The Three Cats 66 a high bookcase where it has been for months and months and has got all covered with dust. So one has to get a duster first of all, and nearly choke oneself in dusting it and when one has made out at last which is dictionary and which is dust, even then there is the job of remembering which end of the alphabet "A" comes — for one feels pretty certain it isn't in the middle — then one has to go and wash one's hands before turning over the leaves for they've got so thick with dust, one hardly knows them by sight-and, as likely as not, the soap is lost, and the jug is empty, and there's no towel, and one has to spend hours and hours in finding things-and perhaps after all, one has to go off to the shop to buy a new cake of soap. So, with all this bother, I hope you won't mind my writing it short and saying, "My dear Ada"), You said in your letter you would like a likeness of me so here it is, and I hope you will like it. I won't forget to call the next time but one I'm in Wallington. LEWIS CARROLL - Your very affectionate friend, II [No date] You lazy thing! Y DEAR AGNES, MY Drinking Health thing I could lay my hand on (which happened to be the rolling-pin) and knocked them all down as flat as pancakes! "If you come knocking at my door," I said, "I shall come knocking at your heads." That was fair, wasn't it?—Yours affectionately, LEWIS CARROLL III MY CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD, October 13, 1875 DEAR GERTRUDE, -I never give birthday presents, but you see I do sometimes write a birthday letter: so, as I've just arrived here, I am writing this to wish you many and many a happy return of your birthday to-morrow. I will drink your health if only I can remember, and if you don't mind but perhaps you object? You see, if I were to sit by you at breakfast, and to drink your tea, you wouldn't like that, would you? You would say, "Boo! hoo! Here's Mr. Dodgson drunk all my tea, and I haven't got any left!" So I am very much afraid, next time Sybil looks for you, she'll find you sitting by the sad sea-waves and crying "Boo! hoo! Here's Mr. Dodgson has drunk my health, and I haven't got any left!" And how it will puzzle Mr. Maund, when he is sent for to see you! "My dear madam, I'm sorry to say your little girl has got no health at all! I never saw such a thing in my life!" "You see she would go and make friends with a strange gentleman, and yesterday he drank her health!" "Well, Mrs. Chataway," he will say, "the only way to cure her is to wait till his next birthday, and then for her to drink his health." And then we shall have changed healths. I wonder how you'll like mine! Oh, Gertrude, I wish you would not talk such nonsense! . . . Your loving friend, LEWIS CARROLL "That she-Aristotle Mary" Charles Lamb entertains a poet's son DEAR P.M. November 25, 1819 EAR MISS WORDSWORTH, You will think me negligent, but I wanted to see more of Willy, before I ventured to express a prediction. Till yesterday I had barely seen him— Virgilium Tantum Vidi but yesterday he gave us his small company to a bullock's heart- and I can pronounce him a lad of promise. He is no pedant nor bookworm, so far I can answer. Perhaps he has hitherto paid too little attention to other men's inventions, preferring, like Lord Foppington, the "natural sprouts of his own." But he has observation, and seems thoroughly awake. I am ill at remembering other people's bon mots, but the following are a few. Being taken over Waterloo Bridge, he remarked that if we had no mountains, we had a fine river at least, which was a Touch of the Comparative, but then he added, in a strain which augured less for his future abilities as a Political Economist, that he supposed they must take at least a pound a week Toll. Like a curious naturalist he inquired if the tide did not come up a little salty. This being satisfactorily answered, he put another question as to the flux and reflux, which being rather cunningly evaded than artfully solved by that she-Aristotle Mary, who muttered something about its getting up an hour sooner and sooner every day, he sagely replied, “Then it must come to the same thing at last," which was a speech worthy of an infant Halley! The Lion in the 'Change by no means came up to his ideal standard. So impossible it is for Nature in any of her works to come up to the standard. of a child's imagination. The whelps (Lionets) he was sorry to find were dead, and on particular inquiry his old friend the Ouran Outang had gone the way of all "I cannot hit that beast" flesh also. The grand Tiger was also sick, and expected in no short time to exchange this transitory world for But again, there was a Golden Eagle another or none. (I do not mean that of Charing) which did much arride and console him. William's genius, I take it, leans a little to the figurative, for being at play at Tricktrack (a kind of minor Billiard-table which we keep for smaller wights, and sometimes refresh our own mature fatigues with taking a hand at) not being able to hit a ball he had iterate aimed at, he cried out, "I cannot hit that beast." Now the balls are usually called men, but he felicitously hit upon a middle term, a term of approximation and imaginative reconciliation, a something where the two ends, of the brute matter (ivory) and their human and rather violent personification into men, might meet, as I take it, illustrative of that Excellent remark in a certain Preface about Imagination, explaining "like a sea-beast that had crawled forth to sun himself." Not that I accuse William Minor of hereditary plagiary, or conceive the image to have come ex traduce. Rather he seemeth to keep aloof from any source of imitation, and purposely to remain ignorant of what mighty poets have done in this kind before him. For, being asked if his father had ever been on Westminster Bridge, he answer'd that he did not know. It is hard to discern the Oak in the Acorn, or a Temple like St. Paul's in the first stone which is laid, nor can I quite prefigure what destination the genius of William Minor hath to take. Some few hints I have set down, to guide my future observations. He hath the power of calculation in no ordinary degree for a chit. He combineth figures, after the first boggle, rapidly. As in the Tricktrack board, where the hits are figured, at first he did not perceive that 15 and 7 made 22, but by a little A Lake Poet's Son use he could combine 8 with 25 — and 33 again with 16, which approacheth something in kind (far let me be from flattering him by saying in degree) to that of the famous American boy. I am sometimes inclined to think I perceive the future satirist in him, for he hath a subsardonic smile which bursteth out upon occasion, as when he was asked if London were as big as Ambleside, and indeed no other answer was given, or proper to be given, to so ensnaring and provoking a question. In the contour of scull certainly I discern something paternal. But whether in all respects the future man shall transcend his father's fame, Time, the trier of geniuses, must decide. Be it pronounced peremptorily at present, that Willy is a well-manner'd child, and though no great student, hath yet a lively eye for things that lie before him. Given in haste from my desk at Leadenhall. Your's and yours' most sincerely, C. LAMB Shelley visits Allegra in the convent I (To Mrs. Shelley) RAVENNA, August 15, 1821 WENT the other day to see Allegra at her convent, and stayed with her about three hours. She is grown tall and slight for her age, and her face is somewhat altered. The traits have become more delicate, and she is much paler, probably from the effect of improper food. She yet retains the beauty of her deep blue eyes and of her mouth, but she has a contemplative seriousness which, mixed with her excessive vivacity, which has not yet deserted her, has a very peculiar effect in a child. She is under very strict discipline, as may be observed |