BIB_ID
413123
Accession number
MA 6397.5
Creator
Carroll, Lewis, 1832-1898.
Display Date
Oxford, 1881 April 14.
Credit line
Gift of Arthur A. Houghton, Jr., 1987.
Description
1 item (4 pages) ; 18.0 x 11.0 cm
Notes
Written on mourning stationery in purple ink.
Written from '"Ch. Ch.", Carroll's abbreviation for Christ Church.
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.
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.
Previously accessioned as AAH 478.
Written from '"Ch. Ch.", Carroll's abbreviation for Christ Church.
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.
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.
Previously accessioned as AAH 478.
Provenance
From the Arthur A. Houghton, Jr., Lewis Carroll collection; gift of Arthur A. Houghton, Jr., 1987.
Summary
Thanking her for her letter and referring to a manuscript by Miss Robertson Ramsay he has sent to his cousin, Miss Wilcox; referring to a manuscript which she has given to someone to copy out and saying "I have read of a good many serious crimes in History (particularly among the later Roman Emperors), but none, I think, quite so black-hearted and cold-blooded as what you so calmly propose - ask your nice little Scotch girl (you call her 'little,' and I have no doubt she is 'nice') to hand over, to a person she has never even seen, the fruits of so many hours' work!...However, that crime I forgive - as well as another equally heinous one, of never referring to any letter of mine when you are answering it : so that no question I ask has even the slightest chance of ever being answered! I am one of those feeble natures that forgives from very laziness : even things that 'lambs cannot forgive. No, Betsy, nor worms forget;" thanking her and Edie for their 'farewell token;' discussing "...the wretchedness of being tired" saying "It is the general cry of human life, I think, from the cradle to the grave. 'So tired, so tired, my heart and I! I wonder if the life of a day is meant to symbolise the life of threescore years and ten. It is so startlingly like it : the fresh vigour of the first hour or two : and the strength of noonday work : and the 'tiredness' that begins to creep on through the afternoon : and last (I suppose) the contended weariness of the old man, when he 'wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.' Well, the 'afternoon' is pleasant enough after all, 'tired' as one sometimes is. May you find it so when you come to it. But you are in all the blaze of noonday just now."
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