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":—­

    December 27, 1873.

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 Zooelogical Gardens, trying to dance a minuet together?  It is a touching sight.

    Give any message from me to Amy that you think will be most
    likely to surprise her, and, believe me,

    Your affectionate friend,

    Lewis Carroll.

    My dear Gaynor,—­So you would like to know the answer to
    that riddle?  Don’t be in a hurry to tell it to Amy and
    Frances:  triumph over them for a while!

        My first lends its aid when you plunge into trade.

    Gain.  Who would go into trade if there were no gain
    in it?

        My second in jollifications—­

    Or [The French for “gold”—­] Your jollifications
    would be very limited if you had no money.

        My whole, laid on thinnish, imparts a neat finish
          To pictorial representations.

    Gaynor.  Because she will be an ornament to the
    Shakespeare Charades—­only she must be “laid on thinnish,”
    that is, there musn’t be too much of her.

    Yours affectionately,

    C. L. Dodgson.

    My dear Gaynor,—­Forgive me for having sent you a
    sham answer to begin with.