MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
FRIEND of mine has passed on to me a strange little object presented to her, a year before his death, by the well-known mathematician and writer Mr. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, known to fame as " Lewis Carroll." The object is entitled " The Wonderland Postage-Stamp Case," was designed by Mr. Dodgson himself, and was printed and stuck together by Messrs. Emberlin and Son of 4, Magdalen Street, Oxford. It consists in the first place of a rack or folder, containing twelve neat pockets for postage stamps of varying. denominations, from id. to ls. In the second place there is attached to it an essay by Mr. Dodgson upon the sub- ject of writing letters, which he has called, with characteristic modesty, "Eight or Nine Wise Words about Letter-Writing." The outside is enlivened by a reproduction of 'a Tenniel draw- ing of a small girl carrying a pig; on the back there is another reproduction of a large cat sitting smiling in the branch of a tree. The whole winsome little business measures some four inches by three. I am interested in the author of " Syllabus of Plane Algebraical Geometry " and " Formulae of Plane Trigonometry," not because I possess even the slightest gift for mathematics, but because I am fascinated by the strange shapes assumed by human sensibility. Why is it that people whose gift for nonsense amounts to genius should so fre- quently be people who are normally concerned with the more precise methods of expression ? EdWard Lear began his artistic career as an illustrator of ornithological works, and his " Family of the Psittacidae " and his illustrations to Gray's " Tortoises, Terrapins and Turtles " are, I am assured, models of accurate presentation. His travel sketches, and notably his lovely drawings of Corfu and the Ionian Islands, are master- eces of precision, in which not one olive is scantily drawn. Lewis Carroll," similarly, was deeply concerned with formal logic. Yet both Lear and Dodgson escaped from these muscle- bound habits into the most gifted denials of reality and logic that our literature has ever witnessed.
There is another thing that has always struck me as strange about Mr. Dodgson. Although he was a timid stuttering don, who was never able, except by correspondence, to establish contact with his contemporaries, he contrived to live on terms of sympathy and even amity with little girls, between the ages of seven and seventeen. As a child, so we are informed by • his biographer Mr. Collingwood, he had a passion for snails and toads; on reaching adult age he transferred this passion to the small daughters of his fellow dons. It was to Miss Alice Liddell that, on a prolonged boating excursion, he first narrated the story of " Alice's Adventures Underground "; thereafter he would spend such time as he could spare from Euclid to photographing these small monsters and writing stories for them which eventually brought him a large fortune. Surely it is very odd for any man of sensibility to care for female children once they have entered the ghastly zone of self- consciousness that extends from about seven to about seven- teen ? Little girls below the age of seven seem to me to combine all the beauty and charm of an April world; after the age of seventeen they become the destiny of man, making the very constellations wheel in ecstasy by the loveliness of their form and the splendour of their virtue, their gentleness, and their minds. But during the miserable decade between seven and seventeen they are abominable persons, who ought to be segregated from,human contact, and arrayed in uniform white gowns, provided with slits only for the yes, and as such be as easily recognisable and avoidable as the Misericordia or the Ku-Klux-Klan.
* * * * Mr. Dodgson really loved these. toads. He found their simpering little ways enchanting, nor did he mind the fact that always they were concerned with the effect they were pro, .luring on other people, that invariably they were striving to Pi show off. I readily admit that little boys, during the same horrible decade, are frequently unattractive; they are beastly to each other, they are often noisy dnd unclean, and they some- times ape the words and gestures of the adult male. But there are moments at least 'when they can behave as natural animals; when they are content to be unaffected little toads and do not struggle always to appear as humming birds. I wonder what Lewis Carroll would have felt had he survived into the twentieth century and seen his Alices on a summer afternoon arrayed in shorts. The members of the mixed bicycling clubs who from time to time will invade my garden present a sight such as would render sore the strongest eyes. The lads, heaven knows, are ugly enough; but the lasses with their scarlet thighs lead one to doubt whether the human form was ever really intended to be divine. Mr. Dodgson, had he witnessed these noisy lumps of flesh, might have suffered yet another of his many disillusions. Alice would not have been permitted to gaze into any looking-glass, and would once and for all have been banished from wonderland. Back he would have rushed to Christ Church and have devoted the remainder of his life to ",Curiosa Mathematica." But it remains a prob- lem why, even in 1865, he should have been so inspired by the awkward age of little girls. I find such problems interesting.
His advice on letter-writing, which forms the enclosure to The Wonderland Postage-Stamp Case," is perfectly sound. He insists that it is important to date your letters fully, giving the day of the month and the year, instead of just scribbling " Dover, Wednesday " at the top. He suggests that it is a good rule to begin your letter by first answering your correspondent's questions and to reserve your own news and comments for the second page. When conducting a controversial corres- pondence it is better, Mr. Dodgson assures us, not to misquote your correspondent's words, not to repeat yourself, and, if your letter be really rude, not to post it until you have re-read your remarks in the cool of the next morning. Never, he insists, should one seek to " have the last w"; such words are apt to become so lapidary that they crush friendships, and friendships are too precious to be crushed. Always, he says, when sending an enclosure to a letter, make certain that you put the enclosure into the envelope before you write your letter; otherwise it may be left out. 'When deciding whether to end your letter " yours truly " or " yours most truly," it is best to consult the last letter from your correspondent and make your own termination a little more friendly than was his. Do not, he tells us, close the envelope until the moment before the post goes; do not put letters in your pocket but carry them in your hand; if there are enclosures, be very careful that they are tucked inside the letter itself and not just pushed beside it into the envelope. Above all, says Mr. Dodgson, keep a careful register of letters sent and received, with a summary of their contents. Here comes into the foreground the fussy, donnish, side of him, which clouded his whole grey life. * * * * I confess that I do not see that it needed a double first and real literary genius to produce such trite precepts. Lewis Carroll lived and fussed before the pleasant days of type- writers; carbon paper and steel files, even as he lived before --the dreadful days when Alice, out bicycling, wore 'shorts. To me, who only write letters of condolence and type 'or dictate the rest, his " Eight or Nine Wise Words about Letter-Writing " seems as meaningless as advice on how to play Faro. Who bothers today how to end their letters, since vi scribble can be interpreted as " sincerely " or " ever " according to taste ? Who bothers today to tell other people news or views about their own lives ? Even if one stammered as badly as Mr. Dodgson stammered, I doubt whether today one would resort to letters as a means of self-expression. One would, as every- body, else, write one's Autobiography.
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