beginnings of those characteristic traits which afterwards,
more fully developed, gave him so distinguished a
position among his contemporaries. We now come
to a period of his life which is in some respects
necessarily less interesting. We all have to
pass through that painful era of self-consciousness
which prefaces manhood, that time when we feel so
deeply, and are so utterly unable to express to others,
or even to define clearly to ourselves, what it is
we do feel. The natural freedom of childhood
is dead within us; the conventional freedom of riper
years is struggling to birth, and its efforts are sometimes
ludicrous to an unsympathetic observer. In Lewis
Carroll’s mental attitude during this critical
period there was always a calm dignity which saved
him from these absurdities, an undercurrent of consciousness
that what seemed so great to him was really very little.
On May 23, 1850, he matriculated at Christ Church,
the venerable college which had numbered his father’s
among other illustrious names. A letter from
Dr. Jelf, one of the canons of Christ Church, to Archdeacon
Dodgson, written when the former heard that his old
friend’s son was coming up to “the House,”
contains the following words: “I am sure
I express the common feeling of all who remember you
at Christ Church when I say that we shall rejoice to
see a son of yours worthy to tread in your footsteps.”
Lewis Carroll came into residence on January 24, 1851.
From that day to the hour of his death—a
period of forty-seven years—he belonged
to “the House,” never leaving it for any
length of time, becoming almost a part of it.
I, for one, can hardly imagine it without him.
Though technically “in residence,” he
had not rooms of his own in College during his first
term. The “House” was very full; and
had it not been for one of the tutors, the Rev. J.
Lew, kindly lending him one of his own rooms, he would
have had to take lodgings in the town. The first
set of rooms he occupied was in Peckwater Quadrangle,
which is annually the scene of a great bonfire on
Guy Fawkes’ Day, and, generally speaking, is
not the best place for a reading man to live in.
In those days the undergraduates dining in hall were
divided into “messes.” Each mess
consisted of about half a dozen men, who had a table
to themselves. Dinner was served at five, and
very indifferently served, too; the dishes and plates
were of pewter, and the joint was passed round, each
man cutting off what he wanted for himself. In
Mr. Dodgson’s mess were Philip Pusey, the late
Rev. G. C. Woodhouse, and, among others, one who still
lives in “Alice in Wonderland” as the
“Hatter.”
Only a few days after term began, Mrs. Dodgson died
suddenly at Croft. The shock was a terrible one
to the whole family, and especially to her devoted
husband. I have come across a delightful and most
characteristic letter from Dr. Pusey—a letter
full of the kindest and truest sympathy with the Archdeacon
in his bereavement. The part of it which bears
upon Mrs. Dodgson’s death I give in full:—
