Part 24 (1/2)

Gertrude Thomson The MS was, I believe, almost complete before his death, and one, at least, of the pictures had been drawn On June 30th he wrote in his Diary, ”Invented what I think is a new kind of riddle

A Russian had three sons The first, named Rab, became a lawyer; the second, Ymra, became a soldier; the third beca letter written to a child-friend, Miss E Drury, illustrates Lewis Carroll's hatred of bazaars:--

Ch Ch, Oxford, _Nov_ 10, 1892

My dear Eeneral principle that they are very undesirable schools for young ladies, in which they learn to be ”too fast” and forward, and are more exposed to undesirable acquaintances than in ordinary society And I have, besides that, special objections to bazaars connected with charitable or religious purposes It seeious object by their undesirable features, and that they take the reality out of all charity by getting people to think that they are doing a good action, when their true motive is amusement for themselves Ruskin has put all this far better than I can possibly do, and, if I can find the passage, and find the time to copy it, I will send it you But _time_ is a very scarce luxury for son

In his later years he used often to give lectures on various subjects to children He gave a series on ”Logic” at the Oxford Girls' High School, but he so instance:--

Went, as arranged with Miss A Ottley, to the High School at Worcester, on a visit At half-past three I had an audience of about a hundred little girls, aged, I should think, from about six to fourteen I showed them two arithmetic puzzles on the black-board, and told them ”Bruno's Picnic” At half-past seven I addressed some serious words to a second audience of about a hundred elder girls, probably from fifteen to twenty--an experience of the deepest interest to e will be best explained by the following letter which I have received from Mr Walter Lindsay, of Philadelphia, US:--

Phila, _Septelad to furnish what information I can with respect to the ”Mechanical Huo, but Ithat, in one sense at least, I did not ”invent” the figure The idea was first put into my head by an article in the _Cos a similar contrivance As a devoted admirer of the ”Alice” books, I determined to build a Humpty Dumpty of my own; but I left the model set by the author of the article ure on entirely different lines In the first place, the figure as described in the azine had very few movements, and not very satisfactory ones at that; and in the second place, no atteeneral way, the well-known appearance of Tenniel's drawing Huh His face, of course, hite; the lower half of the egg was dressed in brilliant blue His stockings were grey, and the fa pattern in blue I araph hardly does him justice; but he had travelled to so an to be decidedly out of shape before he sat for his portrait

[Illustration: The Mechanical ”Huraph_]

When Huiven before the curtain rose, explaining the way in which the Sheep put the egg on the shelf at the back of the little shop, and how Alice went groping along to it And then, just as the explanation had reached the opening of the chapter on Humpty Du on the wall, and gazing into vacancy As soon as the audience had had time to recover, Alice entered, and the conversation was carried on just as it is in the book

Huesticulated with his arms, rolled his eyes, raised his eyebrows, frowned, turned up his nose in scorn at Alice's ignorance, and smiled from ear to ear when he shook hands with her Besides this, his ue, which added very greatly to his life-like appearance

The effect of his huge face, as it changed from one expression to another, was ludicrous in the extreed to repeat sentences in the conversation (to ”go back to the last rehed so loudly over Humpty Du to say The funniest effect was the change from the look of self-satisfied co has proe when Alice innocently betrays her knowledge of the secret

At the close of the scene, when Alice has vainly endeavoured to draw hiust, Humpty loses his balance on the wall, recovers hiain, and then falls off backwards; at the salass is dropped on the floor behind the scenes, to represent the ”heavy crash,” which ”shook the forest from end to end”;--and the curtain falls

Now, as to hoas all done Humpty was made of barrel hoops, and covered with stiff paper and s, covered with muslin, drawn smoothly, and with the pupil and iris marked on the front

These eyes were pivoted to a board, fastened just behind the eye-openings in the face To the eyeballs were sewed strong pieces of tape, which passed through screw-eyes on the edges of the board, and so down to a row of levers which were hinged in the lower part of the figure One lever raised both eyes upward, another moved them both to the left, and so on The eyebroere of worsted and indiarubber knitted together They were fastened at the ends, and raised and lowered by fine white threads passing through small holes in the face, and also operated by levers The arestures were ht hand contained a spring clothes-pin, by which he was enabled to hold the note-book in which Alice set down the celebrated problem--

365 1 ___ 364

Thetape, running down to a pedal, which was controlled by the foot of the perfor strips of red tape, which were drawn out through slits at the corners of the h holes in the sides of the head The performer--as always your humble servant--stood on a box behind the wall, his head just reaching the top of the egg, which was open all the way up the back At the lower end of the figure, convenient to the hands of the performer, was the row of levers, like a little keyboard; and by striking different chords on the keys, any desired expression could be produced on the face

Of course, a perforood Alice would be unutterably flat; but the little girl who played opposite to Humpty, Miss Nellie K---, was so exactly the counterpart of Alice, both in appearance and disposition, that ht out of the book

Humpty still exists, but he has not seen active life for some years His own popularity was the cause of his retireiven a nuhted es, the demands upon his time, from Sunday-schools and other institutions, becaed to withdraw hireat deal of trouble to build, but the success he ave more than repaid me for the bother; and I am sure that any one else who tries it will reach the same conclusion

Yours sincerely,

Walter Lindsay

At the beginning of 1893 a fierce logical battle was being waged between Lewis Carroll and Mr Cook Wilson, Professor of Logic at Oxford The Professor, in spite of the countless arguson hurled at his head, would not confess that he had committed a fallacy