Complete Works of Lewis Carroll (249 page)

Always yours affectionately,

C.L.
Dodgson.

In his later years he used often to give lectures on various subjects to children.
He gave a series on "Logic" at the Oxford Girls' High School, but he sometimes went further afield, as in the following instance:—

Went, as arranged with Miss A.
Ottley, to the High School at Worcester, on a visit.
At half-past three I had an audience of about a hundred little girls, aged, I should think, from about six to fourteen.
I showed them two arithmetic puzzles on the black-board, and told them "Bruno's Picnic."
At half-past seven I addressed some serious words to a second audience of about a hundred elder girls, probably from fifteen to twenty—an experience of the deepest interest to me.

The illustration on the next page will be best explained by the following letter which I have received from Mr.
Walter Lindsay, of Philadelphia, U.S.:—

Phila.,
September
12, 1898.

Dear Sir,—I shall be very glad to furnish what information I can with respect to the "Mechanical Humpty Dumpty" which I constructed a few years ago, but I must begin by acknowledging that, in one sense at least, I did not "invent" the figure.
The idea was first put into my head by an article in the
Cosmopolitan
, somewhere about 1891, I suppose, describing a similar contrivance.
As a devoted admirer of the "Alice" books, I determined to build a Humpty Dumpty of my own; but I left the model set by the author of the article mentioned, and constructed the figure on entirely different lines.
In the first place, the figure as described in the magazine had very few movements, and not very satisfactory ones at that; and in the second place, no attempt whatever was made to reproduce, even in a general way, the well-known appearance of Tenniel's drawing.
Humpty, when completed, was about two feet and a half high.
His face, of course, was white; the lower half of the egg was dressed in brilliant blue.
His stockings were grey, and the famous cravat orange, with a zigzag pattern in blue.
I am sorry to say that the photograph hardly does him justice; but he had travelled to so many different places during his career, that he began to be decidedly out of shape before he sat for his portrait.

THE MECHANICAL "HUMPTY DUMPTY."

From a photograph
.

When Humpty was about to perform, a short "talk" was usually given before the curtain rose, explaining the way in which the Sheep put the egg on the shelf at the back of the little shop, and how Alice went groping along to it.
And then, just as the explanation had reached the opening of the chapter on Humpty Dumpty, the curtain rose, and Humpty was discovered, sitting on the wall, and gazing into vacancy.
As soon as the audience had had time to recover, Alice entered, and the conversation was carried on just as it is in the book.
Humpty Dumpty gesticulated with his arms, rolled his eyes, raised his eyebrows, frowned, turned up his nose in scorn at Alice's ignorance, and smiled from ear to ear when he shook hands with her.
Besides this, his mouth kept time with his words all through the dialogue, which added very greatly to his life-like appearance.

The effect of his huge face, as it changed from one expression to another, was ludicrous in the extreme, and we were often obliged to repeat sentences in the conversation (to "go back to the last remark but one") because the audience laughed so loudly over Humpty Dumpty's expression of face that they drowned what he was trying to say.
The funniest effect was the change from the look of self-satisfied complacency with which he accompanied the words: "The king has promised me—" to that of towering rage when Alice innocently betrays her knowledge of the secret.
At the close of the scene, when Alice has vainly endeavoured to draw him into further conversation, and at last walks away in disgust, Humpty loses his balance on the wall, recovers himself, totters again, and then falls off backwards; at the same time a box full of broken glass is dropped on the floor behind the scenes, to represent the "heavy crash," which "shook the forest from end to end";—and the curtain falls.

Now, as to how it was all done.
Humpty was made of barrel hoops, and covered with stiff paper and muslin.
His eyes were round balls of rags, covered with muslin, drawn smoothly, and with the pupil and iris marked on the front.
These eyes were pivoted to a board, fastened just behind the eye-openings in the face.
To the eyeballs were sewed strong pieces of tape, which passed through screw-eyes on the edges of the board, and so down to a row of levers which were hinged in the lower part of the figure.
One lever raised both eyes upward, another moved them both to the left, and so on.
The eyebrows were of worsted and indiarubber knitted together.
They were fastened at the ends, and raised and lowered by fine white threads passing through small holes in the face, and also operated by levers.
The arms projected into the interior of the machine, and the gestures were made by moving the short ends inside.
The right hand contained a spring clothe-pin, by which he was enabled to hold the note— book in which Alice set down the celebrated problem—

365

  1

___

364

The movement of the mouth, in talking, was produced by a long tape, running down to a pedal, which was controlled by the foot of the performer.
And the smile consisted of long strips of red tape, which were drawn out through slits at the corners of the mouth by means of threads which passed through holes in the sides of the head.
The performer—who was always your humble servant—stood on a box behind the wall, his head just reaching the top of the egg, which was open all the way up the back.
At the lower end of the figure, convenient to the hands of the performer, was the row of levers, like a little keyboard; and by striking different chords on the keys, any desired expression could be produced on the face.

Of course, a performance of this kind without a good Alice would be unutterably flat; but the little girl who played opposite to Humpty, Miss Nellie K—, was so exactly the counterpart of Alice, both in appearance and disposition, that most children thought she was the original, right out of the book.

Humpty still exists, but he has not seen active life for some years.
His own popularity was the cause of his retirement; for having given a number of performances (for Charity, of course), and delighted many thousands of children of all ages, the demands upon his time, from Sunday-schools and other institutions, became so numerous that the performers were obliged to withdraw him in self-defence.
He was a great deal of trouble to build, but the success he met with and the pleasure he gave more than repaid me for the bother; and I am sure that any one else who tries it will reach the same conclusion.

Yours sincerely,

Walter Lindsay.

At the beginning of 1893 a fierce logical battle was being waged between Lewis Carroll and Mr.
Cook Wilson, Professor of Logic at Oxford.
The Professor, in spite of the countless arguments that Mr.
Dodgson hurled at his head, would not confess that he had committed a fallacy.

On February 5th the Professor appears to have conceded a point, for Mr.
Dodgson writes: "Heard from Cook Wilson, who has long declined to read a paper which I sent January 12th, and which seems to me to prove the fallacy of a view of his about Hypotheticals.
He now offers to read it, if
I
will study a proof he sent, that another problem of mine had contradictory
data
.
I have accepted his offer, and studied and answered his paper.
So I now look forward hopefully to the result of his reading mine."

The hopes which he entertained were doomed to be disappointed; the controversy bore no fruits save a few pamphlets and an enormous amount of correspondence, and finally the two antagonists had to agree to differ.

As a rule Mr.
Dodgson was a stern opponent of music-halls and music-hall singers; but he made one or two exceptions with regard to the latter.
For Chevalier he had nothing but praise; he heard him at one of his recitals, for he never in his life entered a "Variety Theatre."
I give the passage from his Diary:—

Went to hear Mr.
Albert Chevalier's Recital.
I only knew of him as being now recognised as
facile princeps
among music-hall singers, and did not remember that I had seen him twice or oftener on the stage—first as "Mr.
Hobbs" in "Little Lord Fauntleroy," and afterwards as a "horsy" young man in a
matinée
in which Violet Vanbrugh appeared.
He was decidedly
good
as an actor; but as a comic singer (with considerable powers of pathos as well) he is quite first-rate.
His chief merit seems to be the earnestness with which he throws himself into the work.
The songs (mostly his own writing) were quite inoffensive, and very funny.
I am very glad to be able to think that his influence on public taste is towards refinement and purity.
I liked best "The Future Mrs.
'Awkins," with its taking tune, and "My Old Dutch," which revealed powers that, I should think, would come out grandly in Robsonian parts, such as "The Porter's Knot."
"The Little Nipper" was also well worth hearing.

Mr.
Dodgson's views on Sunday Observance were old-fashioned, but he lived up to them, and did not try to force them upon people with whose actions he had no concern.
They were purely matters of "private opinion" with him.
On October 2nd he wrote to Miss E.G.
Thomson, who was illustrating his "Three Sunsets":—

Would you kindly do
no
sketches, or photos, for
me
, on a Sunday?
It is, in
my
view (of
course
I don't condemn any one who differs from me) inconsistent with keeping the day holy.
I do
not
hold it to be the Jewish "Sabbath," but I
do
hold it to be "the Lord's Day," and so to be made very distinct from the other days.

In December, the Logical controversy being over for a time, Mr.
Dodgson invented a new problem to puzzle his mathematical friends with, which was called "The Monkey and Weight Problem."
A rope is supposed to be hung over a wheel fixed to the roof of a building; at one end of the rope a weight is fixed, which exactly counterbalances a monkey which is hanging on to the other end.
Suppose that the monkey begins to climb the rope, what will be the result?
The following extract from the Diary illustrates the several possible answers which may be given:—

Got Professor Clifton's answer to the "Monkey and Weight Problem."
It is very curious, the different views taken by good mathematicians.
Price says the weight goes
up
, with increasing velocity; Clifton (and Harcourt) that it goes
up
, at the same rate as the monkey; while Sampson says that it goes
down
.

On December 24th Mr.
Dodgson received the first twelve copies of "Sylvie and Bruno Concluded," just about four years after the appearance of the first part of the story.
In this second volume the two fairy children are as delightful as ever; it also contains what I think most people will agree to be the most beautiful poem Lewis Carroll ever wrote, "Say, what is the spell, when her fledglings are cheeping?"
(p.
305).
In the preface he pays a well-deserved compliment to Mr.
Harry Furniss for his wonderfully clever pictures; he also explains how the book was written, showing that many of the amusing remarks of Bruno had been uttered by real children.
He makes allusion to two books, which only his death prevented him from finishing—"Original Games and Puzzles," and a paper on "Sport," viewed from the standpoint of the humanitarian.
From a literary point of view the second volume of "Sylvie and Bruno" lacks unity; a fairy tale is all very well, and a novel also is all very well, but the combination of the two is surely a mistake.
However, the reader who cares more for the spirit than the letter will not notice this blemish; to him "Sylvie and Bruno Concluded" will be interesting and helpful, as the revelation of a very beautiful personality.