Dream Children By Charles Lamb: Full Text

Dream Children

By Charles Lamb

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 everybody, 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 afterward 

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 neighborhood 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, aye, 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 eyebrows 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 

holidays, where I in particular used to spend many hours by myself, in gazing upon the old 

busts of the Twelve Cæsars, 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 panels, 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 about 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 flavors 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 mediated 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 

everybody, 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 for 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 afterward 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 quarreling 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 them 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 call 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 armchair, where I had fallen asleep, with the 

faithful Bridget unchanged by my side—but John L. (or James Elia) was gone forever.