An Eighteenth Century Spectre - by Katherine Langrish

Thomas, Second Baron Lyttelton

“Sir,” said Dr Johnson to his friend Dr Adams, “it is the most extraordinary thing that has happened in my day.” 

 

He was speaking of the mysterious circumstances attending the death of Thomas, Second Baron Lyttelton, known in true Georgette Heyer fashion as ‘the wicked Lord Lyttelton’, born 30 January 1744, and died - as we shall see - on the night of the 27^th November 1779.

 

Lyttelton was educated at Eton and Oxford, a charming and talented boy; too charming and talented for his own good, perhaps, for he became a notorious rake.  He fought duels, and ‘excelled the ordinary model of young debauchery everywhere’. He married to pay his gambling debts and then ran off to Paris with a barmaid; he entered the House of Commons in 1768 as MP for Bewdley, but was unseated for bribery the following year; he disappeared again to the Continent; but when his father died in 1774 he returned and took his seat in the Lords where, to secure his support, ministers bought him over with a lucrative sinecure – something which would pay him money and for which he would have to do little or no work – the ancient post of Chief Justice of Eyre beyond the Trent. 

 

Four years later, however, on the 25^th November 1779, (possibly disappointed by his failure to obtain another sinecure and become a Keeper of the Privy Seals) Lyttelton changed sides and denounced Government and Court in a vitriolic speech. Horace Walpole comments ‘Lyttelton … has turned against the Court.'  Regarding his existing sinecure, Lyttelton said, ‘Perhaps I may not keep it long.’

 

He was correct.  By midnight on November 27^th, he was dead.

 

On the night before his speech – the night of Wednesday 24^th November – Lyttelton saw a ghost which told him he would die within three days. Between the Wednesday and the Friday, he mentioned this to various friends and acquaintances: Rowan Hamilton, and one Captain Ascough, who told a lady, who told another lady named Mrs Thrale who wrote it down in her diary on Sunday 28^th November, the morning after Lyttelton’s midnight death:

 

Yesterday a lady from Wales dropped in and said that she had been at Drury Lane on Friday night.  “How,” I asked, “were you entertained?” “Very strangely indeed!  Not with the play, though, but the discourse of a Captain Ascough, who averred that a friend of his, Lord Lyttelton, has SEEN A SPIRIT, who warned him that he will die in three days.  I have thought of nothing else since.”

 

Horace Walpole, writing to a friend on Monday November 29^th, says:

 

Lord Lyttelton is dead suddenly.  …The story is given out, that he looked ill, AND HAD SAID HE SHOULD NOT LIVE THREE DAYS; that he had gone to his house in Epsom… with a caravan of nymphs; and on Saturday had retired before supper to take rhubarb; returned, supped heartily, went into the next room and died in an instant. 

 

Within a short time, however, Walpole has picked up on the gossip around town: Lyttleton had claimed to have seen a robin – or some other bird – which changed into a woman and delivered him a death warning.  By December 11^th Walpole writes with dry humour to another friend that ghost stories are back in fashion!

 

Lord Lyttelton’s vision has revived the taste; though it seems a little odd that an APPARITION should despair of getting access to his lordship’s bed, in the shape of a young woman, without being forced to use the disguise of a robin red-breast.

 

The ‘nymphs’ to whom Walpole refers in his first letter were the three Misses Amphlett; residing with their ‘chaperon’ Mrs Flood at Lyttelton’s house in Hill Street, Berkeley Square.  A few months later, in February 1780, Lord Westcote, Lyttelton’s uncle, questioned them, and wrote:

 

On November 25^th, at breakfast in Hill Street, Lord Lyttelton told the young ladies and their chaperon that he had had an extraordinary DREAM.

 

He seemed to be in a room which a bird flew into; the bird changed to a woman in white, who told him he should die in three days.

 

He ‘did not much regard it, because he could in some measure account for it; for that a few days before he had been with Mrs Dawson, when a robin red-breast flew into her room.’  On the morning of Saturday [the 27^th] he told the same ladies that he was very well and believed he should ‘BILK THE GHOST’. On that day – Saturday – he …went to bed after eleven, ordered rolls for breakfast, and, in bed, ‘died without a groan’ as his servant was disengaging him from his waistcoat.

 

Myself, I'm particularly taken with the juxtaposition of the caravan of nymphs and the rhubarb, and with Walpole's crack about the spirit not really needing to disguise itself as a robin to get into Lyttelton's bed... There was no inquest. 

And there's a postscript: on the fatal night, 27^th November 1779, Mr Miles Peter Andrews, a friend of Lyttelton’s who was staying at Dartford, was woken when his bed-curtains were pulled open and he was confronted by Lord Lyttelton ‘in his robe de chambre and nightcap’. Suspecting a practical joke, Andrews rang the bell for his servant, and on turning back found Lord Lyttelton gone.  The house and garden were searched in vain, and about four in the afternoon of the next day, a friend arrived with news of Lyttelton’s death. The event was recorded in the next number of the Scots Magazine, December 1779.

 

But let us return to Dr Johnson, with whom we began, speaking of the mysterious affair with his friend Dr Adams.  Johnson was famously afraid of death.  He continues, “I heard it with my own ears from his uncle Lord Westcote. I am so glad to have evidence of the spiritual world that I am willing to believe it.”

 

Dr Adams replies (doubtless alluding to the Scriptures), “You have evidence enough – good evidence, which needs no support.”

 

“I like to have more!” Dr Johnson growls.

 

 

Picture credit:  Thomas, Second Baron Lyttelton, by Richard Brampton, circa 1775, National Portrait Gallery, London (Wikimedia Commons)

William Sykes - Connoisseur or Forger? by Imogen Robertson

Daily Post (London, England), Tuesday, January 12, 1725

On December 31st 1724 Mr. William Sykes died in Bruges. He was a painter and picture dealer, a member of the Virtuosi of St Luke’s, an exclusive club of artistic connoisseurs, one of the close friends who received a mourning ring from Sir Godfrey Kneller and as you can see above 'a Gentleman distinguished and universally known for his extraordinary Performances and uncommon Judgement in that Art'. 

He left his business at Two Golden Balls, Portugal Row, Lincoln’s Inn--Fields to his son, and the family continued in the art trade through the rest of the 18th century. 

Google him now, however, and you’ll read that he was a forger. 

I’m working on a novella in the Westerman and Crowther series that revolves around art fraud in the period, so I stumbled across Sykes in the early stages of my research. I then went down a rabbit hole of art history and am reporting from deep underground. 

The internet articles about William Sykes seem to originate in Noah Charney’s book The Art of Forgery. Its a beautiful book, but I’m not convinced by his takedown of Sykes. It's made me realise how careful we need to be, or how careful I feel we should be, when accusing historical figures of crimes. I don't think Charney is careful enough, he's providing snappy prose rather than history in the pages which deal with Sykes and I think that's a shame, particularly because it makes me wary about the rest of the book. 

So here's my issue: Charney writes ‘Horace Walpole, the eighteenth century art historian called the con man William Sykes a ‘noted trickster’.’ 

No he didn’t. George Vertue did. According to A. C. Ducerel.

George Vertue by Jonathan Richardson, 1733

George Vertue (1684 -1756) was an artist and engraver who around 1713 embarked on a grand project to collect every scrap of information he could about the history of art in England. He died however before he could shape those notes into something fit to be printed. Horace Walpole, who had often corresponded with him, bought the manuscript notes and used them as the basis for his Anecdotes of Painting in England. In the first volume he wrote about a picture he owned at the time which was known as ‘The Marriage of Henry VII’. Now another of Walpole’s correspondents, A. C. Ducerel wrote to him (23/2/1762), and told him that Vertue had said: 

'That Lord Pomfret bought this picture of one Old Sykes above 30 years ago, which Sykes dealt in pictures and was a noted tricker—that he (Sykes) gave it that name, well knowing how to give names to pictures to make them sell—that Geo. Vertue had carefully examined that picture ... and that, upon the whole, it was suspected, at the time that Lord Pomfret bought it, that Old Sykes, who was a rogue, had caused the figures and representation of the marriage, to be added to the representation of the inside of a church, Old Sykes having before been guilty of many pranks of that sort.' 

So Walpole didn’t use that phrase ‘noted trickster’. It was Vertue who said it to Ducerel, who related it to Walpole who then flew off the handle. Of course he did, Vertue was impugning his picture, of which he was very proud, from beyond the grave. I seem to remember he paid £84 for it.

Now, in one of those gleams of serendipity which seem to come up when researching, it turns out that the picture which Walpole was defending is up for sale next week at Christie’s in New York, and certainly someone messed about with it. A lot. When Walpole owned it it looked like this:

Well, that's an engraving of how it looked. After very careful restoration - it now looks like this:

Lot 8 Attributed to Hugo van der Goes (Ghent c. 1440-1482 Rode Klooster, near Brussels), The Virgin and Child with Saints Thomas, John the Baptist, Jerome and Louis, oil on panel, 43 5/8 x 49 ¼ in. (110.8 x 125.2 cm.). Estimate 3,000,000 - USD 5,000,000 © Christie’s Images Limited 2017.

The estimate is 3-5 million dollars, in case any of you fancy it.

So was this transformation William Sykes’s handiwork? I think there is no way of knowing. This detailed and scholarly article almost convinced me, but a portrait that the author, Alain.R.Truong identifies as by Sykes, and relies on for comparison is now listed on the National Trust site as by an unknown 19th century painter. I’ve emailed to ask about that and will let you know if I hear anything. 

Charney’s accusation however in The Art of Forgery is not that Sykes repainted the painting above, but that Sykes forged an inscription on the back of a different painting. The painting, now known as The Enthronement of Saint Romold as Bishop of Dublin, was for a long time thought to be a Van Eyck portrayal of The Enthronement of Thomas a Becket. It did certainly pass through Sykes’s hands, but that doesn't prove the inscription is the work of Sykes. 

painting by Master of the Youth of Saint Romold
(Museum: National Gallery of Ireland)

Charney implies Sykes attributed the painting to van Eyck because he was ‘the most famous and highest selling artist in the late eighteenth and throughout the nineteenth centuries in England’, which, given Sykes died in 1724, would make him a prophet as well as a forger. 

George Vertue gathered information from Sykes about painters the older man had known, so was willing to take his words on some things, but he’s very distrustful of him too. When Vertue decides that a portrait, traditionally called ‘Mary Queen of Scots with her son’, in The Drapers Hall in London is in fact no such thing he writes ‘I fancy Sykes the painter was concerned in it’. Hmm. Well. Assertion is not evidence. 

I have noticed that though Vertue was an early student of Godfrey Kneller, he didn't get one of those mourning rings, and Sykes did. Jealousy, perhaps? That could make an interesting novel... 

www.imogenrobertson.com

twitter.com/@robertsonimogen

'Samuel Pepys and the Goldfish' by Karen Maitland

I love delving into the diary of Samuel Pepys. He left us a wonderful record of some great historical events as they were unfolding, but for me it is his casual references to the details of everyday life, which always makes me want to find out find out more.

‘Thence home to see my Lady Pen, where my wife and I were shown a fine rarity of fishes kept in a glass of water, that will live so forever, and finely marked they are, being foreign.’ Samuel Pepys, 28th May 1665

We will never know for certain what these fish were that Samuel Pepys admired, but it is likely that this is one of earliest written references to goldfish being kept in an English house.

The Ancient Romans are credited with being the first to bring fish into the home for the pleasure of their guests, keeping them in tanks made of marble. But these would have been fish such as barbels taken from rivers, rather than fish specially breed for colour and shape.

In the Middle Ages manor houses, monasteries and villages had fish ponds stocked with fish destined for the table. No doubt children got pleasure from feeding them crumbs, but even smallest child would have been aware that, like other livestock, they were there to be eaten. In manors and monasteries fish could also be seen swimming for a few days in tubs of water in the cool of the dairy until the cook was ready for them, but the concept of keeping a fish in the house that you didn’t intend to eat would have been strange to most medieval Europeans.

But in China goldfish were kept and breed for pleasure as early as the Sung Dynasty (960-1279AD). In 918AD a Chinese monk wrote, ‘if goldfish eat the remains of olives or soapy water they die, but a certain bark will prevent them getting lice.’ The writer Yo K’o (1173-1240) described fish breeders in Chung-tu (now Beijing) who could turn the colour of fish to gold.

By 1276 silver, black, red and multi-coloured goldfish were being produced for sale as ornamental fish and by the 14th century an entire porcelain factory in China was given over to the production of fish bowls. Martin Martini, writing between 1646-50 in Hangchow, became fascinated by the ‘little gilded fish’ called Chin-yü. ‘The skin glitters,’ he tells us, ‘being interwoven with threads of gold. The whole back sprinkled as it were with gold dust.’

 If it was goldfish Samuel Pepys saw in the ‘glass of water’ it is likely they came into England via Portuguese traders, who were the first Europeans to bring them on ships from China sometime after 1611. But after the East India Company established a trading base in China in 1672, the British eventually began to import these fish directly from China. One such ship arrived in England with live goldfish among its cargo early in the year 1692, having left Macao in China in September the previous year. Considering Louis le Comte on a visit to China in 1696 had described these finger-length fish as highly delicate and susceptible to injury, it was amazing they survived such a rough journey, not to mention the changes in temperature, and their water can't have been replaced very often on such a long voyage.

By 1711 the Duke of Richmond boasted of owning a large Chinese earthenware bowl full of goldfish which had been imported directly from China, and Horace Walpole was so successful in breeding them in his pond, he gave goldfish away as gifts to friends, sending one man home with a dozen in a ‘decanter’.

 But as Horace found out, keeping goldfish wasn't an entirely hazard free hobby. In 1747 Thomas Gray penned his poem ‘Ode on the death of a favourite cat, drowned in a tub of gold fishes.' The cat in question was Horace Walpole's cat, Selima.

 

 Wealthy Europeans kept goldfish in the large porcelain or earthenware bowls, as they had been kept in China, but once these fish became fashionable in England, unless you had grand entrance hall, keeping these large bowls of water on the floor of an English house wasn’t practical, so the glass goldfish bowl was introduced which could stand on a small table. Early English glass fish bowls were mounted on stems like wine glasses. The idea for these glass fish bowls may have originally come from the water-filled glass globes which were placed on tables to intensify the candlelight when someone was trying to read, write or sew.

Eventually these exotic pets became so cheap that goldfish were given to children by rag and bone men in exchange for the old clothes and other recyclables they had collected. I remember as child coming home with a live goldfish I’d won at a fair. I loved and cherished ‘Goldy’ for years, though thankfully for the sake of all those poor creatures who didn’t survive, giving away fish as prizes has now been banned.

The Death of a Peer, or, Lord Lyttelton's Ghost - by Katherine Langrish

Thomas, Second Baron Lyttelton

“Sir,” said Dr Johnson to his friend Dr Adams, “it is the most extraordinary thing that has happened in my day.”

He was speaking of the mysterious circumstances attending the death of Thomas, Second Baron Lyttelton, known - in true Georgette Heyer fashion - as ‘the wicked Lord Lyttelton’, born 30 January 1744, and died, as we shall see, on the night of the 27^th November 1779.

Born with every advantage, Lyttelton was educated at Eton and Oxford, a charming and talented boy: too charming and talented for his own good, perhaps, for he became a notorious rake.  He fought duels, and ‘excelled the ordinary model of young debauchery everywhere’. He married to pay his gambling debts and then ran off to Paris with a barmaid; he entered the House of Commons in 1768 as MP for Bewdley, but was unseated for bribery the following year; he disappeared again to the Continent; but when his father died in 1774 he returned and took his seat in the Lords where, to secure his support, ministers bought him over with a lucrative sinecure – something which would pay him money and for which he would have to do little or no work – the ancient post of Chief Justice of Eyre beyond the Trent.

Four years later, however, on the 25^th November 1779, (possibly disappointed by his failure to obtain another sinecure and become a Keeper of the Privy Seals) Lyttelton changed sides and denounced Government and Court in a vitriolic speech. Horace Walpole comments ‘Lyttelton … has turned against the Court.'  Regarding his existing sinecure, Lyttelton said, ‘Perhaps I may not keep it long.’

He was correct.  By midnight on November 27^th, he was dead.

On the night before his speech – the night of Wednesday 24^th November – Lyttelton saw a ghost which told him he would die within three days. Between the Wednesday and the Friday, he mentioned this to various friends and acquaintances: Rowan Hamilton, and one Captain Ascough, who told a lady, who told another lady named Mrs Thrale who wrote it down in her diary on Sunday 28^th November, the morning after Lyttelton’s midnight death:

Yesterday a lady from Wales dropped in and said that she had been at Drury Lane on Friday night.  “How,” I asked, “were you entertained?” “Very strangely indeed!  Not with the play, though, but the discourse of a Captain Ascough, who averred that a friend of his, Lord Lyttelton, has SEEN A SPIRIT, who warned him that he will die in three days.  I have thought of nothing else since.”

Horace Walpole, writing to a friend on Monday November 29^th, says:

Lord Lyttelton is dead suddenly.  …The story is given out, that he looked ill, AND HAD SAID HE SHOULD NOT LIVE THREE DAYS; that he had gone to his house in Epsom… with a caravan of nymphs; and on Saturday had retired before supper to take rhubarb; returned, supped heartily, went into the next room and died in an instant.

Within a short time, however, Walpole has picked up on the gossip around town: Lyttleton had claimed to have seen a robin – or some other bird – which changed into a woman and delivered him a death warning.  By December 11^th Walpole writes with dry humour to another friend that ghost stories are back in fashion!

Lord Lyttelton’s vision has revived the taste; though it seems a little odd that an APPARITION should despair of getting access to his lordship’s bed, in the shape of a young woman, without being forced to use the disguise of a robin red-breast.

The ‘nymphs’ to whom Walpole refers in his first letter were the three Misses Amphlett; residing with their ‘chaperon’ Mrs Flood at Lyttelton’s house in Hill Street, Berkeley Square.  A few months later, in February 1780, Lord Westcote, Lyttelton’s uncle, questioned them, and wrote:

On November 25^th, at breakfast in Hill Street, Lord Lyttelton told the young ladies and their chaperon that he had had an extraordinary DREAM.

He seemed to be in a room which a bird flew into; the bird changed to a woman in white, who told him he should die in three days.

He ‘did not much regard it, because he could in some measure account for it; for that a few days before he had been with Mrs Dawson, when a robin red-breast flew into her room.’  On the morning of Saturday [the 27^th] he told the same ladies that he was very well and believed he should ‘BILK THE GHOST’. On that day – Saturday – he …went to bed after eleven, ordered rolls for breakfast, and, in bed, ‘died without a groan’ as his servant was disengaging him from his waistcoat.

There was no inquest.

And there's a postscript: on the fatal night, 27^th November 1779, Mr Miles Peter Andrews, a friend of Lyttelton’s who was staying at Dartford, was woken when his bed-curtains were pulled open and he was confronted by Lord Lyttelton ‘in his robe de chambre and nightcap’. Suspecting a practical joke, Andrews rang the bell for his servant, and on turning back found Lord Lyttelton gone.  The house and garden were searched in vain, and about four in the afternoon of the next day, a friend arrived with news of Lyttelton’s death. The event was recorded in the next number of the Scots Magazine, December 1779.

But let us return to Dr Johnson, with whom we began, speaking of the mysterious affair with his friend Dr Adams.  Johnson was famously afraid of death.  He continues, “I heard it with my own ears from his uncle Lord Westcote. I am so glad to have evidence of the spiritual world that I am willing to believe it.”

Dr Adams replies (doubtless alluding to the Scriptures), “You have evidence enough – good evidence, which needs no support.”

“I like to have more!” Dr Johnson growls.

Picture credit:  Thomas, Second Baron Lyttelton, by Richard Brampton, circa 1775, National Portrait Gallery, London (Wikimedia Commons)