LEWIS CARROLL'S SUGGESTION, AND MY SKETCH OF IT IN PUNCH.
"Well, strange to say, Lockwood, I've been seriously thinking of it, but I don't know how one should begin."
"Don't you?" cried Lockwood from the other end of the table. "What do you say to this, nearly killing my friend Harry Furniss!" And my caricature was produced and handed down from guest to guest, to the chagrin of the host. That was Lockwood's version of the coincidence.
Suggestions for Punch came to me from most unexpected quarters, but were rarely of any use. Lewis Carroll—like every one else—got excited over the Gladstonian crisis, and Sir William Harcourt's head to Lewis Carroll was much the same as Charles the First's to Mr. Dick in "David Copperfield," for I find in several letters references to Sir William.
"Re Gladstone's head and its recent growth, couldn't you make a picture of it for the 'Essence of Parliament'? I would call it 'Toby's Dream of A.D. 1900,' and have Gladstone addressing the House, with his enormous head supported by Harcourt on one side, and Parnell on the other."
This suggestion is the only one I adopted. Strange to say, neither Gladstone, Parnell, nor Lewis Carroll lived to see 1900.
"Is that anecdote in the papers true, that some one has sent you a pebble with an accidental (and not a 'doctored') likeness of Harcourt? If so, let me suggest that your most graceful course of action will be to have it photographed, and to present prints of it to any authors whose books you may at any time chance to illustrate!"
This is the "anecdote":