Isa Bowman (1874 – 1958)
Actress, a close friend of Lewis Carroll and author of a memoir about his life, The Story of Lewis Carroll.
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When the rest of the congregation rose at the entrance of the choir he kept his seat. He argued that rising to one's feet at such a time tended to make the choir-boys conceited.
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.
He would, when engaged in an animated conversation with a friend, talk quickly and well for a few minutes, and then suddenly and without any very apparent cause would begin to stutter so much, that it was often difficult to understand him.
Even in mathematics his whimsical fancy was sometimes suffered to peep out, and little girls who learnt the rudiments of calculation at his knee found the path they had imagined so thorny set about with roses by reason of the delightful fun with which he would turn a task into a joy. But when the fun was over the little girl would find that she had learnt the lesson (all unknowingly) just the same. Happy little girls who had such a master.
He had a curiously womanish face, and, in direct contradiction to his real character, there seemed to be little strength in it.
To have even known such a man as he was is an inestimable boon. To have been with him for so long as a child, to have known so intimately the man who above all others has understood childhood, is indeed a memory on which to look back with thanksgiving and with tears.
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