[Literature] Carroll, Lewis (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson). Autograph Letter, signed

A Revealing Letter on Carroll's Relationship With Children

Christ Church, Oxford, March 31, 1890. One sheet folded to make four-pages, 5 3/8 x 3 1/2 in. (136 x 89 mm). Four-page autograph letter in his characteristic purple ink, initialed by Carroll, likely to Edith Blakemore, his child-friend. Tipped into red cloth-covered boards (8vo), lettered in gilt along spine; gift inscription on front blank, dated 1969.

A candid autograph letter from Lewis Carroll, likely to Edith Rose "Dolly” Blakemore (1872-1947)--one of Carroll's child-friends whose relationship lasted into adulthood--regarding Carroll's general relationship with children: "Oh, you naughty little girl! What business have you to be jealous of your old school-fellows, because I'm going to send them little bits of Charades & things, & because I had the effrontery to send them my 'affectionate regards'?...But seriously dear Child, I do sympathise so heartily with you in what you say about feeling shy with children, when you have to entertain them! Sometimes they are a real terror to me--specially boys; little girls I can now & then get on with, when they're few enough. They easily become 'de Prop' But with little boys I'm out of my element altogether--I sent the 'Nursery'...to an Oxford friend...he added 'I think I must bring my little boy to see you' So I wrote to say 'don't'...he could hardly believe his eyes...he thought I doted on all children. But I'm not 'omnivorous'--like a pig. I pick & choose..."

Carroll first met five-year-old Edith Blakemore during his annual holiday in Eastbourne, East Sussex, in August 1877. The daughter of Sarah and Villiers Blakemore, a Birmingham merchant and publisher, Edith and her family summered at the seaside resort town, where Carroll met them near the beach. Carroll was immediately taken by the child, and wrote in his journal that very same evening, "I have made friends with quite the brightest child, and nearly the prettiest...She seemed to be on springs, and was dancing incessantly to the music...her eyes literally glitter...the mother (was) quiet and pleasant...Dolly is fascinating, I hope to see her again." (Cohen, The Letters of Lewis Carroll, Vol. I, p. 281 n. 2).

Of the nearly 200 child-friends that Carroll had known throughout his life, he held Edith in the highest esteem, writing in an 1890 letter (not included), that she was "rather the exception among the hundred or so child-friends who have brightened my life." She would later pass her Oxford and Cambridge Higher Certificate, and became known as an amateur actress (see Cohen, Letters..., Vol. I, pp. 280-281).