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The Dream Chapter the Second - The Beginning of the Dream Parts 1 and 2 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Section two of The Dream, a novel. This is a
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Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit libriyvox dot org.
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Speaker 1: The Dream, a Novel by H. G. Wells. Chapter the
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Speaker 1: second the beginning of the Dream, Parts one and two.
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Speaker 1: Part one. This dream of mine began, he said, as
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Speaker 1: all our lives begin in fragments, in a number of
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Speaker 1: disconnected impressions. I remember myself lying on a sofa, a
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Speaker 1: sofa covered with a curious sort of hard, shiny material
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Speaker 1: with a red and black pattern on it, and I
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Speaker 1: was screaming, but I do not know why I screamed.
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Speaker 1: I discovered my father's standing in the doorway of the room,
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Speaker 1: looking at me. He looked very dreadful. He was partially
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Speaker 1: undressed in trousers and a flannel shirt, and his fair
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Speaker 1: hair was an unbrushed shock. He was shaving and his
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Speaker 1: chin was covered with lather. He was angry because I
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Speaker 1: was screaming. I suppose I stopped screaming, but I am
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Speaker 1: not sure. And I remember kneeling upon this same hard,
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Speaker 1: red and black sofa beside my mother and looking out
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Speaker 1: of the window the sofa used to stand with its
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Speaker 1: back to the window sill at the rain falling on
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Speaker 1: the roadway. Outside the window sill smelled faintly of paint,
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Speaker 1: soft bad paint that had blistered in the sun. It
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Speaker 1: was a violent storm of rain, and the road was
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Speaker 1: an ill made road of a yellowish sandy clay. It
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Speaker 1: was covered with muddy water, and the storming rainfall made
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Speaker 1: a multitude of flashing bubbles that drove along before for
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Speaker 1: the wind and burst and gave place to others. Look
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Speaker 1: at 'em, dearie, said my mother, like soldiers. I think
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Speaker 1: I was still very young when that happened, But I
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Speaker 1: was not so young that I had not often seen
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Speaker 1: soldiers with their helmets and bayonets marching by. That said
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Speaker 1: radiant was some time before the Great War then, and
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Speaker 1: the social collapse some time before, said Sarnak. He considered
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Speaker 1: twenty one years before. This house in which I was
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Speaker 1: born was less than two miles from the great military
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Speaker 1: camp of the British at low Cliffe in England, and
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Speaker 1: low Cliffe railway station was only a few hundred yards away.
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Speaker 1: Soldiers were the most conspicuous objects in my world. Outside
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Speaker 1: my home, they were more brightly colored than other people.
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Speaker 1: My mother used to wheel me out for air every
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Speaker 1: day in a thing called a perambulator, and whenever there
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Speaker 1: were soldiers to be seen, she used to say, oh,
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Speaker 1: pretty soldiers. Soldiers must have been one of my earliest words.
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Speaker 1: I used to point my little wool encased finger, for
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Speaker 1: they wrapped up children tremendously in those days, and I
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Speaker 1: wore even gloves, And I would say, so sure, let
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Speaker 1: me try and describe to you what sort of home
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Speaker 1: this was of mine, and what manner of people my
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Speaker 1: father and mother were. Such homes and houses and places
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Speaker 1: have long since vanished from the world. Not many relics
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Speaker 1: of them have been kept. And though you have probably
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Speaker 1: learnt most of the facts concerning them, I doubt if
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Speaker 1: you can fully realize the feel and the reality of
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Speaker 1: the things I found about me. The name of the
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Speaker 1: place was Cherry Gardens. It was about two miles from
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Speaker 1: the sea at Sanborn. One way lay the town of Cliffstone,
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Speaker 1: from which steamboats crossed the sea to France, and the
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Speaker 1: the other way lay Low Cliff and its rows and
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Speaker 1: rows of ugly red brick barracks and its great drilling plane.
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Speaker 1: And behind us inland was a sort of plateau covered
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Speaker 1: with raw new roads of loose pebbles. You cannot imagine
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Speaker 1: such roads, and vegetable gardens and houses new built or building,
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Speaker 1: and then a line of hills, not very high, but
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Speaker 1: steep and green and bare. The downs. The downs made
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Speaker 1: a graceful skyline that bounded my world to the north,
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Speaker 1: as the sapphire line of the sea bounded it to
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Speaker 1: the south. And they were almost the only purely beautiful
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Speaker 1: things in that world. All the rest was touched and
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Speaker 1: made painful by human confusion. When I was a very
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Speaker 1: little boy, I used to wonder what lay behind those downs,
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Speaker 1: but I never went up them to see until I
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Speaker 1: was seven or eight years old. This was before the
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Speaker 1: days of aeroplanes, asked Radiant. They came into the world.
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Speaker 1: When I was eleven or twelve, I saw the first
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Speaker 1: that ever crossed the channel between the mainland of Europe
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Speaker 1: and England. That was considered a very wonderful thing. Indeed,
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Speaker 1: it was a wonderful thing, said Sonray. I went with
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Speaker 1: a lot of other boys, and we edged through a
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Speaker 1: crowd that stood and stared at the quaint old machine.
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Speaker 1: It was like a big canvas grasshopper with outspread wings
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Speaker 1: in a field somewhere beyond Cliffstone. It was being guarded,
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Speaker 1: and the people were kept away from it by steaks
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Speaker 1: and a string. I find it hard to describe to
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Speaker 1: you what sort of places cherry Gardens and Cliffstone were like,
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Speaker 1: even though we have just visited the ruins of Domadosola.
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Speaker 1: Domodosola was a sprawling, aimless town enough, but these sprawled
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Speaker 1: far more. I looked with a far emptier aimlessness into
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Speaker 1: the face of God. You see, in the thirty or
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Speaker 1: forty years before my birth there had been a period
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Speaker 1: of comparative prosperity and productivity in human affairs. It was, not,
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Speaker 1: of course, in those days, the result of any statesmanship
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Speaker 1: or forethought. It just happened, as now and then, in
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Speaker 1: the course of a rain torrent there comes a pole
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Speaker 1: of level water between the rapids. But the money and
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Speaker 1: credit system was working fairly well. There was much trade
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Speaker 1: and intercourse, no extensive pestilences, exceptionally helpful seasons, and few
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Speaker 1: very widespread wars. As a result of this conspiracy of
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Speaker 1: favorable conditions, there was a perceptible rise in the standards
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Speaker 1: of life of the common people. But for the most
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Speaker 1: part it was discounted by a huge increase of population.
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Speaker 1: As our school books say, in those days, man was
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Speaker 1: his own locust. Later in my life I was to
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Speaker 1: hear furtive whispers of a forbidden topic called birth control.
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Speaker 1: But in the days of my childhood, the whole population
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Speaker 1: of the world, with very few exceptions, was in a
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Speaker 1: state of complete and carefully protected igna ignorance about the
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Speaker 1: elementary facts of human life and happiness. The surroundings of
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Speaker 1: my childhood were dominated by an unforeseen and uncontrollable proliferation.
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Speaker 1: Cheap proliferation was my scenery, my drama, my atmosphere. But
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Speaker 1: they had teachers and priests, and doctors and rulers to
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Speaker 1: tell them better, said Willow, not to tell them better,
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Speaker 1: Since Sarnak, these guides and pilots of life were wonderful people.
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Speaker 1: They abounded and guided no one so far from teaching
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Speaker 1: men and women to control births or avoid diseases, or
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Speaker 1: worked generously together. They rather prevented such teaching. This place,
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Speaker 1: called Cherry Gardens had mostly come into existence in the
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Speaker 1: fifty years before my birth. It had grown from a
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Speaker 1: minute hamlet into what we used to call an urban
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Speaker 1: district in that old world. In which there was neither
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Speaker 1: freedom nor direction. The land was divided up into patches
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Speaker 1: of all sorts and sizes, and owned by people who
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Speaker 1: did what they liked with it, subject to a few
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Speaker 1: vexatious and unhelpful restrictions. And in cherry gardens a sort
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Speaker 1: of men called speculative builders bought pieces of land, often
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Speaker 1: quite unsuitable land, and built houses for the swarming increase
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Speaker 1: of population that had otherwise nowhere to go. There was
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Speaker 1: no plan about this building. One speculative builder built here
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Speaker 1: and another there, and each built as cheaply as possible,
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Speaker 1: and sold or let what he had built for as
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Speaker 1: much as possible. Some of the houses they built in rows,
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Speaker 1: and some stood detached, each with a little patch of
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Speaker 1: private garden, garden they called it, though it was either
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Speaker 1: a muddle or a waste, fenced in to keep people out.
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Speaker 1: Why did they keep people out? They liked to keep
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Speaker 1: people out. It was a satisfaction for them. They were
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Speaker 1: not secret gardens. People might look over the fence if
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Speaker 1: they chose, and each house had its own kitchen where
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Speaker 1: food was cooked. There was no public eating place in
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Speaker 1: cherry gardens, and each its separate store of household gear
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Speaker 1: in most houses there was a man who went out
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Speaker 1: to work and earn a living. They didn't so much
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Speaker 1: live in those days as earn a living, and came
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Speaker 1: home to eat and sleep. And there was a woman,
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Speaker 1: his wife, who did all the services, food and cleaning
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Speaker 1: and everything. And also she bore children, a lot of
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Speaker 1: unpremeditated children, because she didn't know any better. She was
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Speaker 1: too busy to look after them well, and many of
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Speaker 1: them died. Most days she cooked a dinner. She cooked it.
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Speaker 1: It was cooking. Sarnak paused his brows knit cooking. Well,
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Speaker 1: well that's over, anyhow, he said, radiant laughed cheerfully. Almost
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Speaker 1: everyone suffered from indigestion. The newspaper were full of advertisements
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Speaker 1: of cures, said Sarnac, still darkly retrospective. I've never thought
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Speaker 1: of that aspect of life in the old world, said Sunray.
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Speaker 1: It was fundamental, said Sarnac. It was a world in
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Speaker 1: every way out of health. Every morning, except on the Sunday,
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Speaker 1: After the man had gone off to his day's toil,
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Speaker 1: and the children had been got up and dressed, and
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Speaker 1: those who were old enough sent off to school, the
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Speaker 1: woman of the house tidied up a bit, and then
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Speaker 1: came the question of getting in food for this private
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Speaker 1: cooking of hers. Every day except Sunday, a number of
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Speaker 1: men with little pony carts or with barrows they pushed
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Speaker 1: in front of them, bearing meat and fish and vegetables
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Speaker 1: and fruit, all of it exposed to the weather. And
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Speaker 1: any dirt that might be blowing about came bawling along
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Speaker 1: the roads of cherry gardens, shouting the sort of food
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Speaker 1: they were selling. My memory goes back to that red
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Speaker 1: and black sofa by the front window, and I am
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Speaker 1: a child once again there was a particularly splendid fish hawker.
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Speaker 1: What a voice he had. I used to try to
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Speaker 1: reproduce his splendid noises in my piping childish cries. Macrui year,
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Speaker 1: macrow fine, macru the machine macru. The housewives would come
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Speaker 1: out from their domestic mysteries to buy or haggle, and
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Speaker 1: as the saying went, passed the time of day with
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Speaker 1: their neighbors. But everything they wanted was not to be
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Speaker 1: got from the hawkers. And that was where my father
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Speaker 1: came in. He kept a little shop. He was what
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Speaker 1: was called a green grocer. He sold fruits and vegetables,
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Speaker 1: such poor fruits and vegetables, as men had then learned
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Speaker 1: to grow. And also he sold coals and paraffin which
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Speaker 1: people burnt in their lamps, and chocolate and ginger beer,
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Speaker 1: and other things that were necessary to the barbaric housekeeping
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Speaker 1: of the time. He also sold cut flowers and flowers
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Speaker 1: in pots, and seeds and sticks, and string and weed
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Speaker 1: killer for the little gardens. His shop stood in a
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Speaker 1: row with a lot of other shops. The row was
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Speaker 1: like a row of the ordinary houses, with the lower
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Speaker 1: rooms taken out and replaced by the shop. And he
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Speaker 1: made his living and hours by buying his goods as
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Speaker 1: cheaply as he could, and getting as much as he
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Speaker 1: could for them. It was a very poor living because
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Speaker 1: there were several other able bodied men in cherry gardens
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Speaker 1: who were also green grocers, and if he took too
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Speaker 1: much profit, then his customers would go away and buy
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Speaker 1: from these competitors, and he would get no profit at all.
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Speaker 1: I and my brother and sisters, for my mother had
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Speaker 1: been unable to avoid having six babies, and four of
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Speaker 1: us were alive, lived by and in and round about
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Speaker 1: this shop. In the summer, we were chiefly out of
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Speaker 1: doors or in the room above the shop. In the
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Speaker 1: cold weather, it cost too much trouble and money to
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Speaker 1: have a fire in that room. All cherry gardens was
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Speaker 1: heated by open coal fires, and we went down into
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Speaker 1: a dark underground kitchen where my mother, poor dear cooked.
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Speaker 1: According to our lights, you were troglodytes, said Willow. Practically
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Speaker 1: we always ate in that downstairs room. In this summer
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Speaker 1: we were sunburnt and ruddy, but in the winter, because
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Speaker 1: of this inhumation, we became white and rather thin. I
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Speaker 1: had an elder brother who was monstrous in my childish memory.
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Speaker 1: He was twelve years older than I, and I had
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Speaker 1: two sisters, Fanny and Prudence. My elder brother, Ernest went
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Speaker 1: out to work, and then he went away to London,
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Speaker 1: and I saw very little of him until I too
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Speaker 1: went to London. I was the youngest of the lot,
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Speaker 1: and when I was nine years old, my father, taking courage,
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Speaker 1: turned my mother's perambulator into a little push cart for
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Speaker 1: delivering sack of coals and suchlike goods. Fanny, my elder sister,
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Speaker 1: was a very pretty girl, with a white face, from
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Speaker 1: which her brown hair went back in graceful natural waves
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Speaker 1: and curls, and she had very dark blue eyes. Prudence
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Speaker 1: was also white, but of a duller whiteness, and her
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Speaker 1: eyes were gray. She would tease me and interfere with me.
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Speaker 1: But Fanny was either negligent or gracefully kind to me,
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Speaker 1: and I adored her. I do not, strangely enough, remember
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Speaker 1: my mother's appearance at all, distinctly, though she was, of
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Speaker 1: course the dominant fact of my childish life. She was
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Speaker 1: too familiar, I suppose, for the sort of attention that
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Speaker 1: leaves a picture on the mind. I learned to speak
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Speaker 1: from my family, and chiefly from my mother. None of
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Speaker 1: us spoke well. Our common idioms were poor and bad.
14:51
Speaker 1: We mispronounced many words, and long words we avoided as
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Speaker 1: something dangerous and pretentious. I had very few toys, a
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Speaker 1: tin railway engine, I remember, some metal soldiers, and an
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Speaker 1: insufficient supply of wooden building bricks. There was no special
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Speaker 1: place for me to play, and if I laid out
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Speaker 1: my toys on the living room table, a meal was
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Speaker 1: sure to descend and sweep them away. I remember a
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Speaker 1: great longing to play with the things in the shop,
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Speaker 1: and especially with the bundles of firewood and some fire
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Speaker 1: kindlers that were most seductively shaped like wheels. But my
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Speaker 1: father discouraged such ambitions. He did not like to have
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Speaker 1: me about the shop until I was old enough to help,
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Speaker 1: and the indoor part of most of my days was
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Speaker 1: spent in the room above it, or in the underground
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Speaker 1: room below it. After the shop was closed, it became
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Speaker 1: a very cold, cavernous dark place. To a little boy's imagination,
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Speaker 1: there were dreadful shadows in which terrible things might lurk,
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Speaker 1: and even holding fast to my mother's hand on my
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Speaker 1: way to bed, I was filled with fear to traverse it.
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Speaker 1: It had always a faint, unpleasant smell, a smell of
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Speaker 1: decaying vegetation, varying with a particular fruit or vegetable that
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Speaker 1: was most affected, and a constant element of paraffin. But
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Speaker 1: on Sundays, when it was closed all day, the shop
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Speaker 1: was different, no longer darkly threatening, but very very still.
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Speaker 1: I would be taken through it on my way to
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Speaker 1: church or Sunday school. Yes, I will tell you about
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Speaker 1: church in Sunday School in a minute. When I saw
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Speaker 1: my mother lying dead, she died when I was close
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Speaker 1: upon sixteen, I was instantly reminded of the Sunday Shop.
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Speaker 1: Such my dear son Ray was the home in which
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Speaker 1: I found myself. I seemed to have been there since
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Speaker 1: my beginning. It was the deepest dream I have ever had.
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Speaker 1: I had forgotten even you. Part two. And how is
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Speaker 1: this casually begotten infant prepared for the business of life?
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Speaker 1: Asked Radiant. Was he sent away to a garden? There
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Speaker 1: were no children's gardens such as we know them in
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Speaker 1: that world. Since Sarnak there was a place of assembly
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Speaker 1: called an elementary school. Thither I was taken twice daily
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Speaker 1: by my sister Prudence after I was six years old.
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Speaker 1: And here again I find it hard to convey to
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Speaker 1: you what the reality was like. Our histories tell you
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Speaker 1: of the beginning of general education in that distant time,
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Speaker 1: and of the bitter jealousy felt by the old priesthoods
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Speaker 1: and privileged people for the new sort of teachers. But
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Speaker 1: they give you no real picture of the ill equipped
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Speaker 1: and understaffed schoolhouses, and of the gallant work of the
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Speaker 1: underpaid and ill trained men and women who did the
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Speaker 1: first rough popular teaching. There was in particular a gaunt,
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Speaker 1: dark man with a cough who took the older boys,
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Speaker 1: and a little freckled woman of thirty or so who
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Speaker 1: fought with the lower children. And I see now they
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Speaker 1: were holy saints. His name I forget, but the little
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Speaker 1: woman was called miss Merrick. They had to handle enormous classes,
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Speaker 1: and they did most of their teaching by voice and
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Speaker 1: gesture and chalk upon a blackboard. Their equipment was miserable.
18:15
Speaker 1: The only materials of which there was enough to go
18:17
Speaker 1: around were a stock of dirty reading books, bibles, hymn books,
18:22
Speaker 1: and a lot of slabs of slate in frames on
18:25
Speaker 1: which we wrote with slate pencils. To economize paper drawing
18:30
Speaker 1: materials we had practically none. Most of us never learned
18:34
Speaker 1: to draw. Yes, lots of sane adults in that old
18:37
Speaker 1: world never learned to draw even a box. There was
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Speaker 1: nothing to count with in that school, and no geometrical models.
18:46
Speaker 1: There were hardly any pictures except a shiny one of
18:49
Speaker 1: Queen Victoria and a sheet of animals. And there were
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Speaker 1: very yellow wall maps of Europe and Asia twenty years
18:56
Speaker 1: out of date. We learnt the elements of mathematics by rescus.
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Speaker 1: We used to stand in rows, chanting a wonderful chant
19:04
Speaker 1: called our tables twice one two twice steward four twy
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Speaker 1: shear six twice four rate. We used to sing in
19:18
Speaker 1: unison religious hymns. For the most part, the school had
19:22
Speaker 1: a secondhand piano to guide our howlings. There had been
19:26
Speaker 1: a great fuss in Cliffstone and Sherry Gardens when this
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Speaker 1: piano was bought. They called it a luxury and pampering
19:33
Speaker 1: the working classes. Pampering the working classes, Firefly repeated. I
19:39
Speaker 1: suppose it's all right, but I'm rather at sea. I
19:44
Speaker 1: can't explain everything, since Sarnak the factory means that England
19:48
Speaker 1: grudged its own children the shabbiest education, and so, for
19:52
Speaker 1: the matter of fact, did every other country. They saw
19:56
Speaker 1: things differently in those days. They were still in the
19:59
Speaker 1: competitive of Cave America, which was a much richer country
20:03
Speaker 1: than England as wealth went, then had, if possible, meaner
20:07
Speaker 1: and shabbier schools for her common people. My dear, it
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Speaker 1: was so, I'm telling you a story, not explaining the universe.
20:16
Speaker 1: And naturally, in spite of the strenuous efforts of such
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Speaker 1: valiant souls as Miss Merrick, we children learned little, and
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Speaker 1: we learned it very badly. Most of my memories of
20:27
Speaker 1: school are memories of boredom. We sat on wooden forms
20:32
Speaker 1: at long worn wooden desks, rows and rows of us.
20:36
Speaker 1: I can see again all the little heads in front
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Speaker 1: of me, And far away was Miss Merrick with the pointer,
20:43
Speaker 1: trying to interest us in the rivers of England tie
20:47
Speaker 1: where t somber? Is that what they used to call swearing?
20:52
Speaker 1: Asked Willow. No, only geography and history? Was we the conqueror?
21:01
Speaker 1: Teshisti sis we young rufus ten eighty seven? What did
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Speaker 1: it mean to us? Children? Very much? What it means
21:12
Speaker 1: to you? Gibberish? The hours, those interminable hours of childhood
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Speaker 1: in school? How they dragged? Did I say? I lived
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Speaker 1: a life in my dream? In school I lived eternities? Naturally,
21:28
Speaker 1: we sought such amusement as was possible. One thing was
21:32
Speaker 1: to give your next door neighbor a pinch or a
21:34
Speaker 1: punch and say pass it on. And we played furtive
21:38
Speaker 1: games with marbles. It is rather amusing to recall that
21:42
Speaker 1: I learnt to count, to add and subtract and so
21:45
Speaker 1: forth by playing marbles in despite of discipline. But was
21:49
Speaker 1: that the best your Miss Merrick and your saint. What
21:52
Speaker 1: the cough could do? Asked Radiant. Oh they couldn't help themselves.
21:57
Speaker 1: They were in a machine, and the periotic inspectors and
22:01
Speaker 1: examinations to see that they kept in it. But said Sonray,
22:05
Speaker 1: that incantation about we young the conqueror, and the rest
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Speaker 1: of it, it meant something at the back of it
22:12
Speaker 1: lost to cy. Perhaps there was some rational or semirational idea,
22:17
Speaker 1: perhaps reflected Sarnac, but I never detected it. They called
22:21
Speaker 1: it history, said Firefly. Helpfully they did, Sarnac admitted, yes,
22:27
Speaker 1: I think they were trying to interest the children of
22:29
Speaker 1: the land in the doings of the kings and queens
22:32
Speaker 1: of England, probably as dull as string of monarchs as
22:35
Speaker 1: the world has ever seen. If they rose to interest
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Speaker 1: at times, it was through a certain violence. There was
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Speaker 1: one delightful Henry the eighth, with such a craving for
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Speaker 1: love and such a tender conscience about the sanctity of marriage,
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Speaker 1: that he always murdered one wife before he took another.
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Speaker 1: And there was one Alfred who burnt some cakes. I
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Speaker 1: never knew why. In some way it embarrassed the Danes
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Speaker 1: his enemies. But was that all the history they taught you,
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Speaker 1: cried Sunray. Queen Elizabeth of England wore a ruff, and
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Speaker 1: James the first of England and Scotland kissed his men favorites.
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Speaker 1: But history, Sarnac laughed. It is odd I see that
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Speaker 1: now that I am awake again. But indeed that was
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Speaker 1: all they taught us. Did they tell you nothing of
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Speaker 1: the beginnings of life and the ends of life, of
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Speaker 1: its endless delights and possibilities? Sarnac shook his head. Not
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Speaker 1: at school, said Starlight, who evidently knew her books. They
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Speaker 1: did that at church. Sarnac forgets the churches. It was,
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Speaker 1: you must remember an age of intense religious activity. There
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Speaker 1: were places of worship everywhere. One whole day in every
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Speaker 1: seven was given up to the destinies of man and
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Speaker 1: the study of God's purpose. The workers ceased from his toil,
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Speaker 1: from end to end of the land. The air was
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Speaker 1: full of the sound of church bells and of congregations singing.
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Speaker 1: Wasn't there a certain beauty in that, Sarnac? Sarnac reflected
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Speaker 1: and smiled. It wasn't quite like that, he said. Our histories,
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Speaker 1: in that matter need a little revision. But one sees
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Speaker 1: the churches and chapels in the old photographs and cinema pictures,
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Speaker 1: and we still have many of their cathedrals, and some
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Speaker 1: of those are quite beautiful. And they have all had
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Speaker 1: to be shored up and underpinned and tied together with steel,
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Speaker 1: said Sonray, because they were either so carelessly or so
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Speaker 1: faithlessly built. And anyhow, these were not built in Sarnac's
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Speaker 1: time Mortimer Smith's times, Sarnac corrected, they were built hundreds
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Speaker 1: of years earlier than that. End of section two. Read
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Speaker 1: by Marissa D. Six Largo, Florida, July twenty first, twenty
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Speaker 1: twenty three.