Escape, and Other Essays

by Arthur Christopher Benson

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