One of his last private efforts in the editorial line was The Rectory Umbrella, a magazine undertaken when he was about seventeen or eighteen years old, on the bridge, one might say, between boyhood and his approaching Oxford days. His mind had developed quickly, though his views of life did not go far beyond the rectory grounds. He evidently took his title out of the umbrella-stand in the rectory hall, the same stand doubtless which furnished him with “The Walking Stick of Destiny,” a story of the lurid, exciting sort, which made his readers’ hair rise. The magazine also contained a series of sketches supposed to have been copied from paintings by Rembrandt, Sir Joshua Reynolds and others whose works hang in the Vernon Gallery. One specially funny caricature of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s “Age of Innocence” represents a baby hippopotamus smiling serenely under a tree not half big enough to shade him.
Another sketch ridicules homeopathy and is extremely funny. Homeopathy is a branch of medical science which believes in very small doses of medicine, and this picture represents housekeeping on a homeopathic plan; a family of six bony specimens are eating infinitesimal grains of food, which they can only see through the spectacles they all wear, and their table talk hovers round millionths and nonillionths of grains.
But the cleverest poem in The Rectory Umbrella is the parody on “Horatius,” Macaulay’s famous poem, which is supposed to be a true tale of his brothers’ adventures with an obdurate donkey. It is the second of the series called “Lays of Sorrow,” in imitation of Macaulay’s “Lays of Ancient Rome,” and the tragedy lies in the sad fact that the donkey succeeds in getting the better of the boys.
“Horatius” was a great favorite with budding orators of that day. The Rugby boys declaimed it on every occasion, and reading it over in these modern times of peace, one is stirred by the martial note in it. No wonder boys like Charles Dodgson loved Macaulay, and it is pretty safe to say that he must have had it by heart, to have treated it in such spirited style and with such pure fun. Indeed, fun bubbled up through everything he wrote; wholesome, honest fun, which was a safety valve for an over-serious lad.
This period was his halting time, and the humorous skits he dashed off were done in moments of recreation. He was mapping out his future in a methodical way peculiarly his own. Oxford was to be his goal, divinity and mathematics his principal studies, and he was working hard for his examinations. The desire of the eldest son to follow in his father’s footsteps was strengthened by his own natural inclination, for into the boy nature crept a rare golden streak of piety. The reverence for holy things was a beautiful trait in his character from the beginning to the end of his life; it never pushed itself aggressively to the front, but it sweetened the whole of his intercourse with people, and was perhaps the secret of the wonderful power he had with children.
The intervening months between Rugby and Oxford were also the boundary-line between boyhood and young manhood, that most important period when the character shifts into a steadier pose, when the young eyes try vainly to pierce the mists of the future, and the young heart-throbs are sometimes very painful. Between those Rugby school-days and the more serious Oxford ones, something happened—we know not what—which cast a shadow on our Boy’s life. He was young enough to live it down, yet old enough to feel keenly whatever sorrow crossed his path, and as he never married, we naturally suspect that some unhappy love affair, or death perhaps, had cut him off from all the joys so necessary to a young and deep-feeling man. Whatever it was—and he kept his own secret—it did not mar the sweetness of his nature, it did not kill his youth, nor deaden the keen wit which was to make the world laugh one day. It drew some pathetic lines upon his face, a wistful touch about mouth and eyes, as we can see in all his portraits.
A slight reserve hung as a veil between him and people of his own age, but it opened his heart all the wider to the children, whose true knight he became when, as “Lewis Carroll” he went forth to conquer with a laugh. We say “children,” but we mean “girls.” The little boy might just as well have been a caged animal at the Zoo, for all the notice he inspired. Of course, there were some younger brothers of his own to be considered, but he had such a generous provision of sisters that he didn’t mind, and then, besides, one’s own people are different somehow; we know well enough we wouldn’t change our brothers and sisters for the finest little paragons that walk. So with Lewis Carroll; he strongly objected to everybody else’s little brothers but his own, and it is even true that in later years there were some small nephews and boy cousins, to whom he was extremely kind. But as yet there is no Lewis Carroll, only a grave and earnest Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, reading hard to enter Christ Church, Oxford, that grand old edifice steeped in history, where his own father had “blazed a trail.”
Mathematics absorbed many hours of each day, and Latin and Greek were quite as important. English as a “course” was not thought of as it is to-day; the classics were before everything else, although ancient and modern history came into use.
For lighter reading, Dickens was a never-failing source of supply. All during this holiday period “David Copperfield” was coming out in monthly instalments, and though the hero was “only a boy,” there was something in the pathetic figure of lonely little David, irresistibly appealing to the young fellow who hated oppression and injustice of any kind, and was always on the side of the weak. While the dainty picture of Little Em’ly might have been his favorite, he was keenly alive to the absurdities of Mrs. Gummidge, the doglike devotion of Peggotty, and the horrors of the “cheap school,” which turned out little shivering cowards instead of wholesome hearty English boys.
Later on, he visited the spot on which Dickens had founded Dotheboys Hall in “Nicholas Nickleby.” “Barnard’s Castle” was a most desolate region in Yorkshire. He tells of a trip by coach, over a land of dreary hills, into Bowes, a Godforsaken village where the original of Dotheboys Hall was still standing, though in a very dilapidated state, actually falling to pieces. As we well know, after the writing of “Nicholas Nickleby,” government authorities began to look into the condition of the “cheap schools” and to remedy some of the evils. Even the more expensive schools, where the tired little brains were crammed to the brim until the springs were worn out and the minds were gone, were exposed by the great novelist when he wrote “Dombey and Son” and told of Dr. Blimber’s school, where poor little Paul studied until his head grew too heavy for his fragile body. The victims of these three schools—David, Smike, and Little Paul—twined themselves about the heartstrings of the thoughtful young student, and many a humorous bit besides, in the works of Lewis Carroll, bears a decided flavor of those dips into Dickens.