Item Info

Accession Number: 85-1012
Physical Description: [11] pages
Material: paper
Transcription:

                                                                      Devonshire Terrace
                                                                           Sunday Second February 1851.

Dear Sir         

     I take the liberty of offering a few remarks to you in reference to your paper on Dreams, If I venture to say that I think it may be made a little more original, and a little less recapitulative of the usual stories in the books, it is because I have read something on the subject, and have long observed it with the greatest attention and interest
     In the first place I would suggest that the influence of the day's occurrences and of recent events is by no means so great (generally speaking) as is usually supposed. I rather think there is a conventional philosophy and belief on this head. My own dreams are usually of twenty years ago. I often blend my present position with them, but very confusedly, whereas my life of twenty years ago is very distinctly represented. I have been married fourteen years, and have nine children, but I do not remember that I ever, on any occasion, dreamed of myself as being invested with those responsibilities, or surrounded by those relations. This would be so remarkable if it were an idiosyncrasy, that I have asked many intelligent and observant men whether they have found their dreams usually of the same retrospective character. Many have thought not, at first, but on consideration have strongly confirmed my own experience. Ladies, affectionately and happily married, have often recalled, when I have made the same remark in conversation, that while they were engaged-though their thoughts were naturally much set on their engagement-they never dreamed of their lovers. I should say the chances were a thousand to one against anybody's dreaming of the subject closely occupying the waking mind-except-and this I wish particularly to suggest to you-in a sort of allegorical manner. For example, if I have been perplexed during the day in bringing out the incidents of a story as I wish, I find that I dream at night, never by any chance of the story itself, but perhaps of trying to shut a door that will fly open, or to screw something tight that will be loose, or to drive a horse upon some very important journey, who unaccountably becomes a dog and can't be urged along, or to find my way out of a series of chambers that appears to have no end. I sometimes think that the origin of all fable and allegory, the very first conceptions of such fictions, may be referable to this class of dreams.
     Did you ever hear of any person who, by trying and resolving the mind on any subject, could dream of it, or who did not, under such circumstances, dream preposterously wide of the mark? When dreams can be directly traced to any incidents of recent occurrence, it appears to me that the incidents are usually of the more insignificant character, such as made no impression, of which we were conscious at the time, such as present themselves again in wildest eccentricity. - Like Macnish's friend, with the stone, and the wooden leg, and the building. The obvious convenience and effect of making the dreams of heroes and heroines bear on the great themes of a story as illustrated by their late experiences, seems to me to have led the Poets away from the truth on this head, and to have established the conventional belief from which I differ.
     Recurring dreams which come back as certainly as the night - an unhealthy and morbid species of these visions - should be particularly noticed. Secrecy on the part of the dreamer, as to these illusions, has a remarkable tendency to perpetuate them. I once underwent great affliction in the loss of a very dear young friend. For a year, I dreamed of her, every night - sometimes as living, sometimes as dead, never in any terrible or shocking aspect. As she had been my wife's sister, and had dies suddenly in our house, I forebore to allude to these dreams - kept them wholly to myself. At the end of the year I lay down to sleep, in an Inn on a wild Yorkshire Moor, covered with snow. As I looked out of the window on the bleak winter prospect before I undressed, I wondered within myself whether the subject would follow me here. It did. Writing home next morning, I mentioned the circumstance, cheerfully, as being curious. The subject immediately departed out of my dreams, and years passed before it returned. Then, I was living in Italy, and it was All Souls' Night, and people were going about with Bells, calling on the Inhabitants to pray for the dead. -Which I have no doubt I had some sense of, in my sleep; and so flew back to the Dead.
     The assistance supposed to be sometimes furnished, in sleep, towards the solution of Problems, or the invention of things that had baffled the waking mind, I take to be the result of a sudden vigorous effect of the refreshed intellect, in waking. But language has a great part in dreams. I think, on waking, the head is usually full of words.
     -The sudden picture of a whole life, in a certain stage of drowning, I cannot but consider an indisputable phenomenon. In Captain Beaufort's case, it has been most remarkably and minutely stated by himself. I think I remember a similar description, in the remarkable life of Mathews, the comedian. I have also received it from the lips of persons who have been saved. That other have been saved, who have not experienced the same sensations, is a fact that does not disprove these stories. Without enquiring whether these latter people may have been drowned enough, or drowned too much, I think we have sufficient evidence on which to found the conclusion that this remarkable mental feature has presented itself in drowning accidents, and in no other accidents.
     Are dreams so very various and different as you suppose? Or is there, taking into consideration our vast differences of mental and physical constitution, a remarkable sameness in them? Surely it is an extremely unusual circumstance to hear any narrative of a dream that does violence to our dreaming experience or enlarges it very much. And how many dreams are common to us all, from the queen to the costermonger! We all fall off that Tower, we all skim above the ground at a great pace and can't keep on it, we all say "this must be a dream, because I was in this strange, low-roofed beam-obstructed place, once before, and it turned out to be a dream" - we all take unheard of trouble to go to a Theatre and never get in, or to go to a Feast which can't be eaten or drunk, or to read letters, placards or books, that no study will render legible, or to break some thralldom or other, from which we can't escape, we all confound the living with the dead, and all frequently have a knowledge or suspicion that we are doing it, we all astonish ourselves in telling ourselves, the most astonishing and terrific secrets, we all go to public places in our night dresses and are horribly disconcerted lest the company should observe it.
     -And this appears to me to suggest another very curious point - the occasional endeavor to correct our delusions, made by some waking and reasoning faculty of the brain. For, it is to be observed that we are, actually in our night dress at the time. I suspect that a man who lay down in his clothes under a hedge, or on a ship's deck, would not have, this very common kind of dream. It has no connexion with our being cold, for it constantly presents itself to people who are warm in bed. I cannot help thinking that this observant and corrective speck of the brain suggests to you "my good fellow how can you be in this crowd when you know you are in your shirt?" It is not strong enough to dispel the vision, but is just strong enough to present this inconsistency.
     If you think any of these random remarks worthy our consideration, I should be happy to appoint a time for discussing the subject still further with you. I shall be happy to insert the paper, as it stands, if you prefer it, but in that case I should desire to pursue it with my own hints of experience and opinion, and if we could agree, we might dispatch the subject in one paper.

                                                                                                                  Faithfully Yours
Dr. Stone                                                                                                       Charles Dickens
 

 

MssDate: Sunday Second February 1851
Media Type: Letters
Source: Rare Book Department
Recipient: Stone, Thomas
Provenance: Christie's, 14 May 1985 Lot 16, Gratz Fund.

Call Number: DL St71 1851-02-02
Creator Name: Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 - Author