As to the meaning of the Snark [he wrote to a friend in America], I’m very much afraid I didn’t mean anything but nonsense.  Still, you know, words mean more than we mean to express when we use them; so a whole book ought to mean a great deal more than the writer means.  So, whatever good meanings are in the book, I’m glad to accept as the meaning of the book.  The best that I’ve seen is by a lady (she published it in a letter to a newspaper), that the whole book is an allegory on the search after happiness.  I think this fits in beautifully in many ways—­particularly about the bathing-machines:  when the people get weary of life, and can’t find happiness in towns or in books, then they rush off to the seaside, to see what bathing-machines will do for them.

[Illustration:  Henry Holiday in his Studio. From a photograph.]

Mr. H. Holiday, in a very interesting article on “The Snark’s Significance” (Academy, January 29, 1898), quoted the inscription which Mr. Dodgson had written in a vellum-bound, presentation-copy of the book.  It is so characteristic that I take the liberty of reproducing it here:—­

    Presented to Henry Holiday, most patient of artists, by
    Charles L. Dodgson, most exacting, but not most ungrateful
    of authors, March 29, 1876.

A little girl, to whom Mr. Dodgson had given a copy of the “Snark,” managed to get the whole poem off by heart, and insisted on reciting, it from beginning to end during a long carriage-drive.  Her friends, who, from the nature of the case, were unable to escape, no doubt wished that she, too, was a Boojum.

During the year, the first public dramatic representation of “Alice in Wonderland” was given at the Polytechnic, the entertainment taking the form of a series of tableaux, interspersed with appropriate readings and songs.  Mr. Dodgson exercised a rigid censorship over all the extraneous matter introduced into the performance, and put his veto upon a verse in one of the songs, in which the drowning of kittens was treated from the humorous point of view, lest the children in the audience might learn to think lightly of death in the case of the lower animals.

[Illustration:  Lewis Carroll. From a photograph.]

* * * * *

CHAPTER V

(1877-1883)

Dramatic tastes—­Miss Ellen Terry—­“Natural Science at Oxford”—­Mr. Dodgson as an artist—­Miss E. G. Thomson—­The drawing of children—­A curious dream—­“The Deserted Parks”—­“Syzygies”—­Circus children—­Row-loving undergraduates—­A letter to The Observer—­Resignation of the Lectureship—­He is elected Curator of the Common Room—­Dream-music.

Mr. Dodgson’s love of the drama was not, as I have shown, a taste which he acquired in later years.  From early college days he never missed anything which