Previsionary Dream by Charles Dickens
This incident in the experience of Charles Dickens (1812-1870) is to be found in the standard biography by Forster, III, pp. 484-5 (London, 1874). On May 30, 1863, Dickens wrote:
"Here is a curious case at first-hand. On Thursday night in last week, being at my office here, I dreamed that I saw a lady in a red shawl with her back toward me (whom I supposed to be E—). On her turning round I found that I didn't know her, and she said, 'I am Miss Napier.' All the time I was dressing next morning I thought 'What a preposterous thing to have so very distinct a dream about nothing!' and why Miss Napier?—for I never heard of any Miss Napier. That same Friday night I read. After the reading, came into my retiring-room, Mary Boyle and her brother, and the lady in the red shawl, whom they present as 'Miss Napier.' These are all the circumstances exactly told."
I can imagine the late Professor Royce saying thirty years ago—for I much doubt if he would have said it twenty years later—"In certain people, under certain exciting circumstances, there occur what I shall henceforth call Pseudo-presentiments, i.e., more or less instantaneous hallucinations of memory, which make it seem to one that something which now excites or astonishes him has been prefigured in a recent dream, or in the form of some other warning, although this seeming is wholly unfounded, and although the supposed prophecy really succeeds its own fulfillment."
Apply this curious theory (which has probably not been urged for many years) to the incident just cited, and see how loosely it fits. What was there about three persons, one a stranger coming to Dickens after he had finished a reading from his own works, to "excite" or "astonish" him, make his brain whirl and bring about a hallucination of memory, an illusion of having dreamed it all before? It was the most commonplace event to him. Besides, as in most such cases, he had the distinct recollection of his thoughts about the dream after waking, thoughts inextricably interwoven with the acts performed while dressing! Besides, a pseudo-presentiment should tally with the event as a reflection does with the object, but in the dream Miss Napier introduced herself, while in reality she was introduced by another.
[1] By permission of The Century Co.
[2] From Pan's Garden, by Algernon Blackwood—Permission of the Macmillan Company.
[3] From Ten-Minute Stories, published by E. P. Dutton & Co.
[4] By permission of The Century Co.
[5] By permission of the author of War Letters of the Living Dead Man and Mitchell Kennerley.
[6] From Karma (Boni & Liveright).
[7] From "In the Midst of Life" (Boni & Liveright).
[8] Referring to this photo elsewhere, he wrote:—"This at least is not a case which telepathy can explain. Nor can the hypothesis of fraud hold water. It was by the merest accident that I asked the photographer to see if the spirit would give his name. No one in England, so far as I have been able to ascertain, knew that any Piet Botha ever existed.
"As if to render all explanation of fraud or contrivance still more incredible, it may be mentioned that the Daily Graphic of October, 1889, which announced that a Commandant Botha had been killed in the siege of Kimberley, published a portrait alleged to be that of the dead commandant, which not only does not bear the remotest resemblance to the Piet Botha of my photograph, but which was described as Commandant Hans Botha!"
[9] Miss Katharine Bates was present when the Piet Botha photograph was taken under the exact conditions specified by my father.
[10] Contullich: i.e. Ceann-nan-tulaich, "the end of the hillocks." Loch a chaoruinn means the loch of the rowan-trees.
[11] "The farm in the hollow of the yellow flowers."
[12] A chuid do Pharas da! "His share of heaven be his." Gu'n gleidheadh Dia thu, "May God preserve you." Gu'n beannaic-headh Dia an tigh! "God's blessing on this house."
[13] Droch caoidh ort! "May a fatal accident happen to you" (lit. "bad moan on you"). Gaoth gun direadh ort! "May you drift to your drowning" (lit. "wind without direction on you"). Dia ad aghaidh, etc., "God against thee and in thy face ... and may a death of woe be yours.... Evil and sorrow to thee and thine!"
[14] i.e. With a criminal secret, or an undiscovered crime.
[15] 186,900 miles a second (J. Wallace Stewart, B.Sc.).
[16] Termed teleplasma.
[17] By permission of the author.
[18] From Journal of Proceedings of Theosophical Society.
[19] Fragments of Forgotten History.
[20] Fragments of Forgotten History.
[21] By which it is doubtless meant that the full individuality is not present; the higher principles, the true spirit, having ascended to its appropriate house, from which there is no attraction to earth. That which materializes would be an elemental, or elementals molding their fluidic forms in the likeness of the departed human being; or, on the other hand, considering and revivifying the atomic remnants of the sidereal encasement, or astral body, still left undissipated in the soul-world.
[22] Sir Astley Paston Cooper was perhaps the most famous and influential surgeon of his time in England.