Phantasmagoria (Lewis Caroll Poem)

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[edit] Phantasmagoria by Lewis Carroll

"Phantasmagoria" is a poem that appeared in a book that was written by Lewis Carroll and published by Macmillan in London for the first time in 1869. It appeared with several new poems:

A Valentine A Double Acrostic The Valley of the Shadow of Death Lines, Stanzas for Music and The Christmas Greetings

The others have appeared in magazines and other periodicals with the exception of The Election to the Hebdomal Council which was published by itself.

Cover illustrations on the original book (Morgan Library copy) represent the Crab Nebula in Tauras and Donah’s Comet, “Two distinguished members of the Celestial Phantasmargoria.”

• * *

Phantasmagoria is divided into seven cantos which are named:

Canto 1. The Trysting Canto 2. Hys Fyve Rules Canto 3. Scarmoges Canto 4. Hys Nouryture Canto 5. Byckerment Canto 6. Dyscomfyture Canto 7. Sad Souvenaunce

(note that the number 7 is a factor of Carroll’s number 42, which crops up throughout his work. Also, the narrator in this story is forty-two years of age. The number appears throughout Carroll’s work.)

[edit] Synopsis

Phantasmagoria by Lewis Carroll Macmillan and Co., London First edition, 1869 (Morgan Special Collections edition) Blue cardboard cover with gold embossed cover illustration and edges and spine. Bound by Burn & Co., Kirby Street, E.C.

Published in 1869, Phantasmagoria was published by Macmillan and Co., London, the same publishers of the Alice books. The original edition has a blue cardboard over with a gold embossed cover illustration and gold embossed edges and spine. Phantasmagoria is a narrative discussion written in seven cantos between a ghost (the Phantom) and a man named Tibblet. In this poem of seven cantos, Carroll sets out to dymystify ghosts and show us that, after all, ghosts are not so different from us. They may gibber and jangle their chains, but they, like us, simply have a job to do and that job is to haunt. There is, of course, the occasional visit from the Knight Mayor, but overall, ghosts are quite human in their concerns, although sometimes their concerns are reversals of our own. Through seven cantos and a meeting (The Trysting) with a ghost (the Phantom) who has been assigned to haunt the narrator’s (a man named Tibblet) house, we learn that ghosts are not so unlike us. In fact, in many ways they are wholly human with human concerns and thoughts. Like all of us, they must follow rules of etiquette (“Five Maxims of Behavior”) that often seem arbitrary (the theme of rules for rules’ sake crops up many times in Carroll’s work and the rules are often nonsense. Without question, Carroll had his fun with the arbitrariness of social rules in almost all of his books, notably in the Alice books where Alice must abide by nonsensical rules, such as Rule 42 in Who Stole the Tarts).

Just as in our society, in ghost society, there is a hierarchy and ghosts (for there are different orders of ghosts, he tells the narrator) are answerable to the King who must be addressed as “Your Royal Whiteness.” There is even a Knight Mayor, whose job it is to give you “nightmares” (of course) and if you don’t know him, the Phantom tells us, “Either you’ve never gone to bed, Or you’ve got a grand digestion!” (the often-told story that if you go to bed with indigestion that it will give you nightmares, which many people believe.) Lastly, there is Inspektor Kobold whose bones became cold and he caught a “sort of chill”. After that, Inspektor Kobold can only quench his thirst and rid himself of his chill by visiting his hunting ground which happens to be inns where they serve port-wine; hence his name, the “inn-spectre”.

If any of the rules are not followed, ghosts are answerable to a higher authority for not following the ‘Maxims of Behavior” (they must answer to the previously mentioned His Royal Whiteness). Why ghosts even have tastes in wine and several ghosts have complained that on this (Tibbet’s house) premises the wine was bad and it was “no great compliment to haunt a man of forty-two”! Ghosts have their complaints too!

The Phantom visitor here is a shy creature, white and wavy, and a little nervous. He has caught a cold, he says, “out there upon the landing” and when the narrator turns to look he sees, “A little ghost was standing!” It’s a one ghost house, the little ghost tells us. Many ghosts can occupy a house, depending on the number of ghosts the house can accommodate. Some ghosts house more than one ghost, but this one is just for one.

Phantasmagoria is essentially a narrative in cantos about the Whys and Hows of ghosts and how they must live and how they like to live, for they do have, ironically, a life. Ghosts just are, and they are nothing to be feared although they do try to do their job so that if the “Victim” begins to snore, they have utterly failed (because they were ignored). But being a ghost is a job like any other job, the Phantom tells him, recounting the little pay and the hard work involved.

Ghosts, our Phantom tells the narrator, fear the same things that we often fear, only sometimes it is the reverse (note that Carroll also liked to reverse things in his books and also was keen on mirror-writing; backward writing and was very adept at it). As the ghost tells us about the play between reversals;

“Allow me to remark That ghosts has just as good a right, In every way to fear the light, As men to fear the dark.”

[edit] The Cantos

The first part of Phantasmagoria, The Trysting (Canto 1) is the meeting between the ghost and the narrator in which they become acquainted. The remainder of the book is about the Five Maxims – Rules of Etiquette for Ghosts and at last, the final canto, number VII in which find out that Bones, our phantom, has spent all of this time at the wrong house. He was looking for a man named “Tibbs” when he has been at the house of a man, the narrator, named “Tibblets”. This play on words immediately brings to mind poor Stubbs and his misreading of the sign in “Novelty and Romancement” when he notices the “awful gap” between the words (Roman and Cement). The ghost, having had the wrong house now says he could have told him sooner!

“To walk four miles through mud and rain, To spent the night in smoking, And then to find that it’s in vain – And I’ve to do it all again – It’s really too provoking!”

A run through the cantos of Phantasmagoria and a brief description of each. Canto 2 Hys Fyve Rules

Here is the mention of the Rules of Etiquette for Ghosts. Ghosts, like many of Carroll’s characters tend to speak in riddles, even when they seem to be direct (for this ghost seems quite direct and to the point). He tells the narrator, let the “Victim” begin the conversation (“No ghost of any common sense/Begins a conversation.”) p. 12 If asked how he came here, the answer should be honest, but the ghost says, “Just as you please my little dear.” (italic whole line) Should the “Victim” (all hauntees are referred to as “victims”) take no heed, then the ghost tells him, “You’ll know the things a failure…” (12) If the victim is with friends, the ghost tells him, then one might get attention by “picking up some candle-ends…”

Rule 2 Burn a blue or crimson light and then scratch the door or walls. (14)

Rule 3 (to protect the interests of the Victim “To treat him with grave respect, And not to contradict him.”

Of course, the narrator says that some ghosts do forget the third rule, to which the ghost suggests that perhaps “you first transgressed,” and treated the ghost rudely without proper “cordiality” and the ghost must never be approached with a hatchet! If this is done, then all bets are off and the king, His Royal Whiteness, permits the ghost a formal parleying. More, a ghost should never be addressed as a “thing.” Clearly Carrolls’ ghosts certainly have intensity of feeling and are strong in their convictions.

Rule 4 Ghosts must not trespass where other ghosts are living (quartered) and must “instantly be slaughtered” (unless they have a pardon from the king)… but the ghost tells our narrator that ghosts are simply small bits cut up that then re-unite to form the whole – particles clinging together;

The process scarcely hurts at all, Not more than when you’re what you call ‘Cut up’ by a Review.

Rule 5 The king must be addressed as “Sir” and “Your Royal Whiteness” (17). There are different classes or categories of ghosts – Elves, Spectres, Goblins, and more and all have a specific hierarchy, with Elves being “stupid company, you know, For any but themselves.” (19) After reciting his maxims, the ghost is thirsty and requests a glass of beer.

Scarmoges

Inspector Kobold of the Spectre order who dreses in a yellow gown, a crimson vest, and a nightcap with a border (direct quote from Who dresses….) Inspektor Kobold has a great thirst that can only be quenched by port-wine (which he compares to nectar) and the Kobold spends his time at inns where port is served and is thus known as the “Inn-Spectre” (21) The ghost, while speaking to the narrator, is full of opinions. The occupants house is “neither snug nor spacious” (23), the window is too narrow and built by someone who likely, “pinned his faith on Ruskin.” (23)

By now, after the ghost has inquired about his occupants’ cigars the narrator has had it now with such easy familiarity and growls about the cost of the cigars;

“No matter what they are! You’re getting as familiar As if you were my cousin!” (24)

The ghost continues telling his story…

Canto 4. Hys Nouryture

In Canto IV, the ghost makes a reference to Bradshaw’s Railway Guide, which Carroll had parodied as a young child in his “Guida di Braggia” and more, in many of Carroll’s books and stories he has his characters moving about on trains – such as Alice in Through the Looking Glass who travels by rail to get to the third square.

“Oh, when I was a little Ghost,

A merry time had we!

Each seated on his favorite post, We Chumped at chawed the buttered toast They gave us for our tea.”

That story is in print! I cried Don’t say it’s not, because It’s known as Bradshsaw’s Guide!” (The Ghost uneasily replied he hardly thought it was).

Hailing from a long line of ghosts and of the order, the Phantom tells his family tree as such: His father was a Brownie; his mother was a Fairy. The children were of different stripe – there was a Pixy, two Fays, a Banshee, a Fetch and a Kelpie, a Poltergeist and a Ghoul, two Trolls (“which broke the rule”), a Goblin and a Double, then an Elf, a Phantom, and finally, a Leprechaun.

No Spectres, although he notes that when he was a young Phantom some Spectres did call on the family and were “Dressed in the usual white.” (29) Spectres are the “ghost-nobility” and look upon the rest of the ghost species with disdain and “scorn” The ghost informs us of the ways of ghosts; it’s old-fashioned to groan, and instead now there is the trendier and more popular and fashionable squeak (awful squeak, the narrator tells us, that chills him to the bone.) p. 31 but if that’s hard, the ghost tells the narrator, just try “gibbering” – “that’s something like a job.” (31)

Shakespeare’s* ghosts who “gibbered in the Roman streets…they must have found it cold.” (32) It’s not easy being a ghost, he tells us;

“For instance, take a haunted tower, With skull, cross-bones, and sheet; Blue lights to burn (say) two an hour, Condensing lens of extra power, And set of chains complete:

What with the things you have to hire – The fitting on the robe – And testing of the colored fire – The outfit of itself would tire The patience of a Job.” (p.33)

There is a Haunted House Committee who oversee and seem to make a fuss over the slightest thing, including if a ghost should happen to be French; dialects are “objected to” including the Irish brogue…(34)

Canto V. Byckerment

but aren’t victims consulted about their particular ghost, the narrator asks. “Not a bit!” imagine, he tells us, what it would take to satisfy a single child (quote that), “There’d be no end to it!” (35)

but if it’s “not a well-mannered ghost, Then you can have him changed.” (36)

makign houses draughfty (drafty?) lots of things to do “To let the wind come whistling through -.” 38 which is called “trimming and beautifying” (38) to make the premises “ghost ready” –

The Knight-Mayor features in this book, another clever play on words – and from the Knight Mayor (whose duties are to pinch and poke and squeeze them til they nearly choke”) the ghost also takes direction. When the narrator says he doesn’t know the Knight-Mayor the ghost tells him, “Either you never go to bed,/Or you’ve got a grand digestion.”(39 *it is or was believed that indigestion could or can cause nightmares. Many people believe this.The Mayor, of course, was “knighted” by the King.

Canto VI. Dyscomfyture

the ghost discovers he has the wrong house and is not at Tibbs’ house but Tibbetts’, which makes the Phantom vr angry and he tells our narrator, Tibbetts,

“Why couldn’t you have told me so Three quarters of an hour ago? You king of all the asses!” (48)

so after all of this discussion, the Phantom feels has he wasted his time in the wrong house, but it all ends wel with the two shaking hands (he calls Tibbett “Turnip-top”) HE says a Sprite may be sent instead and gives him advice on how to manage the sprite (a rap to the knuckels to keep in in-line when he is not.

Canto VII Sad Soubenaunce

The Phantom leaves (favorite phantom) and nothing can bring him back which leaves he narrator weeping…so he makes himself a drink and sings a “Coronach” “And art thou gone, beloved ghost? Best of all familiars! Nay, then, farewell, my duckling roast, Farewell, Farewell, my tea and toast, My meerschaum and cigars!”

*a meerschaum is a kind of clay pipe and the word is of German origin, 

The story ends with the narrator telling a Quaker friend of his that “The ghost’s not grave,” I say, “but gay; Not solemn, but convivial;”