Alice was among the chosen few who retained his friendship through the years. She was his first favorite, and she was indirectly the source of his good luck, and we may be sure there was a certain winsomeness about her long after the elf-locks were gathered into decorous coils of dark hair.
True, the formal old bachelor came forward in their later association, and the numerous letters he wrote her always began “My dear Mrs. Hargreaves,” but his fondness for her outlived many other passing affections.
To go back to the little Alice and the fair smiling river, and that wizard Lewis Carroll, who told the wonder tales so long ago. Once the children had a taste of “Alice,” she grew to be a great favorite; sometimes a chapter was told on the river, sometimes in his study, often in the garden or after tea in Christ Church Meadows—in fact, wherever they caught a glimpse of the grave young man in cap and gown, the trio of small Liddells fell upon him, and in this fashion, as he tells us himself, “the quaint events were hammered out.”
When he presented the promised copy it might have passed forever from his mind, which was full of the higher mathematics he was teaching to the young men of Christ Church, but he chanced one day to show the manuscript to George Macdonald, the well-known writer, who was so charmed with it that he advised his friend to send it to a publisher. He accordingly carried it to London, and Macmillan & Co. took it at once. This was a great surprise. He never dreamed of his nonsense being considered seriously, and growing suddenly about as young as a great, big, bashful boy, he refused to allow his own rough illustrations to appear in print, so he hunted over the long list of his artist friends, for the genius who could best illustrate the adventures of his dream-child. At last his friend, Tom Taylor, a well-known dramatist, suggested Mr. Tenniel, the clever cartoonist for Punch, who was quite willing to undertake this rather odd bit of work, and on July 4, 1865, exactly three years since that memorable afternoon, Alice Liddell received the first printed copy of “Alice in Wonderland,” the name the author finally selected for his book.
His first idea, as we know, was “Alice’s Adventures Underground,” the second was “Alice’s Hour in Elfland,” but the last seemed best of all, for Wonderland might mean any place where wonderful things could happen. And this was Lewis Carroll’s idea; anywhere the dream “Alice” chose to go would be Wonderland, and none knew better than he did how eagerly the child-mind paints its own fairy nooks and corners.
He was not at all excited about his first big venture; no doubt Alice herself took much more interest. To feel that you are about to be put into print is certainly a great experience, almost as great as being photographed; and, knowing how conscientious Lewis Carroll was about little things, we may be quite sure that her suggestions crept into many of the pictures, while it is equally certain that the few additions he made to the original “Alice” were carefully considered and firmly insisted upon by this critical young person.
The first edition of two thousand copies was a great disappointment; the pictures were badly printed, and all who had bought them were asked to send them back with their names and addresses, as a new edition would be printed immediately and they would then receive perfect copies. The old copies Lewis Carroll gave away to various homes and hospitals, while the new edition, upon which he feared a great loss, sold so rapidly that he was astonished, and still more so when edition after edition was demanded by the public, and far from being a failure, “Alice in Wonderland” brought her author both fame and money.
From that time forward, fortune smiled upon him; there were no strenuous efforts to increase his income. “Alice” yielded him an abundance each year, and he was beset by none of the cares and perplexities which are the dragons most writers encounter with their literary swords. He welcomed the fortune, not so much for the good it brought to him alone, but for the power it gave him to help others. His countless charities are not recorded because they were swallowed up in the “little things” he did, not in the great benefits which are trumpeted over the world. His own life, so simple, so full of purpose, flowed on as usual; he was not one to change his habits with the turn of Fortune’s wheel, no matter what it brought him.
Of course, everyone knew that a certain Lewis Carroll had written a clever, charming book of nonsense, called “Alice in Wonderland”; that he was an Oxford man, very much of a scholar, and little known outside of the University. What people did not know was that this same Lewis Carroll had for a double a certain “grave and reverend” young “don,” named Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who, while “Alice” was making the whole world laugh, retired to his sanctum and wrote in rapid succession the following learned pamphlets: “The Condensation of Determinants,” “An Elementary Treatise on Determinants,” “The Fifth Book of Euclid, treated Algebraically,” “The Algebraic Formulæ for Responsions.”
Now, whatever these may be, they certainly did not interest children in the least, and Charles Lutwidge Dodgson did not care in the least, so long as he could smooth the thorny path of mathematics for his struggling undergraduates. But Lewis Carroll was quite a different matter. So long as the children were pleased, little he cared for algebra or geometry.