LEWIS CARROLL'S NOTE TO ME FOR A PATHETIC PICTURE.
The fairy Sylvie was my own daughter! All the children in his books I illustrated were my own children; yet this fact never struck him! He visited us in the country when I was at work, and I soon afterwards received the following letter:
"Thanks. I was not aware that the boy, whose photo I sent you, had far-apart eyes. If you think (and you are quite the best judge of the point) that these eyes are needed in order to give to the face the fun and roguery I want expressed, by all means retain them.
"It had occurred to me to write and beg that, if Arundel did not furnish all requisite models for drawing from life, you would let all portions of pictures which would have to be done without models or wait till you return to town, wait. But as I think you definitely told me that you never do the finished pictures except from life, I presume the petition to be superfluous."
SYLVIE AND BRUNO. MY ORIGINAL DRAWING FOR LEWIS CARROLL.
(Never published.)
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!"
It was the same idea as Lewis Carroll's about models.
I GO MAD!
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.
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?"
"I—I—I ap—appreciate your feelings—I—I—should feel the same myself. I am off to Oxford!" and he went.
I sent him drawings as they were finished, and each parcel brought back a budget of letter-writing, each page being carefully numbered. This is the top of page 5 in his 49,874th letter. I am not sure if I received all the remaining 49,873 letters in the seven years. To meet him and to work for him was to me a great treat. I put up with his eccentricities—real ones, not sham like mine.—I put up with a great deal of boredom, for he was a bore at times, and I worked over seven years with his illustrations, in which the actual working hours would not have occupied me more than seven weeks, purely out of respect for his genius. I treated him as a problem, and I solved him, and had he lived I would probably have still worked with him. He remunerated me liberally for my work; still, he actually proposed that in addition I should partake of the profits; his gratitude was overwhelming. "I am grateful; and I feel sure that if pictures could sell a book 'Sylvie and Bruno' would sell like wildfire."
Perhaps the most pleasant confession I have to make is my fondness for children. They always interest and amuse me more than "grown-ups." The commonplace talk is to them unknown; it is full of surprises.
Perhaps the nursery's record of my family is not longer or any more interesting than the sayings and doings of the youngsters of any other family; still a few extracts may interest those who, like myself, are interested in first impressions.
My eldest, just entering on his teens, had as companions two brothers and one sister. Hearing there was an addition to this little family group, he, dressed in flannels, ran into my studio, bat in hand, "Papa, is it a boy or a girl?"
"A boy."
"Oh, I am so glad. I do want a wicket-keeper,