"HUNTING THE SNARK" AND OTHER POEMS.
There is no doubt that the second "Alice" book was quite as successful as
the first, but regarding its merit there is much difference of opinion. As
a rule the "grown-ups" prefer it. They like the clever situations and the
quaint logic, no less than the very evident good writing; but this of
course did not influence the children in the least. They liked "Alice" and
the pretty idea of her trip through the Looking-Glass, but for real
delight "Wonderland" was big enough for them, and to whisk down into a
rabbit-hole on a summer's day was a much easier process than squeezing
through a looking-glass at the close of a short winter's afternoon, not
being _quite_ sure that one would not fall into the fire on the other
side.
The very care that Lewis Carroll took in the writing of this book deprived
it of a certain charm of originality which always clings to the pages of
"Wonderland." Each chapter is so methodically planned and so well carried
out that, while we never lose sight of the author and his cleverness,
fairyland does not seem quite so real as in the book which was written
with no plan at all, but the earnest desire to please three children. Then
again there was a certain staidness in the prim little girl who pushed her
way through the Looking-Glass. And there were no wonderful cakes marked
"eat me," and bottles marked "drink me," which kept the Wonderland _Alice_
in a perpetual state of growing or shrinking; so the fact that nothing
happened to _Alice_ at all during this second journey lessened its
interest somewhat for the young ones to whom constant change is the spice
of life. A very little girl, while she might enjoy the flower chapter, and
might be tempted to build her own fanciful tales about the rest of the
garden, would not be so attracted toward the insect chapter, which may
possibly have been written with the praiseworthy idea of teaching children
not to be afraid of these harmless buzzing things that are too busy with
their own concerns to bother them.
There are, in truth, little "cut and dried" speeches in the Looking-Glass
"Alice," which we do not find in "Wonderland." A real hand is moving the
Chessman over the giant board, and the _Red_ and the _White Queen_ often
speak like automatic toys. We miss the savage "off with his head" of the
_Queen of Hearts_, who, for all her cardboard stiffness, seemed a thing of
flesh and blood. But the poetry in the two "Alices" is of very much the
same quality.
In his prose "nonsense" anyone might notice the difference of years
between the two books, but Lewis Carroll's poetry never loses its youthful
tone. It was as easy for him to write verses as to teach mathematics, and
that was saying a good deal. It was as easy for him to write verses at
sixty as at thirty, and that is saying even more. From the time he could
hold a pencil he could make a rhyme, and his earlier editorial ventures,
as we know, were full of his own work which in after years made its way to
the public, either through the magazines or in collection of poems, such
as "Rhyme and Reason," "Phantasmagoria," and "The Three Sunsets."
In _The Train_, that early English magazine before mentioned, are several
poems written by him and signed by his newly borrowed name of Lewis
Carroll, but they are very sentimental and high-flown, utterly unlike
anything he wrote either before or after.
Between the publication of "Through the Looking-Glass" and "The Hunting of
the Snark" was a period of five years, during which, according to his
usual custom, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, in the seclusion of Christ Church,
calmly pursued his scholarly way, smiling sedately over the literary
antics of Lewis Carroll, for the Rev. Charles was a sober, over-serious
bachelor, whose one aim and object at that time was the proper treatment
of Euclid, for during those five years he wrote the following pamphlets:
"Symbols, etc., to be used in Euclid--Books I and II," "Number of
Propositions in Euclid," "Enunciations--Euclid I-VI," "Euclid--Book V.
Proved Algebraically," "Preliminary Algebra and Euclid--Book V," "Examples
in Arithmetic," "Euclid--Books I and II."
He also wrote many other valuable pamphlets concerning the government of
Oxford and of Christ Church in particular, for the retiring "don" took a
keen interest in the University life, and his influence was felt in many
spicy articles and apt rhymes, usually brought forth as timely skits.
_Notes by an Oxford Chiel_, published at Oxford in 1874, included much of
this material, where his clever verses, mostly satirical, generally hit
the mark.
And all this while, Lewis Carroll was gathering in the harvest yielded by
the two "Alices," and planning more books for his child-friends, who, we
may be sure, were growing in numbers.
We find him at the Christmas celebration of 1874, at Hatfield, the home of
Lord Salisbury, as usual, the central figure of a crowd of happy children.
On this occasion he told them the story of _Prince Uggug_, which was
afterwards a part of "Sylvie and Bruno." Many of the chapters of this book
had been published as separate stories in _Aunt Judy's Magazine_ and other
periodicals, and, as such, they were very sweet and dainty as well as
amusing. It was Lewis Carroll's own special charm in telling these stories
which really lent them color and drew the children; they lost much in
print, for they lacked the sturdy foundations of nonsense on which the
"Alices" were built.
On March 29, 1876, "The Hunting of the Snark" was published, a new effort
in "nonsense" verse-making, which stands side by side with "Jabberwocky"
in point of cleverness and interest.
The beauty of Lewis Carroll's "nonsense" was that he never tried to be
funny or "smart." The queer words and the still queerer ideas popped into
his head in the simplest way. His command of language, including that
important knowledge of how to make "portmanteau" words, was his greatest
aid, and the poem which he called "An Agony in Eight Fits" depends
entirely upon the person who reads it for the cleverness of its meaning.
To children it is one big fairy tale where the more ridiculous the
situations, the more true to the rules of fairyland. The Snark, being a
"portmanteau" word, is a cross between a _snake_ and a _shark_, hence
_Snark_, and the fact that he dedicated this wonderful bit of word-making
to a little girl, goes far to prove that the poem was intended as much for
children as for "grown-ups."
The little girl in this instance was Gertrude Chataway, and the verses are
an acrostic on her name:
Girt with a boyish garb for boyish task,
Eager she wields her spade: yet loves as well
Rest on a friendly knee, intent to ask
The tale he loves to tell.
Rude spirit of the seething outer strife,
Unmeet to read her pure and simple spright,
Deem, if you list, such hours a waste of life,
Empty of all delight!
Chat on, sweet maid, and rescue from annoy,
Hearts that by wiser talk are unbeguiled;
Ah, happy he who owns that tenderest joy,
The heart-love of a child!
Away, fond thoughts, and vex my soul no more!
Work claims my wakeful nights, my busy days,
Albeit bright memories of that sunlit shore
Yet haunt my dreaming gaze!
There was scarcely a little girl who claimed friendship with Lewis Carroll
who was not the proud possessor of an acrostic poem written by him--either
on the title-page of some book that he had given her, or as the dedication
of some published book of his own.
"The Hunting of the Snark" owed its existence to a country walk, when the
last verse came suddenly into the mind of our poet:
"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."
In a very humorous preface to the book, Lewis Carroll attempted some sort
of an explanation, which leaves us as much in the dark as ever. He
writes:
"If--and the thing is wildly possible--the charge of writing nonsense was
ever brought against the author of this brief but instructive poem, it
would be based, I feel convinced, on the line:
"'Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes.'
"In view of this painful possibility, I will not (as I might) appeal
indignantly to my other writings as a proof that I am incapable of such a
deed; I will not (as I might) point to the strong moral purpose of the
poem itself, to the arithmetical principles so cautiously inculcated in
it, or to its noble teachings in Natural History. I will take the more
prosaic course of simply explaining how it happened.
"The Bellman, who was almost morbidly sensitive about appearances, used to
have the bowsprit unshipped once or twice a week to be revarnished; and
more than once it happened, when the time came for replacing it, that no
one on board could remember which end of the ship it belonged to. They
knew it was not of the slightest use to appeal to the Bellman about it--he
would only refer to his Naval Code and read out in pathetic tones
Admiralty Instructions which none of them had ever been able to
understand, so it generally ended in its being fastened on anyhow across
the rudder. The Helmsman used to stand by with tears in his eyes; _he_
knew it was all wrong, but, alas! Rule 4, of the Code, '_No one shall
speak to the man at the helm_,' had been completed by the Bellman himself
with the words, '_and the man at the helm shall speak to no one_,' so
remonstrance was impossible and no steering could be done till the next
varnishing day. During these bewildering intervals the ship usually sailed
backward."
Is it any wonder that a poem, based upon such an explanation, should be a
perfect bundle of nonsense? But we know from experience that Lewis
Carroll's nonsense was not stupidity, and that not one verse in all that
delightful bundle missed its own special meaning and purpose.
We do not propose to find the key to this remarkable work--for two
reasons: first, because there are different keys for different minds; and
second, because the unexplainable things in many cases come nearer the
"mind's eye," as Shakespeare calls it, without words. We cannot tell _why_
we understand such and such a thing, but we _do_ understand it, and that
is enough--quite according to Lewis Carroll's ideas, for he always appeals
to our imagination and that is never guided by rules. The higher it soars,
the more fantastic the region over which it hovers, the nearer it gets to
the land of "make believe," "let's pretend" and "supposing," the better
pleased is Lewis Carroll. In a delightful letter to some American
children, published in _The Critic_ shortly after his death, he gives his
own ideas as to the meaning of the _Snark_.
"I'm very much afraid I didn't mean anything but nonsense," he wrote;
"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 shall be 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 beautifully in many ways,
particularly about the bathing machines; when 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."
Taking this idea for the foundation of the poem, it is easy to explain
_Fit the First_, better named _The Landing_, though where they landed it
is almost impossible to say.
"Just the place for a Snark," the Bellman cried, and, as he stated this
fact three distinct times, it was undoubtedly true. That was the
_Bellman's_ rule--once was uncertain, twice was possible, three times was
"dead sure." And the _Bellman_ being a person of some authority, ought to
have known. The crew consisted of a _Boots_, a _Maker of Bonnets and
Hoods_, a _Barrister_, a _Broker_, a _Billiard-marker_, a _Banker_, a
_Beaver_, a _Butcher_, and a nameless being who passed for the _Baker_,
and who, in the end, turned out to be the luckless victim of the Snark. He
is thus beautifully described:
"There was one who was famed for a number of things
He forgot when he entered the ship:
His umbrella, his watch, all his jewels and rings,
And the clothes he had brought for the trip.
"He had forty-two boxes, all carefully packed,
With his name painted clearly on each:
But, since he omitted to mention the fact,
They were all left behind on the beach.
"The loss of his clothes hardly mattered, because
He had seven coats on when he came,
With three pair of boots--but the worst of it was,
He had wholly forgotten his name.
"He would answer to 'Hi!' or to any loud cry,
Such as 'Fry me!' or 'Fritter my wig!'
To 'What-you-may-call-um!' or 'What-was-his-name!'
But especially 'Thing-um-a-jig!'
"While, for those who preferred a more forcible word,
He had different names from these:
His intimate friends called him 'Candle-ends,'
And his enemies 'Toasted-cheese.'
"'His form is ungainly, his intellect small'
(So the Bellman would often remark);
'But his courage is perfect! and that, after all,
Is the thing that one needs with a Snark.'
"He would joke with hyenas, returning their stare
With an impudent wag of the head:
And he once went a walk, paw-in-paw with a bear,
'Just to keep up its spirits,' he said.
"He came as a Baker: but owned when too late--
And it drove the poor Bellman half-mad--
He could only bake Bride-cake, for which I may state,
No materials were to be had."
Notice how ingeniously the actors in this drama are introduced; all the
"B's," as it were, buzzing after the phantom of happiness, which eludes
them, no matter how hard they struggle to find it. Notice, too, that all
these beings are unmarried, a fact shown by the _Baker_ not being able to
make a bride-cake as there are no materials on hand. All these creatures,
while hunting for happiness, came to prey upon each other. The _Butcher_
only killed _Beavers_, the _Barrister_ was hunting among his fellow
sailors for a good legal case. The _Banker_ took charge of all their cash,
for it certainly takes money to hunt properly for a _Snark_, and it is a
well-known fact that bankers need all the money they can get.
_Fit the Second_ describes the _Bellman_ and why he had such influence
with his crew:
The Bellman himself they all praised to the skies:
Such a carriage, such ease, and such grace!
Such solemnity, too! One could see he was wise,
The moment one looked in his face!
He had bought a large map representing the sea,
Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be
A map they could all understand.
"What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?"
So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply,
"They are merely conventional signs!"
"Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!
But we've got our brave Captain to thank"
(So the crew would protest), "that he's bought _us_ the best--
A perfect and absolute blank!"
And true enough, the _Bellman's_ idea of the ocean was a big square basin,
with the latitude and longitude carefully written out on the margin. They
found, however, that their "brave Captain" knew very little about
navigation, he--
"Had only one notion for crossing the ocean,
And that was to tingle his bell."
He thought nothing of telling his crew to steer starboard and larboard at
the same time, and then we know how--
The bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes.
"A thing," as the Bellman remarked,
"That frequently happens in tropical climes,
When a vessel is, so to speak, 'snarked.'"
The _Bellman_ had hoped, when the wind blew toward the east, that the ship
would not travel toward the west, but it seems that with all his nautical
knowledge he could not prevent it; ships are perverse animals!
"But the danger was past--they had landed at last,
With their boxes, portmanteaus, and bags:
Yet at first sight the crew were not pleased with the view,
Which consisted of chasms and crags."
Now that they had reached the land of the Snark, the _Bellman_ proceeded
to air his knowledge on that subject.
"A snark," he said, "had five unmistakable traits--its taste, 'meager and
mellow and crisp,' its habit of getting up late, its slowness in taking a
jest, its fondness for bathing machines, and, fifth and lastly, its
ambition." He further informed the crew that "the snarks that had feathers
could bite, and those that had whiskers could scratch," adding as an
afterthought:
"'For although common Snarks do no manner of harm,
Yet I feel it my duty to say,
Some are Boojums--' The Bellman broke off in alarm,
For the Baker had fainted away."
_Fit the Third_ was the _Baker's_ tale.
"They roused him with muffins, they roused him with ice,
They roused him with mustard and cress,
They roused him with jam and judicious advice,
They set him conundrums to guess."
Then he explained why it was that the name "Boojum" made him faint. It
seems that a dear uncle, after whom he was named, gave him some wholesome
advice about the way to hunt a snark, and this uncle seemed to be a man of
much influence:
"'You may seek it with thimbles, and seek it with care;
You may hunt it with forks and hope;
You may threaten its life with a railway-share;
You may charm it with smiles and soap----'"
"'That's exactly the method,' the Bellman bold
In a hasty parenthesis cried,
'That's exactly the way I have always been told
That the capture of Snarks should be tried!'"
"'But, oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day,
If your Snark be a Boojum! For then
You will softly and suddenly vanish away,
And never be met with again!'"
This of course was a very sad thing to think of, for the man with no name,
who was named after his uncle, and called in courtesy the _Baker_, had
grown to be a great favorite with the crew; but they had no time to waste
in sentiment--they were in the Snark's own land, they had the _Bellman's_
orders in _Fit the Fourth_--the Hunting:
"To seek it with thimbles, to seek it with care;
To pursue it with forks and hope;
To threaten its life with a railway share;
To charm it with smiles and soap!
"For the Snark's a peculiar creature, that won't
Be caught in a commonplace way.
Do all that you know, and try all that you don't:
Not a chance must be wasted to-day!"
Then they all went to work according to their own special way, just as we
would do now in our hunt for happiness through the chasms and crags of
every day.
_Fit the Fifth_ is the _Beaver's_ Lesson, when the _Butcher_ discourses
wisely on arithmetic and natural history, two subjects a butcher should
know pretty thoroughly, and this is proved:
"While the Beaver confessed, with affectionate looks
More eloquent even than tears,
It had learned in ten minutes far more than all books
Would have taught it in seventy years."
The _Barrister's_ Dream occupied _Fit the Sixth_, and here our poet's keen
wit gave many a slap at the law and the lawyers.
The _Banker's_ Fate in _Fit the Seventh_ was sad enough; he was grabbed by
the Bandersnatch (that "frumious" "portmanteau" creature that we met
before in the _Lay of the Jabberwocky_) and worried and tossed about until
he completely lost his senses. Some bankers are that way in the pursuit of
fortune, which means happiness to them; but fortune may turn, like the
Bandersnatch, and shake their minds out of their bodies, and so they left
this _Banker_ to his fate. That is the way of people when bankers are in
trouble, because they were reckless and not always careful to
"Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch."
_Fit the Eighth_ treats of the vanishing of the Baker according to the
prediction of his prophetic uncle. All day long the eager searchers had
hunted in vain, but just at the close of the day they heard a shout in the
distance and beheld their _Baker_ "erect and sublime" on top of a crag,
waving his arms and shouting wildly; then before their startled and
horrified gaze, he plunged into a chasm and disappeared forever.
"'It's a Snark!' was the sound that first came to their ears.
And seemed almost too good to be true.
Then followed a torrent of laughter and cheers,
Then the ominous words, 'It's a Boo----'
"Then, silence. Some fancied they heard in the air
A weary and wandering sigh
That sounded like 'jum!' but the others declare
It was only a breeze that went by.
"They hunted till darkness came on, but they found
Not a button, or feather, or mark
By which they could tell that they stood on the ground
Where the Baker had met with the Snark.
"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."
What became of the _Bellman_ and his crew is left to our imagination.
Perhaps the _Baker's_ fate was a warning, or perhaps they are still
hunting--not _too_ close to the chasm. Lewis Carroll, always so particular
about proper endings, refuses any explanation. The fact that this special
Snark was a "Boojum" altered all the rules of the hunt. Nobody knows what
it is, but all the same nobody wishes to meet a "Boojum." That's all there
is about it.
"Now how absurd to talk such nonsense!" some learned school girl may
exclaim; undoubtedly one who has high ideals about life and literature.
But is it nonsense we are talking, and does the quaint poem really teach
us nothing? Anything which brings a picture to the mind must surely have
some merit, and there is much homely common sense wrapped up in the queer
verses if we have but the wit to find it, and no one is too young nor too
old to join in this hunt for happiness.
Read the poem over and over, put expression and feeling into it, treat the
_Bellman_ and his strange crew as if they were real human beings--there's
a lot of the human in them after all--and see if new ideas and new
meanings do not pop into your head with each reading, while the verses,
all unconsciously, will stick in your memory, where Tennyson or
Wordsworth or even Shakespeare fails to hold a place there.
Of course, Lewis Carroll's own especial girlfriends understood "The
Hunting of the Snark" better than the less favored "outsiders." First of
all there was Lewis Carroll himself to read it to them in his own
expressive way, his pleasant voice sinking impressively at exciting
moments, and his clear explanation of each "portmanteau" word helping
along wonderfully. We can fancy the gleam of fun in the blue eyes, the
sweep of his hand across his hair, the sudden sweet smile with which he
pointed his jests or clothed his moral, as the case might be. Indeed, one
little girl was so fascinated with the poem which he sent her as a gift
that she learned the whole of it by heart, and insisted on repeating it
during a long country drive.
"The Hunting of the Snark" created quite a sensation among his friends.
The first edition was finely illustrated by Henry Holiday, whose clever
drawings show how well he understood the poem, and what sympathy existed
between himself and the author.
"Phantasmagoria," his ghost poem, deals with the friendly relations always
existing between ghosts and the people they are supposed to haunt; a
whimsical idea, carried out in Lewis Carroll's whimsical way, with lots of
fun and a good deal of simple philosophy worked out in the verses. One
canto is particularly amusing. Here are some of the verses:
Oh, when I was a little Ghost,
A merry time had we!
Each seated on his favorite post,
We chumped and chawed the buttered toast
They gave us for our tea.
"That story is in print!" I cried.
"Don't say it's not, because
It's known as well as Bradshaw's Guide!"
(The Ghost uneasily replied
He hardly thought it was.)
It's not in Nursery Rhymes? And yet
I almost think it is--
"Three little Ghostesses" were set
"On postesses," you know, and ate
Their "buttered toastesses."
"The Three Voices," his next ambitious poem, is rather out of the realm of
childhood. A weak-minded man and a strong-minded lady met on the seashore,
she having rescued his hat from the antics of a playful breeze by pinning
it down on the sands with her umbrella, right through the center of the
soft crown. When she handed it to him in its battered state, he was
scarcely as grateful as he might have been--he was rude, in fact,
For it had lost its shape and shine,
And it had cost him four-and-nine,
And he was going out to dine.
"To dine!" she sneered in acid tone.
"To bend thy being to a bone
Clothed in a radiance not its own!"
"Term it not 'radiance,'" said he:
"'Tis solid nutriment to me.
Dinner is Dinner: Tea is Tea."
And she "Yea so? Yet wherefore cease?
Let thy scant knowledge find increase.
Say 'Men are Men, and Geese are Geese.'"
The gentleman wanted to get away from this severe lady, but he could see
no escape, for she was getting excited.
"To dine!" she shrieked, in dragon-wrath.
"To swallow wines all foam and froth!
To simper at a tablecloth!
"Canst thou desire or pie or puff?
Thy well-bred manners were enough,
Without such gross material stuff."
"Yet well-bred men," he faintly said,
"Are not unwilling to be fed:
Nor are they well without the bread."
Her visage scorched him ere she spoke;
"There are," she said, "a kind of folk
Who have no horror of a joke.
"Such wretches live: they take their share
Of common earth and common air:
We come across them here and there."
"We grant them--there is no escape--
A sort of semihuman shape
Suggestive of the manlike Ape."
So the arguing went on--her Voice, his Voice, and the Voice of the Sea. He
tried to joke away her solemn mood with a pun.
"The world is but a Thought," said he:
"The vast, unfathomable sea
Is but a Notion--unto me."
And darkly fell her answer dread
Upon his unresisting head,
Like half a hundredweight of lead.
"The Good and Great must ever shun
That reckless and abandoned one
Who stoops to perpetrate a pun.
"The man that smokes--that reads the _Times_--
That goes to Christmas Pantomimes--
Is capable of _any_ crimes!"
Anyone can understand these verses, but it is very plain that the poem is
a satire on the rise of the learned lady, who takes no interest in the
lighter, pleasanter side of life; a being much detested by Lewis Carroll,
who above all things loved a "womanly woman." As he grew older he became
somewhat precise and old-fashioned in his opinions--that is perhaps the
reason why he was so lovable. His ideals of womanhood and little girlhood
were fixed and beautiful dreams, untouched by the rush of the times. The
"new woman" puzzled and pained him quite as much as the pert, precocious,
up-to-date girl. Would there were more Lewis Carrolls in the world; quiet,
simple, old-fashioned, courteous gentlemen with ideals!
Here is a clever little poem dedicated to girls, which he calls
A GAME OF FIVES.
Five little girls, of five, four, three, two, one:
Rolling on the hearthrug, full of tricks and fun.
Five rosy girls, in years from ten to six:
Sitting down to lessons--no more time for tricks.
Five growing girls, from fifteen to eleven:
Music, drawing, languages, and food enough for seven!
Five winsome girls, from twenty to sixteen:
Each young man that calls I say, "Now tell me which you _mean_!"
Five dashing girls, the youngest twenty-one:
But if nobody proposes, what is there to be done?
Five showy girls--but thirty is an age
When girls may be _engaging_, but they somehow don't _engage_.
Five dressy girls, of thirty-one or more:
So gracious to the shy young men they snubbed so much before!
Five _passe_ girls. Their age? Well, never mind!
We jog along together, like the rest of human kind:
But the quondam "careless bachelor" begins to think he knows
The answer to that ancient problem "how the money goes!"
There was no theme, in short, that Lewis Carroll did not fit into a rhyme
or a poem. Some of them were full of real feeling, others were sparkling
with nonsense, but all had their charm. No style nor meter daunted him; no
poet was too great for his clever pen to parody; no ode was too heroic for
a little earthly fun; and when the measure was rollicking the rhymer was
at his best. Of this last, _Alice's_ invitation to the Looking-Glass world
is a fair example:
To the Looking-Glass world it was Alice that said,
"I've a scepter in hand, I've a crown on my head.
Let the Looking-Glass creatures, whatever they be,
Come and dine with the Red Queen, the White Queen, and me!"
Then fill up the glasses as quick as you can,
And sprinkle the table with buttons and bran;
Put cats in the coffee, and mice in the tea,
And welcome Queen Alice with thirty-times-three!
"O Looking-Glass creatures," quoth Alice, "draw near!
'Tis an honor to see me, a favor to hear;
'Tis a privilege high to have dinner and tea
Along with the Red Queen, the White Queen, and me!"
Then fill up the glasses with treacle and ink,
Or anything else that is pleasant to drink;
Mix sand with the cider, and wool with the wine,
And welcome Queen Alice with ninety-times-nine!
The real sentiment always cropped out in his verses to little girls; from
youth to age he was their "good knight and true" and all his fairest
thoughts were kept for them. Many a grown woman has carefully hoarded
among her treasures some bit of verse from Lewis Carroll, which her happy
childhood inspired him to write; but the dedication of "Alice through the
Looking-Glass" was to the unknown child, whom his book went forth to
please:
Child of the pure, unclouded brow
And dreaming eyes of wonder!
Though time be fleet, and I and thou
Are half a life asunder,
Thy loving smile will surely hail
The love-gift of a fairy tale.
I have not seen thy sunny face,
Nor heard thy silver laughter:
No thought of me shall find a place
In thy young life's hereafter,
Enough that now thou wilt not fail
To listen to my fairy tale.
A tale begun in other days,
When summer suns were glowing,
A simple chime, that served to time
The rhythm of our rowing,
Whose echoes live in memory yet,
Though envious years would say "forget."
Come, hearken then, ere voice of dread,
With bitter tidings laden,
Shall summon to unwelcome bed
A melancholy maiden!
We are but older children, dear,
Who fret to find our bedtime near.
Without, the frost, the blinding snow,
The storm-wind's moody madness;
Within, the firelight's ruddy glow,
And childhood's nest of gladness.
The magic words shall hold thee fast;
Thou shalt not heed the raving blast.
And though the shadow of a sigh
May tremble through the story,
For "happy summer days" gone by
And vanished summer glory,
It shall not touch, with breath of bale,
The pleasance of our fairy tale.
These are only a meager handful of his many poems. Through his life this
gift stayed with him, with all its early spirit and freshness; the added
years but added grace and lightness to his touch, for in the "Story of
Sylvie and Bruno" there are some gems: but that is another chapter and we
shall hear them later.
And so the years passed, and the writer of the "Alices" and the
"Jabberwocky" and "The Hunting of the Snark" and other poems fastened
himself slowly but surely into the loyal hearts of his many readers, and
the grave mathematical lecturer of Christ Church seemed just a trifle
older and graver than of yore. He was very reserved, very shy, and kept
somewhat aloof from his fellow "dons"; but let a little girl tap _ever_ so
faintly at his study door, the knock was heard, the door flung wide,
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson vanished into some inner sanctum, and Lewis
Carroll stood smiling on the threshold to welcome her with open arms.