It was quite against Mr. Dodgson's usual rule to give away photographs of himself; he hated publicity, and the above letter was accompanied by another to Mrs. Paine, which ran as follows:--
I am very unwilling, usually, to give my photograph, for I don't want people, who have heard of Lewis Carroll, to be able to recognise him in the street--but I can't refuse Ada. Will you kindly take care, if any of your ordinary acquaintances (I don't speak of intimate friends) see it, that they are _not_ told anything about the name of "Lewis Carroll"?
He even objected to having his books discussed in his presence; thus he writes to a friend:--
Your friend, Miss--was very kind and complimentary about my books, but may I confess that I would rather have them ignored? Perhaps I am too fanciful, but I have somehow taken a dislike to being talked to about them; and consequently have some trials to bear in society, which otherwise would be no trials at all.... I don't think any of my many little stage-friends have any shyness at all about being talked to of their performances. _They_ thoroughly enjoy the publicity that I shrink from.
The child to whom the three following letters were addressed, Miss Gaynor Simpson, was one of Lewis Carroll's Guildford friends. The correct answer to the riddle propounded in the second letter is "Copal":--
My dear Gaynor,--My name is spelt with a "G," that is to say "_Dodgson_." Any one who spells it the same as that wretch (I mean of course the Chairman of Committees in the House of Commons) offends me _deeply_, and _for ever!_ It is a thing I _can_ forget, but _never can forgive! _If you do it again, I shall call you "'aynor." Could you live happy with such a name?
As to dancing, my dear, I _never_ dance, unless I am allowed to do it _in my own peculiar way. _There is no use trying to describe it: it has to be seen to be believed. The last house I tried it in, the floor broke through. But then it was a poor sort of floor--the beams were only six inches thick, hardly worth calling beams at all: stone arches are much more sensible, when any dancing, _of my peculiar kind_, is to be done. Did you ever see the Rhinoceros, and the Hippopotamus, at the Zoölogical Gardens, trying to dance a minuet together? It is a touching sight.
