Waugh | Carroll & Dodgson (1939)

[Waugh, Carroll & Dodgson Review of the Complete Works of Lewis Carroll Spectator 13/10/1939] “…. The peculiarity of the book lies in the fact that the narrator of this simple tale is intermittently haunted by two dream-children named Sylvie and Bruno. Sylvie has some undefined affinity to Lady Muriel, but Bruno, her junior, is a creation of unique horror, who babbles throughout in baby-talk, like the ‘control’ of a ‘medium’. These children first appear as characters in a dream and are part of a Ruritanian state named Outland. Soon, however, Outland and its intrigues disappear, and the children pop up during narrator’s waking hours. They come to tea with the earl and puzzle him with a bunch of exotic flowers; Bruno becomes so concrete that only the rival lover’s gallantry saves him from being run down by a railway train. Except for this single occasion, however, they play no part in the main story; they are not supernatural visitants of the type of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, who appear in order to solve or complicate the affairs of the world, but aberrations of the narrator’s mind which, one cannot help guessing, correspond to some psychological peculiarity of Dodgson’s. ….” (Gallagher D, The Essays Articles & Reviews of Evelyn Waugh, Methuen, 1983, p261)