DREAM CHILDREN: A REVERIE -CHARLES LAMB

DREAM CHILDREN: A REVERIE

                                   -CHARLES LAMB

Dream Children: A Reverie is one of Lamb’s famous essays. This essay shows the character of boy Lamb, his brother and grandmother.

     Children love to listen to stories about elders. Lamb’s little children, Alice and John gathered near Lamb to hear something about their great –grandmother Mary Field. She lived in a big mansion in Norfolk. She maintained the mansion very well. She was very pious. She knew the Psalms of the Bible by heart. In her youth, she had been very tall, graceful and a very good dancer. She was afflicted with cancer and this put an end to her dancing. She was bold enough to live alone in the big house and how she thought that ghosts of two children used to be seen wandering on the staircase at midnight. Mrs. Field’s funeral was attended by many people, because of her cordial relationship with all.

     As a boy, Lamb used to visit his grandmother house very often. He gazed at the busts of twelve Caesars in his grandmother’s house. He used to roam around the big house and spent his time all alone of his own way. He would lie on the warm grass and look at the fishes in the fishpond.  Thus the boy Lamb idled his time.

     Next Lamb told the children about their Uncle John L.  John was little lame but courageous and high- spirited. He loved riding and hunting. He used to carry Lamb on his back many miles. When John died, Lamb missed him badly. Here the children began to cry and requested the father to talk about their dead mother.

     Lamb narrated to his imaginary children how he counted Alice Winterton in ecstasy and despair. Looking at the child Alice, Lamb felt that his child’s eyes and hair resembled his beloved’s eyes and hair. When he narrated his unsuccessful love for Alice Winterton, the imaginary children began to fade away. Before they made it clear that they were not the children of Alice and Lamb. In reality Alice married Bartrum. So the children would claim Bartrum as their father and not Lamb. The children added that they were only figures in Lamb’s dream and were bound to disappear.

     After the figures disappeared, the dream came to an end and Lamb found himself seated in his bachelor arm-chair.

     There is a mixture of humour and pathos in the essay. Lamb’s language in this essay is simple and it also free from obscure allusions.