His first wife was Julia Arnold (1862–1908), founder in 1902 of Prior's Field School a still existing girls' school in Godalming, Surrey. Through her Leonard was connected to the intellectual family of the Arnolds: his wife's father was Tom Arnold (1823–1900), who married Julia Sorell, granddaughter of a former governor of Tasmania. Julia Arnold's sister was the best-selling novelist Mary (who wrote as Mrs Humphry Ward), her uncle the poet Matthew Arnold, and her grandfather the influential Rugby School headmaster Thomas Arnold. In her youth she and her sister Ethel had inspired Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) to invent doublet (now called word ladder).[https://web.archive.org/web/20081123033218/http://www.lewiscarroll.org/news/times060298.html]