CHAPTER XIII.

“ALICE” ON THE STAGE AND OFF.

 

When the question of dramatizing the “Alice” books was placed before the author, by Mr. Savile Clarke, who was to undertake the work, he consented gladly enough. It was to be an operetta of two acts; the libretto, or story part, by Mr. Clarke himself, the music by Mr. Walter Slaughter, and the only condition Lewis Carroll made was that nothing should be written or acted which should in any way be unsuitable for children.

Of course, everything was done under his eye, and he wrote an extra song for the ghosts of the Oysters, who had been eaten by the Walrus and the Carpenter; he also finished that poetic gem, “’Tis the Voice of the Lobster.”

“’Tis the voice of the Lobster,” I heard him declare,

“You baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair.”

As a duck with its eyelids, so he with his nose,

Trims his belt and his buttons, and turns out his toes.

When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a lark

And talks with the utmost contempt of a shark;

But when the tide rises and sharks are around,

His words have a timid and tremulous sound.

 

I passed by his garden, and marked with one eye

How the Owl and the Panther were sharing a pie:

The Panther took pie, crust and gravy and meat,

While the Owl had the dish, for his share of the treat.

When the pie was all finished, the Owl—as a boon

Was kindly permitted to pocket the spoon;

While the Panther received knife and fork with a growl,

And concluded the banquet——

That is how the poem originally ended, but musically that would never do, so the last two lines were altered in this fashion:

“But the Panther obtained both the fork and the knife,

So when he lost his temper, the Owl lost his life,”

and a rousing little song it made.

The play was produced at the Prince of Wales’ Theater, during Christmas week of 1886, where it was a great success. Lewis Carroll himself specially praises the Wonderland act, notably the Mad Tea Party. The Hatter was finely done by Mr. Sidney Harcourt, the Dormouse by little Dorothy d’Alcourt, aged six-and-a-half, and Phœbe Carlo, he tells us, was a “splendid Alice.”

He went many times to see his “dream child” on the stage, and was always very kind to the little actresses, whose dainty work made his work such a success. Phœbe Carlo became a very privileged young person and enjoyed many treats of his giving, to say nothing of a personal gift of a copy of “Alice” from the delighted author.

After the London season, the play was taken through the English provinces and was much appreciated wherever it went. On one occasion a company gave a week’s performance at Brighton, and Lewis Carroll happening to be there one afternoon, came across three of the small actresses down on the beach and spent several hours with them. “Happy, healthy little girls” he called them, and no doubt that beautiful afternoon they had the time of their lives.

These children, he found—and he had made the subject quite a study—had been acting every day in the week, and twice on the day before he met them, and yet were energetic enough to get up each morning at seven for a sea bath, to run races on the pier, and to be quite ready for another performance that night.

On December 26, 1888, there was an elaborate revival of “Alice” at the Royal Globe Theater. In the London Times the next morning appeared this notice:

“‘Alice in Wonderland,’ having failed to exhaust its popularity at the Prince of Wales’ Theater, has been revived at the Globe for a series of matinées during the holiday season. Many members of the old cast remain in the bill, but a new ‘Alice’ is presented in Miss Isa Bowman, who is not only a wonderful actress for her years, but also a nimble dancer.

“In its new surroundings the fantastic scenes of the story—so cleverly transferred from the book to the stage by Mr. Savile Clarke—lose nothing of their original brightness and humor. ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass’ have the rare charm of freshness for children and for their elders, and the many strange personages concerned—the White Rabbit, the Caterpillar, the Cheshire Cat, the Hatter, the Dormouse, the Gryphon, the Mock Turtle, the Red and White Kings and Queens, the Walrus, Humpty-Dumpty, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and all the rest of them—being seen at home, so to speak, and not on parade as in an ordinary pantomime. Even the dreaded Jabberwock pays an unconventional visit to the company from the ‘flies,’ and his appearance will not be readily forgotten. As before, Mr. Walter Slaughter’s music is an agreeable element to the performance....”

The programme of this performance certainly spreads a feast before the children’s eyes. First of all, think of a forest in autumn! (They had to change the season a little to get the bright colours of red and yellow.) Here it is that Alice falls asleep and the Elves sing to her. Then there is the awakening in Wonderland—such a Wonderland as few children dreamed of. And then all our favorites appear and do just the things we always thought they would do if they had the chance. The Cheshire Cat grins and vanishes, and then the grin appears without the cat, and then the cat grows behind the grin, and everything is so impossible and wonderful that one shivers with delight. There is a good old fairy tale that every child knows; it is called “Oh! if I could but shiver!” and everyone who really enjoys a fairy tale understands the feeling—the delight of shivering—to see the Jabberwock pass before you in all his terrifying, delicious ugliness, flapping his huge wings, rolling his bulging eyes, and opening and shutting those dreadful jaws of his; and yet to know he isn’t “really, real” any more than Sir John Tenniel’s picture of him in the dear old “Alice” book at home, that you can actually go with Alice straight into Wonderland and back again, safe and sound, and really see what happened just as she did, and actually squeeze through into Looking-Glass Land, all made so delightfully possible by clever scenery and acting.

A more charming, dainty little “Alice” never danced herself into the heart of anyone as Isa Bowman did into the heart of Lewis Carroll. She came into his life when all of his best-beloved children had passed forever beyond the portals of childhood, never to return; loved more in these later days for the memory of what they had been. But here was a child who aroused all the associations of earlier years, who had made “Alice” real again, whose clever acting gave just that dreamlike, elfin touch which the real Alice of Long Ago had suggested; a sweet-natured, lovable, most attractive child, the child perhaps who won his deepest affections because she came to him when the others had vanished, and clung to him in the twilight.

There must have been several little Bowmans. We know of four little sisters—Isa, Emsie, Nellie, and Maggie, and Master Charles Bowman was the Cheshire Cat in the revival of “Alice in Wonderland,” and to all of these—we are considering the girls of course, the boy never counted—Lewis Carroll showed his sweetest, most lovable side. They called him “Uncle,” and a more devoted uncle they could not possibly have found. As for Isa herself, there was a special niche all her own; she was, as he often told her, “his little girl,” and in a loving memoir of him she has given to the world of children a beautiful picture of what he really was.

There was something in the grip of his firm white hands, in his glance so deeply sympathetic, so tender and kind, that always stirred the little girl just as her sharp eyes noted a certain peculiarity in his walk. His stammer also impressed her, for it generally came when he least expected it, and though he tried all his life to cure it, he never succeeded.

His shyness, too, was very noticeable, not so much with children, except just at first until he knew them well, but with grown people he was, as she put it, “almost old-maidishly prim in his manner.” This shyness was shown in many ways, particularly in a morbid horror of having his picture taken. As fond as he was of taking other people, he dreaded seeing his own photograph among strangers, and once when Isa herself made a caricature of him, he suddenly got up from his seat, took the drawing out of her hands, tore it in small pieces and threw it into the fire without a word; then he caught the frightened little girl in his strong arms and kissed her passionately, his face, at first so flushed and angry, softening with a tender light.

Many and many a happy time she spent with him at Oxford. He found rooms for her just outside the college gates, and a nice comfortable dame to take charge of her. The long happy days were spent in his rooms, and every night at nine she was taken over to the little house in St. Aldates (“St. Olds”) and put to bed by the landlady.

In the morning the deep notes of “Great Tom” woke her and then began another lovely day with her “Uncle.” She speaks of two tiny turret rooms, one on each side of his staircase in Christ Church. “He used to tell me,” she writes, “that when I grew up and became married, he would give me the two little rooms, so that if I ever disagreed with my husband, we could each of us retire to a turret until we had made up our quarrel.”

She, too, was fascinated by his collection of music-boxes, the finest, she thought, to be found anywhere in the world. “There were big black ebony boxes with glass tops, through which you could see all the works. There was a big box with a handle, which it was quite hard exercise for a little girl to turn, and there must have been twenty or thirty little ones which could only play one tune. Sometimes one of the musical boxes would not play properly and then I always got tremendously excited. Uncle used to go to a drawer in the table and produce a box of little screw-drivers and punches, and while I sat on his knee, he would unscrew the lid and take out the wheels to see what was the matter. He must have been a clever mechanist, for the result was always the same—after a longer or shorter period, the music began again. Sometimes, when the musical boxes had played all their tunes, he used to put them in the box backwards, and was as pleased as I was at the comic effect of the music ‘standing on its head,’ as he phrased it.

“There was another and very wonderful toy which he sometimes produced for me, and this was known as ‘The Bat.’ The ceilings of the rooms in which he lived were very high, indeed, and admirably suited for the purposes of ‘The Bat.’ It was an ingeniously constructed toy of gauze and wire, which actually flew about the room like a bat. It was worked by a piece of twisted elastic, and it could fly for about half a minute. I was always a little afraid of this toy because it was too lifelike, but there was a fearful joy in it. When the music boxes began to pall, he would get up from his chair and look at me with a knowing smile. I always knew what was coming, even before he began to speak, and I used to dance up and down in tremendous anticipation.

“‘Isa, my darling,’ he would say, ‘once upon a time there was someone called Bob, the Bat! and he lived in the top left-hand drawer of the writing table. What could he do when Uncle wound him up?’”

“And then I would squeak out breathlessly: ‘He could really fly!’”

And Bob the Bat had many wonderful adventures. She tells us how, on a hot summer morning when the window was wide open, Bob flew out into the garden and landed in a bowl of salad that one of the servants was carrying to someone’s room. The poor fellow was so frightened by this sudden apparition that he promptly dropped the bowl, breaking it into countless pieces.

Lewis Carroll never liked “his little girl” to exaggerate. “I remember,” she tells us, “how annoyed he once was when, after a morning’s sea bathing at Eastbourne, I exclaimed: ‘Oh, this salt water, it always makes my hair as stiff as a poker!’

“He impressed upon me quite irritably that no little girl’s hair could ever possibly get as stiff as a poker. ‘If you had said “as stiff as wires” it would have been more like it, but even that would have been an exaggeration.’ And then seeing I was a little frightened, he drew for me a picture of ‘The little girl called Isa, whose hair turned into pokers because she was always exaggerating things.’

“‘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,

img549.jpg

, 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.

“... One day while we sat under a great tree, and the hum of the myriad insect life rivaled the murmur of the far-away waves, he took a foxglove from the heap that lay in my lap, and told me the story of how it came by its name; how in the old days, when all over England there were great forests, like the forest of Arden that Shakespeare loved, the pixies, the ‘little folks,’ used to wander at night in the glades, like Titania and Oberon and Puck, and because they took great pride in their dainty hands they made themselves gloves out of the flowers. So the particular flower that the ‘little folks’ used came to be called ‘folks’ gloves.’ Then, because the country people were rough and clumsy in their talk, the name was shortened into ‘foxgloves,’ the name that everyone uses now.”

This special walk always ended in the coastguard’s house, where they partook of tea and rock cake, and here most of his prettiest stories were told. The most thrilling part occurred when “the children came to a deep dark wood,” always described with a solemn dropping of the voice; by that Isa knew that the exciting part was coming, then she crept nearer to him, and he held her close while he finished the tale. Isa, as was quite natural, was a most dramatic little person, so she always knew what emotions would suit the occasion, and used them like the clever little actress that she was.

We find something very beautiful in this intimacy between the grave scholar and the light-hearted, innocent little girl, who used to love to watch him in some of those deep silences which neither cared to break. This small maid understood his every mood. A beautiful sunset, she tells us, touched him deeply. He would take off his hat and let the wind toss his hair, and look seaward with a very grave face. Once she saw tears in his eyes, and he gripped her hand very hard as they turned away.

Perhaps, what caught her childish fancy more than anything else, was his observance of Sunday. He always took Isa twice to church, and she went because she wanted to go; he did not believe in forcing children in such matters, but he made a point of slipping some interesting little book in his pocket, so in case she got tired, or the sermon was beyond her, she would have something pleasant to do instead of staring idly about the church or falling asleep, which was just as bad. Another peculiarity, she tells us, was his habit of keeping seated at the entrance of the choir. He contended that the rising of the congregation made the choir-boys conceited.

One could go on telling anecdotes of Lewis Carroll and this well-beloved child, but of a truth his own letters will show far better than any description how he regarded this “star” child of his. So far as her acting went, he never spared either praise or criticism where he thought it just. Here is a letter criticising her acting as the little Duke of York:

“Ch. Ch. Oxford. Ap. 4, ’89.

“My Lord Duke:—The photographs your Grace did me the honor of sending arrived safely; and I can assure your Royal Highness that I am very glad to have them, and like them very much, particularly the large head of your late Royal Uncle’s little, little son. I do not wonder that your excellent Uncle Richard should say ‘off with his head’ as a hint to the photographer to print it off. Would your Highness like me to go on calling you the Duke of York, or shall I say ‘my own darling Isa’? Which do you like best?

“Now, I’m gong to find fault with my pet about her acting. What’s the good of an old Uncle like me except to find fault?”

Then follows some excellent criticism on the proper emphasis of words, explained so that the smallest child could understand; he also notes some mispronounced words, and then he adds:

“One thing more. (What an impertinent uncle! Always finding fault!) You’re not as natural when acting the Duke as you were when you acted Alice. You seemed to me not to forget yourself enough. It was not so much a real prince talking to his brother and uncle; it was Isa Bowman talking to people she didn’t care much about, for an audience to listen to. I don’t mean it was that all through, but sometimes you were artificial. Now, don’t be jealous of Miss Hatton when I say she was sweetly natural. She looked and spoke like a real Prince of Wales. And she didn’t seem to know there was any audience. If you ever get to be a good actress (as I hope you will) you must learn to forget ‘Isa’ altogether, and be the character you are playing. Try to think ‘This is really the Prince of Wales. I’m his little brother and I’m very glad to meet him, and I love him very much, and this is really my uncle; he is very kind and lets me say saucy things to him,’ and do forget that there’s anybody else listening!

“My sweet pet, I hope you won’t be offended with me for saying what I fancy might make your acting better.

“Your loving old Uncle,

“Charles.

“X for Nellie.

“X for Maggie. “X for Isa.”

“X for Emsie.

The crosses were unmistakably kisses. He was certainly a most affectionate “Uncle.” He rarely signed his name “Charles.” It was only on special occasions and to very “special” people.

Here is another letter written to Isa’s sister Nellie, thanking her for a “tidy” she made him. (He called it an Antimacassar.) “The only ordinary thing about it,” Isa tells us, “is the date.” The letter reads backward. One has to begin at the very bottom and read up, instead of reading from the top downward:

“Nov. 1, 1891.

“C.L.D., Uncle loving your! Instead grandson his to it give to had you that so, years 80 or 70 for it forgot you that was it pity a what and; him of fond so were you wonder don’t I and, gentleman old nice very a was he. For it made you that him been have must it see you so: Grandfather my was, then alive was that, ‘Dodgson Uncle’ only the, born was I before long was that see you then But. ‘Dodgson Uncle for pretty thing some make I’ll now,’ it began you when yourself to said you that, me telling her without, knew I course of and: ago years many great a it made had you said she. Me told Isa what from was it? For meant was it who out made I how know you do! Lasted has it well how and Grandfather my for made had you Antimacassar pretty that me give to you of nice so was it, Nellie dear my.”

He had often written a looking-glass letter which could only be read by holding it up to a mirror, but this sort of writing was a new departure.

In one of her letters Isa sent “sacks full of love and baskets full of kisses.”

“How badly you do spell your words!” he answered her. “I was so puzzled about the ‘sacks full of love and baskets full of kisses.’ But at last I made out that, of course, you meant a ‘sack full of gloves and a basket full of kittens.’” Then he composed a regular nonsense story on the subject. Isa and her sisters called it the “glove and kitten letter” and read it over and over with much delight, for it was full of quaint fancies, such as Lewis Carroll loved to shower upon the children.

When “Bootle’s Baby” was put upon the stage, Maggie Bowman, though but a tiny child, played the part of Mignon, the little lost girl, who walked into the hearts of the soldiers, and especially one young fellow, to whom she clung most of all. Lewis Carroll, besides taking a personal interest in Maggie herself, was charmed with the play, which appealed to him strongly, so when little Maggie came to Oxford with the company she was treated like a queen. She stayed four days, during which time her “Uncle” took her to see everything worth looking at, and made a rhyming diary for her which he called—

MAGGIE’S VISIT TO OXFORD.

 

When Maggie once to Oxford came

On tour as “Bootle’s Baby,”

She said: “I’ll see this place of fame,

However dull the day be!”

 

So with her friend she visited

The sights that it was rich in,

And first of all she poked her head

Inside the Christ Church Kitchen.

 

The cooks around that little child

Stood waiting in a ring;

And every time that Maggie smiled,

Those cooks began to sing—

Shouting the Battle-cry of Freedom!

 

“Roast, boil, and bake,

For Maggie’s sake!

Bring cutlets fine

For her to dine;

Meringues so sweet

For her to eat—

For Maggie may be

Bootle’s Baby.”

There are a great many verses describing her walks and what she saw, among other wonders “a lovely Pussy Cat.”

And everywhere that Maggie went

That Cat was sure to go—

Shouting the Battle-cry of Freedom!

 

“Miaow! Miaow!

Come make your bow!

Take off your hats,

Ye Pussy Cats!

And purr and purr

To welcome her

For Maggie may be

Bootle’s Baby!”

 

So back to Christ Church-not too late

For them to go and see

A Christ Church Undergraduate,

Who gave them cakes and tea.

······

In Magdalen Park the deer are wild

With joy that Maggie brings

Some bread, a friend had given the child,

To feed the pretty things.

 

They flock round Maggie without fear,

They breakfast and they lunch,

They dine, they sup, those happy deer—

Still as they munch and munch,

Shouting the Battle-cry of Freedom!

 

“Yes, deer are we,

And dear is she.

We love this child

So sweet and mild:

We all are fed

With Maggie’s bread—

For Maggie may be

Bootle’s Baby!”

······

They met a Bishop on their way—

A Bishop large as life—

With loving smile that seemed to say

“Will Maggie be my wife?”

 

Maggie thought not, because you see

She was so very young,

And he was old as old could be—

So Maggie held her tongue.

 

“My Lord, she’s Bootle’s Baby; we

Are going up and down,”

Her friend explained, “that she may see

The sights of Oxford-town.”

 

“Now, say what kind of place it is!”

The Bishop gayly cried,

“The best place in the Provinces!”

The little maid replied.

······

Away next morning Maggie went

From Oxford-town; but yet

The happy hours she there had spent

She could not soon forget.

······

“Oxford, good-bye!

She seemed to sigh,

You dear old City

With gardens pretty,

And lawns and flowers

And College towers,

And Tom’s great Bell,

Farewell! farewell!

For Maggie may be

Bootle’s Baby!”

Here is just a piece of a letter which shows that Lewis Carroll could tease when he liked. It is evident that Isa washed to buy the “Alice” book in French, to give to a friend, so she naïvely wrote to headquarters to ask the price. This is the reply:

“Eastbourne.

“My own darling Isa,—The value of a copy of the French ‘Alice’ is £45: but, as you want the ‘cheapest’ kind, and as you are a great friend of mine, and as I am of a very noble, generous disposition, I have made up my mind to a great sacrifice, and have taken £3, 10s, 0d, off the price, so that you do not owe me more than £41, 10s, 0d, and this you can pay me, in gold or bank notes, as soon as you ever like. Oh, dear! I wonder why I write such nonsense! Can you explain to me, my pet, how it happens that when I take up my pen to write a letter to you, it won’t write sense. Do you think the rule is that when the pen finds it has to write to a nonsensical, good-for-nothing child it sets to work to write a nonsensical, good-for-nothing letter? Well, now I’ll tell you the real truth. As Miss Kitty Wilson is a dear friend of yours, of course she’s a sort of a friend of mine. So I thought (in my vanity) ‘perhaps she would like to have a copy “from the author” with her name written in it.’ So I sent her one—but I hope she’ll understand that I do it because she’s your friend, for you see I had never heard of her before; so I wouldn’t have any other reason.”

When he published his last long story, “Sylvie and Bruno,” the dedication was to her, an acrostic on her name; but as “Sylvie and Bruno” will be spoken of later on, perhaps it will be more interesting to give the dainty little verses where they belong. He sent his pet a specially bound copy of the new book, with the following letter:

“Christ Church, May 16, ’90.

“Dearest Isa:—I had this bound for you when the book first came out, and it’s been waiting here ever since Dec. 17, for I really didn’t dare to send it across the Atlantic—the whales are so inconsiderate. They’d have been sure to want to borrow it to show to the little whales, quite forgetting that the salt water would be sure to spoil it.

“Also I’ve been waiting for you to get back to send Emsie the ‘Nursery Alice.’ I give it to the youngest in a family generally, but I’ve given one to Maggie as well, because she travels about so much, and I thought she would like to have one to take with her. I hope Nellie’s eyes won’t get quite green with jealousy at two (indeed three) of her sisters getting presents, and nothing for her! I’ve nothing but my love to send her to-day, but she shall have something some day.—Ever your loving

“Uncle Charles.”

The “Nursery Alice” he refers to was arranged by himself for children “from naught to five” as he quaintly puts it. It contained twenty beautiful coloured drawings from the Tenniel illustrations, with a cover designed by E. Gertrude Thomson, of whose work he was very fond. The words were simplified for nursery readers.

In another letter to Isa he talks very seriously about “social position.”

“Ladies,” he writes, “have to be much more particular in observing the distinctions of what is called ‘social position,’ and the lower their own position is (in the scale of ‘lady’ ship) the more jealous they seem to be in guarding it.... Not long ago I was staying in a house with a young lady (about twenty years old I should think) with a title of her own, as she was an earl’s daughter. I happened to sit next to her at dinner, and every time I spoke to her she looked at me more as if she was looking down on me from about a mile up in the air, and as if she was saying to herself, ‘How dare you speak to me! Why you’re not good enough to black my shoes!’ It was so unpleasant that next day at luncheon I got as far from her as I could.

“Of course we are all quite equal in God’s sight, but we do make a lot of distinctions (some of them quite unmeaning) among ourselves!”

However, he was not always so unfortunate among great people, the “truly great” that is. In Lord Salisbury’s house he was always a welcome and honored guest, for in a letter to “his little girl” from Hatfield House he tells her of the Duchess of Albany and her two children.

“She is the widow of Prince Leopold (the Queen’s youngest son), so her children are a Prince and a Princess; the girl is Alice, but I don’t know the boy’s Christian name; they call him ‘Albany’ because he is the Duke of Albany.

“Now that I have made friends with a real live little Princess, I don’t intend ever to speak to children who haven’t any titles. In fact, I’m so proud, and I hold my chin so high, that I shouldn’t even see you if we met! No, darlings, you mustn’t believe that. If I made friends with a dozen Princesses, I would love you better than all of them together, even if I had them all rolled up into a sort of child-roly-poly.

“Love to Nellie and Emsie.—Your loving Uncle,

“C.L.D.

“XXXXXXX

“[kisses].”

Nothing could give us a better glimpse of the wholesome nature of this quiet “don” of ours than these letters to a little child; a wholesome child like himself, whose every emotion was to him like the page of some fairy book, to be read and read again. Isa Bowman could not know, child as she was, what she was to this man, who with all his busy life, and all his gifts and talents, and all his many friendships, was so curiously lonely. But later, when she was grown, and wrote the little book of memories from which we have drawn so many sweet lessons, she doubtless realized, as she rolled back the years, what they had been to her—and what to Lewis Carroll.