Observations placeholder

From The Mystery of the Human Double – Ralph Shirley

The narrator is the Hon. P. H. Newnham

 "In the month of March, 1856 (he wrote), I was at Oxford; it was my first year and I was living in furnished rooms. I was subject to violent headaches, especially at night. One evening, at about eight o'clock, I had a more violent headache than usual.

At about nine it became unbearable.

I went to my bedroom and threw myself on my bed without undressing and soon fell asleep.

I then experienced a dream of singular clearness and intensity. All the details are as vivid in my memory as at the moment that I was dreaming. I dreamt that I was with the family of the lady who afterwards became my wife. All the young people had gone to bed and I remained chatting as I stood before the mantelpiece. Then I took my candle and went to bed. When I reached the hall I saw that my fiancee had remained downstairs, that she had only just reached the top of the staircase. I sprang up the stairs four steps at a time, and, surprising her as she reached the last step, I from behind passed my arm round her waist. I held my candle in my left hand whilst I mounted the stairs but in my dream that did not inconvenience me at all.

I then awoke and almost immediately a clock in the house struck ten.

The impression which the dream produced on me was so strong that I wrote to my fiancee the following morning an account of it. I received a letter from the lady which was not in answer to mine, but which had crossed it in the post. It contained the following remarks:

'Did you particularly think of me last night at ten o'clock? As I went upstairs to bed I heard distinctly your footsteps behind me and I felt your arms round my waist.’”

P. H. NEWNHAM