by Thomas Hood (uncredited).
Originally published in Hood's Magazine and Comic Miscellany (Andrew Spottiswoode) vol.1 (1845).
No. II.
"Dreams tell but of the past, and yet 'tis said,
They prophesy."—Osorio.
The belief that dreams foretel events is as old as the imagination of man; and curious it is to observe how, in all the stages of his social development, from the rudest condition of savage life to the highest state of civilisation, he cherishes that credulity: with what care he notes every coincidence that can strengthen it, and with what easy indifference he passes by the thousands of instances when the most vivid impressions made on the mind of the sleeper have been followed by no results, that the utmost ingenuity could torture into a fulfilment of the scenes represented in his slumber. We keep a careful register of the prizes in the psychological lottery, but take no account of the overwhelming list of blanks.
The chronicles tell us that the mother of Alexander the Great dreamed that a dragon was his father, and that Hecuba saw in her dream that she should give birth to a torch, by which her palace should he burned. Olympias became the mother of Philip's warlike son; the other Alexander carried off Mrs. Menelaus—as we heard a well-bred youth, brought up at his mothers apron-string, simper out, when asked who Helen was—Troy was wrapped in flames; and down the tradition is handed in both cases. But we never stop to inquire about the dreams of Aurelia, although the Roman might well vie with the Greek, or whether Madame Mère ever had any remarkable vision in her sleep, foretelling the brilliant career of the greatest conqueror of modern times, till his star set before the genius of our greater Captain, of whose mother's dreams we are equally ignorant.
On the other hand, Calphurnia dreamed, on the night preceding the day of Cæsar's murder, that the roof of the house fell in, that he was stabbed in her arms, and that the doors of the bedchamber spontaneously opened; whilst Cæsar himself, on the same night, was flying, in his dreams, above the clouds, and shaking hands with Jupiter. The alarmed wife, moreover, implored her husband not to go forth, on the ides of March, made for ever memorable by the touching "Et tu Brute!"—words, by the way, that never passed Cæsar's lips. He died without speaking a syllable, if we are to believe Suetonius, who declares that he uttered no sound, except one groan when he received the first of the twenty-three stabs that laid him dead, although some have related, that when Cæsar saw Marcus Brutus rushing on him, he exclaimed in Greek, "You, too, among them—you, my son?"[1] He had faced death too often to fear it, and had seen too much of mankind to be surprised at the treachery of a bosom friend, or to waste words at such a moment. His whole soul seemed to be bent on so disposing his toga that he might fall with decency.
"But he left his home unwillingly, and not without the exhortation of Decimus Brutus, who pleaded the numbers that he would disappoint by not going to the senate-house."
Most true; and it is no part of our duty to shew' that Cæsar's mind, ill in body as he was, received no impressions from these dreams, coupled as they were with other prodigies; nay, he manifested what was passing in his mind when he mocked Spurinna.[2]
Calphurnia and others evidently foresaw the coming mischief, and her dream only denoted a foregone conclusion. Cæsar's vision would have answered equally well, and would have been as triumphantly recorded, if he had secured the diadem to which he aspired.
Sir Thomas More's mother, we are told, "the first night after her marriage, sawe in her sleepe, the number of children she should have, written as it were in her marriage ring; and the formes, shapes, and countenances of them all. One was very dim and obscure, and could skarcelie be discerned; for of one she suffered by an untimely byrth an aborsement. Another she saw full bright and beautiful, and fairer than all the rest; whereby, no doubt," says the unknown author of his life—a Romish biographer apparently, "was this lampe of England prefigured." So far, so good; but the dream seems, in mercy to the future mother, to have stopped short, for we have no glimpse of the extinction of that shining light in blood, at the behest of the most cruel and hypocritical tyrant that England ever tolerated; one who "while Sir Thomas was chancellour of the duchie came to dynner to him, and after dynner in a faire garden walked with him by the space of an howre, holding his arme about his neck." Sir Thomas, indeed, seems to have made no other account of these favours, "than a deepe wise man should doe;" for when, after the king's departure, "his sonne-in-law, Mr. William Roper, verie glad to have seene this came to him, saying, 'Sir, how happie are you whome the king hath so familiarly entertained, as I never sawe him to doe the like to any, except to the Lord Cardinall, with whom I saw his grace once walke arme in arme!' Sir Thomas aunswered in this sorte: 'I thanke God, sonne William, I find his grace my very goode lord and maister; and I doe believe he doth as singularlie fuvoure me as he doth any subject within this realme. Howbeit, sonne Roper, as I shall tell thee, I have noe cause to be proude of it ; for if my head would wynne him a castle in France, it should not faile to flie from my shoublers, as fast now as it seemeth to sticke.'" These words were prophetic; and we almost lose the sense of Henry's unsparing cruelty in our abhorrence of his vile hypocrisy, when the news of More's execution was brought to him in the presence of another victim, for whom the axe was so soon to be sharpened.
"Immediatelic after the execution of Sir Thomas More, word was brought thereof to the king; who being then at dice when it was told him, at the hearing thereof seemed to be wonderfullie amazed. 'And is it true?' (quoth the king). 'Is Sir Thomas More, my chancellour, dead?' The messenger answered, 'Yea, if it may please your majestie.' He turned him to queen Anne, who then stood by, and wistlie looking upon her, 'Thou art the cause of this man's death.' So prosentlie went to his chamber, and there wept full bitterlie."
Sir Thomas More was beheaded on the 6th of July, 1535, and before the May flowers of the next year had faded, Anne Boleyn laid her head on the block for the crime of having survived the ruthless Henry's affections.
No dream, properly so called, as far as we know, forewarned either of these sufferers, although it is clear that More had long foreseen the fatal catastrophe which the unrelenting fury of a heart that seems to have known no touch of mercy brought upon both, and in his day-dreams had been familiarised with the last bloody scene.
There are few persons of lively imagination who, in a quiet day and in the solitude of the country, or of their chamber, have not lost, in a great degree, the consciousness of their locality and of surrounding objects, and beheld in their mind's eye a far distant scene presenting the dead, the absent, or the probable future. Blount and Raleigh both looked upon the same wall at Say's Court; but while the former saw no more than the side of an old hall hung round with antlers, bucklers, old pieces of armour, and such furniture; the more imaginative Raleigh was sunk in reverie, "and it seemed as if the empty space of air betwixt him and the wall were the stage of a theatre on which his fancy was mustering his own dramatis personæ and treating him with sights far different from those which his awakened and earthly vision could have offered."
"'Twas one of those dreams that by music are brought,
Like a light summer haze, o'er the poet's warm thought—
When, lost in the future, his soul wanders on,
And all of this life, but its sweetness, is gone."
In these reveries, or waking dreams, however, the external world is never entirely shut out, and judgment corrects our errant musings to a certain extent.
In the case of dreams, properly so called, we have the determined habit of keeping a list of the prizes only, as above alluded to, constantly brought to our notice, even in this matter-of-fact age. The year is still young, and yet we had the other day, in the leading journal of Europe, an account of a poor collier lad, who dreamed that he was crushed by a great stone in the pit, and was so affected by the dream, that he returned twice to bid his mother farewell—for ever, as the event proved—for he was actually so crushed that day, according to the account. At first sight here is pure prophecy and fulfilment. But it appears that another of the family had previously lost his life in the same way. No one can doubt that this violent death, to which the dreamer himself was daily liable, must have made a strong impression on his mind. The wonder would have been if he had not dreamed of it repeatedly, as he most probably had.
Early on the morning of Thurtell's execution, the gaoler's son entered his cell, and finding him in a profound sleep, retired, but returned with his father, who awoke the criminal.
"How do you find yourself this morning?" said Mr. Wilson.
"Very well," replied Thurtell.
"You have slept well?"
"Yes, I have. I have had some very curious dreams. I have often dreamt since my confinement, yet {what is very extraordinary) I have never dreamt of anything connected with this affair."
The bard sings as philosophically as sweetly,
"Oft in the stilly night,
When slumber's chain has bound me;
Fond memory brings the light
Of other days around me."
There is a sad sweetness about such dreams, strongly contrasting with those which Coleridge portrays in these nervous lines:—
"A lurid light, a trampling throng—
Sense of intolerable wrong,
And whom I scorned, those only strong!
Thirst of revenge, the powerless will
Still baffled, and yet burning still;
Desire with loathing strangely mixed
On wild or hateful objects fixed.
Fantastic passions, maddening brawl!
And shame and terror over all!
Deeds to be hid which were not hid,
Which, all confused, I could not know,
Whether I suffered or I did;
For all seemed guilt, remorse, or woe,
My own, or others, still the same
Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame."
The volition in ordinary dreams is not followed by the obedience of the muscles. You are a lecturer, a preacher, a barrister, or a senator, and you feel in your dream the gush of a fine burst of eloquence rising to your lips, and are about to address your audience in a style that you are certain must carry everything before it and yourself to the top of the tree, when suddenly you find that you are voiceless, and only draw down the sarcastic ridicule of the multitude, who seem to stab you with their hundred dagger-like eyes, while you do nothing but gasp like Virgil's ghosts.
My personal experience of dreams has been considerable. I rarely drop into slumber for a few minutes in my chair without dreaming nor would I lose the privilege, although the impressions have been sometimes so strong and powerful, that I have been unable to shake them off for days. But before I venture to go into some of my adventures in the shadowy vale of sleep, and exhibit my list of prizes and blanks, I must ask the good-natured reader to go back with me once more to my childish days.
I can just remember the long, peaked stomacher, to which in the cycle of fashion the belles of to-day have come round, though not to its contemporary well-powdered tête; and how both lingered on the persons of three dear buzzy-headed maiden ladies, who used to give me sugar-plums out of a beautiful amber French comfit-box, and whose trim apartments, dotted with fine old china on fairy inlaid tables, were lighted by the best Dresden beflowered and bespangled shepherds and shepherdesses, standing against shrubby porcelain trees, with more blossoms than leaves. To this lengthened wasp-like waist succeeded the short-bodied gown, still to be seen in Lawrence's early portraits, and which gave rise to the song of that name, which I am old enough to have heard carolled in triviis.
Ye lads and ye lasses of country and city,
I pray you give ear to my humorous ditty,
Concerning the fashion just come from town—
A whimsical dress call'd the short-body'd gown
Last Midsummer-day Sally went to the fair
To part with her yam and how she did stare!
Both wives, maids, and widows in every shop round,
They all were dress'd up in a short-body'd gown.
So home in the evening Miss Sally she hies,
And told it her mother with greatest surprise;
Saying, "Two hanks a-day will I spin the week round.
Until [ can purchase a short-body'd gown."
Surpris'd was her mother and thought it a jest,
Saying, "Sally, your old-fashion'd gown fits you best,
So leave this new fashion to folks in the town,
And don't waste your cloth in a short-body'd gown."
"Oh, mother, you are a bad judge of the size,
The lengths that it takes it would you surprise,
For the breadth of the waste is three inches all round,
That's just the full size of a short-body'd gown."
I witnessed, I say, the sudden transition from the long inverted cone of rich substantial brocade, and frizzled and powdered hair, to the extremely thin and scanty hook-muslin of this same short-bodied gown, the cincture of which came just below the bosom, and the disposition of the natural tresses, à la Grecque; and can still see the powdering-room, a long, narrow strip of an apartment behind ray mother's bed-chamber, hung with blue paper and lighted by one window only at the front-end, so that the other extremity received hardly any light at all. This, from the association of colour, redolent as it also was of mareschale powder, I called the violet-room, till I was taken to see "Bluebeard" at our theatre, after which it immediately became the blue chamber in my vocabulary. Then it was that the long row of cylindrical mysterious-looking band-boxes, with their truncated tops ranged along the wall, passed well in the twilight for the headless bodies of the wives of the very magnificent three-tailed Bashaw; and I recollect one gloomy evening starting back as a pair of glassy eyes glared at me from among the loose drapery at the foot of one of them, as if the decapitated wife bore her severed head upon her lap. It was only in the broad daylight of the morrow that I dared revisit the terrible spot which had haunted me all night in my dreams, and then I found that the object which had raised such fearful ideas was my mothers powdering-mask—a paste-board cover with glazed apertures before the eyes, to protect the patient's face from the powder during the operations of the powder-puff.
One day I had entered the pantry unobserved, and climbing on a chair, beheld, among other goodly preparations for a party, a splendid eel-pie, uncut and ready to make its appearance, with an eel's head sticking up out of the middle of a net-work of pastry in its highly-ornamented centre. Temptation overcame me. I thought to pull out the head, just taste the end that was in the pie, and put it back again. I had lately been promoted to vests and tunics, as they were called, and gloried in a pocket accordingly. Well, I pulled at the head, but instead of coming out short, as I expected, the neck and body followed. Never shall I forget my horror. I tried to push it back in vain, and hearing the sound of approaching feet, I pulled away, and forth came the whole serpentine sesquipedality of the almost interminable fish, which had been coiled up in the pie. It was crammed somehow into my pocket, and as I came from the sacked pâté, trying to look innocent, I encountered my kind maiden aunt, Barbara, boneted, muffed, and tippeted, bearing my hat and feather, intent on taking me out for a walk. We had not proceeded far, when a great dog came up and exhibited a strong attachment to my person, which I in vain discountenanced. In vain also did my aunt try to drive away my persecutor with her parasol. The brute kept jumping upon me till at last he overthrew me, and after tossing my tunic about, to my aunt's infinite alarm, got his nose into my pocket—that pocket of which I had been so proud—and drew out the savoury plunder, which he devoured upon the spot. "Why, Gideon, what have you been doing!" said my aunt in astonishment. With bitter tears of fright I confessed my guilt; she, kind soul, stood my friend; and the poor cat, as usual, had the credit of it.
We continued our walk, which bad for its object a visit to a sort of travelling Leverian Museum, containing, among other stuffed specimens, an enormous Boa, with a very red tongue, by way of making it as life-like as possible, tightly constricting a Royal Tiger that looked as if he could not help it.
About half a year after this I dreamt that my aunt, whom I loved more than ever, since she had screened me in the affair of the eel, had married Bluebeard, and was in his power. We were then at our country-house; but, in my dream, I was in the blue chamber in the haunted town mansion aforesaid, where my mother and aunt were shut up with the ghastly headless trunks of the rest of his wives, expecting my aunt's fate momentarily. The Bashaw thundered at the door; in he came with his glittering scimetar, which he had just raised to strike my beloved aunt, holding her by her long fair hair as she knelt in her short-bodied gown; when entered one of the buzzy-headed, long-waisted Miss Leynes, with her tall ebony walking-staff tipped with an ivory hook, and, tapping Bluebeard with it, she turned him into an immense piece of bread and butter. "Now,' said she to me, if you love your aunt, eat for your life and hers—if you leave but a crumb within five minutes, she'll be a dead woman." Oh! the horrors of munching, munching, at that mountain of bread and butter, as, stuffed to the throat, I fixed my eyes on the minute-hand of an old clock, on the face of which the red eyes of a rampant white lion rolled awfully at every vibration of the pendulum! Presently a tremendous voice called " Time!" before I had half finished. There stood Bluebeard again flourishing his scimetar over poor Aunt Barbara, more savage than ever; and, as I tried to scream with a dreamer's usual success, in came another huzzy-headed, long-waisted Miss Loyne, who took out of her comfit-box the identical eel-pie that had caused me so many a nightmare, and just as I thought that all was over with my dear aunt, out the eel began to wriggle from the pie—my turn now, thought I—and, changing into a great Boa constrictor, twined itself round Abomclique, whose ribs I had the satisfaction of hearing crack like pistol-shots, as I awoke to look up in my aunt's smiling face—bless her—who was clapping her hands to rouse me and lead me forth to breathe the fresh morning air. I told her what I had seen in my sleep, and she wrote it down as an instance of what she called "a child's memory-dream."
Notwithstanding the observations already made on the subject, I desire to speak of the prophetic dream with all respect, intimately interwoven as it is with our religious belief. The warning that sent the holy family into Egypt is a mystery too solemn to be here discussed, nor is it my intention to dwell on the dreams of Joseph and his fellow prisoners; or those of Pharaoh, for an interpretation of which the king consulted both the Charetummim, or magicians, and the Chakamim, or wise men, in vain; but which the more divinely-gifted Joseph immediately explained. Neither do I deny that dreamy as well as political prophecies may be fulfilled, the first by the impression made on a highly imaginative mind, and the second by the excitement produced upon a people by the acts of the prophets themselves. In both cases, numerous instances occur, wherein the coincidences have been so nearly complete as to make very passable fulfilments of the prophecies. But it is rare to find a dreamer honest enough to note and publish the entire failure of the event supposed to be foretold. Such an example we have in the following letter, which appeared in Le Mercure Gallant, for January, 1G90, and is quoted by Dr. Hibbert in his interesting and philosophical work.
"The last proof, my dear friend, which I can give on the vanity of dreams, is my surviving after one that I experienced on the 22d of September, 1679. I awoke on that day at five o'clock in the morning, and having fallen asleep again half-an-hour after, I dreamt that I was in my bed, and that the curtain of it was undrawn at the foot (two circumstances which were true), and that I saw one of my relations, who had died several years before, enter the room, with a countenance as sorrowful as it had formerly been joyous. She seated herself at the foot of my bed, and looked at me with pity. As I knew her to be dead, as well in the dream as in reality, I judged by her sorrow that she was going to announce some bad news to me, and, perhaps, death; and foreseeing it with sufficient indifference, 'Ah, well!' I said to her, 'I must die, then?' She replied to me, 'It is true.' 'And when?' retorted I; 'immediately?' 'To-day!' replied she. I confess to you the time appeared short; but, without being concerned, I interrogated her further, and asked her, 'in what manner?' She murmured some words which I did not understand, and at that moment I awoke.
The importance of a dream so precise made me take notice of my situation, and I remarked that I had laid down on my right side, my body extended, and both hands resting upon my stomach. I rose to commit my dream to writing, for fear of forgetting any part of it; andfinding it accompanied by all the circumstances which are attributed to mysterious and divine visions, I was no sooner dressed, than I went to tell my sister-in-law, that, if serious dreams were infallible warnings, she would have no brother-in-law in twenty-four hours. I told her afterwards all that had happened to me, and likewise informed some of my friends, but without betraying the least alarm, and without changing in any respect my usual conduct, resigning myself entirely to the disposal of Providence."
"Now," continues the letter-wTiter, "if I had been weak enough to give up my mind to the idea that I was going to die, perhaps I should have died; and it would have happened to me, as to those men of whom Procopius, the Greek historian, has spoken, who, when the plague prevailed, were struck with this scourge from Clod, from having only dreamt that demons touched them, or said to them that they would be soon in the tomb. I likewise should have paid, by the shortening of my days, for yielding up my belief to these dreams, and violating the law of God, which forbids such a superstition. At least it is certain that a Canadian would not have escaped; for he would even have had recourse to precipices, or to his own hands, in order that his dream might not he a futile one. For the people of that country are absolutely persuaded, that they cannot dream of anything which ought not to happen as a matter of course."
This is the reasoning and disposition of a well-regulated mind, the strength of which may be judged of, not only from the narrative itself, but from the time when the letter was written. The observation of the strong-minded writer of this anecdote, that if he "had been weak enough to give up his mind to the idea that he was going to die, perhaps he should have died," is confirmed and illustrated by the story related by the Earl of Rochester to Bishop Burnet, and recorded by the latter in his life of that brilliant and penitent profligate.
"He told me," writes the Bishop, "of another odd presage that one had of his approaching death, in the Lady Warre, his mother-in-law's house. The chaplain had dreamt that such a day he should die; but, being by all the family put out of the belief of it, he had almost forgot it; till the evening before, at supper, there being thirteen at table, according to a fond conceit that one of these must soon die, one of the young ladies pointed to him, that he was to die. He, remembering his dream, fell into some disorder; and the Lady Warre reproving him for his superstition, he said, 'he was confident he was to die before morning; but he being in perfect health it was not much minded. It was Saturday night, and he was to preach next day. He went to his chamber and sat up late, as appeared by the candle, and he had been preparing his notes for his sermon, but was found dead in his bed the next morning."
In this case, the fears of the chaplain, whose perfect health may well be doubted, were fatally renewed by the young lady's inconsiderate act and speech. He thought he should die, and he did die.
One of the deepest impressions ever made on me by a dream of this nature was produced some years ago, when I was far away from my friends, and had undergone great fatigue of body and mind. Immediately my head touched the pillow, I dropped into a dose—it was no more—and then started up broad awake. In vain did I lie down again and court sleep. I counted units till they made thousands, and my head was giddy. I thought of waving corn till I almost saw the field undulating in the summer breeze through the wall of my room; and watched a countless imaginary flock of sheep, going one after the other through a gap in a quickset hedge in vain. Opposite to my bed was a fairy frigate in a glass case, put into a short, uneasy motion," but regular withal, upon a heaving, painted sea, by hidden machinery. Upon that I fixed my eyes: it grew bigger and bigger the glass vanished; sea-birds appeared to flit above, and porpoises around it; the distant sound of her bell seemed wafted into my ear, and I found myself in the house of a dear friend;—it was the house of mourning.
The funeral party were assembled: every person who should have been there was present—the relations, the friends, the clergyman of the parish in his robes. As I entered, he approached and bade me be comforted. After he had retired to the rest of the mournful assembly, another dear friend came to me and said, "We waited but for you—why did you tarry?—She's gone!" He then led me to the chamber of death. I saw her name and age, both exact, upon the coffin. We returned. The procession set forth. The solemn service—oh, what a service that is!—was performed. The coffin was lowered to the house appointed for all living. I heard the awful words, "ashes to ashes—dust to dust," followed by that indescribable rattle of the earth upon the coffin—and awoke. For some minutes I seemed to be still in the church, and looking down into the vault; but gradually the faint watch-light shewed me the familiar furniture of my room. I slept again, and again went through the same harrowing scene.
I acknowledge that I was greatly depressed, nor could the bright morning, nor the business of the day, lift the weight from my heart. The post did not leave without a letter from me to a mutual friend, in which, with some hesitation, my reiterated dream was related, and an earnest inquiry was made relative to the health of her whose obsequies I had so witnessed. The answer informed me that she never was better; but, that much about the same time she had dreamed that she was dead, and that she, as her own ghost, had gone to see how she looked in her coffin, when a terrible voice exclaimed, "Will your vanity never cease?"—and she awoke.
This dear friend is still, thank God, fulfilling all th^ duties of an exemplary life: but who shall say what effect would have been produced on the survivors, if the fatal event had happened at the time, or near it—a coincidence not improbable, considering the frail nature of the tenure on which we hold our existence.
1. καὶ σύ, εἴ ἐκεῖνως, καὶ σύ, τέκνον.
2. "The ides of March are come."—"Aye, but not gone."