Lewis Carroll in Wonderland and at Home Part 20

_"My Ninth Rule._--When you get to the end of a note-sheet, and find you have more to say, take another piece of paper--a whole sheet or a sc.r.a.p, as the case may demand, but whatever you do, _don't cross_!

Remember the old proverb 'Cross-writing makes cross-reading.' 'The _old_ proverb?' you say inquiringly. 'How old?' Why, not so _very_ ancient, I must confess. In fact--I'm afraid I invented it while writing this paragraph. Still, you know 'old' is a _comparative_ term; I think you would be quite justified in addressing a chicken just out of the sh.e.l.l as 'Old Boy!' _when compared_ with another chicken that was only half out!"

"Don't try to have the last word," he tells us--and again, "_Don't_ fill more than a page and a half with apologies for not having written sooner."

"_On how to end a letter_," he advises the writer to "refer to your correspondent's last letter, and make your winding up _at least as friendly as his_; in fact, even if a shade more friendly, it will do no harm."

"When you take your letters to the post, _carry them in your hand_.

If you put them in your pocket, you will take a long country walk (I speak from experience), pa.s.sing the post office twice, going and returning, and when you get home you will find them still in your pocket."

Letter-writing was as much a part of Lewis Carroll as games, and puzzles, and problems, and mathematics, and nonsense, and little girls. Indeed, as we view him through the stretch of years, we find him so many-sided that he himself would have done well to draw a new geometrical figure to represent a nature so full of strange angles and surprising shapes. If one is fond of looking into a kaleidoscope, and watching the ever-changing facets and colors and designs, one would be pretty apt to understand the constant s.h.i.+fting of that active mind, always on the alert for new ideas, but steady and fixed in many good old ones, which had become firm habits.

He was fond of giving his child-friends "nuts to crack," and nothing pleased him more than to be the center of some group of little girls, firing his conundrums and puzzles into their minds, and watching the bright young faces catching the glow of his thoughts. He knew just how far to go, and when to turn some dawning idea into quaint nonsense, so that the young mind could grasp and hold it. Dear maker of nonsense, dear teacher and friend, dear lover of children, can they ever forget you!

CHAPTER XII.

A FAIRY RING OF GIRLS.

In a little poem called "A Sea Dirge," which Lewis Carroll wrote about this time, we find some very strange, uncomplimentary remarks, considering the fact that most of his vacations was spent at the seash.o.r.e. Eastbourne, in the summer time, was as much his home--during the last fifteen years of his life--as Christ Church during the Oxford term. His pretty house in a shady, quiet street was a familiar spot to every girl friend of his acquaintance, and many of his closest and most interesting friends.h.i.+ps were begun by the sea, yet he says:

There are certain things, as a spider, a ghost, The income-tax, gout, an umbrella for three-- That I hate, but the thing that I hate the most Is a thing they call the Sea.

Pour some salt water over the floor-- Ugly I'm sure you'll allow it to be; Suppose it extended a mile or more, _That's_ very like the Sea.

I had a vision of nursery maids; Tens of thousands pa.s.sed by me-- All leading children with wooden spades, And this way by the Sea.

Who invented those spades of wood?

Who was it cut them out of the tree?

None, I think, but an idiot could-- Or one that loved the Sea.

If you like your coffee with sand for dregs, A decided hint of salt in your tea, And a fishy taste in the very eggs-- By all means choose the Sea.

And if, with these dainties to drink and eat, You prefer not a vestige of gra.s.s or tree, And a chronic state of wet in your feet, Then--I recommend the Sea.

Did he mean all this, we wonder, this genial gentleman, who haunted the seash.o.r.e in search of little girls, his pockets bulging with games and puzzles? He had also a good supply of safety-pins, in case he saw someone who wanted to wade in the sea, but whose skirts were in her way and who had no pin handy. Then he would go gravely up to her and present her with one of his stock.

In the earlier days he used to go to Sandown, in the Isle of Wight, and there he met little Gertrude Chataway, who must have been a very charming child, for he promptly fell in love with her. This was in 1875, and, from her description of him, he must have been a _very, very_ old gentleman--forty-three at least. He happened to live next door to Gertrude, and during those summer days she used to watch him with much interest, for he had a way of throwing back his head and sniffing in the salt air that fascinated Gertrude, whose joy bubbled over when at last he spoke to her. The two became great friends. They used to sit for hours on the steps of their house which led to the beach, and he would delight the little girl with his wonderful stories, often ill.u.s.trating them with a pencil as he talked. The great charm of these stories lay in the fact that some chance remark of Gertrude's would wind him up; some question she asked would suggest a story, and as it spread out into "lovely nonsense"

she always felt in some way that she had helped to make it grow.

This little girl was one of the child-friends who clung to the sweet a.s.sociation all her life, just as the little Liddell girls never grew quite away from his love and interest. It was to Gertrude that he dedicated "The Hunting of the Snark," and she was the proud possessor not only of his friends.h.i.+p, but of many interesting letters, covering a period of at least ten years, during which time Gertrude pa.s.sed from little girlhood, though he never seemed to realize the change.

Two of his prime favorites in the earlier days were Ellen Terry, the well-known English actress, and her sister Kate, who was also an actress of some note.

Lewis Carroll, being always very fond of the drama, found it through life his keenest delight, and it was his good fortune to see little Ellen Terry in the first prominent part she ever took. This was in 1856, when Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kean played in "The Winter's Tale," and Ellen took the child's character of _Mamillius_, the little son of the King. Lewis Carroll was carried away with the tiny actress, and it did not take him long after that to make her acquaintance. This no doubt began in the usual way, a chat with the child behind the scenes, a call upon her father and mother, and, finally, an introduction to the whole family which, being nearly as large as his own, could not fail to interest him deeply.

There were two other little Terry girls, who attracted him and to whom he was very kind, Florence and Marion. The boys, and there were five of them, he never noticed of course, but the four little girls came in for a good share of the most substantial petting. Many a day at the seaside he gave them--these busy little actresses--many a feast in his own rooms, many a daytime frolic, for night was their working time--not that they minded in the least, for they loved their work. There was much talk in those days about the harm in allowing children to act at night, when they should be snug in their beds dreaming of fairies. But Lewis Carroll thought nothing of the kind; he delighted in the children's acting, and he knew, being half a child himself, that the youngsters took as much delight in their work as he did in seeing them. He always contended that acting comes naturally to children; from babyhood they "pretend," and if they happen, as in Ellen Terry's case and the case of other little stage people he knew, to be born in the profession, why, this "pretending" is the finest kind of _play_ not _work_. So he was always on the side of the little actors and actresses who did not want to be taken away from the theater and put to bed.

Ellen Terry proved also to be one of his lifelong friends; the talented actress found his praise a most precious thing, and his criticism, always so honest, and usually so keen and true, she accepted with the grace of the great artist. Often, too, he asked her aid for some other girl friend with dramatic talent, and she never failed to lend a helping hand when she could. From first to last her acting charmed him. Often he would take a little girl to some Shakespearean treat at the theater, and would raise her to the "seventh heaven" of delight by penciling a note to Miss Terry asking for an interview or perhaps a photograph for his small companion, and these requests were never refused.

Every Christmas the Rev. Charles Dodgson spent with his sisters, who since their father's death had lived at Guildford, in a pretty house called _The Chestnuts_. His coming at Christmas was always a great event, for of course some very youthful ladies in the neighborhood were in a state of suppressed excitement over his yearly arrival, which meant Christmas jollity--with charades and tableaux and all sorts of odd and interesting games, and, _of course_, stories.

One of his special Guildford favorites was Gaynor Simpson, to whom he wrote several of his clever letters. In one, evidently an answer to hers, he begged her never again to leave out the g in the name Dodgson, asking in a very plaintive manner what _she_ would think if he left out the G in _her_ name and called her "Aynor" instead of Gaynor.

In this same letter he confessed that he never danced except in his own peculiar way, that the last house he danced in, the floors broke through, but as the beams were only six inches thick, it was a very poor sort of floor, when one came to think--that stone arches were much better for _his_ sort of dancing.

Indeed, the poem he wrote about the sea must have been just a bit of a joke, for it was at Margate, another seaside resort, that he met Adelaide Paine, another of his favorites, and to her he presented a copy of "The Hunting of the Snark," with an acrostic on her name written on the fly leaf. This little maid was further honored by receiving a photograph, not of Lewis Carroll, but of Mr. Dodgson, and in a note to her mother he begged in his usual odd way that she would never let any but her intimate friends know anything about the name of "Lewis Carroll," as he did not wish people who had heard of him to recognize him in the street.

The friends.h.i.+ps that were not cemented at the seaside or under the shelter of old "Tom Quad" were very often begun in the railway train. English trains are not like ours in America. In Lewis Carroll's time the "first-cla.s.s" accommodations were called _carriages_, in which four or five people, often total strangers, were shut up for hours together, actually locked in by the guard; and if one of these people chanced to be Lewis Carroll, and another a restless, active little girl, why, in the twinkling of an eye the sign of fellows.h.i.+p had flashed between them, and they were friends.

One special friend made in this fas.h.i.+on was a dear little maid named Kathleen Eschwege, who stayed a child to him always during their eighteen years of friends.h.i.+p, in spite of all the changes the years brought in their train; her marriage among the rest, on which occasion he wrote her that as he never gave wedding presents, he hoped the inclosed he sent in his letter she would accept as an _unwedding_ present.

This letter bore the date of January 20, 1892; five years later he wrote to acknowledge a photograph she had sent him in January, 1892, also her wedding-card in August of the same year. But he salved his conscience by reminding her that a certain biscuit-box--decorated with "Looking-Gla.s.s"

pictures--which he had sent her in December, 1892, had never been acknowledged by _her_.

Our "don's" memory sometimes played him tricks we see, especially in later years. On one occasion, failing to recognize someone who pa.s.sed him on the street, he was much chagrined to find out that he had been the gentleman's guest at dinner only the night before.

Another pleasant railway friends.h.i.+p was established with three little Drury girls, as early as 1869. They did not know who he was until he sent them a copy of "Alice in Wonderland"--with the following verse on the fly leaf:

TO THREE PUZZLED LITTLE GIRLS.

(_From the Author._)

Three little maidens weary of the rail, Three pairs of little ears listening to a tale, Three little hands held out in readiness For three little puzzles very hard to guess.

Three pairs of little eyes and open wonder-wide At three little scissors lying side by side, Three little mouths that thanked an unknown friend For one little book he undertook to send.

Though whether they'll remember a friend or book or day-- In three little weeks is very hard to say.

Edith Rix was another favorite but apparently beyond the usual age, for his letters to her have quite a grown-up tone, and he helped her through many girlish quandaries with his wholesome advice.

There are scores of others--so many that their very names would mean nothing to us unless we knew the circ.u.mstances which began the acquaintance, and the numerous incidents which could only occur in the company of Lewis Carroll.

As we know, there were three great influences in his life: his reverence for holy things, his fondness for mathematics, and his love of little girls. It is this last trait which colors our picture of him and makes him stand forth in our minds apart from other men of his time. There have been many great preachers and eminent mathematicians, and these brilliant men may have loved childhood in a certain way, but to step aside from their high places to mingle with the children would never have occurred to them.

The small girls who were "seen and not heard" dropped their eyes bashfully when the great ones pa.s.sed, and bobbed a little old-fas.h.i.+oned curtsy in return for a stately preoccupied nod. But not so Lewis Carroll. No childish eyes ever sought his in vain. His own blue ones always smiled back, and there was something so glowing in this smile which lit up his whole face, that children, all unconsciously, drew near the warmth of it.

His love for girls speaks well for the home-life and surroundings of his earlier years, when in the company of his seven sisters he learned to know girls pretty thoroughly. These girls of whom we have such scant knowledge possessed, we are sure, some potent charm to make this "big brother"

forever afterwards the champion of little girls, and being a thoughtful fellow, he must have watched with pleasure the way they bloomed from childhood to girlhood and from girlhood to womanhood, in the sweet seclusion of Croft Rectory. It was this intimacy and comrades.h.i.+p with his sisters which made him so easily the intimate and comrade of so many little girls, understanding all their traits and peculiarities and their "girl nature" better sometimes than they did themselves.

Some of his friends moved in royal circles. Princess Beatrice, who received the second presentation copy of "Alice in Wonderland," was one of them; but in later years the two children of the d.u.c.h.ess of Albany (Queen Victoria's daughter-in-law), Alice and the young Duke, claimed his friends.h.i.+p, and despite his preference for girls, Lewis Carroll could not help liking the lad, whose gentle disposition and studious habits set him somewhat apart from other boys.

Near home, that is to say in Oxford, or more properly, within a stone's throw of Christ Church itself, dwelt the Rev. E. Hatch and his bright and interesting family of children, with all of whom Lewis Carroll was on the most intimate terms, though his special favorite was Beatrice, better known as Bee. This little girl came so close upon the Liddell children in his long list of friends that she almost caught the echo of those happy days of "Wonderland," and she has much to say about this a.s.sociation in an interesting article published in the _Strand Magazine_ some years ago.

"My earliest recollections of Mr. Dodgson," she writes, "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 j.a.panese or a beggar child or a gypsy 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 tall friend's side in the tiny dark room, and watch him while he poured the contents of several little strong-smelling bottles on the gla.s.s picture of yourself that looked so funny with its black face; and when you grew tired of this there were many delights to be found in the cupboards in the big room downstairs. Musical boxes of different colors and different tunes, the dear old woolly bear that walked when he was wound up, toys, picture-books, and packets of photographs of other children, who had also enjoyed these mornings of bliss.