by Thomas Hood (uncredited).
Originally published in Hood's Magazine and Comic Miscellany (Andrew Spottiswoode) vol.1 (1845).
No. IV.
"The apparition comes!—
Those hands are not more like."
Hamlet.
My third visitation took place about a year and a half after the departure of a relation for India. He had started for that land of the sun from my chambers in the Temple, which were on the ground-floor, and have now given place to more modern and less gloomy tenements. After all the anxieties of the outfit, and the last melancholy parting, I well remember watching him from behind the noble poplar that then stood in the garden, and was, afterwards, mercilessly felled to make way for the new buildings, till he disappeared in the cheerless fog of a November morning, as he dropped down the river in old Major's wherry.
My bed-room opened into the sitting-room, and both fronted the garden. The foot of the bed was towards the window, on the seat of which my lamp burned. One summer night I was lying awake thinking of a case I had to answer, and of nothing less than my relation, when, on turning my head, I saw him standing close to the left side of my bed, and looking down on me. Before I could recover from my surprise, his back was towards me. I saw him go out of the open door on the same side of the room—arose, threw on my dressing-gown, took up the lamp, called him by name, searched the rooms, and then, so strong was the impression, unbolted the outer door, sought him in the passage, went to the common entrance, and even looked up the paved footway that led to it between the buildings and the garden. No human figure was visible. The moon shone upon the high tide from a cloudless sky silvering the trees in the garden, and the silence was only broken by the whispering of the poplar-leaves and the occasional distant dash of oars.
No extraordinary coincidence accompanied this vision.
On the other hand, the story related of Dr. Donne by honest Izaak Walton makes the vision coincide so exactly, both in circumstances and time with actual events, that we can hardly wonder at the effect produced on those who had been made acquainted with it.
When "Mr. Donne" removed from Mitcham to London, Sir Robert Drewry, "a gentleman of very noble estate, and a more liberal mind, assigned him and his wife an useful apartment in his own large house in Drury Lane, and not only rent free, but was also a cherisher of his studies, and such a friend as sympathised with him and his in all their joys and sorrows." Lord Hay was sent at this time on an embassy to Henry IV. of France by our first James; and Sir Robert, having resolved to accompany him, solicited Donne to be his companion in that journey. But his wife, who was in bad health and with child, desired him not to leave her, saying, "Her divining soul boded her some ill in his absence." He accordingly laid aside all thoughts of going; but the importunity of Sir Robert prevailed, and Donne, considering himself bound, told his wife so, "who did, therefore, with an unwilling-willingness give a faint consent."
"Within a few days," Walton tells us, "after this resolve, the ambassador, Sir Robert, and Mr. Donne, left London, and were, the twelfth day, got all safe to Paris. Two days after their arrival there, Mr. Donne was left alone in that room, in which Sir Robert, and he, and some other friends had dined together. To this place Sir Robert returned within half an hour; and as he left, so he found, Mr. Donne alone: but in an ecstasy, and so altered as to his looks, as amazed Sir Robert to behold him; insomuch that he earnestly desired Mr. Donne to declare what had befallen him in the short time of his absence. To which Mr. Donne was not able to make a present answer: but, after a long and perplexed pause, did at last say, "I have seen a dreadful vision since I saw you: I have seen my dear wife pass twice by me through this room, with her hair hanging about her shoulders, and a dead child in her arms: this I have seen since I saw you." To which Sir Robert replied, "Sure, sir, you have slept since I saw you; and this is the result of some melancholy dream, which I desire you to forget, for you are now awake." To which Mr. Donne's reply was,—"I cannot be surer that I now live, than that I have not slept since I saw you; and am as sure, that»at her second appearing she stopped, and looked me in the face and vanished." Rest and sleep had not altered Mr. Donne's opinion the next day; for he then affirmed this vision with a more deliberate and so confirmed a confidence, that he inclined Sir Robert to a faint belief that the vision was true. It is truly said, that desire and doubt have no rest; and it proved so with Sir Robert: for he immediately sent, a servant to Drewry House, with a charge to hasten back, and bring him word whether Mrs. Donne were alive; and, if alive, in what condition she was as to her health. The twelfth day the messenger returned with this account:—That he found and left Mrs. Donne very sad, and sick in her bed; and that, after a long and dangerous labour, she had been delivered of a dead child. And, upon examination, the abortion proved to be the same day, and about the very hour, that Mr. Donne affirmed he saw her pass by him in his chamber."
"This is a relation," says the venerable biographer, that will beget some wonder, and it well may; for most of our world are at present possessed with an opinion, that visions and miracles are ceased. And, though it is most certain, that two lutes being both strung and tuned to an equal pitch, and then one played upon, the other, that is not touched, being laid upon a table at a fit distance, will—like an echo to a trumpet—warble a faint audible harmony in answer to the same tune; yet many will not believe there is any such thing as a sympathy of souls; and I am well pleased, that every reader do enjoy his own opinion."
What the opinion of the father of angling was may be collected from his subsequent remarks, the instances of apparitions that he quotes, and his commendation of the following consideration to the reader:—"That there be many pious and learned men, that believe our merciful God hath assigned to every man a particular guardian angel, to be his constant monitor, and to attend him in all his dangers, both of body and soul."
In this narrative—which was not told to Walton by Donne himself, but—"now long since—by a person of honour, and of such intimacy with him, that he knew more of the secrets of his soul than any person then living"—we have not only a presentiment of evil on the part of the wife, but the most perfect coincidences accompanying the vision of the husband. The tender affection that Mr. Donne felt for his partner may be collected from his expression of his feelings generally, and in no small degree from his "Valediction, forbidding to mourn"—"A copy of verses given by Mr. Donne to his wife at the lime he then parted from her." In that age of slow locomotion, when no lover could annihilate time and space, and as many days were required to reach Paris from London with any degree of comfort, as in the present high-pressure period will steam a traveller across the Atlantic, is it extraordinary that the forebodings and dangerous state of the beloved wife should, during such a separation, be constantly borne in upon the soul of the anxious husband—a man, be it remembered, of strong imagination—till the dismal apparition was raised?
Still those cases, in which all circumstances fit so exactly, must produce a strong impression, especially upon ordinary minds.
Such was the strange story sometimes mentioned by Lord Byron, and related to him by Captain Kidd, the commander of the immortalised "Lisbon Packet."—"This officer stated that, being asleep one night in his berth, he was awakened by the pressure of something heavy on his limbs, and, there being a faint light in the room, could see, as he thought, distinctly, the figure of his brother, who was at that time in the naval service in the East Indies, dressed in his uniform, and stretched across the bed. Concluding it to be an illusion of the senses, he shut his eyes; and made an effort to sleep. But still the same pressure continued, and still, as often as he ventured to take another look, ho saw the figure lying across him in the same position. To add to the wonder, on putting his hand forth to touch this form, he found the uniform, in which it appeared to be dressed, dripping wet. On the entrance of one of his brother officers, to whom he called out in alarm, the apparition vanished; but in a few months after he received the startling intelligence, that on that night his brother had been drowned in the Indian seas. Of the supernatural character of this appearance, Captain Kidd himself did not appear to have the slightest doubt."[1]
Many years ago, a gentleman, habitually an early riser, who was on a visit at the country seat of an old and particular friend, retired at night apparently in his usual health; and, at six, the next morning, was found dead in his bed. The shocking intelligence soon spread, and at last reached the head keeper:—"Dead!" said he, "Mr. — dead? Why I saw him leaning over the fence at half past five this morning, looking at the deer!" This man was convinced that he had seen Mr. —'s " Fetch;" nor were there wanting others of the same opinion.
Not long since, a friend who has deservedly earned for himself a European reputation, was deeply immersed in a scientific subject about two o'clock in the day, when, suddenly, it rushed into his mind that he had long neglected to write to a lady who had been most
intimate with his mother and family—one of those amiable persons—would they were less rare!—who are always thinking of others rather than themselves. Penetrated by a feeling which he could not control, he laid aside his work, and immediately commenced a letter to Mrs. —, wherein he upbraided himself for his delay, and, as he proceeded, became so overpowered, that he was affected to tears while he wrote—"at this very moment you may be no more." The letter was despatched, but it never reached the hand for which it was intended. The relatives, whose distressing duty it was to open the letters addressed to the deceased, struck with the expression, turned to the date, and found that the sentence was written on the very day of her death. She was no more when that overpowering sensation wrung my friend's heart, and those mournful words dropped from his pen. It is not surprising that the relatives of the departed point to that letter as a proof that sympathies exist not dreamt of in our philosophy.
The coincidence of the mysterious disturbance at Abbotsford, and Mr. George Bullock's sudden death recorded in one of the most interesting and perfect pieces of biography ever printed[2], will occur to every one; and light as Sir Walter made of it before he heard of his friend's decease, it appears to have sunk much deeper into his mind after he had been made acquainted with the details of that event.
In a subsequent part of the same fascinating work we find, however, the true philosophy laid down on a very affecting occasion:—"As I slept for a few minutes in my chair, to which I am more addicted than I could wish, I heard, as I thought, my poor wife call me by the familiar name of fondness which she gave me. My recollections on waking were melancholy enough. These be
'The airy tongues that syllable men's names.'
All, I believe, have some natural desire to consider these unusual impressions as bodements of good or evil to come. But, alas! this is a prejudice of our own conceit. They are the empty echoes of what is past, not the foreboding voice of things to come,"—Diary.
To return to those visions which are purely confined to certain localities, I must refer to an instance which was strongly dwelt on by those to whom it was known, inasmuch as it was vouched that the seer had never heard of what she declared she saw, and the likeness traced by her in the apparition agreed with the picture for which the ghost had sat while in the body.
In a mansion in —shire there was a tradition that one of its former mistresses had committed suicide. The apartment in which the crime was perpetrated was said to be subject to visitations from the restless spirit of the criminal, who occasionally appeared with her pale, self-accusing face and long black dishevelled hair flowing in profusion over her shoulders and bust, the only part of her figure visible on such ghastly occasions. The tale had its day: modern education laughed it to scorn; and although an unsophisticated maid-servant would occasionally come down very pale in the morning, after passing the night in that apartment, and on persisting in her solemn assertion that she had seen the unearthly visitant, and in her determination to enter it no more, generally obtained her dismissal, the ghost-story was treated as such stories of late years have been, and the comfortable room had long been fitted up as a bedchamber, without any disturbance of the rest of the visiters who occupied it.
To this house a lady and her daughter came to make a short stay. The lady was taken dangerously ill, and lay in this room. It was midnight. She slept. Her daughter was on the bed, but not undressed, counting the minutes as she held her watch in her hand; for she had been told that her dear mother's life depended upon the punctual administration of medicine. The side curtains of the bed were partially undrawn, and suddenly something seemed to come between the opening and an old-fashioned cabinet, black as ebony, that stood against the wall. The young lady looked up, and beheld the marble-like, ghostly bust, half veiled by the long dark tresses, as if suspended in the aperture. Every lineament was distinct, and so clear that she traced in the deadly white visage a likeness to the features of a friend. She leaped desperately to the floor, looked around—and found nothing but what was usually in the apartment. She tried the door—it was fast—then screamed and fainted. The servants were alarmed by the violent ringing of the sick mother, who had been aroused by her child's scream, and burst into the room.
No one doubted the veracity of the narrator; but the probability was, that, intimate as the families were, some account of the ghost had reached the young lady's ears in her early youth, and had passed from her mind till she found herself under such circumstances amid the associations of the very spot where it was said to appear.
Indeed in all cases where the vision is seen by one person only, natural causes will account for the illusion; but when more than one behold the same phantom at the same instant, the solution of the problem becomes more difficult.
In the Life of Blackbeard, referred to in our last chapter, we find the following:—"Those of his crew who were taken alive told a story which may appear a little incredible; however, we think it will not be fair to omit it, since we had it from their own mouths. That, once upon a cruise, they found out that they had a man on board more than their crew: such a one was seen several days amongst them, sometimes below and sometimes upon deck, yet no man in the ship could give an account who he was, or from whence he came; but that he disappeared a little before they were cast away in their great ship—but, it seems, they verily believed it was the Devil."
When we reflect on the constant state of drunken excitement in which these wretches lived, and the diabolical excesses of which they were guilty[3], there is not, indeed, much room for wonder at the dark terrors called up by their delirium tremens; but it is not so easy to account for the following phantasms.
A venerable manor-house in the west of England, with its terraced walks, noble hollies, and quaint yew hedges, had sunk into the usual condition of such ancient places, and had become a farm-house of the better class. The former possessors had been of elevated rank, and the last of their descendants, a widow lady of title, had retired there, still retaining the remains of loveliness, with a handsome nephew in the prime of manly beauty, about the middle of the last century. They lived in strict privacy, were never seen out of the grounds, and never received any visiters, with one exception. At the expiration of every three months an old-fashioned coach rolled up the avenue shaded by the sun-proof elms, stopped at the entrance, and out stepped a man of advanced age, dressed in a dark-brown suit, with a plain cocked hat and grey stockings. In about ten minutes he again made his appearance, entered the carriage, which rolled down the avenue, and was seen no more till the next quarter of a year had passed away. This had gone on for some time, and afforded subject for comment to all the country round. The neighbours shook their head®, and whispered light tales of the dame; but all attempts to penetrate the cloud that shrouded their history failed.
One fine August evening, six weeks at least before its appearance was due, according to its usual periods of arrival, the light of the harvest moon shone on the well-known coach till it lost to view under the melancholy boughs of the avenue trees. Some reapers, on their way home, saw it return, and, as it passed out of the avenue gates, beheld, sitting by the side of the old gentleman, the handsome nephew, pale and motionless as a corpse. The same night a carriage and four drove furiously up to the house, and, at the end of the week, a hearse and six received at midnight a coffin covered with black velvet, and went—none of the neighbours knew where. The place was shut up for years, and had only been lately fitted up for the reception of a new tenant—a substantial man who had bought the land about the house and farmed it himself—at the commencement of the present century.
In its desolate state, it was haunted of course; and "the wicked lady," as she was called, had often been seen gliding in the moonlight about the terraces by those who had been hardy enough to take a short cut across the grounds in their way home from the village club.
The two sons of the new tenant were young men just at the end of their teens. They had heard all the ghost-stories connected with the place, and laughed at them. They had also heard strange noises, especially from one particular chamber, in which the lady had died, and the door of which had not been unlocked for years, and had satisfied themselves that they had traced some of the sounds to a colony of jackdaws that had established themselves in the unused chimnies with which the spacious old house—a world too wide for the present occupants—abounded.
These two brothers lay upon a grassy headland enjoying the noon of a lovely day outside one of the garden walls. They were shaded from the sun by the overhanging laburnums and guelder-roses, which, tired of their confinement within, had, truant-like, broken bounds to mingle their blossoms with the wild flowers on the field-side of the half-ruined wall. The young men listened to the humming in the air, and lazily watched the tremulous haze that rose from the ridges of the fallow which lay parallel to them.
Lying thus, with half-shut eyes, they saw upon the ridges before them the figure of a lady dressed in the costume of the middle of the eighteenth century. They both started up together, and advanced rapidly to the form, which receded without appearing to move a limb across the furrows, with its face still towards them as they had first seen it, till it reached the closed gate, through the bars of which it seemed to pass as the brothers arrived at the barrier—and then was lost to their view. Beyond was a bare common, where no person could have been hid; and the only beings in sight besides themselves were a party of gnats dancing in the sun, and the swallows that ever and anon cut a lane through them, leaving the survivors to continue their dance.
Another tale which I shall also tell, as "'twas told to me," records an instance where two persons of different grades of life saw the same phantom simultaneously.
An officer of rank in the army bought a fine old house and estate, beautifully situated in a midland county, which had no drawback, except that it was said to be the haunt of a tall female arrayed in deep mourning. The family were delighted with the place, and for some time were undisturbed. After a little while, however, the servants began to complain that their path was occasionally crossed by the apparition, and some of them left their service in consequence.
One evening in the autumn, the gentlemen were sitting over their wine, when the host, as he looked out of the old oriel window, saw a female figure standing in the grey light on the lawn. He immediately exclaimed, taking what he saw for his wife,—"How inconsiderate of
Charlotte to be out at this time! in the first place she will take cold, and in the next, if any of the servants see her, they will declare that they have seen the Dark Lady." The guests turned their heads, saw nothing, and said so. "No," replied Colonel --, "she is just now gone." Upon entering the drawing-room, where Mrs. -- was sitting in a black velvet dress with her female friends, he spoke to her on the subject; but she assured him that she had not been out at all, which was the fact. This did not banish the scepticism of the gallant proprietor, who felt convinced either that some one was bent on amusement at his expense, or was anxious that he should be disgusted with his purchase, for selfish ends, and was determined, if possible, to detect the contriver. Watch, he accordingly did, at all hours, but without the slightest success.
He had given up this vain vigilance, and was beginning to forget the Dark Lady, when, as he was returning from shooting with his game-keeper in the evening, the latter called his attention to a dusky female form standing at the end of the nearest external extremity of one of the wings of the mansion which was in the form of an E, like many of the old houses built in Elizabeth's time. He immediately said, "Now, we shall catch the ghost," and sending the keeper round the back of the house so as to cut off the intruder if an escape should be attempted round the opposite wing, he advanced upon the figure which waited his approach at first, but, before he could reach it, it turned down the inside of the wing, as if it were going to the front entrance. The gamekeeper now appeared at the end of the opposite wing; and his master pursued the form, which glided before him down the wing near which they had first seen it, then along the front of the house, and was lost to the view of the pursuer in the middle of the inside of the opposite wing, where there had formerly been a door. He was so close that he, for the moment, thought to enter with the apparition through the doorway, which had been walled up for years. He was a brave man, but his# heart beat thick. The keeper declared that nothing had passed him; and to this hour the mystery remains unsolved.
1. Moore's Life of Byron.
2. Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart. By J.G. Lockhart, Esq., his Literary Executor. 8vo. Edinburgh: C. Candell, 1842.
3. "Some of his frolics of wickedness were so extravagant, as if he aimed at making his men believe he was a devil incarnate; for being one day at sea, and a little flushed with drink--'Come,' says he, 'let us make a hell of our own, and try how long we can bear it.' Accordingly he, with two or three others, went down into the hold, and, closing up all the hatches, filled several pots full of brimstone and other combustible matter, and set it on fire, and so continued till they were almost suffocated, when some of the men cried out for air. At length he opened the hatches, not a little pleased that he held out the longest."—General History of the Pyrates, Life of Captain Teach, alias Blackbeard.