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The Snark’s Significanceby Henry Holiday

(Tan, 29,1898.

THE SNARK’S SIGNIFICANCE.

I.

Mvor fruitless speculation has been spentover supposed hidden meanings in LewisCarroll’s Hunting of the Snark. Theinclina-tion to search for these wasstrictly natural,though the search was destined to fail.

It is possible that the author was half-consciously laying a trap, so readily did hetake to the inventing of puzzles and thingsenigmatic; but to those who knew the man,or who have divined him correctly throughhis writings, the explanation is fairlysimple.Mr. Dodgson had a mathematical, a

logical, and a philosophical mind ; and whenthese qualities are united to a love of thegrotesque, the resultant fancies are sure tohave a quite peculiar charm, a charm somuch the greater because its source is subtleand eludes all attempts to grasp it. Some-times he seems to revel in ideas which arenot merely illogical but anti-logical, aswhere the Bellman supplies his crew withcharts of the ocean in which the land isomitted for the sake of simplicity, and“north poles and equators, tropics, zonesand meridian lines”? are rejected because‘“‘they are merely conventional signs.’”’ Or,as in the Barrister’s dream, where the Pig,being charged with deserting his sty, theSnark pleads an alibi in mitigation. Atother times, when the nonsense seems mostexuberant, we find an underlying order, amethod in the madness, which makes usfeel that even when he gives Fancy therein the jade knows that the firm hand isthere and there is no risk of a spill, such asseems to be the fate of so many nonsense-writers, if we may judge by the averageburlesques of the day. Take ‘‘ Jabberwocky,”for instance. The very words are unknownto any language, ancient or modern; butthey are so valuable that we have adopted

|} them and translated them into most lan-

Jan.29, - 1898, ]_ aeneee nee eee

guages, ancient and modern. What shouldwe do without “chortle,” ‘ uffish,” *‘ beam-ish,” “galumphing,” and the rest? ‘Thepage looks, when weopenit, likethe wander-ings of one insane; but as we read wefindwe have a work of creative genius, and thatour language is enriched as to its vocabulary.Whether the humour consists chiefly in

the conscious defiance oflogic by a logicalmind,or in the half-unconscious control bythat logical mind of its lively aud grotesquefancies, in either case the charm arises fromthe author’s well-ordered mind; and weneed not be surprised if the feeling thatthis is so leads many to look for somehidden purpose in his writings.The real origin of The Hunting of the

Snark is very singular. Mr. Dodgson waswalking alone one evening, whenthe words,‘‘For the Snark was a Boojum, you see,”came spontaneously into his head, and theoem was written up to them. I have

heard it said that Wagner began ‘‘ The Ringof the Nibelungs” by writing Siegfried’s‘‘Funeral March,” which certainly containsthe most important motives in the work, andthat the rest of the trilogy, or tetralogy,was developed out of it; but as this greatwork, though finished after the publicationof Lhe Hunting of the Snark (1876), wascertainly begun beforeit, it is scarcely opento me to maintain that the great Germanmaster of musical drama plagiarised in hismethods from our distinguished humorist.

Starting in this way, our author wrotethree stanzas of his poem (or “fits” of his“agony,” as he called them), and asked ifI would design three illustrations to them,explaining that the composition would someday be introduced in a book he was con-templating; but as this latter would certainlynot be ready for a considerable time, hethought of printing the poem for privatecirculation in the first instance. hile Iwas making sketches for these illustrations,he sent me a fourth “ fit,” asking for anotherdrawing; shortly after came a fifth “fit,”with @ similar request, and this was followedby a sixth, seventh, and eighth. His mindnot being occupied with any other book atthe time, this theme seemed continually tobe suggesting new developments; and havingextended the ‘“‘agony”’ thus far beyond hisoriginal intentions, Mr. Dodgson decided topublish it at once as an independent work,without waiting for Sylvie and Bruno, ofwhich it was to have formed a feature.

I rather regretted the extension, as itseemed to me to involve a disproportionbetween the scale of the work and itssubstance ; and I doubted if the expansionwere not greater than so slight a structurewould bear. The ‘ Walrus and Carpenter ”appeared to be happierin its proportion, andit mattered little whether or not it couldestablish a claim to be classified amongliterary vertebrata. However, on re-readingthe Snark now I feel it to be unquestion-ably funny throughout, and I cannot wishany part cut out; so I suppose my fearswere unfounded.

I remember a clever undergraduate atOxford, who knew the Szari; by heart,telling me that on all sorts of occasions, inall the daily incidents of life, someline fromthe poem was sure to occur to him that

__.THE ACADEMY.

exactly fitted. Most peoplewill have noticedthis peculiarity of Lewis Carroll’s writings.In the thick of the great miners’ strike of1893 I sent to the Westminster Gazette@ quotation from Alice in Wonderlandabout a mine; not a coal-mine, it is true,but amustard-mine. Alice having hazardedthe suggestion that mustard is a mineral,the Duchess tells her that she has a largemustard-mine on her estate, and adds, “Themoral of that is—the more there is of minethe less there is of yours”; which goes tothe root of the whole system of commercialcompetition, and,was marvellously apt whenlandowners were struggling for theirroyalties, mine-owners for their profits, rail-way companies for cheap fuel, and minersfor wages; each for ‘‘moum” against66 tuum,”? ;

In our correspondence about the illustra-tions, the coherence and consistency of thenonsense on its own nonsensical understand-ing often became prominent. One of thefirst three I had to do was the disappearanceof the Baker, and I not unnaturally inventeda Boojum. Mr. Dodgson wrote that it wasa delightful monster, but that it was inad-missible. All his descriptions of theBoojum were quite unimaginable, and hewanted the creature to remain so. I assented,of course, though reluctant to dismiss whatI am still confident is an accurate repre-sentation. I hope that some future Darwin,in a new Beagle, will find the beast, orits remains; if he does, I know he willconfirm my drawing.When Isent Mr. Dodgson the sketch of

the hunting, in which I had personifiedHope and Care—

‘‘ They sought it with thimbles, they sought itwith care,

They pursued it with forks and hope ”——

he wrote that he admired the figures, butthat they interfered with the point, whichconsisted in the mixing up of two meaningsof the word “with.” replied,‘ Precisely,and I intended to add a third—‘in com-pany with’—and so develop the point.”This view he cordially accepted, and theladies were admitted.In the copy bound in vellum which he

gave me the dedication runs: “ Presentedto Henry Holiday, most patient of artists,by Charles L. Dodgson, most exacting, butnot most ungrateful of authors, March 29,1876,”

The above instance will show that thoughhe justly desired to see his meanings pre-served, he was not exacting in any un-reasonable spirit. The accompanyingletter,written after the work was complete, willsufficiently show the friendly tone whichhad characterised our correspondence.

Henry Hotipay.Jan. 26, 1898,

[copy.|

‘My DEAR Honipay,—I finishedoffmyletterat Brighton yesterday in a hurry, and omittedto say how pleased I am with the proofs yousent me. They seem to me most successfullycut, and T agree with you in thinking the headof ‘ Hope’ w great success ; it is quite lovely.On my return here last night, I found the

charming chess-boards, for which aceapt mybest thanks, My sister and I have played

199several games of ‘Go-bang’ on them aireudy.(I need hardly remark that they serve just aswell or that, or for draughts, as they do forchess.Now for another bit of designing, if you

don’t mind undertaking it. Macmillan writesme word that the gorgeous cover will costls 4d.acopy! Whereas we can’t really affordmore than dd. or 6d., as we must not chargemore than 3s. for the book. Myidea is this,to have @ simpler cover for the 3s. copies,which will, no doubt, be the ones usually sold,but to offer the gorgeous covers also at 4s., whichwill be bought by the rich and these who wishto give them as presents. Whut I want youto do is to take ‘ Alice’ as a guide, anddesign covers requiring about the same amountof guld, or, better, a little less. As ‘ Alice’and the ‘ Looking-Glass’ have both gotgrotesque faces outside, I should like these tobe pretty, as a contrast, and I don’t think wecan do better than to take the head of ‘ Hope’for thefirst side, and ‘Care’ for the second ;and, as these are associated with ‘forks’ and‘thimbles’ in the poem, what do you thinkof surrounding them, one with a border ofinterlaced forks, the other with a shower ofthimbles? And what do youthink of putting@ bell at each corner of the cover, instead of asingle line? The only thing to secureis that thetotal amount of gold required shall be ratherless than on the cover of ‘ Alice.’

All these are merely suggestions : you will bea far better judge of the matter than I can be,and perhaps may think of some quite different,and better, design.—Yours ever truly,

L. Dopason,The Chestnuts, Guildford, Jan. 15, 1876.”

IT.

Human perversity has identified the Snarkwith everything possible and impossible.There exist people who, led away by theexquisite demonstration given to theButcher by the Beaver, have seen in ita treatise on pure mathematics. Otherswill have it that the Bellman is onlyan Arctic explorer and the Snark theNorth Pole; while a few, basing theirconjecture on the fact that the Barristerbears, in his portrait, an extraordinaryresemblance to the late Dr. Kenealy,maintain that the Snark is the TichborneClaimant. In fact, each reader finds theSnark that he deserves. My own is Fortune,and I am always lost in astonishmentat thepeople who think it can be anything else.Observe the things with which its capturewas attempted. Why, the mere mention ofrailway shares and soap is sufficient of itselfto establish my thesis. And then look atthe dramatis persone and their actions. TheButcher, perceiving that novelty is thesecret of success, announces himself as theonly beaver-butcher in this or any othercountry, and the Baker aims at interestby specialising in bride-cakes. Even theBanker, whose celebrated interview withthe Bandersnatch gave him so great a fright‘‘ that his waistcoat turned white,” abandonshis legitimate business in favourof the issueof insurancepolicies against fire and damagefrom hail. The Barrister dreams of points ofthe utmost nicetyand rarity, and the influenceof luck in the court is prettily emphasisedby the Snark’s assumption of the preroga~tives of the Judge. The Bellman isa trulypathetic figure. Heis the type of the man

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who pursues fortune without any sufficientconsideration of the facts of practical life,and I fancy that he must, at one time oranother, have lost a good deal of money onthe Stock Exchange. His sorrowful remarkthat “he had hoped, when the wind wasdue East, that the ship would not traveldue West,” is just what one could expectfrom a disappointed speculator. Of theBilliard-marker nothing is recorded, savethat ‘‘ his skill was immense’; but that ofitself was more than sufficient justificationfor his joining in the search for Fortune,and he may well have been the most success-ful in the end of ail the crew. ‘Thedichotomy of Snarks into those which have“feathers and bite” and those which have‘‘ whiskers and scratch” does not, I think,indicate anything more than a belief thatthere is more than one sort of good fortune,and that all are somewhat to be feared.The habit—common, apparently, to allSnarks—of breakfasting at five o’clock teaand dining the day afterwards, so obviouslytypifies the tendency of Fortune not to cometo a man until it is too late to give him anypleasure that it is unnecessary to labour thepoint, The taste—‘‘ meagre and hollow,ut crisp ’’—I regard as finally settling the

question, All varieties of Snark have them,and the most fortunate of mankind freelyadmit that this is the real flavour of success.On my hypothesis the Bandersnatch wouldbe Scandal. In Through the Looking-Glass this creature is more than oncereferred to as oxtraordinarily difficult tostop or to catch, and the judicious reader

il remember how the Banker entirelyfailed to divert its attacks bythe offer of largediscount or even bearer cheques. But what,then, is the Boojum? It is a-kind of Snark—that is clear from twenty passages. Butif a sort of good fortune, how could it haveso distressing an effect upon the man theycalled Ho? Well, I think a Boojum isthat sort of sudden, unexpected luck which‘puts a man “ above his boots,” carries himinto a sphere in which he is miserable, andmakes his wife cut the greengrocer’s lady.It is a very dangerous creature, and thewarning of the Baker’s Uncle is more thanjustified. M. H. T.

ett tet

it.

Ay ingenious friend of mine once main-tained, with considerable speciousness, thatThe Hunting of the Snark was written as asatire on the craving for what is called“social advancement.” According to hisview, the people who hunt the Snark arethe people who try to “get into Society,’’the bankers, bakers, butchers, billiard.markers, and barristers of our day. Theyare headed by an individual who rings abell because their endeavour is to attractattention, Thoy never do get into Society,these good people. The Snark is nevercaught. They only find a Boojum, whichmy friend interpreted as a kind of suburbanset, where they “ never are heard of again ”’—in the Morning Post. The theory, on theface of it, has much to be said in its favour,and I trust to get further details from myinformant. Why, for instance, did the

THE ACADEMY.

Bellman always repeat everything threetimes:

‘What I say three times is true,”

he says, with marked emphasis ?

‘“Ah,” suid my friend, ‘‘the Bellman wasone of those tedious people who always repeatthemselves, and who believe that a thing isroved if it is only asserted sufficiently often.have met loads of them. Can you wonder

that they never get into Society? e suburbanBoojum (which Itake to be a kind of BrowningSociety) is the only place for them.”’

This seemed convincing, and I next inquiredwhy it was the Baker who found theBoojum, and not one of the others. Myfriend’s reply was oracular. ‘‘ Bakers,” hesaid, ‘never get into Society. Barristersand bankers sometimes; bakers never. TheBaker, therefore, was very rightly put outin the first round.” No further informationcould I extract from myfriend, and whenmy questions grew pertinacious, he yawnedand went away. For myself, I am temptedto accept his view, and to believe thatthe whole poem is a prophetic satire onthe career of the late Barney Barnato.Students of the poem will remember thatall the Snark-hunters’ names begin with a‘B,” which is, I think, strong evidence ofmy theory. =

Sr. J. E. C. H.

(Jan. 29, 1898