Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

“ We may differ, according to our difference of taste or temperament, in appraising Charles Dodgson's genius; but that that great gift was his, that his best work ranks with the very best of its kind, this has been owned with a recognition too wide and spontaneous to leave room for doubt. The brilliant, venturesome imagination, defying forecast with ever-fresh surprise; the sense of humour in its finest and most naive form; the power to touch with lightest hand the undercurrent of pathos in the midst of fun; the audacity of creative fancy, and the delicacy of insight—these are rare gifts ”

“ I find that as life slips away (I am over fifty now) , and the life on the other side of the great river becomes more and more the reality, of which this is only a shadow, that the petty distinctions of the many creeds of Christendom tend to slip away as well—leaving only the great truths which all Christians believe alike. More and more, as I read of the Christian religion, as Christ preached it, I stand amazed at the forms men have given to it, and the fictitious barriers they have built up between themselves and their brethren. ”

“ Even the hand of death itself only made his face look more boyish—the word is not too strong. "How wonderfully young your brother looks!" were the first words the doctor said, as he returned from the room where Lewis Carroll's body lay, to speak to the mourners below. And so he loved children because their friendship was the true source of his perennial youth and unflagging vigour. ”

“ Would it be so very irreverent to let your child have a story-book to read during the sermon, to while away that tedious half-hour, and to make church-going a bright and happy memory, instead of rousing the thought, "I'll never go to church no more"? I think not. For my part, I should love to see the experiment tried. I am quite sure it would be a success. My advice would be to keep some books for that special purpose. I would call such books "Sunday-treats"—and your little boy or girl would soon learn to look forward with eager hope to that half-hour, once so tedious. ”

“ A few days before his death he asked one of his sisters to read him that well-known hymn, every verse of which ends with "Thy Will be done." To another he said that his illness was a great trial of his patience. How great a trial it must have been it is hard for us to understand. With the work he had set himself still uncompleted, with a sense of youth and joyousness, which sixty years of the battle of life had in no way dulled, Lewis Carroll had to face death. ”

“ The love of excellence is far beyond the love of excelling; and if he should once be bewitched into a mere ambition to surpass others I need not urge that the very quality of his knowledge would be materially injured, and that his character would receive a stain of a more serious description still. . . .
And again, when Charles was leaving Richmond, he wrote: "Be assured that I shall always feel a peculiar interest in the gentle, intelligent, and well-conducted boy who is now leaving us." ”

“ To write the life of Lewis Carroll as it should be written would tax the powers of a man of far greater experience and insight than I have any pretension to possess, and even he would probably fail to represent adequately such a complex personality. ”

“ I believe that when you and I come to lie down for the last time, if only we can keep firm hold of the great truths Christ taught us—our own utter worthlessness and His infinite worth; and that He has brought us back to our one Father, and made us His brethren, and so brethren to one another—we shall have all we need to guide us through the shadows. ”

“ I believe that he understood children even better than he understood men and women; civilisation has made adult humanity very incomprehensible, for convention is as a veil which hides the divine spark that is in each of us, and so this strange thing has come to be, that the imperfect mirrors perfection more completely than the perfected, that we see more of God in the child than in the man. ”

“ I pity that unfortunate clergyman if ever he is bold enough to enter any Young Men's Debating Club where there is some clear-headed sceptic who has heard, or heard of, that sermon. I can fancy how the young man would rub his hands, in delight, and would say to himself, "Just see me get him into a corner, and convict him of arguing in a circle!" ”

“ That children love the book is a very precious thought to me, and, next to their love, I value the sympathy of those who come with a child's heart to what I have tried to write about a child's thoughts. ”

“ Public school life then was not what it is now; the atrocious system then in vogue of setting hundreds of lines for the most trifling offences made every day a weariness and a hopeless waste of time, while the bad discipline which was maintained in the dormitories made even the nights intolerable—especially for the small boys, whose beds in winter were denuded of blankets that the bigger ones might not feel cold. Charles kept no diary during his time at Rugby ”

“ Gentle and cheerful in his intercourse with others, playful and ready in conversation, he is capable of acquirements and knowledge far beyond his years, while his reason is so clear and so jealous of error, that he will not rest satisfied without a most exact solution of whatever appears to him obscure. He has passed an excellent examination just now in mathematics, exhibiting at times an illustration of that love of precise argument, which seems to him natural. ”

“ I have never seen architecture that seemed so entirely in harmony with the spirit of the place. By some subtle instinct the old architects seem to have chosen both form and colour, the grouping of the towers with their pointed spires, and the two neutral tints, light grey and brown, on the walls and roof, so as to produce buildings which look as naturally fitted to the spot as the heath or the harebells. ”

“ And in those moments of depression of which he had his full share, when old age seemed to mock him with all its futility and feebleness, it was the thought that the children still loved him which nerved him again to continue his life-work, which renewed his youth, so that to his friends he never seemed an old man. ”

“ We are sufficiently old friends, I feel sure, for me to have no fear that I shall seem intrusive in writing about your great sorrow. The greatest blow that has ever fallen on my life was the death, nearly thirty years ago, of my own dear father ”

“ Well, to return to my subject—children in church. The lessons, and the prayers, are not wholly beyond them; often they can catch little bits that come within the range of their small minds. But the sermons! It goes to one's heart to see, as I so often do, little darlings of five or six years old, forced to sit still through a weary half-hour, with nothing to do, and not one word of the sermon that they can understand. Most heartily can I sympathise with the little charity-girl who is said to have written to some friend, "I think, when I grows up, I'll never go to church no more. ”

“ But the beauties of Peterhof were quite eclipsed by the Oriental splendours of Moscow, which naturally made a great impression upon a mind accustomed to the cold sublimity of Gothic architecture at Oxford. ”

“ To those accustomed to regard mathematics as the driest of dry subjects, and mathematicians as necessarily devoid of humour, it seems scarcely credible that "An Elementary Treatise on Determinants," and "Alice in Wonderland" were written by the same author, and it came quite as a revelation to the undergraduate who heard for the first time that Mr. Dodgson of Christ Church and Lewis Carroll were identical. ”

“ These friendships usually began all very much in the same way. A chance meeting on the sea-shore, in the street, at some friend's house, led to conversation; then followed a call on the parents, and after that all sorts of kindnesses on Lewis Carroll's part, presents of books, invitations to stay with him at Oxford, or at Eastbourne, visits with him to the theatre. ”

“ In spite of all the wealth of words that has been expended upon German art, he found something new to say on this most fertile subject:—
The amount of art lavished on the whole region of Potsdam is marvellous; some of the tops of the palaces were like forests of statues, and they were all over the gardens, set on pedestals In fact, the two principles of Berlin architecture appear to me to be these. On the house-tops, wherever there is a convenient place, put up the figure of a man; he is best placed standing on one leg. ”

“ He was lucky enough during the course of the year to see a ceremony which is denied to most Oxford men. When degrees are given, any tradesman who has been unable to get his due from an undergraduate about to be made a Bachelor of Arts is allowed, by custom, to pluck the Proctor's gown as he passes, and then to make his complaint. This law is more honoured in the breach than in the observance; but, on the occasion of this visit of Mr. Dodgson's to Convocation, the Proctor's gown was actually plucked—on account of an unfortunate man who had gone through the Bankruptcy Court. ”

“ He was Headmaster during the whole of the time Charles was at Rugby, except the last year, during which Dr. Goulburn held that office. Charles went up in February, 1846, and he must have found his new life a great change from his quiet experiences at Richmond. Football was in full swing, and one can imagine that to a new boy "Big-side" was not an unalloyed delight. Whether he distinguished himself as a "dropper,' or ever beat the record time In the "Crick" run, I do not know. Probably not; his abilities did not lie much in the field of athletics. ”

“ If I was not assured by the best authority on earth that the world is to be destroyed by fire, I should conclude that the day of destruction is at hand, but brought on by means of an agent very opposite to that of heat. ”

“ If a man could travel round the world so fast that the sun would be always directly above his head, and if he were to start travelling at midday on Tuesday, then in twenty-four hours he would return to his original point of departure, and would find that the day was now called Wednesday — at what point of his journey would the day change its name ? ”