The Teacher
Dreamed 1874 by Lord Vivian
Many dreams that are full of clear details apparently belonging to the future entirely lack... emotional importance... [i.e. violating Freud's claim that dreams are about wishes and fears, and Jung's counterclaim they're about psychological or spiritual development; both men claimed dreams don't care about business, science or politics]. Thus, there have been many claims to dream in advance of a winning lottery ticket, or the result of a horse race...
An example is the story told by the second Lord Vivian, of how he dreamed the winner of the City and Suburban Handicap. The winning horse, Aldrich, was owned by Lord Rosebery and started at 40 to 1, winning by a neck. Lord Vivian's account, published in 1879 in the Daily Telegraph, is reproduced by Lee as follows:
The odds in Lee's version are probably a misprint. The year of the race, which he does not refer to, was 1874, that is five years before Lord Vivian's published letter about his dream. The present (fourth) Lord Vivian only saw his grandfather once as a child, and his father never told him about the story, but he was familiar with it when answering the writer's enquiries in 1936.I did dream on the morning of the race for the City and Suburban Handicap, that I had fallen asleep in the weighing-room of the stand at Epsom prior to that race, and that after it had been run, I was awakened by a gentleman--the owner of another horse in the race--who informed me that a horse called "The Teacher" had won. Of this horse, so far as my recollection serves me, I had never before heard.On reaching Victoria Station, the first person I saw was the gentleman who had appeared to me in my dream, and to him I mentioned it, observing that I could not find any horse so named in the race. He replied, "There is a horse now called Aldrich, which was previously called The Teacher."The dream had so vividly impressed me, that I declared my intention of backing Aldrich for £100, and was in course of doing this when I was questioned by his owner as to "why I was backing his horse." I replied, "Because I dreamt he had won the race." To this I was answered, "As against your dream, I will tell you this fact: I tried the horse last week with a hurdle-jumper, and he was beaten a distance." (I afterwards learned that the trial horse was Lowlander.) I thanked my informant and discontinued backing Aldrich.
General Taylor, who had overhead what passed, asked me, if I did not intend backing the horse again for myself to win him £1,000 by him. This I did by taking him for 1,000 to 30 about Aldrich.
EDITOR'S NOTE
It's hard for me to avoid reading this as a lesson in trusting your own dreams. The stranger's face was a hit, the horse's name was a hit... so is this really gambling or a challenge in trusting dream-guidance?
I wonder how British betting was calculated back in the Stone Age. Was the horse-owner's skepticism (and error about which horse failed his trial) a deceit, to keep a huge bet from flattening those long, profitable odds?
SOURCE: The Dream World by Rodolphe L. Megroz, p.253-4. His source is Glimpses in the Twilight by the Rev. FG Lee, DD, 1885.
CURRENCY: if he'd placed his £100 bet, his winnings at 40:1 would be equivalent to several million dollars today.
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