LACKS TRUTH ONLY
COLD FACTS DESTROY AN ENTER
TAINING GHOST STORY,
Reminiscences of Lord Lytton Which Are More Valuable in Relation Than In Truthfulness — An Alleged Hunted Room Which Did Not Exist.
Romantic Lord Lytton was, but not superstitions. His death, however, has revived the story of the yellow boy's room; the ghost chamber said to exist at Knebworth house, the beautiful ancestral home of the Lyttons for more than 600 years. At Mr. W. P. Frith's door must the charge be laid of having put the interesting tale in circulation, for we find it first in his engaging volume of "Reminiscences." After relating Westwood's experiences with the weird woman of the Maison Blob, the painter supplements the story by another anecdote of more tragical significance.
"At Knebworth," he says, "the seat of Lord Lytton, there is a bedchamber called the yellow boy's room." He then proceeds to relate that during a visit to Knebworth, Lord Castlereagh, while the guest of the grandfather of the late British embassador to Paris, was assigned without a word of warning to the mysteries and haunted room. Feeling very tired he soon dropped into sleep, but his uneasy slumbers were troubled and it was not long before he awoke. What it was which startled him his lordship never knew, but the sight which met his eyes as he gazed at the still burning fire in his room was startling enough. The figure of a boy, with long, yellowish hair streaming down, sat in front of the flameace with his back toward the Irish nobleman. As the latter looked, the lad arced, turned toward him, and drawing back the curtain at the bottom of the bed with one hand, with the other he drew his fingers two or three times across his throat. Of course the impression produced on Castlereagh was decidedly disturbing. Bulwer insisted that he must have been dreaming, but his lordship declared with emphasis that he saw the figure as distinctly as he saw his host at that moment, and that, far from being silent, he was wide awake.
A TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE.
Mr. Frith then adds that Mr. Bulwer did not tell Lord Castlereagh—Byron's "carotid cutting Castlereagh"—that the yellow boy always appeared to any one who was destined to die a violent death and always indicated the manner of it to his victim.
A more amusing and loss unpleasant incident is told of the same chamber at Knobworth by our artist author, the subject being a timid, nervous brother painter who spent a night at the poet's lovely and stately retreat in Hertfordshire. The father of the author of "Luclie," Mr. Frith says, confided the details of the Castlelore story to his guest on allotting the yellow boy's room to him, remarking on bidding him good night. "You will not be frightened, will you?" "No-o-o-o," said the painter, with an ashy face. "Well, it is getting late; what do you say to retiring? Yes, that is your candle. Too warm for a fire in your room. You don't mind? Good night." "The rest of the story shall be told," says Frith, "in my old friend's words as nearly as I can remember them. I had seen," he went on, "the infernal room before dinner, and I thought it looked a ghostly sort of place, and when I reached it that night what would I not have given to be back in my own room at home! I looked under the bed, up the great, wide chimney, and had a shock from the sight of my own face in the looking glass. No ghost could be whiter than I was. I don't believe in ghosts, you know, but still it was really too bad of Lytton to tell me such things just as I was going to bed, and then to put me in the very place! There was an awful old cabinet. I managed to pull open the door and was tugging at the other, when my candle went out—how, I don't know —somebody seemed to blow it out. I can't tell you what became of it; all I know is I jumped into bed with my boots on, and lay trembling there for hours. Frith—literally for hours—till sleep took me at last; and never was I more thankful than when I woke and saw the sun shining into the yellow boy's room."
NO TRUTH IN THE STORY.
The circumstantiality with which Mr. Frith tells these short tales must convince his readers that he is thoroughly satisfied in his own mind that the incidents which he carefully describes all
happened at Knebworth. And yet, in that respect, he is altogether out in his reckoning. There is no yellow boy's room in that grand old house of the Lyttons at Knebworth, Lord Castlereagh never spent a night there, nor is it known that he ever visited the place in his life. In the autumn of 1884 I spent two or three very agreeable days at Knebworth, the guest of Lord Lytton, who very kindly showed me everything of interest about his home and its charming surroundings.
I thought it strange that the yellow boy's room—if there really was such a room—had not been open to me, and that the very story associated with it in the Frith reminiscences had been kept back. So I sent one of a hurried note to Owen Meredith, then performing his embassador functions in the gayest capital in Europe, and an early mail brought me these lines:
"PARIS, 8th Feb'v. 1888."
"MY DEAR MR. STEWART—I answer your letter of the 12th inch, in desperate and unavoidable haste. Mr. Frith's autobiography is all wrong about the story of the 'Yellow Boy.' That story was told by Sir Walter Scott of Lord Castlereagh, who is said to have seen the 'Yellow Boy' in some house in Ireland at the time when he was secretary for Ireland, just before the union, and the story went that the apparition then predicted to him the mode of his death. But the incident certainly did not occur at Kneebworth, nor do I think Lord Castlereagh was ever there. Yours very faithfully; LYTON."
The Castlereagh story is quite familiar to the readers of Scott and Lockhart's noble biography—Independent
TOO FOND OF HIMSELF.
So Much Interested in the Fair Passe
that He Paid Double.
A pretty young woman, dressed in the height of fashion, got into one of the Fifth avenue "busses" the other day to drive up to Central park. Some of these busses still run on the old "boattail" system, that is, they have no conductors to collect the fare, and passengers must themselves drop their nickels into a box at the end of the conveyance. The driver is supplied with a quantity of small coin to make change for passengers who have not the exact fare. As this handsome young woman took out her purse, several men bent forward expectantly for the privilege of passing her coin up to the box for her. Ignoring their readiness, she made her way up to the box herself and dropped a dime into it.
Then she waited for her change. No change came, however. She looked at the box anxiously, evidently thinking that perhaps she needed to pull out a handle or press a button somewhere in order to see her change fall out, but all she saw was a little sign, "Put the exact fare in the box." The men whom she had overlooked only grimed. She appealed to the driver for change. He told her he could not open the box, but that if she would wait until another passenger got aboard she could have his nickel instead of his dropping it in the box.
Pretty soon a typical "chappie," with monicle and English covert, coat much too large for him, stepped into the bus and offered the driver ten cents to be changed into two nickels. The driver explained to him the predicament the young lady was in and asked him to give her one of the nickels.
"Certainly, with all the pleasure in the world," said the young fellow, as with a "din't-l-just-in-it" smile he raised his hat, bowed profusely to the young woman and dropped a nickel into her little gloved hand. He beamed into her eyes as he did so in a way that evidently embarrassed her, but he grinned wider at her blush and looked around at the others as if to say, "Watch me mash her the first time." Then with a jaunty air he dropped the other nickel in the box.
Then several men snorted and the young fellow looked up surprised to see what they were laughing at. He could not help seeing that he was the object of their mirth. He could not understand it at first, but pretty soon it struck him that he had got rid of two nickels for one ride. Then he blushed up to the roots of his hair, gave very hot indeed and went out on the roof to cool off.—New York Tribune
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