Andrew Lang - The Book of Dreams and Ghosts

“The fact was Mr. Percival was assassinated on the evening of the 11th.

“Some business soon after called me to London, and in one of the print-shops I saw a drawing for sale, representing the place and the circumstances which attended Mr. Perceval’s death. I purchased it, and upon a careful examination I found it to coincide in all respects with the scene which had passed through my imagination in the dream. The colours of the dresses, the buttons of the assassin’s coat, the white waistcoat of Mr. Perceval, the spot of blood upon it, the countenances and attitudes of the parties present were exactly what I had dreamed.

“The singularity of the case, when mentioned among my friends and acquaintances, naturally made it the subject of conversation in London, and in consequence my friend, the late Mr. Rennie, was requested by some of the commissioners of the navy that they might be permitted to hear the circumstances from myself. Two of them accordingly met me at Mr. Rennie’s house, and to them I detailed at the time the particulars, then fresh in my memory, which form the subject of the above statement.

“I forbear to make any comment on the above narrative, further than to declare solemnly that it is a faithful account of facts as they actually occurred.

(Signed) “JOHN WILLIAMS.” 22 22 Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research , vol. v., pp. 324, 325.

When we come to dreams of the future, great historical examples are scarce indeed, that is, dreams respectably authenticated. We have to put up with curious trivialities. One has an odd feature.

Dr. Kinsolving, of the Church of the Epiphany in Philadelphia, dreamed that he “came across a rattlesnake,” which “when killed had two black-looking rattles and a peculiar projection of bone from the tail, while the skin was unusually light in colour”. Next day, while walking with his brother, Dr. Kinsolving nearly trod on a rattlesnake, “the same snake in every particular with the one I had had in my mind’s eye”. This would be very well, but Dr. Kinsolving’s brother, who helped to kill the unlucky serpent, says “ he had a single rattle ”. The letters of these gentlemen were written without communication to each other. If Mr. Kinsolving is right, the real snake with one rattle was not the dream snake with two rattles. The brothers were in a snaky country, West Virginia. 23 23 Proceedings , S.P.R ., vol. xi., p. 495.

The following is trivial, but good. It is written by Mr. Alfred Cooper, and attested by the dreamer, the Duchess of Hamilton.

Mr. Cooper says: “A fortnight before the death of the late Earl of L- in 1882, I called upon the Duke of Hamilton, in Hill Street, to see him professionally. After I had finished seeing him, we went into the drawing-room, where the duchess was, and the duke said, ‘Oh, Cooper, how is the earl?’

“The duchess said, ‘What earl?’ and on my answering ‘Lord L-,’ she replied: ‘That is very odd. I have had a most extraordinary vision. I went to bed, but after being in bed a short time, I was not exactly asleep, but thought I saw a scene as if from a play before me. The actors in it were Lord L- as if in a fit, with a man standing over him with a red beard. He was by the side of a bath, over which a red lamp was distinctly shown.

“I then said: ‘I am attending Lord L- at present; there is very little the matter with him; he is not going to die; he will be all right very soon’.

“Well he got better for a week and was nearly well, but at the end of six or seven days after this I was called to see him suddenly. He had inflammation of both lungs.

“I called in Sir William Jenner, but in six days he was a dead man. There were two male nurses attending on him; one had been taken ill. But when I saw the other, the dream of the duchess was exactly represented. He was standing near a bath over the earl, and strange to say, his beard was red. There was the bath with the red lamp over it. It is rather rare to find a bath with a red lamp over it, and this brought the story to my mind..”

This account, written in 1888, has been revised by the late Duke of Manchester, father of the Duchess of Hamilton, who heard the vision from his daughter on the morning after she had seen it.

The duchess only knew the earl by sight, and had not heard that he was ill. She knew she was not asleep, for she opened her eyes to get rid of the vision, and, shutting them, saw the same thing again. 24 24 Signed by Mr. Cooper and the Duchess of Hamilton.

In fact, the “vision” was an illusion hypnagogique . Probably most readers know the procession of visions which sometimes crowd on the closed eyes just before sleep. 25 25 See Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty , p. 91. They commonly represent with vivid clearness unknown faces or places, occasionally known faces. The writer has seen his own in this way and has occasionally “opened his eyes to get rid of” the appearances. In his opinion the pictures are unconsciously constructed by the half-sleeping mind out of blurs of light or dark seen with closed eyes. Mr. Cooper’s story would be more complete if he had said whether or not the earl, when visited by him, was in a chair as in the vision. But beds are not commonly found in bathrooms.

This story was told to the writer by his old head-master, the Rev. Dr. Hodson, brother of Hodson, of Hodson’s Horse, a person whom I never heard make any other allusion to such topics. Dr. Hodson was staying with friends in Switzerland during the holidays. One morning, as he lay awake, he seemed to see into a room as if the wall of his bedroom had been cut out. In the room were a lady well known to him and a man whom he did not know. The man’s back was turned to the looker-on. The scene vanished, and grew again. Now the man faced Dr. Hodson; the face was unfamiliar, and had a deep white scar seaming the moustache. Dr. Hodson mentioned the circumstance to his friends, and thought little of it. He returned home, and, one day, in Perth station, met the lady at the book-stall. He went up to accost her, and was surprised by the uneasiness of her manner. A gentleman now joined them, with a deep white scar through his moustache. Dr. Hodson now recalled, what had slipped his memory, that the lady during his absence from Scotland had eloped with an officer, the man of the vision and the railway station. He did not say, or perhaps know, whether the elopement was prior to the kind of dream in Switzerland.

Here is a dream representing a future event, with details which could not be guessed beforehand.

Mrs. Weiss, of St. Louis, was in New York in January, 1881, attending a daughter, Mrs. C., who was about to have a child. She writes: —

“On Friday night (Jan. 21) I dreamed that my daughter’s time came; that owing to some cause not clearly defined, we failed to get word to Mr. C., who was to bring the doctor; that we sent for the nurse, who came; that as the hours passed and neither Mr. C. nor the doctor came we both got frightened; that at last I heard Mr. C. on the stairs, and cried to him: ‘Oh, Chan, for heaven’s sake get a doctor! Ada may be confined at any moment’; that he rushed away, and I returned to the bedside of my daughter, who was in agony of mind and body; that suddenly I seemed to know what to do… and that shortly after Mr. C. came, bringing a tall young doctor, having brown eyes, dark hair, ruddy brun complexion, grey trousers and grey vest, and wearing a bright blue cravat, picked out with coral sprigs; the cravat attracted my attention particularly. The young doctor pronounced Mrs. C. properly attended to, and left.”