The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll by Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

S >> Stuart Dodgson Collingwood >> The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23

And now as to the secondary causes which attracted him to children.
First, I think children appealed to him because he was pre-eminently a
teacher, and he saw in their unspoiled minds the best material for him
to work upon. In later years one of his favourite recreations was to
lecture at schools on logic; he used to give personal attention to
each of his pupils, and one can well imagine with what eager
anticipation the children would have looked forward to the visits of a
schoolmaster who knew how to make even the dullest subjects
interesting and amusing.

Again, children appealed to his aesthetic faculties, for he was a keen
admirer of the beautiful in every form. Poetry, music, the drama, all
delighted him, but pictures more than all put together. I remember his
once showing me "The Lady with the Lilacs," which Arthur Hughes had
painted for him, and how he dwelt with intense pleasure on the
exquisite contrasts of colour which it contained--the gold hair of a
girl standing out against the purple of lilac-blossom. But with those
who find in such things as these a complete satisfaction of their
desire for the beautiful he had no sympathy; for no imperfect
representations of life could, for him, take the place of life itself,
life as God has made it--the babbling of the brook, the singing of the
birds, the laughter and sweet faces of the children. And yet,
recognising, as he did, what Mr. Pater aptly terms "the curious
perfection of the human form," in man, as in nature, it was the soul
that attracted him more than the body. His intense admiration, one
might almost call it adoration, for the white innocence and
uncontaminated spirituality of childhood emerges most clearly in
"Sylvie and Bruno." He says very little of the personal beauty of his
heroine; he might have asked, with Mr. Francis Thompson--

How can I tell what beauty is her dole,
Who cannot see her countenance for her soul?

So entirely occupied is he with her gentleness, her pity, her
sincerity, and her love.

Again, the reality of children appealed strongly to the simplicity and
genuineness of his own nature. I believe that he understood children
even better than he understood men and women; civilisation has made
adult humanity very incomprehensible, for convention is as a veil
which hides the divine spark that is in each of us, and so this
strange thing has come to be, that the imperfect mirrors perfection
more completely than the perfected, that we see more of God in the
child than in the man.

And in those moments of depression of which he had his full share,
when old age seemed to mock him with all its futility and feebleness,
it was the thought that the children still loved him which nerved him
again to continue his life-work, which renewed his youth, so that to
his friends he never seemed an old man. Even the hand of death itself
only made his face look more boyish--the word is not too strong. "How
wonderfully young your brother looks!" were the first words the doctor
said, as he returned from the room where Lewis Carroll's body lay, to
speak to the mourners below. And so he loved children because their
friendship was the true source of his perennial youth and unflagging
vigour. This idea is expressed in the following poem--an acrostic,
which he wrote for a friend some twenty years ago:--

Around my lonely hearth, to-night,
Ghostlike the shadows wander:
Now here, now there, a childish sprite,
Earthborn and yet as angel bright,
Seems near me as I ponder.

Gaily she shouts: the laughing air
Echoes her note of gladness--
Or bends herself with earnest care
Round fairy-fortress to prepare
Grim battlement or turret-stair--
In childhood's merry madness!

New raptures still hath youth in store:
Age may but fondly cherish
Half-faded memories of yore--
Up, craven heart! repine no more!
Love stretches hands from shore to shore:
Love is, and shall not perish!

His first child-friend, so far as I know, was Miss Alice Liddell, the
little companion whose innocent talk was one of the chief pleasures of
his early life at Oxford, and to whom he told the tale that was to
make him famous. In December, 1885, Miss M.E. Manners presented him
with a little volume, of which she was the authoress, "Aunt Agatha Ann
and Other Verses," and which contained a poem (which I quoted in
Chapter VI.), about "Alice." Writing to acknowledge this gift, Lewis
Carroll said:--

Permit me to offer you my sincere thanks for the very sweet
verses you have written about my dream-child (named after a
real Alice, but none the less a dream-child) and her
Wonderland. That children love the book is a very precious
thought to me, and, next to their love, I value the sympathy
of those who come with a child's heart to what I have tried
to write about a child's thoughts. Next to what conversing
with an angel _might_ be--for it is hard to imagine
it--comes, I think, the privilege of having a real child's
thoughts uttered to one. I have known some few _real_
children (you have too, I am sure), and their friendship is
a blessing and a help in life.

[Illustration: Alice Liddell. _From a photograph by Lewis
Carroll._]

It is interesting to note how in "Sylvie and Bruno" his idea of the
thoughts of a child has become deeper and more spiritual. Yet in the
earlier tale, told "all in a golden afternoon," to the plash of oars
and the swish of a boat through the waters of Cherwell or Thames, the
ideal child is strangely beautiful; she has all Sylvie's genuineness
and honesty, all her keen appreciation of the interest of life; only
there lacks that mysterious charm of deep insight into the hidden
forces of nature, the gentle power that makes the sky "such a darling
blue," which almost links Sylvie with the angels.

Another of Lewis Carroll's early favourites was Miss Alexandra (Xie)
Kitchin, daughter of the Dean of Durham. Her father was for fifteen
years the Censor of the unattached members of the University of
Oxford, so that Mr. Dodgson had plenty of opportunities of
photographing his little friend, and it is only fair to him to say
that he did not neglect them.

It would be futile to attempt even a bare list of the children whom he
loved, and who loved him; during forty years of his life he was
constantly adding to their number. Some remained friends for life, but
in a large proportion of cases the friendship ended with the end of
childhood. To one of those few, whose affection for him had not waned
with increasing years, he wrote:--

I always feel specially grateful to friends who, like you,
have given me a child-friendship and a woman-friendship.
About nine out of ten, I think, of my child-friendships get
ship-wrecked at the critical point, "where the stream and
river meet," and the child-friends, once so affectionate,
become uninteresting acquaintances, whom I have no wish to
set eyes on again.

[Illustration: Xie Kitchin. _From a photograph by Lewis
Carroll._]

These friendships usually began all very much in the same way. A
chance meeting on the sea-shore, in the street, at some friend's
house, led to conversation; then followed a call on the parents, and
after that all sorts of kindnesses on Lewis Carroll's part, presents
of books, invitations to stay with him at Oxford, or at Eastbourne,
visits with him to the theatre. For the amusement of his little guests
he kept a large assortment of musical-boxes, and an organette which
had to be fed with paper tunes. On one occasion he ordered about
twelve dozen of these tunes "on approval," and asked one of the other
dons, who was considered a judge of music, to come in and hear them
played over. In addition to these attractions there were clock-work
bears, mice, and frogs, and games and puzzles in infinite variety.

One of his little friends, Miss Isabel Standen, has sent me the
following account of her first meeting with him:--

We met for the first time in the Forbury Gardens, Reading.
He was, I believe, waiting for a train. I was playing with
my brothers and sisters in the Gardens. I remember his
taking me on his knee and showing me puzzles, one of which
he refers to in the letter (given below. This puzzle was, by
the way, a great favourite of his; the problem is to draw
three interlaced squares without going over the same lines
twice, or taking the pen off the paper), which is so
thoroughly characteristic of him in its quaint humour:--

"The Chestnuts, Guildford,

_August _22, 1869.

My Dear Isabel,--Though I have only been acquainted
with you for fifteen minutes, yet, as there is no one
else in Reading I have known so long, I hope you will
not mind my troubling you. Before I met you in the
Gardens yesterday I bought some old books at a shop in
Reading, which I left to be called for, and had not
time to go back for them. I didn't even remark the name
of the shop, but I can tell _where_ it was, and if
you know the name of the woman who keeps the shop, and
would put it into the blank I have left in this note,
and direct it to her I should be much obliged ... A
friend of mine, called Mr. Lewis Carroll, tells me he
means to send you a book. He is a _very_ dear
friend of mine. I have known him all my life (we are
the same age) and have _never_ left him. Of course
he was with me in the Gardens, not a yard off--even
while I was drawing those puzzles for you. I wonder if
you saw him?

Your fifteen-minute friend,

C.L. Dodgson.

Have you succeeded in drawing the three squares?"

Another favourite puzzle was the following--I give it in his own
words:--

A is to draw a fictitious map divided into counties.

B is to colour it (or rather mark the counties with
_names_ of colours) using as few colours as possible.

Two adjacent counties must have _different_ colours.

A's object is to force B to use as _many_ colours as
possible.

How many can he force B to use?

One of his most amusing letters was to a little girl called Magdalen,
to whom he had given a copy of his "Hunting of the Snark":--

Christ Church, _December_ 15, 1875.

My dear Magdalen,--I want to explain to you why I did not
call yesterday. I was sorry to miss you, but you see I had
so many conversations on the way. I tried to explain to the
people in the street that I was going to see you, but they
wouldn't listen; they said they were in a hurry, which was
rude. At last I met a wheelbarrow that I thought would
attend to me, but I couldn't make out what was in it. I saw
some features at first, then I looked through a telescope,
and found it was a countenance; then I looked through a
microscope, and found it was a face! I thought it was father
like me, so I fetched a large looking-glass to make sure,
and then to my great joy I found it was me. We shook hands,
and were just beginning to talk, when myself came up and
joined us, and we had quite a pleasant conversation. I said,
"Do you remember when we all met at Sandown?" and myself
said, "It was very jolly there; there was a child called
Magdalen," and me said, "I used to like her a little; not
much, you know--only a little." Then it was time for us to
go to the train, and who do you think came to the station to
see us off? You would never guess, so I must tell you. They
were two very dear friends of mine, who happen to be here
just now, and beg to be allowed to sign this letter as your
affectionate friends,

Lewis Carroll and C.L. Dodgson.

Another child-friend, Miss F. Bremer, writes as follows:--

Our acquaintance began in a somewhat singular manner. We
were playing on the Fort at Margate, and a gentleman on a
seat near asked us if we could make a paper boat, with a
seat at each end, and a basket in the middle for fish! We
were, of course, enchanted with the idea, and our new
friend--after achieving the feat--gave us his card, which we
at once carried to our mother. He asked if he might call
where we were staying, and then presented my elder sister
with a copy of "Alice in Wonderland," inscribed "From the
Author." He kindly organised many little excursions for
us--chiefly in the pursuit of knowledge. One memorable visit
to a light house is still fresh in our memories.

It was while calling one day upon Mrs. Bremer that he scribbled off
the following double acrostic on the names of her two daughters--

DOUBLE ACROSTIC--FIVE LETTERS.

Two little girls near London dwell,
More naughty than I like to tell.

1.
Upon the lawn the hoops are seen:
The balls are rolling on the green. T ur F

2.
The Thames is running deep and wide:
And boats are rowing on the tide. R ive R

3.
In winter-time, all in a row,
The happy skaters come and go. I c E

4.
"Papa!" they cry, "Do let us stay!"
He does not speak, but says they may. N o D

5.
"There is a land," he says, "my dear,
Which is too hot to skate, I fear." A fric A

At Margate also he met Miss Adelaide Paine, who afterwards became one
of his greatest favourites. He could not bear to see the healthy
pleasures of childhood spoiled by conventional restraint. "One piece
of advice given to my parents," writes Miss Paine, "gave me very great
glee, and that was not to make little girls wear gloves at the
seaside; they took the advice, and I enjoyed the result."
_Apropos_ of this I may mention that, when staying at Eastbourne,
he never went down to the beach without providing himself with a
supply of safety-pins. Then if he saw any little girl who wanted to
wade in the sea, but was afraid of spoiling her frock, he would
gravely go up to her and present her with a safety-pin, so that she
might fasten up her skirts out of harm's way.

Tight boots were a great aversion of his, especially for children. One
little girl who was staying with him at Eastbourne had occasion to buy
a new pair of boots. Lewis Carroll gave instructions to the bootmaker
as to how they were to be made, so as to be thoroughly comfortable,
with the result that when they came home they were more useful than
ornamental, being very nearly as broad as they were long! Which shows
that even hygienic principles may be pushed too far.

The first meeting with Miss Paine took place in 1876. When Lewis
Carroll returned to Christ Church he sent her a copy of "The Hunting
of the Snark," with the following acrostic written in the fly-leaf:--

'A re you deaf, Father William?' the young man said,
'D id you hear what I told you just now?
E xcuse me for shouting! Don't waggle your head
L ike a blundering, sleepy old cow!
A little maid dwelling in Wallington Town,
I s my friend, so I beg to remark:
D o you think she'd be pleased if a book were sent down
E ntitled "The Hunt of the Snark?"'

'P ack it up in brown paper!' the old man cried,
'A nd seal it with olive-and-dove.
I command you to do it!' he added with pride,
'N or forget, my good fellow, to send her beside
E aster Greetings, and give her my love.'

This was followed by a letter, dated June 7, 1876:--

My dear Adelaide,--Did you try if the letters at the
beginnings of the lines about Father William would spell
anything? Sometimes it happens that you can spell out words
that way, which is very curious.

I wish you could have heard him when he shouted out "Pack it
up in brown paper!" It quite shook the house. And he threw
one of his shoes at his son's head (just to make him attend,
you know), but it missed him.

He was glad to hear you had got the book safe, but his eyes
filled with tears as he said, "I sent _her_ my love,
but she never--" he couldn't say any more, his mouth was so
full of bones (he was just finishing a roast goose).

Another letter to Miss Paine is very characteristic of his quaint humour:--

Christ Church, Oxford, _March_ 8, 1880.

My dear Ada,--(Isn't that your short name? "Adelaide" is all
very well, but you see when one's _dreadfully_ busy one
hasn't time to write such long words--particularly when it
takes one half an hour to remember how to spell it--and even
then one has to go and get a dictionary to see if one has
spelt it right, and of course the dictionary is in another
room, at the top of a high bookcase--where it has been for
months and months, and has got all covered with dust--so
one has to get a duster first of all, and nearly choke
oneself in dusting it--and when one _has_ made out at
last which is dictionary and which is dust, even _then_
there's the job of remembering which end of the alphabet "A"
comes--for one feels pretty certain it isn't in the
_middle_--then one has to go and wash one's hands
before turning over the leaves--for they've got so thick
with dust one hardly knows them by sight--and, as likely as
not, the soap is lost, and the jug is empty, and there's no
towel, and one has to spend hours and hours in finding
things--and perhaps after all one has to go off to the shop
to buy a new cake of soap--so, with all this bother, I hope
you won't mind my writing it short and saying, "My dear
Ada"). You said in your last letter you would like a
likeness of me: so here it is, and I hope you will like
it--I won't forget to call the next time but one I'm in
Wallington.

Your very affectionate friend,

Lewis Carroll.

It was quite against Mr. Dodgson's usual rule to give away photographs
of himself; he hated publicity, and the above letter was accompanied
by another to Mrs. Paine, which ran as follows:--

I am very unwilling, usually, to give my photograph, for I
don't want people, who have heard of Lewis Carroll, to be
able to recognise him in the street--but I can't refuse Ada.
Will you kindly take care, if any of your ordinary
acquaintances (I don't speak of intimate friends) see it,
that they are _not_ told anything about the name of
"Lewis Carroll"?

He even objected to having his books discussed in his presence; thus
he writes to a friend:--

Your friend, Miss--was very kind and complimentary about my
books, but may I confess that I would rather have them
ignored? Perhaps I am too fanciful, but I have somehow taken
a dislike to being talked to about them; and consequently
have some trials to bear in society, which otherwise would
be no trials at all.... I don't think any of my many little
stage-friends have any shyness at all about being talked to
of their performances. _They_ thoroughly enjoy the
publicity that I shrink from.

The child to whom the three following letters were addressed, Miss
Gaynor Simpson, was one of Lewis Carroll's Guildford friends. The
correct answer to the riddle propounded in the second letter is
"Copal":--

_December_ 27, 1873.

My dear Gaynor,--My name is spelt with a "G," that is to say
"_Dodgson_." Any one who spells it the same as that
wretch (I mean of course the Chairman of Committees in the
House of Commons) offends me _deeply_, and _for
ever!_ It is a thing I _can_ forget, but _never
can forgive! _If you do it again, I shall call you
"'aynor." Could you live happy with such a name?

As to dancing, my dear, I _never_ dance, unless I am
allowed to do it _in my own peculiar way. _There is no
use trying to describe it: it has to be seen to be believed.
The last house I tried it in, the floor broke through. But
then it was a poor sort of floor--the beams were only six
inches thick, hardly worth calling beams at all: stone
arches are much more sensible, when any dancing, _of my
peculiar kind_, is to be done. Did you ever see the
Rhinoceros, and the Hippopotamus, at the Zooelogical Gardens,
trying to dance a minuet together? It is a touching sight.

Give any message from me to Amy that you think will be most
likely to surprise her, and, believe me,

Your affectionate friend,

Lewis Carroll.

My dear Gaynor,--So you would like to know the answer to
that riddle? Don't be in a hurry to tell it to Amy and
Frances: triumph over them for a while!

My first lends its aid when you plunge into trade.

_Gain_. Who would go into trade if there were no gain
in it?

My second in jollifications--

_Or_ [The French for "gold"--] Your jollifications
would be _very_ limited if you had no money.

My whole, laid on thinnish, imparts a neat finish
To pictorial representations.

_Gaynor_. Because she will be an ornament to the
Shakespeare Charades--only she must be "laid on thinnish,"
that is, _there musn't be too much of her._

Yours affectionately,

C. L. Dodgson.

My dear Gaynor,--Forgive me for having sent you a
sham answer to begin with.

My first--_Sea_. It carries the ships of the merchants.

My second--_Weed_. That is, a cigar, an article much used
in jollifications.

My whole--_Seaweed_. Take a newly painted oil-picture;
lay it on its back on the floor, and spread over it, "thinnish,"
some wet seaweed. You will find you have "finished" that
picture.

Yours affectionately,

C.L. Dodgson.

Lewis Carroll during the last fifteen years of his life always spent
the Long Vacation at Eastbourne; in earlier times, Sandown, a pleasant
little seaside resort in the Isle of Wight, was his summer abode. He
loved the sea both for its own sake and because of the number of
children whom he met at seaside places. Here is another "first
meeting"; this time it is at Sandown, and Miss Gertrude Chataway is
the narrator:--

I first met Mr. Lewis Carroll on the sea-shore at Sandown in
the Isle of Wight, in the summer of 1875, when I was quite a
little child.

We had all been taken there for change of air, and next door
there was an old gentlemen--to me at any rate he seemed
old--who interested me immensely. He would come on to his
balcony, which joined ours, sniffing the sea-air with his
head thrown back, and would walk right down the steps on to
the beach with his chin in air, drinking in the fresh
breezes as if he could never have enough. I do not know why
this excited such keen curiosity on my part, but I remember
well that whenever I heard his footstep I flew out to see
him coming, and when one day he spoke to me my joy was
complete.

Thus we made friends, and in a very little while I was as
familiar with the interior of his lodgings as with our own.

I had the usual child's love for fairy-tales and marvels,
and his power of telling stories naturally fascinated me. We
used to sit for hours on the wooden steps which led from our
garden on to the beach, whilst he told the most lovely tales
that could possibly be imagined, often illustrating the
exciting situations with a pencil as he went along.

One thing that made his stories particularly charming to a
child was that he often took his cue from her remarks--a
question would set him off on quite a new trail of ideas, so
that one felt that one had somehow helped to make the story,
and it seemed a personal possession It was the most lovely
nonsense conceivable, and I naturally revelled in it. His
vivid imagination would fly from one subject to another, and
was never tied down in any way by the probabilities of life.

To _me_ it was of course all perfect, but it is
astonishing that _he_ never seemed either tired or to
want other society. I spoke to him once of this since I have
been grown up, and he told me it was the greatest pleasure
he could have to converse freely with a child, and feel the
depths of her mind.

He used to write to me and I to him after that summer, and
the friendship, thus begun, lasted. His letters were one of
the greatest joys of my childhood.

I don't think that he ever really understood that we, whom
he had known as children, could not always remain such. I
stayed with him only a few years ago, at Eastbourne, and
felt for the time that I was once more a child. He never
appeared to realise that I had grown up, except when I
reminded him of the fact, and then he only said, "Never
mind: you will always be a child to me, even when your hair
is grey."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23