“Mr. Dodgson,” continues Miss Hatch, “seats his guest in a corner of the red sofa, in front of the fireplace, and the few minutes before dinner are occupied with anecdotes about other child friends, small or grown up, or anything in particular that has happened to himself.... Dinner is served in the smaller room, which is also filled with bookcases and books.... Those who have had the privilege of enjoying a college dinner need not be told how excellent it is.... The rest of the evening slips away very quickly, there is so much to be shown. You may play a game—one of Mr. Dodgson’s own invention— ... or you may see pictures, lovely drawings of fairies, whom your host tells you ‘you can’t be sure don’t really exist.’ Or you may have music if you wish it.”
This was of course before the days of the phonograph, but Lewis Carroll had the next best thing, which Miss Hatch describes as an organette, in a large square box, through the side of which a handle is affixed. “Another box holds the tunes, circular perforated cards, all carefully catalogued by their owner. The picture of the author of ‘Alice’ keenly enjoying every note as he solemnly turns the handle, and raises or closes the lid of the box to vary the sound, is more worthy of your delight than the music itself. Never was there a more delightful host for a ‘dinner-party’ or one who took such pains for your entertainment, fresh and interesting to the last.”
One of the first things a little girl learned in her intercourse with Lewis Carroll was to be methodical and orderly, as he was himself, in the arrangement of papers, photographs, and books; he kept lists and registers of everything. Miss Hatch tells of a wonderful letter register of his own invention “that not only recorded the names of his correspondents and the dates of their letters, but also noted the contents of each communication, so that in a few seconds he could tell you what you had written to him about on a certain day in years gone by.
“Another register contained a list of every menu supplied to every guest who dined at Mr. Dodgson’s table. Yet,” she explains, “his dinners were simple enough, never more than two courses. But everything that he did must be done in the most perfect manner possible, and the same care and attention would be given to other people’s affairs, if in any way he could assist or give them pleasure.
“If he took you up to London to see a play, you were no sooner seated in the railway carriage than a game was produced from his bag and all the occupants were invited to join in playing a kind of ‘Halma’ or ‘draughts’ of his own invention, on the little wooden board that had been specially made at his design for railway use, with ‘men’ warranted not to tumble down, because they fitted into little holes in the board.”
Children, little girls especially, remember through life the numberless small kindnesses that are shown to them. Is it any wonder, then, that the name of Lewis Carroll is held in such loving memory by the scores of little girls he drew about him? Beatrice Hatch was only one among many to feel the warmth of his love. This quiet, almost solitary, man whose home was in the shadow of a great college, whose daily life was such a long walk of dull routine, could yet find time to make his own sunshine and to draw others into the light of it.
But the children did their part too. He grew dependent on them as the years rolled on; a fairy circle of girls was always drawing him to them, and he was made one of them. They told him their childish secrets feeling sure of a ready sympathy and a quick appreciation. He seemed to know his way instinctively to a girl’s heart; she felt for him an affection, half of comradeship, half of reverence, for there was something inspiring in the fearless carriage of the head, the clear, serene look in the eyes, that seemed to pierce far ahead upon the path over which their own young feet were stumbling, perhaps.
With the passing of the years, some of the seven sisters married, and a fair crop of nieces and nephews shot up around him, also some small cousins in whom he took a deep interest. It is to one of these that he dedicated his poem called “Matilda Jane,” in honor of the doll who bore the name, which meant nothing in the world to such an unresponsive bit of doll-dom.
Matilda Jane, you never look
At any toy or picture book;
I show you pretty things in vain,
You must be blind, Matilda Jane!
I ask you riddles, tell you tales,
But all our conversation fails;
You never answer me again,
I fear you’re dumb, Matilda Jane!
Matilda, darling, when I call,
You never seem to hear at all;
I shout with all my might and main,
But you’re so deaf, Matilda Jane!
Matilda Jane, you needn’t mind,
For though you’re deaf and dumb and blind,
There’s some one loves you, it is plain,
And that is me, Matilda Jane!
A little tender-hearted, ungrammatical, motherly “me”—how well the writer knew the small “Bessie” whose affection for this doll inspired the verses!