An Unexpected Guest.
"Mr. Dobson wants to see you, miss."
I was in the kitchen looking after the dinner, and did not feel that I particularly wished to see anybody.
"He wants a vote, or he is an agent for a special kind of tea," thought I. "I don't know him; ask him to send a message."
Presently the maid returned—
"He says he is Mr. Dodgson, of Oxford."
"Lewis Carroll!" I exclaimed; and somebody else had to superintend the cooking that day.
My apologies were soon made and cheerfully accepted. I believe I was unconventional enough to tell the exact truth concerning my occupation, and matters were soon on a friendly footing. Indeed I may say at once that the stately college don we have heard so much about never made his appearance during our intercourse with him.
He did not talk "Alice," of course; authors don't generally talk their books, I imagine; but it was undoubtedly Lewis Carroll who was present with us.
A portrait of Ellen Terry on the wall had attracted his attention, and one of the first questions he asked was, "Do you ever go to the theatre?" I explained that such things were done, occasionally, even among Quakers, but they were not considered quite orthodox.
"Oh, well, then you will not be shocked, and I may venture to produce my photographs." And out into the hall he went, and soon returned with a little black bag containing character portraits of his child-friends, Isa and Nellie Bowman.
"Isa used to be Alice until she grew too big," he said. "Nellie was one of the oyster—fairies, and Emsie, the tiny one of all, was the Dormouse."
"When 'Alice' was first dramatised," he said, "the poem of the 'Walrus and the Carpenter' fell rather flat, for people did not know when it was finished, and did not clap in the right place; so I had to write a song for the ghosts of the oysters to sing, which made it all right."
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ALICE AND THE DORMOUSE. From a photograph Elliott & Fry. |
He was then on his way to London, to fetch Isa to stay with him at Eastbourne. She was evidently a great favourite, and had visited him before. Of that earlier time he said:—
"When people ask me why I have never married, I tell them I have never met the young lady whom I could endure for a fortnight—but Isa and I got on so well together that I said I should keep her a month, the length of the honeymoon, and we didn't get tired of each other."
Nellie afterwards joined her sister "for a few days," but the days spread to some weeks, for the poor little dormouse developed scarlet fever, and the elder children had to be kept out of harm's way until fear of infection was over.
Of Emsie he had a funny little story to tell. He had taken her to the Aquarium, and they had been watching the seals coming up dripping out of the water. With a very pitiful look she turned to him and said, "Don't they give them any towels?" [The same little girl commiserated the bear, because it had got no tail.]
Asked to stay to dinner, he assured us that he never took anything in the middle of the day but a glass of wine and a biscuit; but he would be happy to sit down with us, which he accordingly did and kindly volunteered to carve for us. His offer was gladly accepted, but the appearance of a rather diminutive piece of neck of mutton was somewhat of a puzzle to him. He had evidently never seen such a joint in his life before, and had frankly to confess that he did not know how to set about carving it. Directions only made things worse, and he bravely cut it to pieces in entirely the wrong fashion, relating meanwhile the story of a shy young man who had been asked to carve a fowl, the joints of which had been carefully wired together beforehand by his too attentive friends.
The task and the story being both finished, our visitor gazed on the mangled remains, and remarked quaintly: "I think it is just as well I don't want anything, for I don't know where I should find it."
At least one member of the party felt she could have managed matters better; but that was a point of very little consequence.
A day or two after the first call came a note saying that he would be taking Isa home before long, and if we would like to see her he would stop on the way again.
Of course we were only too delighted to have the opportunity, and, though the visit was postponed more than once, it did take place early in August, when he brought both Isa and Nellie up to town to see a performance of "Sweet Lavender." It is needless to remark that we took care, this time, to be provided with something at once substantial and carvable.
The children were bright, healthy, happy and childlike little maidens, quite devoted to their good friend, whom they called "Uncle"; and very interesting it was to see them together.
But he did not allow any undue liberties either, as a little incident showed.
He had been describing a particular kind of collapsible tumbler, which you put in your pocket and carried with you for use on a railway journey.
"There now," he continued, turning to the children, "I forgot to bring it with me after all."
"Oh Goosie," broke in Isa; "you've been talking about that tumbler for days, and now you have forgotten it."
He pulled himself up, and looked at her steadily with an air of grave reproof.
Much abashed, she hastily substituted a very subdued "Uncle" for the objectionable "Goosie," and the matter dropped.
The principal anecdote on this occasion was about a dog which had been sent into the sea after sticks. He brought them back very properly for some time, and then there appeared to be a little difficulty, and he returned swimming in a very curious manner. On closer inspection it appeared that he had caught hold of his own tail by mistake, and was bringing it to land in triumph.
This was told with the utmost gravity, and though we had been requested beforehand not to mention "Lewis Carroll's" books, the temptation was too strong. I could not help saying to the child next me—
"That was like the Whiting, wasn't it?"
Our visitor, however, took up the remark, and seemed quite willing to talk about it.
"When I wrote that," he said, "I believed that whiting really did have their tails in their mouths, but I have since been told that fishmongers put the tail through the eye, not in the mouth at all."
He was not a very good carver, for Miss Bremer also describes a little difficulty he had—this time with the pastry: "An amusing incident occurred when he was at lunch with us. He was requested to serve some pastry, and, using a knife, as it was evidently rather hard, the knife penetrated the d'oyley beneath—and his consternation was extreme when he saw the slice of linen and lace he served as an addition to the tart!"
It was, I think, through her connection with the "Alice" play that Mr. Dodgson first came to know Miss Isa Bowman. Her childish friendship for him was one of the joys of his later years, and one of the last letters he wrote was addressed to her. The poem at the beginning of "Sylvie and Bruno" is an acrostic on her name—
Is all our Life, then, but a dream,
Seen faintly in the golden gleam
Athwart Times's dark, resistless stream?
Bowed to the earth with bitter woe,
Or laughing at some raree-show,