Isa Bowman

Isa Bowman (1874 – 1958) was an actress, a close friend of Lewis Carroll and author of a memoir about his life, The Story of Lewis Carroll.

The Story of Lewis Carroll (1899)

 * 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.
 * Page 1.


 * 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.
 * Page 3.


 * 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.
 * Page 5.


 * He had a curiously womanish face, and, in direct contradiction to his real character, there seemed to be little strength in it.
 * Page 9.


 * 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.
 * Page 11.


 * He had great ideas upon the importance of a regular and almost daily visit to the dentist. He himself went to a dentist as he would have gone to a hairdresser's, and he insisted that all the little girls he knew should go too.
 * Page 71.


 * 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.
 * Page 80.