Lord Brougham's Bath

As a student at the University of Edinburgh, Henry Brougham (later Lord Brougham and Vaux) had deep conversations about the nature of the soul and what happens after death with his friend G. In his memoirs he recalled that "we actually committed the folly of drawing up an agreement, written with our blood, to the effect that whichever of us died the first should appear to the other, and thus solve any doubts we had entertained of the 'life after death'."

After university their ways diverged. G. went off to India and they lost contact. Then, on December 19, 1799, Brougham took a bath after a long day of travel in  bitter cold in Sweden. He reported: 

"I had taken a warm bath, and while lying in it and enjoying the comfort of the heat, after the late freezing I had undergone, I turned my head round, looking towards the chair on which I had deposited my clothes, as I was about to get out of the bath. On the chair sat G., looking calmly at me. How I got out of the bath I know not, but on recovering my senses I found myself sprawling on the floor. The apparition, or whatever it was, that had taken the likeness of G., had disappeared...

"I recollected quickly enough our old discussion and the bargain we had made. I could not discharge from my mind the impression that G. must have died, and that his appearance to me was to be received by me as a proof of a future state, yet all the while I felt convinced that the whole was a dream ; and so painfully vivid."

When he returned to Edinburgh he received a letter from India with the news that his friend G. had died on December 19, 1799, the day of his bath in Gothenburg. 

Source:   Life  and  Times  of  Henry, Lord  Brougham,  Written  by  Himself  (London: Blackwood, 1871) pp. 201-3

Illustration: "Lord Brougham's Bath" by RM with AI assistance