He hated publicity, and tried to avoid it in every way.  “Do not tell any one, if you see me in the theatre,” he wrote once to Miss Marion Terry.  On another occasion, when he was dining out at Oxford, and some one, who did not know that it was a forbidden subject, turned the conversation on “Alice in Wonderland,” he rose suddenly and fled from the house.  I could multiply instances of this sort, but it would be unjust to his memory to insist upon the morbid way in which he regarded personal popularity.  As compared with self-advertisement, it is certainly the lesser evil; but that it is an evil, and a very painful one to its possessor, Mr. Dodgson fully saw.  Of course it had its humorous side, as, for instance, when he was brought into contact with lion-hunters, autograph-collectors, et hoc genus omne.  He was very suspicious of unknown correspondents who addressed questions to him; in later years he either did not answer them at all, or used a typewriter.  Before he bought his typewriter, he would get some friend to write for him, and even to sign “Lewis Carroll” at the end of the letter.  It used to give him great amusement to picture the astonishment of the recipients of these letters, if by any chance they ever came to compare his “autographs.”

On one occasion the secretary of a “Young Ladies’ Academy” in the United States asked him to present some of his works to the School Library.  The envelope was addressed to “Lewis Carroll, Christ Church,” an incongruity which always annoyed him intensely.  He replied to the Secretary, “As Mr. Dodgson’s books are all on Mathematical subjects, he fears that they would not be very acceptable in a school library.”

Some fourteen or fifteen years ago, the Fourth-class of the Girl’s Latin School at Boston, U.S., started a magazine, and asked him if they might call it The Jabberwock. He wrote in reply:—­

Mr. Lewis Carroll has much pleasure in giving to the editors of the proposed magazine permission to use the title they wish for.  He finds that the Anglo-Saxon word “wocer” or “wocor” signifies “offspring” or “fruit.”  Taking “jabber” in its ordinary acceptation of “excited and voluble discussion,” this would give the meaning of “the result of much excited discussion.”  Whether this phrase will have any application to the projected periodical, it will be for the future historian of American literature to determine.  Mr. Carroll wishes all success to the forthcoming magazine.

From that time forward he took a great interest in the magazine, and thought very well of it.  It used, I believe, to be regularly supplied to him.  Only once did he express disapproval of anything it contained, and that was in 1888, when he felt it necessary to administer a rebuke for what he thought to be an irreverent joke.  The sequel is given in the following extract from The Jabberwock for June, 1888:—­

    A FRIEND WORTH HAVING.