Gertrude Chataway
Friend of Lewis Carroll

Gertrude Chataway

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The basics
Quick facts
Intro
Friend of Lewis Carroll
Gender:
Female
Places:
United Kingdom
Birth:
1866
Death:
1951
Family:
Father:
James Chataway
The details
Biography

Lewis Carroll wrote this unique double acrostic for Gertrude Chataway. The verses embody her name in two ways — by letters, and by syllables. This is the only double acrostic of its kind.

Gertrude Chataway (1866–1951) was the most important child-friend in the life of the author Lewis Carroll, after Alice Liddell.It was Gertrude who inspired his great nonsense mock-epic The Hunting of the Snark (1876), and the book is dedicated to her, and opens with a poem that uses her name as a double acrostic.

Carroll first became friends with Gertrude in 1875, when she was aged nine and he was forty-three, while on holiday at the English seaside resort of Sandown.He made a number of pen and ink sketches of Gertrude as a young girl.He continued to correspond with her, and to spend numerous seaside holidays with her, including several when she was in her late twenties.