Part 40 (1/2)

LOUISA BOURNE.

H. M. Bourne.

The second signature was added later, with the words: ”This was written by my sister and me together.”

Miss H. M. Bourne enclosed the above in the following letter to Mrs.

Dent, to whom we are indebted for the case:--

WESTON SUBEDGE, BROADWAY, WORCESTERs.h.i.+RE, _May 21st, 1891_.

MY DEAR MRS. DENT,--Louisa has asked me send you the enclosed account of the impression she, the coachman, and I had of seeing papa on Paddy in the hunting-field. It was on the 5th February 1887 it happened, and in March the same year, when I was out walking alone, I thought I saw papa and Paddy stop at a little plantation of his close to, and look at the wall, which had fallen in [in] one part. He then appeared to ride a few yards towards me, but afterwards turned round and went back past the plantation and out of sight. When I went in I asked him if he had not seen me, and why he turned back, when it transpired he had not been past that plantation all day, but had ridden home another way. He said it must have been some one else on a white horse, and asked where I was when I saw him, and then, not before, it dawned on me that it was utterly impossible to see either plantation or wall from where I was. Since then I have often been along the same road, and stood, and looked, and wondered how it was I so distinctly saw the broken wall and papa on the white horse; a turn in the road makes my having really done so quite impossible. I am sorry I cannot give you the exact date of this: I know it was in March 1887, but cannot remember the day, except that it was _not_ on the 5th. The other ”experience” is, I always think, far more interesting, as having been seen by three, and also from the fact that Paddy was the only white or grey horse in the hunting-field that day; so that unbelievers could not say it was some one else on a white horse that we had mistaken....

NINA M. BOURNE.

Mrs. Sidgwick writes:--

_February 25th, 1892._

I saw Miss H. Bourne and her father this afternoon. Miss Bourne told me the stories of her seeing her father, first with her sister, and later by herself, and signed the account which she and her sister had, she says, made out together about it. The groom who saw the figure at the same time has since been dismissed, and cannot be asked for his evidence. Canon Bourne remembers hearing of the matter the day it happened. The groom rode up to the ladies as they were looking, and said: ”The Canon is beckoning, Miss, and I think you had better go to him; his horse looks as if he had had a fall” (that is, muddy). The figure was beckoning to them with their father's usual (and peculiar) gesture. He is a heavy man, and his white horse, adapted to carry weight, was quite unlike any other horse in the neighbourhood. Every one agrees as to the impossibility of mistaking the horse. The horses of the neighbourhood were well known to the neighbourhood in general and to the Miss Bournes in particular, as they were at that time constantly out with the hounds. The incident seems quite unaccountable.

VI. C. From _Phantasms of the Living_, vol. i. p. 214. We received the first account of this case--the percipient's evidence--through the kindness of Mrs. Martin, of Ham Court, Upton-on-Severn, Worcester.

ANTONY, TORPOINT, _December 14th, 1882_.

Helen Alexander (maid to Lady Waldegrave) was lying here very ill with typhoid fever, and was attended by me. I was standing at the table by her bedside, pouring out her medicine, at about 4 o'clock in the morning of the 4th October 1880. I heard the call-bell ring (this had been heard twice before during the night in that same week), and was attracted by the door of the room opening, and by seeing a person entering the room whom I instantly felt to be the mother of the sick woman. She had a bra.s.s candlestick in her hand, a red shawl over her shoulders, and a flannel petticoat on which had a hole in the front. I looked at her as much as to say, ”I am glad you have come,” but the woman looked at me sternly, as much as to say, ”Why wasn't I sent for before?” I gave the medicine to Helen Alexander, and then turned round to speak to the vision, but no one was there. She had gone. She was a short, dark person, and very stout. At about 6 o'clock that morning Helen Alexander died.

Two days after her parents and a sister came to Antony, and arrived between 1 and 2 o'clock in the morning; I and another maid let them in, and it gave me a great turn when I saw the living likeness of the vision I had seen two nights before. I told the sister about the vision, and she said that the description of the dress exactly answered to her mother's, and that they had bra.s.s candlesticks at home exactly like the one described. There was not the slightest resemblance between the mother and daughter.

FRANCES REDDELL.

This at first sight might be taken for a mere delusion of an excitable or over-tired servant, modified and exaggerated by the subsequent sight of the real mother. If such a case is to have evidential force, we must ascertain beyond doubt that the description of the experience was given in detail before any knowledge of the reality can have affected the percipient's memory or imagination. This necessary corroboration has been kindly supplied by Mrs. Pole-Carew, of Antony, Torpoint, Devonport.

_December 31st, 1883._

In October, 1880, Lord and Lady Waldegrave came with their Scotch maid, Helen Alexander, to stay with us. [The account then describes how Helen was discovered to have caught typhoid fever.] She did not seem to be very ill in spite of it, and as there seemed no fear of danger, and Lord and Lady Waldegrave had to go a long journey the following day (Thursday), they decided to leave her, as they were advised to do, under their friend's care.

The illness ran its usual course, and she seemed to be going on perfectly well till the Sunday week following, when the doctor told me that the fever had left her, but the state of weakness which had supervened was such as to make him extremely anxious. I immediately engaged a regular nurse, greatly against the wish of Reddell, my maid, who had been her chief nurse all through the illness, and who was quite devoted to her. However, as the nurse could not conveniently come till the following day, I allowed Reddell to sit up with Helen again that night, to give her the medicine and food, which were to be taken constantly.

At about 4.30 that night, or rather Monday morning, Reddell looked at her watch, poured out the medicine, and was bending over the bed to give it to Helen, when the call-bell in the pa.s.sage rang. She said to herself, ”There's that tiresome bell with the wire caught again.” (It seems it did occasionally ring of itself in this manner.) At that moment, however, she heard the door open and, looking round, saw a very stout old woman walk in. She was dressed in a night-gown and red flannel petticoat, and carried an old-fas.h.i.+oned bra.s.s candlestick in her hand. The petticoat had a hole rubbed in it. She walked into the room, and appeared to be going towards the dressing-table to put her candle down. She was a perfect stranger to Reddell, who, however, merely thought, ”This is her mother come to see after her,” and she felt quite glad it was so, accepting the idea without reasoning upon it, as one would in a dream. She thought the mother looked annoyed, possibly at not having been sent for before. She then gave Helen the medicine, and turning round, found that the apparition had disappeared, and that the door was shut. A great change, meanwhile, had taken place in Helen, and Reddell fetched me, who sent off for the doctor, and meanwhile applied hot poultices, etc., but Helen died a little before the doctor came. She was quite conscious up to about half an hour before she died, when she seemed to be going to sleep.

During the early days of her illness, Helen had written to a sister, mentioning her being unwell, but making nothing of it, and as she never mentioned any one but this sister, it was supposed by the household, to whom she was a perfect stranger, that she had no other relation alive. Reddell was always offering to write for her, but she always declined, saying there was no need, she would write herself in a day or two. No one at home, therefore, knew anything of her being so ill, and it is, therefore, remarkable, that her mother, a far from nervous person, should have said that evening going up to bed, ”I am sure Helen is very ill.”

Reddell told me and my daughter of the apparition, about an hour after Helen's death, prefacing with, ”I am not superst.i.tious, or nervous, and I wasn't the least frightened, but her mother came last night,” and she then told the story, giving a careful description of the figure she had seen. The relations were asked to come to the funeral, and the father, mother, and sister came, and in the mother Reddell recognised the apparition, as I did also, for Reddell's description had been most accurate, even to the expression, which she had ascribed to annoyance, but which was due to deafness. It was judged best not to speak about it to the mother, but Reddell told the sister, who said the description of the figure corresponded exactly with the probable appearance of her mother if roused in the night; that they had exactly such a candlestick at home, and that there was a hole in her mother's petticoat produced by the way she always wore it. It seems curious that neither Helen nor her mother appeared to be aware of the visit. Neither of them, at any rate, ever spoke of having seen the other, nor even of having dreamt of having done so.

F. A. POLE-CAREW.

[Frances Reddell states that she has never had any hallucination, or any odd experience of any kind, except on this one occasion. The Hon. Mrs. Lyttelton, formerly of Selwyn College, Cambridge, who knows her, tells us that ”she appears to be a most matter-of-fact person, and was apparently most impressed by the fact that she saw a hole in the mother's flannel petticoat, made by the busk of her stays, reproduced in the apparition.”]