Permit me to offer you my sincere thanks for the very sweet verses you have written about my dream-child (named after a real Alice, but none the less a dream-child) and her Wonderland. That children love the book is a very precious thought to me, and, next to their love, I value the sympathy of those who come with a child's heart to what I have tried to write about a child's thoughts. Next to what conversing with an angel might be—for it is hard to imagine it—comes, I think, the privilege of having a real child's thoughts uttered to one. I have known some few real children (you have too, I am sure), and their friendship is a blessing and a help in life.
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ALICE LIDDELL. From a photograph by Lewis Carroll. |
It is interesting to note how in "Sylvie and Bruno" his idea of the thoughts of a child has become deeper and more spiritual. Yet in the earlier tale, told "all in a golden afternoon," to the plash of oars and the swish of a boat through the waters of Cherwell or Thames, the ideal child is strangely beautiful; she has all Sylvie's genuineness and honesty, all her keen appreciation of the interest of life; only there lacks that mysterious charm of deep insight into the hidden forces of nature, the gentle power that makes the sky "such a darling blue," which almost links Sylvie with the angels.
Another of Lewis Carroll's early favourites was Miss Alexandra (Xie) Kitchin, daughter of the Dean of Durham. Her father was for fifteen years the Censor of the unattached members of the University of Oxford, so that Mr. Dodgson had plenty of opportunities of photographing his little friend, and it is only fair to him to say that he did not neglect them.
It would be futile to attempt even a bare list of the children whom he loved, and who loved him; during forty years of his life he was constantly adding to their number. Some remained friends for life, but in a large proportion of cases the friendship ended with the end of childhood. To one of those few, whose affection for him had not waned with increasing years, he wrote:—
I always feel specially grateful to friends who, like you, have given me a child-friendship and a woman—friendship. About nine out of ten, I think, of my child-friendships get ship-wrecked at the critical point, "where the stream and river meet," and the child-friends, once so affectionate, become uninteresting acquaintances, whom I have no wish to set eyes on again.
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XIE KITCHIN. From a photograph by Lewis Carroll. |
These friendships usually began all very much in the same way. A chance meeting on the sea-shore, in the street, at some friend's house, led to conversation; then followed a call on the parents, and after that all sorts of kindnesses on Lewis Carroll's part, presents of books, invitations to stay with him at Oxford, or at Eastbourne, visits with him to the theatre. For the amusement of his little guests he kept a large assortment of musical-boxes, and an organette which had to be fed with paper tunes. On one occasion he ordered about twelve dozen of these tunes "on approval," and asked one of the other dons, who was considered a judge of music, to come in and hear them played over. In addition to these attractions there were clock-work bears, mice, and frogs, and games and puzzles in infinite variety.
One of his little friends, Miss Isabel Standen, has sent me the following account of her first meeting with him:—
We met for the first time in the Forbury Gardens, Reading. He was, I believe, waiting for a train. I was playing with my brothers and sisters in the Gardens. I remember his taking me on his knee and showing me puzzles, one of which he refers to in the letter (given below. This puzzle was, by the way, a great favourite of his; the problem is to draw three interlaced squares without going over the same lines twice, or taking the pen off the paper), which is so thoroughly characteristic of him in its quaint humour:—
"The Chestnuts, Guildford,
August 22, 1869.
My Dear Isabel,—Though I have only been acquainted with you for fifteen minutes, yet, as there is no one else in Reading I have known so long, I hope you will not mind my troubling you. Before I met you in the Gardens yesterday I bought some old books at a shop in Reading, which I left to be called for, and had not time to go back for them. I didn't even remark the name of the shop, but I can tell where it was, and if you know the name of the woman who keeps the shop, and would put it into the blank I have left in this note, and direct it to her I should be much obliged ... A friend of mine, called Mr. Lewis Carroll, tells me he means to send you a book. He is a very dear friend of mine. I have known him all my life (we are the same age) and have never left him. Of course he was with me in the Gardens, not a yard off—even while I was drawing those puzzles for you. I wonder if you saw him?
Your fifteen-minute friend,
C.L. Dodgson.
Have you succeeded in drawing the three squares?"