Abigail and Gregory Acland argued that the maker of Bonnets and Hoods is the same person as the Boots. They suggested that “maker of Bonnets and Hoods” is a description of the Boots’s [sic!] skills rather than a separate character.
(Abigail E. Acland and Gregory M. Acland, ‘The Crew Was Complete:…’, But How Many Was That?, p. 15-17 in issue 81 of the Jabberwocky magazine, Winter 1992/93, volume 22, no. 1, Lewis Carroll Society.)
Lines 9 and 10 of The Hunting of the Snark are ambiguous. Is there a Boots and a maker of Bonnets and Hoods, or is there a Boots, who makes bonnets and hoods? Are there 9 or 10 Snark hunters? My personal choice is 9 Snark hunters. But do I have that choice?
I suggest that the expression “maker of Bonnets and Hoods” describes one of the Boots’ skills and is prepared for contracting that expression into the name “Boots” as an interlaced portmanteau. Lewis Carroll explained the term “portmanteau” in the preface to his Snark poem for a reason (unless you insist on that everything in the Snark is nonsense which defies any reason). With this trick, Carroll turns “maker of Bonnets and Hoods” into a short name which starts with a capitalized “B” like the names of all the other eight Snark hunters. And letting the “Boots” have some activities with boots nicely obfuscates Carroll’s trick. Does anybody suspect that my suggestion just is arguing for the sake of arguing?
I think that “Boots” being a portmanteau gives additional support to the position of the Aclands. However, in a debate among Carrollians I of course met a different views. One example: The Aclands would ignore a punctuation problem. If making bonnets and hoods just would be a skill of the Boots, Carroll would have written (with a comma, not a long dash): “The crew was complete: it included a Boots, // Who fixed all the bonnets and hoods— // A Barrister, brought…”. This means that in that case Carroll would have made clear, that the Boots is a maker of bonnets and hoods. But if Carroll would have done that, he would have spoiled the fun he had with leaving us guessing how many hunters are going after the Snark.
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That said, I personally think that Carroll’s ambiguity is intentional and that he neither wanted to make clear, that the Boots is a maker of bonnets and hoods, nor that the Boots and a maker of Bonnets and Hoods are two separate Snark hunters. Carroll liked to give his writings more that one meaning. This also works well when we listen to the Snark poem instead of reading it. The narration by James Earl Jones in Michael Sporn‘s animated Snark film (1989) is a good example. (How does Jones deal with punctuation? Can you hear whether a letter is capitalized or not?) But close your eyes when listening; I like Sporn’s film a lot, but he killed the ambiguity visually.
2026-04-08, updated: 2026-04-17