“I may as well just tell you a few of the things I
like, and then, whenever you want to give me a birthday present (my birthday
comes once every seven years, on the fifth Tuesday in April) you will know what
to give me. Well, I like,
very much indeed, a little mustard with a bit
of beef spread thinly under it; and I like brown sugar — only it should have
some apple pudding mixed with it to keep it from being too sweet; but perhaps
what I like best of all is salt, with some soup poured over it. The use of the
soup is to hinder the salt from being too dry; and it helps to melt it. Then
there are other things I like; for instance, pins — only they should always
have a cushion put round them to keep them warm. And I like two or three
handfuls of hair; only they should always have a little girl’s head beneath
them to grow on, or else whenever you open the door they get blown all over the
room, and then they get lost, you know.”— English children’s book author, clergyman,
mathematician, and photographer Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll
(1832-1898), letter to Jessie Sinclair, Jan. 22, 1878, in The Best of Lewis Carroll (2011)
Lewis Carroll died 125 years ago today in Guildford,
England. His “child-friends,” who included Alice Liddell (the inspiration for the
children’s-lit masterpiece, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland), have in
recent years come in for considerable speculation as to the exact nature of
their relationships with the author.
Jessie Sinclair was reputed to be another of these “child-friends,”
as one might guess from the whimsical tone that the middle-aged author adopted
in this letter.
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