[Literature] Carroll, Lewis (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson). Group of 2 Autograph Letters, signed

One of the Earliest Letters to this Mother of Carroll's Life-long Child-Friend

The Chestnuts, Guildford, April 22, 1878. One sheet folded to make four pages, 6 x 3 3/4 in. (152 x 95 mm). Two-page autograph letter, signed by Carroll in his characteristic purple ink, to Mrs. Sarah Elizabeth Blakemore, regarding her daughter and Carroll's child-friend, Edith: "...I shall not find it easy to forget your little 'Dolly', I think!...Some day when she can write I shall like to have a note from her, and shall prize it more than any number of little presents. Sincerely hoping that tears & her eyes are strangers now..." Tipped in to full red cloth-covered boards (8vo), lettered in gilt along spine; original postal envelope mounted on front blank, modern gift inscription below same, dated 1969.

Together with:

No place, no date. One sheet folded to make four-pages, 7 1/8 x 4 1/2 in. (181 x 114 mm). Three-page autograph letter, signed by Carroll in purple ink to Mrs. Blakemore: "...I hope I shall be patient enough to think kindly of Dolly, even if she never speaks to me again--& to remember her as she was the first time I saw her, before she had been teased into an unnatural state of mind--It has occurred to me that perhaps Mr. Blakemore has never seen the 'electric' pen, a new invention...I should be most happy to show him..." Bound with above.

Group of two autograph letters from Lewis Carroll to Sarah Elizabeth Blakemore, the mother of Edith Rose "Dolly” Blakemore (1872-1947)--one of Carroll's child-friends whose relationship lasted into adulthood. These two letters are among the earliest from Carroll to Mrs. Blakemore.

Carroll first met five-year-old Edith Blakemore during his annual holiday in Eastbourne, East Sussex, in August 1877 (less than year before the first letter above). 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).

This lot is located in Philadelphia.

Provenance

From the collection of Justin G. Schiller

[Literature] Carroll, Lewis (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson). Group of 2 Autograph Letters, signed

[Literature] Carroll, Lewis (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson). Group of 2 Autograph Letters, signed