It is very strange, in the matter of dreadful dreams, how the body
of the terror is, in the course of often dreaming, reduced to a mere
convention. For a long time I was tormented with a nightmare of
burglars, and at first I used to dramatize the whole affair in detail,
from the time the burglars approached the house, till they mounted the
stairs, and the light of their dark-lanterns shone under the door into
my room. Now I have blue-pencilled all that introductory detail; I have
a light shining in under my door at once; I know that it is my old
burglars; and I have the effect of nightmare without further ceremony.
There are other nightmares that still cost me a great deal of trouble
in their construction, as for instance the nightmare of clinging to the
face of a precipice or the eaves of a lofty building; I have to take
as much pains with the arrangement of these as if I were now dreaming
them for the first time, and were hardly more than an apprentice in the
business.
Perhaps the most universal dream of all is that disgraceful dream of
appearing in public places, and in society, with very little or nothing
on. This dream spares neither age nor sex, I believe, and I dare say
the innocency of wordless infancy is abused by it, and dotage pursued
to the tomb. I have not the least doubt Adam and Eve had it in Eden;
though up to the moment the fig-leaf came in, it is difficult to
imagine just what plight they found themselves in that seemed improper;
probably there was some plight. The most amusing thing about this
dream is the sort of defensive process that goes on in the mind, in
search of self-justification or explanation. Is there not some peculiar
circumstance or special condition, in whose virtue it is wholly right
and proper for one to come to a fashionable assembly clad simply in a
towel, or to go about the street in nothing but a pair of kid gloves,
or of pyjamas at the most? This, or something like it, the mind of the
dreamer struggles to establish, with a good deal of anxious appeal to
the bystanders and a final sense of the hopelessness of the cause.
One may easily laugh off this sort of dream in the morning, but there
are other shameful dreams, whose inculpation projects itself far into
the day, and whose infamy often lingers about one till lunch-time.
Every one, nearly, has had them, but it is not the kind of dream that
any one is fond of telling: the gross vanity of the most besotted
dream-teller keeps that sort back. During the forenoon, at least, the
victim goes about with the dim question whether he is not really that
kind of man harassing him, and a sort of remote fear that he may be. I
fancy that as to his nature and as to his mind, he is so, and that but
for the supernal criticism, but for his soul, he might be that kind of
man in very act and deed.
The dreams we sometimes have about other people are not without a
curious suggestion; and the superstitious (of those superstitious who
like to invent their own superstitions) might very well imagine that
the persons dreamed of had a witting complicity in their facts, as
well as the dreamer. This is a conjecture that must of course not be
forced to any conclusion. One must not go to one of these persons and
ask, however much one would like to ask, “Sir, have you no recollection
of such and such a thing, at such and such a time and place, which
happened to us in my dream?” Any such person would be fully justified
in not answering the question. It would be, of all interviewing, the
most intolerable species. Yet a singular interest, a curiosity not
altogether indefensible, will attach to these persons in the dreamer’s
mind, and he will not be without the sense, ever after, that he and
they have a secret in common. This is dreadful, but the only thing
that I can think to do about it is to urge people to keep out of other
people’s dreams by every means in their power.