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Unit 3: Charles Lamb-Dream Children : A Reverie-A Detailed Study

story upon it. Here Alice put out one of her dear mother’s looks, too tender to be called Notes
upbraiding. Then I went on to say, how religious and how good their great. grandmother
Field was, how beloved and respected by every body, 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 afterwards 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,

This is hardly a story at all; it is so slight in substance and in texture; it is a reverie only.
Yet it has its movement and its climax; it makes only a single impression; and thus it is
seen to have certain of the essential qualities of the true short-story.

when she came to die, her funeral was attended by a concourse of all the poor, and some of
the gentry too, of the neighbourhood 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, ay, 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 eye-brows 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 holydays, where I in particular used to spend many hours by myself,
in gazing upon the old busts of the Twelve Caesars, 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 pannels, 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 a out 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 dance 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 flavours 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

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