Part 20 (2/2)

Ellen Terry proved also to be one of his lifelong friends; the talented actress found his praise a most precious thing, and his criticism, always so honest, and usually so keen and true, she accepted with the grace of the great artist. Often, too, he asked her aid for some other girl friend with dramatic talent, and she never failed to lend a helping hand when she could. From first to last her acting charmed him. Often he would take a little girl to some Shakespearean treat at the theater, and would raise her to the ”seventh heaven” of delight by penciling a note to Miss Terry asking for an interview or perhaps a photograph for his small companion, and these requests were never refused.

Every Christmas the Rev. Charles Dodgson spent with his sisters, who since their father's death had lived at Guildford, in a pretty house called _The Chestnuts_. His coming at Christmas was always a great event, for of course some very youthful ladies in the neighborhood were in a state of suppressed excitement over his yearly arrival, which meant Christmas jollity--with charades and tableaux and all sorts of odd and interesting games, and, _of course_, stories.

One of his special Guildford favorites was Gaynor Simpson, to whom he wrote several of his clever letters. In one, evidently an answer to hers, he begged her never again to leave out the g in the name Dodgson, asking in a very plaintive manner what _she_ would think if he left out the G in _her_ name and called her ”Aynor” instead of Gaynor.

In this same letter he confessed that he never danced except in his own peculiar way, that the last house he danced in, the floors broke through, but as the beams were only six inches thick, it was a very poor sort of floor, when one came to think--that stone arches were much better for _his_ sort of dancing.

Indeed, the poem he wrote about the sea must have been just a bit of a joke, for it was at Margate, another seaside resort, that he met Adelaide Paine, another of his favorites, and to her he presented a copy of ”The Hunting of the Snark,” with an acrostic on her name written on the fly leaf. This little maid was further honored by receiving a photograph, not of Lewis Carroll, but of Mr. Dodgson, and in a note to her mother he begged in his usual odd way that she would never let any but her intimate friends know anything about the name of ”Lewis Carroll,” as he did not wish people who had heard of him to recognize him in the street.

The friends.h.i.+ps that were not cemented at the seaside or under the shelter of old ”Tom Quad” were very often begun in the railway train. English trains are not like ours in America. In Lewis Carroll's time the ”first-cla.s.s” accommodations were called _carriages_, in which four or five people, often total strangers, were shut up for hours together, actually locked in by the guard; and if one of these people chanced to be Lewis Carroll, and another a restless, active little girl, why, in the twinkling of an eye the sign of fellows.h.i.+p had flashed between them, and they were friends.

One special friend made in this fas.h.i.+on was a dear little maid named Kathleen Eschwege, who stayed a child to him always during their eighteen years of friends.h.i.+p, in spite of all the changes the years brought in their train; her marriage among the rest, on which occasion he wrote her that as he never gave wedding presents, he hoped the inclosed he sent in his letter she would accept as an _unwedding_ present.

This letter bore the date of January 20, 1892; five years later he wrote to acknowledge a photograph she had sent him in January, 1892, also her wedding-card in August of the same year. But he salved his conscience by reminding her that a certain biscuit-box--decorated with ”Looking-Gla.s.s”

pictures--which he had sent her in December, 1892, had never been acknowledged by _her_.

Our ”don's” memory sometimes played him tricks we see, especially in later years. On one occasion, failing to recognize someone who pa.s.sed him on the street, he was much chagrined to find out that he had been the gentleman's guest at dinner only the night before.

Another pleasant railway friends.h.i.+p was established with three little Drury girls, as early as 1869. They did not know who he was until he sent them a copy of ”Alice in Wonderland”--with the following verse on the fly leaf:

TO THREE PUZZLED LITTLE GIRLS.

(_From the Author._)

Three little maidens weary of the rail, Three pairs of little ears listening to a tale, Three little hands held out in readiness For three little puzzles very hard to guess.

Three pairs of little eyes and open wonder-wide At three little scissors lying side by side, Three little mouths that thanked an unknown friend For one little book he undertook to send.

Though whether they'll remember a friend or book or day-- In three little weeks is very hard to say.

Edith Rix was another favorite but apparently beyond the usual age, for his letters to her have quite a grown-up tone, and he helped her through many girlish quandaries with his wholesome advice.

There are scores of others--so many that their very names would mean nothing to us unless we knew the circ.u.mstances which began the acquaintance, and the numerous incidents which could only occur in the company of Lewis Carroll.

As we know, there were three great influences in his life: his reverence for holy things, his fondness for mathematics, and his love of little girls. It is this last trait which colors our picture of him and makes him stand forth in our minds apart from other men of his time. There have been many great preachers and eminent mathematicians, and these brilliant men may have loved childhood in a certain way, but to step aside from their high places to mingle with the children would never have occurred to them.

The small girls who were ”seen and not heard” dropped their eyes bashfully when the great ones pa.s.sed, and bobbed a little old-fas.h.i.+oned curtsy in return for a stately preoccupied nod. But not so Lewis Carroll. No childish eyes ever sought his in vain. His own blue ones always smiled back, and there was something so glowing in this smile which lit up his whole face, that children, all unconsciously, drew near the warmth of it.

His love for girls speaks well for the home-life and surroundings of his earlier years, when in the company of his seven sisters he learned to know girls pretty thoroughly. These girls of whom we have such scant knowledge possessed, we are sure, some potent charm to make this ”big brother”

forever afterwards the champion of little girls, and being a thoughtful fellow, he must have watched with pleasure the way they bloomed from childhood to girlhood and from girlhood to womanhood, in the sweet seclusion of Croft Rectory. It was this intimacy and comrades.h.i.+p with his sisters which made him so easily the intimate and comrade of so many little girls, understanding all their traits and peculiarities and their ”girl nature” better sometimes than they did themselves.

Some of his friends moved in royal circles. Princess Beatrice, who received the second presentation copy of ”Alice in Wonderland,” was one of them; but in later years the two children of the d.u.c.h.ess of Albany (Queen Victoria's daughter-in-law), Alice and the young Duke, claimed his friends.h.i.+p, and despite his preference for girls, Lewis Carroll could not help liking the lad, whose gentle disposition and studious habits set him somewhat apart from other boys.

Near home, that is to say in Oxford, or more properly, within a stone's throw of Christ Church itself, dwelt the Rev. E. Hatch and his bright and interesting family of children, with all of whom Lewis Carroll was on the most intimate terms, though his special favorite was Beatrice, better known as Bee. This little girl came so close upon the Liddell children in his long list of friends that she almost caught the echo of those happy days of ”Wonderland,” and she has much to say about this a.s.sociation in an interesting article published in the _Strand Magazine_ some years ago.

”My earliest recollections of Mr. Dodgson,” she writes, ”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 gypsy 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 tall friend's side in the tiny dark room, and watch him while he poured the contents of several little strong-smelling bottles on the gla.s.s picture of yourself that looked so funny with its black face; and when you grew tired of this there were many delights to be found in the cupboards in the big room downstairs. Musical boxes of different colors and different tunes, the dear old woolly bear that walked when he was wound up, toys, picture-books, and packets of photographs of other children, who had also enjoyed these mornings of bliss.

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