The Apparition of Mrs. Veal
This thing is so rare in all its circumstances, and on so good
authority, that my reading and conversation have not given me anything
like it. It is fit to gratify the most ingenious and serious inquirer.
Mrs. Bargrave is the person to whom Mrs. Veal appeared after her
death; she is my intimate friend, and I can avouch for her reputation
for these fifteen or sixteen years, on my own knowledge; and I can
confirm the good character she had from her youth to the time of my
acquaintance. Though, since this relation, she is calumniated by some
people that are friends to the brother of Mrs. Veal who appeared, who
think the relation of this appearance to be a reflection, and endeavor
what they can to blast Mrs. Bargrave's reputation and to laugh the
story out of countenance. But by the circumstances thereof, and the
cheerful disposition of Mrs. Bargrave, notwithstanding the ill usage
of a very wicked husband, there is not yet the least sign of dejection
in her face; nor did I ever hear her let fall a desponding or
murmuring expression; nay, not when actually under her husband's
barbarity, which I have been a witness to, and several other persons
of undoubted reputation.
Now you must know Mrs. Veal was a maiden gentlewoman of about thirty
years of age, and for some years past had been troubled with fits,
which were perceived coming on her by her going off from her discourse
very abruptly to some impertinence. She was maintained by an only
brother, and kept his house in Dover. She was a very pious woman, and
her brother a very sober man to all appearance; but now he does all he
can to null and quash the story. Mrs. Veal was intimately acquainted
with Mrs. Bargrave from her childhood. Mrs. Veal's circumstances were
then mean; her father did not take care of his children as he ought,
so that they were exposed to hardships. And Mrs. Bargrave in those
days had as unkind a father, though she wanted neither for food nor
clothing; while Mrs. Veal wanted for both, insomuch that she would
often say, "Mrs. Bargrave, you are not only the best, but the only
friend I have in the world; and no circumstance of life shall ever
dissolve my friendship." They would often condole each other's adverse
fortunes, and read together Drelincourt upon Death, and other good
books; and so, like two Christian friends, they comforted each other
under their sorrow.
Some time after, Mr. Veal's friends got him a place in the
custom-house at Dover, which occasioned Mrs. Veal, by little and
little, to fall off from her intimacy with Mrs. Bargrave, though there
was never any such thing as a quarrel; but an indifferency came on by
degrees, till at last Mrs. Bargrave had not seen her in two years and
a half, though above a twelvemonth of the time Mrs. Bargrave hath been
absent from Dover, and this last half-year has been in Canterbury
about two months of the time, dwelling in a house of her own.
In this house, on the eighth of September, one thousand seven hundred
and five, she was sitting alone in the forenoon, thinking over her
unfortunate life, and arguing herself into a due resignation to
Providence, though her condition seemed hard: "And," said she, "I have
been provided for hitherto, and doubt not but I shall be still, and am
well satisfied that my afflictions shall end when it is most fit for