The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll/Chapter IV
CHAPTER IV
(1868-1876)
THE success of "Alice in Wonderland" tempted Mr. Dodgson to make another essay in the same field of literature. His idea had not yet been plagiarised, as it was afterwards, though the book had of course been parodied, a notable instance being "Alice in Blunderland," which appeared in Punch. It was very different when he came to write "Sylvie and Bruno"; the countless imitations of the two "Alice" books which had been foisted upon the public forced him to strike out in a new line. Long before the publication of his second tale, people had heard that Lewis Carroll was writing again, and the editor of a well-known magazine had offered him two guineas a page, which was a high rate of pay in those days, for the story, if he would allow it to appear in serial form.
The central idea was, as every one knows, the adventures of a little girl who had somehow or other got through a looking-glass. The first difficulty, however, was to get her through, and this question exercised his ingenuity for some time, before it was satisfactorily solved. The next thing was to secure Tenniel's services again. At first it seemed that he was to be disappointed in this matter; Tenniel was so fully occupied with other work that there seemed little hope of his being able to undertake any more. He then applied to Sir Noel Paton, with whose fairy-pictures he had fallen in love; but the artist was ill, and wrote in reply, "Tenniel is the man." In the end Tenniel consented to undertake the work, and once more author and artist settled down to work together. Mr. Dodgson was no easy man to work with; no detail was too small for his exact criticism. "Don't give Alice so much crinoline," he would write, or "The White Knight must not have whiskers; he must not be made to look old"—such were the directions he was constantly giving. On June 21st Archdeacon Dodgson died, after an illness of only a few days' duration. Lewis Carroll was not summoned until too late, for the illness took a sudden turn for the worse, and he was unable to reach his father's bedside before the end had come. This was a terrible shock to him; his father had been his ideal of what a Christian gentleman should be, and it seemed to him at first as if a cloud had settled on his life which could never be dispelled. Two letters of his, both of them written long after the sad event, give one some idea of the grief which his father's death, and all that it entailed, caused him. The first was written long afterwards, to one who had suffered a similar bereavement. In this letter he said:—
We are sufficiently old friends, I feel sure, for me to have no fear that I shall seem intrusive in writing about your great sorrow. The greatest blow that has ever fallen on my life was the death, nearly thirty years ago, of my own dear father; so, in offering you my sincere sympathy, I write as a fellow-sufferer. And I rejoice to know that we are not only fellow-sufferers, but also fellow-believers in the blessed hope of the resurrection from the dead, which makes such a parting holy and beautiful, instead of being merely a blank despair.
The second was written to a young friend, Miss Edith Rix, who had sent him an illuminated text:
My dear Edith,—I can now tell you (what I wanted to do when you sent me that text-card, but felt I could not say it to two listeners, as it were) why that special card is one I like to have. That text is consecrated for me by the memory of one of the greatest sorrows I have known—the death of my dear father. In those solemn days, when we used to steal, one by one, into the darkened room, to take yet another look at the dear calm face, and to pray for strength, the one feature in the room that I remember was a framed text, illuminated by one of my sisters, "Then are they glad, because they are at rest; and so he bringeth them into the haven where they would be!" That text will always have, for me, a sadness and a sweetness of its own. Thank you again for sending it me. Please don't mention this when we meet. I can't talk about it.
Always affectionately yours,
C. L. Dodgson.
The object of his edition of Euclid Book V., published during the course of the year, was to meet the requirements of the ordinary Pass Examination, and to present the subject in as short and simple a form as possible. Hence the Theory of Incommensurable Magnitudes was omitted, though, as the author himself said in the Preface, to do so rendered the work incomplete, and, from a logical point of view, valueless. He hinted pretty plainly his own preference for an equivalent amount of Algebra, which would be complete in itself. It is easy to understand this preference in a mind so strictly logical as his.
So far as the object of the book itself is concerned, he succeeded admirably; the propositions are clearly and beautifully worked out, and the hints on proving Propositions in Euclid Book V., are most useful.
In November he again moved into new rooms at Christ Church; the suite which he occupied from this date to the end of his life was one of the best in the College. Situated at the northwest corner of Tom Quad, on the first floor of the staircase from the entrance to which the Junior Common Room is now approached, they consist of four sitting-rooms and about an equal number of bedrooms, besides rooms for lumber, &c. From the upper floor one can easily reach the flat college roof. Mr. Dodgson saw at once that here was the very place for a photographic studio, and he lost no time in obtaining the consent of the authorities to erect one. Here he took innumerable photographs of his friends and their children, as indeed he had been doing for some time under less favourable conditions. One of his earliest pictures is an excellent likeness of Professor Faraday.
His study was characteristic of the man; oil
paintings by A. Hughes, Mrs. Anderson, and 
LEWIS CARROLL'S STUDY AT CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD.
Heaphy proclaimed his artistic tastes; nests of pigeon-holes, each neatly labelled, showed his love of order; shelves, filled with the best books
PROF. FARADAY.
(From a photograph by Lewis Carroll.)
on every subject that interested him, were evidence of his wide reading. His library has now been broken up and, except for a few books retained by his nearest relatives, scattered to the winds; such dispersions are inevitable, but they are none the less regrettable. It always seems to me that one of the saddest things about the death of a literary man is the fact that the breaking-up of his collection of books almost invariably follows; the building up a good library, the work of a lifetime, has been so much labour lost, so far as future generations are concerned. Talent, yes, and genius too, are displayed not only in writing books but also in buying them, and it is a pity that the ruthless hammer of the auctioneer should render so much energy and skill fruitless.
Lewis Carroll's dining-room has been the scene of many a pleasant little party, for he was very fond of entertaining. In his Diary, each of the dinners and luncheons that he gave is recorded by a small diagram, which shows who his guests were, and their several positions at the table. he kept a menu book as well, that the same people might not have the same dishes too frequently. He sometimes gave large parties, but his favourite form of social relaxation was a dîner à deux.
At the beginning of 1869 his "Phantasmagoria," a collection of poems grave and gay, was published by Macmillan. Upon the whole he was more successful in humorous poetry, but there is an undeniable dignity and pathos in his more serious verses. He gave a copy to Mr. Justice Denman, with whom he afterwards came to be
Justice Denman.
(From a photograph by Lewis Carroll.)
very well acquainted, and who appreciated the gift highly. "I did not lay down the book," he wrote, "until I had read them [the poems] through; and enjoyed many a hearty laugh, and something like a cry or two. Moreover, I hope to read them through (as the old man said) 'again and again.'"
It had been Lewis Carroll's intention to have "Phantasmagoria" illustrated, and he had asked George du Maurier to undertake the work; but the plan fell through. In his letter to du Maurier, Mr. Dodgson had made some inquiries about Miss Florence Montgomery, the authoress of "Misunderstood." In reply du Maurier said, "Miss Florence Montgomery is a very charming and sympathetic young lady, the daughter of the admiral of that ilk. I am, like you, a very great admirer of "Misunderstood," and cried pints over it. When I was doing the last picture I had to put a long white pipe in the little boy's mouth until it was finished, so as to get rid of the horrible pathos of the situation while I was executing the work. In reading the book a second time (knowing the sad end of the dear little boy), the funny parts made me cry almost as much as the pathetic ones."
A few days after the publication of "Phantasmagoria," Lewis Carroll sent the first chapter of his new story to the press. "Behind the Looking-Glass and what Alice saw there" was his original idea for its title; it was Dr. Liddon who suggested the name finally adopted.
During this year German and French translations of "Alice in Wonderland" were published by Macmillan; the Italian edition appeared in 1872. Henri Bué, who was responsible for the French version, had no easy task to perform. In many cases the puns proved quite untranslatable; while the poems, being parodies on well-known English pieces, would have been pointless on the other side of the Channel. For instance, the lines beginning, "How doth the little crocodile" are a parody on "How doth the little busy bee," a song which a French child has, of course, never heard of. In this case Bué gave up the idea of translation altogether, and, instead, parodied La Fontaine's "Maitre Corbeau" as follows:
Maître Corbeau sur un arbre perché
Faisait son nid entre des branches;
Il avait relevé ses manches,
Car il était très affairé.
Maître Renard par là passant,
Lui dit: "Descendez donc, compère:
Venez embrasser votre frère!"
Le Corbeau, le reconnaissant,
Lui répondit en son ramage!—
"Fromage."
The dialogue in which the joke occurs about "tortoise" and "taught us" ("Wonderland", p. 142) is thus rendered:—
"La maîtresse était une vielle tortue; nous l'appelions chélonée." "Et pourquoi l'appeliez-vous chélonée, si ce n'etait pas son nom?" "Parcequ'on ne pouvait s'empêcher de s'écrier en la voyant: Quel long nez!" dit la Fausse—Tortue d'un ton fâché; "vous êtes vraiment bien bornée!"
At two points, however, both M. Bué and Miss Antonie Zimmerman, who translated the tale into German, were fairly beaten: the reason for the whiting being so called, from its doing the boots and shoes, and for no wise fish going anywhere without a porpoise, were given up as untranslatable.
At the beginning of 1870 Lord Salisbury came up to Oxford to be installed as Chancellor of the University. Dr. Liddon introduced Mr. Dodgson to him, and thus began a very pleasant acquaintance. Of course he photographed the Chancellor and his two sons, for he never missed an opportunity of getting distinguished people into his studio.
In December, seven "Puzzles from Wonderland" appeared in Mrs. Gatty's paper, Aunt Judy's Magazine.
They had originally been 
LORD SALISBURY AND HIS TWO SONS.
(From a photograph by Lewis Carroll.)
written for the Cecil children, with whom Lewis Carroll was already on the best terms. Meanwhile "Through the Looking-Glass" was steadily progressing—not, however, without many little hitches. One question which exercised Mr. Dodgson very much was whether the picture of the Jabberwock would do as a frontispiece, or whether it would be too frightening for little children. On this point he sought the advice of about thirty of his married lady friends, whose experiences with their own children would make them trustworthy advisers; and in the end he chose the picture of the White Knight on horseback. In 1871 the book appeared, and was an instantaneous success. Eight thousand of the first edition had been taken up by the booksellers before Mr. Dodgson had even received his own presentation copies. The compliments he received upon the "Looking-Glass" would have been enough to turn a lesser man's head, but he was, I think, proof against either praise or blame.
I can say with a clear head and conscience [wrote Henry Kingsley] that your new book is the finest thing we have had since "Martin Chuzzlewit." . . . I can only say, in comparing the new "Alice" with the old, "this is a more excellent song than the other." It is perfectly splendid, but you have, doubtless, heard that from other quarters. I lunch with Macmillan habitually, and he was in a terrible pickle about not having printed enough copies the other day.
Jabberwocky[1] was at once recognised as the best and most original thing in the book, though one fair correspondent of The Queen declared that it was a translation from the German! The late Dean of Rochester, Dr. Scott, writes about it to Mr. Dodgson as follows:—
Are we to suppose, after all, that the Saga of Jabberwocky is one of the universal heirlooms which the Aryan race at its dispersion carried with it from the great cradle of the family? You must really consult Max Müller about this. It begins to be probable that the origo originalissima may be discovered in Sanscrit, and that we shall by and by have a Iabrivokaveda. The hero will turn out to be the Sun-god in one of his Avatars; and the Tumtum tree the great Ash Ygdrasil of the Scandinavian mythology.
In March, 1872, the late Mr. A. A. Vansittart, of Trinity College, Cambridge, translated the poem into Latin elegiacs. His rendering was printed, for private circulation only, I believe, several years later, but will probably be new to most of my readers. A careful comparison with the original shows the wonderful fidelity of this translation:—
"MORS lABROCHII."
Coesper[2] erat: tunc lubriciles[3] ultravia circum
Urgebant gyros gimbiculosque tophi;
Mœstenui visae borogovides ire meatu;
Et profugi gemitus exgrabuêre rathæ.
O fuge Iabrochium, sanguis meus![4] Ille recurvis
Unguibus, estque avidis dentibus ille minax.
Ububæ fuge cautus avis vim, gnate! Neque unquam
Fædarpax contra te frumiosus eat!
Vorpali gladio juvenis succingitur: hostis
Manxumus ad medium quæritur usque diem:
Jamque via fesso, sed plurima mente prementi:
Tumtumiæ frondis suaserat umbra moram.
Consilia interdum stetit egnia[5] mente revolvens:
At gravis in densa fronde susuffrus[6] erat,
Spiculaque[7] ex oculis jacientis flammea, tulscam
Per silvam venit burbur[8] Iabrochii!
Vorpali, semel atque iterum collectus in ictum,
Persnicuit gladio persnacuitque puer:
Deinde galumphatus, spernens informe cadaver,
Horrendum monstri rettulit ipse caput.
Victor labrochii, spoliis insignis opimis,
Rursus in amplexus, o radiose, meos!
O frabiose dies! Callo clamateque Calla!
Vix potuit laetus chorticulare pater.
Cœsper erat: tunc lubriciles ultravia circum
Urgebant gyros gimbiculosque tophi;
Mœstenui visae borogovides ire meatu;
Et profugi gemitus exgrabuêre rathæ.
A. A. V.
JABBERWOCKY.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame.
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabc,
All mimsy were the borogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
The story, as originally written, contained thirteen chapters, but the published book consisted of twelve only. The omitted chapter introduced a wasp, in the character of a judge or barrister, I suppose, since Mr. Tenniel wrote that "a wasp in a wig is altogether beyond the appliances of art." Apart from difficulties of illustration, the "wasp" chapter was not considered to be up to the level of the rest of the book, and this was probably the principal reason of its being left out.
"It is a curious fact," wrote Mr. Tenniel some years later, when replying to a request of Lewis Carroll's that he would illustrate another of his books, "that with 'Through the Looking-Glass' the faculty of making drawings for book illustration departed from me, and, notwithstanding all sorts of tempting inducements, I have done nothing in that direction since."
(Facsimile of a letter from Sir John Tenniel to Lewis Carroll, June 1, 1870.)
"Through the Looking Glass" has recently appeared in a solemn judgment of the House of Lords. In Eastman Photographic Materials Company v. Comptroller General of Patents, Designs, and Trademarks (1898), the question for decision was, What constitutes an invented word? A trademark that consists of or contains an invented word or words is capable of registration. "Solio" was the word in issue in the case. Lord Macnaghten in his judgment said, when alluding to the distinguishing characteristics of an invented word:—
I do not think that it is necessary that it should be wholly meaningless. To give an illustration: your lordships may remember that in a book of striking humour and fancy, which was in everybody's hands when it was first published, there is a collection of strange words where "there are" (to use the language of the author) "two meanings packed up into one word." No one would say that those were not invented words. Still they contain a meaning—a meaning is wrapped up in them if you can only find it out.
Before I leave the subject of the "Looking-Glass," I should like to mention one or two circumstances in connection with it which illustrate his reverence for sacred things. In his original manuscript the bad-tempered flower (pp. 28–33) was the passion-flower; the sacred origin of the name never struck him, until it was pointed out to him by a friend, when he at once changed it into the tiger-lily. Another friend asked him if the final scene was based upon the triumphal conclusion of " Pilgrim's Progress." He repudiated the idea, saying that he would consider such trespassing on holy ground as highly irreverent.
He seemed never to be satisfied with the amount of work he had on hand, and in 1872 he determined to add to his other labours by study- ing anatomy and physiology. Professor Barclay Thompson supplied him with a set of bones, and, having purchased the needful books, he set to work in good earnest. His mind was first turned to acquiring medical knowledge by his happening to be at hand when a man was seized with an epileptic fit. He had prevented the poor creature from falling, but was utterly at a loss what to do next. To be better prepared on any future occasion, he bought a little manual called "What to do in Emergencies." In later years he was con- stantly buying medical and surgical works, and by the end of his life he had a library of which no doctor need have been ashamed. There were only two special bequests in his will, one of some Page:Collingwood - Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll.djvu/176 Page:Collingwood - Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll.djvu/177 Page:Collingwood - Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll.djvu/178 Page:Collingwood - Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll.djvu/179 Page:Collingwood - Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll.djvu/180 Page:Collingwood - Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll.djvu/181 Page:Collingwood - Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll.djvu/182 Page:Collingwood - Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll.djvu/183 Page:Collingwood - Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll.djvu/184 Page:Collingwood - Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll.djvu/185 Page:Collingwood - Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll.djvu/186 Page:Collingwood - Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll.djvu/187 Page:Collingwood - Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll.djvu/188 Page:Collingwood - Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll.djvu/189 Page:Collingwood - Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll.djvu/190 Page:Collingwood - Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll.djvu/191 Page:Collingwood - Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll.djvu/192 Page:Collingwood - Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll.djvu/193 170 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF
field of battle ! I have somewhere read in a book — a rather antiquated book, I fear, and one much discredited by modern lights — the words, " the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." Truly we read these words with a new meaning in the present day I " Groan and travail " it undoubtedly does still (more than ever, so far as the brute creation is concerned ) ; but to what end ? Some higher and more glorious state ? So one might have said a few years back. Not so in these days. The reXog raXeiov of secular education, when divorced from religious or moral training, is — I say it deliberately — the purest and most unmitigated selfish- ness. The world has seen and tired of the worship of Nature, of Reason, of Humanity ; for this nineteenth century has been reserved the development of the most refined religion of all — the worship of Self. For that, indeed, is the upshot of it all. The enslavement of his weaker brethren — " the labour of those who do not enjoy, for the enjoyment of those who do not labour " — the degradation of woman — the torture of the animal world — these are the steps of the ladder by which man is ascending to his higher civilisation. Selfishness is the key- note of all purely secular education ; and I take vivisection to be a glaring, a wholly unmistakable case in point. And let it not be thought that this is an evil that we can hope to see produce the good for which we are asked to tolerate it, and then pass away. It is one that tends continually to spread. And if it be tolerated or even ignored now, the age of universal education, when the sciences, and anatomy among them, shall be the heritage of all, will be heralded by a cry of anguish from the brute creation that will ring through the length and breadth of the land ! This, then, is the glorious future to which the advocate of secular education may look forward : the dawn that gilds the horizon of his hopes ! An age when all forms of religious thought shall be things of the past ; when chemistry and biology shall be the ABC of a State education enforced on all; when vivisection shall be LEWIS CARROLL 171
practised in every college and school ; and when the man of science, looking forth over a world which will then own no other sway than his, sliall exult in the thought that he has made of this fair green earth, if not a heaven for man, at least a hell for animals.
I am, sir,
Your obedient servant, February loth. Lewis Carroll.
On March 29, 1876, "The Hunting of the Snark" was published. Mr. Dodgson gives some interesting particulars of Its evolution. The first Idea for the poem was the line " For the Snark zvas a Boojum, you see," which came Into his mind, apparently without any cause, while he was taking a country walk. The first complete verse which he composed was the one which stands last In the poem: —
In the midst of the word he was trying to say,
In the midst of his laughter and glee, He had softly and suddenly vanished away —
For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.
The Illustrations were the work of Mr. Henry Holiday, and they are thoroughly in keeping with the spirit of the poem. Many people have tried to show that "The Hunting of the Snark " was an allegory ; some regarding it as being a
burlesque upon the TIchborne case, and others 
HENRY HOLIDAY IN HIS STUDIO.
(From a photograph.)
THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF LEWIS CARROLL 173
taking the Snark as a personification of popu- larity. Lewis Carroll always protested that the poem had no meaning at all.
As to the meaning of the Snark [he wrote to a friend in America], I'm very much afraid I didn't mean anything but nonsense ! Still, you know, words mean more than we mean to express when we use them ; so a whole book ought to mean a great deal more than the writer means. So, whatever good meanings are in the book, I'm glad to accept as the meaning of the book. The best that I've seen is by a lady (she published it in a letter to a newspaper), that the whole book is an allegory on the search after happiness. I think this fits in beautifully in many ways — particularly about the bathing-machines : when the people get weary of life, and can't find happiness in towns or in books, then they rush off to the seaside, to see what bathing-machines will do for them.
Mr. H. Holiday, in a very interesting article on "The Snark's Significance" [Academy, January 29, 1898), quoted the inscription which Mr. Dodgson had written in a vellum-bound, pre- sentation-copy of the book. It is so charac- teristic that I take the liberty of reproducing it here : —
Presented to Henry Holiday, most patient of artists, by Charles L. Dodgson, most exacting, but not most ungrateful of authors, March 29, 1876.
A little girl, to whom Mr. Dodgson had given 174 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF LEWIS CARROLL
a copy of the "Snark," managed to get the whole poem off by heart, and insisted on reciting it from beginning to end during a long carriage- drive. Her friends, who, from the nature of the case, were unable to escape, no doubt wished that she, too, was a Boojum.
During the year, the first public dramatic repre- sentation of "Alice in Wonderland" was given at the Polytechnic, the entertainment taking the form of a series of tableaux, interspersed with appropriate readings and songs. Mr. Dodgson exercised a rigid censorship over all the ex- traneous matter introduced into the perform- ance, and put his veto upon a verse in one of the songs, in which the drowning of kittens was treated from the humorous point of view, lest the children in the audience might learn to think
lightly of death in the case of the lower animals. 
LEWIS CARROLL.
(From a photograph.)
- ↑ Lewis Carroll composed this poem while staying with his cousins, the Misses Wilcox, at Whitburn, near Sunderland. To while away an evening the whole party sat down to a game of verse-making, and "Jabberwocky" was his contribution.
- ↑ Cœsper from cœna and vesper.
- ↑ Lubriciles, from lubricus and graciles. See the commentary in "Humpty Dumpty's square", which will also explain ultravia, and, if it requires explanation, mœstenui.
- ↑ Sanguis meus: Verg. Æn. vi. 836—
"Projice tela manu, sanguis meus!"
- ↑ Egnia: "muffish" = segnis; therefore, "uffish" =egnis. This is a conjectural analogy, but I can suggest no better solution.
- ↑ Susuffrus: "whiffling," susurrus: "whistling."
- ↑ Spicula: see the picture.
- ↑ Burbur: apparently a labial variation of murmur, stronger but more dissonant.