BIB_ID
430517
Accession number
MA 14297
Creator
Carroll, Lewis, 1832-1898, sender.
Display Date
Oxford, England, 1897 February 1.
Credit line
Bequest of Gordon N. Ray, 1987.
Description
1 item (4 pages) ; 11 x 18 cm
Notes
Written from "Ch. Ch., Oxford", and signed "C.L. Dodgson".
Dodgson opens his letter with a "N.B." explaining that Christ Church is regarded as a church rather than a college, and that "Other colleges sign themselves 'E Collegio so - and -so': but a Ch. Ch. man signs 'Ex Ode Christi-'".
Miss Hodgson was employed as a schoolmistress at the Guildford High School for girls; Dodgson had visited the school only a few days earlier, on January 26 of that year, where he instructed the students and staff in his "Memoria technica", a mnemonic technique for memorizing dates; the letter evidently relates to some rhymes he had agreed to write in accordance with his previously described technique to assist the students of Guildford High School in remembering the dates of historical treaties. See: Lewis Carroll's diaries (Luton : Lewis Carroll Society,1993-2005), volume 9, pages 119, 292-293; a selection of Dodgson's rhymes for treaties has been published in: Rare, uncollected, unpublished, & nonexistent verse of Lewis Carroll. Annandale, VA : The Lewis Carroll Society of North America, 2018, pages 94-95.
"Ruby" evidently refers to Miss Hodgson's niece, Ruby McNair.
Dodgson opens his letter with a "N.B." explaining that Christ Church is regarded as a church rather than a college, and that "Other colleges sign themselves 'E Collegio so - and -so': but a Ch. Ch. man signs 'Ex Ode Christi-'".
Miss Hodgson was employed as a schoolmistress at the Guildford High School for girls; Dodgson had visited the school only a few days earlier, on January 26 of that year, where he instructed the students and staff in his "Memoria technica", a mnemonic technique for memorizing dates; the letter evidently relates to some rhymes he had agreed to write in accordance with his previously described technique to assist the students of Guildford High School in remembering the dates of historical treaties. See: Lewis Carroll's diaries (Luton : Lewis Carroll Society,1993-2005), volume 9, pages 119, 292-293; a selection of Dodgson's rhymes for treaties has been published in: Rare, uncollected, unpublished, & nonexistent verse of Lewis Carroll. Annandale, VA : The Lewis Carroll Society of North America, 2018, pages 94-95.
"Ruby" evidently refers to Miss Hodgson's niece, Ruby McNair.
Provenance
Bequest of Gordon N. Ray, 1987.
Summary
Concerning some "rhymes for treaties" which he has agreed to write, remarking that they should not take long as soon as he has "the essential datum for each", and explaining that composition of the rhymes will require the "first idea which the of the treaty suggests," as secondary ideas are of "no use at all"; illustrating this point with the example of Henry VIII, stating that "the first idea, for me, would be that he was fat", and that any secondary associations with his name would be of no use "as they do not occur at once, on hearing his name"; suggesting that she provide him with the first ideas brought to the mind of "the average girl, on hearing the name of each treaty" by getting the girls (i.e., her students) to write down lists of first ideas, recording, for his benefit, "those which appear on the majority of lists" as without this information "it would be a sheer waste of time for me to make any rhymes"; providing a rhyme for the French Revolution, adding "the one I made was a little too horrid"; sending his love to Ruby (McNair) and asking if she would like to have a copy of The hunting of the snark.
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