Mr. Dodgson was a great admirer of photography and he inspired father with a like enthusiasm, and I am the happy possessor of a photograph (reproduced on page 407) that our dear friend took at Christ Church of father and me. Such a good likeness of father and me, such a lanky, long-legged, shy child, with very short petticoats, low shoes, and a huge flap hat! More than forty years has this been taken—the two dear friends gone for ever and only the photograph remaining as souvenir of the dear old past—it is almost as fresh as the day it was taken!
Other likenesses were taken, but, though I have hunted about, I cannot find them. Also, to my great sorrow, I have lost several long, illustrated letters written to me with the hope of shaming me out of several bad habits and faults. One in particular was the sucking of my thumb, and this Mr. Dodgson always teased me about very much. One day I received a long letter with funny little pictures of a small family of birds who would suck their thumbs (claws). They looked so comical in a row, on a branch, with their claws in their beaks, and the father- and mother-birds below with a pot of bitter aloes, a birch-rod, and long muslin bags to tie up the claws in. The next picture showed the little birds weeping, with their claws in bags, the father and mother enjoying a good repast, and the naughty little birds "had none"! And so on all the way through this most interesting pictorial letter, till the little birds had no claws left. All sucked away! The story was quite as interesting as the pictures, and I think it did me good, as Mary Pearson always read this letter to me whenever I sucked my thumb more than usual, and protested my thumbs were disappearing as the birds' claws did, and I was terribly frightened; for Mr. Dodgson used to say Mary was quite right, and I should be spoken of as "the little girl without thumbs."
My hair was a great trouble to me as a child, for it would tangle and Mary was not over and above patient as I twisted and turned when she wished to dress it. So one day I received a long, blue envelope addressed to myself (letters are always so delightful to children—they raise them almost to the ranks of the "grown-ups"), and there was a story-letter, all full of drawings, from Mr Dodgson. The first picture was of a little girl—hat off and tumbled hair very much en évidence—asleep on a rustic bench under a big tree by the side of a river (supposed to be the dear old seat in the Botanical Gardens), and two birds holding an evidently most important conversation above in the branches, their heads on one side, eyeing the sleeping child. The next picture, the two birds, flying with twigs and straw, preparing to build a nest; the child still sleeping and the birds chirping and twittering with the delight of building their nest in the tangled hair of the child. Next came the awakening. The work complete, the mother-bird on her nest, the father-bird flying round the frightened child. And then, lastly, hundreds of birds—the air thick with them; the child fleeing; small boys with tin trumpets raised to their lips, and Nurse Mary, with a basket of brushes and combs, bringing up the rear! All this, with the well-drawn-out story, cured me of this fault, and Mary, in after-life, told me she "had no more trouble; just to open the letter and show the unhappy child in the picture, and I was 'passive as a lamb.'" Sometimes father would say, patting my head, "Any more nests to-day, Ducky? Birds would not have a chance now with this smooth little head."
LEWIS CARROLL.
(The Rev. C. L. Dodgson.)
I have grieved greatly that these picture-stories are no more, and, from several letters which I have seen from other little girls—now grown up and far away in different parts of the world, their letters of a like kind have also gone astray and been lost amidst the movings, changings, and chances of life.
In after years my father often told me another story of Mr. Dodgson, which I, being so young, had forgotten. In the very early part of the time in which I knew him, he one day called in Long-Wall Street to fetch father to go with him to "The Union" to look into some particular subject together. Mr. Dodgson was anxious I should go as well, as, perhaps, we might all take a walk, and as I promised to be most obedient and good, I was told to go and get my hat. I trotted along, and, "The Union" reached, was put in a comfortable chair to wait till they were ready to go on the proposed walk. It was hot, and I was tired, and the crackling of papers turning over and the hum of voices lulled me to sleep. I slept on, oblivious of all, and, I suppose, the two friends, talking intently, forgot my existence and, in earnest conversation, left "The Union"—and me, sleeping quietly, quite alone.
Mr. Dodgson left father in Long-Wall Street, and then went to his rooms in Christ Church. Suddenly, so the story goes, he thought, "We went out three; we came back two; where is three?"
And then it flashed across him that there had been no "three" left in Long-Wall Street—only his friend—and so "three" must have been left somewhere on the road. Though it was just the hour of dinner, this good friend trudged back to "The Union," intent upon finding the lost lamb, and there I was still asleep, coiled up, as he expressed it, "like a dormouse." I was taken home tired and a little cross; it was past my supper-time; I was hungry, and quite ready for the white sheets and pillows that lead to dreamland. But, always thoughtful for others, Mr. Dodgson strayed into the ever-famous and delightful shop of Boffins in "The High," and a sugared Bath-bun and a glass of jelly revived my drooping spirits and raised my courage to meet Mary. I was soon given into her care, and my adventures, as told by Mr. Dodgson, made me quite a heroine, and I felt myself a person of some importance with a history.