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[Illustration: _Miss Isa Bowman as Alice in "Alice in Wonderland"_]
TOLD FOR YOUNG PEOPLE BY THE REAL ALICE IN WONDERLAND
WITH A DIARY AND NUMEROUS FACSIMILE LETTERS WRITTEN TO MISS ISA BOWMAN AND OTHERS. ALSO MANY SKETCHES AND PHOTOS BY LEWIS CARROLL AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS.
NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 31 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 1900
MISS ISA BOWMAN (IN PHOTOGRAVURE) _Frontispiece_
MISS ISA BOWMAN AND MISS BESSIE HATTON AS THE LITTLE PRINCES IN THE TOWER 73
MISS ISA BOWMAN AS "ALICE IN WONDERLAND" (IN PHOTOGRAVURE) 80
It seems to me a very difficult task to sit down at a desk and write "reminiscences" of a friend who has gone from us all.
It is not easy to make an effort and to remember all the little personalia of some one one has loved very much, and by whom one has been loved. And yet it is in a measure one's duty to tell the world something of the inner life of a famous man; and Lewis Carroll was so wonderful a personality, and so good a man, that if my pen dragged ever so slowly, I feel that I can at least tell something of his life which is worthy the telling.
Writing with the sense of his loss still heavy upon me, I must of necessity colour my account with sadness. I am not in the ordinary sense a biographer. I cannot set down a critical estimate, a cold, dispassionate summing-up of a man I loved; but I can write of a few things that happened when I was a little girl, and when he used to say to me that I was "_his_ little girl."
The gracious presence of Lewis Carroll is with us no longer. Never again will his hand hold mine, and I shall never hear his voice more in this world. Forever while I live that kindly influence will be gone from my life, and the "Friend of little Children" has left us.
And yet in the full sorrow of it all I find some note of comfort. He was so good and sweet, so tender and kind, so certain that there was another and more beautiful life waiting for us, that I know, even as if I heard him telling it to me, that some time I shall meet him once more.
In all the noise and excitement of London, amid all the distractions of a stage life, I know this, and his presence is often very near to me, and the kindly voice is often at my ear as it was in the old days.