One grieves to think that the old Hall of the Townshends on the other
side of Fakenham has been shorn of its ancestral portraits. What a
splendid collection, indeed, was this, and how far more dignified did
the full-length Elizabethan warriors by Janssen look here than upon
the walls at Christie's a year or so ago. The famous haunted
chambers have a far less awe-inspiring appearance than some other
of the bedrooms with their hearse-like beds and nodding plumes. We
do not know when the "Brown Lady" last made her appearance, but there are rumours that she was visible before the decease of the late
Marquis Townshend. Until then the stately lady in her rich brown
brocade had absented herself for half a century. She had last
introduced herself unbecoming a modest ghost, to two gentlemen
visitors of a house party who were sitting up late at night. One of
these gentlemen, a Colonel Loftus, afterwards made a sketch of her
from memory which possibly is still in existence.
[Pg 44]