“My own darling Isa,—The value of a copy of the French ‘Alice’ is £45: but, as you want the ‘cheapest’ kind, and as you are a great friend of mine, and as I am of a very noble, generous disposition, I have made up my mind to a great sacrifice, and have taken £3, 10s, 0d, off the price, so that you do not owe me more than £41, 10s, 0d, and this you can pay me, in gold or bank notes, as soon as you ever like. Oh, dear! I wonder why I write such nonsense! Can you explain to me, my pet, how it happens that when I take up my pen to write a letter to you, it won’t write sense. Do you think the rule is that when the pen finds it has to write to a nonsensical, good-for-nothing child it sets to work to write a nonsensical, good-for-nothing letter? Well, now I’ll tell you the real truth. As Miss Kitty Wilson is a dear friend of yours, of course she’s a sort of a friend of mine. So I thought (in my vanity) ‘perhaps she would like to have a copy “from the author” with her name written in it.’ So I sent her one—but I hope she’ll understand that I do it because she’s your friend, for you see I had never heard of her before; so I wouldn’t have any other reason.”
When he published his last long story, “Sylvie and Bruno,” the dedication was to her, an acrostic on her name; but as “Sylvie and Bruno” will be spoken of later on, perhaps it will be more interesting to give the dainty little verses where they belong. He sent his pet a specially bound copy of the new book, with the following letter:
“Christ Church, May 16, ’90.
“Dearest Isa:—I had this bound for you when the book first came out, and it’s been waiting here ever since Dec. 17, for I really didn’t dare to send it across the Atlantic—the whales are so inconsiderate. They’d have been sure to want to borrow it to show to the little whales, quite forgetting that the salt water would be sure to spoil it.
“Also I’ve been waiting for you to get back to send Emsie the ‘Nursery Alice.’ I give it to the youngest in a family generally, but I’ve given one to Maggie as well, because she travels about so much, and I thought she would like to have one to take with her. I hope Nellie’s eyes won’t get quite green with jealousy at two (indeed three) of her sisters getting presents, and nothing for her! I’ve nothing but my love to send her to-day, but she shall have something some day.—Ever your loving
“Uncle Charles.”
The “Nursery Alice” he refers to was arranged by himself for children “from naught to five” as he quaintly puts it. It contained twenty beautiful colored drawings from the Tenniel illustrations, with a cover designed by E. Gertrude Thomson, of whose work he was very fond. The words were simplified for nursery readers.
In another letter to Isa he talks very seriously about “social position.”
“Ladies,” he writes, “have to be much more particular in observing the distinctions of what is called ‘social position,’ and the lower their own position is (in the scale of ‘lady’ ship) the more jealous they seem to be in guarding it.... Not long ago I was staying in a house with a young lady (about twenty years old I should think) with a title of her own, as she was an earl’s daughter. I happened to sit next to her at dinner, and every time I spoke to her she looked at me more as if she was looking down on me from about a mile up in the air, and as if she was saying to herself, ‘How dare you speak to me! Why you’re not good enough to black my shoes!’ It was so unpleasant that next day at luncheon I got as far from her as I could.
“Of course we are all quite equal in God’s sight, but we do make a lot of distinctions (some of them quite unmeaning) among ourselves!”