Dreams

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Title:     Dreams
Author: Arthur C. Benson [More Titles by Benson]

There is a movement nowadays among the philosophers who study the laws of thought, to lay a strong emphasis upon the phenomena of dreams; what part of us is it that enacts with such strange zest and vividness, and yet with so mysterious a disregard of ordinary motives and conventions, the pageant of dreams? Like many other things which befall us in daily life, dreams are so familiar a fact, that we often forget to wonder at the marvellousness of it all. The two points about dreams which seem to me entirely inexplicable are: firstly, that they are so much occupied with visual impressions, and secondly, that though they are all self- invented and self-produced, they yet contrive to strike upon the mind with a marvellous freshness of emotion and surprise. Let us take these two points a little more in detail.

When one awakes from a vivid dream one generally has the impression of a scene of some kind, which has been mainly received through the medium of the eye. I suppose that this varies with different people, but my own dreams are rather sharply divided into certain classes. I am oftenest a silent spectator of landscapes of ineffable beauty, such as a great river, as blue as sapphire, rolling majestically down between vast sandstone cliffs, or among wooded hills, piled thick with trees rich in blossom; or I see stately buildings crowded together among woodlands, with long carved fronts of stone and airy towers. These dreams are peculiarly uplifting and stimulating, and I wake from them with an extraordinary sense of beauty and wonder; or else I see from some window or balcony a great ceremony of some quite unintelligible kind proceeding, a procession with richly dressed persons walking or riding, or a religious pomp taking place in a dim pillared interior. All such dreams pass by in absolute silence. I have no idea where I am, nor what is happening, nor am I curious to know. No voice is upraised, and there is no one at hand to converse with.

Then again there are dreams of which the substance is animated and vivid conversation. I have long and confidential talks with people like the Pope or the Tsar of Russia. They ask my advice, they quote my books, and I am surprised to find them so familiar and accessible. Or I am in a strange house with an unknown party of guests, and person after person comes up to tell me all kinds of interesting facts and details. Or else, as often happens to me, I meet people long since dead; I dream constantly, for instance, about my father. I see him by chance at a railway station, we congratulate ourselves upon the happy accident of meeting; he takes my arm, he talks smilingly and indulgently; and the only way in which the knowledge that he is dead affects the dream is that I feel bewildered at having seen so little of him of late, and even ask him where he has been for so long that we have not met oftener.

Very occasionally I hear music in a dream. I well remember hearing four musicians with little instruments like silver flutes play a quartet of infinite sweetness; but most of my adventures take place either among fine landscapes or in familiar conversation.

At one time, as a child, I had an often repeated dream. We were then living in an old house at Lincoln, called the Chancery. It was a large rambling place, with some interesting medieval features, such as a stone winding staircase, a wooden Tudor screen, built into a wall, and formerly belonging to the chapel of the house, There were, moreover, certain quite unaccountable spaces, where the external measurements of passages did not correspond with the measurement of rooms within. This fact excited our childish imagination, and probably was the origin of the dream.

It always began in the same way. I would appear to be descending a staircase which led up into a lobby, and would find that a certain step rattled as I trod upon it. Upon examination the step proved to be hinged, and on opening it, the head of a staircase appeared, leading downwards. Though, as I say, the dream was often repeated, it was always with the same shock of surprise that I made the discovery. I used to squeeze in through the opening, close the step behind me, and go down the stairs; the place was dimly lighted with some artificial light, the source of which I could never discover. At the bottom a large vaulted room was visible, of great extent, fitted with iron-barred stalls as in a stable. These stalls were tenanted by animals; there were dogs, tigers, and lions. They were all very tame, and delighted to see me. I used to go into the stalls one by one, feed and play with the animals, and enjoy myself very much. There was never any custodian to be seen, and it never occurred to me to wonder how the animals had got there, nor to whom they belonged. After spending a long time with my menagerie, I used to return; and the only thing that seemed of importance to me was that I should not be seen leaving the place. I used to raise the step cautiously and listen, so as to be sure that there was no one about; generally in the dream some one came down the stairs over my head; and I then waited, crouched below, with a sense of delightful adventure, until the person had passed by, when I cautiously extricated myself. This dream became quite familiar to me, so that I used to hope in my mind, on going to bed, that I might be about to see the animals. but I was often disappointed, and dreamed of other things. This dream visited me at irregular intervals for I should say about two or three years, and then I had it no more; but the singular fact about it was that it always came with the same sense of wonder and delight, and while actually dreaming it, I never realised that I had seen it before.

The only other tendency to a recurring dream that I have ever noticed was in the course of the long illness of which I have written elsewhere; my dreams were invariably pleasant and agreeable at that time; but I constantly had the experience in the course of them of seeing something of a profound blackness. Sometimes it was a man in a cloak, sometimes an open door with an intensely black space within, sometimes a bird, like a raven or a crow; oftenest of all it took the shape of a small black cubical box, which lay on a table, without any apparent lid or means of opening it. This I used to take up in my hands, and find very heavy; but the predominance of some intensely black object, which I have never experienced before or since, was too marked to be a mere coincidence; and I have little doubt that it was some obscure symptom of my condition, and had some definite physical cause. Indeed, at the same time, I was occasionally aware of the presence of something black in waking hours, not a thing definitely seen, but existing dimly in a visual cell. After I recovered, this left me, and I have never seen it since.

These are the more coherent kind of dreams; but there is another kind of a vaguely anxious character, which consist of endless attempts to catch trains, or to fulfil social engagements, and are full of hurry and dismay. Or one dreams that one has been condemned to death for some unknown offence, and the time draws near; some little while ago I spent the night under these circumstances interviewing different members of the Government in a vain attempt to discover the reasons for my condemnation; they could none of them give me a specific account of the affair, and could only politely deplore that it was necessary to make an example. "Depend upon it," said Mr. Lloyd-George to me, "SUBSTANTIAL justice will be done!" "But that is no consolation to me," I said. "No," he replied kindly, "it would hardly amount to that!"

But out of all this there emerges the fact that after a vivid dream, one's memory is full of pictures of things seen quite as distinctly, indeed often more distinctly, than in real life. I have a clearer recollection of certain dream-landscapes than I have of many scenes actually beheld with the eye; and this sets me wondering how the effect is brought about, and how the memory is enabled to store what appears to be a visual impression, by some reflex action of the nerves of sight.

Then there is the second point, that of the lively emotions stirred by dreams. It would really appear that there must be two distinct personalities at work, without any connection between them, one unconsciously inventing and the other consciously observing. I dreamed not long ago that I was walking beside the lake at Riseholme, the former palace of the bishops of Lincoln, where I often went as a child. I saw that the level of the lake had sunk, and that there was a great bank of shingle between the water and the shore, on which I proceeded to pace. I was attracted by something sticking out of the bank, and on going up to it, I saw that it was the base of a curious metal cup. I pulled it out and saw that I had found a great golden chalice, much dimmed with age and weather. Then I saw that farther in the bank there were a number of cups, patens, candlesticks, flagons, of great antiquity and beauty. I then recollected that I had heard as a child (this was wholly imaginary, of course) that there had once been a great robbery of cathedral plate at Lincoln, and that one of the bishops had been vaguely suspected of being concerned in it; and I saw at once that I had stumbled on the hoard, stowed there no doubt by guilty episcopal hands--I even recollected the name of the bishop concerned.

Now as a matter of fact one part of my mind must have been ahead inventing this story, while the other part of the mind was apprehending it with astonishment and excitement. Yet the observant part of the mind was utterly unaware of the fact that I was myself originating it all. And the only natural inference would seem to be that there is a real duality of mind at work.

For when one is composing a story, in ordinary waking moments, one has the sense that one is inventing and controlling the incidents. In dreams this sense of proprietorship is utterly lost; one seems to have no power over the inventive part of the mind; one can only helplessly follow its lead, and be amazed at its creations. And yet, sometimes, in a dream of tragic intensity, as one begins to awake, a third person seems to intervene, and says reassuringly that it is only a dream. This intervention seems to disconcert the inventor, who then promptly retires, while it brings sudden relief to the timid and frightened observer. It would seem then that the rational self reasserts itself, and that the two personalities, one of which has been creating and the other observing, come in like dogs to heel.

Another very curious part of dreams is that they concern themselves so very little with the current thoughts of life. My dreams are mostly composed, as I have said, of landscapes, ceremonies, conversations, sensational adventures, muddling engagements. When I was a schoolmaster, I seldom dreamed of school; now that I am no longer a schoolmaster, I do sometimes dream of school, of trying to keep order in immense classrooms, or hurrying about in search of my form. When I had my long and dreary illness, lasting for two years, I invariably had happy dreams. Now that I am well again, I often have dreams of causeless and poignant melancholy. It is the rarest thing in the world for me to be able to connect my dreams with anything which has recently happened; I cannot say that marvellous landscapes, ceremonies, conversations with exalted personages, sensational incidents, play any considerable part in my life; and yet these are the constituent elements in my dreams. The scientific students of psychology say that the principal stuff of dreams seems to be furnished by the early experience of life; and when they are dealing with mental ailments, they say that delusions and obsessions are often explained by the study of the dreams of diseased brains, which point as a rule either to some unfulfilled desire, or to some severe nervous shock sustained in childhood. But I cannot discern any predominant cause of my own elaborate visions; the only physical cause which seems to me to be very active in producing dreams is if I am either too hot or too cold in bed. A sudden change of temperature in the night is the one thing which seems to me quite certain to produce a great crop of dreams.

Another very curious fact about my dreams is that I am wholly deserted by any moral sense. I have stolen interesting objects, I have even killed people in dreams, without adequate cause; but I am then entirely devoid of remorse, and only anxious to escape detection. I have never felt anything of the nature of shame or regret in a dream. I find myself anxious indeed, but fertile in expedients for escaping unscathed. On the other hand, certain emotions are very active in dreams. I sometimes appear to go with a brother or sister through the rooms or gardens of a house, which on awaking proves to be wholly imaginary, and recall with my companion all sorts of pathetic and delightful incidents of childhood which seem to have taken place there.

Again, though much of my life is given to writing, I hardly ever find myself composing anything in a dream. Once I wrote a poem in my sleep, a curious Elizabethan lyric, which may be found in the Oxford Book of Verse, called "The Phoenix." It is not the sort of thing that I have ever written before or since. It came to me on the night before my birthday, in 1891, I think, when I was staying with a friend at the Dun Bull Hotel, by Hawes Water in Westmorland. I scribbled the lyric down on awaking. I afterwards added a verse, thinking the poem incomplete. I published it in a book of poems, and showed the proof to a friend, who said to me, pointing to the added stanza: "Ah, you must omit that stanza--it is quite out of keeping with the rest of the poem!"

But this is a quite unique experience, except that I once dreamed I was present at a confirmation service, at which a very singular hymn was sung, which I recollected on waking, and which is far too grotesque to write down, being addressed, as it was, to the bishop who was to perform the rite. At the time, however, it seemed to me both moving and appropriate.

It is often said that dreams only take place either when one is just going to sleep or beginning to awake. But that is not my experience. I have occasionally been awakened suddenly by some loud sound, and on those occasions I have come out of dreams of an intensity and vividness that I have never known equalled. Neither is it true in my experience that dreamful sleep is unrefreshing. I should say it was rather the other way. Profound and heavy sleep is generally to me a sign that I am not very well; but a sleep full of happy and interesting dreams is generally succeeded by a feeling of freshness and gaiety, as if one had been both rested and well entertained.

These are only a few scattered personal experiences, and I have no philosophy of dreams to suggest. It is in my case an inherited power. My father was the most vivid and persistent dreamer I have ever met, and his dreams had a quality of unexpectedness and interest of which I have never known the like. The dream of his, which I have told in his biography, of the finding of the grave of the horse of Titus Oates, seems to me one of the most extraordinary pieces of invention I have ever heard, because of the conversation which took place before he realised what the slab actually was.

He dreamed that he was standing in Westminster Abbey with Dean Stanley, looking at a small cracked slab of slate with letters on it. "We've found it," said Stanley. "Yes," said my father, "and how do you account for it?" "Why," said Stanley, "I suppose it is intended to commemorate the fact that the animal innocence was not affected by the villainies of the master." "Of course!" said my father, who was still quite unaware what the inscription referred to. He then saw on the slab the letters ITI CAPITANI, and knew that the stone was one that had marked the grave of Titus Oates' horse, and that the whole inscription must have been EQUUS TITI CAPITANI,- -"The horse of Titus the Captain"--the "Captain" referring to the fact that my father then recollected that Titus Oates had been a Train-band Captain.

My only really remarkable dream containing a presentiment or rather a clairvoyance of a singular kind, hardly explicable as a mere coincidence, has occurred to me since I began this paper.

On the night of December 8, 1914, I dreamed that I was walking along a country road, between hedges. To the left was a little country house, in a park. I was proposing to call there, to see, I thought, an old friend of mine, Miss Adie Browne, who has been dead for some years, though in my dream I thought of her as alive.

I came up with four people, walking along the road in the same direction as myself. There was an elderly man, a younger man, red- haired, walking very lightly, in knickerbockers, and two boys whom I took to be the sons of the younger man. I recognised the elder man as a friend, though I cannot now remember who he appeared to be. He nodded and smiled to me, and I joined the party. Just as I did so, the younger man said, "I am going to call on a lady, an elderly cousin of mine, who lives here!" He said this to his companions, not to me, and I became aware that he was speaking of Miss Adie Browne. The older man said to me, "You have not been introduced," and then, presenting the younger man, he said, "This is Lord Radstock!" We shook hands and I said, "Do you know, I am very much surprised; I understood Lord Radstock to be a much older man!"

I do not remember any more of the dream; but it had been very vivid, and when I was called, I went over it in my mind. A few minutes later, the Times of December 9 was brought to my bedroom, and opening it, I saw the sudden death of Lord Radstock announced. I had not known that he was ill, and indeed had never thought of him for years; but the strange thing is this, that he was a cousin of Miss Adie Browne's, and she used to tell me interesting stories about him. I do not suppose that since her death I have ever heard his name mentioned, and I had never met him. So that, as a matter of fact, when I dreamed my dream, the old Lord Radstock was dead, and his son, who is a man of fifty-four, was the new Lord Radstock. The man I saw in my dream was not, I should say, more than about forty-five; but I remember little of him, except that he had red hair.

I do not take in an evening paper, but I do not think there was any announcement of Lord Radstock's illness, on the previous day; in fact his death seems to have been quite sudden and unexpected. Apart from coincidence, the rational explanation might be that my mind was in some sort of telepathic communication with that of my old and dear friend Miss Adie Browne, who is indeed often in my mind, and one would also have to presuppose that her spirit was likewise aware of her cousin Lord Radstock's death. I do not advance this as the only explanation, but it seems to me a not impossible one of a mysterious affair.

My conclusion, such as it is, would be that the rational and moral faculties are in suspense in dreams, and that it is a wholly primitive part of one's essence that is at work. The creative power seems to be very strong, and to have a vigorous faculty of combining and exaggerating the materials of memory; but it deals mainly with rather childish emotions, with shapes and colours, with impressive and distinguished people, with things marvellous and sensational, with troublesome and perplexed adventures. It does not go far in search of motives; in the train-catching dreams, for instance, I never know exactly where I am going, or what is the object of my journey; in the ceremonial dreams, I seldom have any notion of what is being celebrated.

But what I cannot in the least understand is the complete withdrawal of consciousness from the inventive part of the mind, especially when the observant part is so eagerly and alertly aware of all that is happening. Moreover, I can never understand the curious way in which dream-experiences, so vivid at the time, melt away upon awakening. If one rehearses a dream in memory the moment one awakes, it becomes a very distinct affair. If one does not do this, it fades swiftly, and though one has a vague sense of rich adventures, half an hour later there seems to be no power whatever of recovering them.

Strangest of all, the inventive power in dreams seems to have a range and an intensity which does not exist when one is awake. I have not the slightest power, in waking life, of conceiving and visualising the astonishing landscapes which I see in dreams. I can recall actual scenes with great distinctness, but the glowing colour and the prodigious forms of my landscape visions are wholly beyond my power of thought.

Lastly, I have never had any dream of any real or vital significance, any warning or presentiment, anything which bore in the least degree upon the issues of life.

There is a beautiful passage in the "Purgatorio" of Dante about the dawn: he writes

In that hour
When near the dawn the swallow her sad song,
Haply remembering ancient grief, renews;
And when our minds, more wanderers from the flesh
And less by thought restrained, are, as 't were, full
Of holy divination in their dreams.

I suppose that it would be possible to interpret one's dreams symbolically; but in my own case my dream-experiences all seem to belong to a wholly different person from myself, a light-hearted, childish, careless creature, full of animation and inquisitiveness, buoyant and thoughtless, content to look neither forwards nor backwards, wholly without responsibility or intelligence, just borne along by the pleasure of the moment, perfectly harmless and friendly as a rule, a sort of cheerful butterfly. That is not in the least my waking temperament; but it fills me sometimes with an uneasy suspicion that it is more like myself than I know.

[The end]
Arthur C. Benson's essay: Dreams

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