Page:Works of Charles Dickens, ed. Lang - Volume 31.djvu/21

Rh Loch Skene, with the Grey Mare's Tail in front of them. Collins actually sprained his ankle, the compass was really broken, and the descent was achieved (as is easiest in such cases) by finding a burn and following it. The little romance on the man who shared a double-bedded room with a corpse may be founded on a similar incident in the early life of Sir Walter Scott. But Scott slept nearly as soundly as the occupant of the other bed, who did not waken.

The incident of the " half-dozen noiseless old men" in the Lancaster Inn has this odd peculiarity, that precisely the same experience occurred to a lady, well known to the editor, on her arrival one night at the same hotel. Six men, like waiters, stood in a row before her, and, when she looked about for one of them to remove her luggage, they were not, nor could she find any trace of them. Next morning, on leaving, she was presented with a copy of Dickens's chapter, and read with amazement about his similar experience. Mr. Forster throws no light on any real vision, or dream, which Dickens may have had in the hotel, and philosophers may argue, either that his mind produced the effect on the lady's, by unconscious thought transference, or that six ghosts were about; or that the lady unconsciously read back into her memory what she had only gathered from Dickens's chapter. She is a person of meticulous veracity, and has herself no theory about the occurrence, now remote in time. The lady's old men did not speak; all that part of the tale is obvious embroidery. But did Dickens see the six old men? The chapter on Doncaster and the Leger expresses Dickens's own theory of "that gigantic engine of national demoralisation," as Lord Beaconsfield called it, the Turf. He was haunted by memories of Palmer, the sporting