“7 Lushington Road, Eastbourne,
“Aug. 30, ’90.
“Oh, you naughty, naughty, bad, wicked little girl! You forgot to put a stamp on your letter, and your poor old Uncle had to pay Twopence! His last Twopence! Think of that. I shall punish you severely for this, once I get you here. So tremble! Do you hear? Be good enough to tremble!
“I’ve only time for one question to-day. Who in the world are the ‘all’ that join you in ‘lufs and kisses’? Weren’t you fancying you were at home and sending messages (as people constantly do) from Nellie and Emsie, without their having given any? It isn’t a good plan—that sending messages people haven’t given. I don’t mean it’s in the least untruthful, because everybody knows how commonly they are sent without having been given; but it lessens the pleasure of receiving messages. My sisters write to me ‘with best love from all.’ I know it isn’t true, so don’t value it much. The other day the husband of one of my ‘child-friends’ (who always writes ‘your loving’) wrote to me and ended with ‘Ethel joins me in kindest regards.’ In my answer I said (of course in fun)—‘I am not going to send Ethel kindest regards, so I won’t send her any message at all.’ Then she wrote to say she didn’t even know he was writing. ‘Of course I would have sent best love,’ and she added that she had given her husband a piece of her mind. Poor Husband!
“Your always loving Uncle,
“C.L.D.”
These initials were always joined as a monogram and written backward, thus,
, which no doubt, after the years of practice he had, he dashed off with an easy flourish. His general writing was not very legible, but when he was writing for the press he was very careful. “Why should the printers have to work overtime because my letters are ill-formed and my words run into each other?” he once said, and Miss Bowman has put in her little volume the facsimile of a diary he once wrote for her, where every letter was carefully formed so that Isa could read every word herself.
“They were happy days,” she writes, “those days in Oxford, spent with the most fascinating companion that a child could have. In our walks about the old town, in our visits to the Cathedral or Chapel Hall, in our visits to his friends, he was an ideal companion, but I think I was always happiest when we came back to his rooms and had tea alone; when the fire glow (it was always winter when I stayed in Oxford) threw fantastic shadows about the quaint room, and the thoughts of the prosiest people must have wandered a little into fairyland. The shifting firelight seemed almost to etherealize that kindly face, and as the wonderful stories fell from his lips, and his eyes lighted on me with the sweetest smile that ever a man wore, I was conscious of a love and reverence for Charles Dodgson that became nearly an adoration.”
“He was very particular,” she tells us, “about his tea, which he always made himself, and in order that it should draw properly he would walk about the room, swinging the teapot from side to side, for exactly ten minutes. The idea of the grave professor promenading his book-lined study and carefully waving a teapot to and fro may seem ridiculous, but all the minutiæ of life received an extreme attention at his hands.”
The diary referred to, which he so carefully printed for Isa, covered several days’ visit to Oxford in 1888, which oddly enough happened to be in midsummer, and being her first, was never forgotten. It was written in six “chapters” and jotted down faithfully the happenings of each day. What little girl could resist the feast of fun and frolic he had planned for those happy days!