Complete Works of Lewis Carroll (293 page)

“A TURK”

The tale has been often told of how “Alice in Wonderland” came to be written, but it is a tale so well worth the telling again, that, very shortly, I will give it to you here.

Years ago in the great quadrangle of Christ Church, opposite to Mr.
Dodgson, lived the little daughters of Dean Liddell, the great Greek scholar and Dean of Christ Church.
The little girls were great friends of Mr.
Dodgson’s, and they used often to come to him and to plead with him for a fairy tale.
There was never such a teller of tales, they thought!
One can imagine the whole delightful scene with little trouble.
That big cool room on some summer’s afternoon, when the air was heavy with flower scents, and the sounds that came floating in through the open window were all mellowed by the distance.
One can see him, that good and kindly gentleman, his mobile face all aglow with interest and love, telling the immortal story.

Round him on his knee sat the little sisters, their eyes wide open and their lips parted in breathless anticipation.
When Alice (how the little Alice Liddell who was listening must have loved the tale!) rubbed the mushroom and became so big that she quite filled the little fairy house, one can almost hear the rapturous exclamations of the little ones as they heard of it.

The story, often continued on many summer afternoons, sometimes in the cool Christ Church rooms, sometimes in a slow gliding boat in a still river between banks of rushes and strange bronze and yellow waterflowers, or sometimes in a great hay-field, with the insects whispering in the grass all round, grew in its conception and idea.

Other folk, older folk, came to hear of it from the little ones, and Mr.
Dodgson was begged to write it down.
Accordingly the first MS.
was prepared with great care and illustrated by the author.
Then, in 1865, memorable year for English children, “Alice” appeared in its present form, with Sir John Tenniel’s drawings.

In 1872 “Alice Through the Looking-Glass,” appeared, and was received as warmly as its predecessor.
That fact, I think, proves most conclusively that Lewis Carroll’s success was a success of absolute merit, and due to no mere mood or fashion of the public taste.
I can conceive nothing more difficult for a man who has had a great success with one book than to write a sequel which should worthily succeed it.
In the present case that is exactly what Lewis Carroll did.
“Through the Looking-Glass” is every whit as popular and charming as the older book.
Indeed one depends very much upon the other, and in every child’s book-shelves one sees the two masterpieces side by side.

While on the subject of the two “Alices,” I will put in a letter that he wrote mentioning his books.
He was so modest about them, that it was extremely difficult to get him to say, or write, anything at all about them.
I believe it was a far greater pleasure for him to know that he had pleased some child with “Alice” or “The Hunting of the Snark,” than it was to be hailed by the press and public as the first living writer for children.

“Eastbourne.

“My own darling Isa,—The full value of a copy of the French ‘Alice’ is £45: but, as you want the ‘cheapest’ kind, and as you are a great friend of mine, and as I am of a very noble, generous disposition, I have made up my mind to a
great
sacrifice, and have taken £3, 10s.
0d.
off the price.
So that you do not owe me more than £41, 10s.
0d., and this you can pay me, in gold or bank-notes
as soon as you ever like
.
Oh dear!
I wonder why I write such nonsense!
Can you explain to me, my pet, how it happens that when I take up my pen to write a letter to
you
it won’t write sense?
Do you think the rule is that when the pen finds it has to write to a nonsensical good-for-nothing child, it sets to work to write a nonsensical good-for-nothing letter?
Well, now I’ll tell you the real truth.
As Miss Kitty Wilson is a dear friend of yours, of course she’s a
sort
of a friend of mine.
So I thought (in my vanity) ‘perhaps she would like to have a copy’ from the author, ‘with her name written in it.’
So I’ve sent her one—but I hope she’ll understand that I do it because she’s
your
friend, for, you see, I had never
heard
of her before: so I wouldn’t have any other reason.

“I’m still exactly ‘on the balance’ (like those scales of mine, when Nellie says ‘it won’t weigh!’) as to whether it would be wise to have my pet Isa down here!
how
am
I to make it weigh, I wonder?
Can you advise any way to do it?
I’m getting on grandly with ‘Sylvie and Bruno Concluded.’
I’m afraid you’ll expect me to give you a copy of it?
Well, I’ll see if I have one to spare.
It won’t be out before Easter-tide, I’m afraid.

“I wonder what sort of condition the book is in that I lent you to take to America?
(‘Laneton Parsonage,’ I mean).
Very shabby, I expect.
I find lent books
never
come back in good condition.
However, I’ve got a second copy of this book, so you may keep it as your own.
Love and kisses to any one you know who is lovely and kissable.—

“Always your loving Uncle,
“C.
L.
D.”

In 1876 appeared the long poem called the “Hunting of the Snark; or, An Agony in Eight Fits,” and besides those verses we have from Lewis Carroll’s pen two books called “Phantasmagoria” and “Rhyme and Reason.”

The last work of his that attained any great celebrity was “Sylvie and Bruno,” a curious romance, half fairy tale, half mathematical treatise.
Mr.
Dodgson was employed of late years on his “Symbolic Logic,” only one part of which has been published, and he seems to have been influenced by his studies.
One can easily trace the trail of the logician in Sylvie and Bruno, and perhaps this resulted in a certain lack of “form.”
However, some of the nonsense verses in this book were up to the highest level of the author’s achievement.
Even as I write the verse comes to me—

“He thought he saw a kangaroo
Turning a coffee-mill;
He looked again, and found it was
A vegetable pill!
‘Were I to swallow you,’ he said,
‘I should be very ill’!”

The fascinating jingle stays in the memory when graver verse eludes all effort at recollection.
I personally could repeat “The Walrus and the Carpenter” from beginning to end without hesitation, but I should find a difficulty in writing ten lines of “Hamlet” correctly.

At the beginning of “Sylvie and Bruno” is a little poem in three verses which forms an acrostic on my name.
I quote it—

“Is all our life, then, but a dream,
Seen faintly in the golden gleam
Athwart Time’s dark resistless stream?
 
Bowed to the earth with bitter woe,
Or laughing at some raree-show,
We flutter idly to and fro.
 
Man’s little day in haste we spend,
And, from its merry noontide, send
No glance to meet the silent end.”

You see that if you take the first letter of each line, or if you take the first three letters of the first line of each verse, you get the name Isa Bowman.

Although he never wrote anything in the dramatic line, he once wrote a prologue for some private theatricals, which was to be spoken by Miss Hatch and her brother.
This prologue is reproduced in facsimile on the preceding page.

Miss Hatch has also sent me a charade (reproduced on pp.
) which he wrote for her, and illustrated with some of his funny drawings.

I have one more letter, the last, which, as it mentions the book “Sylvie and Bruno,” I will give now.

“Christ Church,
“
May 16, ’90
.

“Dearest Isa,—I had this (‘this’ was ‘Sylvie and Bruno’) bound for you when the book first came out, and it’s been waiting here ever since Dec.
17, for I really didn’t dare to send it across the Atlantic—the whales are so inconsiderate.
They’d have been sure to want to borrow it to show to the little whales, quite forgetting that the salt water would be sure to spoil it.

“Also, I’ve only been waiting for you to get back to send Emsie the ‘Nursery Alice.’
I give it to the youngest in a family generally; but I’ve given one to Maggie as well, because she travels about so much, and I thought she would like to have one to take with her.
I hope Nellie’s eyes won’t get
quite
green with jealousy, at two (indeed
three
!) of her sisters getting presents, and nothing for her!
I’ve nothing but my love to send her to-day: but she shall have
something some
day.—Ever your loving

“Uncle Charles.”

Socially, Lewis Carroll was of strong conservative tendencies.
He viewed with wonder and a little pain the absolute levelling tendencies of the last few years of his life.
I have before me an extremely interesting letter which deals with social observances, and from which I am able to make one or two extracts.
The bulk of the letter is of a private nature.

“Ladies have ‘to be
much
’ more particular than gentlemen in observing the distinctions of what is called ‘social position’: and the
lower
their own position is (in the scale of ‘lady’ ship), the more jealous they seem to be in guarding it....
I’ve met with just the same thing myself from people several degrees above me.
Not long ago I was staying in a house along with a young lady (about twenty years old, I should think) with a title of her own, as she was an earl’s daughter.
I happened to sit next her at dinner, and every time I spoke to her, she looked at me more as if she was looking down on me from about a mile up in the air, and as if she were saying to herself ‘How
dare
you speak to
me
!
Why, you’re not good enough to black my shoes!’
It was so unpleasant, that, next day at luncheon, I got as far off her as I could!

“Of course we are all
quite
equal in God’s sight, but we
do
make a lot of distinctions (some of them quite unmeaning) among ourselves!”

The picture that this letter gives of the famous writer and learned mathematician obviously rather in terror of some pert young lady fresh from the schoolroom is not without its comic side.
One cannot help imagining that the girl must have been very young indeed, for if he were alive to-day there are few ladies of any state who would not feel honoured by the presence of Charles Dodgson.

However, he was not always so unfortunate in his experience of great people, and the following letter, written when he was staying with Lord Salisbury at Hatfield House, tells delightfully of his little royal friends, the Duchess of Albany’s children:

“Hatfield House, Hatfield,
“Herts,
June 8, ’89
.”

“My darling Isa,—I hope this will find you, but I haven’t yet had any letter from
Fulham
, so I can’t be sure if you have yet got into your new house.

“This is Lord Salisbury’s house (he is the father, you know, of that Lady Maud Wolmer that we had luncheon with): I came yesterday, and I’m going to stay until Monday.
It is such a nice house to stay in!
They let one do just as one likes—it isn’t ‘Now you must do some geography!
now it’s time for your sums!’
the sort of life
some
little girls have to lead when they are so foolish as to visit friends—but one can just please one’s own dear self.

“There are some sweet little children staying in the house.
Dear little ‘Wang’ is here with her mother.
By the way,
I
made a mistake in telling you what to call her.
She is ‘the Honourable Mabel
Palmer
’—‘Palmer’ is the family name: ‘Wolmer’ is the
title
, just as the
family
name of Lord Salisbury is ‘Cecil,’ so that his daughter was Lady Maud Cecil, till she married.

“Then there is the Duchess of Albany here, with two such sweet little children.
She is the widow of Prince Leopold (the Queen’s youngest son), so her children are a Prince and Princess: the girl is ‘Alice,’ but I don’t know the boy’s Christian name: they call him ‘Albany,’ because he is the Duke of Albany.
Now that I have made friends with a real live little Princess, I don’t intend ever to
speak
to any more children that haven’t any titles.
In fact, I’m so proud, and I hold my chin so high, that I shouldn’t even
see
you if we met!
No, darlings, you mustn’t believe
that
.
If I made friends with a
dozen
Princesses, I would love you better than all of them together, even if I had them all rolled up into a sort of child-roly-poly.

“Love to Nellie and Emsie.—Your ever loving Uncle,

“C.
L.
D.”
X X X X X X X

And now I think that I have done all that has been in my power to present Lewis Carroll to you in his most delightful aspect—as a friend to children.
I have not pretended in any way to write an exhaustive life-story of the man who was so dear to me, but by the aid of the letters and the diaries that I have been enabled to publish, and by the few reminiscences that I have given you of Lewis Carroll as I knew him, I hope I have done something to bring still nearer to your hearts the memory of the greatest friend that children ever had.