Complete Works of Lewis Carroll (233 page)

HENRY HOLIDAY IN HIS STUDIO.

From a photograph

by Lewis Carroll
.

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 taking the Snark as a personification of popularity.
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, presentation-copy of the book.
It is so characteristic 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 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 representation 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 extraneous matter introduced into the performance, 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.

CHAPTER V

(1877—1883)

Dramatic tastes—Miss Ellen Terry—"Natural Science at Oxford"—Mr.
Dodgson as an artist—Miss E.
G.
Thomson—The drawing of children—A curious dream—"The Deserted Parks"—"Syzygies"—Circus children—Row-loving undergraduates—A letter to
The Observer
—Resignation of the Lectureship—He is elected Curator of the Common Room—Dream-music.

LEWIS CARROLL.

From a photograph
.

Mr.
Dodgson's love of the drama was not, as I have shown, a taste which he acquired in later years.
From early college days he never missed anything which he considered worth seeing at the London theatres.
I believe he used to reproach himself—unfairly, I think—with spending too much time on such recreations.
For a man who worked so hard and so incessantly as he did; for a man to whom vacations meant rather a variation of mental employment than absolute rest of mind, the drama afforded just the sort of relief that was wanted.
His vivid imagination, the very earnestness and intensity of his character enabled him to throw himself utterly into the spirit of what he saw upon the stage, and to forget in it all the petty worries and disappointments of life.
The old adage says that a man cannot burn the candle at both ends; like most proverbs, it is only partially true, for often the hardest worker is the man who enters with most zest into his recreations, and this was emphatically the case with Mr.
Dodgson.

Walter Pater, in his book on the Renaissance, says (I quote from rough notes only), "A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated dramatic life.
How may we see in them all that is to be seen in them by the finest senses?
How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy?
To burn always with this hard gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life."
Here we have the truer philosophy, here we have the secret of Lewis Carroll's life.
He never wasted time on social formalities; he refused to fulfil any of those (so called) duties which involve ineffable boredom, and so his mind was always fresh and ready.
He said in one of his letters that he hoped that in the next world all knowledge would not be given to us suddenly, but that we should gradually grow wiser, for the
acquiring
knowledge was to him the real pleasure.
What is this but a paraphrase of another of Pater's thoughts, "Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself is the end."

And so, times without number, he allowed himself to be carried away by emotion as he saw life in the mirror of the stage; but, best of all, he loved to see the acting of children, and he generally gave copies of his books to any of the little performers who specially pleased him.
On January 13, 1877, he wrote in his Diary:—

Went up to town for the day, and took E— with me to the afternoon pantomime at the Adelphi, "Goody Two-Shoes," acted entirely by children.
It was a really charming performance.
Little Bertie Coote, aged ten, was clown—a wonderfully clever little fellow; and Carrie Coote, about eight, was Columbine, a very pretty graceful little thing.
In a few years' time she will be just
the
child to act "Alice," if it is ever dramatised.
The harlequin was a little girl named Gilchrist, one of the most beautiful children, in face and figure, that I have ever seen.
I must get an opportunity of photographing her.
Little Bertie Coote, singing "Hot Codlings," was curiously like the pictures of Grimaldi.

It need hardly be said that the little girl was Miss Constance Gilchrist.
Mr.
Dodgson sent her a copy of "Alice in Wonderland," with a set of verses on her name.

Many people object altogether to children appearing on the stage; it is said to be bad for their morals as well as for their health.
A letter which Mr.
Dodgson once wrote in the
St.
James's Gazette
contains a sufficient refutation of the latter fancy:—

I spent yesterday afternoon at Brighton, where for five hours I enjoyed the society of three exceedingly happy and healthy little girls, aged twelve, ten, and seven.
I think that any one who could have seen the vigour of life in those three children—the intensity with which they enjoyed everything, great or small, that came in their way—who could have watched the younger two running races on the Pier, or have heard the fervent exclamation of the eldest at the end of the afternoon, "We
have
enjoyed ourselves!"
would have agreed with me that here, at least, there was no excessive "physical strain," nor any
imminent
danger of "fatal results"!
A drama, written by Mr.
Savile Clarke, is now being played at Brighton, and in this (it is called "Alice in Wonderland") all three children have been engaged.
They had been acting every night this week, and
twice
on the day before I met them, the second performance lasting till half-past ten at night, after which they got up at seven next morning to bathe!
That such (apparently) severe work should co-exist with blooming health and buoyant spirits seems at first sight a paradox; but I appeal to any one who has ever worked
con amore
at any subject whatever to support me in the assertion that, when you really love the subject you are working at, the "physical strain" is absolutely
nil
; it is only when working "against the grain" that any strain is felt, and I believe the apparent paradox is to be explained by the fact that a taste for
acting
is one of the strongest passions of human nature, that stage-children show it nearly from infancy, and that, instead of being miserable drudges who ought to be celebrated in a new "Cry of the Children," they simply
rejoice
in their work "even as a giant rejoiceth to run his course."

Mr.
Dodgson's general views on the mission of the drama are well shown by an extract from a circular which he sent to many of his friends in 1882:—

The stage (as every playgoer can testify) is an engine of incalculable power for influencing society; and every effort to purify and ennoble its aims seems to me to deserve all the countenance that the great, and all the material help that the wealthy, can give it; while even those who are neither great nor wealthy may yet do their part, and help to—

"Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be."

I do not know if Mr.
Dodgson's suggested amendment of some lines in the "Merchant of Venice" was ever carried out, but it further illustrates the serious view he took of this subject.
The hint occurs in a letter to Miss Ellen Terry, which runs as follows:—

ELLEN TERRY.

From a photograph

by Lewis Carroll
.

You gave me a treat on Saturday such as I have very seldom had in my life.
You must be weary by this time of hearing your own praises, so I will only say that Portia was all I could have imagined, and more.
And Shylock is superb—especially in the trial-scene.

Now I am going to be very bold, and make a suggestion, which I do hope you will think well enough of to lay it before Mr.
Irving.
I want to see that clause omitted (in the sentence on Shylock)—

That, for this favour,

He presently become a Christian;

It is a sentiment that is entirely horrible and revolting to the feelings of all who believe in the Gospel of Love.
Why should our ears be shocked by such words merely because they are Shakespeare's?
In his day, when it was held to be a Christian's duty to force his belief on others by fire and sword—to burn man's body in order to save his soul—the words probably conveyed no shock.
To all Christians now (except perhaps extreme Calvinists) the idea of forcing a man to abjure his religion, whatever that religion may be, is (as I have said) simply horrible.

I have spoken of it as a needless outrage on religious feeling: but surely, being so, it is a great artistic mistake.
Its tendency is directly contrary to the spirit of the scene.
We have despised Shylock for his avarice, and we rejoice to see him lose his wealth: we have abhorred him for his bloodthirsty cruelty, and we rejoice to see him baffled.
And now, in the very fulness of our joy at the triumph of right over wrong, we are suddenly called on to see in him the victim of a cruelty a thousand times worse than his own, and to honour him as a martyr.
This, I am sure, Shakespeare never meant.
Two touches only of sympathy does he allow us, that we may realise him as a man, and not as a demon incarnate.
"I will not pray with you"; "I had it of Leah, when I was a bachelor."
But I am sure he never meant our sympathies to be roused in the supreme moment of his downfall, and, if he were alive now, I believe he would cut out those lines about becoming a Christian.