Isa Bowman

“ My darling Isa,—I hope this will find you, but I haven’t yet had any letter from Fulham, so I can’t be sure if you have yet got into your new house.
“This is Lord Salisbury’s house (he is the father, you know, of that Lady Maud Wolmer that we had luncheon with) : I came yesterday, and I’m going to stay until Monday. It is such a nice house to stay in! They let one do just as one likes—it isn’t ‘Now you must do some geography! now it’s time for your sums!’ the sort of life some little girls have to lead when they are so foolish as to visit friends—but one can just please one’s own dear self. ”

“ At Eastbourne I was happier even with Lewis Carroll than I was at Oxford. We seemed more free, and there was the air of holiday over it all. Every day of my stay at the house in Lushington Road was a perfect dream of delight.
There was one regular and fixed routine which hardly ever varied, and which I came to know by heart; and I will write an [Pg 64] account of it here, and ask any little girl who reads it, if she ever had such a splendid time in her life.
To begin with, we used to get up very early indeed. Our bedroom doors faced each other at the top of the staircase. ”

“ This diary, and what I have written before, show how I, as a little girl, knew Lewis Carroll at Oxford.
For his little girl friends, of course, he reserved the most intimate side of his nature, but on occasion he would throw off his reserve and talk earnestly and well to some young man in whose life he took an interest. ”

“ I remember how annoyed he was once 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 it on 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 [Pg 24] even that would have been an exaggeration.” And then, seeing that 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.” ”

“ He did not always tell me fairy tales, though I think I liked the fairy tale much the best. Sometimes he gave me accounts of adventures which had happened to him. There was one particularly thrilling story of how he was lost on Beachy Head in a sea fog, and had to find his way home by means of boulders. This was the more interesting because we were on the actual scene of the disaster, and to be there stimulated the imagination.
The summer afternoons on the great headland were very sweet and peaceful. I have never met a man so sensible to the influences of Nature as Lewis Carroll. ”

“ I believe I owe this entirely to those daily visits to the Eastbourne dentist.
Soon after this it was time for lunch, and we both went back hand-in-hand to the rooms in Lushington Road. Lewis Carroll never had a proper lunch, a fact which always used to puzzle me tremendously.
I could not understand how a big grown-up man could live on a glass of sherry and a biscuit at dinner time. It seemed such a pity when there was lots of mutton and rice-pudding that he should not have any. I always used to ask him, “Aren’t you hungry, uncle, even to-day?” ”

“ When Alice (how the little Alice Liddell who was listening must have loved the tale!) rubbed the mushroom and became so big that she quite filled the little fairy house, one can almost hear the rapturous exclamations of the little ones as they heard of it.
The story, often continued on many summer afternoons, sometimes in the cool Christ Church rooms, sometimes in a slow gliding boat in a still river between banks of rushes and strange bronze and yellow waterflowers, or sometimes in a great hay-field, with the [Pg 106] insects whispering in the grass all round, grew in its conception and idea. ”

“ So that I should remember it, I always had to tell it to him afterwards as a story of my own.
[Pg 65]
“LEWIS CARROLL’S” HOUSE AT EASTBOURNE
[Pg 66] “Now then, Isa dearest,” he would say, “tell me a story, and mind you begin with ‘once upon a time.’ A story which does not begin with ‘once upon a time’ can’t possibly be a good story. It’s most important.” ”

“ Lewis Carroll at the time of which I am speaking had two tiny turret rooms, one on each side of his staircase in Christ Church. He always used to tell me 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 till we had made up our quarrel!
And those rooms of his! I do not think there was ever such a fairy-land for children. I am sure they must have contained one of the finest collections of musical-boxes to be found anywhere in the world. ”

“ One reads a great deal about the lines that a man’s life paints in his face, and there are many people who believe that character is indicated by the curves of flesh and bone. I do not, and never shall, believe it is true, and Lewis Carroll is only one of many instances to support my theory. ”

“ Every one when a child has, I suppose, seen the trick in which a handkerchief is rolled up to look like a mouse, and then made to jump about by a movement of the hand. He did this better than any one I ever saw, and the trick was a never-failing joy. By a sort of consent [Pg 71] between us the handkerchief trick was kept especially for the walk to Beachy Head, when, about half-way, I was a little tired and wanted to rest. When we actually got to the Head there was tea waiting in the coastguard’s cottage. ”

“ He began to talk to me of ordinary subjects, of the things a man might do at Oxford, of the place itself, and the affection in which he held it. He talked quietly, and in a rather tired voice. During our [Pg 56] conversation my eye fell upon a photograph of a little girl—evidently from the freshness of its appearance but newly taken—which was resting upon the ledge of a reading-stand at my elbow. It was the picture of a tiny child, very pretty, and I picked it up to look at it. ”

“ Once I remember we made an expedition from Eastbourne to Margate to visit Miss Sarah Thorne’s theatre, and especially for the purpose of seeing Miss Violet Vanbrugh’s Ophelia. He was a great admirer of both Miss Violet and Miss Irene Vanbrugh as actresses. Of Miss Thorne’s school of acting, too, he had the highest opinion, and it was his often expressed wish that all intending players could have so excellent a course of tuition. Among the male members of the theatrical profession he had no especial favourites, excepting Mr. Toole and Mr. Richard Mansfield. ”

“ He would, when engaged in an animated conversation with a friend, talk quickly and well for a few minutes, and then suddenly and [Pg 11] without any very apparent cause would begin to stutter so much, that it was often difficult to understand him. ”

“ In 1872 “Alice Through the Looking-Glass,” appeared, and was received as warmly as its predecessor. That fact, I think, proves most conclusively that Lewis Carroll’s success was a success of absolute merit, and due to no mere mood or fashion of the public taste. I can conceive nothing more difficult for a man who has had a great success with one book than to write a sequel which should worthily succeed it. In the present case that is exactly what Lewis Carroll did. “Through the Looking-Glass” is every whit as popular and charming as [Pg 107] the older book. ”

“ And then to Magdalen College. At the top of the wall, in one corner, they saw a very large jolly face, carved in stone, with a broad grin, and a little man at the side, helping him to laugh by pulling up the corner of his mouth for him. Isa thought that, the next time she wants to laugh, she will get Nellie and Maggie to help her. With two people to pull up the corners of your mouth for you, it is as easy to laugh as can be! ”

“ One would have hardly expected that a man of so reserved a nature as Lewis Carroll would have taken much interest in the stage. Yet he was devoted to the theatre, and one of the commonest of the treats that he gave his little girl friends was to organise a party for the play. ”

“ The next morning Isa set off, almost before she was awake, with the A.A.M., to pay a visit to a little College, called “Christ Church”. You go in under a magnificent tower, called “Tom Tower”, nearly four feet high (so that Isa had hardly to stoop at all, to go under it) into the Great Quadrangle (which very vulgar people call “Tom Quad”.) You should always be polite, even when speaking to a Quadrangle: it might seem not to take any notice, but it doesn’t like being called names. ”

“ On Saturday Isa had a Music Lesson, and learned to play on an American Orguinette. It is not a very difficult instrument to play, as you only have to turn a handle round and round: so she did it nicely. You put a long piece of paper in, and it goes through the machine, and the holes in the paper make different notes play. They put one in wrong end first, and had a tune backwards, and soon found themselves in the day before yesterday: so they dared not go on, for fear of making Isa so young she would not be able to talk. ”

“ I am afraid I was a very lazy little girl in those days, and I know I hated walking far. The trial was, [Pg 68] that we should walk to the top of Beachy Head every afternoon. I used to like it very much when I got there, but the walk was irksome. 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. ”

“ The scratches were all healed, and they told me ‘The kittens have been good!’ And, when any kitten wants to catch a mouse, it just takes off one of its gloves; and if it wants to catch two mice, it takes off two gloves; and if it wants to catch three mice, it takes off three gloves; and if it wants to catch four mice, it takes off all its gloves. But the moment they’ve caught the mice, they pop their gloves on again, because they know we can’t love them without their gloves. For, you see ‘gloves’ have got ‘love’ inside them—there’s none outside! ”

“ The picture that this letter gives of the famous writer and learned mathematician obviously rather in terror of some pert young lady fresh from the schoolroom is not without its comic side. One cannot help imagining that the girl must have been very young indeed, for if he were alive to-day there are few ladies of any state who would not feel honoured by the presence of Charles Dodgson. ”

“ This letter takes up eight pages of close writing, and I should very much doubt if any child ever had a more charming one from anybody. The whimsical fancy in it, [Pg 63] the absolute comprehension of a child’s intellect, the quickness with which the writer employs the slightest incident or thing that would be likely to please a little girl, is simply wonderful. I shall never forget how the letter charmed and delighted my sister Maggie and myself. ”