2014-06 Charles Lamb: Dream Children
The great master of the personal or familiar essay is "Gentle Charles" Lamb [1775-1834].
Born of a father who worked in the Inner
Temple, one of the Inns of Court in London, he grew up in an atmosphere
favorable to the love of books and literary people.
At the age of seven he was
sent to Christ's Hospital School, where the severity of the treatment only
accentuated the gentleness of the boy and early made him known among his
fellows as an exceedingly likable youth.
There he made friends of boys who later became known in the
literary world, particularly Coleridge and Leigh Hunt. In November, 1789, when
he was but fourteen, he was taken out of school and, soon after, went to work
in a private office, the next year leaving to enter the South Sea House,
importers, where his brother John worked. Finally in 1792 he entered the employ
of the East India House as bookkeeper and remained in their employ for
thirty-three years.
In the winter of 1795, disappointment over love of Ann Simmons
drove him temporarily insane and laid the basis of his unbounded sympathy for and
devotion to his sister Mary, who later, in a fit of insanity, killed her
mother. His sacrifice of himself and all that he might have wished for himself,
in order to nurse Mary through her recurring insanity, has earned him the admiration
of generations.
His home and favorite coffee-houses were frequented by much of
the best literary talent; his conversation and repartee became important in the
literary life of the period. Slight of stature, dressed rather shabbily in
outmoded clothes, given to punning in his humorous stammering, Lamb presented a
figure closely associated with his literary work. Hazlitt called Lamb the best
of indoor company.
In 1820 the famous Essays of Elia appeared in the London Magazine, essays partly biographical, in which
Lamb appeared as James Elia. It is upon these essays mainly that his fame
rests. In 1834 he stumbled and fell and, lacking strength enough to recover
from the blow, "sank into death placidly as into sleep". His grave is
now cared for by a perpetual endowment from E. V. Lucas, a modern English
essayist whose work reflects so much of the gentle Elia spirit. Lucas' Life of Charles Lamb is the best work on the subject.
The Dream Children: A Reverie given below is the most poignant [and in my opinion, the best piece along with The Praise of Chimney Sweepers] in Charles Lamb's mostly autobiographical Essays of Elia.
Children love to listen to stories about their
elders, when they were children; to stretch their imagination to the conception
of a traditionary great-uncle, or grandame, whom they never saw. It was in this
spirit that my little ones crept about me the other evening to hear about their
great-grandmother Field, who lived in a great house in Norfolk (a hundred times
bigger than that in which they and papa lived) which had been the scene -- so
at least it was generally believed in that part of the country -- of the tragic
incidents which they had lately become familiar with from the ballad of the
Children in the Wood.
Certain it is that the whole story of the children and
their cruel uncle was to be seen fairly carved out in wood upon the
chimney-piece of the great hall, the whole story down to the Robin Redbreasts,
till a foolish rich Person pulled it down to set up a marble one of modern
invention in its stead, with no story upon it. Here Alice put out one of her
dear mother's looks, too tender to be called upbraiding.
Then I went on to say,
how religious and how good their great. grandmother Field was, how beloved and
respected by every body, though she was not indeed the mistress of this great
house, but had only the charge of it (and yet in some respects she might be
said to be the mistress of it too) committed to her by the owner, who preferred
living in a newer and more fashionable mansion which he had purchased somewhere
in the adjoining county; but still she lived in it in a manner as if it had
been her own, and kept up the dignity of the great house in a sort while she
lived, which afterwards came to decay, and was nearly pulled down, and all its
old ornaments stripped and carried away to the owner's other house, where they
were set up, and looked as awkward as if some one were to carry away the old
tombs they had seen lately at the Abbey, and stick them up in Lady C.'s tawdry
gilt drawing-room. Here John smiled, as much as to say, "that would be
foolish indeed."
And then I told how, when she came to die, her funeral
was attended by a concourse of all the poor, and some of the gentry too, of the
neighbourhood for many miles round, to show their respect for her memory,
because she had been such a good and religious woman; so good indeed that she
knew all the Psaltery by heart, ay, and a great part of the Testament besides.
Here little Alice spread her hands.
Then I told what a tall, upright, graceful
person their great-grandmother Field once was; and how in her youth she was
esteemed the best dancer -- here Alice's little right foot played an
involuntary movement, till, upon my looking grave, it desisted -- the best
dancer, I was saying, in the county, till a cruel disease, called a cancer,
came, and bowed her down with pain; but it could never bend her good spirits,
or make them stoop, but they were still upright, because she was so good and
religious.
Then I told how she was used to sleep by herself in a lone chamber
of the great lone house; and how she believed that an apparition of two infants
was to be seen at midnight gliding up and down the great staircase near where
she slept, but she said "those innocents would do her no harm;" and
how frightened I used to be, though in those days I had my maid to sleep with
me, because I was never half so good or religious as she -- and yet I never saw
the infants. Here John expanded all his eye-brows and tried to look courageous.
Then I told how good she was to all her grand-children, having us to the
great-house in the holydays, where I in particular used to spend many hours by
myself, in gazing upon the old busts of the Twelve Caesars, that had been
Emperors of Rome, till the old marble heads would seem to live again, or I to
be turned into marble with them; how I never could be tired with roaming about
that huge mansion, with its vast empty rooms, with their worn-out hangings,
fluttering tapestry, and carved oaken pannels, with the gilding almost rubbed
out -- sometimes in the spacious old-fashioned gardens, which I had almost to
myself, unless when now and then a solitary gardening man would cross me -- and
how the nectarines and peaches hung upon the walls, without my ever offering to
pluck them, because they were forbidden fruit, unless now and then, -- and
because I had more pleasure in strolling about among the old melancholy-looking
yew trees, or the firs, and picking up the red berries, and the fir apples,
which were good for nothing but to look at -- or in lying a out upon the fresh
grass, with all the fine garden smells around me -- or basking in the orangery,
till I could almost fancy myself ripening too along with the oranges and the
limes in that grateful warmth -- or in watching the dace that darted to and fro
in the fish-pond, at the bottom of the garden, with here and there a great
sulky pike hanging midway down the water in silent state, as if it mocked at
their impertinent friskings, -- I had more pleasure in these busy-idle
diversions than in all the sweet flavours of peaches, nectarines, oranges, and
such like common baits of children.
Here John slyly deposited back upon the
plate a bunch of grapes, which, not unobserved by Alice, he had meditated
dividing with her, and both seemed willing to relinquish them for the present as
irrelevant. Then in somewhat a more heightened tone, I told how, though their
great-grandmother Field loved all her grand-children, yet in an especial manner
she might be said to love their uncle, John L----, because he was so handsome
and spirited a youth, and a king to the rest of us; and, instead of moping
about in solitary corners, like some of us, he would mount the most mettlesome
horse he could get, when but an imp no bigger than themselves, and make it
carry him half over the county in a morning, and join the hunters when there
were any out -- and yet he loved the old great house and gardens too, but had
too much spirit to be always pent up within their boundaries -- and how their
uncle grew up to man's estate as brave as he was handsome, to the admiration of
every body, but of their great-grandmother Field most especially; and how he
used to carry me upon his back when I was a lame- footed boy -- for he was a
good bit older than me -- many a mile when I could not walk pain; -- and how in
after life he became lame-footed too, and I did not always (I fear) make
allowances enough for him when he was impatient, and in pain, nor remember
sufficiently how considerate he had been to me when I was lame- footed; and how
when he died, though he had not been dead an hour, it seemed as if he had died
a great while ago, such a distance there is betwixt life and death; and how I
bore his death as I thought pretty well at first, but afterwards it haunted and
haunted me; and though I did not cry or take it to heart as some do, and as I
think he would have done if I had died, yet I missed him all day long, and knew
not till then how much I had loved him. I missed his kindness, and I missed his
crossness, and wished him to be alive again, to be quarrelling with him (for we
quarreled sometimes), rather than not have him again, and was as uneasy without
him, as he their poor uncle must have been when the doctor took off his limb.
Here the children fell a crying, and asked if their little mourning which they
had on was not for uncle John, and they looked up, and prayed me not to go on
about their uncle, but to tell them, some stories about their pretty dead
mother.
Then I told how for seven long years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in
despair, yet persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice W---n; and, as much as
children could understand, I explained to them what coyness, and difficulty,
and denial meant in maidens -- when suddenly, turning to Alice, the soul of the
first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a reality of re-presentment, that
I became in doubt which of them stood there before me, or whose that bright
hair was; and while I stood gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to
my view, receding, and still receding till nothing at last but two mournful features
were seen in the uttermost distance, which, without speech, strangely impressed
upon me the effects of speech; "We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are
we children at all.
The children of Alice called Bartrum father. We are
nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been, and
must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have
existence, and a name" ------ and immediately awaking I found myself
quietly seated in my bachelor arm-chair, where I had fallen asleep, with the
faithful Bridget unchanged by my side -- but John L. (or James Elia) was gone
for ever.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles Lamb's Dream Children - A Reverie YouTube Video [49 min] [Click Here]
Charles Lamb's Dream Children YouTube Slide Share [Click Here]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
.jpg)
