The Valet's Tragedy, and Other Studies Part 13

Let not the weary reader imagine that the catena of evidence ends here!

His lordship's own ghost did a separate stroke of business, though only in the commonplace character of a deathbed wraith, or 'veridical hallucination.'

Lord Lyttelton had a friend, we learn from 'Past Feelings Renovated'

(1828), a friend named Miles Peter Andrews. 'One night after Mr. Andrews had left Pitt Place and gone to Dartford,' where he owned powder-mills, his bed-curtains were pulled open and Lord Lyttelton appeared before him in his robe de chambre and nightcap. Mr. Andrews reproached him for coming to Dartford Mills in such a guise, at such a time of night, and, 'turning to the other side of the bed, rang the bell, when Lord Lyttelton had disappeared.' The house and garden were searched in vain; and about four in the afternoon a friend arrived at Dartford with tidings of his lordship's death.

Here the reader with true common sense remarks that this second ghost, Lord Lyttelton's own, does not appear in evidence till 1828, fifty years after date, and then in an anonymous book, on no authority. We have permitted to the reader this opportunity of exercising his acuteness, while laying a little trap for him. It is not in 1828 that Mr. Andrews's story first appears. We first find it in December 1779--that is, in the month following the alleged event. Mr. Andrews's experience, and the vision of Lord Lyttelton, are both printed in 'The Scots Magazine,'

December 1779, p. 650. The account is headed 'A Dream,' and yet the author avers that Lord Lyttelton was wide awake! This ill.u.s.trates beautifully the fact on which we insist, that 'dream' is eighteenth-century English for ghost, vision, hallucination, or what you will.

'Lord Lyttelton,' says the contemporary 'Scots Magazine,' 'started up from a midnight sleep on perceiving a bird fluttering near the bed-curtains, which vanished suddenly when a female spirit in white raiment presented herself' and prophesied Lord Lyttelton's death in three days. His death is attributed to convulsions while undressing.

The 'dream' of Mr. Andrews (according to 'The Scots Magazine' of December 1779)* occurred at Dartford in Kent, on the night of November 27. It represented Lord Lyttelton drawing his bed-curtains, and saying, 'It is all over,' or some such words.

*The magazine appeared at the end of December.

This Mr. Andrews had been a drysalter. He made a large fortune, owned the powder-mills at Dartford, sat in Parliament, wrote plays which had some success, and was thought a good fellow in raffish society. Indeed, the society was not always raffish. In 'Notes and Queries' (December 26, 1874) H. S. says that his mother, daughter of Sir George Prescott, often met Mr. Andrews at their house, Theobalds Park, Herts. He was extremely agreeable, and, if pressed, would tell his little anecdote of November 27, 1779.

This proof that the Andrews tale is contemporary has led us away from the description of the final scene, given in 'Past Feelings Renovated,'

by the person who brought the news to Mr. Andrews. His version includes a trick played with the watches and clocks. All were set on half an hour; the valet secretly made the change in Lord Lyttelton's own timepiece. His lordship thus went to bed, as he thought, at 11.30, really at eleven o'clock, as in the Pitt Place doc.u.ment. At about twelve o'clock, midnight, the valet rushed in among the guests, who were discussing the odd circ.u.mstances, and said that his master was at the point of death. Lord Lyttelton had kept looking at his watch, and at a quarter past twelve (by his chronometer and his valet's) he remarked, 'This mysterious lady is not a true prophetess, I find.' The real hour was then a quarter to twelve. At about half-past twelve, by HIS watch, twelve by the real time, he asked for his physic. The valet went into the dressing-room to prepare it (to fetch a spoon by other versions), when he heard his master 'breathing very hard.' 'I ran to him, and found him in the agonies of death.'

There is something rather plausible in this narrative, corresponding, as it does, with the Pitt Place doc.u.ment, in which the valet, finding his master in a fit, leaves him and seeks a.s.sistance, instead of lowering his head that he might breathe more easily. Like the other, this tale makes suicide a most improbable explanation of Lord Lyttelton's death.

The affair of the watches is dramatic, but not improbable in itself.

A correspondent of 'The Gentleman's Magazine' (in 1815) only cites 'a London paper' as his authority. The writer of 'Past Feelings Renovated'

(1828) adds that Mr. Andrews could never again be induced to sleep at Pitt Place, but, when visiting there, always lay at the Spread Eagle, in Epsom.

Let us now tabulate our results.

At Pitt Place, Epsom, or Hill Street, Berkeley Square, On November 24, Lord Lyttelton Dreamed of, or saw, A young woman and a robin. A bird which became a woman. A dove and a woman. Mrs. Amphlett (without a dove or robin). Some one else unknown.

In one variant, a clock and a preternatural light are thrown in, with a sermon which it were superfluous to quote. In another we have the derangement of clocks and watches. Lord Lyttelton's stepmother believed in the dove. Lady Lyttelton did without a dove, but admitted a fluttering sound.

For causes of death we have--heart disease (a newspaper), breaking of a blood-vessel (Mason), suicide (Coulton), and 'a suffocating fit' (Pitt Place doc.u.ment). The balance is in favour of a suffocating fit, and is against suicide. On the whole, if we follow the Pitt Place Anonymous (writing some time after the event, for he calls Mr. Fortescue 'Lord Fortescue'), we may conclude that Lord Lyttelton had been ill for some time. The making of his will suggests a natural apprehension on his part, rather than a purpose of suicide. There was a lively impression of coming death on his mind, but how it was made--whether by a dream, an hallucination, or what not--there is no good evidence to show.

There is every reason to believe, on the Pitt Place evidence, combined with the making of his will, that Lord Lyttelton had really, for some time, suffered from alarming attacks of breathlessness, due to what cause physicians may conjecture. Any one of these fits, probably, might cause death, if the obvious precaution of freeing the head and throat from enc.u.mbrances were neglected; and the Pitt Place doc.u.ment a.s.serts that the frightened valet DID neglect it. Again, that persons under the strong conviction of approaching death will actually die is proved by many examples. Even Dr. Hibbert says that 'no reasonable doubt can be placed on the authenticity of the narrative' of Miss Lee's death, 'as it was drawn up by the Bishop of Gloucester' (Dr. William Nicholson) 'from the recital of the young lady's father,' Sir Charles Lee. Every one knows the tale. In a preternatural light, in a midnight chamber, Miss Lee saw a woman, who proclaimed herself Miss Lee's dead mother, 'and that by twelve o'clock of the day she should be with her.' So Miss Lee died in her chair next day, on the stroke of noon, and Dr. Hibbert rather heartlessly calls this 'a fortunate circ.u.mstance.'

The Rev. Mr. Fison, in 'Kamilaroi and Kurnai,' gives, from his own experience, similar tales of death following alleged ghostly warnings, among Fijians and Australian blacks. Lord Lyttelton's uneasiness and apprehension are conspicuous in all versions; his dreams had long been troubled, his health had caused him anxiety, the 'warning' (whatever it may have been) clinched the matter, and he died a perfectly natural death.

Mr. Coulton, omitting Walpole's statement that he 'looked ill,' and never alluding to the Pitt Place description of his very alarming symptoms, but clinging fondly to his theory of Junius, perorates thus: 'Not Dante, or Milton, or Shakespeare himself, could have struck forth a finer conception than Junius, in the pride of rank, wealth, and dignities, raised to the Council table of the sovereign he had so foully slandered--yet sick at heart and deeply stained with every profligacy--terminating his career by deliberate self-murder, with every accompaniment of audacious charlatanry that could conceal the crime.'

It is magnificent, it is worthy of Dante, or Shakespeare himself--but the conception is Mr. Coulton's.

We do not think that we have provided what Dr. Johnson 'liked,'

'evidence for the spiritual world.' Nor have we any evidence explanatory of the precise nature of Lord Lyttelton's hallucination. The problem of the authorship of the 'Junius Letters' is a malstrom into which we decline to be drawn.

But it is fair to observe that all the discrepancies in the story of the 'warning' are not more numerous, nor more at variance with each other, than remote hearsay reports of any ordinary occurrence are apt to be.

And we think it is plain that, if Lord Lyttelton WAS Junius, Mr. Coulton had no right to allege that Junius went and hanged himself, or, in any other way, was guilty of self-murder.

VI. THE MYSTERY OF AMY ROBSART

1. HISTORICAL CONFUSIONS AS TO EVENTS BEFORE AMY'S DEATH

Let him who would weep over the tribulations of the historical inquirer attend to the tale of the Mystery of Amy Robsart!

The student must dismiss from his memory all that he recollects of Scott's 'Kenilworth.' Sir Walter's chivalrous motto was 'No scandal about Queen Elizabeth,' 'tis blazoned on his t.i.tle-page. To avoid scandal, he calmly cast his narrative at a date some fifteen years after Amy Robsart's death, brought Amy alive, and represented Queen Elizabeth as ignorant of her very existence. He might, had he chosen, have proved to his readers that, as regards Amy Robsart and her death, Elizabeth was in a position almost as equivocal as was Mary Stuart in regard to the murder of Darnley. Before the murder of Darnley we do not hear one word to suggest that Mary was in love with Bothwell. For many months before the death of Amy (Lady Robert Dudley), we hear constant reports that Elizabeth has a love affair with Lord Robert, and that Amy is to be divorced or murdered. When Darnley is killed, a mock investigation acquits Bothwell, and Mary loads him with honours and rewards. When Amy dies mysteriously, a coroner's inquest, deep in the country, is held, and no records of its proceedings can be found. Its verdict is unknown.

After a brief tiff, Elizabeth restores Lord Robert to favour.

After Darnley's murder, Mary's amba.s.sador in France implores her to investigate the matter with all diligence. After Amy's death, Elizabeth's amba.s.sador in France implores her to investigate the matter with all diligence. Neither lady listens to her loyal servant, indeed Mary could not have pursued the inquiry, however innocent she might have been. Elizabeth could! In three months after Darnley's murder, Mary married Bothwell. In two months after Amy's death Cecil told (apparently) the Spanish amba.s.sador that Elizabeth had married Lord Robert Dudley. But this point, we shall see, is dubious.

There the parallel ceases, for, in all probability, Lord Robert was not art and part in Amy's death, and, whatever Elizabeth may have done in private, she certainly did not publicly espouse Lord Robert. A Scot as patriotic as, but less chivalrous than, Sir Walter might, however, have given us a romance of c.u.mnor Place in which Mary would have been avenged on 'her sister and her foe.' He abstained, but wove a tale so full of conscious anachronisms that we must dismiss it from our minds.

Amy Robsart was the only daughter of Sir John Robsart and his wife Elizabeth, nee Scot, and widow of Roger Appleyard, a man of good old Norfolk family. This Roger Appleyard, dying on June 8, 1528, left a son and heir, John, aged less than two years. His widow, Elizabeth, had the life interest in his four manors, and, as we saw, she married Sir John Robsart, and by him became the mother of Amy, who had also a brother on the paternal side, Arthur Robsart, whether legitimately born or not.*

Both these brothers play a part in the sequel of the mystery. Lord Robert Dudley, son of John, Duke of Northumberland, and grandson of the Dudley who, with Empson, was so unpopular under Henry VII., was about seventeen or eighteen when he married Amy Robsart--herself perhaps a year older--on June 4, 1550. At that time his father was Earl of Warwick; the wedding is chronicled in the diary of the child king, Edward VI.**

*Mr. Walter Rye in The Murder of Amy Robsart, Norwich and London, 1885, makes Arthur a b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Mr. Pettigrew, in An Inquiry into the Particulars connected with the Death of Amy Robsart (London, 1859), represents Arthur as legitimate.

**Mr. Rye dates the marriage in 1550.

Rye, pp. 5, 36, cf. Edward VI.'s Diary, Clarendon Society. Mr. Froude cites the date, June 4, 1549, from Burnet's Collectanea, Froude, vi.

p. 422, note 2 (1898), being misled by Old Style; Edward VI. notes the close of 1549 on March 24.

Amy, as the daughter of a rich knight, was (at least if we regard her brother Arthur as a b.a.s.t.a.r.d) a considerable heiress. Robert Dudley was a younger son. Probably the match was a family arrangement, but Mr. Froude says 'it was a love match.' His reason for this a.s.sertion seems to rest on a misunderstanding. In 1566-67, six years after Amy's death, Cecil drew up a list of the merits and demerits of Dudley (by that time Earl of Leicester) and of the Archduke Charles, as possible husbands of Elizabeth. Among other points is noted by Cecil, 'Likelihood to Love his Wife.' As to the Archduke, Cecil takes a line through his father, who 'hath been blessed with mult.i.tude of children.' As to Leicester, Cecil writes 'Nuptiae carnales a laet.i.tia incipiunt, et in luctu terminantur'--'Weddings of pa.s.sion begin in joy and end in grief.' This is not a reference, as Mr. Froude thought, to the marriage of Amy and Dudley, it is merely a general maxim, applicable to a marriage between Elizabeth and Leicester. The Queen, according to accounts from all quarters, had a physical pa.s.sion or caprice for Leicester. The marriage, if it occurred, would be nuptiae carnales, and as such, in Cecil's view, likely to end badly, while the Queen and the Archduke (the alternative suitor) had never seen each other and could not be 'carnally'

affectionate.*

*Froude, ut supra, note 3.

We do not know, in short, whether Dudley and Amy were in love with each other or not. Their marriage, Cecil says, was childless.

Concerning the married life of Dudley and Amy very little is known.

When he was a prisoner in the Tower under Mary Tudor, Amy was allowed to visit him. She lost her father, Sir John, in 1553. Two undated letters of Amy's exist: one shows that she was trusted by her husband in the management of his affairs (1556-57) and that both he and she were anxious to act honourably by some poor persons to whom money was due.*

The other is to a woman's tailor, and, though merely concerned with gowns and collars, is written in a style of courteous friendliness.**

Both letters, in orthography and sentiment, do credit to Amy's education and character. There is certainly nothing vague or morbid or indicative of an unbalanced mind in these poor epistles.

*Pettigrew, 14, note 1.

**Jackson, Nineteenth Century, March 1882, A Longleat MS.

When Elizabeth came to the throne (1558) she at once made Dudley Master of the Horse, a Privy Councillor, and a Knight of the Garter. His office necessarily caused him to be in constant attendance on the royal person, and the Knighthood of the Garter proves that he stood in the highest degree of favour.

For whatever reason, whether from distaste for Court life, or because of the confessed jealousy with which the Queen regarded the wives of her favourites--of all men, indeed--Amy did not come to Court. About 1558-59 she lived mainly at the country house of the Hydes of Detchworth, not far from Abingdon. Dudley seems to have paid several visits to the Hydes, his connections; this is proved by entries in his household books of sums of money for card-playing there.* It is also certain that Amy at that date, down to the end of 1559, travelled about freely, to London and many other places; that she had twelve horses at her service; and that, as late as March 1560 (when resident with Dudley's comptroller, Forster, at c.u.mnor Place) she was buying a velvet hat and shoes. In brief, though she can have seen but little of her husband, she was obviously at liberty, lived till 1560 among honourable people, her connections, and, in things material, wanted for nothing.** Yet Amy cannot but have been miserable by 1560. The extraordinary favour in which Elizabeth held her lord caused the lewdest stories to spread among all cla.s.ses, from the circle of the Court to the tattle of country folk in Ess.e.x and Devonshire.***

*Jackson, ut supra.