Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, No. 362, December 1845

Perhaps, the world never saw, since the days of Sardanapalus, a court so corrupt, wealth so profligate, and a state of society so utterly contemptuous of even the decent affectation of virtue, as the closing years of the reign of Louis XV. A succession of profligate women ruled the king, a similar succession ruled the cabinet; lower life was a sink of corruption; the whole a romance of the most scandalous order. Madame de Pompadour, a woman whose vice had long survived her beauty, and who ruled the decrepit heart of a debauched king, had made Choiseul minister. Choiseul was the beau-ideal of a French noble of the old régime. His ambition was boundless, his insolence ungoverned, his caprice unrestrained, and his love of pleasure predominant even over his love of power. "He was an open enemy, but a generous one; and had more pleasure in attaching an enemy, than in punishing him. Whether from gaiety or presumption, he was never dismayed; his vanity made him always depend on the success of his plans, and his spirits made him soon forget the miscarriage of them."

At length appeared on the tapis the memorable Madame du Barri! For three months, all the faculties of the court were absorbed in the question of her public presentation. Indulgent as the courtiers were to the habits of royal life, the notoriety of Madame du Barri's early career, startled even their flexible sense of etiquette. The ladies of the court, most of whom would have been proud to have taken her place, determined "that they would not appear at court if she should be received there." The King's daughters (who had borne the ascendant of Madame du Pompadour in their mother's life) grew outrageous at the new favourite; and the relatives of Choiseul insisted upon it, that he should resign rather than consent to the presentation. Choiseul resisted, yielded, was insulted for his resistance, and was scoffed at for his submission. He finally retired, and was ridiculed for his retirement. Du Barri triumphed. Epigrams and calembours blazed through Paris. Every one was a wit for the time, and every wit was a rebel. The infidel faction looked on at the general dissolution of morals with delight, as the omen of general overthrow. The Jesuits rejoiced in the hope of getting the old King into their hands, and terrifying him, if not into a proselyte, at least into a tool. Even Du Barri herself was probably not beyond their hopes; for the established career of a King's mistress was, to turn dévote on the decay of her personal attractions.

Among Choiseul's intentions was that of making war on England. There was not the slightest ground for a war. But it is a part of the etiquette of a Frenchman's life, that he must be a warrior, or must promote a war, or must dream of a war. M. Guizot is the solitary exception in our age, as M. Fleury was the solitary exception in the last; but Fleury was an ecclesiastic, and was eighty years old besides – two strong disqualifications for a conqueror. But the King was then growing old, too; his belligerent propensities were absorbed in quarrels with his provincial parliaments; his administrative faculties found sufficient employment in managing the morals of his mistresses; his private hours were occupied in pelting Du Barri with sugar-plums; and thus his days wore away without that supreme glory of the old régime– a general war in Europe.

The calamities of the French noblesse at the period of the Revolution, excited universal regret; and the sight of so many persons, of graceful manners and high birth, flung into the very depths of destitution in foreign lands, or destroyed by the guillotine at home, justified the sympathy of mankind. But, the secret history of that noblesse was a fearful stigma, not only on France, but on human nature. Vice may have existed to a high degree of criminality in other lands; but in no other country of Europe, or the earth, ever was vice so public, so ostentatiously forced upon the eyes of man, so completely formed into an established and essential portion of fashionable and courtly life. It was even the etiquette, that the King of France should have a mistress. She was as much a part of the royal establishment as a prime minister was of the royal councils; and, as if for the purpose of offering a still more contemptuous defiance to the common decencies of life, the etiquette was, that this mistress should be a married woman! Yet in that country the whole ritual of Popery was performed with scrupulous exactness. A vast and powerful clergy filled France; and the ceremonials of the national religion were performed continually before the court, with the most rigid formality. The King had his confessor, and, so far as we can discover, the mistress had her confessor too; the nobles attended the royal chapel, and also had their confessors. The confessional was never without royal and noble solicitors of monthly, or, at the furthest, quarterly absolution. Still, from the whole body of ecclesiastics, France heard no remonstrance against those public abominations. Their sermons, few and feeble, sometimes declaimed on the vices of the beggars of Paris, or the riots among the peasantry; but no sense of scriptural responsibility, and no natural feeling of duty, ever ventured to deprecate the vices of the nobles and the scandals of the throne.

We must give but a fragment, from Walpole's catalogue raisonné, of this Court of Paphos. It had been the King's object to make some women of rank introduce Madame du Barri at court; and he had found considerable difficulty in this matter, not from her being a woman of no character, but on her being a woman of no birth, and whose earlier life had been spent in the lowest condition of vice. The King at last succeeded – and these are the chaperons. "There was Madame de l'Hôpital, an ancient mistress of the Prince de Soubize! The Comtesse Valentinois, of the highest birth, very rich, but very foolish; and as far from a Lucretia as Madame du Barri herself! Madame de Flavacourt was another, a suitable companion to both in virtue and understanding. She was sister to three of the King's earliest mistresses, and had aimed at succeeding them! The Maréchale Duchesse de Mirpoix was the last, and a very important acquisition." Of her, Walpole simply mentions that all her talents were "drowned in such an overwhelming passion for play, that though she had long and singular credit with the King, she reduced her favour to an endless solicitation for money to pay her debts." He adds, in his keen and amusing style – "That, to obtain the post of dame d'honneur to the Queen, she had left off red (wearing rouge,) and acted dévotion; and the very next day was seen riding with Madame de Pompadour (the King's mistress) in the latter's coach!" The editor settles the question of her morality, too. – "She was a woman of extraordinary wit and cleverness, but totally without character." She had her morals by inheritance; for she was the daughter of the mistress of the Duke of Lorraine, who married her to Monsieur de Beauvan, a poor noble, and whom the duke got made a prince of the empire, by the title of De Craon. Now, all those were females of the highest rank in France, ladies of fashion, the stars of court life, and the models of national manners. Can we wonder at the retribution which cast them out into the highways of Europe? Can we wonder at the ruin of the corrupted nobility? Can we wonder at the massacre of the worldly church, which stood looking on at those vilenesses, and yet never uttered a syllable against them, if it did not even share in their excesses? The true cause for astonishment is, not in the depth of their fall, but in its delay; not in the severity of the national judgment, but in that long-suffering which held back the thunderbolt for a hundred years, and even then did not extinguish the generation at a blow!

A FEW PASSAGES CONCERNING OMENS, DREAMS, APPEARANCES, &c

In a Letter to Eusebius

No. II

It is somewhat late, my dear, Eusebius, to refer me to my letter of August 1840, and to enquire, in your bantering way, if I have shaken hands with a ghost recently, or dreamed a dream worth telling. You have evidently been thinking upon this subject ever since I wrote to you; and I suspect you are more of a convert than you will admit. You only wish to provoke me to further evidence; but I see – through the flimsy veil of your seeming denials, and through your put-on audacity – the nervous workings of your countenance, when your imagination is kindled by the mysterious subject. Your wit and your banter are but the whistle of the clown in the dark, to keep down his rising fears. However good your story³⁴ may be, there have been dreams even of the numbers of lottery-tickets that have been verified. We call things coincidences and chances, because we have no name to give them, whereas they are phenomena that want a better settlement. You speak, too, of the "doctrine of chances." If chance have a doctrine, it is subject to a rule, is under calculation, arithmetic, and loses all trace at once of our idea of absolute chance. If there be chance, there is also a power over chance. The very hairs of our head, which seem to be but a chance-confusion, are yet, we are assured, all numbered – and is it less credible that their every movement is noted also? One age is the type of another; and every age, from the beginning of the world, hath had its own symbols; and not poetically only, but literally true is it, that "coming events cast their shadows before." If the "vox populi" be the "vox Dei," it has pronounced continually, in a space of above five thousand years, that there is communication between the material and immaterial worlds. So rare are the exceptions, that, speaking of mankind, we may assert that there is a universal belief amongst them of that connexion by signs, omens, dreams, visions, or ghostly presences. Many professed sceptics, who have been sceptics only in the pride of understanding, have in secret bowed down to one form or other of the superstition. Take not the word in a bad sense. It is at least the germ, the natural germ, of religion in the human mind. It is the consciousness of a superiority not his own, of some power so immeasurably above man, that his mind cannot take it in, but accepts, as inconsiderable glimpses of it, the phenomena of nature, and the fears and misgivings of his own mind, spreading out from himself into the infinite and invisible. I am not certain, Eusebius, if it be not the spiritual part of conscience, and is to it what life is to organized matter – the mystery which gives it all its motion and beauty.

It is not my intention to repeat the substance of my former letter – I therefore pass on. You ask me if the mesmeric phenomena – which you ridicule, yet of which I believe you covet a closer investigation – are not part and parcel of the same incomprehensible farrago? I cannot answer you. It would be easy to do so were I a disciple. If the mesmerists can establish clairvoyance, it will certainly be upon a par with the ancient oracles. But what the philosopher La Place says, in his Essay on Probabilities, may be worth your consideration – that "any case, however apparently incredible, if it is a recurrent case, is as much entitled to a fair valuation under the laws of induction, as if it had been more probable beforehand." If the mesmerized can project, and that apparently without effort, their minds into the minds of others – read their thoughts; if they can see and tell what is going on hundreds of miles off, on the sea and on distant lands alike; if they can at remote distances influence others with a sense of their presence – they possess a power so very similar to that ascribed, in some extraordinary cases, to persons who, in a dying state, have declared that they have been absent and conversed with individuals dear to them in distant countries, and whose presence has been recognised at those very times by the persons so said to be visited, that I do not see how they can be referable to different original phenomena. Yet with this fact before them, supposing the facts of mesmerism, of the mind's separation from, and independence of its organic frame, is it not extraordinary that so many of this new school are, or profess themselves by their writings, materialists? I would, however, use the argument of mesmerism thus: – Mesmerism, if true, confirms the ghost and vision power, though I cannot admit that dreams, ghosts, and visions are any confirmation of mesmerism; for if mesmerism be a delusion and cheat, it may have arisen from speculating upon the other known power – as true miracles have been known to give rise to false. In cases of mesmerism, however, this shock is felt – the facts, as facts in the ordinary sense, are incredible; but then I see persons who have examined the matter very nicely, whom I have known, some intimately, for many years, of whose good sense, judgement, and veracity I will not allow myself to doubt – indeed to doubt whose veracity would be more incredible to me than the mesmeric facts themselves. Here is a conflict – a shock. Two contradictory impossibilities come together. I do not weigh in the scale at all the discovery of some cheats and pretenders; this was from the first to have been expected. In truth, the discoveries of trick and collusion are, after all, few. Not only has mesmerism been examined into by persons I respect, but practised likewise; and by one, a physician, whom I have known intimately many years, who, to his own detriment, has pursued it, and whom I have ever considered one of the most truthful persons living, and incapable of collusion, or knowingly in any way deceiving. Now, Eusebius, we cannot go into society, and pronounce persons whom we have ever respected all at once to be cheats and liars. Yet there may be some among them who will tell you that they themselves were entirely sceptical until they tried mesmerism, and found they had the power in themselves. We must then, in fairness, either acknowledge mesmerism as a power, or believe that these persons whom we respect and esteem are practised upon and deluded by others. And such would, I confess, be the solution of the difficulty, were it not that there are cases where this is next to an impossibility.

But I do not mean now, Eusebius, to discuss mesmerism, ³⁵ further than as it does seem "a part and parcel" of that mysterious power which has been manifested in omens, dreams, and appearances. I say seem– for if it be proved altogether false, the other mystery stands untouched by the failure – for in fact it was, thousands of years before either the discovery or practice – at least as far as we know; for some will not quite admit this, but, in their mesmeric dreaming, attribute to it the ancient oracles, and other wonders. And there are who somewhat inconsistently do this, having ridiculed and contemned as utterly false those phenomena, until they have found them hitch on to, and give a credit to, their new Mesmeric science.

But to return to the immediate subject. It has been objected against dreams, omens, and visions, that they often occur without an object; that there is either no consequence, or a very trifling one; the knot is not "dignus vindice." Now, I am not at all staggered by this; on the contrary, it rather tends to show that there is some natural link by which the material and immaterial within and without ourselves may be connected; and very probably many more intimations of that connexion are given than noted. Those of thought, mental suggestions, may most commonly escape us. It is thus what we would not do of ourselves we may do in spite of ourselves. Nor do we always observe closely objects and ends. We might, were we to scrutinize, often find the completion of a dream or omen which we had considered a failure, because we looked too immediately for its fulfilment. But even where there is evidently no purpose attained, there is the less reason to suspect fabrication, which would surely commence with an object. Some very curious cases are well attested, where the persons under the impression act upon the impulse blindly, not knowing why; and suddenly, in conclusion, the whole purpose bursts upon their understandings. But I think the objection as to purpose is answered by one undoubted fact, the dream of Pilate's wife – "Have thou nothing to do with that just man; for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him." There is here no apparent purpose – the warning was unheeded. Yet the dream, recorded as it is and where it is, was unquestionably a dream upon the event to happen; and is not to be considered as a mere coincidence, which would have been unworthy the sacred historian, who wrote the account of it under inspiration. And this is a strong – the strongest confirmation of the inspiration of dreams, or rather, perhaps, of their significance, natural or otherwise, and with or without a purpose. So the dream of Cæsar's wife did not save Cæsar's life. And what are we to think of the whole narrative, beginning with the warning of the Ides of March? Now, Joseph's dream and Pharaoh's dream were dreams of purpose; they were prophetic, and disclosed to the understanding of Joseph. So that, with this authority of Scripture, I do not see how dreams can be set aside as of no significance. And we have the like authority for omens, and symbols, and visions – so that we must conclude the things themselves to be possible; and this many do, yet say that, with other miracles, they have long ceased to be.

Then, again, in things that by their agreement, falling in with other facts and events, move our wonder, we escape from the difficulty, as we imagine, by calling them coincidences; as if we knew what coincidences are. I do not believe they are without a purpose, any more than that seeming fatality by which little circumstances produce great events, and in ordinary life occur frequently to an apparent detriment, yet turn out to be the very hinge upon which the fortune and happiness of life depend and are established. I remember a remarkable instance of this – though it may not strictly belong to omens or coincidences; but it shows the purpose of an accident. Many years ago, a lady sent her servant – a young man about twenty years of age, and a native of that part of the country where his mistress resided – to the neighbouring town with a ring which required some alteration, to be delivered into the hands of a jeweller. The young man went the shortest way, across the fields; and coming to a little wooden bridge that crossed a small stream, he leaned against the rail, and took the ring out of its case to look at it. While doing so, it slipped out of his hand, and fell into the water. In vain he searched for it, even till it grew dark. He thought it fell into the hollow of a stump of a tree under water; but he could not find it. The time taken in the search was so long, that he feared to return and tell his story – thinking it incredible, and that he should even be suspected of having gone into evil company, and gamed it away or sold it. In this fear, he determined never to return – left wages and clothes, and fairly ran away. This seemingly great misfortune was the making of him. His intermediate history I know not; but this – that after many years' absence, either in the East or West Indies, he returned with a very considerable fortune. He now wished to clear himself with his old mistress; ascertained that she was living, purchased a diamond ring of considerable value, which he determined to present in person, and clear his character, by telling his tale, which the credit of his present condition might testify. He took the coach to the town of – , and from thence set out to walk the distance of a few miles. He found, I should tell you, on alighting, a gentleman who resided in the neighbourhood, who was bound for the adjacent village. They walked together; and, in conversation, this former servant, now a gentleman, with graceful manners and agreeable address, communicated the circumstance that made him leave the country abruptly, many years before. As he was telling this, they came to the very wooden bridge. "There," said he – "it was just here that I dropped the ring; and there is the very bit of old tree, into a hole of which it fell – just there." At the same time, he put down the point of his umbrella into the hole of a knot in the tree – and, drawing it up, to the astonishment of both, found the very ring on the ferrule of the umbrella. I need not tell the rest. But make this reflection – why was it that he did not as easily find it immediately after it had fallen in? It was an incident like one of those in Parnell's "Hermit," which, though a seeming chance, was of purpose, and most important.

Now, here is an extraordinary coincidence between a fact and a dream, or a vision, whatever it may be, which yet was of no result – I know it to be true. And you know, Eusebius, my excellent, truth-telling, worthy Mrs H – , who formerly kept a large school at – . One morning early, the whole house was awakened by the screams of one of the pupils. She was in hysterics; and, from time to time, fainting away in an agony of distress. She said she had seen her grandfather – that he was dead, and they would bury him alive. In due time, the post brought a letter – the grandfather was dead. Letters were written to the friends to announce the dream or vision, and the burial was delayed in consequence. Nothing could be more natural than the fear of burying him alive in the mind of the young girl, unacquainted with death, and averse to persuade herself that the person she had seen could be really dead. Now, my dear Eusebius, you know Mrs H – , and cannot doubt the fact.

Cases of this kind are so many, and well authenticated, that one knows not where to choose.

– "Tam multa loquacem

Delassare valent Fabium."

I think you knew the worthy and amiable Mr – , who had the charge of the valuable museum at – . I well remember hearing this narrated of him, long before his death. He stated, that one day opening a case, he heard a voice issue from it, which said – "In three days you shall die." He became ill, and sent for Dr P – , the very celebrated physician. It was in vain to reason with him. The third day arrived. The kind physician sat with him till the hour was past. He did not then die! Did he, however, mistake or miscalculate the meaning of the voice? He died that very day three years!! Nothing can be more authentic than this.

When I was in town in the summer, Eusebius, I spent an agreeable day with my friends, the C – s. Now, I do not know a human being more incapable of letting an idea, a falsehood of imagination, run away with his sober judgment. He has a habit, I should say, more than most men, of tying himself down to matters of fact. I copy for you an extract from a diary; it was taken down that night. "Mr C – has just told me the following very curious circumstance: – Some years ago, Mrs C – being not in good health, they determined to spend some weeks in the country. His father was then in his house. They separated – the father, to his own home in the neighbourhood of London, and Mr and Mrs C – to visit the brother of Mrs C – , a clergyman, and resident upon his living, in Suffolk. Soon after their arrival, there was a large assembly of friends, in consequence of some church business. There was church service – in the midst of which Mr C – suddenly felt an irresistible desire to return to his house in town. He knew not why. It was in vain he reasoned with himself – go he must, forced by an impulse for which he could in no way account. It would distress his friends – particularly on such an occasion. He could not help it. He communicated his intention to Mrs C – ; begged her to tell no one, lest he should give trouble by having the carriage; – his resolution was instantly taken, to quit the church at once, to walk about six miles to meet the coach if possible; if not, determining to walk all night, a distance of thirty-two miles. He did quit the church, walked the six miles, was in time to take the coach, reached London, and his own home. The intelligence he found there was, that his father was dangerously ill. He went to him – found him dying – and learned that he had told those about him that he knew he should see his son. That wish was gratified, which could not have been but for this sudden impulse and resolution. His father expired in his arms."

It is curious that his father had told him a dream which he had had some years before – that he was in the midst of some convulsion of nature, where death was inevitable, and that then the only one of his children who came to him was my friend Mr C – , which was thus in manner accomplished on the day of his death.

I know not if some persons are naturally more under these and suchlike mysterious influences. There was another occurrence which much affected Mr C – . He went into Gloucestershire to visit a brother. I do not think the brother was ill. All the way that he went in the coach, he had, to use his own words, a death-smell which very much annoyed him. Leaving the coach, he walked towards his brother's house greatly depressed; so much so, that, for a considerable time, he sat on a stone by the way, deeply agitated, and could not account for the feeling. He arrived in time only to see his brother expire. I do not know, Eusebius, how you can wish for better evidence of facts so extraordinary. Mr C – 's character is sufficient voucher.

Here is another of these extraordinary coincidences which I have been told by my friend Mrs S – , niece to the Rev. W. Carr, whom she has very frequently heard narrate the following: – A farmer's wife at Bolton Abbey, came to him, the Rev. W. Carr, in great agitation, and told him she had passed a dreadful night, having dreamed that she saw Mr Richard, (brother to Rev. W. Carr;) that she saw him in great distress, struggling in the water, with his portmanteau on his shoulders, escaping from a burning ship; and she begged the family to write to know if Mr Richard was safe. It was exactly according to the dream; he had, at the very time, so escaped from the burning of (I believe) the Boyne. How like is this to some of the mesmeric visions! I am assured of the truth of the following, by one who knew the circumstance. One morning, as Mrs F – was sitting in her room, a person came in and told her he had had a very singular dream; that he had been sitting with her sister, Mrs B – k, when some one came into the room with distressing intelligence about her husband. Though it could not have been there known at the time, Mr B – k had been thrown from his horse and killed.

A party of gentlemen had met at Newcastle; the nature of the meeting is stated to have been of a profane character. One of them suddenly started, and cried, "What's that?" – and saw a coffin. The others saw it; and one said – "It is mine: I see myself in it!" In twenty-four hours he was a corpse.

I think I mentioned to you, Eusebius, that when I dined with Miss A – , in town, she told me a curious story about a black boy. I have been since favoured with the particulars, and copy part of the letter; weigh it well, and tell me what you think of such coincidences – if you are satisfied that there is nothing but chance in the matter.

"Now for the little black boy. In the year 1813, I was at the house of Sir J. W. S – th of D – House, near Bl – d, who then resided in Portman Square, and a Mr L – r of Norfolk, a great friend of Sir John's, was of the party. On coming into the room, he said – 'I have just been calling on our old Cambridge friend, H – n, who returned the other day from India; and he has been telling me a very curious thing which happened in his family. He had to go up the country to a very remote part, on some law business, and he left Mrs H – n at home, under the protection of her sister and that lady's husband. The night after Mr H – n went away, the brother-in-law was awakened by the screams of his own wife in her sleep; she had dreamed that a little black boy, Mr H – n's servant, who had attended him, was murdering him. He woke her, and while he was endeavouring to quiet her, and convince her that her fears were the effects of a bad dream, produced probably by indigestion, he was roused by the alarming shrieks of Mrs H – n, who slept in an adjoining room. On going to her, he found her, too, just awakening after a horrid dream – the little Indian boy was murdering her husband. He used the same arguments with her that he had already found answer in quieting his own wife; but, in his own mind, he felt very anxious for tidings from Mr H – n. To their great surprise, that gentleman made his appearance the next evening, though he had expected to be absent above a week. He looked ill and dejected. They anxiously asked him what was the matter. Nothing, but that he was angry with himself for acting in a weak, foolish manner. He had dreamed that his attendant, the little black boy, intended to murder him; and the dream made such an impression on his nerves that he could not bear the sight of the boy, but dismissed him at once without any explanation. Finding he could not go on without an attendant, he had returned home to procure one; but as he had no reason whatever to suspect the boy of any ill intention, he felt very angry with himself for minding a dream. Dear Mrs H – n was much struck with this story; but she used to say – unless it were proved that the boy really had the intention of murdering his master, the dreams were for nothing.'"

In this instance a murder may have been prevented by these dreams; for if merely coincidences, and without an object, the wonder of coincidences is great indeed; for it is not one dream, but three, and of three persons.

Things apparently of little consequence are yet curious for observation. Our friend K – n, and two or three other friends, some months ago went on an excursion together. Their first point was Bath, where they meant to remain some time. K – n dreamed on Friday they were to start on Saturday; that there was a great confusion at the railway station; and that there would be no reaching Bath for them. They went, however, on Saturday morning, and he told his dream when in the carriage. One of the party immediately repeated the old saying —