When I received this letter at Arundel my second boy was sitting in his bathing costume on a garden-roller on the lawn for a picture of Bruno sitting on a dead mouse. I was chaffing my model about flirting with a young lady he met at a children's garden party, and threatened to inform his sweetheart in London, when he assured me with knowingness, "Fact is, papa, the young lady here is all right for the country, you know--but she would _never_ do in town!" [Illustration: SYLVIE AND BRUNO. MY ORIGINAL DRAWING FOR LEWIS CARROLL. (_Never published._)] It was the same idea as Lewis Carroll's about models. As I have brought my family into this, I may mention that there is one picture in "Sylvie and Bruno" (vol. i., p. 134) which brings back to me the only sorrowful hour I had in connection with the otherwise enjoyable work. My wife was very ill--so ill it was a question of life and death. Expert opinion was called in, and the afternoon I had to make that drawing--with my own children as models--the "consultation" was being held in my wife's room. Carroll was on his way from Oxford to see the work, and I was drawing against time. It's the old story of the clown with the sick wife. Caricaturists are after all but clowns of the pencil. They must raise a laugh whatever their state of mind may be. For a long time I never would show Lewis Carroll my work, for the simple reason I did not do it. He thought I was at work, but I was not. That's where my acting eccentricity came in. I knew that I would have to draw the subjects "right off," not one a month or one in six months. Correspondence for three months, as a rule, led to work for one week. Isolated verse I did let him have the illustrations for, but not the body of the book. This was my only chance, and I arrived at this secrecy by the following bold stroke. [Illustration: I GO MAD!] Lewis Carroll came from Oxford one evening, early in the history of the work, to dine, and afterwards to see a batch of work. He ate little, drank little, but enjoyed a few glasses of sherry, his favourite wine. "Now," he said, "for the studio!" I rose and led the way. My wife sat in astonishment. She knew I had nothing to show. Through the drawing-room, down the steps of the conservatory to the door of my studio. My hand is on the handle. Through excitement Lewis Carroll stammers worse than ever. Now to see the work for his great book! I pause, turn my back to the closed door, and thus address the astonished Don: "Mr. Dodgson, I am _very_ eccentric--I cannot help it! Let me explain to you clearly, before you enter my studio, that my eccentricity sometimes takes a violent form. If I, in showing my work, discover in your face the slightest sign that you are not _absolutely_ satisfied with any particle of this work in progress, the _whole_ of it goes into the fire! It is a risk: will you accept it, or will you wait till I have the drawings _quite_ finished and send them to Oxford?"