Socially, Lewis Carroll was of strong conservative tendencies. He viewed with wonder and a little pain the absolute levelling tendencies of the last few years of his life. I have before me an extremely interesting letter which deals with social observances, and from which I am able to make one or two extracts. The bulk of the letter is of a private nature.
“Ladies have ‘to be much’ more particular than gentlemen 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.... I’ve met with just the same thing myself from people several degrees above me. Not long ago I was staying in a house along 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 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 were 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 off 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!”
The picture that this letter gives of the famous writer and learned mathematician obviously rather in terror of some pert young lady fresh from the schoolroom is not without its comic side. One cannot help imagining that the girl must have been very young indeed, for if he were alive to-day there are few ladies of any state who would not feel honoured by the presence of Charles Dodgson.
However, he was not always so unfortunate in his experience of great people, and the following letter, written when he was staying with Lord Salisbury at Hatfield House, tells delightfully of his little royal friends, the Duchess of Albany’s children:
“Hatfield House, Hatfield,
“Herts, June 8, ’89.”
“My darling Isa,—I hope this will find you, but I haven’t yet had any letter from Fulham, so I can’t be sure if you have yet got into your new house.
“This is Lord Salisbury’s house (he is the father, you know, of that Lady Maud Wolmer that we had luncheon with): I came yesterday, and I’m going to stay until Monday. It is such a nice house to stay in! They let one do just as one likes—it isn’t ‘Now you must do some geography! now it’s time for your sums!’ the sort of life some little girls have to lead when they are so foolish as to visit friends—but one can just please one’s own dear self.
“There are some sweet little children staying in the house. Dear little ‘Wang’ is here with her mother. By the way, I made a mistake in telling you what to call her. She is ‘the Honourable Mabel Palmer’—‘Palmer’ is the family name: ‘Wolmer’ is the title, just as the family name of Lord Salisbury is ‘Cecil,’ so that his daughter was Lady Maud Cecil, till she married.
“Then there is the Duchess of Albany here, with two such sweet little children. She is the widow of Prince Leopold (the Queen’s youngest son), so her children are a Prince and Princess: the girl is ‘Alice,’ but I don’t know the boy’s Christian name: they call him ‘Albany,’ because he is the Duke of Albany. Now that I have made friends with a real live little Princess, I don’t intend ever to speak to any more children that haven’t any titles. In fact, I’m so proud, and I hold my chin so high, that I shouldn’t even see you if we met! No, darlings, you mustn’t believe that. If I made friends with a dozen Princesses, I would love you better than all of them together, even if I had them all rolled up into a sort of child-roly-poly.