“The ‘why’ of this book cannot and need not be put into words. Those for whom a child’s mind is a sealed book, and who see no divinity in a child’s smile, would read such words in vain; while for any one who has ever loved one true child, no words are needed. For he will have known the awe that falls on one in the presence of a spirit, fresh from God’s hands, on whom no shadow of sin, and but the outermost fringe of the shadow of sorrow, has yet fallen; he will have felt the bitter contrast between the haunting selfishness that spoils his best deeds and the life that is but an overflowing love—for I think a child’s first attitude to the world is a simple love for all living things—and he will have learned that the best work a man can do is when he works for love’s sake only, with no thought of name or gain or earthly reward. No deed of ours, I suppose, on this side of the grave is really unselfish, yet if one can put forth all one’s powers in a task where nothing of reward is hoped for but a little child’s whispered thanks, and the airy touch of a little child’s pure lips, one seems to have come somewhere near to this.”
In the appendix to the same book he writes regarding laughter:
“I do not believe God means us to divide life into two halves—to wear a grave face on Sunday, and to think it out of place even so much as to mention Him on a week-day.... Surely the children’s innocent laughter is as sweet in His ears as the grandest anthem that ever rolled up from ‘the dim religious light’ of some solemn cathedral; and if I have written anything to add to those stores of innocent and healthy amusement that are laid up in books for the children I love so well, it is surely something I may hope to look back upon without shame or sorrow ... when my turn comes to walk through the valley of shadows.”
Such was the man who filled the world with laughter, and wrote “nonsense” books; a man of such deeply religious feeling that a jest that touched upon sacred things, however innocent in itself, was sure to bring down his wrath upon the head of the offender. There is a certain strain of sadness in those quoted words of his, which surely never belonged to those “golden summer days” when he made merry with the three little Liddells. We must remember that twenty-one years had passed between the telling of the story and the reprint of the original manuscript, and Lewis Carroll was just a little graver and considerably older than on that eventful day when the White Rabbit looked at his watch as if to say: “Oh—my ears and whiskers! What will the Duchess think!” as he popped down the hole with Alice at his heels.
But we are going a little too far ahead. After the writing of “Alice,” with the accompanying excitement of seeing his first-born win favor, Lewis Carroll went quietly forward in his daily routine. He had already become quite a famous lecturer, being, indeed, the only mathematical lecturer in Christ Church College, so Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was not completely overshadowed by the glory of Lewis Carroll.
From the beginning he was careful to separate these two sides of his life, and the numbers of letters which soon began to pour in upon the latter were never recognized by the grave, precise “don,” whose thoughts flowed in numbers, and so it was all through his life. When anyone wrote to him, addressing him by his real name, and praising him for the “Alice” books, he sent a printed reply which he kept “handy,” saying that as C. L. Dodgson was so often approached as the author of books bearing another name, it must be understood that Mr. Dodgson never acknowledged the authorship of a book which did not bear his name. He was most careful in the wording of this printed form, that it should bear no shadow of untruth. It was only his shy way of avoiding the notice of strangers, and it succeeded so well that very few people knew that the Rev. Charles Dodgson and Lewis Carroll were one and the same person. It was also hinted, and very broadly, too, that many of the queer characters Alice met on her journey through Wonderland were very dignified and stately figures in the University itself, who posed unconsciously as models. The Hatter is an acknowledged portrait, and no doubt there were many other sly caricatures, for Lewis Carroll was a born humorist.
“Alice” has been given to the public in many ways besides translations. There have been lectures, plays, magic lantern slides of Tenniel’s wonderful pictures, tableaux; and many scenes find their way, even at this day, in the nursery wall-paper covered over with Gryphons and Mock Turtles and the whole Court of Cards—a most imposing array. It has been truly stated that, with the exception of Shakespeare’s plays, no books have been so often quoted as the two “Alices.”
After the publication of “Alice in Wonderland,” Lewis Carroll contributed short stories to the various periodicals which were eager for his work. As early as 1867, he sent to Aunt Judy’s Magazine a short story called “Bruno’s Revenge,” the foundation of “Sylvie and Bruno,” which was never published in book form until 1889, twenty-two years after.
The editor of the magazine, Mrs. Gatty, in accepting the story, gave the author some wholesome advice wrapped up in a bundle of praise for the dainty little idyll. She reminded him that mathematical ability such as he possessed was also the gift of hundreds of others, but his story-telling talent, so full of exquisite touches, was peculiarly his own, and whatever of fame might come to him would be on the wings of the fairies, and not from the lecture room.
In “Bruno’s Revenge” we have, for the first time in any of his stories, a little boy. It was a sort of unwilling tribute Lewis Carroll paid to the poor despised “roundabouts,” and for all the winsome fairy ways and merry little touches, Bruno was never quite the real thing; at any rate the story was put away to simmer, and as the long years passed, it was added to bit by bit until—but that is another story.