Lewis CARROLL / Autographed letter signed / about Alice in Wonderland

  
Burton Eastbourne, August 25 [18]77, 2 pages. A troubling letter addressed to the father of his new "child-friend," to whom he wishes to send a copy of Alice in Wonderland. I hope you will excuse the freedom I take in addressing you, as well as the liberty I took a few days ago in befriending your little girl, but I believe that even a man who, like me, is not a great lover of children, cannot fail to be drawn to her. As I wish to leave for her at her lodgings a little book (which I have often given to young friends), I have made two expeditions, in vain, to find where she lived. Lacking the correct address, and not seeing her any longer on the beach, the only solution seems to be to write to her town address. If you will allow me to present her with the book, would you kindly tell me whether I should send it to London or, if not, to what address. (The book is titled Alice's Adventures in Wonderland).

Believe me, Sir, in my best sentiments. Dodgson (of Christ Church Oxford). Burton, this letter is written nine days after the writer's meeting with his daughter, as reported by him. On August 16, 1877: "I went to the pier in the evening and had another happy encounter. My new friend is named Mabel Burton.

She seems to be about 8 years old.) She is absolutely charming and without an atom of shyness.

I have never befriended a child so easily and so quickly." The writer's fondness for young girls is well known. Carroll here explicitly informs a family man - unaware that he has since passed away - that he intends to befriend his daughter, certainly not without ambiguity.

Despite these considerations, a friendship begins that surpasses the perplexity mixed with astonishment of Mrs. Harriet Burton, Mabel's mother. The girl did not intend to share her encounter with the "strange gentleman," as the young girl herself described him.

On August 28, Carroll writes a letter to Mrs. Harriet Burton in which we understand that she has accepted that he send a copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Although the novel is several years older than the friendship between Carroll and the little girl, it is not forbidden to imagine Mabel as the shadow of Alice, a heroine through the lens of the writer's gaze. "Lewis Carroll Unpublished Letters to Mabel Amy Burton and her Parents.