Novelists From England

"My dear Hardman, It was pleasant... I am sorry that your Oriental venture has not been going as well as you expected. But, then, I think that the days when a man could expect to make his fortune in the East are dead and gone. Indeed, the time seems to have come for the reverse of the old process to apply, and for the East to dominate the West."

"…the whole world here breathed easy concupiscence…"

"The arrangement of his papers, the classification of his photographs, the order of his books, the lists and registers that he kept about everything imaginable - all this betokened his well-ordered mind."

"Dodgson of course was a meticulous traveler. He packed each article separately, well wrapped in paper to twice its bulk."

"Rich deposits of perversity crop up in his humor - and his sudden attacks of virtue or sentimentality midway through his own or other persons' jests hint that his imp has suggested to him something particularly unfunny and unpardonable."

"Cramped by his own charts, on a stream itself restricted, his genius directed him to the bottomless ocean of his books, and impelled him to dive under the graciously sparkling surface into the dark swirl of the icy depths."

"Charles, trapped in the cave of his period, was the laughing philosopher who could show others the way out. He spoke the language and played the role of Ariel - the mantle of Prospero ill became him, though he fancied it."

"Charles Lutwidge Dodgson's life in space-time colored his liberated life of the imagination."

"Charles Dodgson, born a romantic and a rationalist, would have fitted more easily into the world of Voltaire and Goethe than into the one that received him."

"How did it happen that the Reverend Charles Dodgson, thirty years of age, lecturer on geometry at Christ Church, Oxford, hitherto remarkable chiefly for his precision, on a single July afternoon, while rowing up the Isis with a brother don and three little girls, parthenogenetically gave birth to one of the most famous stories of all time?"

"The benefaction which he bestowed upon the world is still with us - the benefaction of a wit that was never sarcastic, a humour that was always sympathetic; and the embodiment in himself of the three essentials of Life: Faith, the light by which to live; Hope, the goal for which to labour; Charity, the wide horizon, to which his soul looked out in love."

"Mr. Dodgson did not often preach, yet, when he did, he had the power to impress and captivate his hearers. There was no need for him to write out a sermon. Full of earnestness in his subject, the words came without difficulty. Neither was there any danger of his wandering from the direct point, for before the eye of his ordered and logical mind, his subject would arise in the form of a diagram to be worked out point by point."

"With all his humour he took a serious view of life, and had a very grave vein running through his mind. The simplicity of his faith, his deep reverence, and his child-like faith in the goodness of God were striking."

"Never was there a more delightful host for a "dinner-party," or one who took such pains for your entertainment, fresh and interesting to the last."

"Mr. Dodgson had a great horror of being "lionised," and ingeniously silenced his tormentors by representing to them, indirectly, that "lewis Carroll," the author of "Alice," and "Mr. Dodgson" were two separate persons."

"Everything that he did must be done in the most perfect manner possible; and the same care and attention would be given to other people's affairs, if in any way he could assist or give them pleasure."

"In his estimation, logic was a most important study for everyone. No pains were spared to make it clear and interesting to those who would but consent to learn of him."

"It was impossible for Mr. Dodgson to pass by the smallest opportunity of speaking to a child, and his winning manner gained the hearts, and generally the tongues, of all whom he met."

"Never, surely, did any man make more friends among children than he did."

"Those of us who knew him best remember him as the kind and loving friend, who contributed so much to the happiness of our lives, and whom we shall truly mourn as one of the best of men."

"For some reason, we know not what, his childhood was sharply severed. It lodged in him whole and entire. He could not disperse it."

"The Reverend C. L. Dodgson had no life. He passed through the world so lightly that he left no print. He melted so passively into Oxford that he is invisible."

"He was the kind of man who kept a diagram showing where you sat when you dined with him and what you ate, lest he serve you the same dish when you came again."

"His imaginatively posed photographs of children are a delight, and his hundreds of photographs of friends and celebrities provide us with much insight into the Victorian world around him."

"And the exquisite nonsense he talked! It was like pages out of the Alices, only more delightful, for there was his own voice and smile to give the true charm to it all."

"My beloved friend - one of the most unique and charming personalities of our time."

"It may be taken as axiomatic that whatever Dodgson was thinking and feeling at the time found its way into his 'nonsense'."

"Dodgson’s stammer was a good deal under control and could be used defensively (to gain time), or rhetorically to enhance the effect of a story, when the point was near."

"In a stroke, Carroll anticipated key elements of multiple alignment, minimum distance alignment and local alignment that are now central to biological sequence analysis."

"He impressed me mainly as belonging to the type of 'the University Man': a certain externalism of polite propriety, verging towards the conventional. I do not think in my presence he said anything 'funny' or quaint."

"Sometimes our friend’s face looked, when in repose, very sad and worn, and very different from the fun-lit face, with its charming eyes, that we saw when he was telling us those magic tales – tales which seem to have been woven right into the fabric of my life, and to have coloured it always with a tinge of his dreams."

"And how Lewis Carroll loved the country, the woods, and the hay, and wove into his magic stories the flowers and animals we saw there! Sitting with his back to a big tree-trunk, with one of us on his knee – sometimes one on each knee – he would tell us for hours, stories of the Pixies. And every time he came, he had fresh adventures to relate."

"I shall always remember his beautiful twinkling eyes, full of love and laughter, as he told us wonderful stories."

"Except for the straw boater for the river outings, a top hat was always worn and gloves carried."

"As one who was a boy for much of his adult life, he was by our standards something of a fuddy-duddy in his youth."

"It was a soufflé of a speech, light, pleasant, digestible, and nourishing also."

"Dodgson was overcome by the beauty of Cologne Cathedral. I found him leaning against the rails of the Choir and sobbing like a child. When the verger came to show us over the chapels behind the Choir, he got out of the way, he said that he could not bear the harsh voice of the man in the presence of so much beauty."

"My mother is English, and as she was the one who read to us, my early world was A. A. Milne, Beatrix Potter, Kenneth Grahame, Lewis Carroll and Roald Dahl. None of them thought it necessary to protect children from darkness. On the contrary, they guided their readers right toward it. This gives one an enormous sense of being respected as a child. Not just of being trusted to handle things as they are, but to be accepted as not entirely good. To be recognized as having darkness within oneself, too."

"Mr. Dodgson had a mathematical, a logical and a philosophical mind; and when these qualities are united to a love of the grotesque, the resultant fancies are sure to have a quite peculiar charm, a charm so much the greater because its source is subtle and eludes all attempts to grasp it. Sometimes he seems to revel in ideas which are not merely illogical but anti-logical."

"The star that danced at Carroll's birth In high exuberance of mirth Is dancing yet."

"He was preoccupied with left and right, as with right and wrong."

"To have known the man was even as great a treat as to read his books. Lewis Carroll was as unlike any other man as his books were unlike any other author's books. It was a relief to meet the pure simple, innocent dreamer of children, after the selfish commercial mind of most authors."

"We worked together for seven years. Tenniel and other artists declared I would not work with Carroll for seven weeks! I accepted the challenge, but I, for that purpose, adopted quite a new method. No artist is more matter-of-fact or businesslike than myself: to Carroll I was not Hy. F., but someone else, as he was someone else. I was wilful and erratic, bordering on insanity. We therefore got on splendidly."

"Here is a golden Rule to begin with. Write legibly. The average temper of the human race would be perceptibly sweetened, if everybody obeyed this Rule! A great deal of the bad writing in the world comes simply from writing too quickly."

"Such were the lucidity of exposition and his mastery of the topic that it seems possible that, had he ever published it, the political theory of Britain would have been significantly different."

"Lewis Carroll's humour is that of an educated man; it is fun indeed, but of the most refined and exotic. And that is why his books, popular as they are and as they deserve to be among children, can only be fully appreciated by grown-up readers."

"No one who was not by nature a lover of logic, and an extreme precisian in the use of words and phrases, could have written the two "Alice" books."

"One day, when Charles was a very small boy, he came up to his father and showed him a book of logarithms, with the request, "Please explain." Mr. Dodgson told him that he was much too young to understand anything about such a difficult subject. The child listened to what his father said, and appeared to think it irrelevant, for he still insisted, "But, please, explain!""

"He made pets of the most odd and unlikely animals, and numbered certain snails and toads among his intimate friends. He tried also to encourage civilised warfare among earthworms, by supplying them with small pieces of pipe, with which they might fight if so disposed. His notions of charity at this early age were somewhat rudimentary; he used to peel rushes with the idea that the pith would afterwards "be given to the poor," though what possible use they could put it to he never attempted to explain."

"A Nursery Magician took All little children by the hand: And led them laughing through the book Where Alice walks in Wonderland."