LEWIS CARROLL

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 132, 27 January 1932, Page 7

LEWIS CARROLL

GENTENARY OF BI^TH WORLD'S MO|T FAMOUS WRITER OF REASONED NONSENSE ANNIVER^ARY TO-DAY To-day is the centenary Of the birth of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson . better known to children and adults the world over as Lewis Carroll, "the World's most famous writer of feasoned * nonsense." ' Ha is known chiefly by the "Alice" books. The fifst edition of "Alice in Wonderland" appeared in 1865i Few books have met with such unequivocal praise from the critics and such instantaneous favour from the public. The popularity of "Alice in Wonderland" and of "Alice ThroUgh the Looking Glass" is still immertse in Great Britain and America. The former has' been translated into Erench, German, Italian and Dutch, and has recelved the distinctibn of being officially banned , from China. This was in' the Province of Hunan, whose Governor, General Ho Chien, I in April, 1931, issued ah edict f of- j bidding the use of the" hook among school children, on the gtound that "to attribute tffe power of human lqnguage to beasts is an insult to the human race, and any children reading such books must ineyitably regard animals and human beings on the same level, and this would be disastrous." Early Bent The young DodgSon was the eldest of a family of 11, his father being a Gheshire parson. Even as a boy, Charles showed his ; bent, editing for home consumption a magazine called "The Rectory Umbrella." Ih this ho wrote most of the matter, and drew all the sketches. When later, as 3 parson and mathematician, he deemed it necessary to adopt a pen-name, it was Yates who persuaded him to adopt that of Lewis Carroll, which is based on variants of his real Christian nam.es. Thus Lewis" is developed from Ludovieus, and Lndovicus from Lutwidge (his mother's maiden name), while Carroll is merely an Anglicised form of Carolus, the Latin equivalent f or Charles. Lesser Known Works Although it is by the "Alice" books that Lewis Carroll will still be known a hundred years hence, there is much plever nonsense to be found in his lesser known works, such as "Sylvia and Bruno," "Phantasmogoria," and "The Hunting of the Snark." It is interesting to recall that many people tried to shqw that "The Hunting of the Snark" was an allegory. Some said that the Snark was a personification of popularity, others that the whole thing was a bUrlesque on the Tichborne ease! Lewis Carroll himself always said that the poem had no hidden meaning. As he put it to a friend in America: "As to the meaning of the Snark I'm very much afraid I didii't mean anything but nonsense ! Still, yoii know, words mean more than we mean to express when we use them; so a whole hook oizght to mean a deal more than the writer means. So, whatever good meanings are in the hook, I'm glad to accept as the meaning of the hook. The best that I've seen is by a lady (she puhlished it in a letter to a newspaper), that the whole hook is an allegory on the seareh after Bappiness. I think this fits "in beautifully in many ways — particularly about the bathing-machines ; when the people get weary of life, and ean't find happiness in towns or in books, they rush off to the seaside, to see what bathing-machines will do for them!" Pilgrimage to iGrave In the States the name of - Lewis Carroll is honoured, and Ainerieans ' in large numbers make the toilsome pilgrimage to his unpretentious grave in the eemetery at Guildford. It was an American who; some three years ago, paid the sum of £15,400 after a spirited bout of bidding, for the Original manuscript of "Alice in Wonderland."- The original title of the story was "Alice's Adventures Underground"- — later. it became "Alice's Hour in Elfland" — and before there was any thought of publication its author took the trouble to make a manuscript copy of it as a Christmas present for the living Alice. It was this small work of 92 pages "Which fetched so large a sum. Few know in thes'e days that in the original story there was a chapter about a wasp. This, however, was considered to be inferior to the rest of the story, and was omitted from the published' v-ersion. Tenniel, the artist whose" illustrations are part ' and parcel of the 'Alice" books, too, said that to draw a wasp in a wig was bcvorid bim-

In "The Life aiid Letters of Lewis Carroll," edited by his .nephew (S. Dodgson Collingwood), will be found' a storehouse of information and anecdote. Perhaps the most fascinatihg quality- in the writings of "Lewis Carroll, who died "on 14th January, 1898, is his intangibility. His quaint conversations ' ahd fantastic scenes abonnd in ideas that seem to vanish hefore we can quite grasp them — like the Gheshire Cat, leaving only the smile behind, or like our rather confused idea of his immortal Snark, that was not strictly a Snark because it was a Boojum! He never malces the mistake of less responsible and less •desighing authors of satiating us with good -things; on completing one of his stories %We ai:e always left With the' impi'gSSiO'il that" h'e could have added another chapter or two as allur ing as the last, had he felt so disposed. And, more than any other writer, he has fathomed the mysterious depths of childhood that lie within us^-even Within . the hearts of those who are but children of a larger growth.