Our “don’s” memory sometimes played him tricks we see, especially in later years. On one occasion, failing to recognize someone who passed 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 friendship 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 circumstances 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 passed, and bobbed a little old-fashioned 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 comradeship 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 Duchess of Albany (Queen Victoria’s daughter-in-law), Alice and the young Duke, claimed his friendship, 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 association 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 Japanese 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 glass 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.