Complete Works of Lewis Carroll (218 page)

Yr affec' brother Charles.

To
SKEFF [
a younger brother, aged six
].

My dear Skeff,—Roar not lest thou be abolished.
Yours, etc.,——.

The discomforts which he, as a "new boy," had to put up with from his school-mates affected him as they do not, unfortunately, affect most boys, for in later school days he was famous as a champion of the weak and small, while every bully had good reason to fear him.
Though it is hard for those who have only known him as the gentle and retiring don to believe it, it is nevertheless true that long after he left school his name was remembered as that of a boy who knew well how to use his fists in defence of a righteous cause.

As was the custom at that time, Charles began to compose Latin verses at a very early age, his first copy being dated November 25, 1844.
The subject was evening, and this is how he treated it:—

Phoebus aqua splendet descendens, æquora tingens

Splendore aurato.
Pervenit umbra solo.

Mortales lectos quærunt, et membra relaxant

Fessa labore dies; cuncta per orbe silet.

Imperium placidum nunc sumit Phoebe corusca.

Antris procedunt sanguine ore feræ.

These lines the boy solemnly copied into his Diary, apparently in the most blissful ignorance of the numerous mistakes they contained.

The next year he wrote a story which appeared in the school magazine.
It was called "The Unknown One," so it was probably of the sensational type in which small boys usually revel.

Though Richmond School, as it was in 1844, may not compare favourably in every respect with a modern preparatory school, where supervision has been so far "reduced to the absurd" that the unfortunate masters hardly get a minute to themselves from sunrise till long after sunset, yet no better or wiser men than those of the school of Mr.
Tate are now to be found.
Nor, I venture to think, are the results of the modern system more successful than those of the old one.
Charles loved his "kind old schoolmaster," as he affectionately calls him, and surely to gain the love of the boys is the main battle in school-management.

The impression he made upon his instructors may be gathered from the following extracts from Mr.
Tate's first report upon him:

Sufficient opportunities having been allowed me to draw from actual observation an estimate of your son's character and abilities, I do not hesitate to express my opinion that he possesses, along with other and excellent natural endowments, a very uncommon share of genius.
Gentle and cheerful in his intercourse with others, playful and ready in conversation, he is capable of acquirements and knowledge far beyond his years, while his reason is so clear and so jealous of error, that he will not rest satisfied without a most exact solution of whatever appears to him obscure.
He has passed an excellent examination just now in mathematics, exhibiting at times an illustration of that love of precise argument, which seems to him natural.

I must not omit to set off against these great advantages one or two faults, of which the removal as soon as possible is desirable, tho' I am prepared to find it a work of time.
As you are well aware, our young friend, while jealous of error, as I said above, where important faith or principles are concerned, is exceedingly lenient towards lesser frailties—and, whether in reading aloud or metrical composition, frequently sets at nought the notions of Virgil or Ovid as to syllabic quantity.
He is moreover marvellously ingenious in replacing the ordinary inflexions of nouns and verbs, as detailed in our grammars, by more exact analogies, or convenient forms of his own devising.
This source of fault will in due time exhaust itself, though flowing freely at present....
You may fairly anticipate for him a bright career.
Allow me, before I close, one suggestion which assumes for itself the wisdom of experience and the sincerity of the best intention.
You must not entrust your son with a full knowledge of his superiority over other boys.
Let him discover this as he proceeds.
The love of excellence is far beyond the love of excelling; and if he should once be bewitched into a mere ambition to surpass others I need not urge that the very quality of his knowledge would be materially injured, and that his character would receive a stain of a more serious description still....

And again, when Charles was leaving Richmond, he wrote:

"Be assured that I shall always feel a peculiar interest in the gentle, intelligent, and well-conducted boy who is now leaving us."

ARCHBISHOP TAIT
.

Although his father had been a Westminster boy, Charles was, for some reason or other, sent to Rugby.
The great Arnold, who had, one might almost say, created Rugby School, and who certainly had done more for it than all his predecessors put together, had gone to his rest, and for four years the reins of government had been in the firm hands of Dr.
Tait, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury.
He was Headmaster during the whole of the time Charles was at Rugby, except the last year, during which Dr.
Goulburn held that office.
Charles went up in February, 1846, and he must have found his new life a great change from his quiet experiences at Richmond.
Football was in full swing, and one can imagine that to a new boy "Big-side" was not an unalloyed delight.
Whether he distinguished himself as a "dropper," or ever beat the record time in the "Crick" run, I do not know.
Probably not; his abilities did not lie much in the field of athletics.
But he got on capitally with his work, and seldom returned home without one or more prizes.
Moreover, he conducted himself so well that he never had to enter that dreaded chamber, well known to
some
Rugbeians, which is approached by a staircase that winds up a little turret, and wherein are enacted scenes better imagined than described.

A schoolboy's letter home is not, usually, remarkable for the intelligence displayed in it; as a rule it merely leads up with more or less ingenuity to the inevitable request for money contained in the postscript.
Some of Charles's letters were of a different sort, as the following example shows:

Yesterday evening I was walking out with a friend of mine who attends as mathematical pupil Mr.
Smythies the second mathematical master; we went up to Mr.
Smythies' house, as he wanted to speak to him, and he asked us to stop and have a glass of wine and some figs.
He seems as devoted to his duty as Mr.
Mayor, and asked me with a smile of delight, "Well Dodgson I suppose you're getting well on with your mathematics?"
He is very clever at them, though not equal to Mr.
Mayor, as indeed few men are, Papa excepted....
I have read the first number of Dickens' new tale, "Davy Copperfield."
It purports to be his life, and begins with his birth and childhood; it seems a poor plot, but some of the characters and scenes are good.
One of the persons that amused me was a Mrs.
Gummidge, a wretched melancholy person, who is always crying, happen what will, and whenever the fire smokes, or other trifling accident occurs, makes the remark with great bitterness, and many tears, that she is a "lone lorn creetur, and everything goes contrairy with her."
I have not yet been able to get the second volume Macaulay's "England" to read.
I have seen it however and one passage struck me when seven bishops had signed the invitation to the pretender, and King James sent for Bishop Compton (who was one of the seven) and asked him "whether he or any of his ecclesiastical brethren had anything to do with it?"
He replied, after a moment's thought "I am fully persuaded your majesty, that there is not one of my brethren who is not as innocent in the matter as myself."
This was certainly no actual lie, but certainly, as Macaulay says, it was very little different from one.

The Mr.
Mayor who is mentioned in this letter formed a very high opinion of his pupil's ability, for in 1848 he wrote to Archdeacon Dodgson: "I have not had a more promising boy at his age since I came to Rugby."

Dr.
Tait speaks no less warmly:—

My dear Sir,—I must not allow your son to leave school without expressing to you the very high opinion I entertain of him.
I fully coincide in Mr.
Cotton's estimate both of his abilities and upright conduct.
His mathematical knowledge is great for his age, and I doubt not he will do himself credit in classics.
As I believe I mentioned to you before, his examination for the Divinity prize was one of the most creditable exhibitions I have ever seen.

During the whole time of his being in my house, his conduct has been excellent.

Believe me to be, My dear Sir,

Yours very faithfully,

A.C.
TAIT.

Public school life then was not what it is now; the atrocious system then in vogue of setting hundreds of lines for the most trifling offences made every day a weariness and a hopeless waste of time, while the bad discipline which was maintained in the dormitories made even the nights intolerable—especially for the small boys, whose beds in winter were denuded of blankets that the bigger ones might not feel cold.

Charles kept no diary during his time at Rugby; but, looking back upon it, he writes in 1855:—

During my stay I made I suppose some progress in learning of various kinds, but none of it was done
con amore
, and I spent an incalculable time in writing out impositions—this last I consider one of the chief faults of Rugby School.
I made some friends there, the most intimate being Henry Leigh Bennett (as college acquaintances we find fewer common sympathies, and are consequently less intimate)—but I cannot say that I look back upon my life at a Public School with any sensations of pleasure, or that any earthly considerations would induce me to go through my three years again.

When, some years afterwards, he visited Radley School, he was much struck by the cubicle system which prevails in the dormitories there, and wrote in his Diary, "I can say that if I had been thus secure from annoyance at night, the hardships of the daily life would have been comparative trifles to bear."

The picture on page 32 was, I believe, drawn by Charles while he was at Rugby in illustration of a letter received from one of his sisters.
Halnaby, as I have said before, was an outlying district of Croft parish.

During his holidays he used to amuse himself by editing local magazines.
Indeed, they might be called
very local
magazines, as their circulation was confined to the inmates of Croft Rectory.
The first of these,
Useful and Instructive Poetry
, was written about 1845.
It came to an untimely end after a six months' run, and was followed at varying intervals by several other periodicals, equally short-lived.

In 1849 or 1850,
The Rectory Umbrella
began to appear.
As the editor was by this time seventeen or eighteen years old, it was naturally of a more ambitious character than any of its precursors.
It contained a serial story of the most thrilling interest, entitled, "The Walking-Stick of Destiny," some meritorious poetry, a few humorous essays, and several caricatures of pictures in the Vernon Gallery.
Three reproductions of these pictures follow, with extracts from the
Umbrella
descriptive of them.