Complete Alice in Wonderland - L. Carroll [143]
I include here the pertinent excerpt of a letter which Lewis Carroll wrote to one Mrs. Chataway, explaining this very fact. It is intriguing because it firmly ties The Hunting of the Snark to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and to Through the Looking-Glass even moreso.
Ch. Ch. Oxford
November 7, 1875
DEAR MRS. CHATAWAY,
With the exception of my Publisher, Printer, and Artist, and my own family, I have told nobody yet of my intention of bringing out a little Christmas book. And I think you are the next person to whom the announcement ought to be made, because I have taken as a dedication, the verses I sent you the other day in MS. It will be a very small book—not 40 pages—a poem (supposed to be comic) with a frontispiece by Mr. Holiday. The advertisements will appear about the middle of this month, I suppose, and till then I should be glad if you would not let the name of the book go beyond your own family-circle—I don’t mind the fact, that the book is in the press, being known—but the name ought to be new when it appears. It is called “The Hunting of the Snark,” and the scene is laid in an island frequented by the Jubjub and Bandersnatch—no doubt the very island in which the Jabberwock was Slain.
(...)
Believe me
yours very sincerely,
C. L. DODGSON.
We are left with the understanding that there is a mysterious island, perhaps not far from Looking-Glass Land, which is home to the Jabberwock, Jubjubs, Bandersnatches and Snarks. And, as we shall see, the intrepid dreaming adventurer who dares to explore that island is not Alice, but rather Lewis Carroll himself!
THE HUNTING
OF THE SNARK
An Agony in Eight Fits
By
LEWIS CARROLL
With Illustrations By
HENRY HOLIDAY
Dedication
Inscribed to a dear Child:
in memory of golden summer hours
and whispers of a summer sea.
Prefatory Poem
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 spirits 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!
Preface
IF—and the thing is wildly possible—the charge of writing nonsense were 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 this 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 it more than once 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