09 February 2010
Renting A Flat to Swing A Cat - Another Mystery
Carroll had some of the best rooms in Christ Church, a very large apartment. It's a mystery why he then apparently decided to rent a flat above a pawnbroker's. He wrote about it to his niece, Edith, saying that
"You see one is so cramped in one's tiny College rooms, but, by having
a house in Brewer Street AS WELL, one really has enough room to swing a
cat.
He took a second storey flat
In which you could not swing a cat
But such was never his intent
His only object was low rent
And to swing cats he never meant.""
Nobody has the remotest idea what he meant, or what he did with and in his apartment. But here are
2 cats which are very happy living on a boat on the Thames, which probably has even less space than a flat above a pawnbrokers. And they look happy enough.
"You see one is so cramped in one's tiny College rooms, but, by having
a house in Brewer Street AS WELL, one really has enough room to swing a
cat.
He took a second storey flat
In which you could not swing a cat
But such was never his intent
His only object was low rent
And to swing cats he never meant.""
Nobody has the remotest idea what he meant, or what he did with and in his apartment. But here are
2 cats which are very happy living on a boat on the Thames, which probably has even less space than a flat above a pawnbrokers. And they look happy enough.
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It seems to me the explanation is the longing, common to romantic, otherworldly souls, to be elsewhere. A room above a pawnbroker's might not seem like Isfahan or Valpairaiso to you or me, but perhaps to Carroll it did.