ABSTRACT
It did not take much to upset Charles Dodgson. An inaccurate use of contractions was enough to set him off on the evils of inelegant elision, insisting on “ca’n’t” instead of the new-fangled “can’t” (Carroll 509-10). And so when he complained about some new melodies being composed for Saville Clarke’s operatic version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, his contemporaries may not have taken him as seriously as he would have liked. He writes in 1886 of the old familiar tune to “Twinkle, twinkle”:
I hope [the tune] will be used. It would be a great pity not to do so . . . They are certainly the notes which the writer attaches to the words, if any weight may be given to that circumstance.
