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[Illustration: _Miss Isa Bowman as Alice in "Alice in Wonderland"_]
THE STORY OF
LEWIS CARROLL
TOLD FOR YOUNG PEOPLE BY
THE REAL ALICE IN WONDERLAND
MISS ISA BOWMAN
WITH A DIARY AND NUMEROUS
FACSIMILE LETTERS WRITTEN TO
MISS ISA BOWMAN AND
OTHERS. ALSO MANY SKETCHES
AND PHOTOS BY LEWIS CARROLL
AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS.
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
31 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET
1900
COPYRIGHT, 1899
BY E. P. DUTTON & CO.
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
MISS ISA BOWMAN (IN PHOTOGRAVURE) _Frontispiece_
LEWIS CARROLL'S ROOM IN OXFORD 9
C. L. DODGSON 13
A CHINAMAN 17
BEGGAR CHILDREN 35
ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON 59
LEWIS CARROLL'S HOUSE AT EASTBOURNE 65
MISS ISA BOWMAN AND MISS BESSIE HATTON AS THE LITTLE
PRINCES IN THE TOWER 73
ISA BOWMAN AS DUKE OF YORK 77
MISS ISA BOWMAN AS "ALICE IN WONDERLAND" (IN PHOTOGRAVURE) 80
THE LITTLE PRINCES 83
"DOLLY VARDEN" 95
"A TURK" 103
FACSIMILE OF A CHARADE 108-109-110
LEWIS CARROLL
It seems to me a very difficult task to sit down at a desk and write
"reminiscences" of a friend who has gone from us all.
It is not easy to make an effort and to remember all the little personalia
of some one one has loved very much, and by whom one has been loved. And
yet it is in a measure one's duty to tell the world something of the inner
life of a famous man; and Lewis Carroll was so wonderful a personality,
and so good a man, that if my pen dragged ever so slowly, I feel that I
can at least tell something of his life which is worthy the telling.
Writing with the sense of his loss still heavy upon me, I must of
necessity colour my account with sadness. I am not in the ordinary sense
a biographer. I cannot set down a critical estimate, a cold, dispassionate
summing-up of a man I loved; but I can write of a few things that happened
when I was a little girl, and when he used to say to me that I was "_his_
little girl."
The gracious presence of Lewis Carroll is with us no longer. Never again
will his hand hold mine, and I shall never hear his voice more in this
world. Forever while I live that kindly influence will be gone from my
life, and the "Friend of little Children" has left us.
And yet in the full sorrow of it all I find some note of comfort. He was
so good and sweet, so tender and kind, so certain that there was another
and more beautiful life waiting for us, that I know, even as if I heard
him telling it to me, that some time I shall meet him once more.
In all the noise and excitement of London, amid all the distractions of a
stage life, I know this, and his presence is often very near to me, and
the kindly voice is often at my ear as it was in the old days.
To have even known such a man as he was is an inestimable boon. To have
been with him for so long as a child, to have known so intimately the man
who above all others has understood childhood, is indeed a memory on which
to look back with thanksgiving and with tears.
Now that I am no longer "his little girl," now that he is dead and my life
is so different from the quiet life he led, I can yet feel the old charm,
I can still be glad that he has kissed me and that we were friends. Little
girl and grave professor! it is a strange combination. Grave professor and
little girl! how curious it sounds! yet strange and curious as it may
seem, it was so, and the little girl, now a little girl no longer, offers
this last loving tribute to the friend and teacher she loved so well.
Forever that voice is still; be it mine to revive some ancient memories of
it.
First, however, as I have essayed to be some sort of a biographer, I feel
that before I let my pen run easily over the tale of my intimate knowledge
of Lewis Carroll I must put down very shortly some facts about his life.
The Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson died when he was sixty-six years old,
and when his famous book, "Alice in Wonderland," had been published for
thirty-three years. He was born at Daresbury, in Cheshire, and his father
was the Rev. Charles Dodgson. The first years of his life were spent at
Daresbury, but afterwards the family went to live at a place called Croft,
in Yorkshire. He went first to a private school in Yorkshire and then to
Rugby, where he spent years that he always remembered as very happy ones.
In 1850 he went to Christ Church, Oxford, and from that time till the year
of his death he was inseparably connected with "The House," as Christ
Church college is generally called, from its Latin name "AEdes Christi,"
which means, literally translated, the House of Christ.
There he won great distinction as a scholar of mathematics, and wrote many
abstruse and learned books, very different from "Alice in Wonderland."
There is a tale that when the Queen had read "Alice in Wonderland" she was
so pleased that she asked for more books by the same author. Lewis Carroll
was written to, and back, with the name of Charles Dodgson on the
title-page, came a number of the very dryest books about Algebra and
Euclid that you can imagine.
Still, even in mathematics his whimsical fancy was sometimes suffered to
peep out, and little girls who learnt the rudiments of calculation at his
knee found the path they had imagined so thorny set about with roses by
reason of the delightful fun with which he would turn a task into a joy.
But when the fun was over the little girl would find that she had learnt
the lesson (all unknowingly) just the same. Happy little girls who had
such a master. The old rhyme--
"Multiplication is vexation,
Division is as bad,
The rule of three doth puzzle me,
And Practice drives me mad,"
would never need to have been written had all arithmetic lessons been like
the arithmetic lessons given by Charles Dodgson to his little friends.
As a lecturer to his grown-up pupils he was also surprisingly lucid, and
under his deft treatment the knottiest of problems were quickly smoothed
out and made easy for his hearers to comprehend. "I always hated
mathematics at school," an ex-pupil of his told me a little while ago,
"but when I went up to Oxford I learnt from Mr. Dodgson to look upon my
mathematics as the most delightful of all my studies. His lectures were
never dry."
For twenty-six years he lectured at Oxford, finally giving up his post in
1881. From that time to the time of his death he remained in his college,
taking no actual part in the tuition, but still enjoying the Fellowship
that he had won in 1861.
This is an official account, a brief sketch of an intensely interesting
life. It tells little save that Lewis Carroll was a clever mathematician
and a sympathetic teacher; it shall be my work to present him as he was
from a more human point of view.
Lewis Carroll was a man of medium height. When I knew him his hair was a
silver-grey, rather longer than it was the fashion to wear, and his eyes
were a deep blue. He was clean shaven, and, as he walked, always seemed a
little unsteady in his gait. At Oxford he was a well-known figure. He was
a little eccentric in his clothes. In the coldest weather he would never
wear an overcoat, and he had a curious habit of always wearing, in all
seasons of the year, a pair of grey and black cotton gloves.
But for the whiteness of his hair it was difficult to tell his age from
his face, for there were no wrinkles on it. He had a curiously womanish
face, and, in direct contradiction to his real character, there seemed to
be little strength in it. One reads a great deal about the lines that a
man's life paints in his face, and there are many people who believe that
character is indicated by the curves of flesh and bone. I do not, and
never shall, believe it is true, and Lewis Carroll is only one of many
instances to support my theory. He was as firm and self-contained as a man
may be, but there was little to show it in his face.
Yet you could easily discern it in the way in which he met and talked with
his friends. When he shook hands with you--he had firm white hands, rather
large--his grip was strong and steadfast. Every one knows the kind of man
of whom it is said "his hands were all soft and flabby when he said,
'How-do-you-do.'" Well, Lewis Carroll was not a bit like that. Every one
says when he shook your hand the pressure of his was full of strength,
and you felt here indeed was a man to admire and to love. The expression
in his eyes was also very kind and charming.
[Illustration: LEWIS CARROLL'S ROOM IN OXFORD IN WHICH "ALICE IN
WONDERLAND" WAS WRITTEN]
He used to look at me, when we met, in the very tenderest, gentlest way.
Of course on an ordinary occasion I knew that his interested glance did
not mean anything of any extra importance. Nothing could have happened
since I had seen him last, yet, at the same time, his look was always so
deeply sympathetic and benevolent that one could hardly help feeling it
meant a great deal more than the expression of the ordinary man.
He was afflicted with what I believe is known as "Housemaid's knee," and
this made his movements singularly jerky and abrupt. Then again he found
it impossible to avoid stammering in his speech. He would, when engaged in
an animated conversation with a friend, talk quickly and well for a few
minutes, and then suddenly and without any very apparent cause would
begin to stutter so much, that it was often difficult to understand him.
He was very conscious of this impediment, and he tried hard to cure
himself. For several years he read a scene from some play of Shakespeare's
every day aloud, but despite this he was never quite able to cure himself
of the habit. Many people would have found this a great hindrance to the
affairs of ordinary life, and would have felt it deeply. Lewis Carroll was
different. His mind and life were so simple and open that there was no
room in them for self-consciousness, and I have often heard him jest at
his own misfortune, with a comic wonder at it.
The personal characteristic that you would notice most on meeting Lewis
Carroll was his extreme shyness. With children, of course, he was not
nearly so reserved, but in the society of people of maturer age he was
almost old-maidishly prim in his manner. When he knew a child well this
reserve would vanish completely, but it needed only a slightly
disconcerting incident to bring the cloak of shyness about him once more,
and close the lips that just before had been talking so delightfully.
I shall never forget one afternoon when we had been walking in Christ
Church meadows. On one side of the great open space the little river
Cherwell runs through groves of trees towards the Isis, where the college
boat-races are rowed. We were going quietly along by the side of the
"Cher," when he began to explain to me that the tiny stream was a
tributary, "a baby river" he put it, of the big Thames. He talked for some
minutes, explaining how rivers came down from hills and flowed eventually
to the sea, when he suddenly met a brother Don at a turning in the avenue.
He was holding my hand and giving me my lesson in geography with great
earnestness when the other man came round the corner.
[Illustration: C. L. DODGSON]
He greeted him in answer to his salutation, but the incident disturbed his
train of thought, and for the rest of the walk he became very difficult to
understand, and talked in a nervous and preoccupied manner. One strange
way in which his nervousness affected him was peculiarly characteristic.
When, owing to the stupendous success of "Alice in Wonderland" and "Alice
Through the Looking-Glass," he became a celebrity many people were anxious
to see him, and in some way or other to find out what manner of man he
was. This seemed to him horrible, and he invented a mild deception for use
when some autograph-hunter or curious person sent him a request for his
signature on a photograph, or asked him some silly question as to the
writing of one of his books, how long it took to write, and how many
copies had been sold. Through some third person he always represented that
Lewis Carroll the author and Mr. Dodgson the professor were two distinct
persons, and that the author could not be heard of at Oxford at all. On
one occasion an American actually wrote to say that he had heard that
Lewis Carroll had laid out a garden to represent some of the scenes in
"Alice in Wonderland," and that he (the American) was coming right away to
take photographs of it. Poor Lewis Carroll, he was in terror of Americans
for a week!
Of being photographed he had a horror, and despite the fact that he was
continually and importunately requested to sit before the camera, only
very few photographs of him are in existence. Yet he had been himself a
great amateur photographer, and had taken many pictures that were
remarkable in their exact portraiture of the subject.
It was this exactness that he used to pride himself on in his camera work.
He always said that modern professional photographers spoilt all their
pictures by touching them up absurdly to flatter the sitter. When it was
necessary for me to have some pictures taken he sent me to Mr. H. H.
Cameron, whom he declared to be the only artist who dared to produce a
photograph that was exactly like its subject. This is one of the
photographs of me that Mr. Cameron took, and Lewis Carroll always declared
that it was a perfect specimen of portrait work.
Many of the photographs of children in this book are Lewis Carroll's work.
Miss Beatrice Hatch, to whose kindness I am indebted for these photographs
and for much interesting information, writes in the _Strand Magazine_
(April 1898):
"My earliest recollections of Mr. Dodgson are connected with
photography. He was very fond of this art at one time, though he had
entirely given it up for many years latterly. He kept various costumes
and 'properties' with which to dress us up, and, of course, that added
to the fun. What child would not thoroughly enjoy personating a
Japanese or a beggar child, or a gipsy or an Indian? Sometimes there
were excursions to the roof of the college, which was easily
accessible from the windows of the studio. Or you might stand by your
friend's side in the tiny dark room and watch him while he poured the
contents of several little strong-smelling bottles on to the glass
picture of yourself that looked so funny with its black face."
[Illustration: A CHINAMAN]
Yet, despite his love for the photographer's art, he hated the idea of
having his own picture taken for the benefit of a curious world. The
shyness that made him nervous in the presence of strangers made the idea
that any one who cared to stare into a shop window could examine and
criticise his portrait extremely repulsive to him.
I remember that this shyness of his was the only occasion of anything
approaching a quarrel between us.
I had an idle trick of drawing caricatures when I was a child, and one day
when he was writing some letters I began to make a picture of him on the
back of an envelope. I quite forget what the drawing was like--probably it
was an abominable libel--but suddenly he turned round and saw what I was
doing. He got up from his seat and turned very red, frightening me very
much. Then he took my poor little drawing, and tearing it into small
pieces threw it into the fire without a word. Afterwards he came suddenly
to me, and saying nothing, caught me up in his arms and kissed me
passionately. I was only some ten or eleven years of age at the time, but
now the incident comes back to me very clearly, and I can see it as if it
happened but yesterday--the sudden snatching of my picture, the hurried
striding across the room, and then the tender light in his face as he
caught me up to him and kissed me.
I used to see a good deal of him at Oxford, and I was constantly in Christ
Church. He would invite me to stay with him and find me rooms just outside
the college gates, where I was put into charge of an elderly dame, whose
name, if I do not forget, was Mrs. Buxall. I would spend long happy days
with my uncle, and at nine o'clock I was taken over to the little house in
St. Aldates and delivered into the hands of the landlady, who put me to
bed.
In the morning I was awakened by the deep reverberations of "Great Tom"
calling Oxford to wake and begin the new day. Those times were very
pleasant, and the remembrance of them lingers with me still. Lewis
Carroll at the time of which I am speaking had two tiny turret rooms, one
on each side of his staircase in Christ Church. He always used to tell me
that when I grew up and became married he would give me the two little
rooms, so that if I ever disagreed with my husband we could each of us
retire to a turret till we had made up our quarrel!
And those rooms of his! I do not think there was ever such a fairy-land
for children. I am sure they must have contained one of the finest
collections of musical-boxes to be found anywhere in the world. There were
big black ebony boxes with glass tops through which you could see all the
works. There was a big box with a handle, which it was quite hard exercise
for a little girl to turn, and there must have been twenty or thirty
little ones which could only play one tune. Sometimes one of the
musical-boxes would not play properly, and then I always got tremendously
excited. Uncle used to go to a drawer in the table and produce a box of
little screw-drivers and punches, and while I sat on his knee he would
unscrew the lid and take out the wheels to see what was the matter. He
must have been a clever mechanist, for the result was always the
same-after a longer or shorter period the music began again. Sometimes
when the musical-boxes had played all their tunes he used to put them in
the box backwards, and was as pleased as I at the comic effect of the
music "standing on its head," as he phrased it.
There was another and very wonderful toy which he sometimes produced for
me, and this was known as "The Bat." The ceilings of the rooms in which he
lived at the time were very high indeed, and admirably suited for the
purposes of "The Bat." It was an ingeniously constructed toy of gauze and
wire, which actually flew about the room like a bat. It was worked by a
piece of twisted elastic, and it could fly for about half a minute.
I was always a little afraid of this toy because it was too lifelike, but
there was a fearful joy in it. When the music-boxes began to pall he would
get up from his chair and look at me with a knowing smile. I always knew
what was coming even before he began to speak, and I used to dance up and
down in tremendous anticipation.
"Isa, my darling," he would say, "once upon a time there was some one
called Bob the Bat! and he lived in the top left-hand drawer of the
writing-table. What could he do when uncle wound him up?"
And then I would squeak out breathlessly, "He could really FLY!"
Bob the Bat had many adventures. There was no way of controlling the
direction of its flight, and one morning, a hot summer's morning when the
window was wide open, Bob flew out into the garden and alighted in a bowl
of salad which a scout was taking to some one's rooms. The poor fellow
was so startled by the sudden flapping apparition that he dropped the
bowl, and it was broken into a thousand pieces.
There! I have written "a thousand pieces," and a thoughtless exaggeration
of that sort was a thing that Lewis Carroll hated. "A thousand pieces?" he
would have said; "you know, Isa, that if the bowl had been broken into a
thousand pieces they would each have been so tiny that you could have
hardly seen them." And if the broken pieces had been get-at-able, he would
have made me count them as a means of impressing on my mind the folly of
needless exaggeration.
I remember how annoyed he was once when, after a morning's sea bathing at
Eastbourne, I exclaimed, "Oh, this salt water, it always makes my hair as
stiff as a poker."
He impressed it on me quite irritably that no little girl's hair could
ever possibly get as stiff as a poker. "If you had said, 'as stiff as
wires,' it would have been more like it, but even that would have been an
exaggeration." And then, seeing that I was a little frightened, he drew
for me a picture of "The little girl called Isa whose hair turned into
pokers because she was always exaggerating things."
That, and all the other pictures that he drew for me are, I'm sorry to
say, the sole property of the little fishes in the Irish Channel, where a
clumsy porter dropped them as we hurried into the boat at Holyhead.
"I nearly died of laughing," was another expression that he particularly
disliked; in fact any form of exaggeration generally called from him a
reproof, though he was sometimes content to make fun. For instance, my
sisters and I had sent him "millions of kisses" in a letter. Below you
will find the letter that he wrote in return, written in violet ink that
he always used (dreadfully ugly, I used to think it).
[Illustration]
"CH. Ch. Oxford,
"_Ap. 14, 1890_.
"MY OWN DARLING,
It's all very well for you and Nellie and Emsie to write in millions
of hugs and kisses, but please consider the _time_ it would occupy
your poor old very busy Uncle! Try hugging and kissing Emsie for a
minute by the watch, and I don't think you'll manage it more than 20
times a minute. 'Millions' must mean 2 millions at least.
20)2,000,000 hugs and kisses
60)100,000 minutes
12)1,666 hours
6)138 days (at twelve hours a day)
23 weeks.
"I couldn't go on hugging and kissing more than 12 hours a day: and I
wouldn't like to spend _Sundays_ that way. So you see it would take
_23 weeks_ of hard work. Really, my dear child, I _cannot spare the
time_.
"Why haven't I written since my last letter? Why, how _could_ I, you
silly silly child? How could I have written _since the last time_ I
_did_ write? Now, you just try it with kissing. Go and kiss Nellie,
from me, several times, and take care to manage it so as to have
kissed her _since the last time_ you _did_ kiss her. Now go back to
your place, and I'll question you.
"'Have you kissed her several times?'
"'Yes, darling Uncle.'
"'What o'clock was it when you gave her the _last_ kiss?'
"'5 minutes past 10, Uncle.'
"'Very well, now, have you kissed her _since_?'
"'Well--I--ahem! ahem! ahem! (excuse me, Uncle, I've got a bad cough).
I--think--that--I--that is, you, know, I----'
"'Yes, I see! "Isa" begins with "I," and it seems to me as if she was
going to _end_ with "I," _this_ time!'
"Anyhow, my not writing hasn't been because I was _ill_, but because I
was a horrid lazy old thing, who kept putting it off from day to day,
till at last I said to myself, 'WHO ROAR! There's no time to write
now, because they _sail_ on the 1st of April.'[1] In fact, I shouldn't
have been a bit surprised if this letter had been from _Fulham_,
instead of Louisville. Well, I suppose you _will_ be there by about
the middle of May. But mind you don't write to me from there! Please,
_please_, no more horrid letters from you! I _do_ hate them so! And as
for _kissing_ them when I get them, why, I'd just as soon
kiss--kiss--kiss _you_, you tiresome thing! So there now!
"Thank you very much for those 2 photographs--I liked
them--hum--_pretty_ well. I can't honestly say I thought them the very
best I had ever seen.
"Please give my kindest regards to your mother, and 1/2 of a kiss to
Nellie, and 1/200 a kiss to Emsie, and 1/2,000,000 a kiss to yourself.
So, with fondest love, I am, my darling, your loving Uncle,
"C. L. DODGSON."
And now, in the postscript, comes one of the rare instances in which Lewis
Carroll showed his deep religious feeling. It runs--
"_P.S._--I've thought about that little prayer you asked me to write
for Nellie and Emsie. But I would like, first, to have the words of
the one I wrote for _you_, and the words of what they _now_ say, if
they say any. And then I will pray to our Heavenly Father to help me
to write a prayer that will be really fit for them to use."
Again, I had ended one of my letters with "all join me in lufs and
kisses." It was a letter written when I was away from home and alone, and
I had put the usual ending thoughtlessly and in haste, for there was no
one that I knew in all that town who could have joined me in my messages
to him. He answered me as follows:--
"7 LUSHINGTON ROAD, EASTBOURNE,
"_Aug. 30, 90_.
"Oh, you naughty, naughty, bad wicked little girl! You forgot to put a
stamp on your letter, and your poor old uncle had to pay TWOPENCE! His
_last_ Twopence! Think of that. I shall punish you severely for this
when once I get you here. So _tremble_! Do you hear? Be good enough to
tremble!
"I've only time for one question to-day. Who in the world are the
'all' that join you in 'Lufs and kisses.' Weren't you fancying you
were at home, and sending messages (as people constantly do) from
Nellie and Emsie without their having given any? It isn't a good plan
that sending messages people haven't given. I don't mean it's in the
least _untruthful_, because everybody knows how commonly they are sent
without having been given; but it lessens the pleasure of receiving
the messages. My sisters write to me 'with best love from all.' I know
it isn't true; so I don't value it much. The other day, the husband of
one of my 'child-friends' (who always writes 'your loving') wrote to
me and ended with 'Ethel joins me in kindest regards.' In my answer I
said (of course in fun)--'I am not going to send Ethel kindest
regards, so I won't send her any message _at all_.' Then she wrote to
say she didn't even know he was writing! 'Of course I would have sent
best love,' and she added that she had given her husband a piece of
her mind! Poor husband!
"Your always loving uncle,
"C. L. D."
These letters are written in Lewis Carroll's ordinary handwriting, not a
particularly legible one. When, however, he was writing for the press no
characters could have been more clearly and distinctly formed than his.
Throughout his life he always made it his care to give as little trouble
as possible to other people. "Why should the printers have to work
overtime because my letters are ill-formed and my words run into each
other?" he once said, when a friend remonstrated with him because he took
such pains with the writing of his "copy." As a specimen of his careful
penmanship the diary that he wrote for me, which is reproduced in this
book in facsimile, is an admirable example.
They were happy days, those days in Oxford, spent with the most
fascinating companion that a child could have. In our walks about the old
town, in our visits to cathedral or chapel or hall, in our visits to his
friends he was an ideal companion, but I think I was almost happiest when
we came back to his rooms and had tea alone; when the fire-glow (it was
always winter when I stayed in Oxford) threw fantastic shadows about the
quaint room, and the thoughts of the prosiest of people must have
wandered a little into fancy-land. The shifting firelight seemed to
almost aetherealise that kindly face, and as the wonderful stories fell
from his lips, and his eyes lighted on me with the sweetest smile that
ever a man wore, I was conscious of a love and reverence for Charles
Dodgson that became nearly an adoration.
It was almost pain when the lights were turned up and we came back to
everyday life and tea.
He was very particular about his tea, which he always made himself, and in
order that it should draw properly he would walk about the room swinging
the tea-pot from side to side for exactly ten minutes. The idea of the
grave professor promenading his book-lined study and carefully waving a
tea-pot to and fro may seem ridiculous, but all the minutiae of life
received an extreme attention at his hands, and after the first surprise
one came quickly to realise the convenience that his carefulness ensured.
[Illustration: BEGGAR CHILDREN]
Before starting on a railway journey, for instance (and how delightful
were railway journeys in the company of Lewis Carroll), he used to map
out exactly every minute of the time that we were to take on the way. The
details of the journey completed, he would exactly calculate the amount of
money that must be spent, and, in different partitions of the two purses
that he carried, arrange the various sums that would be necessary for
cabs, porters, newspapers, refreshments, and the other expenses of a
journey. It was wonderful how much trouble he saved himself _en route_ by
thus making ready beforehand. Lewis Carroll was never driven half frantic
on a station platform because he had to change a sovereign to buy a penny
paper while the train was on the verge of starting. With him journeys were
always comfortable.
Of the joys that waited on a little girl who stayed with Lewis Carroll at
his Oxford home I can give no better idea than that furnished by the diary
that follows, which he wrote for me, bit by bit, during the evenings of
one of my stays at Oxford.
[Illustrations: Facsimile:
=Isa's Visit to Oxford.=
1888.
=Chap. I.=
On Wednesday, the Eleventh of July, Isa happened to meet a friend at
Paddington Station at half-past-ten. She can't remember his name, but she
says he was an old old old gentleman, and he had invited her, she thinks,
to go with him somewhere or other, she can't remember where.
=Chap. II.=
The first thing they did, after calling at a shop, was to go to the
Panorama of the "Falls of Niagara". Isa thought it very wonderful. You
seemed to be on the top of a tower, with miles and miles of country all
round you. The things in front were real, and somehow they joined into the
picture behind, so that you couldn't tell where the real things ended and
the picture began. Near the foot of the Falls, there was a steam-packet
crossing the river, which showed what a tremendous height the Falls must
be, it looked so tiny. In the road in front were two men and a dog,
standing looking the other way. They may have been wooden figures, or part
of the picture, there was no knowing which. The man, who stood next to
Isa, said to another man "That dog looked round just now. Now see, I'll
whistle to him, and make him look round again!" And he began whistling:
and Isa almost expected, it looked so exactly like a real dog, that it
would turn its head to see who was calling it!
After that Isa and her friend (the Aged Aged Man) went to the house of a
Mr Dymes. Mrs Dymes gave them some dinner, and two of her children, called
Helen and Maud, went with them to Terry's Theatre, to see the play of
"Little Lord Fauntleroy". Little Vera Beringer was the little Lord
Fauntleroy. Isa would have liked to play the part, but the Manager at the
Theatre did not allow her, as she did not know the words, which would have
made it go off badly. Isa liked the whole play very much: the passionate
old Earl, and the gentle Mother of the little boy, and the droll "Mr.
Hobbs", and all of them.
Then they all went off by the Metropolitan Railway, and the two Miss
Dymeses got out at their station, and Isa and the A.A.M. went on to
Oxford. A kind old lady, called Mrs Symonds, had invited Isa to come and
sleep at her house: and she was soon fast asleep, and dreaming that she
and little Lord Fauntleroy were going in a steamer down the Falls of
Niagara, and whistling to a dog, who was in such a hurry to go up the
Falls that he wouldn't attend to them.
=Chap. III.=
The next morning Isa set off, almost before she was awake, with the
A.A.M., to pay a visit to a little College, called "Christ Church". You go
in under a magnificent tower, called "Tom Tower", nearly four feet high
(so that Isa had hardly to stoop at all, to go under it) into the Great
Quadrangle (which very vulgar people call "Tom Quad".) You should always
be polite, even when speaking to a Quadrangle: it might seem not to take
any notice, but it doesn't like being called names. On their way to Christ
Church they saw a tall monument, like the spire of a church, called the
"Martyrs' Memorial", put up in memory of three Bishops, Cranmer, Ridley
and Latimer, who were burned in the reign of Queen Mary, because they
would not be Roman Catholics. Christ Church was built in 1546.
They had breakfast at Ch. Ch., in the rooms of the A.A.M., and then Isa
learned how to print with the "Typewriter", and printed several beautiful
volumes of poetry, all of her own invention. By this time it was 1
o'clock, so Isa paid a visit to the Kitchen, to make sure that the
chicken, for her dinner, was being properly roasted The Kitchen is about
the oldest part of the College, so was built about 1546. It has a
fire-grate large enough to roast forty legs of mutton at once.
Then they saw the Dining Hall, in which the A.A.M. has dined several
times, (about 8,000 times, perhaps). After dinner, they went, through the
quadrangle of the Bodleian Library, into Broad Street, and, as a band was
just going by, of course they followed it. (Isa likes Bands better than
anything in the world, except Lands, and walking on Sands, and wringing
her Hands). The Band led them into the gardens of Wadham College (built in
1613), where there was a school-treat going on. The treat was, first
marching twice round the garden--then having a photograph done of them,
all in a row--then a =promise= of "Punch and Judy", which wouldn't be
ready for 20 minutes, so Isa, and Co., wouldn't wait, but went back to Ch.
Ch., and saw the "Broad Walk." In the evening they played at "Reversi",
till Isa had lost the small remainder of her temper. Then she went to bed,
and dreamed she was Judy, and was beating Punch with a stick of
Barley-sugar.
=Chap. IV.=
On Friday morning (after taking her medicine very amiably), went with the
A.A.M. (who =would= go with her, though she told him over and over she
would rather be alone) to the gardens of Worcester College (built in 1714)
where they didn't see the swans (who ought to have been on the lake), nor
the hippopotamus, who ought not to have been walking about among the
flowers, gathering honey like a busy bee.
After breakfast, Isa helped the A.A.M. to pack his luggage, because he
thought he would go away, he didn't know where, some day, he didn't know
when--so she put a lot of things, she didn't know what, into boxes, she
didn't know which.
After dinner they went to St. John's College (built in 1555), and admired
the large lawn, where more than 150 ladies, dressed in robes of gold and
silver, were not walking about.
Then they saw the Chapel of Keble College (built in 1870) and then the
New Museum, where Isa quite lost her heart to a charming stuffed Gorilla,
that smiled on her from a glass case. The Museum was finished in 1860. The
most curious thing they saw there was a "Walking Leaf," a kind of insect
that looks exactly like a withered leaf.
Then they went to New College (built in 1386), & saw, close to the
entrance, a "skew" arch (going slantwise through the wall) one of the
first ever built in England. After seeing the gardens, they returned to
Ch. Ch. (Parts of the old City walls run round the gardens of New College:
and you may still see some of the old narrow slits, through which the
defenders could shoot arrows at the attacking army, who could hardly
succeed in shooting through them from the outside).
They had tea with Mrs Paget, wife of Dr. Paget one of the Canons of Ch.
Ch. Then, after a sorrowful evening, Isa went to bed, and dreamed she was
buzzing about among the flowers, with the dear Gorilla: but there wasn't
any honey in them--only slices of bread-and-butter, and
multiplication-tables.
=Chap. V.=
On Saturday Isa had a Music Lesson, and learned to play on an American
Orguinette. It is not a =very= difficult instrument to play, as you only
have to turn a handle round and round: so she did it nicely. You put a
long piece of paper in, and it goes through the machine, and the holes in
the paper make different notes play. They put one in wrong end first, and
had a tune backwards, and soon found themselves in the day before
yesterday: so they dared not go on, for fear of making Isa so young she
would not be able to talk. The A.A.M. does not like visitors who only
howl, and get red in the face, from morning to night.
In the afternoon they went round Ch. Ch. meadow, and saw the Barges
belonging to the Colleges, and some pretty views of Magdalen Tower through
the trees.
Then they went through the Botanical Gardens, built in the year----no, by
the bye, they never were built at all. And then to Magdalen College. At
the top of the wall, in one corner, they saw a very large jolly face,
carved in stone, with a broad grin, and a little man at the side, helping
him to laugh by pulling up the corner of his mouth for him. Isa thought
that, the next time she wants to laugh, she will get Nellie and Maggie to
help her. With two people to pull up the corners of your mouth for you, it
is as easy to laugh as can be!
They went into Magdalen Meadow, which has a pretty walk all round it,
arched over with trees: and there they met a lady "from Amurrica," as she
told them, who wanted to know the way to "Addison's Walk," and
particularly wanted to know if there would be "any danger" in going there.
They told her the way, and that =most= of the lions and tigers and
buffaloes, round the meadow, were quite gentle and hardly ever killed
people: so she set off, pale and trembling, and they saw her no more:
only they heard her screams in the distance: so they guessed what had
happened to her
Then they rode in a tram-car to another part of Oxford, and called on a
lady called Mrs Jeane, and her little grand-daughter, called "Noel",
because she was born on Christmas-Day. ("Noel" is the French name for
"Christmas".) And there they had so much Tea that at last Isa nearly
turned into a "Teaser".
Then they went home, down a little narrow street, where there was a little
dog standing fixed in the middle of the street, as if its feet were glued
to the ground: they asked it how long it meant to stand there, and it said
(as well as it could) "till the week after next".
Then Isa went to bed, and dreamed she was going round Magdalen Meadow,
with the "Amurrican" lady, and there was a buffalo sitting at the top of
every tree, handing her cups of tea as she went underneath: but they all
held the cups upside-down, so that the tea poured all over her head and
ran down her face.
=Chap. VI.=
On Sunday morning they went to St. Mary's church, in High Street. In
coming home, down the street next to the one where they had found a fixed
dog, they found a fixed cat--a poor little kitten, that had put out its
head through the bars of the cellar-window, and get back again. They rang
the bell at the next door, but the maid said the cellar wasn't in that
house, and, before they could get to the right door the cat had unfixed
its head----either from its neck or from the bars, and had gone inside.
Isa thought the animals in this city have a curious way of fixing
themselves up and down the place, as if they were hat-pegs.
Then they went back to Ch. Ch., and looked at a lot of dresses, which the
A.A.M kept in a cupboard, to dress up children in, when they come to be
photographed. Some of the dresses had been used in Pantomimes at Drury
Lane: some were rags, to dress up beggar-children in: some had been very
magnificent once, but were getting quite old and shabby. Talking of old
dresses, there is one College in Oxford, so old that it is not known for
certain when it was built The people, who live there, say it was built
more than 1000 years ago: and, when they say this, the people who live in
the other Colleges never contradict them, but listen most
respectfully----only they wink a little with one eye, as if they didn't
=quite= believe it.
The same day, Isa saw a curious book of pictures of ghosts. If you look
hard at one for a minute, and then look at the ceiling, you see another
ghost there: only, when you have a black one in the book, it is a =white=
one on the ceiling: when it is green in the book, it is =pink= on the
ceiling.
In the middle of the day, as usual, Isa had her dinner: but this time it
was grander than usual. There was a dish of "Meringues" (this is
pronounced "Marangs"), which Isa thought so good that she would have liked
to live on them all the rest of her life.
They took a little walk in the afternoon, and in the middle of Broad
Street they saw a cross buried in the ground, very near the place where
the Martyrs were burned. Then they went into the gardens of Trinity
College (built in 1554) to see the "Lime Walk", a pretty little avenue of
lime-trees. The great iron "gates" at the end of the garden are not real
gates, but all done in one piece: and they couldn't open them, even if you
knocked all day. Isa thought them a miserable sham.
Then they went into the "Parks" (this word doesn't mean "parks of grass,
with trees and deer," but "parks" of guns: that is, great rows of cannons,
which stood there when King Charles the First was in Oxford, and Oliver
Cromwell fighting against him.
They saw "Mansfield College", a new College just begun to be built, with
such tremendously narrow windows that Isa was afraid the young gentlemen
who come there will not be able to see to learn their lessons, and will go
away from Oxford just as wise as they came.
Then they went to the evening service at New College, and heard some
beautiful singing and organ-playing. Then back to Ch. Ch., in pouring
rain. Isa tried to count the drops: but, when she had counted four
millions, three hundred and seventy-eight thousand, two hundred and
forty-seven, she got tired of counting, and left off.
After dinner, Isa got somebody or other (she is not sure who it was) to
finish this story for her. Then she went to bed, and dreamed she was fixed
in the middle of Oxford, with her feet fast to the ground, and her head
between the bars of a cellar-window, in a sort of final tableau. Then she
dreamed the curtain came down, and the people all called out "encore!" But
she cried out "Oh, not again! It would be =too= dreadful to have my visit
all over again!" But, on second thoughts, she smiled in her sleep, and
said "Well, do you know, after all, I think I wouldn't mind so very much
if I =did= have it all over again!".
Lewis Carroll.
THE END]
This diary, and what I have written before, show how I, as a little girl,
knew Lewis Carroll at Oxford.
For his little girl friends, of course, he reserved the most intimate side
of his nature, but on occasion he would throw off his reserve and talk
earnestly and well to some young man in whose life he took an interest.
Mr. Arthur Girdlestone is able to bear witness to this, and he has given
me an account of an evening that he once spent with Lewis Carroll, which I
reproduce here from notes made during our conversation.
Mr. Girdlestone, then an undergraduate at New College, had on one occasion
to call on Lewis Carroll at his rooms in Tom Quad. At the time of which I
am speaking Lewis Carroll had retired very much from the society which he
had affected a few years before. Indeed for the last years of his life he
was almost a recluse, and beyond dining in Hall saw hardly any one. Miss
Beatrice Hatch, one of his "girl friends," writes apropos of his
hermit-like seclusion:--
"If you were very anxious to get him to come to your house on any
particular day, the only chance was _not_ to _invite_ him, but only to
inform him that you would be at home. Otherwise he would say, 'As you have
_invited_ me I cannot come, for I have made a rule to decline all
_invitations_; but I will come the next day.' In former years he would
sometimes consent to go to a 'party' if he was quite sure he was not to be
'shown off' or introduced to any one as the author of 'Alice.' I must
again quote from a note of his in answer to an invitation to tea: 'What an
awful proposition! To drink tea from four to six would tax the
constitution even of a hardened tea drinker! For me, who hardly ever touch
it, it would probably be fatal.'"
All through the University, except in an extremely limited circle, Lewis
Carroll was regarded as a person who lived very much by himself. "When,"
Mr. Girdlestone said to me, "I went to see him on quite a slight
acquaintance, I confess it was with some slight feeling of trepidation.
However I had to on some business, and accordingly I knocked at his door
about 8.30 one winter's evening, and was invited to come in.
"He was sitting working at a writing-table, and all round him were piles
of MSS. arranged with mathematical neatness, and many of them tied up with
tape. The lamp threw his face into sharp relief as he greeted me. My
business was soon over, and I was about to go away, when he asked me if I
would have a glass of wine and sit with him for a little.
"The night outside was very cold, and the fire was bright and inviting,
and I sat down. He began to talk to me of ordinary subjects, of the things
a man might do at Oxford, of the place itself, and the affection in which
he held it. He talked quietly, and in a rather tired voice. During our
conversation my eye fell upon a photograph of a little girl--evidently
from the freshness of its appearance but newly taken--which was resting
upon the ledge of a reading-stand at my elbow. It was the picture of a
tiny child, very pretty, and I picked it up to look at it.
"'That is the baby of a girl friend of mine,' he said, and then, with an
absolute change of voice, 'there is something very strange about very
young children, something I cannot understand.' I asked him in what way,
and he explained at some length. He was far less at his ease than when
talking trivialities, and he occasionally stammered and sometimes
hesitated for a word. I cannot remember all he said, but some of his
remarks still remain with me. He said that in the company of very little
children his brain enjoyed a rest which was startlingly recuperative. If
he had been working too hard or had tired his brain in any way, to play
with children was like an actual material tonic to his whole system. I
understood him to say that the effect was almost physical!
"He said that he found it much easier to understand children, to get his
mind into correspondence with their minds when he was fatigued with other
work. Personally, I did not understand little children, and they seemed
quite outside my experience, and rather incautiously I asked him if
children never bored him. He had been standing up for most of the time,
and when I asked him that, he sat down suddenly. 'They are three-fourths
of my life,' he said. 'I cannot understand how any one could be bored by
little children. I think when you are older you will come to see this--I
hope you'll come to see it.'
"After that he changed the subject once more, and became again the
mathematician--a little formal, and rather weary."
Mr. Girdlestone probably had a unique experience, for it was but rarely
that Mr. Dodgson so far unburdened himself to a comparative stranger, and
what was even worse, to a "grown-up stranger."
Now I have given you two different phases of Lewis Carroll at
Oxford--Lewis Carroll as the little girl's companion, and Lewis Carroll
sitting by the fireside telling something of his inner self to a young
man. I am going on to talk about my life with him at Eastbourne, where I
used, year by year, to stay with him at his house in Lushington Road.
He was very fond of Eastbourne, and it was from that place that I received
the most charming letters that he wrote me. Here is one, and I could
hardly say how many times I have taken this delightful letter from its
drawer to read through and through again.
"7 LUSHINGTON ROAD, EASTBOURNE,
"_September 17, 1893_.
"Oh, you naughty, naughty little culprit! If only I could fly to
Fulham with a handy little stick (ten feet long and four inches thick
is my favourite size) how I would rap your wicked little knuckles.
However, there isn't much harm done, so I will sentence you to a
very mild punishment--only one year's imprisonment. If you'll just
tell the Fulham policeman about it, he'll manage all the rest for you,
and he'll fit you with a nice pair of handcuffs, and lock you up in a
nice cosy dark cell, and feed you on nice dry bread, and delicious
cold water.
[Illustration: ST. GEORGE THE DRAGON]
"But how badly you _do_ spell your words! I _was_ so puzzled about the
'sacks full of love and baskets full of kisses!' But at last I made
out why, of course, you meant 'a sack full of _gloves_, and a basket
full of _kittens_!' Then I understood what you were sending me. And
just then Mrs. Dyer came to tell me a large sack and a basket had
come. There was such a miawing in the house, as if all the cats in
Eastbourne had come to see me! 'Oh, just open them please, Mrs. Dyer,
and count the things in them!'
"So in a few minutes Mrs. Dyer came and said, '500 pairs of gloves in
the sack and 250 kittens in the basket.'
"'Dear me! That makes 1000 gloves! four times as many gloves as
kittens! It's very kind of Maggie, but why did she send so many
gloves? for I haven't got 1000 _hands_, you know, Mrs. Dyer.'
"And Mrs. Dyer said, 'No, indeed, you're 998 hands short of that!'