BIB_ID
249707
Accession number
MA 6350
Creator
Carroll, Lewis, 1832-1898.
Display Date
Oxford?, 1885 February 24?.
Credit line
Gift of Arthur A. Houghton, Jr., 1987.
Description
1 item (4 pages) ; 18.2 x 11.3 cm
Notes
Carroll gives only "Tuesday" for the day of writing, and lists no place of writing. Based on Carroll's diaries, Morton Cohen argues in The Letters of Lewis Carroll that this letter was written on February 24, 1885 in Oxford. See the full citation below for additional information.
Written in purple ink.
This item is part of the Arthur A. Houghton, Jr., Lewis Carroll collection. The large collection includes printed books, letters, manuscripts, puzzles and games, personal effects and ephemera, which have been cataloged separately.
Removed from the "Carrolliana" album (MA 6347) assembled by Arthur A. Houghton, Jr., folio 3.
The letter is signed C. L. Dodgson. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson adopted the pseudonym "Lewis Carroll" in 1856 when publishing a poem in "The Train." He used the pseudonym when publishing Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and other works, but wrote under his given name, Charles Dodgson, when publishing mathematical works and in daily life. For administrative purposes, all manuscripts are collated under the name Lewis Carroll.
Written in purple ink.
This item is part of the Arthur A. Houghton, Jr., Lewis Carroll collection. The large collection includes printed books, letters, manuscripts, puzzles and games, personal effects and ephemera, which have been cataloged separately.
Removed from the "Carrolliana" album (MA 6347) assembled by Arthur A. Houghton, Jr., folio 3.
The letter is signed C. L. Dodgson. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson adopted the pseudonym "Lewis Carroll" in 1856 when publishing a poem in "The Train." He used the pseudonym when publishing Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and other works, but wrote under his given name, Charles Dodgson, when publishing mathematical works and in daily life. For administrative purposes, all manuscripts are collated under the name Lewis Carroll.
Provenance
From the Arthur A. Houghton, Jr., Lewis Carroll collection; gift of Arthur A. Houghton, Jr., 1987.
Summary
Inviting her to take a walk and "partake of the cup that does not inebriate" on Thursday afternoon; asking her to tell her sister Julia "that I may forget, but cannot forgive, her utterly heartless behavior in my rooms yesterday"; promising "I will be even with her some day: some sultry afternoon, when she is here, half fainting with thirst, I will produce a bottle of delicious cool lemonade. This I will uncork, & pour it foaming into a large tumbler: & then, after putting the tumbler well within her reach, she shall have the satisfaction of seeing me drink it myself! Not a drop of it shall reach her lips!"; saying that he was glad to see her mother looking so well and "so much up to joining in the dissipations of the day"; thanking her in a postscript for bringing "my dear old friend" (Marion Terry) to see him and writing "when she had vanished from my gaze, what had I but mathematical considerations to console me? 'She may be limited and superficial,' I said to myself. 'She may even be without depth. But she is at least equilateral & equiangular: in one word, what else is she but a Polygon!'"
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