The Man behind the Wonderland - The Life and Work of the Legendary Author Lewis Carroll. Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

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 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, shall 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,

       Lewis Carroll.

       February 10th.

      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 was 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.

       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.