BOOK SHELF

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22307, 22 January 1938, Page 4 (Supplement)

BOOK SHELF

LEWIS CARROLL AND HIS FRIENDS Tile Story of the Author of "Alice in Wdntierland"

Ten small brothers and sisters, with hands unclean, followed Charles round the house, hunting for the creamy white letter. Of course, the letter, the first one Charles had ever received, was m his pocket. Mother had sent it to him and Charles intended to keep it. He would hide it until he grew to be an old man, and then he would take it out to read again. But where could he hide it? Where in all the house was there a box or drawer or closet in which the brother of 10 dirty children could bury his white treasure safely? No, he decided, he would not hide it; perhaps there was a craftier way to keep his brothers from destroying the letter. On one side of the

like to fight each other. He made friends with a family of blinking toads. One of his particular pets was a mysterious snail. (Whenever Charles picked her up to talk to her, she hid.)

The boy's lather was the rector of Daresbury. The bargemen, who worked on the neighbouring canals, were unable to attend church on Sunday mornings, so that the Rev. Mr Dodgson held a service for them on Sunday evenings. An old barge on the canal was made over into a floating chapel. In the Sunday evening dusk, drifting upon a path of water which gleamed mysteriously from the shadow, Charles would listen to his father preach. Between the pauses of the deep

envelope he printed. "No one is to touch this letter: for it belongs to Charles Lutwidge Dodgson;" on the other side. •'Covered with slimy pitch so that they will wet their fingers." Charles had lived on a farm, one mile and a half from the English village of Daresbury. since 1833. the ■year of his birth. It was an "island farm, 'mid seas of corn." so far irom the bustle of life on the main road that a waggon driving by the Sate would cause the Dodgson chilren to run to the hec'ge and watch curiouslv. So quiet were the first 10 years of Charles's life that they iri'ffH almost Rave been a dream. Life was a sort of Wonderland where people and animals were to be treated alike. Once Charles jsupplied three earthworms with small pieces of pipe in case they might

voice, Charles could hear the soft lapping of water under the floor. Thus life at Daresbury not only taught him to live in a sort of Wonderland, but it taught him a Serious love of the church.

When Charles was 12 years old. he was sent away to school at Richmqnd. and later to the famous English school of Rugby. Charles was a good student, in mathematics particularly, and seldom returned home from school without having won one or more prizes. At 18, he went to college at Christ Church, Oxford, where, when he graduated, he remained to teach mathematics for 25 years. The dean of Christ Church, the Rev. Mr Liddell, had three little daughters, Lorinaj Edith, and Alice, whom Charles Dodgson often took rowing upon the river. One sum-

I mer afternoon, when the sun was hot upon the water, the four landed in a meadow beside the stream and sat down in the shade of a hayrick.

"Tell us a storyl" begged the three children.

"And I hope," said little Alice, "that there'll be nonsense in it." And so Charles Dodgson began to make up a story about Alice and an elegant White Rabbit. Just when Alice had kicked Bill the

Alice Liddell the real "Alfce iii Wonderland" when she was seven

Lizard out of the chimney so that the people below shouted, "There goes Bill!" Mr Dodgson leaned back against the hay and pretended to go to sleepl Later, Alice asked Mr Dodgson to write the story down for her. One day, a visitor saw the book which he had made for> Alice, and persuaded Mr Dodgson to have his tale published. They called it "Alice in Wonderland." At once it was so popular that it was soon translated into five languages. But Mr Dodgson did not want people to know that a serious mathematician had written a nonsense book, so he named himself "Lewis Carroll." (Carroll means Charles.)