The Story of Lewis Carroll: Told for Young People by the Real Alice in Wonderland — John Shaqi
The Story of Lewis Carroll: Told for Young People by the Real Alice in WonderlandBowman, Isa
History
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
I used to see a good deal of him at Oxford, and I was constantly in Christ
Church. He would invite me to stay with him and find me rooms just outside
the college gates, where I was put into charge of an elderly dame, whose
name, if I do not forget, was Mrs. Buxall. I would spend long happy days
with my uncle, and at nine o'clock I was taken over to the little house in
St. Aldates and delivered into the hands of the landlady, who put me to
bed.
In the morning I was awakened by the deep reverberations of "Great Tom"
calling Oxford to wake and begin the new day. Those times were very
pleasant, and the remembrance of them lingers with me still. Lewis
Carroll at the time of which I am speaking had two tiny turret rooms, one
on each side of his staircase in Christ Church. He always used to tell me
that when I grew up and became married he would give me the two little
rooms, so that if I ever disagreed with my husband we could each of us
retire to a turret till we had made up our quarrel!
And those rooms of his! I do not think there was ever such a fairy-land
for children. I am sure they must have contained one of the finest
collections of musical-boxes to be found anywhere in the world. There were
big black ebony boxes with glass tops through which you could see all the
works. There was a big box with a handle, which it was quite hard exercise
for a little girl to turn, and there must have been twenty or thirty
little ones which could only play one tune. Sometimes one of the
musical-boxes would not play properly, and then I always got tremendously
excited. Uncle used to go to a drawer in the table and produce a box of
little screw-drivers and punches, and while I sat on his knee he would
unscrew the lid and take out the wheels to see what was the matter. He
must have been a clever mechanist, for the result was always the
same-after a longer or shorter period the music began again. Sometimes
when the musical-boxes had played all their tunes he used to put them in
the box backwards, and was as pleased as I at the comic effect of the
music "standing on its head," as he phrased it.
There was another and very wonderful toy which he sometimes produced for
me, and this was known as "The Bat." The ceilings of the rooms in which he
lived at the time were very high indeed, and admirably suited for the
purposes of "The Bat." It was an ingeniously constructed toy of gauze and
wire, which actually flew about the room like a bat. It was worked by a
piece of twisted elastic, and it could fly for about half a minute.
I was always a little afraid of this toy because it was too lifelike, but
there was a fearful joy in it. When the music-boxes began to pall he would
get up from his chair and look at me with a knowing smile. I always knew
what was coming even before he began to speak, and I used to dance up and
down in tremendous anticipation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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