ST. GEORGE THE DRAGON

This letter takes up eight pages of close writing, and I should very much doubt if any child ever had a more charming one from anybody. The whimsical fancy in it, the absolute comprehension of a child’s intellect, the quickness with which the writer employs the slightest incident or thing that would be likely to please a little girl, is simply wonderful. I shall never forget how the letter charmed and delighted my sister Maggie and myself. We called it “The glove and kitten letter,” and as I look at the tremulous handwriting which is lying by my side, it all comes back to me very vividly—like the sound of forgotten fingers on the latch to some lonely fireside watcher, when the wind is wailing round the house with a wilder inner note than it has in the daytime.

At Eastbourne I was happier even with Lewis Carroll than I was at Oxford. We seemed more free, and there was the air of holiday over it all. Every day of my stay at the house in Lushington Road was a perfect dream of delight.

There was one regular and fixed routine which hardly ever varied, and which I came to know by heart; and I will write an account of it here, and ask any little girl who reads it, if she ever had such a splendid time in her life.

To begin with, we used to get up very early indeed. Our bedroom doors faced each other at the top of the staircase. When I came out of mine I always knew if I might go into his room or not by his signal. If, when I came into the passage, I found that a newspaper had been put under the door, then I knew I might go in at once; but if there was no newspaper, then I had to wait till it appeared. I used to sit down on the top stair as quiet as a mouse, watching for the paper to come under the door, when I would rush in almost before uncle had time to get out of the way. This was always the first pleasure and excitement of the day. Then we used to downstairs to breakfast, after which we always read a chapter out of the Bible. So that I should remember it, I always had to tell it to him afterwards as a story of my own.

“LEWIS CARROLL’S” HOUSE AT EASTBOURNE

“Now then, Isa dearest,” he would say, “tell me a story, and mind you begin with ‘once upon a time.’ A story which does not begin with ‘once upon a time’ can’t possibly be a good story. It’s most important.”

When I had told my story it was time to go out.

I was learning swimming at the Devonshire Park baths, and we always had a bargain together. He would never allow me to go to the swimming-bath—which I revelled in—until I had promised him faithfully that I would go afterwards to the dentist’s.

He had great ideas upon the importance of a regular and almost daily visit to the dentist. He himself went to a dentist as he would have gone to a hairdresser’s, and he insisted that all the little girls he knew should go too. The precaution sounds strange, and one might be inclined to think that Lewis Carroll carried it to an unnecessary length; but I can only bear personal witness to the fact that I have firm strong teeth, and have never had a toothache in my life. I believe I owe this entirely to those daily visits to the Eastbourne dentist.

Soon after this it was time for lunch, and we both went back hand-in-hand to the rooms in Lushington Road. Lewis Carroll never had a proper lunch, a fact which always used to puzzle me tremendously.

I could not understand how a big grown-up man could live on a glass of sherry and a biscuit at dinner time. It seemed such a pity when there was lots of mutton and rice-pudding that he should not have any. I always used to ask him, “Aren’t you hungry, uncle, even to-day?”

After lunch I used to have a lesson in backgammon, a game of which he was passionately fond, and of which he could never have enough. Then came what to me was the great trial of the day. I am afraid I was a very lazy little girl in those days, and I know I hated walking far. The trial was, that we should walk to the top of Beachy Head every afternoon. I used to like it very much when I got there, but the walk was irksome. Lewis Carroll believed very much in a great amount of exercise, and said one should always go to bed physically wearied with the exercise of the day. Accordingly there was no way out of it, and every afternoon I had to walk to the top of Beachy Head. He was very good and kind. He would invent all sorts of new games to beguile the tedium of the way. One very curious and strange trait in his character was shown on these walks. I used to be very fond of flowers and of animals also. A pretty dog or a hedge of honeysuckle were always pleasant events upon a walk to me. And yet he himself cared for neither flowers nor animals. Tender and kind as he was, simple and unassuming in all his tastes, yet he did not like flowers! I confess that even now I find it hard to understand. He knew children so thoroughly and well—perhaps better than any one else—that it is all the stranger that he did not care for things that generally attract them so much. However, be that as it may, the fact remained. When I was in raptures over a poppy or a dogrose, he would try hard to be as interested as I was, but even to my childish eyes it was an obvious effort, and he would always rather invent some new game for us to play at. Once, and once only, I remember him to have taken an interest in a flower, and that was because of the folk-lore that was attached to it, and not because of the beauty of the flower itself.

We used to walk into the country that stretched, in beautiful natural avenues of trees, inland from Eastbourne. One day while we sat under a great tree, and the hum of the myriad insect life rivalled the murmur of the far-away waves, he took a foxglove from the heap that lay in my lap and told me the story of how they came by their name; how, in the old days, when, all over England, there were great forests, like the forest of Arden that Shakespeare loved, the pixies, the “little folks,” used to wander at night in the glades, like Titania, and Oberon, and Puck, and because they took great pride in their dainty hands they made themselves gloves out of the flowers. So the particular flower that the “little folks” used came to be called “folks’ gloves.” Then, because the country people were rough and clumsy in their talk, the name was shortened into “Fox-gloves,” the name that every one uses now.

When I got very tired we used to sit down upon the grass, and he used to show me the most wonderful things made out of his handkerchief. Every one when a child has, I suppose, seen the trick in which a handkerchief is rolled up to look like a mouse, and then made to jump about by a movement of the hand. He did this better than any one I ever saw, and the trick was a never-failing joy. By a sort of consent between us the handkerchief trick was kept especially for the walk to Beachy Head, when, about half-way, I was a little tired and wanted to rest. When we actually got to the Head there was tea waiting in the coastguard’s cottage. He always said I ate far too much, and he would never allow me more than one rock cake and a cup of tea. This was an invariable rule, and much as I wished for it, I was never allowed to have more than one rock cake.

It was in the coastguard’s house or on the grass outside that I heard most of his stories. Sometimes he would make excursions into the realms of pure romance, where there were scaly dragons and strange beasts that sat up and talked. In all these stories there was always an adventure in a forest, and the great scene of each tale always took place in a wood. The consummation of a story was always heralded by the phrase, “The children now came to a deep dark wood.” When I heard that sentence, which was always spoken very slowly and with a solemn dropping of the voice, I always knew that the really exciting part was coming. I used to nestle a little nearer to him, and he used to hold me a little closer as he told of the final adventure.

He did not always tell me fairy tales, though I think I liked the fairy tale much the best. Sometimes he gave me accounts of adventures which had happened to him. There was one particularly thrilling story of how he was lost on Beachy Head in a sea fog, and had to find his way home by means of boulders. This was the more interesting because we were on the actual scene of the disaster, and to be there stimulated the imagination.

The summer afternoons on the great headland were very sweet and peaceful. I have never met a man so sensible to the influences of Nature as Lewis Carroll. When the sunset was very beautiful he was often affected by the sight. The widespread wrinkled sea below, in the mellow melancholy light of the afternoon, seemed to fit in with his temperament. I have still a mental picture that I can recall of him on the cliff. Just as the sun was setting, and a cool breeze whispered round us, he would take off his hat and let the wind play with his hair, and he would look out to sea. Once I saw tears in his eyes, and when we turned to go he gripped my hand much tighter than usual.

MISS ISA BOWMAN AND MISS BESSIE HATTON
AS THE LITTLE PRINCES IN THE TOWER

We generally got back to dinner about seven or earlier. He would never let me change my frock for the meal, even if we were going to a concert or theatre afterwards. He had a curious theory that a child should not change her clothes twice in one day. He himself made no alteration in his dress at dinner time, nor would he permit me to do so. Yet he was not by any means an untidy or slovenly man. He had many little fads in dress, but his great horror and abomination was high-heeled shoes with pointed toes. No words were strong enough, he thought, to describe such monstrous things.

Lewis Carroll was a deeply religious man, and on Sundays at Eastbourne we always went twice to church. Yet he held that no child should be forced into church-going against its will. Such a state of mind in a child, he said, needed most careful treatment, and the very worst thing to do was to make attendance at the services compulsory. Another habit of his, which must, I feel sure, sound rather dreadful to many, was that, should the sermon prove beyond my comprehension, he would give me a little book to read; it was better far, he maintained, to read, than to stare idly about the church. When the rest of the congregation rose at the entrance of the choir he kept his seat. He argued that rising to one’s feet at such a time tended to make the choir-boys conceited. I think he was quite right.

He kept no special books for Sunday reading, for he was most emphatically of opinion that anything tending to make Sunday a day dreaded by a child should be studiously avoided. He did not like me to sew on Sunday unless it was absolutely necessary.

One would have hardly expected that a man of so reserved a nature as Lewis Carroll would have taken much interest in the stage. Yet he was devoted to the theatre, and one of the commonest of the treats that he gave his little girl friends was to organise a party for the play. As a critic of acting he was naïve and outspoken, and never hesitated to find fault if he thought it justifiable. The following letter that he wrote to me criticising my acting in “Richard III.” when I was playing with Richard Mansfield, is one of the most interesting that I ever received from him. Although it was written for a child to understand and profit by, and moreover written in the simplest possible way, it yet even now strikes me as a trenchant and valuable piece of criticism.

ISA BOWMAN AS DUKE OF YORK

He was a fairly constant patron of all the London theatres, save the Gaiety and the Adelphi, which he did not like, and numbered a good many theatrical folk among his acquaintances. Miss Ellen Terry was one of his greatest friends. Once I remember we made an expedition from Eastbourne to Margate to visit Miss Sarah Thorne’s theatre, and especially for the purpose of seeing Miss Violet Vanbrugh’s Ophelia. He was a great admirer of both Miss Violet and Miss Irene Vanbrugh as actresses. Of Miss Thorne’s school of acting, too, he had the highest opinion, and it was his often expressed wish that all intending players could have so excellent a course of tuition. Among the male members of the theatrical profession he had no especial favourites, excepting Mr. Toole and Mr. Richard Mansfield.

He never went to a music-hall, but considered that, properly managed, they might be beneficial to the public. It was only when the refrain of some particularly vulgar music-hall song broke upon his ears in the streets that he permitted himself to speak harshly about variety theatres.

Comic opera, when it was wholesome, he liked, and was a frequent visitor to the Savoy theatre. The good old style of Pantomime, too, was a great delight to him, and he would often speak affectionately of the pantomimes at Brighton during the régime of Mr. and Mrs. Nye Chart. But of the up-to-date pantomime he had a horror, and nothing would induce him to visit one. “When pantomimes are written for children once more,” he said, “I will go. Not till then.”

Once when a friend told him that she was about to take her little girls to the pantomime, he did not rest till he had dissuaded her.

To conclude what I have said about Lewis Carroll’s affection for the dramatic art, I will give a kind of examination paper, written for a child who had been learning a recitation called “The Demon of the Pit.” Though his stuttering prevented him from being himself anything of a reciter, he loved correct elocution, and would take any pains to make a child perfect in a piece.

THE LITTLE PRINCES

First of all there is an explanatory paragraph.

“As you don’t ask any questions about ‘The Demon of the Pit,’ I suppose you understand it all. So please answer these questions just as you would do if a younger child (say Mollie) asked them.”

I have now nearly finished my little memoir of Lewis Carroll; that is to say, I have written down all that I can remember of my personal knowledge of him. But I think it is from the letters and the diaries published in this book that my readers must chiefly gain an insight into the character of the greatest friend to children who ever lived. Not only did he study children’s ways for his own pleasure, but he studied them in order that he might please them. For instance, here is a letter that he wrote to my little sister Nelly eight years ago, which begins on the last page and is written entirely backwards—a kind of variant on his famous “Looking-Glass” writing. You have to begin at the last word and read backwards before you can understand it. The only ordinary thing about it is the date. It begins—I mean begins if one was to read it in the ordinary way—with the characteristic monogram, C. L. D.

Miss Hatch has also sent me an original letter that Lewis Carroll wrote to her in 1873, about a large wax doll that he had given her. It is interesting to notice that this letter, written long before any of the others that he wrote to me, is identically the same in form and expression. It is a striking proof how fresh and unimpaired the writer’s sympathies must have been. Year after year he retained the same sweet, kindly temperament, and, if anything, his love for children seemed to increase as he grew older.

Among the bundle of letters and MS. before me, I find written on a half sheet of note-paper the following Ollendorfian dialogue. It is interesting because, slight and trivial as it is, it in some strange way bears the imprint of Lewis Carroll’s style. The thing is written in the familiar violet ink, and neatly dated in the corner 29/9/90:—

“Let’s go and look at the house I want to buy. Now do be quick! You move so slow! What a time you take with your boots!”

“Don’t make such a row about it: it’s not two o’clock yet. How do you like this house?”

“I don’t like it. It’s too far down the hill. Let’s go higher. I heard a nice account of one at the top, built on an improved plan.”

“What does the rent amount to?”

“Oh, the rent’s all right: it’s only nine pounds a year.”

Over all matters connected with letter writing, Lewis Carroll was accustomed to take great pains. All letters that he received that were of any interest or importance whatever he kept, putting them away in old biscuit tins, numbers of which he kept for the purpose.

“DOLLY VARDEN”

In 1888 he published a little book which he called “Eight or Nine Wise Words about Letter Writing,” and as this little book of mine is so full of letters, I think I can do no better than make a few extracts:—

“Write Legibly.—The average temper of the human race would be perceptibly sweeter if every one obeyed this rule! A great deal of the bad writing in the world comes simply from writing too quickly. Of course you reply, ‘I do it to save time.’ A very good object, no doubt; but what right have you to do it at your friend’s expense? Isn’t his time as valuable as yours? Years ago I used to receive letters from a friend—and very interesting letters too—written in one of the most atrocious hands ever invented. It generally took me about a week to read one of his letters! I used to carry it about in my pocket, and take it out at leisure times, to puzzle over the riddles which composed it—holding it in different positions, and at different distances, till at last the meaning of some hopeless scrawl would flash upon me, when I at once wrote down the English under it; and, when several had thus been guessed, the context would help one with the others, till at last the whole series of hieroglyphics was deciphered. If all one’s friends wrote like that, life would be entirely spent in reading their letters.”

In writing the last wise word, the author no doubt had some of his girl correspondents in his mind’s eye, for he says—

I have another diary to give to my readers, a diary that Lewis Carroll wrote for my sister Maggie when, a tiny child, she came to Oxford to play the child part, Mignon, in “Booties’ Baby.” He was delighted with the pretty play, for the interest that the soldiers took in the little lost girl, and how a mere interest ripened into love, till the little Mignon was queen of the barracks, went straight to his heart. I give the diary in full:—