An Oxford Discovery

Cilla Bull, the Great Master’s talented assistant, went up to Oxford last autumn. The pressure on student accommodation meant that she found herself staying in an old attic. There she found an old trunk containing a notebook. It appears that the Reverend Dodgson, before he succumbed to the Victorian idea of what a poem should look like, recorded his unique inspirations in another form. Page 17 is reproduced below:

	Ongoing dispute Tweedledum and Tweedledee —Big black crow ends it He had a great fall Humpty (off the wall) Dumpty —Irreversible Brillig. Slithy toves In the wabe, gyre and gimble —Outgrabing mome raths Jabberwocky! The frumious bandersnatch —Vorpal sword needed Walking close at hand Walrus and the carpenter —Oyster outlook bleak
Cilla was so moved by them that, using the last line of ‘Looking Glass’, she wrote the following:
	Suddenly awake Life—what is it but a dream Of queens and kittens?

Little frog

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