6

Terrifying Dreams

To the outsider, Agatha as a child, led a seemingly idyllic existence. She lived in a beautiful place on the coast of the 'English Riviera'; loved both her parents as they loved her, and although lacking friends of her own age, was able to compensate for this by creating friends in her imagination. However, in every Garden of Eden there is a serpent, which in her case took the form of terrifying dreams.

For centuries, people have attempted to analyse dreams - the meaning of which can sometimes appear obvious, and at other times obscure. Agatha's dreams are instructive, in that they shed light on her mental state as a child. They indicate that, surprising as it may seem, she was a person who suffered from deep feelings of insecurity As will be seen, this insecurity manifested itself most strongly when, in later life, a huge crisis occurred in which she had what would nowadays be termed a nervous breakdown.

In attempting to understand Agatha's bad dreams, it is first necessary to describe them. According to her, they centred around someone whom she called 'The Gunman'. She had given him this appellation, not because he carried a gun, nor because she was frightened of him shooting her. The gun, described as an antiquated kind of musket, was simply an appendage of someone who otherwise appeared to her as a Frenchman in pale blue uniform; his hair powdered and done up in a pigtail, and wearing a tricorn hat. No, it was the mere presence of the Frenchman that frightened her, together with the fact that he would appear during the course of a very ordinary dream, say when she was at a tea party, or walking with family or friends, or attending a festive event. Suddenly, she would be overcome with a feeling of uneasiness, knowing that there was someone present 'who ought not to be there'. This feeling quickly gave way to 'a horrid feeling of fear', when she would suddenly see The Gunman, either sitting at the tea table, walking along a beach, or joining in with some party games. As soon as his pale blue eyes met hers, she would awake screaming, 'The Gunman, The Gunman!'

There were, however, variations to the dream in that The Gunman, instead of being a separate entity in himself, sometimes masqueraded as another person. For example, Agatha would be sitting at the tea-table when she would look across to one of her relations, or to a friend, and realize that it was not her aunt, her brother, or her mother whom she was looking at. Instead, as she looked at the familiar face with its characteristic, pale-blue eyes, she would suddenly realize that it really was The Gunman.1 Agatha herself had no idea what the origin of these dreams was. Could The Gunman have been derived from some story that she had read? No, she had never read anything about anyone who remotely resembled him!

'Nightmares' or 'Night Terrors'?

Experts in the field of sleep disorders differentiate between night terrors and nightmares:

Night terrors, since they are disorders of arousal from the deepest sleep, occur typically, in the first part of the night - certainly the first half, and usually just a few hours after bedtime.

On the other hand, 'A nightmare. tends to occur towards the end of the night - in the early morning hours.' In a night terror:

Thrashing around, walking up and down in the crib, and seemingly terrified crying out are the results. He [or she] will not remember the night terror in the morning. Night terrors seem to occur in cycles. They may happen every night or so for several weeks, then disappear for months at a time. They are said to be outgrown by 8 years old in half the cases, but about a third of cases continue into adolescence.2

In her autobiography, Agatha gives the impression that her bad dreams were most frequent when she was about the age of four,3 and makes no mention of them occurring in her teenage or adult years (even though certain traumatic events which occurred subsequently, were to remind her of them). From her description, it therefore appears, that what she suffered from as a child were night terrors (which an estimated five per cent of children experience), rather than nightmares; her symptoms appearing to fit well with the classical syndrome as described by psychiatrists.

Origin of 'The Gunman'

Perhaps the germ for the idea of The Gunman, the subject of Agatha's night terrors, was placed in her mind as a result of a game called 'The Elder Sister', which she used to play with her sister Madge. Just like The Gunman, this imaginary and terrifying Elder Sister was again 'someone who ought not to be there'.

From Agatha's description, The Gunman was definitely male by gender - a Frenchman in uniform, carrying an antiquated kind of musket.4 (Followers of the famous Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, would undoubtedly support this view, seeing the musket as representing a masculine phallic symbol).

Is it, therefore, possible that Agatha feared that someone of male identity would take the place of her family and friends, and in particular her mother Clara, just as The Gunman did in her night terrors? This in turn begs the question, if Agatha suffered from a sense of insecurity, then why?

Attachment

Dr John Bowlby has made a study of the importance and significance of the attachment which occurs between the young child and its family, and in particular its parents. (He defines 'attachment' as being 'a reciprocal system of behaviours between an infant and a caregiver - generally the mother.') Says Bowlby:

It seems likely that early attachment to one, or a few close relatives holds portent for a person's overall relational ability. Attachment predicts the ability to relate to many others; to establish trust, to form and retain friendships, and to engage in mutually satisfying emotional and physical relationships.5

Bowlby also advances the view:

that excessive separation anxiety is usually caused by adverse family experiences, such as repeated threats of abandonment or rejections by parents, or to parents' or siblings' illnesses or deaths, for which the child feels responsible.6

Separation Anxiety

No one is suggesting that Agatha was, in reality, separated from her parents, or indeed that either of them had any desire or intention to abandon her. Quite the reverse, in fact. By not allowing Agatha to attend school, Clara made her daughter Agatha dependent on the home and family, and in particular, on herself and Nursie, far more than would normally have been the case for a child. (Even when Agatha did eventually go to school, it was only for two days a week).7 When Clara and Frederick decided to spend the winter on the Continent, they took Agatha with them. When Clara sent Agatha to Paris to continue her schooling there, once again she (Clara) accompanied her. It was the same when Clara went to Cairo to convalesce after an illness. So why on earth should Agatha feel that her parents might abandon her?

Possible Sources of this Anxiety

Of Agatha's love for her parents and her home there is no doubt, and more than once she describes her own principal ambition as being to reproduce this idyllic environment by achieving a happy marriage herself. However, although Clara was there to comfort Agatha in times of trouble, as for instance when her canary 'Goldie' disappeared, or when she was ill,8 or when The Gunman appeared, and also to read her stories, one gets the overwhelming impression that the child spent the major part of her life alone - her older siblings, sister Madge and brother Monty; being away at boarding school. Finding herself lonely and largely isolated from other children, her survival mechanism was to invent a series of fictitious characters: they would be her companions in the absence of real, live ones. What little companionship she had, came either from her nanny, or from her governess, and she was devastated, first when 'Nursie' retired, and later when Marie Sijé returned to France.

This imaginative and some might say over-sensitive child was aware that her own mother's childhood had been disrupted when the latter was sent away to be brought up by an aunt, who effectively adopted her whilst her three brothers remained at home. The bitter indignation which welled up inside her, the result of being made to feel surplus to requirements, adversely affected Clara's subsequent view of life, said Agatha. This unhappy event occurred as the result of an accident, in which Clara's father, Captain Frederick Boehmer, was thrown from his horse and sustained fatal injuries, whereupon her mother Mary Ann, was left at the age of twenty-seven with four children, and only her widow's pension to rely upon.9 Did Agatha fear that a similar calamity might befall her own family? However, in no way could Frederick Boehmer be described in this context as a threatening figure, like The Gunman.

There were other factors which may have played a part in making Agatha feel...