On Staying With the Family of a Child-Friend

Christ Church, Oxford, October 28, 1890. One sheet folded to make four pages, 5 1/2 x 3 1/2 in. (140 x 89 mm). Three-page autograph letter, signed by Carroll in his characteristic purple ink, to Mrs. Sarah Elizabeth Blakemore, mother of his child-friend, Edith Rose "Dolly" Blakemore: "I thank you very heartily for your most kind & hospitable letter, & gladly accept your offer to house me when I come to give the address at the High School...I shall be sorry to miss Edith's bright face, but I hope you won't find me an entirely discontented guest on that account..." With a post-script by Carroll, "P.S. I fear I've no tastes for sight-seeing!" Tipped into red cloth-covered boards (8vo), lettered in gilt along spine; gift inscription on front blank, dated 1969.

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--regarding his staying with the family.

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).