Complete Works of Lewis Carroll (282 page)

“‘I nearly died of laughing’ was another expression that he particularly disliked; in fact, any form of exaggeration generally called from him a reproof, though he was sometimes content to make fun.
For instance, my sisters and I had sent him ‘millions of kisses’ in a letter.’
Here is his answer:

“‘Ch.
Ch.
Oxford.
Ap.
14, 1890.

“‘My own Darling:

“‘It’s all very well for you and Nellie and Emsie to write in millions of hugs and kisses, but please consider the
time
it would occupy your poor old very busy uncle!
Try hugging and kissing Emsie for a minute by the watch and I don’t think you’ll manage it more than 20 times a minute.
“Millions” must mean two millions at least.’”

Then follows a characteristic example in arithmetic:

20)2,000,000

hugs and kisses.

60)100,000

minutes.

12)1,666

hours.

6)138

days (at twelve hours a day).

23

weeks.

“I couldn’t go on hugging and kissing more than 12 hours a day; and I wouldn’t like to spend
Sundays
that way.
So you see it would take
23
weeks of hard work.
Really, my dear child, I cannot spare the time.

“Why haven’t I written since my last letter?
Why, how could I have written
since the last time I did
write?
Now you just try it with kissing.
Go and kiss Nellie, from me, several times, and take care to manage it so as to have kissed her
since the last time you did
kiss her.
Now go back to your place and I’ll question you.

“‘Have you kissed her several times?’

“‘Yes, darling Uncle.’

“‘What o’clock was it when you gave her the
last
kiss?’

“‘Five minutes past 10, Uncle.’

“‘Very well, now, have you kissed her
since
?’

“‘Well—I—ahem!
ahem!
ahem!
(excuse me, Uncle, I’ve got a bad cough) I—think—that—I—that is, you know, I—’

“‘Yes, I see!
“Isa” begins with “I,” and it seems to me as if she was going to
end
with “I”
this
time!’”

The rest of the letter refers to Isa’s visit to America, when she went to play the little
Duke of York
in “Richard III.”

“Mind you don’t write me from there,” he warns her.
“Please,
please
, no more horrid letters from you!
I
do
hate them so!
And as for kissing them when I get them, why, I’d just as soon kiss—kiss—kiss—
you
, you tiresome thing!
So there now!

“Thank you very much for those 2 photographs—I liked them—hum—
pretty
well.
I can’t honestly say I thought them the very best I had ever seen.

“Please give my kindest regards to your mother, and ½ of a kiss to Nellie, and
1
⁄200 of a kiss to Emsie,
1
⁄2000000 of a kiss to yourself.
So with fondest love, I am, my darling,

“Your loving Uncle,

“C.
L.
Dodgson.”

And at the end of this letter, teeming with fun and laughter, could anything be sweeter than this postscript?

“I’ve thought about that little prayer you asked me to write for Nellie and Emsie.
But I would like first to have the words of the one I wrote for
you
, and the words of what they say
now
, if they say any.
And then I will pray to our Heavenly Father to help me to write a prayer that will be really fit for them to use.”

In letter-writing, and even in his story-telling, Lewis Carroll made frequent use of italics.
His own speech was so emphatic that his writing would have looked odd without them, and many of his cleverest bits of nonsense would have been lost but for their aid.

Another time Isa ended a letter to him with “All join me in lufs and kisses.”
Now Miss Isa was away on a visit and had no one near to join her in such a message, but that is what she would have put had she been at home, and this is the letter he wrote in reply:

 “7 Lushington Road, Eastbourne,

“Aug.
30, ’90.

“Oh, you naughty, naughty, bad, wicked little girl!
You forgot to put a stamp on your letter, and your poor old Uncle had to pay
Twopence
!
His
last
Twopence!
Think of that.
I shall punish you severely for this, once I get you here.
So tremble!
Do you hear?
Be good enough to tremble!

“I’ve only time for one question to-day.
Who in the world are the ‘all’ that join you in ‘lufs and kisses’?
Weren’t you fancying you were at home and sending messages (as people constantly do) from Nellie and Emsie, without their having given any?
It isn’t a good plan—that sending messages people haven’t given.
I don’t mean it’s in the least
untruthful
, because everybody knows how commonly they are sent without having been given; but it lessens the pleasure of receiving messages.
My sisters write to me ‘with best love from all.’
I know it isn’t true, so don’t value it much.
The other day the husband of one of my ‘child-friends’ (who always writes ‘your loving’) wrote to me and ended with ‘Ethel joins me in kindest regards.’
In my answer I said (of course in fun)—‘I am not going to send Ethel kindest regards, so I won’t send her any message
at all
.’
Then she wrote to say she didn’t even know he was writing.
‘Of course I would have sent best love,’ and she added that she had given her husband a piece of her mind.
Poor Husband!

“Your always loving Uncle,

“C.L.D.”

These initials were always joined as a monogram and written backward, thus,

, which no doubt, after the years of practice he had, he dashed off with an easy flourish.
His general writing was not very legible, but when he was writing for the press he was very careful.
“Why should the printers have to work overtime because my letters are ill-formed and my words run into each other?”
he once said, and Miss Bowman has put in her little volume the facsimile of a diary he once wrote for her, where every letter was carefully formed so that Isa could read every word herself.

“They were happy days,” she writes, “those days in Oxford, spent with the most fascinating companion that a child could have.
In our walks about the old town, in our visits to the Cathedral or Chapel Hall, in our visits to his friends, he was an ideal companion, but I think I was always happiest when we came back to his rooms and had tea alone; when the fire glow (it was always winter when I stayed in Oxford) threw fantastic shadows about the quaint room, and the thoughts of the prosiest people must have wandered a little into fairyland.
The shifting firelight seemed almost to etherealize that kindly face, and as the wonderful stories fell from his lips, and his eyes lighted on me with the sweetest smile that ever a man wore, I was conscious of a love and reverence for Charles Dodgson that became nearly an adoration.”

“He was very particular,” she tells us, “about his tea, which he always made himself, and in order that it should draw properly he would walk about the room, swinging the teapot from side to side, for exactly ten minutes.
The idea of the grave professor promenading his book-lined study and carefully waving a teapot to and fro may seem ridiculous, but all the minutiæ of life received an extreme attention at his hands.”

The diary referred to, which he so carefully printed for Isa, covered several days’ visit to Oxford in 1888, which oddly enough happened to be in midsummer, and being her first, was never forgotten.
It was written in six “chapters” and jotted down faithfully the happenings of each day.
What little girl could resist the feast of fun and frolic he had planned for those happy days!

First, he met her at Paddington station; then he took her to see a panorama of the Falls of Niagara, after which they had dinner with a Mrs.
Dymes, and two of her children, Helen and Maud, went with them to Terry’s Theater to see “Little Lord Fauntleroy” played by Vera Beringer, another little actress friend of Lewis Carroll.
After this they all took the Metropolitan railway; the little Dymes girls got off at their station, but Isa and the Aged Aged Man, as he called himself, went on to Oxford.
There they saw everything to be seen, beginning with Christ Church, where the “A.A.M.”
lived, and here and there Lewis Carroll managed to throw bits of history into the funny little diary.
They saw all the colleges, and Christ Church Meadow, and the barges which the Oxford crews used as boathouses, and took long walks, and went to St.
Mary’s Church on Sunday, and lots of other interesting things.

Every year she stayed a while with him at Eastbourne, where she tells us she was even happier if possible.
Her day at Eastbourne began very early.
Her room faced his, and after she was dressed in the morning she would steal into the little passage quiet as a mouse, and sit on the top stair, her eye on his closed door, watching for the signal of admission into his room; this was a newspaper pushed under his door.
The moment she saw that, she was at liberty to rush in and fling herself upon him, after which excitement they went down to breakfast.
Then he read a chapter from the Bible and made her tell it to him afterwards as a story of her own, beginning always with, “Once upon a time.”
After which there was a daily visit to the swimming-bath followed by one to the dentist—he always insisted on this, going himself quite as regularly.

After lunch, which with him consisted of a glass of sherry and a biscuit, while little Miss Isa ate a good substantial dinner, there was a game of backgammon, of which he was very fond, and then a long, long walk to the top of Beachy Head, which Isa hated.
She says:

“Lewis Carroll believed very much in a great amount of exercise, and said one should always go to bed physically wearied with the exercise of the day.
Accordingly, there was no way out of it, and every afternoon I had to walk to the top of Beachy Head.
He was very good and kind.
He would invent all sorts of new games to beguile the tedium of the way.
One very curious and strange trait in his character was shown in these walks.
I used to be very fond of flowers and animals also.
A pretty dog or a hedge of honeysuckle was always a pleasant event upon our walk to me.
And yet he himself cared for neither flowers nor animals.
Tender and kind as he was, simple and unassuming in all his tastes, yet he did not like flowers....
He knew children so thoroughly and well, that it is all the stranger that he did not care for things that generally attract them so much....
When I was in raptures over a poppy or a dog-rose, he would try hard to be as interested as I was, but even to my childish eyes it was an effort, and he would always rather invent some new game for us to play at.
Once, and once only, I remember him to have taken an interest in a flower, and that was because of the folklore that was attached to it, and not because of the beauty of the flower itself.