“I nearly died of laughing,” was another expression that he particularly disliked; in fact any form of exaggeration generally called from him a reproof, though he was sometimes content to make fun. For instance, my sisters and I had sent him “millions of kisses” in a letter. Below you will find the letter that he wrote in return, written in violet ink that he always used (dreadfully ugly, I used to think it).
“CH. Ch. Oxford,
“Ap. 14, 1890.
“My own Darling,
It’s all very well for you and Nellie and Emsie to write in millions of hugs and kisses, but please consider the time it would occupy your poor old very busy Uncle! Try hugging and kissing Emsie for a minute by the watch, and I don’t think you’ll manage it more than 20 times a minute. ‘Millions’ must mean 2 millions at least.
20)2,000,000 hugs and kisses
60)100,000 minutes
12)1,666 hours
6)138 days (at twelve hours a day)
23 weeks.
“I couldn’t go on hugging and kissing more than 12 hours a day: and I wouldn’t like to spend Sundays that way. So you see it would take 23 weeks of hard work. Really, my dear child, I cannot spare the time.
“Why haven’t I written since my last letter? Why, how could I, you silly silly child? How could I have written since the last time I did write? Now, you just try it with kissing. Go and kiss Nellie, from me, several times, and take care to manage it so as to have kissed her since the last time you did kiss her. Now go back to your place, and I’ll question you.
“‘Have you kissed her several times?’
“‘Yes, darling Uncle.’
“‘What o’clock was it when you gave her the last kiss?’
“‘5 minutes past 10, Uncle.’
“‘Very well, now, have you kissed her since?’
“‘Well—I—ahem! ahem! ahem! (excuse me, Uncle, I’ve got a bad cough). I—think—that—I—that is, you, know, I——’
“‘Yes, I see! “Isa” begins with “I,” and it seems to me as if she was going to end with “I,” this time!’
“Anyhow, my not writing hasn’t been because I was ill, but because I was a horrid lazy old thing, who kept putting it off from day to day, till at last I said to myself, ‘WHO ROAR! There’s no time to write now, because they sail on the 1st of April.’ In fact, I shouldn’t have been a bit surprised if this letter had been from Fulham, instead of Louisville. Well, I suppose you will be there by about the middle of May. But mind you don’t write to me from there! Please, please, no more horrid letters from you! I do hate them so! And as for kissing them when I get them, why, I’d just as soon kiss—kiss—kiss you, you tiresome thing! So there now!
“Thank you very much for those 2 photographs—I liked them—hum—pretty well. I can’t honestly say I thought them the very best I had ever seen.
“Please give my kindest regards to your mother, and ½ of a kiss to Nellie, and 1⁄200 a kiss to Emsie, and 1⁄2,000,000 a kiss to yourself. So, with fondest love, I am, my darling, your loving Uncle,
“C. L. Dodgson.”
And now, in the postscript, comes one of the rare instances in which Lewis Carroll showed his deep religious feeling. It runs—
“P.S.—I’ve thought about that little prayer you asked me to write for Nellie and Emsie. But I would like, first, to have the words of the one I wrote for you, and the words of what they now say, if they say any. And then I will pray to our Heavenly Father to help me to write a prayer that will be really fit for them to use.”
Again, I had ended one of my letters with “all join me in lufs and kisses.” It was a letter written when I was away from home and alone, and I had put the usual ending thoughtlessly and in haste, for there was no one that I knew in all that town who could have joined me in my messages to him. He answered me as follows:—
“7 Lushington Road, Eastbourne,
“Aug. 30, 90.
“Oh, you naughty, naughty, bad wicked little girl! You forgot to put a stamp on your letter, and your poor old uncle had to pay TWOPENCE! His last Twopence! Think of that. I shall punish you severely for this when once I get you here. So tremble! Do you hear? Be good enough to tremble!
“I’ve only time for one question to-day. Who in the world are the ‘all’ that join you in ‘Lufs and kisses.’ Weren’t you fancying you were at home, and sending messages (as people constantly do) from Nellie and Emsie without their having given any? It isn’t a good plan that sending messages people haven’t given. I don’t mean it’s in the least untruthful, because everybody knows how commonly they are sent without having been given; but it lessens the pleasure of receiving the messages. My sisters write to me ‘with best love from all.’ I know it isn’t true; so I don’t value it much. The other day, the husband of one of my ‘child-friends’ (who always writes ‘your loving’) wrote to me and ended with ‘Ethel joins me in kindest regards.’ In my answer I said (of course in fun)—‘I am not going to send Ethel kindest regards, so I won’t send her any message at all.’ Then she wrote to say she didn’t even know he was writing! ‘Of course I would have sent best love,’ and she added that she had given her husband a piece of her mind! Poor husband!
“Your always loving uncle,
“C. L. D.”
These letters are written in Lewis Carroll’s ordinary handwriting, not a particularly legible one. When, however, he was writing for the press no characters could have been more clearly and distinctly formed than his. Throughout his life he always made it his care to give as little trouble as possible to other people. “Why should the printers have to work overtime because my letters are ill-formed and my words run into each other?” he once said, when a friend remonstrated with him because he took such pains with the writing of his “copy.” As a specimen of his careful penmanship the diary that he wrote for me, which is reproduced in this book in facsimile, is an admirable example.
They were happy days, those days in Oxford, spent with the most fascinating companion that a child could have. In our walks about the old town, in our visits to cathedral or chapel or hall, in our visits to his friends he was an ideal companion, but I think I was almost happiest when we came back to his rooms and had tea alone; when the fire-glow (it was always winter when I stayed in Oxford) threw fantastic shadows about the quaint room, and the thoughts of the prosiest of people must have wandered a little into fancy-land. The shifting firelight seemed to almost ætherealise that kindly face, and as the wonderful stories fell from his lips, and his eyes lighted on me with the sweetest smile that ever a man wore, I was conscious of a love and reverence for Charles Dodgson that became nearly an adoration.
It was almost pain when the lights were turned up and we came back to everyday life and tea.
He was very particular about his tea, which he always made himself, and in order that it should draw properly he would walk about the room swinging the tea-pot from side to side for exactly ten minutes. The idea of the grave professor promenading his book-lined study and carefully waving a tea-pot to and fro may seem ridiculous, but all the minutiæ of life received an extreme attention at his hands, and after the first surprise one came quickly to realise the convenience that his carefulness ensured.
BEGGAR CHILDREN
Before starting on a railway journey, for instance (and how delightful were railway journeys in the company of Lewis Carroll), he used to map out exactly every minute of the time that we were to take on the way. The details of the journey completed, he would exactly calculate the amount of money that must be spent, and, in different partitions of the two purses that he carried, arrange the various sums that would be necessary for cabs, porters, newspapers, refreshments, and the other expenses of a journey. It was wonderful how much trouble he saved himself en route by thus making ready beforehand. Lewis Carroll was never driven half frantic on a station platform because he had to change a sovereign to buy a penny paper while the train was on the verge of starting. With him journeys were always comfortable.
Of the joys that waited on a little girl who stayed with Lewis Carroll at his Oxford home I can give no better idea than that furnished by the diary that follows, which he wrote for me, bit by bit, during the evenings of one of my stays at Oxford.
This diary, and what I have written before, show how I, as a little girl, knew Lewis Carroll at Oxford.
For his little girl friends, of course, he reserved the most intimate side of his nature, but on occasion he would throw off his reserve and talk earnestly and well to some young man in whose life he took an interest.
Mr. Arthur Girdlestone is able to bear witness to this, and he has given me an account of an evening that he once spent with Lewis Carroll, which I reproduce here from notes made during our conversation.
Mr. Girdlestone, then an undergraduate at New College, had on one occasion to call on Lewis Carroll at his rooms in Tom Quad. At the time of which I am speaking Lewis Carroll had retired very much from the society which he had affected a few years before. Indeed for the last years of his life he was almost a recluse, and beyond dining in Hall saw hardly any one. Miss Beatrice Hatch, one of his “girl friends,” writes apropos of his hermit-like seclusion:—
“If you were very anxious to get him to come to your house on any particular day, the only chance was not to invite him, but only to inform him that you would be at home. Otherwise he would say, ‘As you have invited me I cannot come, for I have made a rule to decline all invitations; but I will come the next day.’ In former years he would sometimes consent to go to a ‘party’ if he was quite sure he was not to be ‘shown off’ or introduced to any one as the author of ‘Alice.’ I must again quote from a note of his in answer to an invitation to tea: ‘What an awful proposition! To drink tea from four to six would tax the constitution even of a hardened tea drinker! For me, who hardly ever touch it, it would probably be fatal.’”
All through the University, except in an extremely limited circle, Lewis Carroll was regarded as a person who lived very much by himself. “When,” Mr. Girdlestone said to me, “I went to see him on quite a slight acquaintance, I confess it was with some slight feeling of trepidation. However I had to on some business, and accordingly I knocked at his door about 8.30 one winter’s evening, and was invited to come in.
“He was sitting working at a writing-table, and all round him were piles of MSS. arranged with mathematical neatness, and many of them tied up with tape. The lamp threw his face into sharp relief as he greeted me. My business was soon over, and I was about to go away, when he asked me if I would have a glass of wine and sit with him for a little.
“The night outside was very cold, and the fire was bright and inviting, and I sat down. He began to talk to me of ordinary subjects, of the things a man might do at Oxford, of the place itself, and the affection in which he held it. He talked quietly, and in a rather tired voice. During our conversation my eye fell upon a photograph of a little girl—evidently from the freshness of its appearance but newly taken—which was resting upon the ledge of a reading-stand at my elbow. It was the picture of a tiny child, very pretty, and I picked it up to look at it.
“‘That is the baby of a girl friend of mine,’ he said, and then, with an absolute change of voice, ‘there is something very strange about very young children, something I cannot understand.’ I asked him in what way, and he explained at some length. He was far less at his ease than when talking trivialities, and he occasionally stammered and sometimes hesitated for a word. I cannot remember all he said, but some of his remarks still remain with me. He said that in the company of very little children his brain enjoyed a rest which was startlingly recuperative. If he had been working too hard or had tired his brain in any way, to play with children was like an actual material tonic to his whole system. I understood him to say that the effect was almost physical!
“He said that he found it much easier to understand children, to get his mind into correspondence with their minds when he was fatigued with other work. Personally, I did not understand little children, and they seemed quite outside my experience, and rather incautiously I asked him if children never bored him. He had been standing up for most of the time, and when I asked him that, he sat down suddenly. ‘They are three-fourths of my life,’ he said. ‘I cannot understand how any one could be bored by little children. I think when you are older you will come to see this—I hope you’ll come to see it.’
“After that he changed the subject once more, and became again the mathematician—a little formal, and rather weary.”
Mr. Girdlestone probably had a unique experience, for it was but rarely that Mr. Dodgson so far unburdened himself to a comparative stranger, and what was even worse, to a “grown-up stranger.”
Now I have given you two different phases of Lewis Carroll at Oxford—Lewis Carroll as the little girl’s companion, and Lewis Carroll sitting by the fireside telling something of his inner self to a young man. I am going on to talk about my life with him at Eastbourne, where I used, year by year, to stay with him at his house in Lushington Road.
He was very fond of Eastbourne, and it was from that place that I received the most charming letters that he wrote me. Here is one, and I could hardly say how many times I have taken this delightful letter from its drawer to read through and through again.
“7 Lushington Road, Eastbourne,
“September 17, 1893.
“Oh, you naughty, naughty little culprit! If only I could fly to Fulham with a handy little stick (ten feet long and four inches thick is my favourite size) how I would rap your wicked little knuckles. However, there isn’t much harm done, so I will sentence you to a very mild punishment—only one year’s imprisonment. If you’ll just tell the Fulham policeman about it, he’ll manage all the rest for you, and he’ll fit you with a nice pair of handcuffs, and lock you up in a nice cosy dark cell, and feed you on nice dry bread, and delicious cold water.
ST. GEORGE THE DRAGON
“But how badly you do spell your words! I was so puzzled about the ‘sacks full of love and baskets full of kisses!’ But at last I made out why, of course, you meant ‘a sack full of gloves, and a basket full of kittens!’ Then I understood what you were sending me. And just then Mrs. Dyer came to tell me a large sack and a basket had come. There was such a miawing in the house, as if all the cats in Eastbourne had come to see me! ‘Oh, just open them please, Mrs. Dyer, and count the things in them!’
“So in a few minutes Mrs. Dyer came and said, ‘500 pairs of gloves in the sack and 250 kittens in the basket.’
“‘Dear me! That makes 1000 gloves! four times as many gloves as kittens! It’s very kind of Maggie, but why did she send so many gloves? for I haven’t got 1000 hands, you know, Mrs. Dyer.’
“And Mrs. Dyer said, ‘No, indeed, you’re 998 hands short of that!’
“However the next day I made out what to do, and I took the basket with me and walked off to the parish school—the girl’s school, you know—and I said to the mistress, ‘How many little girls are there at school to-day?’
“‘Exactly 250, sir.’
“‘And have they all been very good all day?’
“‘As good as gold, sir.’
“So I waited outside the door with my basket, and as each little girl came out, I just popped a soft little kitten into her hands! Oh, what joy there was! The little girls went all dancing home, nursing their kittens, and the whole air was full of purring! Then, the next morning, I went to the school, before it opened, to ask the little girls how the kittens had behaved in the night. And they all arrived sobbing and crying, and their faces and hands were all covered with scratches, and they had the kittens wrapped up in their pinafores to keep them from scratching any more. And they sobbed out, ‘The kittens have been scratching us all night, all the night.’
“So then I said to myself, ‘What a nice little girl Maggie is. Now I see why she sent all those gloves, and why there are four times as many gloves as kittens!’ and I said loud to the little girls, ‘Never mind, my dear childre
n, do your lessons very nicely, and don’t cry any more, and when school is over, you’ll find me at the door, and you shall see what you shall see!’
“So, in the evening, when the little girls came running out, with the kittens still wrapped up in their pinafores, there was I, at the door, with a big sack! And, as each little girl came out, I just popped into her hand two pairs of gloves! And each little girl unrolled her pinafore and took out an angry little kitten, spitting and snarling, with its claws sticking out like a hedgehog. But it hadn’t time to scratch, for, in one moment, it found all its four claws popped into nice soft warm gloves! And then the kittens got quite sweet-tempered and gentle, and began purring again!
“So the little girls went dancing home again, and the next morning they came dancing back to school. The scratches were all healed, and they told me ‘The kittens have been good!’ And, when any kitten wants to catch a mouse, it just takes off one of its gloves; and if it wants to catch two mice, it takes off two gloves; and if it wants to catch three mice, it takes off three gloves; and if it wants to catch four mice, it takes off all its gloves. But the moment they’ve caught the mice, they pop their gloves on again, because they know we can’t love them without their gloves. For, you see ‘gloves’ have got ‘love’ inside them—there’s none outside!
“So all the little girls said, ‘Please thank Maggie, and we send her 250 loves, and 1000 kisses in return for her 250 kittens and her 1000 loves!!’ And I told them in the wrong order! and they said they hadn’t.
“Your loving old Uncle,
“C. L. D.
“Love and kisses to Nellie and Emsie.”
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.
Complete Works of Lewis Carroll Page 174