Complete Works of Lewis Carroll (223 page)

The next few years of his life passed quietly, and without any unusual events to break the monotony of college routine.
He spent his mornings in the lecture-rooms, his afternoons in the country or on the river—he was very fond of boating—and his evenings in his room, reading and preparing for the next day's work.
But in spite of all this outward calm of life, his mind was very much exercised on the subject of taking Holy Orders.
Not only was this step necessary if he wished to retain his Studentship, but also he felt that it would give him much more influence among the undergraduates, and thus increase his power of doing good.
On the other hand, he was not prepared to live the life of almost puritanical strictness which was then considered essential for a clergyman, and he saw that the impediment of speech from which he suffered would greatly interfere with the proper performance of his clerical duties.

BISHOP WILBERFORCE.

(From a photograph by Lewis Carroll)
.

The Bishop of Oxford, Dr.
Wilberforce, had expressed the opinion that the "resolution to attend theatres or operas was an absolute disqualification for Holy Orders," which discouraged him very much, until it transpired that this statement was only meant to refer to the parochial clergy.
He discussed the matter with Dr.
Pusey, and with Dr.
Liddon.
The latter said that "he thought a deacon might lawfully, if he found himself unfit for the work, abstain from direct ministerial duty."
And so, with many qualms about his own unworthiness, he at last decided to prepare definitely for ordination.

On December 22, 1861, he was ordained deacon by the Bishop of Oxford.
He never proceeded to priest's orders, partly, I think, because he felt that if he were to do so it would be his duty to undertake regular parochial work, and partly on account of his stammering.
He used, however, to preach not unfrequently, and his sermons were always delightful to listen to, his extreme earnestness being evident in every word.

"He knew exactly what he wished to say" (I am quoting from an article in
The Guardian
), "and completely forgot his audience in his anxiety to explain his point clearly.
He thought of the subject only, and the words came of themselves.
Looking straight in front of him he saw, as it were, his argument mapped out in the form of a diagram, and he set to work to prove it point by point, under its separate heads, and then summed up the whole."

One sermon which he preached in the University Church, on Eternal Punishment, is not likely to be soon forgotten by those who heard it.
I, unfortunately, was not of that number, but I can well imagine how his clear-cut features would light up as he dwelt lovingly upon the mercy of that Being whose charity far exceeds "the measure of man's mind."
It is hardly necessary to say that he himself did not believe in eternal punishment, or any other scholastic doctrine that contravenes the love of God.

He disliked being complimented on his sermons, but he liked to be told of any good effects that his words had had upon any member of the congregation.
"Thank you for telling me that fact about my sermon," he wrote to one of his sisters, who told him of some such good fruit that one of his addresses had borne.
"I have once or twice had such information volunteered; and it is a
great
comfort—and a kind of thing that is
really
good for one to know.
It is
not
good to be told (and I never wish to be told), 'Your sermon was so
beautiful
.'
We shall not be concerned to know, in the Great Day, whether we have preached beautiful sermons, but whether they were preached with the one object of serving God."

He was always ready and willing to preach at the special service for College servants, which used to be held at Christ Church every Sunday evening; but best of all he loved to preach to children.
Some of his last sermons were delivered at Christ Church, Eastbourne (the church he regularly attended during the Long Vacation), to a congregation of children.
On those occasions he told them an allegory—
Victor and Arnion,
which he intended to publish in course of time—putting all his heart into the work, and speaking with such deep feeling that at times he was almost unable to control his emotion as he told them of the love and compassion of the Good Shepherd.

I have dwelt at some length on this side of his life, for it is, I am sure, almost ignored in the popular estimate of him.
He was essentially a religious man in the best sense of the term, and without any of that morbid sentimentality which is too often associated with the word; and while his religion consecrated his talents, and raised him to a height which without it he could never have reached, the example of such a man as he was, so brilliant, so witty, so successful, and yet so full of faith, consecrates the very conception of religion, and makes it yet more beautiful.

On April 13, 1859, he paid another visit to Tennyson, this time at Farringford.

After dinner we retired for about an hour to the smoking-room, where I saw the proof-sheets of the "King's Idylls," but he would not let me read them.
He walked through the garden with me when I left, and made me remark an effect produced on the thin white clouds by the moon shining through, which I had not noticed—a ring of golden light at some distance off the moon, with an interval of white between—this, he says, he has alluded to in one of his early poems ("Margaret," vol.
i.), "the tender amber."
I asked his opinion of Sydney Dobell—he agrees with me in liking "Grass from the Battlefield," and thinks him a writer of genius and imagination, but extravagant.

ALICE LIDDELL AS BEGGAR-CHILD.

(From a photograph by Lewis Carroll)
.

On another occasion he showed the poet a photograph which he had taken of Miss Alice Liddell as a beggar-child, and which Tennyson said was the most beautiful photograph he had ever seen.

Tennyson told us he had often dreamed long passages of poetry, and believed them to be good at the time, though he could never remember them after waking, except four lines which he dreamed at ten years old:—

May a cock sparrow

Write to a barrow?

I hope you'll excuse

My infantile muse;

—which, as an unpublished fragment of the Poet Laureate, may be thought interesting, but not affording much promise of his after powers.
He also told us he once dreamed an enormously long poem about fairies, which began with very long lines that gradually got shorter, and ended with fifty or sixty lines of two syllables each!

On October 17, 1859, the Prince of Wales came into residence at Christ Church.
The Dean met him at the station, and all the dons assembled in Tom Quadrangle to welcome him.
Mr.
Dodgson, as usual, had an eye to a photograph, in which hope, however, he was doomed to disappointment.
His Royal Highness was tired of having his picture taken.

During his early college life he used often to spend a few days at Hastings, with his mother's sisters, the Misses Lutwidge.
In a letter written from their house to his sister Mary, and dated April 11, 1860, he gives an account of a lecture he had just heard:—

I am just returned from a series of dissolving views on the Arctic regions, and, while the information there received is still fresh in my mind, I will try to give you some of it.
In the first place, you may not know that one of the objects of the Arctic expeditions was to discover "the intensity of the magnetic needle."
He [the lecturer] did not tell us, however, whether they had succeeded in discovering it, or whether that rather obscure question is still doubtful.
One of the explorers, Baffin, "
though
he did not suffer all the hardships the others did,
yet
he came to an untimely end (of course one would think in the Arctic regions),
for instance
(what follows being, I suppose, one of the untimely ends he came to), being engaged in a war of the Portuguese against the Prussians, while measuring the ground in front of a fortification, a cannon-ball came against him, with the force with which cannon-balls in that day
did
come, and killed him dead on the spot."
How many instances of this kind would you demand to prove that he did come to an untimely end?
One of the ships was laid up three years in the ice, during which time, he told us, "Summer came and went frequently."
This, I think, was the most remarkable phenomenon he mentioned in the whole lecture, and gave
me
quite a new idea of those regions.

On Tuesday I went to a concert at St.
Leonard's.
On the front seat sat a youth about twelve years of age, of whom the enclosed is a tolerably accurate sketch.
He really was, I think, the ugliest boy I ever saw.
I wish I could get an opportunity of photographing him.

The following note occurs in his Journal for May 6th:—

A Christ Church man, named Wilmot, who is just returned from the West Indies, dined in Hall.
He told us some curious things about the insects in South America—one that he had himself seen was a spider charming a cockroach with flashes of light; they were both on the wall, the spider about a yard the highest, and the light was like a glow-worm, only that it came by flashes and did not shine continuously; the cockroach gradually crawled up to it, and allowed itself to be taken and killed.

GEORGE MACDONALD

AND HIS DAUGHTER LILY.

(From a photograph

by Lewis Carroll)
.

A few months afterwards, when in town and visiting Mr.
Munroe's studio, he found there two of the children of Mr.
George Macdonald, whose acquaintance he had already made: "They were a girl and boy, about seven and six years old—I claimed their acquaintance, and began at once proving to the boy, Greville, that he had better take the opportunity of having his head changed for a marble one.
The effect was that in about two minutes they had entirely forgotten that I was a total stranger, and were earnestly arguing the question as if we were old acquaintances."
Mr.
Dodgson urged that a marble head would not have to be brushed and combed.
At this the boy turned to his sister with an air of great relief, saying, "Do you hear
that
, Mary?
It needn't be combed!"
And the narrator adds, "I have no doubt combing, with his great head of long hair, like Hallam Tennyson's, was
the
misery of his life.
His final argument was that a marble head couldn't speak, and as I couldn't convince either that he would be all the better for that, I gave in."