WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
Further nonsense verse and prose cover

Further nonsense verse and prose

Chapter 3: THE LADY OF THE LADLE[2]
By Lewis Carroll
Open in WeRead

About This Book

A varied collection of short pieces that mixes nonsense verse, limericks, parodies, acrostics, playful correspondence, and brief comic prose. Poems range from brisk, absurd ditties to more measured, mildly melancholic lyrics, while prose items include mock-serious essays on manners, whimsical imaginings, and light mathematical or logical pastiches. The pieces rely on inventive wordplay, paradox, and satire of social convention, shifting between ear-catching rhythms and conversational wit. Arranged as a miscellany, the work emphasizes formal experimentation and a childlike playfulness tempered by occasional gentle reflection.

THE LADY OF THE LADLE[2]


(From “The Whitby Gazette” of August 31, 1854)

The Youth at Eve had drunk his fill,
Where stands the “Royal” on the Hill,
And long his mid-day stroll had made,
On the so called “Marine Parade”—
(Meant, I presume, for Seamen brave,
Whose “march is on the Mountain wave”;
’Twere just the bathing-place for him
Who stays on land till he can swim—)
And he had strayed into the Town,
And paced each alley up and down,
Where still so narrow grew the way,
The very houses seemed to say,
Nodding to friends across the Street,
“One struggle more and we shall meet.”
And he had scaled that wondrous stair
That soars from earth to upper air
Where rich and poor alike must climb,
And walk the treadmill for a time.
That morning he had dressed with care,
And put Pomatum in his hair;
He was, the loungers all agreed,
A very heavy swell indeed:
Men thought him, as he swaggered by,
Some scion of nobility,
And never dreamed, so cold his look,
That he had loved—and loved a Cook.
Upon the beach he stood and sighed,
Unheedful of the treacherous tide;
Thus sang he to the listening main,
And soothed his sorrow with the strain!

[2] It has given the editor much pleasure to “discover” this poem and the story “Wilhelm von Schmitz” on p. 57, for since their original appearance in print seventy-two years ago neither has been published, or even quoted, and it is extremely doubtful whether more than two or three people know of their existence. So that if not “new and unpublished matter by Lewis Carroll” in fact, they are certainly so in effect—so far as every one younger than eighty is concerned! Mr. Dodgson composed them during the Oxford Long Vacation of 1854, which he spent at Whitby reading for Mathematics. He stayed at 5, East Terrace, from July 20th to September 21st. He was twenty-two at the time, and this early work from his pen, although somewhat periphrastic, gives promise, in its appreciation of the preposterous and the calculated precision of its phraseology, of the genius which was destined to make the name of Lewis Carroll immortal. The “Hilda” and the “Goliath” were local pleasure craft of the period, and the “wondrous stair” refers presumably to that steep and picturesque ascent known as “Jacob’s Ladder,” which is still a Whitby wonder.