Complete Works of Lewis Carroll (265 page)

This kitchen is a very wonderful old place, the first portion of Wolsey’s work to be completed, and so strongly was it built, and so well has it lasted, that it seems scarcely to have been touched by time.
Of course there are some modern improvements, but the great ranges are still there, and the wide fireplace and spits worked by a “smoke jack.”
Wolsey’s own gridiron hangs just above the fireplace, a large uncouth affair, fit for cooking the huge hunks of meat the Cardinal liked best.

We must not imagine that the years at Oxford were “all work and no play,” for Charles Dodgson’s many vacations were spent either at home, where his father made much of him, his brothers looked up to him, and his sisters petted and spoiled him, or on little trips of interest and amusement.

Once, during what is known as the “Long Vacation,” he visited London at the time of the Great Exhibition, and wrote a vivid letter of description to his sister Elizabeth.
What seemed to interest him most was the vastness of everything he saw, the huge crystal fountain and the colossal statues on either side of the central aisle.
One statue he particularly noticed.
It was called the “Amazon and the Tiger,” and many of us have doubtless seen the picture, the strong, erect, girlish figure on horseback, and the tiger clinging to the horse, his teeth buried in his neck, the girl’s face full of terror, the horse rearing with fright and pain.
He always liked anything that told a story, either in statues or in pictures, and in after years, when he became a skilled photographer, he was fond of taking his many girlfriends in costume, for somehow it always suggested a story.

He was also very fond of the theater, and he made many a trip to London to see a special play.
Shakespeare was his delight, and “Henry VIII” was certainly the most appropriate play for a Student of Christ Church College to see.
The great actor, Charles Kean, took the part of
Cardinal Wolsey
, and Mrs.
Kean shone forth as poor
Queen Katharine
, the discarded wife of Henry VIII.
What impressed him most was the vision of the sleeping queen, the troops of floating angels with palm branches in their hands, which they waved slowly over her, while shafts of light fell upon them from above.
Then as the Queen awoke they vanished, and raising her arms she called “Spirits of peace, where are ye?”
Poor Queen, no wonder her audience shed tears!
Henry VIII was not an easy man to get along with, even in his sweetest mood!

In 1854, Charles Dodgson began hard study for final examinations, working sometimes as many as thirteen hours a day during the last three weeks, but the subjects which he had to prepare were philosophy and history, neither of which were special favorites, and though he passed fairly well, his name was not among the first.

During the following Long Vacation he went to Whitby, where he prepared for final examination in mathematics, and so well did he work that he took First Class honors and became quite a distinguished personage among the undergraduates.
His prowess in so difficult a subject traveled even beyond the college walls, and congratulations poured in upon him until he laughingly declared that if he had shot the Dean there could not have been more commotion.
This meant a great deal to him; to begin with, he stood head on the list of five very able men who were close to him in the marking.
He came out number 279 and the lowest of the five was 213, so it was a hard fight in a hard subject, and Lewis Carroll might be forgiven for a little quiet “bragging” in the letter he wrote his father, telling the result of the examinations.
Of one thing he was now quite sure—a future lectureship in Christ Church College.

On December 18, 1854, he graduated, taking the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and the following year, October 15, 1855, to celebrate the appointment of Dean Liddell, he was made a “Master of the House,” meaning that under the roof of Christ Church College he had all the privileges of a Master of Arts, which is the next higher degree; but he did not become a Master of Arts in the University until two years later.
When a college graduate puts B.A.
after his name, we know that means Bachelor of Arts, the first college degree, and M.A.
means Master of Arts, the second degree.

The young Student was glad to be free of college restraint and to begin work.
Archdeacon Dodgson was not a rich man, and though his son had never faced the trials of poverty, he was anxious to become independent.
Now that the “grinding” study was over, his thoughts turned fondly to a literary life.
His numerous clever sketches, too, gave him hope of better work hereafter, and this we know had been his dream through his boyish years; it was his dream still, but where his talent would lie he had no idea, though hazy poems and queer jumbles of words popped into his mind on the slightest notice.
Still he could not settle down seriously to such work just at first; there was other work at hand and he must learn to wait.
During the first year of tutorship he took many private pupils, besides lecturing in mathematics, his chosen profession, from three to three and a half hours a day.
The next year he was one of the regular lecturers, and often lectured seven hours a day, not counting the time it took him to prepare his work.

Mathematicians are born, not made; this young fellow had not only the power of solving problems, but the rare gift of being able to teach others to solve them also, and many a student has been heard to declare that mathematics was never a dull study with Mr.
Dodgson to explain.
We can imagine the slight, youthful figure of the young college “don,” his clean-cut, refined face, full of light and interest, his blue eyes flashing as he tackled some difficult problem, wrestled with it before his class in the lecture-hall, and undid the tangle without the slightest trouble.

He “took to” problems as naturally as a duck to water; the harder they were the more resolutely he bent to his task.
Sometimes the tussle kept him awake half the night, often he was up at dawn to renew the battle, but he usually “won out,” and this is what made him so good a teacher—he
never
“let go.”
Whatever mathematical ax he had to grind, he always managed to put a keen edge upon it sooner or later.

To his many friends, especially his many girl friends, this side of his character was most remarkable.
How this fun-making, fun-loving, story-telling nonsense rhymer could turn in a twinkling into the grave, precise “don” and discourse on rectangles, and polygons, and parallel lines, and unknown quantities was more than they could understand.

Girls, the best of them, the rarest and finest of them, are not, as a rule, fond of mathematics.
They “take” it in school, as they “take” whooping cough and measles at home, but in those days they seldom went further than the “first steps” in plain arithmetic.
Girls, especially the little girls of Charles Dodgson’s immediate circle, rarely went to school; they were usually in the care of governesses who helped them along the narrow path of learning which they themselves had trod, and these little maids could truly say, with all their hearts:

“Multiplication is vexation,

Division is as bad,

The Rule of Three, it puzzles me,

And Fractions drive me mad!”

It was certainly thought quite unnecessary to educate girls in higher mathematics; those were not the days when colleges for girls were thought of.
The little daughters of the wise Oxford men were considered finely grounded if they had mastered the three R’s—(“Reading, ’Riting, and ’Rithmetic”) and the young “don” knew pretty well how far they were led along these paths, for if we remember our “Alice in Wonderland” we may easily recall that interesting conversation between
Alice
, the
Mock Turtle
and the
Gryphon
, about schools, the
Mock Turtle
remarking with a sigh:

“I took only the regular course.”

“What was that?”
inquired Alice.

“Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,” the Mock Turtle replied, “and then the different branches of Arithmetic—Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.”

“What else had you to learn?”
asks Alice later on.

“Well, there was Mystery,” the Mock Turtle replied, counting off the subjects on his flappers, “Mystery—ancient and modern—with Seography; then Drawling—the Drawling-master was an old Conger-eel that used to come once a week;
he
taught us Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils.”
[Drawing, sketching, and painting in oils.] Lewis Carroll loved this play upon words.

“What was
that
like?”
said Alice.

“Well, I can’t show it you myself,” the Mock Turtle said, “I’m too stiff.
And the Gryphon never learnt it.”

“Hadn’t time,” said the Gryphon.
“I went to the Classical master though.
He was an old Crab,
he
was.”

“I never went to him,” the Mock Turtle said, with a sigh; “he taught Laughing and Grief, they used to say.”

“So he did, so he did,” said the Gryphon, sighing in his turn, and both creatures hid their faces in their paws.

It is doubtful if any little girl in Lewis Carroll’s time ever learned “Laughing and Grief” unless she was
very
ambitious, but many a quick, active young mind absorbed the simple problems which he was constantly turning into games for them.

So the years passed over the head of this young Student of Christ Church.
They were pleasantly broken by long vacations at Croft Rectory, by trips through the beautiful English country, by one special journey to the English lakes, where Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge lived and wrote their poems.
These trips were often afoot, and Charles Dodgson was very proud of the long distances he could tramp, no matter what the wind or the weather.
There was nothing he liked better unless it was the occasional visits he made to the Princess’s Theatre in London.

On June 16, 1856, he records seeing “A Winter’s Tale,” where he was specially pleased with little Ellen Terry, a beautiful tiny creature, who played the child’s part of
Mamillius
in the most charming way.
This was the first of many meetings with the famous actress, who became one of his child-friends in later years.
But that was when he was Lewis Carroll.
As yet he was only Charles Dodgson, a struggling young Student, anxious for independence, interested in his work, simple, sincere, devout, a dreamer of dreams which had not yet taken shape, and above all, a true lover of little girls, no matter how plain, or fretful, or rumpled, or even dirty.
His kindly eyes could see beneath the creases on the top, his gentle fingers clasped the shrinking, trembling little hands; his low voice charmed them all unconsciously, and no doubt the children he loved did for him as much as he did for them.
If he felt the strain of overwork nothing soothed him like a romp with his favorites, and young as he was, when dreaming of the future and the magic circle in which he would write his name, it was not of the great world he was thinking, but of bright young faces, with dancing eyes and sunny curls, and eager voices continually demanding—“One more story.”

CHAPTER V.

A MANY-SIDED GENIUS.

We have traveled over the years with some speed, from the time that little Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was christened by his proud papa to the moment when the same proud father heard that his eldest son was made a student of Christ College—a good large slice out of a birthday-cake—twenty candles—if one counts birthdays by candles.
It’s a charming old German fashion, for the older one grows the brighter the lights become, and if you chance to get
real
old—a fine “threescore and ten”—why, if there’s a candle for each year, there you are—in a perfect blaze of glory!

We have just passed over the very oldest part of our Boy’s life; from the time he became Lewis Carroll, Charles Dodgson began to go backward; he did a lot of things backward, as we shall see later.
He wrote letters backward, he told stories backward, he spelled and counted backward—in fact, he was so fond of doing things backward we do not wonder that he stepped out from the circle of the years, and turned backward to find the boyhood he had somehow missed before.
This is when Lewis Carroll was born; but that is a story in itself.

Outwardly the life of the young Student seemed unchanged, but that is all we mortals know about it; the fairies were already at work.
In moments of leisure little poems went forth to the world—a world which at first consisted of Croft Rectory—for there was another and last family magazine, of which he was sole editor and composer.
He named it
Misch-Masch
, a curious old German word, which in our English means Hodge-Podge, and everybody, young and old, knows what a jumble Hodge-Podge is—something like New England succotash.

Misch-Masch
was started by this enterprising young editor during the year after his graduation.
He had become a person of vast experience between
Misch-Masch
and the days of
The Rectory Umbrella
, having been editor of
College Rhymes
, his college paper.
He also wrote stories for the
Oxonian Advertiser
and the
Whitby Gazette
, and this printed matter, together with many new and original ideas and drawings, found a place in his new home venture.

His mathematical genius blossomed forth in a wonderful labyrinth or maze, a geometrical design within a given square form, of a tangle of intersecting lines and angles containing a hidden pathway to the center.
These designs, that seem so remarkable to outsiders, were very simple to the editor of
Misch-Masch
, who was always inventing puzzles of some sort.

He also wrote a series of “Studies from the English Poets,” which he illustrated himself.
One specially good drawing was of the following line from one of Keats’s poems.
“She did so—but ’tis doubtful how or whence.”
The picture represents a very fat old lady, with a capitally drawn placid face, perched on a post marked “
Dangerous
,” seemingly in midwater.
In her chubby hand is a basket with the long neck of a goose hanging out.

Mr.
Stuart Collingwood, Lewis Carroll’s nephew, gives a most interesting account of these early editorial efforts, in an article written for the
Strand
, an English magazine.
Speaking of the above illustration he says:

“Keats is the author whom our artist has honored, and surely the shade of that much neglected songster owes something to a picture which must popularize one passage at least in his works.

“The only way I can account for the lady’s hazardous position is by supposing her to have attempted to cross a frozen lake after a thaw has set in.
The goose, whose long neck projects from her basket, proves that she has just returned from market; probably the route across the lake was her shortest way home.
We are to suppose that for some time she proceeded without any knowledge of the risk she was running, when suddenly she felt the ice giving way under her.
By frantic exertions she succeeded in reaching the notice-board, to which she clung for days and nights together, till the ice was all melted and a deluge of rain caused the water to rise so many feet that at last she was compelled for dear life to climb to the top of the post.”
We can now understand how well the illustration fits in with the line:

“She did so, but ’tis doubtful how or whence.”

Mr.
Collingwood continues:

“Whether she sustained life by eating raw goose is uncertain.
At least she did not follow Father William’s example by devouring the beak.
The question naturally suggests itself: Why was she not rescued?
My answer is that either such a dense fog enveloped the whole neighborhood that even her bulky form was invisible, or that she was so unpopular a character that each man feared the hatred of the rest if he should go to her succor.”

Mr.
Collingwood concludes his article with the following riddle which the renowned editor of
Misch-Masch
presented to his readers; there must be an answer, and it is therefore worth while guessing, for Lewis Carroll would never have written a riddle without one:

A monument, men all agree—

Am I in all sincerity;

Half-cat, half-hindrance made

If head and tail removed shall be

Then, most of all you strengthen me.

Replace my head—the stand you see

On which my tail is laid.

Misch-Masch
had a short but brilliant career, for magazines with a wider circulation than Croft Rectory began to claim his attention.
The Comic Times
was a small periodical very much on the order of
Punch
.
Edmund Yates was the editor, and among the writers and artists were some of the best known in England.
Charles Dodgson’s poetry and sketches were too clever to hide themselves from public view, and he became a regular contributor.
Later,
The Comic Times
changed hands, and the old staff started a new magazine called
The Train
, in 1856, and the quiet Oxford “don” found his poetry in such demand that after talking it over with the editor, he decided to adopt a suitable pen name.
He first suggested “Dares” in compliment to his birthplace, Daresbury, but the editor preferred a
real
name.
Then he took his first two names, Charles Lutwidge, and transposing them he got two names, Edgar Cuthwellis or Edgar U.
C.
Westhill, neither of which sounded in the least interesting.
Finally he decided to take the two names and look at them backward—this very queer young fellow always preferred to look at things backward—Lutwidge Charles.
That was certainly not promising.
Then he took one name at a time and analyzed it in his own quaint way.
Lutwidge was surely derived from the Latin word Ludovicus—which in good sound English meant Lewis—ah, that was not bad!
Now for Charles.
Its Latin equivalent was Carolus—which could be easily changed in Carroll.
The whole thing worked out like one of his own word puzzles, and Lewis Carroll he was, henceforth, whenever he made his appearance in print.

There was not much ceremony at
this
christening.
Just two clever men put their heads together and the result was—Lewis Carroll!
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson retired to his rooms at Christ Church College, where he prepared his lectures on mathematics and wrote the most learned text-books for the University; but Lewis Carroll peeped out into the world, which he found full of light and laughter and happy childhood, and as Lewis Carroll he was known to that world henceforth.

The first poem to appear with his new name was called “The Path of Roses,” a very solemn, serious poem about half a yard long and not specially interesting, save as a contribution to a most interesting little paper.
The Train
was really very ambitious, full, indeed, of the best talent of the day.
There were short stories and serials, poems, timely articles, jokes, puns, anecdates—in short, all the attractions that help toward the making of an attractive magazine, and though the illustrations were nothing but old-fashioned woodcuts, the reading was quite as good, and in many cases better than what we find in the average magazine of to-day.

Many of the little poems Lewis Carroll wrote at this time he tucked away in some cubby-hole and made use of later in one or the other of his books.
One of his very earliest printed bits is called:

MY FANCY.

I painted her a gushing thing,

With years perhaps a score,

I little thought to find they were

At least a dozen more.

My fancy gave her eyes of blue,

A curly auburn head;

I came to find the blue—a green,

The auburn turned to red.

She boxed my ears this morning,

They tingled very much;

I own that I could wish her

A somewhat lighter touch.

And if you were to ask me how

Her charms might be improved,

I would not have them
added
to,

But just a few
removed
!

She has the bear’s ethereal grace,

The bland hyena’s laugh,

The footstep of the elephant,

The neck of the giraffe;

I love her still, believe me,

Tho’ my heart its passion hides—

“She is all my fancy painted her,”

But, oh—
how much besides
!

The quoted line—“She is all my fancy painted her”—is the line upon which he built the poem; he was very fond of doing this, and though no special mention is made of the fact, it is highly probable that these three telling verses found their way into
Misch-Masch
, among the “Studies from the Poets.”
It is unfortunate, too, that we have not some funny drawing of this wonderful “gushing thing” of the giraffe neck, “the bear’s ethereal grace,” and the “footstep of the elephant,” for Lewis Carroll’s drawings generally followed his thoughts; a pencil and bit of paper were always ready in some inner pocket, for illustrating purposes, and it is doubtful if any celebrated artist could produce more sketches on such a variety of subjects.
His power to make his pencil “talk” impressed his sisters and brothers greatly; they caught every scrap of paper that fluttered from his hands, treasured it, and if the drawing was distinct enough, they coloured it with crayons or touched it up in black and white, for the use of
The Rectory Umbrella
and the later publication of
Misch-Masch
.
In his secret soul he longed to be an artist; he certainly possessed genius of a queer sort.
A few strokes would tell the story, usually a funny one or a quaint one, but all his art failed to make his people look quite real or natural—just dolls stuffed with sawdust.
But they were fine caricatures, and the young artist had to content himself with this smaller talent.

The Train
published many of his poems during 1856-57.
“Solitude,” “Novelty and Romancement,” “The Three Voices,” followed one another in quick succession, but the best of all was decidedly “Hiawatha’s Photographing,” and this for more reasons than one.
In the first place, from the time he went into residence at Christ Church photography was his great delight; he “took” people whenever he could—canons, deacons, deans, students, undergraduates and children.
The “grown-ups” submitted with a gentle sort of patience, but he made his camera such a point of attraction for the youngsters that he could “take” them as often as he liked, and he has left behind him a wonderful array of photographs, many of well-known, even celebrated people, among whom we may find Tennyson, the Rossetti family, Ellen and Kate Terry, John Ruskin, George Macdonald, Charlotte M.
Yonge, Sir John Millais, and many others known to fame; and considering that photography had not reached its present perfection, Lewis Carroll’s photographs show remarkable skill.
He would not have been Lewis Carroll if he had not gone into this fascinating pastime with his whole soul.
Whenever he met a new face which interested him, we may be sure it was not long before the busy camera was at work.
There is no doubt that his admiring family suffered agonies in posing, to say nothing of his friends who were not always beautiful enough to produce “pretty pictures”; their criticisms were often based entirely on their disappointment: hence the poem,