In the rich tapestry of Victorian verse, one lyric stands out for its haunting musicality and profound meditation on life, death, and desire: Dream-Pedlary by Thomas Lovell Beddoes. This week, we delve into the Bristol-born poet's most anthologised work, a piece that begins with whimsy and culminates in a deeply moving exploration of loss and the limits of human longing.
The Musical Architecture of Melancholy
From its opening line, Dream-Pedlary casts a spell with its unique rhythm and sound. The poem immediately engages the reader with an intimate question: "If there were dreams to sell. What would you buy?" This conversational opening belies the sophisticated structure beneath. The verse plays with scansion, allowing for rhythmic flexibility that shifts from dactylic to iambic, inviting a slower, more contemplative reading as it progresses.
The first stanza's ten-line form, with its telling triplet of "sell / tell / bell", establishes a pattern that evolves. Repetition becomes a key motif, notably in the recurring "crown / down" rhymes that tie the stanzas together. This technical mastery is not mere ornamentation; it serves the poem's emotional core, guiding the reader from a shared speculation into the speaker's deeply private anguish.
From Whimsy to Personal Anguish
The poem's journey is one of inward turn. The initial, almost playful query to the reader is swiftly answered by the speaker himself in the second stanza. He yearns for "A cottage lone and still", a shadowy retreat where he might wait for death. This dream of a settled, healing solitude carries a particular poignancy given Beddoes' own life as a wanderer, essentially homeless across continental Europe.
The argument of the poem intensifies in the third stanza, where the speaker chastises his own desires: "Life is a dream, they tell, / Waking, to die." Here, Beddoes, who was also a trained physician, wrestles with the Gothic fascination of his era—the possibility of life after death and the raising of ghosts. His medical studies informed a serious, if sceptical, investigation into spiritual survival.
The Ghost of a Lost Love
The heart of the poem's personal grief is revealed in the fourth stanza. The ghost the speaker wishes most to raise is "my loved long-lost boy". This figure is widely believed to be Benjamin Bernhard Reich, a Russian medical student with whom Beddoes lived for a year while studying in Göttingen. This reference adds a crucial dimension to the work, informed by the poet's homosexuality—an integral part of his creative and political rebellion, and a source of profound alienation.
The poem's conclusion offers a bleak, yet paradoxically beautiful, resolution. The earlier image of a rose-leaf shaken lightly from "Life’s fresh crown" is transformed. In the final stanza, the fall is heavier, final. The speaker accepts that "There are no ghosts to raise" from death. The only way to "woo" ghosts and make dreams "Ever to last" is to join them: "Else lie, as I will do, / And breathe thy last."
Dream-Pedlary ultimately showcases Beddoes as a singular late-Romantic voice. It balances lyrical beauty with wry self-awareness, where Romantic tropes are questioned and delicate metaphors bear the weight of real, fleshly yearning. It remains, over a century and a half after its composition, a perfectly crafted and deeply unsettling inquiry into what we dream of when we dream of escape from mortality itself.
