[Illustration:  Sylvie and Bruno. From a drawing by Henry Holiday.]

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CHAPTER VII

(1888-1891)

A systematic life—­“Memoria Technica”—­Mr. Dodgson’s shyness—­“A Lesson in Latin”—­The “Wonderland” Stamp-Case—­“Wise Words about Letter-Writing”—­Princess Alice—­“Sylvie and Bruno”—­“The night cometh”—­“The Nursery ‘Alice’”—­Coventry Patmore—­Telepathy—­Resignation of Dr. Liddell—­A letter about Logic.

An old bachelor is generally very precise and exact in his habits.  He has no one but himself to look after, nothing to distract his attention from his own affairs; and Mr. Dodgson was the most precise and exact of old bachelors.  He made a precis of every letter he wrote or received from the 1st of January, 1861, to the 8th of the same month, 1898.  These precis were all numbered and entered in reference-books, and by an ingenious system of cross-numbering he was able to trace a whole correspondence, which might extend through several volumes.  The last number entered in his book is 98,721.

He had scores of green cardboard boxes, all neatly labelled, in which he kept his various papers.  These boxes formed quite a feature of his study at Oxford, a large number of them being arranged upon a revolving bookstand.  The lists, of various sorts, which he kept were innumerable; one of them, that of unanswered correspondents, generally held seventy or eighty names at a time, exclusive of autograph-hunters, whom he did not answer on principle.  He seemed to delight in being arithmetically accurate about every detail of life.

He always rose at the same early hour, and, if he was in residence at Christ Church, attended College Service.  He spent the day according to a prescribed routine, which usually included a long walk into the country, very often alone, but sometimes with another Don, or perhaps, if the walk was not to be as long as usual, with some little girl-friend at his side.  When he had a companion with him, he would talk the whole time, telling delightful stories, or explaining some new logical problem; if he was alone, he used to think out his books, as probably many another author has done and will do, in the course of a lonely walk.  The only irregularity noticeable in his mode of life was the hour of retiring, which varied from 11 p.m. to four o’clock in the morning, according to the amount of work which he felt himself in the mood for.

He had a wonderfully good memory, except for faces and dates.  The former were always a stumbling-block to him, and people used to say (most unjustly) that he was intentionally short-sighted.  One night he went up to London to dine with a friend, whom he had only recently met.  The next morning a gentleman greeted him as he was walking.  “I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Dodgson, “but you have the advantage of me.  I have no remembrance of having ever seen you before this moment.”  “That is very strange,” the other replied, “for I was your host last night!” Such little incidents as this happened more than once.  To help himself to remember dates, he devised a system of mnemonics, which he circulated among his friends.  As it has never been published, and as some of my readers may find it useful, I reproduce it here.