Handbook (p. 210) suggests:
Oats. Wreath. Myrtle. Tidier.
Weight. Antics. Twine. Editor.
Syringe. Gnawer. Plaster. Wonted.
Whose. Wither. Yeast. Snoweth.
Weasel. Merino. Yonder. Hewest.
Myriad. Forego. Tougher. Yawneth.
Other versions are possible. For example, Edward Wakeling offers Myrtle or Termly, Editor or Rioted, Wither or Whiter, Snoweth or New Shot: for further suggestions, see his Rediscovered Lewis Carroll Puzzles, p. 69.
[“They both make a roaring – a roaring all night”]
Sent in a letter to Agnes Hull, 10 December 1877, in which LC is joking about forgetting names. The youngest sister Jessie always adds herself: “and Jessie”, so he disguises the last rhyme. Answer: Sea-son (Hatch, pp. 133–4). See also note to “The Lyceum”.
Love Among the Roses
Acrostic for Sarah Sinclair, ‘the infant Cerito’, the young actress daughter of the actor Joseph Scrivener who used the stage-name Henry Sinclair. LC saw her performing as Cupid in the Adelphi Pantomime on New Year’s Eve 1877 and wrote the poem three days later (see Diaries, vii, 75 and 91). He later helped to raise money for the three young children after their father died.
[“Around my lonely hearth to-night”]
Acrostic for Agnes Georgina Hull. Carroll made the family’s acquaintance in 1877 and a warm friendship prospered, which broke down in September 1882 (see Diaries, vii, 471–4). See also note to ‘The Lyceum’.
[Poem for Dolly Draper]
Acrostic poem addressed to Dorothy (Dolly) Draper, 20 May 1876, sent with an inscribed copy of Looking-Glass, and revealing LC’s birthday, 27 January (see Diaries, vi, 462).
To M. A. B.
The second part (“Maiden, though thy heart may quail”) is an acrostic for Marion Terry, 15 August 1876. She was the sister of Ellen and Kate Terry and became a very successful actress in her own right. Queen Mab is traditionally the Queen of the fairies.
To Miss Gaynor Simpson
LC sent this riddle to Gaynor Simpson, ?February 1880, with two separate joke solutions: the first produced her name. “ ‘My first’: Gain. ‘Who would go into trade if there were no gain in it?’; ‘My second’ Or (the French for ‘gold’): ‘Your jollifications would be very limited if you had no money;’ ‘My whole’: Gaynor. ‘Because she will be an ornament to the Shakespeare charades – only she must be “laid on thinnish,” that is, there mustn’t be too much of her.’ ”
Then he apologised for sending “a sham answer” and proposed: “My first – Sea: ‘It carries the ships of the merchants.’; my second: Weed: ‘That is, a cigar, an article much used in jollification.’ ” He then offers an absurd “whole”: “Seaweed, because if you laid that on a newly painted picture that would ‘finish’ it” (Letters, i, 367). He had earlier offered the riddle to Mrs George Macdonald without a solution, with the first line as: “My first lends its aid when I plunge into trade” (Letters, i, 221). Collingwood (pp. 377–9) says the correct solution is “Copal”.
LC rarely gave solutions and seems often to have had several possible ones in mind for his riddles and for the double-acrostics. Edward Wakeling remarks: “He would always accept an alternative reasonable answer” (private correspondence).
For Alexandra Kitchin
Alexandra Kitchin was known as Xie (LC sometimes called her “dear multiplication sign”). The clues are: Ale (“resembling wine”); x (“follows nine”); and (“sentences combine”); ra (Royal Academy): “the line”, at eye-level – the most advantageous position for a picture to be exhibited. LC took a great many photographs of Xie over several years and was close friends with her whole family. See Lewis Carroll and the Kitchins, ed. Morton N. Cohen (New York: Lewis Carroll Society of North America, 1980).
A Charade
The product of an awkward incident on 5 February 1880 when LC gave a goodbye kiss to a young woman Harriet (Atty) Owen, who with her little brother had been visiting his rooms while her father was busy elsewhere in college. “She does not look 14 yet, and when, having kissed her at parting, I learned (from Owen) that she is 17, I was astonished” (letter to Mrs Kitchin, Diaries, vii, 240). Atty Owen’s mother was deeply offended, perhaps particularly by LC’s light-hearted letter of apology, and all contact was for a time broken off. The reversal between manners then and now is striking: now kissing a child might well be looked at askance, then a young lady. This casts an interesting light on his society’s views of the propriety of LC’s conduct. The riddle is: AT/rocity; atroci/TY; t/OW/n; EN/ding.
Dedicated to a tea-tea. Why? Oh, when?
The title gives her name: A-t-t-y O-wen. Written 16 March 1880. Perhaps an attempt at mollifying (see preceding poem and note) by emphasising Atty’s youth “her small head” (11).
To my Pupil
Acrostic dedication in a copy of LC’s A Tangled Tale (1885) given to Edith Rix (born 1866): the second letter of each line spells her name. They met because she answered one of the mathematical “knots” in Tangled Tale when it originally appeared in Charlotte M. Yonge’s magazine Monthly Packet, April 1880 (Handbook, pp. 108, 136–8 and Diaries, viii, 204).
To My Child-Friend
Written 1886. Acrostic dedication to Climène Mary Holiday, niece of Henry Holiday, illustrator of The Hunting of the Snark. The second letter of each line spells her name.
To Miss Emmie Drury
This combines her name with LC’s volume Rhyme? Or Reason? See note to “[To the three Misses Drury 1]”.
A Nursery Darling
Dedicatory acrostic to Marie Van der Gucht, an eleven-year-old LC met through the Holiday family in 1885 and entertained frequently. The second letter of each line spells her name.
[“Girlie to whom in perennial bloom”]
Written 1891, acrostic for Gladys Baly. Diaries, viii, 586 quotes from her reminiscences of LC published in the Christian Science Monitor (23 February 1932), which is the source of this acrostic.
[Double Acrostics]
(To Miss E. M. Argles)
LC became friends with the Argles family and spent a week with them at Torquay adjacent to Babbacombe. The first two stanzas praise Babbacombe; each succeeding stanza gives a clue with an answer that generates the first and last letters needed to form the words running downwards: Babbacombe Friendship. The answers are 9 BlufF, 12 AnchoR, 15 BroccolI, 18 BarquE, 21 AppreciatioN, 24 ChilD, 27 OdiouS, 30 MontH, 33 BelzonI, 36 EditorshiP.
33. BelzonI: Giovanni Battista Belzoni, Venetian explorer and engineer. His drawings of the royal tombs at Thebes were published by his widow in 1829.
[Double Acrostic for Agnes and Emily]
In a letter sent to Amy Hughes, 4 April 1871, LC declares he wrote a previous riddle specifically for her, then:
I set to work on getting your letter to make a double acrostic for Agnes and Emily. Here it is. The first verse describes the two “upright” words (each has five letters) & the others describe the horizontal words – The words underlined are to help you in guessing.
LC’s underlining is printed as italic in this edition.
The answers are 1–4 [Agnes and Emily], 8 AlicE, 12 GlooM, 16 NinjI, 20 EaseL, 24 SherrY.
16. Russian fair: The only allusion in his poems to LC’s one expedition outside the British Isles, all the way across Europe to Russia, leaving in July 1867.
20. sit: The children are to “sit” for their father, the Pre-Raphaelite painter and illustrator, Arthur Hughes. LC purchased his The Lady with the Lilacs.
[“Two little girls near London dwell”]
For Trina and Freda Bremer, written while on a visit to their mother Elizabeth Bremer, October 1870. The answers are 4 TurF, 6 RiveR, 8 IcE, 10 NoD, 12 AfricA.
[“Thanks, thanks, fair Cousins, for your gift”]
Written for Mabel and Emily Kerr, 20 May 1871, nieces of Mrs Edwin Hatch, who were living in Canada and had sent LC a “carte” (carte-de-visite-sized photograph) of themselves. This ingenious double-acrosti
c includes a joke substitution in each of the rhymes (“league” for mile, “Noah” for Adam, “cauliflower” for broccoli, “acre” for ell, “parrot” for Lory (see Wonderland, chapter 3)). The correct rhyme words run downwards to form their names, Mabel and Emily.
[“I saw a child; even if blind”]
Sent to Edith Argles; Dolly was her little sister. See also note to “(To Miss E. M. Argles.)” The answers are 1 CrueL, 3 DollY, 5 ColD, 7 RomeO, 9 UnfiliaL, 11 EviL, 13 LoudlY.
A Day in the Country
Woolf (pp. 59–61) prints this poem and her suggested solutions are given here. She describes its double-acrostic structure: each verse is a riddle “and the puzzler must figure out the two ‘column-words’ which relate to the entire poem and whose letters in order begin and end each riddle’s solution” (p. 59). The puzzle has never been completely solved and some of Woolf’s suggestions are doubtful. The more certain answers are 4 PortmanteaU, 8 PhotographY, 12 PumP, 16 OstricH, 20 RomeO, 32 AssemblinG (?), 40 TeA, 44 EggcuP, 52 UglY. My own added suggestions would be: 24 T—T: Tait; 28 M—O Malvolio; 36 N—R Napier? (48 A—H). Edward Wakeling has passed on the information, from Alan Tannenbaum (private communication) that the acrostic was addressed to Professor Henry Wall, a logician, so that several of the clues may be the names of logicians. Wakeling’s further suggestions are: Talent, Memento, Awning, Nestler or Number, Arch.
37. evening’s: Reads “evening” in MS.
Maggie’s Visit to Oxford
Maggie Bowman was the younger sister of Isa, one of LC’s favourite friends. She and her three sisters all became successful actresses. All the episodes in the poem are also recorded in his diary. Maggie was touring in Bootles’ Baby, a comedy by Hugh Moss (1888); it was made into a film in 1914.
A Lesson in Latin
This poem was written in May 1888 for the fourth class of the Latin School for Girls in Boston, Massachusetts. LC had given them permission to name their school magazine Jabberwock. The poem plays the Latin infinitive “to love” or the imperative “be loved” – amare – against the adverb – amare – “bitterly”.
[“My First has no beard – but its whiskers abound”]
Solution: A Kit/chin = A. Kitchin, (Letters, i, 384). See note to “For Alexandra Kitchin”.
To Miss Véra Beringer
Sent while Véra Beringer was on holiday on the Isle of Man (probably July 1888), this limerick is a rare example of the form for LC (see “Melodies” and note). She was an actress who in 1888 at the age of nine performed Lord Fauntleroy “with wonderful naturalness and spirit” (Diaries, viii, 400).
Riddle Poem
Sent to Olive, Ruth and Violet Butler, 29 December 1892. Read down from O in the first line for the name “Olive”. The “berry” is Olive, “sorrow” is Ruth, the “Third” is Violet (obscurely). Is Butler a reference to butlers’ tipsy reputation?
[Some Poems to accompany Photographs]
The Castle Builder
Poem written to accompany the 9 July 1875 photograph of Edith Morley, daughter of Henry Morley, professor of English literature at University College London, and his wife, Mary. Edith was photographed in beachwear with a spade (Diaries, vi, 404).
[“No sooner does the sun appear”]
Poems to accompany two photographs in Henry Holiday’s album of Daisy Whiteside and of Daisy and her mother, taken 10 July 1875 (Diaries, vi, 404–5, 407).
Going a-shrimping
Poem to accompany photograph in Henry Holiday’s album of Honor, Evelyn and Olive Brooke, children of Stopford Brooke, then a widower, 13 July 1875. Honor later recounted how she and Winifred Holiday “climbed a tree and discussed how I would like to be taken with naked toes”: see Diaries, vi, 406 note 666. See also note to “To My Child-Friend”.
[“Breathes there the man with soul so dead”]
Sent in a letter to Arthur Lewis, 21 April 1880 (Diaries, vii, 261 note 472). Lewis was married to Kate Terry and they had four daughters. LC wrote: “This is the sort of think [sic] Scott would have written if he had lived in our day.” Cf. Scott’s Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805):
Breathes there a man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself has said,
This is my own, my native land!
Ode addressed to a Young Lady
Sent in a letter to Albina (Lily) Falle, 23 May 1884 (Diaries, viii, 111–12).
Who Killed Cock Robin?
LC sent this poem in his own handwriting to Mrs E. L. Shute on 18 February 1887, and she believed it to be by him. But it is unusual in taking a strong political position outside his Oxford concerns and does not employ LC’s more usual tactics in his parodies, though the rewriting of a nursery rhyme is like him. R. B. Shaberman in Under the Quizzing-Glass suggests that LC may have hoped, unsuccessfully, to publish it in Punch for which its content would have been suitable.
The First Boer war took place in 1880–81. “Willy” is the Prime Minister William Gladstone. The hasty political settlement in March 1881 was deplored by many commentators.
A possible source of personal interest for LC was that his child-friend Hallie (Clara Halyburton Cunnynghame) (see “To ‘Hallie’ ”) later married Robert Oxley who was Commander of the Gordon Highlanders at Kabul in 1879.
Sylvie and Bruno (1889) and Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893)
Sylvie and Bruno
This long and complex work was seeded as early as 1867 by the short story “Bruno’s Revenge”, which includes the fairy song beginning “Rise, Oh rise! The daylight dies”. Chapter references for the poems are given below because of the length of the work. In the Preface LC declares that he wrote it “in the hope of supplying, for the children whom I love, some thoughts that may suit those hours of innocent merriment which are the very life of childhood: and also, in the hope of suggesting, to them and to others, some thoughts that may prove, I would fain hope, not wholly out of harmony with the graver cadences of life”. See Introduction, pp. xxi–xxiii.
[“Who sins in hope, who, sinning, says”]
Included in the Preface, this poem suggests the much graver tone: God is not mocked.
[“Is all our Life, then, but a dream”]
The dedicatory poem is addressed to Isa Bowman and the initial letters of each line spell her name. The poem muses on the final line of the poem that concludes Looking-Glass: “Life, what is it but a dream?” See also note to “Maggie’s Visit to Oxford”.
5. raree-show: A peepbox: LC loved toy theatres, marionettes and peep shows as well as the stage.
[A Beggar’s Palace]
Chapter 5.
[The Gardener’s Song]
The stanzas appear at irregular intervals (stanza 1, chapter 5; 2–3, chapter 6, etc.) throughout Sylvie and Bruno; stanza 9 is from Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, chapter 20.
The Old Man’s Incantation
Chapter 9.
Peter and Paul
Chapter 11. This relentless, comic and sardonic tale reworks the meaning of the old saying “Robbing Peter to pay Paul”. The money never gets lent but the debt must be repaid.
[“He either fears his fate too much”]
Chapter 14.
Fairies’ Song
Chapter 15. The song is interrupted by the arrival of Sylvie (and never finished).
The Three Badgers
Chapter 17. Another ruthless rhyme reminiscent of “The Walrus and the Carpenter”.
Light Come, Light Go
Chapter 20. The title implies a sadder outcome than the poem relates.
Sylvie and Bruno Concluded
[“Dreams, that elude the Maker’s frenzied grasp”]
This dedicatory poem of farewell to his Sylvie and Bruno books is addressed to Enid Stevens, an Oxford child-friend, and the third letter of each line spells her name.
[“King Fisher courted Lady Bird”]
Chapter 1.
[Streaks of Dawn]
Chapter 3.
Matilda Jane
Chapter 5. This poem was first
sent with a copy of Wonderland in French to Mrs Holiday on 7 June 1870, though it was written for his cousin Menella (Nella) Wilcox about her doll Matilda Jane, necessarily “deaf, and dumb, and blind” (14), but beloved (Handbook, p. 185 and Hatch, p. 125).
The Revellers’ Song
Chapter 5.
What Tottles Meant
This poem is spread across several chapters (13–16). It uses a fixed refrain (“and he meant it”), which changes meaning in the course of the tale.
[The Earl’s Poem]
Chapter 16.
[“In stature the Manlet was dwarfish”]
Chapter 17.
A Fairy-Duet
Chapter 19.
The Pig-Tale
Chapter 23. This poem, as Bruno remarks, “begins miserably, and it ends miserablier”. It is one of the “Other Professor’s” endless tales. Lurking in it is LC’s loathing of hunting. (Stanza 5 first appeared in Sylvie and Bruno, chapter 10.)
Late Collections
Rhyme? And Reason? (1883)
This collection largely consists of previously published poems, illustrated by Henry Holiday and Arthur Frost. Only the new ones are printed here.
Echoes
The poem combines fragments from Wordsworth’s “We are Seven” with some from Tennyson’s “Lady Clara Vere de Vere” and his “Locksley Hall”.
A Game of Fives
Possibly an ungallant reference to LC’s responsibility towards his unmarried sisters.
Four Riddles
No. I. “There was an ancient city” is printed in Phantasmagoria.
II.
Edward Wakeling and Kazunari Takaya have worked out this double-acrostic, based on Ellen Terry as Ophelia: cross-lights: ENGAGEMENT, LOVE, LETTER, EQUIVOCATOR, NUNNERY (Mischmasch: The Journal of the Lewis Carroll Society of Japan, ix, 2007, pp. 152–71).
III.
In W. S. Gilbert’s very successful blank-verse drama Pygmalion and Galatea (1871), Pygmalion is married to Cynisca who at first is happy for him to be fond of his statue of Galatea, but when she comes to life Cynisca grows jealous and after twenty-four hours of life Galatea thinks it best to return to her statue state. So, Gala-tea: Galatea.
Jabberwocky and Other Nonsense Page 32