LORD BROUGHAM ON GHOSTS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 1168, 15 November 1871, Page 3

LORD BROUGHAM ON GHOSTS.

(From Life and Times of Brougham, written by himself. ) Tired with, the cold of yesterday, I was glad to take advantage of a hot bath before I turned in. And here a most remarkable thing happened to me — so remarkable that I must tell the story from the beginning. After I left the High School, I Avent with G -, my most intimate friend, to attend the classes in the University. There was no divinity-class, but we frequently in our walks discussed and speculated upon many grave subjects — among others, on the immortality of the soul, and on a future state. This question, and the possibility, I will not say of ghosts walking, but of the dead appearing to the living, were subjects of much speculation ; and wo actually committed the folly of drawing up an agreement, written toith our blood, to the effect that whichever of us died the first should appear to the other, and thus solve any doubts we had entertained of the "life after death." After we had finished our classes' at the college, G went to India, having got an appointment there in the civil service. He seldom wrote to me, and after the lapse of a few years I had almost forgotten liiin ; moreover, his family having little connection with Edinburgh, I seldom saw or heard anything of them, or of him through them, so that all the old schoolboy intimacy had died out, and I had nearly forgotten his existence. I had taken, as I have said, a warm bath ; and while lying in it and enjoying the comfort of the heat, after the late freezing I had undergone, I turned my head round, looking towards the chair on which I had deposited my clothes, as I was about to get up out of the bath. On the chair sat G- , looking calmly at me. How I got out of the bath I know not, but on recovering my senses I found myself sprawling on the floor. The apparition, or whatever it was, that had taken the likeness of G , had disappeared. The vision produced such a shock that I had no inclination to talk about it, or to speak about it even to Stuai't ; but the impression it made upon me was too vivid to be easily forgotten ; and so strongly was I affected by it that I have herp written down the whole history, with the date, 19th December, and all the particulars, as they are now fresh before me. No doubt I had fallen asleep ; and that the appearance presented so distinctly to my eyes was a dream, I cannot for a moment doubt ; yet for years I had had no communication with G , nor had there been anytliing to recall him to my recollection ; nothing had taken place 'during our Swedish travels either connected with G or with India, or with anything relating to him, or to any member of his family. I recollected quiokly enough our old discussion, and the bargain we had made. I could not discliarge from my mind the impression that G must have died, and that his appearance was to be received by me as proof of a future state ; yet all the while I felt convinced that the whole was a dream ; and so painfully vivid, and so unfading was the impression*, that I could not bring myself to talk of it, or to make the slightest allusion to it. I finished dressing , and, as we had agreed to make an early start, I was ready by six o'clock, the hour of our breakfast. Brougham, October 16th, 1862. — I have just been copying out from my journal the account of this strange dream : Certissima mortis imago ! And now to finish the story, begun about sixty years since. Soon after my return to Edinburgh, there arrived a letter from India announcing G 's death ! and stating that he had died on the 19th December ! ! Singular coincidence ; yet when one reflects on the vast number of dreams which night after night pass through our brains, the number of coincidences between the vision and the event are perhaps fewer and less remarkable than a fair calculation of chances would warrant us to expect. Nor is it surprising, considering the variety of our thoughts in sleep, and that they all bear some analogy to the affairs of life, that a dream should sometimes coincide with a contemporaneous, or even with a future event. This is not much more wonderful than that a person, whom we had no reason to expect, should appear to us at the very moment we had been thinking or speaking of him. So common is this that it has for ages grown into the proverb, "Speakof the devil." I believe every such seeming miracle is, like every ghost story, capable of explanation. There never was, to all appearance, a better authenticated fact than Lord Lyttelton's ghost. I have heard my father tell the story ; but coupled with his entire conviction that it was either a pure invention, or the accidental coincidence of a dream with the event. He had heard tho particulars from a lady — a Mrs Aflleck, or some such name — during a visit he made to London about the year 1780, not very long after the death. The substance of what he heard was that Lord Lyttelton had for some time been in failing health ; that he was suffering from a heart complaint; that a few days before his death he related to some female friends who were hiving in his house in London an extraordinary dream, in which a figure appeared to him and told him he should shortly die ; that his death, which really took place a few days after the dream, had been very sudden, owing no doubt to the heart disease. My father was convinced that tho female tendency to believe in the marvellous naturally produced the statement that the moment of the death had exactly corresponded with the time as predicted in the dream. The story was told with corroborating circumstances — one of which was, the attempt to cheat the ghoat by altering the

hour on the clock ; and the tale obtained a surprising degree of credit, considering the unsubstantial foundation on which it reallyrested. On all such subjects my father was very sceptical. He was very fond of telling a story in which he had been actor, and, as he used to say, in which his unbelieving obstinacy had been the means of demolishing what would have made a very pretty ghost story. He had dined one day in Deans-yard, Westminster, with a party of yoimg men, one of whom was his intimate friend, Mr Calmel. There was some talk about the death of a Mrs Nightingale, who had recently died under some melancholy circumstances, and had that day been buried in the Abbey. Some one of the party offered to bet that no one of those present would go down into the grave and drive a nail into the coffin. Calmel accepted the wager, only stipulating that he might have a lantern. He was accordingly led into the cathedral by a door out of cloisters, and then left to himself. The dinner party, after waiting an hour or more for Calmel, began to think something must have happened to him, and that he ought to be looked after ; so my father and two or three more got a light, and went to the grave at the bottom of which lay the apparently dead body of Mr Calmel. He was quickly transported to the prebend's diningroom, and recovered out of his fainting fit. As soon as he coidd find his tongue, he said, " Well, I have won my wager, and you'll find the nail n the coffin ; but, by Jove ! the lady rose up, laid hold of me, and pulled mo down before I could scramble out of the grave." Calmel stuck to his story in spite of all the scoffing of his friends ; and the ghost of Mrs Nightingale woidd have been all over the town, but for my father's obstinate incredulity. Nothing would satisfy him but an ocular inspection of tho grave and coffin ; and so, getting a light, he and some of the party returned to the grave. There, sure enough, was the nnil, well driven into the coffin ; but hard fixed by it, was a bit of Mr Calmel's coat tail ! So there was an end of Mrs Nightingale's ghost. This grave afterwards became remarkable for a very beautiful piece of sculpture, by some celebrated artist, representing Mr Nightingale vainly attempting to ward from his dying wife the dart of death. My father always instanced this as the best piece of monumental sculpture in the Abbey. After this long digression, it is time to return to my journal.