Where he lived: Tom Quad at Christ Church college, Oxford (Photo: Toby Ord)
It’s Lewis Carroll‘s birthday! I’ve become more fond of the Oxford author since I’ve become terribly fond of his haunts – I have regularly stayed across the street from Christ Church college at Oxford, where he lived forever. It’s grand.
Very early selfie
Christ Church college has produced thirteen prime ministers. More importantly, it produced W.H. Auden, and is the academic setting for Evelyn Waugh‘s Brideshead Revisited. So Charles Dodgson, too, attended the famous college, and continued his association with it till his death.
But here’s another thing he should be remembered for, besides Alice in Wonderland, and besides mathematics, besides even the photographs. He wrote and received nearly a hundred thousand letters – 98,721, to be precise. He was so good at it that he gave advice on letter writing, in a missive titled “Eight or Nine Wise Words About Letter-Writing.” You can read the whole thing here. It includes some handy advice on stamp cases, as if you ever thought of possessing such a thing.
How to begin a letter? First, check the address. Then he advises, “Next, Address and Stamp the Envelope. ‘What! Before writing the Letter?’ Most certainly. And I’ll tell you what will happen if you don’t. You will go on writing till the last moment, and just in the middle of the last sentence, you will become aware that ‘time’s up!’ Then comes the hurried wind-up—the wildly-scrawled signature—the hastily-fastened envelope, which comes open in the post—the address, a mere hieroglyphic—the horrible discovery that you’ve forgotten to replenish your Stamp-Case—the frantic appeal, to every one in the house, to lend you a Stamp—the headlong rush to the Post Office, arriving, hot and gasping, just after the box has closed—and finally, a week afterwards, the return of the Letter, from the Dead-Letter Office, marked ‘address illegible’!” Well, that’s more than eight or nine words right there. And what’s with all the caps?
He also has some more practical modern advice, for those of us dedicated to electronic correspondence. To wit:
“Your friend is much more likely to enjoy your wit, after his own anxiety for information has been satisfied.“ Start with “Aunt Maude is dead,” and then work in your jokes after that.
“When once you have said your say, full and clearly, on a certain point, and have failed to convince your friend, drop that subject: to repeat your arguments, all over again, will simply lead to his doing the same; and so you will go on, like a Circulating Decimal.”
“If it should ever occur to you to write jestingly, in dispraise of your friend, be sure you exaggerate enough to make the jesting obvious: a word spoken in jest, but taken as earnest, may lead to very serious consequences.”
And try not to have the last word, he advises. Even when your opponent is smugly satisfied that he has stunned you into shamed silence. It’s not worth it.
Steve Leveen at the Huffington Post writes more about it here.
Tags: Charles Dodgson, Evelyn Waugh, Lewis Carroll, Steve Leveen, W.H. Auden