Part 20 (1/2)

_”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.