BIB_ID
413129
Accession number
MA 6397.7
Creator
Carroll, Lewis, 1832-1898.
Display Date
Oxford, 1883 March 20.
Credit line
Gift of Arthur A. Houghton, Jr., 1987.
Description
1 item (10 pages) ; 18.2 x 11.2 cm
Notes
Addressed "Dear Mrs. Wardell." Ellen Terry married Charles Wardell in 1877.
Written 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 483.
Written 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 483.
Provenance
From the Arthur A. Houghton, Jr., Lewis Carroll collection; gift of Arthur A. Houghton, Jr., 1987.
Summary
Commenting on her dislike of letter-writing and telling her that this letter needs no reply; relating news of Lucy & Ethel Arnold and thanking her for her "special kindness" to Lucy Arnold; saying "I think you have learned a piece of philosophy which many never learn in a long life - that, while it is hopelessly difficult to secure for oneself even the smallest bit of happiness, and the more trouble we take the more certain we are to fail, there is nothing so easy as to secure it for somebody else : so that, if only A would aim at B's happiness, and B at C's, and so on, we should all be happy, and there would be little need to wait for heaven : we should have it. There are some verses I am very fond of repeating to myself, that say all this so much more perfectly than I have managed to do, that I will run the risk of wearying you with yet more reading, by copying them for you;" setting forth a lengthy and detailed Shakespearean 'Hero-ic' puzzle posing questions related Hero, Beatrice & Margaret in Much Ado about Nothing; saying "My difficulty is this : Why in the world did not Hero (or at any rate Beatrice when speaking on her behalf) prove an 'alibi' in answer to the charge? It seems certain she did not sleep in her own room that night : for how could Margaret venture to open the window and talk from it, with her mistress asleep in the room? It would be sure to wake her...Well, then, granting that Hero slept in some other room that night, why didn't she say so? When Claudio asks her 'What man was he talked with you yesternight Out at your window betwixt twelve and one? why doesn't she reply, 'I talked with no man at that hour, my Lord : nor was I in my chamber yesternight, But in another, far from it remove.' And this she could of course prove by the evidence of the housemaid, who must have known that she had occupied another room that night...with all these excellent materials for proving an 'alibi', it is incomprehensible that no one should think of it. If only there had been a barrister present, to cross-examine Beatrice ! 'Now ma'am, attend to me, please : and speak up, so that the jury may hear you. Where did you sleep last night? Where did Hero sleep? Will you swear that she slept in her own room?...But I shall bore you if I go on chattering. I will copy those lines I spoke of;" copying out a twenty-line poem which according to Morton Cohen's notes to this letter (see publication citation below), is titled "To C.C.P" by George MacDonald; concluding by saying he "...thought the change in the fainting business a great improvement. I presume the change was made owing to some one else having suggested it, before I did (as you do not say it was owing to me), but even so I am glad to have my opinion thus confirmed."
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