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

Defending His Conduct Following the Visit of a Child-Friend

Christ Church, Oxford, July 5, 1891. Two sheets folded to make eight pages, each 5 1/2 x 3 1/2 in. (140 x 89 mm). Six-page autograph letter, signed by Carroll in grey ink, to Mrs. Sarah Elizabeth Blakemore, mother of his child-friend Edith Rose "Dolly" Blakemore, explaining his behavior in regards to a recent visit by Edith: "I am glad you have got your daughter safe home again, however tired & wet! Even a tired and wet Edith is better (if a bachelor may be allowed to speculate on such difficult problems) than no Edith at all. And I am also very glad to be able to tell you that the misfortune, and the 'failure', which you lament, are creatures of the imagination!...So please put away such ideal sorrows (unless you can turn them to such good account as Tennyson's 'Margaret', to whom he writes 'Your sorrow, only sorrow's shade, keeps real sorrow far away!'), & believe that Edith's visit was, so far as I am concerned, neither a mistake nor a failure..." Tipped into red cloth-covered boards (8vo), lettered in gilt along spine; gift inscription on front blank, dated 1969.

Lengthy autograph letter 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. Here Carroll defends his behavior during a recent visit by Edith.

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).

This lot is located in Philadelphia.

Provenance

From the collection of Justin G. Schiller

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

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