Observations placeholder

Marchioness Townshend & Maude Ffoulkes
True Ghost Stories

The Monmouth Room at Raynham (so called on account of the ill-fated Duke of Monmouth having slept there when he stayed at the Great House with his royal father) is haunted by the ghost of the Duke, who appears not as Rosenkavalier, but as a Red cavalier, and he once enacted the role of a ghostly "Scout", as he certainly did one good deed on this special night.

At one of my house-parties the Monmouth Room was occupied by the loveliest debutante of her year, who begged to sleep there, as she wanted, beyond all things, to meet the Red cavalier. The phantom of the Duke did not materialize, so I suppose that ghosts are amongst those who can't be "druv", and in consequence the "lovely" drew a blank.

The next person to sleep in the Monmouth Room, two days after that "deb's" departure, was a connection of the Townshends, a spinster of uncertain age, destined by Fate to lead one of those small smothered lives devoid of romance and its possibilities.

Nevertheless, it fell to her lot to experience one glamorous night, when she suddenly awoke to see the Red Cavalier standing at the foot of her bed, smiling in a most encouraging manner. She told us afterwards that she was not in the least frightened, only happily interested; and when, as befitted a courtier, the Duke paid her the homage due to a Princess of the Blood, and bowed himself out into the shadows of the opposite wall, he became the happiest memory of a drab lifetime.