ABSTRACT
In the “Photographic Scrap Book. Vol. II.,” one of four volumes of Lewis Carroll photographs in the Morris L. Parrish Collection at Princeton University Library, is the photograph titled The Beggar-Maid. 1 This has become one of the most famous and frequently reprinted images that Carroll produced of Alice Liddell, for whom he wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). According to Stuart Dodgson Collingwood, Carroll's nephew and first biographer, when Carroll presented a copy of the photograph to Alfred Lord Tennyson during one of his visits to the poet's summer home at Farringford, the Poet Laureate declared it to be “the most beautiful photograph he had ever seen.” 2 Tennyson's praise of Carroll's The Beggar-Maid is a bit of a backhanded compliment, in that Carroll may have based his image on Tennyson's “The Beggar Maid,” which he published in Poems (1842): Her arms across her breast she laid; She was more fair than words can say: Bare-footed came the beggar maid Before king Cophetua. In robe and crown the king stept down, To meet and greet her on her way; ‘It is no wonder,’ said the lords, ‘She is more beautiful than day.’ As shines the moon in clouded skies, She in her poor attire was seen; One praised her ancles, one her eyes, One her dark hair and lovesome mien. So sweet a face, such angel grace, In all that land had never been: Cophetua sware a royal oath; ‘This beggar maid shall be my queen!’ 3
