To ‘What-you-may-call-um!’ or ‘What-was-his-name!’
But especially ‘Thing-um-a-jig!’
“While, for those who preferred a more forcible word,
He had different names from these:
His intimate friends called him ‘Candle-ends,’
And his enemies ‘Toasted-cheese.’
“‘His form is ungainly, his intellect small’
(So the Bellman would often remark);
‘But his courage is perfect! and that, after all,
Is the thing that one needs with a Snark.’
“He would joke with hyenas, returning their stare
With an impudent wag of the head:
And he once went a walk, paw-in-paw with a bear,
‘Just to keep up its spirits,’ he said.
“He came as a Baker: but owned when too late—
And it drove the poor Bellman half-mad—
He could only bake Bride-cake, for which I may state,
No materials were to be had.”
Notice how ingeniously the actors in this drama are introduced; all the “B’s,” as it were, buzzing after the phantom of happiness, which eludes them, no matter how hard they struggle to find it. Notice, too, that all these beings are unmarried, a fact shown by the Baker not being able to make a bride-cake as there are no materials on hand. All these creatures, while hunting for happiness, came to prey upon each other. The Butcher only killed Beavers, the Barrister was hunting among his fellow sailors for a good legal case. The Banker took charge of all their cash, for it certainly takes money to hunt properly for a Snark, and it is a well-known fact that bankers need all the money they can get.
Fit the Second describes the Bellman and why he had such influence with his crew:
The Bellman himself they all praised to the skies:
Such a carriage, such ease, and such grace!
Such solemnity, too! One could see he was wise,
The moment one looked in his face!
He had bought a large map representing the sea,
Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be
A map they could all understand.
“What’s the good of Mercator’s North Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?”
So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply,
“They are merely conventional signs!”
“Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!
But we’ve got our brave Captain to thank”
(So the crew would protest), “that he’s bought us the best—
A perfect and absolute blank!”
And true enough, the Bellman’s idea of the ocean was a big square basin, with the latitude and longitude carefully written out on the margin. They found, however, that their “brave Captain” knew very little about navigation, he—
“Had only one notion for crossing the ocean,
And that was to tingle his bell.”
He thought nothing of telling his crew to steer starboard and larboard at the same time, and then we know how—
The bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes.
“A thing,” as the Bellman remarked,
“That frequently happens in tropical climes,
When a vessel is, so to speak, ‘snarked.’”
The Bellman had hoped, when the wind blew toward the east, that the ship would not travel toward the west, but it seems that with all his nautical knowledge he could not prevent it; ships are perverse animals!
“But the danger was past—they had landed at last,
With their boxes, portmanteaus, and bags:
Yet at first sight the crew were not pleased with the view,
Which consisted of chasms and crags.”
Now that they had reached the land of the Snark, the Bellman proceeded to air his knowledge on that subject.
“A snark,” he said, “had five unmistakable traits—its taste, ‘meager and mellow and crisp,’ its habit of getting up late, its slowness in taking a jest, its fondness for bathing machines, and, fifth and lastly, its ambition.” He further informed the crew that “the snarks that had feathers could bite, and those that had whiskers could scratch,” adding as an afterthought:
“‘For although common Snarks do no manner of harm,
Yet I feel it my duty to say,
Some are Boojums—’ The Bellman broke off in alarm,
For the Baker had fainted away.”
Fit the Third was the Baker’s tale.
“They roused him with muffins, they roused him with ice,
They roused him with mustard and cress,
They roused him with jam and judicious advice,
They set him conundrums to guess.”
Then he explained why it was that the name “Boojum” made him faint. It seems that a dear uncle, after whom he was named, gave him some wholesome advice about the way to hunt a snark, and this uncle seemed to be a man of much influence:
“‘You may seek it with thimbles, and seek it with care;
You may hunt it with forks and hope;
You may threaten its life with a railway-share;
You may charm it with smiles and soap——’”
“‘That’s exactly the method,’ the Bellman bold
In a hasty parenthesis cried,
‘That’s exactly the way I have always been told
That the capture of Snarks should be tried!’”
“‘But, oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day,
If your Snark be a Boojum! For then
You will softly and suddenly vanish away,
And never be met with again!’”
This of course was a very sad thing to think of, for the man with no name, who was named after his uncle, and called in courtesy the Baker, had grown to be a great favorite with the crew; but they had no time to waste in sentiment—they were in the Snark’s own land, they had the Bellman’s orders in Fit the Fourth—the Hunting:
“To seek it with thimbles, to seek it with care;
To pursue it with forks and hope;
To threaten its life with a railway share;
To charm it with smiles and soap!
“For the Snark’s a peculiar creature, that won’t
Be caught in a commonplace way.
Do all that you know, and try all that you don’t:
Not a chance must be wasted to-day!”
Then they all went to work according to their own special way, just as we would do now in our hunt for happiness through the chasms and crags of every day.
Fit the Fifth is the Beaver’s Lesson, when the Butcher discourses wisely on arithmetic and natural history, two subjects a butcher should know pretty thoroughly, and this is proved:
“While the Beaver confessed, with affectionate looks
More eloquent even than tears,
It had learned in ten minutes far more than all books
Would have taught it in seventy years.”
The Barrister’s Dream occupied Fit the Sixth, and here our poet’s keen wit gave many a slap at the law and the lawyers.
The Banker’s Fate in Fit the Seventh was sad enough; he was grabbed by the Bandersnatch (that “frumious” “portmanteau” creature that we met before in the Lay of the Jabberwocky) and worried and tossed about until he completely lost his senses. Some bankers are that way in the pursuit of fortune, which means happiness to them; but fortune may turn, like the Bandersnatch, and shake their minds out of their bodies, and so they left this Banker to his fate. That is the way of people when bankers are in trouble, because they were reckless and not always careful to
“Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch.”
Fit the Eighth treats of the vanishing of the Baker according to the prediction of his prophetic uncle. All day long the eager searchers had hunted in vain, but just at the close of the day they heard
a shout in the distance and beheld their Baker “erect and sublime” on top of a crag, waving his arms and shouting wildly; then before their startled and horrified gaze, he plunged into a chasm and disappeared forever.
“‘It’s a Snark!’ was the sound that first came to their ears.
And seemed almost too good to be true.
Then followed a torrent of laughter and cheers,
Then the ominous words, ‘It’s a Boo——’
“Then, silence. Some fancied they heard in the air
A weary and wandering sigh
That sounded like ‘jum!’ but the others declare
It was only a breeze that went by.
“They hunted till darkness came on, but they found
Not a button, or feather, or mark
By which they could tell that they stood on the ground
Where the Baker had met with the Snark.
“In the midst of the word he was trying to say,
In the midst of his laughter and glee,
He had softly and suddenly vanished away—
For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.”
What became of the Bellman and his crew is left to our imagination. Perhaps the Baker’s fate was a warning, or perhaps they are still hunting—not too close to the chasm. Lewis Carroll, always so particular about proper endings, refuses any explanation. The fact that this special Snark was a “Boojum” altered all the rules of the hunt. Nobody knows what it is, but all the same nobody wishes to meet a “Boojum.” That’s all there is about it.
“Now how absurd to talk such nonsense!” some learned school girl may exclaim; undoubtedly one who has high ideals about life and literature. But is it nonsense we are talking, and does the quaint poem really teach us nothing? Anything which brings a picture to the mind must surely have some merit, and there is much homely common sense wrapped up in the queer verses if we have but the wit to find it, and no one is too young nor too old to join in this hunt for happiness.
Read the poem over and over, put expression and feeling into it, treat the Bellman and his strange crew as if they were real human beings—there’s a lot of the human in them after all—and see if new ideas and new meanings do not pop into your head with each reading, while the verses, all unconsciously, will stick in your memory, where Tennyson or Wordsworth or even Shakespeare fails to hold a place there.
Of course, Lewis Carroll’s own especial girlfriends understood “The Hunting of the Snark” better than the less favored “outsiders.” First of all there was Lewis Carroll himself to read it to them in his own expressive way, his pleasant voice sinking impressively at exciting moments, and his clear explanation of each “portmanteau” word helping along wonderfully. We can fancy the gleam of fun in the blue eyes, the sweep of his hand across his hair, the sudden sweet smile with which he pointed his jests or clothed his moral, as the case might be. Indeed, one little girl was so fascinated with the poem which he sent her as a gift that she learned the whole of it by heart, and insisted on repeating it during a long country drive.
“The Hunting of the Snark” created quite a sensation among his friends. The first edition was finely illustrated by Henry Holiday, whose clever drawings show how well he understood the poem, and what sympathy existed between himself and the author.
“Phantasmagoria,” his ghost poem, deals with the friendly relations always existing between ghosts and the people they are supposed to haunt; a whimsical idea, carried out in Lewis Carroll’s whimsical way, with lots of fun and a good deal of simple philosophy worked out in the verses. One canto is particularly amusing. Here are some of the verses:
Oh, when I was a little Ghost,
A merry time had we!
Each seated on his favorite post,
We chumped and chawed the buttered toast
They gave us for our tea.
“That story is in print!” I cried.
“Don’t say it’s not, because
It’s known as well as Bradshaw’s Guide!”
(The Ghost uneasily replied
He hardly thought it was.)
It’s not in Nursery Rhymes? And yet
I almost think it is—
“Three little Ghostesses” were set
“On postesses,” you know, and ate
Their “buttered toastesses.”
“The Three Voices,” his next ambitious poem, is rather out of the realm of childhood. A weak-minded man and a strong-minded lady met on the seashore, she having rescued his hat from the antics of a playful breeze by pinning it down on the sands with her umbrella, right through the center of the soft crown. When she handed it to him in its battered state, he was scarcely as grateful as he might have been—he was rude, in fact,
For it had lost its shape and shine,
And it had cost him four-and-nine,
And he was going out to dine.
“To dine!” she sneered in acid tone.
“To bend thy being to a bone
Clothed in a radiance not its own!”
“Term it not ‘radiance,’” said he:
“’Tis solid nutriment to me.
Dinner is Dinner: Tea is Tea.”
And she “Yea so? Yet wherefore cease?
Let thy scant knowledge find increase.
Say ‘Men are Men, and Geese are Geese.’”
The gentleman wanted to get away from this severe lady, but he could see no escape, for she was getting excited.
“To dine!” she shrieked, in dragon-wrath.
“To swallow wines all foam and froth!
To simper at a tablecloth!
“Canst thou desire or pie or puff?
Thy well-bred manners were enough,
Without such gross material stuff.”
“Yet well-bred men,” he faintly said,
“Are not unwilling to be fed:
Nor are they well without the bread.”
Her visage scorched him ere she spoke;
“There are,” she said, “a kind of folk
Who have no horror of a joke.
“Such wretches live: they take their share
Of common earth and common air:
We come across them here and there.”
“We grant them—there is no escape—
A sort of semihuman shape
Suggestive of the manlike Ape.”
So the arguing went on—her Voice, his Voice, and the Voice of the Sea. He tried to joke away her solemn mood with a pun.
“The world is but a Thought,” said he:
“The vast, unfathomable sea
Is but a Notion—unto me.”
And darkly fell her answer dread
Upon his unresisting head,
Like half a hundredweight of lead.
“The Good and Great must ever shun
That reckless and abandoned one
Who stoops to perpetrate a pun.
“The man that smokes—that reads the Times—
That goes to Christmas Pantomimes—
Is capable of any crimes!”
Anyone can understand these verses, but it is very plain that the poem is a satire on the rise of the learned lady, who takes no interest in the lighter, pleasanter side of life; a being much detested by Lewis Carroll, who above all things loved a “womanly woman.” As he grew older he became somewhat precise and old-fashioned in his opinions—that is perhaps the reason why he was so lovable. His ideals of womanhood and little girlhood were fixed and beautiful dreams, untouched by the rush of the times. The “new woman” puzzled and pained him quite as much as the pert, precocious, up-to-date girl. Would there were more Lewis Carrolls in the world; quiet, simple, old-fashioned, courteous gentlemen with ideals!
Here is a clever little poem dedicated to girls, which he calls
A GAME OF FIVES.
Five little girls, of five, four, three, two, one:
Rolling on the hearthrug, full of tricks and fun.
Five rosy girls, in years from ten to six:
S
itting down to lessons—no more time for tricks.
Five growing girls, from fifteen to eleven:
Music, drawing, languages, and food enough for seven!
Five winsome girls, from twenty to sixteen:
Each young man that calls I say, “Now tell me which you mean!”
Five dashing girls, the youngest twenty-one:
But if nobody proposes, what is there to be done?
Five showy girls—but thirty is an age
When girls may be engaging, but they somehow don’t engage.
Five dressy girls, of thirty-one or more:
So gracious to the shy young men they snubbed so much before!
Five passé girls. Their age? Well, never mind!
We jog along together, like the rest of human kind:
But the quondam “careless bachelor” begins to think he knows
The answer to that ancient problem “how the money goes!”
There was no theme, in short, that Lewis Carroll did not fit into a rhyme or a poem. Some of them were full of real feeling, others were sparkling with nonsense, but all had their charm. No style nor meter daunted him; no poet was too great for his clever pen to parody; no ode was too heroic for a little earthly fun; and when the measure was rollicking the rhymer was at his best. Of this last, Alice’s invitation to the Looking-Glass world is a fair example:
To the Looking-Glass world it was Alice that said,
“I’ve a scepter in hand, I’ve a crown on my head.
Let the Looking-Glass creatures, whatever they be,
Come and dine with the Red Queen, the White Queen, and me!”
Then fill up the glasses as quick as you can,
And sprinkle the table with buttons and bran;
Put cats in the coffee, and mice in the tea,
And welcome Queen Alice with thirty-times-three!
“O Looking-Glass creatures,” quoth Alice, “draw near!
’Tis an honor to see me, a favor to hear;
Complete Works of Lewis Carroll Page 165
