The Story of Lewis Carroll Part 1

The Story of Lewis Carroll.

by Isa Bowman.

LEWIS CARROLL

It seems to me a very difficult task to sit down at a desk and write "reminiscences" of a friend who has gone from us all.

It is not easy to make an effort and to remember all the little personalia of some one one has loved very much, and by whom one has been loved. And yet it is in a measure one's duty to tell the world something of the inner life of a famous man; and Lewis Carroll was so wonderful a personality, and so good a man, that if my pen dragged ever so slowly, I feel that I can at least tell something of his life which is worthy the telling.

Writing with the sense of his loss still heavy upon me, I must of necessity colour my account with sadness. I am not in the ordinary sense a biographer. I cannot set down a critical estimate, a cold, dispa.s.sionate summing-up of a man I loved; but I can write of a few things that happened when I was a little girl, and when he used to say to me that I was "_his_ little girl."

The gracious presence of Lewis Carroll is with us no longer. Never again will his hand hold mine, and I shall never hear his voice more in this world. Forever while I live that kindly influence will be gone from my life, and the "Friend of little Children" has left us.

And yet in the full sorrow of it all I find some note of comfort. He was so good and sweet, so tender and kind, so certain that there was another and more beautiful life waiting for us, that I know, even as if I heard him telling it to me, that some time I shall meet him once more.

In all the noise and excitement of London, amid all the distractions of a stage life, I know this, and his presence is often very near to me, and the kindly voice is often at my ear as it was in the old days.

To have even known such a man as he was is an inestimable boon. To have been with him for so long as a child, to have known so intimately the man who above all others has understood childhood, is indeed a memory on which to look back with thanksgiving and with tears.

Now that I am no longer "his little girl," now that he is dead and my life is so different from the quiet life he led, I can yet feel the old charm, I can still be glad that he has kissed me and that we were friends. Little girl and grave professor! it is a strange combination. Grave professor and little girl! how curious it sounds! yet strange and curious as it may seem, it was so, and the little girl, now a little girl no longer, offers this last loving tribute to the friend and teacher she loved so well.

Forever that voice is still; be it mine to revive some ancient memories of it.

First, however, as I have essayed to be some sort of a biographer, I feel that before I let my pen run easily over the tale of my intimate knowledge of Lewis Carroll I must put down very shortly some facts about his life.

The Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson died when he was sixty-six years old, and when his famous book, "Alice in Wonderland," had been published for thirty-three years. He was born at Daresbury, in Ches.h.i.+re, and his father was the Rev. Charles Dodgson. The first years of his life were spent at Daresbury, but afterwards the family went to live at a place called Croft, in Yorks.h.i.+re. He went first to a private school in Yorks.h.i.+re and then to Rugby, where he spent years that he always remembered as very happy ones.

In 1850 he went to Christ Church, Oxford, and from that time till the year of his death he was inseparably connected with "The House," as Christ Church college is generally called, from its Latin name "aedes Christi,"

which means, literally translated, the House of Christ.

There he won great distinction as a scholar of mathematics, and wrote many abstruse and learned books, very different from "Alice in Wonderland."

There is a tale that when the Queen had read "Alice in Wonderland" she was so pleased that she asked for more books by the same author. Lewis Carroll was written to, and back, with the name of Charles Dodgson on the t.i.tle-page, came a number of the very dryest books about Algebra and Euclid that you can imagine.

Still, even in mathematics his whimsical fancy was sometimes suffered to peep out, and little girls who learnt the rudiments of calculation at his knee found the path they had imagined so th.o.r.n.y set about with roses by reason of the delightful fun with which he would turn a task into a joy.

But when the fun was over the little girl would find that she had learnt the lesson (all unknowingly) just the same. Happy little girls who had such a master. The old rhyme--

"Multiplication is vexation, Division is as bad, The rule of three doth puzzle me, And Practice drives me mad,"

would never need to have been written had all arithmetic lessons been like the arithmetic lessons given by Charles Dodgson to his little friends.

As a lecturer to his grown-up pupils he was also surprisingly lucid, and under his deft treatment the knottiest of problems were quickly smoothed out and made easy for his hearers to comprehend. "I always hated mathematics at school," an ex-pupil of his told me a little while ago, "but when I went up to Oxford I learnt from Mr. Dodgson to look upon my mathematics as the most delightful of all my studies. His lectures were never dry."

For twenty-six years he lectured at Oxford, finally giving up his post in 1881. From that time to the time of his death he remained in his college, taking no actual part in the tuition, but still enjoying the Fellows.h.i.+p that he had won in 1861.

This is an official account, a brief sketch of an intensely interesting life. It tells little save that Lewis Carroll was a clever mathematician and a sympathetic teacher; it shall be my work to present him as he was from a more human point of view.

Lewis Carroll was a man of medium height. When I knew him his hair was a silver-grey, rather longer than it was the fas.h.i.+on to wear, and his eyes were a deep blue. He was clean shaven, and, as he walked, always seemed a little unsteady in his gait. At Oxford he was a well-known figure. He was a little eccentric in his clothes. In the coldest weather he would never wear an overcoat, and he had a curious habit of always wearing, in all seasons of the year, a pair of grey and black cotton gloves.

But for the whiteness of his hair it was difficult to tell his age from his face, for there were no wrinkles on it. He had a curiously womanish face, and, in direct contradiction to his real character, there seemed to be little strength in it. One reads a great deal about the lines that a man's life paints in his face, and there are many people who believe that character is indicated by the curves of flesh and bone. I do not, and never shall, believe it is true, and Lewis Carroll is only one of many instances to support my theory. He was as firm and self-contained as a man may be, but there was little to show it in his face.

Yet you could easily discern it in the way in which he met and talked with his friends. When he shook hands with you--he had firm white hands, rather large--his grip was strong and steadfast. Every one knows the kind of man of whom it is said "his hands were all soft and flabby when he said, 'How-do-you-do.'" Well, Lewis Carroll was not a bit like that. Every one says when he shook your hand the pressure of his was full of strength, and you felt here indeed was a man to admire and to love. The expression in his eyes was also very kind and charming.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LEWIS CARROLL'S ROOM IN OXFORD IN WHICH "ALICE IN WONDERLAND" WAS WRITTEN]

He used to look at me, when we met, in the very tenderest, gentlest way.

Of course on an ordinary occasion I knew that his interested glance did not mean anything of any extra importance. Nothing could have happened since I had seen him last, yet, at the same time, his look was always so deeply sympathetic and benevolent that one could hardly help feeling it meant a great deal more than the expression of the ordinary man.

He was afflicted with what I believe is known as "Housemaid's knee," and this made his movements singularly jerky and abrupt. Then again he found it impossible to avoid stammering in his speech. He would, when engaged in an animated conversation with a friend, talk quickly and well for a few minutes, and then suddenly and without any very apparent cause would begin to stutter so much, that it was often difficult to understand him.

He was very conscious of this impediment, and he tried hard to cure himself. For several years he read a scene from some play of Shakespeare's every day aloud, but despite this he was never quite able to cure himself of the habit. Many people would have found this a great hindrance to the affairs of ordinary life, and would have felt it deeply. Lewis Carroll was different. His mind and life were so simple and open that there was no room in them for self-consciousness, and I have often heard him jest at his own misfortune, with a comic wonder at it.

The personal characteristic that you would notice most on meeting Lewis Carroll was his extreme shyness. With children, of course, he was not nearly so reserved, but in the society of people of maturer age he was almost old-maidishly prim in his manner. When he knew a child well this reserve would vanish completely, but it needed only a slightly disconcerting incident to bring the cloak of shyness about him once more, and close the lips that just before had been talking so delightfully.

I shall never forget one afternoon when we had been walking in Christ Church meadows. On one side of the great open s.p.a.ce the little river Cherwell runs through groves of trees towards the Isis, where the college boat-races are rowed. We were going quietly along by the side of the "Cher," when he began to explain to me that the tiny stream was a tributary, "a baby river" he put it, of the big Thames. He talked for some minutes, explaining how rivers came down from hills and flowed eventually to the sea, when he suddenly met a brother Don at a turning in the avenue.

He was holding my hand and giving me my lesson in geography with great earnestness when the other man came round the corner.

[Ill.u.s.tration: C. L. DODGSON]

He greeted him in answer to his salutation, but the incident disturbed his train of thought, and for the rest of the walk he became very difficult to understand, and talked in a nervous and preoccupied manner. One strange way in which his nervousness affected him was peculiarly characteristic.

When, owing to the stupendous success of "Alice in Wonderland" and "Alice Through the Looking-Gla.s.s," he became a celebrity many people were anxious to see him, and in some way or other to find out what manner of man he was. This seemed to him horrible, and he invented a mild deception for use when some autograph-hunter or curious person sent him a request for his signature on a photograph, or asked him some silly question as to the writing of one of his books, how long it took to write, and how many copies had been sold. Through some third person he always represented that Lewis Carroll the author and Mr. Dodgson the professor were two distinct persons, and that the author could not be heard of at Oxford at all. On one occasion an American actually wrote to say that he had heard that Lewis Carroll had laid out a garden to represent some of the scenes in "Alice in Wonderland," and that he (the American) was coming right away to take photographs of it. Poor Lewis Carroll, he was in terror of Americans for a week!

Of being photographed he had a horror, and despite the fact that he was continually and importunately requested to sit before the camera, only very few photographs of him are in existence. Yet he had been himself a great amateur photographer, and had taken many pictures that were remarkable in their exact portraiture of the subject.

It was this exactness that he used to pride himself on in his camera work.

He always said that modern professional photographers spoilt all their pictures by touching them up absurdly to flatter the sitter. When it was necessary for me to have some pictures taken he sent me to Mr. H. H.

Cameron, whom he declared to be the only artist who dared to produce a photograph that was exactly like its subject. This is one of the photographs of me that Mr. Cameron took, and Lewis Carroll always declared that it was a perfect specimen of portrait work.

Many of the photographs of children in this book are Lewis Carroll's work.

Miss Beatrice Hatch, to whose kindness I am indebted for these photographs and for much interesting information, writes in the _Strand Magazine_ (April 1898):

"My earliest recollections of Mr. Dodgson 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 gipsy 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 friend's side in the tiny dark room and watch him while he poured the contents of several little strong-smelling bottles on to the gla.s.s picture of yourself that looked so funny with its black face."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A CHINAMAN]

Yet, despite his love for the photographer's art, he hated the idea of having his own picture taken for the benefit of a curious world. The shyness that made him nervous in the presence of strangers made the idea that any one who cared to stare into a shop window could examine and criticise his portrait extremely repulsive to him.

I remember that this shyness of his was the only occasion of anything approaching a quarrel between us.

I had an idle trick of drawing caricatures when I was a child, and one day when he was writing some letters I began to make a picture of him on the back of an envelope. I quite forget what the drawing was like--probably it was an abominable libel--but suddenly he turned round and saw what I was doing. He got up from his seat and turned very red, frightening me very much. Then he took my poor little drawing, and tearing it into small pieces threw it into the fire without a word. Afterwards he came suddenly to me, and saying nothing, caught me up in his arms and kissed me pa.s.sionately. I was only some ten or eleven years of age at the time, but now the incident comes back to me very clearly, and I can see it as if it happened but yesterday--the sudden s.n.a.t.c.hing of my picture, the hurried striding across the room, and then the tender light in his face as he caught me up to him and kissed me.

I used to see a good deal of him at Oxford, and I was constantly in Christ Church. He would invite me to stay with him and find me rooms just outside the college gates, where I was put into charge of an elderly dame, whose name, if I do not forget, was Mrs. Buxall. I would spend long happy days with my uncle, and at nine o'clock I was taken over to the little house in St. Aldates and delivered into the hands of the landlady, who put me to bed.