The first part of The Dream traces how Harry Mortimer Smith is shaped by his environment and experiences, beginning in a modest middle-class family where joy is fragile and hardship persistent, as a visionary dream awakens in him a longing for something greater, while his family’s misfortunes and the death of his father force a move to London that reshapes his world and identity, and each stage of his early life builds the emotional and psychological foundation for the love and tragedy to come, exposing the rigid structures and social constraints of Edwardian England.