Write the summary of the essay entitled "Dream Children: A Reverie

Write the summary of the essay entitled “Dream Children: A Reverie”.

Ans.

Summary of the Essay

One evening Alice and John (Lamb’s Dream Children – in reality Lamb never married and had not children came to him to hear form him an account of their ancestors. Lamb told them about their great-grandmother Field, Uncle John Lamb (Whom Lamb called James Elia) and their mother Alice Winterton (Ann Simmons).

Lamb told the children that their great grandmother Field lived in a big house in Norfolk. She lived in such a way that she always seemed to be the owner of the great house while she was only its keeper. It was an old house with a wooden chimney. On the chimney was carved the full story of the ballad. ‘The children in the wood’. But as foolish rich man, who purchased that house, replaced the wooden chimney with ballad by a modern marble one without ballad on it. Their great grandmother was a religious and holy lady. She knew all psalms by heart. She was a woman of so good nature and sweat temperament that she was loved and respected by all. When she died, her funeral was attended by a concourse of all the poor, and some of the gentry too, of the neighbourhood for many miles around, to show their respect for her memory. She was a patient of cancer. Her disease bowed down her body, but it could never bow down her spirit. She was very courageous. Despite the fact that the house was haunted by the ghost of two children, she would sleep all alone in the house without fear. She loved all her grand children very much; she would invite all of them to the great house to enjoy their holidays. The author used to spend his holiday there. He often wandered about the house for hours all alone. He would gaze upon the statues of the Roman Emperors there. He would go on gazing at them till they appeared to be living kings or he himself a marble statue. He enjoyed roaming in the gardens also.

Then Lamb told his children about their uncle John Lamb. John was so brave, handsome kind and considerate that all loved him very much. Though great-grandmother loved all children equally, yet she had special affection for him. He was also a good horse-rider. When Charles Lamb once was a lame footed boy, he remembers how kind and considerate John was, and how he carries him (Charles Lamb) on his back for miles. Charles Lamb remembers with regret that, quite to the contrary, when John himself was lame-footed, he could do nothing for him. After his pre-mature death, Lamb often missed his kindness and his crossness, and always wished him to be alive again.

Hearing the sad story of John’s life, the dream children became so sad that they requested their father (Lamb, their dream father) not to go any further about their uncle. They requested him to tell them something about their pretty dead mother. Then he told them “how for seven long years, in hope, sometimes in despair, yet persisting ever, he courted the fair Alice W-n.” Alice, his daughter, resembled her mother very much. As Lamb stared at her face, the children gradually grew fainter to his view. They said nothing but seemed to be saying that they were not his children, they were nothing, less than nothing, and dreams. This reality shattered the dream of the author, and brought him back into his bachelor arm-chair, where he had fallen asleep. His sister Bridget was sitting by his side, but John L. was gone for ever.