On Dreams

William Archer, Theodore Besterman

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138232440
• eBook ISBN: 9781315312392
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Cognitive Psychology & Cognition
• Index: Psychology

Originally published in 1935, William Archer's interest in dreams had persisted for over quarter of a century, for ten years of which he kept a careful record of his own dreams. These records alone form a valuable collection of material, of which Archer made good use in the writing of the book on dreams on which he was engaged at the time of his death; large parts of these dream-records are reproduced in this book. He left this book partly finished, partly in draft, and partly in the form of notes. In putting together this material the editor, Theodore Besterman, tries to carry out Archer's intentions as closely as possible, and believed that he represented the book as he would have wished it to appear. It was unquestionably an important contribution to a difficult subject at the time, the result of many years' study and reflection.

CHAPTER XI

TEN YEARS OF DREAMS: A SELECTION

THE value of the foregoing remarks derives in large part from the fact that they are based on actual recorded experience, since an ounce of fact is worth a ton of theory. I will now set out a selection from the full accounts I wrote of my dreams, immediately on awakening, during a period of ten years. Some of these dreams have already been quoted from and the full texts are given here so that the reader may judge whether just use has been made of them. For the most part, however, the dreams selected have not previously been cited. They have been chosen as illustrating as wide a range as possible of dream-phenomena; the arrangement is chronological, and the records and comments stand as written at the time, apart from a few name changes.

THE CHESS-MEN

24-25 September, 1915

I was at some place, a sort of peninsula in a lake or river, where an immense number of rich people had set up a sort of summer city—a street of richly furnished pavilions along the water-front. But the place was breaking up, the pavilions were deserted, and I wandered from one to another seeing no one. In almost all of them there were travelling chess-boards with small bone men made to fit into holes. Presently I came to a pavilion where the name on the door was ‘Mr Arthur Archer’. I was somehow prepared for this, having (so I thought) noticed this name in some list, and wondered who it was. This pavilion like the rest was deserted, and on the mantelpiece was a set of common wooden chess-men lying tumbled about. A sudden impulse came over me to pocket them, and I hurriedly did so, sweeping up along with them some metal figurines which were mixed among them. Why I did this I cannot guess, for I was perfectly conscious all the time that I had no chess-board and that I hated chess.

Then I went on some way to a very luxurious pavilion at the point of the peninsula; but nothing happened there. I turned back, having decided that I must pick out the metal figures from among the chess-men and replace them. On the way a workman stopped me, produced a yellow ticket and said, with a great deal of voluble explanation, that I must pay ten shillings for it, having no right to enter the peninsula without it. I said, ‘Look here, my man, I see plainly from your patter’ (I particularly remember using this word) ‘that you are trying to swindle me. The next time you want to play such a game, don’t make any explanations, but simply demand the money as a matter of course. However, I’ll give you a shilling’. And I did so, well knowing that it was on account of my evil conscience by reason of the chess-men in my pocket. Then I went back to the Arthur Archer pavilion and was picking out the metal figures when two ladies entered. I was at once certain that one of them was Mrs Arthur Archer, a very dark, Jewish-looking, middle-aged woman. I introduced myself, and made the identity of name an excuse for my desire to borrow her chess-men. I promised faithfully to return them in three days if she would give me her town address; and I said, laughingly, Tm quite willing to make a deposit of ten shillings for them’. She evidently, with good reason, thought me mad, but made no objection; and the last thing I remember is trying to dissemble the compromising fact that I had the chess-men already in my pocket.

I have not the slightest clue to any of the factors in this dream. I had been thinking of nothing with any relation to the summer-city, ‘Arthur Archer,’ the chess-men, or anything. It is rather curious that my mind should have selected the name ‘Arthur’, for it is perhaps the only one of the commoner names that I never heard associated with the name Archer.

ZEPPELINS AND THE BRITISH MUSEUM

9-10 October, 1915

I was in the British Museum Reading-room when I heard a sort of rattling noise, something like a weak discharge of musketry, or someone rattling a stick along an iron railing. I thought ‘Hullo, here’s a Zeppelin’, but I was much reassured when someone in authority in the centre of the room began in a loud voice calling to order the people who were making the noise, though who they were, or how thay made it, I could not see. I woke up wondering whether there had been any outside noise that had occasioned the dream, but all was quite still. This is (so far) the only dream I can remember even remotely concerning Zeppelins since the acute Zeppelin scare began. Long before, at a time when they were only a vague and speculative menace, I remember having a dream of a huge sort of castle in the sky (not in the least like a Zeppelin) from which descended a stream of fire that instantly wiped out the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. Also I once dreamt of strange flying structures over Paris; but they were British, or at any rate not hostile.

It is to be noted that, in spite of intense preoccupation with the war, I seldom dream of it. During the first two or three months I never dreamed of it at all (to my knowledge).

COUNTESS OF WINCHILSEA

18-19 August, 1916

A curiously rational, consistent dream. With a party of people—I don’t know who but I fancy Dibdin was one—I went to visit the hall of some old castle. I remember we each paid the old housekeeper half a crown at the door, and she left us to our own devices. It was a large lofty room with pictures, and in a window-seat sat an enormously tall old lady, reciting or talking to herself. I knew that this was the old Countess of Winchilsea, and that the hall must be hers.

We kept away from her, and presently she left the room by a side door. Then I thought it would be a pity not to introduce myself to her if she would care to see me, so I went to the housekeeper and gave her my card and said I didn’t want to force myself on the old lady in any way, but an uncle of mine had been a particular friend of hers, and perhaps she would like to see me. The housekeeper seemed very doubtful. I said ‘Do you know the present Lord W.?’ She said ‘Of course’. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I once spent a fortnight at his station in Australia; and I knew Mr Harold too’. What happened then I don’t know, except that before going to speak to the housekeeper I had laid down my spectacles somewhere and could not find them again. All the bric-a-brac in the room seemed to have turned into spectacles just like mine, so that it was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

What was curious was the perfect plausibility of my interview with the housekeeper. I am not sure whether Uncle William was such a friend of Lady W. as I represented him to have been. He certainly knew her; but perhaps I rather mixed up Lady W. with Mrs Sidey.

Apart from this it was all quite true. Why Lady W. (who I suppose is dead) came into my head at all I don’t know.

In another dream of the same night I was walking on a Sunday on the Queensferry Road outside Edinburgh, and in a hurry to get back to Edinburgh. A Shoolbred motor-van came along and I asked the driver to give me a lift. He said he always charged a guinea. I said that was too much, but that I would give him half a guinea. This he declined, and I walked on with someone (I don’t know who) and found we were much nearer Edinburgh than I supposed. We reached it somehow before the motor-man, and I remember triumphing over him.

MEDLEY

28-29 August, 1916

A very long confused dream, or rather several dreams, though I do not think I awoke between them.

In one I was with Dooie at Athens, or at least a place I believed to be Athens, though it was utterly unlike what I know of Athens. We saw a lot of low ruins, mere foundations, rising only a few inches above the ground, and I said this was evidently a race-course.

Then, still in the same trough-shaped valley, I was driving a motor-car. It seemed I could drive quite well, but did not know the power of the car; for I was always dashing at hills it would not climb and having to turn back. Then I found myself rushing the car (still with Dooie) at an enormous speed along the face of an almost perpendicular bank, so that it seemed inevitable that we must skid and turn over. People shouted to warn me of the danger, but I couldn’t help it, and somehow we got through.

In another dream I arrived at the Murrays’ (I presume at Oxford) and found them just going out to some entertainment at a college. I was to follow. The place, Lady Mary said, was ‘Number 80 to 90’, and I was ashamed to confess my ignorance of what this meant, and thought my cabman would know. But I found my cabman did not know, and drove me away into the country (to a romantic valley wholly unlike the surroundings of Oxford), and the last thing I remember was despairing of finding the place because I was sure none of the colleges were situated in any such place.

Then I found myself somewhere with an omnibus full of people, to one of whom I repeated A. E. Housman’s parody of Æschylus—the first lines of it, down to ‘This well-nightingaled vicinity’ —and we discussed the two Housmans, and agreed that A. E. was much the better man. Then, somehow, all the people in the omnibus (though it was in London) got out to dine, while the omnibus waited for them.

I thought I could not wait but must walk on; and then I found that I was carrying (having picked it up in absence of mind) a very large book of photographs which (as a matter of fact) I had seen yesterday at Wellington House. I thought there was a buff slip clipped to it directing that it should be taken to Bertram Dobell’s in Charing Cross Road, and I set off to take it there, the place I was then in being, I thought, somewhere about Kingsway. But though the book was too large to carry with comfort, I must needs enquire at one or two old bookshops in the neighbourhood for Scott’s Life of Napoleon. At one of them the bookseller produced it—four large blue volumes, price 6s.—and he pointed out, as enhancing the value, that there was stamped on the back of the first volume, ‘Licensed for export by H.B.M. Consul, Nagasaki’. I discussed with someone that was with me the meaning of this, but do not remember who it was, or what theory we arrived at. I looked at the illustrations, which were brightly coloured plates of uniforms, and remember thinking how foolish it was to make all the British soldiers look so refined and intellectual.

When I awoke, I was discussing in my mind (I) whether I could carry the four volumes along with the huge book of photos (2) whether I really wanted to read the Life of Napoleon.

It has, as a matter of fact, often occurred to me that I would like to get hold of Scott’s Life of Napoleon, and see whether it was not readable.

THE SHAVING OF MR SHAW

26-27 October, 1916

One incident in a long dream otherwise forgotten—I met Shaw and Mrs Shaw somewhere and Shaw had shaved his beard and moustache, with the result that his face had become wholly different from what it actually is—a hatchet face with a long sharp nose and rather weak chin. I chaffed him about it and said, ‘Have you lectured since you shaved? You’ll find that all the magic is gone and you can’t take the people in’—and some reference to Samson was in my mind, though I don’t think I spoke it. Mrs Shaw, by the way, was exactly like herself. What is curious about this is the total lack of any predisposing cause. There was no reason why Shaw should come into my mind any more than anyone else, and still less any reason why I should think of him shaving. I believe the effect produced by his shaving may have been influenced by some reminiscence of the unhappy change made in Hubert Herkomer’s appearance by the same means.

Part of the same dream was that I was wading in a shallow pool which I believed to be Havana harbour, and was alarmed to see a fish which I took to be a shark very near my feet. I took refuge on a large block of pure white marble in the middle of the harbour. I think Shaw and Mrs Shaw were wading too. Some five or six days ago I had been writing about Havana harbour, with reference to Alan Seeger.

ZAFGENGALO ZAG

16-17 January, 1917

A curious instance of the invention of strange names.

At the end of a wholly forgotten dream I found myself reading a newspaper article in the first line of which occurred the name ‘Zafgengalo Zag’. I remarked to someone standing by (I don’t know who) that it was not at all like a Norwegian name (which is very true) and then woke up. This accounts for my being able to remember the name.

TUCCOTINE

24-25 January, 1917

I was at an inn at some watering-place with two or three people, I think relatives of mine, though my sister Annie is the only one I remember clearly. In the evening, the landlady brought in a tray with drinks. For some reason or other, she knew I would not take what the others were taking, so she had brought me a glass of clear blackish brown fluid (like the water from a shingle roof in Australia, but darker) which she said was the specialty of the inn, and called ‘tuccotine’. I took a mouthful of it and choked—not that I thought it exactly nasty, though it wanted sugar. What is a little remarkable is that I woke immediately after with the clear impression of having invented a taste—that is, of having experienced a taste which I seemed at the moment of waking to remember quite clearly and which I had never experienced before. The name ‘tuccotine’, which came quite glibly from the landlady’s lips, may have been suggested by ‘seccotine’; but I am aware of nothing that should bring seccotine to my mind.

AUNT LIZZIE AT ST ANDREWS

14-15 February, 1917

I fell asleep over Boswell’s Hebrides, where he and Johnson are at St. Andrews. In my dream I was at a place which I thought was St Andrews— a large building on a hillside—a maze of corridors and small rooms, ancient but comfortably furnished in modern style. A messenger boy from Wellington House with great difficulty forced himself into my room, carrying a locked glass case within which was a book. This was some book supposed to be contraband, and the glass case was the method adopted by the censorship to deliver it— and yet prevent it from doing any harm. (This part of the dream may have been vaguely suggested by an odd mistake made by my housekeeper this morning, who had delivered at the Star office some MS. intended for Wellin...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Editor’s Preface
• Contents
• I. The Importance of Dreams
• II. Two Outstanding Dreams
• III. Time in Dreams
• IV. Dozing Dreams
• V. Visions and Dreams
• VI. The Element of Chance in Dreams
• VII. Physically Stimulated Dreams
• VIII. The Sources of Dreams
• IX. Wish-Fulfilment
• X. The Moral Sense in Dreams
• XI. Ten Years of Dreams [A Selection] :
• Index of Names