The Story of Lewis Carroll: Told for Young People by the Real Alice in WonderlandBowman, Isa
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The Story of Lewis Carroll: Told for Young People by the Real Alice in Wonderland
Bowman, Isa
Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography -- Juvenile literature; Carroll, Lewis, 1832-1898 -- Juvenile literature
The gracious presence of Lewis Carroll is with us no longer. Never again
will his hand hold mine, and I shall never hear his voice more in this
world. Forever while I live that kindly influence will be gone from my
life, and the "Friend of little Children" has left us.
And yet in the full sorrow of it all I find some note of comfort. He was
so good and sweet, so tender and kind, so certain that there was another
and more beautiful life waiting for us, that I know, even as if I heard
him telling it to me, that some time I shall meet him once more.
In all the noise and excitement of London, amid all the distractions of a
stage life, I know this, and his presence is often very near to me, and
the kindly voice is often at my ear as it was in the old days.
To have even known such a man as he was is an inestimable boon. To have
been with him for so long as a child, to have known so intimately the man
who above all others has understood childhood, is indeed a memory on which
to look back with thanksgiving and with tears.
Now that I am no longer "his little girl," now that he is dead and my life
is so different from the quiet life he led, I can yet feel the old charm,
I can still be glad that he has kissed me and that we were friends. Little
girl and grave professor! it is a strange combination. Grave professor and
little girl! how curious it sounds! yet strange and curious as it may
seem, it was so, and the little girl, now a little girl no longer, offers
this last loving tribute to the friend and teacher she loved so well.
Forever that voice is still; be it mine to revive some ancient memories of
it.
First, however, as I have essayed to be some sort of a biographer, I feel
that before I let my pen run easily over the tale of my intimate knowledge
of Lewis Carroll I must put down very shortly some facts about his life.
The Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson died when he was sixty-six years old,
and when his famous book, "Alice in Wonderland," had been published for
thirty-three years. He was born at Daresbury, in Cheshire, and his father
was the Rev. Charles Dodgson. The first years of his life were spent at
Daresbury, but afterwards the family went to live at a place called Croft,
in Yorkshire. He went first to a private school in Yorkshire and then to
Rugby, where he spent years that he always remembered as very happy ones.
In 1850 he went to Christ Church, Oxford, and from that time till the year
of his death he was inseparably connected with "The House," as Christ
Church college is generally called, from its Latin name "AEdes Christi,"
which means, literally translated, the House of Christ.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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