Lewis Carroll (1832 – 1898)
British author, mathematician, Anglican clergyman, logician, and amateur photographer, more famous under the pen name Lewis Carroll.
Cramped by his own charts, on a stream itself restricted, his genius directed him to the bottomless ocean of his books, and impelled him to dive under the graciously sparkling surface into the dark swirl of the icy depths.
"You have no mind to be unkind,"
Said echo in her ear:
"No mind to bring a living thing
To suffering or fear.
For all that's bad, or mean or sad, you have no mind,
my dear."
There are certain things - as, a spider, a ghost,
The income-tax, gout, an umbrella for three -
That I hate, but the thing that I hate the most
Is a thing they call the Sea.
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson's life in space-time colored his liberated life of the imagination.
The light was faint, and soft the air
That breathed around the place;
And she was lithe, and tall, and fair,
And with a wayward grace
Her queenly head she bare.
And as to being in a fright,
Allow me to remark
That Ghosts have just as good a right
In every way, to fear the light,
As Men to fear the dark.
Not as in rest she bowed,
But large hot tears were coursing down her cheek.
And her low-panted sobs broke awefully
Upon the sleeping echoes of the night.
Went to the new Church both morning and afternoon, and read service in the afternoon. I got through it all with great success, till I came to read out the first verse of the hymn before the sermon, where the two words ‘strife strengthened,’ coming together, were too much for me, and I had to leave the verse unfinished.
Now that's a thing I WILL NOT STAND,
And so I tell you flat.
Never was there a more delightful host for a "dinner-party," or one who took such pains for your entertainment, fresh and interesting to the last.
And the exquisite nonsense he talked! It was like pages out of the Alices, only more delightful, for there was his own voice and smile to give the true charm to it all.
Rich deposits of perversity crop up in his humor - and his sudden attacks of virtue or sentimentality midway through his own or other persons' jests hint that his imp has suggested to him something particularly unfunny and unpardonable.
'Tis a secret: none knows how it comes, how it goes:
But the name of the secret is Love!
It may be taken as axiomatic that whatever Dodgson was thinking and feeling at the time found its way into his 'nonsense'.
Oh, when I was a little Ghost,
A merry time had we!
Each seated on his favourite post,
We chumped and chawed the buttered toast
They gave us for our tea.
Dodgson was overcome by the beauty of Cologne Cathedral. I found him leaning against the rails of the Choir and sobbing like a child. When the verger came to show us over the chapels behind the Choir, he got out of the way, he said that he could not bear the harsh voice of the man in the presence of so much beauty.
Some American writer has said “the snakes in this district may be divided into one species—the venomous”. The same principle applies here. Postage-Stamp-Cases may be divided into one species, the “Wonderland”. Imitations of it will soon appear, no doubt: but they cannot include the two Pictorial Surprises, which are copyright.
Mr. Dodgson did not often preach, yet, when he did, he had the power to impress and captivate his hearers. There was no need for him to write out a sermon. Full of earnestness in his subject, the words came without difficulty. Neither was there any danger of his wandering from the direct point, for before the eye of his ordered and logical mind, his subject would arise in the form of a diagram to be worked out point by point.
Phyllis Greenacre, quoted in Florence Becker Lennon, The Life of Lewis Carroll (1962), p.32
A change came o'er my Vision - it was night:
We clove a pathway through a frantic throng:
The steeds, wild-plunging, filled us with affright:
The chariots whirled along.