Gertrude Chataway

Who was Gertrude Chataway?

Gertrude Chataway 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, 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, 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.