My role as custodian of this unusual and potentially maligned collection was to promote and authenticate the collection as legitimate and worthy. With this in mind, I instigated a museum research program to investigate its provenance and remarkable history – one that begins with the story of the object that initiated the collection: the Pea. This has become a lecture and could later become a written history of the collection.
The Great Pea Experiment
The Great Pea Experiment was conceived as part of the museum’s research program. Its object was to investigate the effect of the pea on the sleep of the participants and the efficacy of the pea as a diagnostic of aristocracy. The Participants were supplied with a pea and the following instructions:
“Made famous by Hans Christian Andersen, the use of a ‘pea’ to test the legitimacy of future royal brides can be traced back through Scandinavian history. This diminutive vegetable was placed under the mattress of the prospective bride and the quality of the resulting night’s sleep was used as a gauge of the purity of the girl’s royal bloodline.
As you may be aware the Museum of Curiosities is the current guardian of the original pea. This experiment is being conducted as part of the museum’s ongoing research program and to ground the artefact in a contemporary context.
The experiment is a very simple one. Each participant simply takes the replica pea contained in this pack and follows the instructions below.
- Just before retiring for the evening, place the pea under your mattress – reasonably central to your preferred lying area.
- Sleep well.
- On waking, remove the pea from your bed and write, on the enclosed observation sheet, your experiences, observations or perhaps dreams from your night with the pea. Any information given will remain anonymous.
- Return the observation sheet to the custodian.
Your part of the experiment will be placed in the magpie_seven archive to assist in further research. Your participation is an important part of the museum’s future and the custodian thanks you for your support and interest.”
Here is a selection of the Anonymous Responses
20/01/04 – A dream – I am in my father’s house. I look at the window and say to my father; “Do you see these webby blobs attached to the glass? They are oothecae – the egg cases of spiders. When they hatch, thousands of spiders will come out. You must clean the windows.” As I look, I realise that there are dozens of these egg cases stuck to the window pane, and some of them are really big. One in fact is the size, and has the texture, of a very large old apple. We notice that it has a hole in one side. The friend who I am with taps the ootheca; it is hollow and dusty inside. I do not know if it contained billions of tiny spiders, or a handful of enormous ones. I fell uneasy.
24/01/04 – Woke up uncomfortable quite a few times during the night, especially while lying on my right-hand side. Every time I woke up I was having a very vivid dream which I kept going back to each time I went back to sleep. I can’t remember much about the dream but I know I was dreaming about water & flooding.
05/01/04 – Heavier sleep than usual – very comfortable. No dreams that I can remember but a restful night sleep!
06/02/04 – Slept badly all night and finally woke about 4am unable to sleep any further. My dreams were violent and disturbing involving several different well-known movie horrors such as ‘Candyman’ and ‘The Birds’ resulting in my death by suicide. My dreams all had a sense of panic and I woke feeling very anxious and panicky. Was tired all day.
08/02/04 – I retired for the night as usual, after placing the pea under my mattress. I fell asleep fairly quickly, which is unusual for me. I had an initial session of deep, refreshing sleep. But then work at around 2am, suffering from a slight cold, I may have been disturbed by my blocked nose. I tried to recall any dreams I had experienced, but the memory was not clear. I felt that had had a happy positive dream. I also recalled socialising, perhaps at an evening party, with colleagues. I do not recall any relations being in the dream. After a few moments, I went back to sleep and was awoken by my husband’s alarm clock at 8am. I believe that I slept soundly for the rest of the evening, and was very comfortable. The one way in which this night’s sleep stands out is that I slept soundly & comfortably, and went to sleep quite soon after retiring for the night. This is rather unusual for me, as I often stay awake for an hour or more before falling asleep. I had not taken any medication or remedies on the day prior to sleeping on the pea, but had consumed a small amount of alcohol that evening as we were entertaining friends.
10/02/04 – Although I felt quite comfortable – surprising really since the pea was placed merely under the sheet – I simply did not have the mattresses available (my knowledge of this story comes from the Ladybird version, and the picture shows at least 20 mattresses). However, I certainly had an eventful nights dreaming; perhaps because I had mentally told myself to try to remember. In one of the more vivid dreams that I remember and was relevant the pea grew o be as large as a tree and I climbed up onto it and looked over a beautiful green British countryside. In the fairytale theme I was also locked into a tower for so long that my hair grew, but instead of like Rapunzel I wove my hair, which I cut off, into a long rope, and put it outside to escape. But I was no young girl; I was a cropped headed wizened old crone (I must have raided a subconscious full of children’s books as o looked rather like Mrs Pepperpot!) I didn’t feel relief that I had escaped merely amusement and horror at what I’d turned into. And the other dreams – the usual assortment were interrupted by having to get up to confiscate the hamster’s wheel – and puzzling over trying to remember dreams so rudely interrupted.
12/02/04 – Seven hours of wonderful sleep – dreamed of a conversation with a woman who I recognised but did not know, about a kind of ‘rose’. Her experiences of growing it in Bayswater were very successful, since she watered the plants with a solution of watered down wine. The flowers are pink and clean and glowing (I tried to grow them but mine are curled, dirty, withered looking) like the true yellow rose of Texas. Cue for a song here!! **woke at 6.30ish desperate for a pee. Watched a documentary last night featuring animal malpractice of pigs which instead of being pink and glowing were dirty and covered in their own excrement.
25/02/04 – Had a lovely dream about babies, then nothing else in the dream category. Woke up very late and extremely tired.
03/03/04 – On settling down to sleep, I had a distinct awareness of something under my right thigh. It was a chilly night, so I snuggled under the duvet and was reluctant to get out. Listened to Radio 4 from 7am while dozing comfortably!
08/03/04 – Very vivid dreams. Dreamt that I was studio manager at hospital radio, but the studio was on the tube lines at Baker Street station. Everyone was playing around on the live train lines, and no matter how much I screamed & shouted at people to get off the lines; they wouldn’t listen. I was shouting and screaming until I cried and woke feeling very het-up and aggressive!
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