Complete Works of Lewis Carroll (241 page)

Ch.
Ch.,
Dec
.
13, 1885.

Dear Edith,—I have been a severe sufferer from
Logical
puzzles of late.
I got into a regular tangle about the "import of propositions," as the ordinary logical books declare that "all
x
is
z
" doesn't even
hint
that any
x
's exist, but merely that the qualities are so inseparable that, if ever
x
occurs,
z
must occur also.
As to "some
x
is
z
" they are discreetly silent; and the living authorities I have appealed to, including our Professor of Logic, take opposite sides!
Some say it means that the qualities are so connected that, if any
x
's
did
exist, some
must
be
z
—others that it only means compatibility,
i.e.,
that some
might
be
z
, and they would go on asserting, with perfect belief in their truthfulness, "some boots are made of brass," even if they had all the boots in the world before them, and knew that
none
were so made, merely because there is no inherent impossibility in making boots of brass!
Isn't it bewildering?
I shall have to mention all this in my great work on Logic—but
I
shall take the line "any writer may mean exactly what he pleases by a phrase so long as he explains it beforehand."
But I shall not venture to assert "some boots are made of brass" till I have found a pair!
The Professor of Logic came over one day to talk about it, and we had a long and exciting argument, the result of which was "
x —x
"—a magnitude which you will be able to evaluate for yourself.

C.
L.
Dodgson.

As an example of the good advice Mr.
Dodgson used to give his young friends, the following letter to Miss Isabel Standen will serve excellently:—

Eastbourne,
Aug
.
4, 1885.

I can quite understand, and much sympathise with, what you say of your feeling lonely, and not what you can honestly call "happy."
Now I am going to give you a bit of philosophy about that—my own experience is, that
every
new form of life we try is, just at first, irksome rather than pleasant.
My first day or two at the sea is a little depressing; I miss the Christ Church interests, and haven't taken up the threads of interest here; and, just in the same way, my first day or two, when I get back to Christ Church, I miss the seaside pleasures, and feel with unusual clearness the bothers of business-routine.
In all such cases, the true philosophy, I believe, is "
wait
a bit."
Our mental nerves seem to be so adjusted that we feel
first
and most keenly, the
dis
—comforts of any new form of life; but, after a bit, we get used to them, and cease to notice them; and
then
we have time to realise the enjoyable features, which at first we were too much worried to be conscious of.

Suppose you hurt your arm, and had to wear it in a sling for a month.
For the first two or three days the discomfort of the bandage, the pressure of the sling on the neck and shoulder, the being unable to use the arm, would be a constant worry.
You would feel as if all comfort in life were gone; after a couple of days you would be used to the new sensations, after a week you perhaps wouldn't notice them at all; and life would seem just as comfortable as ever.

So my advice is, don't think about loneliness, or happiness, or unhappiness, for a week or two.
Then "take stock" again, and compare your feelings with what they were two weeks previously.
If they have changed, even a little, for the better you are on the right track; if not, we may begin to suspect the life does not suit you.
But what I want
specially
to urge is that there's no use in comparing one's feelings between one day and the next; you must allow a reasonable interval, for the
direction of
change to show itself.

Sit on the beach, and watch the waves for a few seconds; you say "the tide is coming in "; watch half a dozen successive waves, and you may say "the last is the lowest; it is going out."
Wait a quarter of an hour, and compare its
average
place with what it was at first, and you will say "No, it is coming in after all."
...

With love, I am always affectionately yours,

C.
L.
Dodgson.

The next event to chronicle in Lewis Carroll's Life is the publication, by Messrs.
Macmillan, of "A Tangled Tale," a series of mathematical problems which had originally appeared in the
Monthly Packet
.
In addition to the problems themselves, the author added their correct solutions, with criticisms on the solutions, correct or otherwise, which the readers of the
Monthly Packet
had sent in to him.
With some people this is the most popular of all his books; it is certainly the most successful attempt he ever made to combine mathematics and humour.
The book was illustrated by Mr.
A.B.
Frost, who entered most thoroughly into the spirit of the thing.
One of his pictures, "Balbus was assisting his mother-in-law to convince the dragon," is irresistibly comic.
A short quotation will better enable the reader to understand the point of the joke:—

Balbus was waiting for them at the hotel; the journey down had tried him, he said; so his two pupils had been the round of the place, in search of lodgings, without the old tutor who had been their inseparable companion from their childhood.
They had named him after the hero of their Latin exercise-book, which overflowed with anecdotes about that versatile genius—anecdotes whose vagueness in detail was more than compensated by their sensational brilliance.
"Balbus has overcome all his enemies" had been marked by their tutor, in the margin of the book, "Successful Bravery."
In this way he had tried to extract a moral from every anecdote about Balbus—sometimes one of warning, as in "Balbus had borrowed a healthy dragon," against which he had written, "Rashness in Speculation "—sometimes of encouragement, as in the words, "Influence of Sympathy in United Action," which stood opposite to the anecdote "Balbus was assisting his mother-in-law to convince the dragon"—and sometimes it dwindled down to a single word, such as "Prudence," which was all he could extract from the touching record that "Balbus, having scorched the tail of the dragon, went away."
His pupils liked the short morals best, as it left them more room for marginal illustrations, and in this instance they required all the space they could get to exhibit the rapidity of the hero's departure.

Balbus and his pupils go in search of lodgings, which are only to be found in a certain square; at No.
52, one of the pupils supplements the usual questions by asking the landlady if the cat scratches:—

The landlady looked round suspiciously, as if to make sure the cat was not listening.
"I will not deceive you, gentlemen," she said.
"It
do
scratch, but not without you pulls its whiskers!
It'll never do it," she repeated slowly, with a visible effort to recall the exact words of some written agreement between herself and the cat, "without you pulls its whiskers!"

"Much may be excused in a cat so treated," said Balbus as they left the house and crossed to No.
70, leaving the landlady curtesying on the doorstep, and still murmuring to herself her parting words, as if they were a form of blessing—"Not without you pulls its whiskers!"

Balbus having scorched

the Dragon's Tail—Went Away!

From a crayon drawing

by the Rev.
H.C.
Gaye.
.

They secure one room at each of the following numbers—the square contains 20 doors on each side—Nine, Twenty-five, Fifty-two, and Seventy-three.
They require three bedrooms and one day-room, and decide to take as day—room the one that gives them the least walking to do to get to it.
The problem, of course, is to discover which room they adopted as the day-room.
There are ten such "knots" in the book, and few, if any of them, can be untied without a good deal of thought.

Owing, probably, to the strain of incessant work, Mr.
Dodgson about this period began to be subject to a very peculiar, yet not very uncommon, optical delusion, which takes the form of seeing moving fortifications.
Considering the fact that he spent a good twelve hours out of every twenty-four in reading and writing, and that he was now well over fifty years old, it was not surprising that nature should begin to rebel at last, and warn him of the necessity of occasional rest.

Some verses on "Wonderland" by "One who loves Alice," appeared in the Christmas number of
Sylvia's Home Journal
, 1885.
They were written by Miss M.E.
Manners, and, as Lewis Carroll himself admired them, they will, I think, be read with interest:—

WONDERLAND.

How sweet those happy days gone by,

Those days of sunny weather,

When Alice fair, with golden hair,

And we—were young together;—

When first with eager gaze we scann'd

The page which told of Wonderland.

On hearthrug in the winter-time

We lay and read it over;

We read it in the summer's prime,

Amidst the hay and clover.

The trees, by evening breezes fann'd,

Murmured sweet tales of Wonderland.

We climbed the mantelpiece, and broke

The jars of Dresden china;

In Jabberwocky tongue we spoke,

We called the kitten "Dinah!"

And, oh!
how earnestly we planned

To go ourselves to Wonderland.

The path was fringed with flowers rare,

With rainbow colours tinted;

The way was "up a winding stair,"

Our elders wisely hinted.