The Mystery of Lewis Carroll

by Jenny Woolf

  Come, pack my things, and let the clothes

  Be neatly brushed and folded well:

  The friends I visit all suppose

  That I’m a perfect London swell.

  [PORTMANTEAU]

  I wield a magic art, whose skill

  Would make you open both your eyes:

  And any friend of mine, who will,

  I’m ready to immortalise.

  [PHOTOGRAPHY]

  ‘But is there water?’ I demand,

  ‘Water in limitless supplies?’

  They say ‘’Tis ready to your hand,

  And in prodigious quantities.’

  [PUMP]

  ‘Our long-legged Johnnie shall attend:

  He’ll fetch it for you at a word.’

  I said ‘My worthy long-legged friend,

  You’re very like a monstrous bird!’

  [OSTRICH]

  ‘Arrange the group! Our eldest boy

  As Shakespeare’s lover shall be dressed;

  And it shall be his sole employ

  To roll his eyes and thump his chest.’

  [ROMEO]

  ‘He has such genius!’ says Momma.

  ‘He got the fortieth prize at Eton!

  In tragedy he’s best, by far –

  As Hamlet he can not be beaten

  [unknown, but must begin with T and end with T]

  ‘And don’t forget to write below

  Some neat Shakespearian quotation –

  The picture’ll strike our friend, I know

  All of a heap with admiration!’

  [unknown but must begin with M and end with O]

  ‘But is it really here you mean

  To group the family together?

  You really must devise a screen –

  The sun will bake us brown as leather!’

  [ASSEMBLING has been suggested]

  ’Tis done! This happy English home

  Is now immortalised securely:

  The great historian of Rome

  Could not have done it half as surely!

  [unknown but must begin with N and end with R]

  But evening now drawing on,

  So for today we’ll give it up:

  The light, you see is nearly gone –

  But come indoors and take a cup

  [TEA]

  ‘Our larger cups are broken all,

  So this must do – it’s made of chiney.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said I, ‘it’s very small:

  I never saw a cup so tiny!’

  [EGGCUP]

  I’ve taken pictures bad and good:

  But that, I think, was worse than any

  The great Logician never could

  Have proved it worth a single penny!

  [unknown but must begin with A and end with H]

  They tell me it is turning green –

  All change, I’m sure, will be a blessing:

  For never, never was there seen

  A thing so hideous, so distressing!

  [UGLY] 22

  Carroll’s interest in word puzzles also extended to making up parlour games involving words. The easiest was Doublets, which involved turning one word into another of the same length, by changing a letter at a time. It is a game which is still played today, and, as with Scrabble, the words must be found in a standard English dictionary, and proper nouns are not allowed. Carroll’s examples included:

  Make the DEAD LIVE:

  DEAD

  lead

  lend

  lent

  lint

  line

  LIVE

  Turn MICE into RATS:

  MICE

  mite

  mate

  mats

  RATS

  Most of Carroll’s friends and family seem to have enjoyed doing these word games, and he also delighted in teasing his friends with riddles and puzzles. In general, however, his daily life as a mathematics don in Christ Church was regular and uneventful, and it became more so as he grew older. His friend Strong remarked that, ‘… any account of his life that is truthful, must be in some measure disappointing … [because] the life of an Oxford don is for the most part … not rich in incidents that are likely to attract the general reader. …”23 What Strong was too polite to say was that Carroll’s colleagues and friends in the college sometimes found him very difficult to deal with, particularly in later life. Carroll eventually all but shunned the company of many of his colleagues, and his natural fastidiousness, contrariness and love of detail were transformed over the years into an exasperating fussiness which became only too well known in Christ Church.

  ‘He was the most prolific malcontent’ proclaimed Michael Sadleir, who was steward of Christ Church during the last years of Carroll’s life. Sadleir did not exaggerate. In later life, Carroll did not try to make himself agreeable to his colleagues day-to-day. No less than 48 of his surviving letters complain either about omissions or negligence on the part of the college servants, or, as Sadleir more accurately described them, ‘minor inconveniences affecting his own comfortable life’.24 These topics included the way his cauliflower was cooked, the exact time of postal collections and the amount of milk sent up to him in the mornings.

  His fussiness was noted and sometimes resented in places other than Oxford, too. One of the churchwardens at the church which Carroll attended at Eastbourne remembered how angry Carroll became at the size of the hassocks in the church, and recalled that a specially large hassock had to be made for him to kneel upon. The vicar at Eastbourne also chimed in with a memory that Carroll used to rent two pews in the church – one for him and one for his silk top hat.25

  Yet despite all his many complaints about Christ Church, there is no doubt that Carroll’s life there was also extremely pleasant. Not for him were the day-to-day chores which bedevil the average modern bachelor. Nowhere is the comfort and even cosiness of this later life of his more clearly shown than in a letter which a good friend, Walter Watson, wrote to his daughter in February 1882, when Carroll was 50. Mr Watson was staying with Carroll in his Christ Church rooms for a few days, and he describes living arrangements resembling those in a large and pleasant hotel, with everything to hand.26 The letter is particularly interesting because it is almost the only surviving indication of what it was like to live with Carroll, and gives a picture of the Christ Church domesticity that formed the background to his personal and professional life for so many years.

  At about 7 am, Watson told his daughter, he and Carroll were roused by the sound of water being transferred to a bath. At 8 am they attended chapel for about half an hour, and then Carroll went through his papers or a newly arrived bookseller’s catalogue, while Mr Watson read quietly. At 9 am came a cooked breakfast with coffee; after that, Carroll worked in silence till noon, leaving Mr. Watson contentedly to his own devices. Mr Watson did not mention lunch (Carroll is known to have had only a snack at lunchtime), but after taking letters to the post, he and Carroll would repair to the Common Room to read the papers. After that, Carroll would work in silence again till about three, and then the two men would take a companionable walk of about two hours in the surrounding countryside.

  Between five and seven, Carroll worked again. Then the men went to dinner in the hall, where there was a huge fire in the grate. Latin grace was said, and the academic caps (or ‘mortarboards’) were brought in after the meal for the dons’ progression to the Common Room. In the Common Room, they partook of wine and desserts which were laid out on a large table, and chatted with friends and colleagues. Returning to Carroll’s rooms, there was tea at 9 pm, and then Carroll would write until late.

  Looking at Carroll’s daily life overall, there were many disadvantages to his Christ Church existence. In particular, he suffered social and sexual restrictions which to modern eyes seem cruel and emotionally damaging. His visitors were always scrutinized by the porters who guarded the gates, and he could never be truly alone. Yet for all that, his life in the ivory tower also had
a calm, settled and positively courtly atmosphere which many a modern academic might envy.

  As a young man Carroll was rather good looking. His friend Gertrude Thomson described him as having a sensitive face, ‘dreamy’ eyes and a finely modelled, beautifully formed head. In 1863, Carroll asked Oscar G Rejlander to photograph him, the result probably the most famous picture of Carroll in existence.

  3

  ‘Nose in the middle, mouth under’

  The Human Body

  ‘He has been curing himself, you know: he’s a very learned doctor. Why, he’s actually invented three new diseases, besides a new way of breaking your collar-bone!’

  ‘Is it a nice way?’ said Bruno.

  ‘Well, hum, not very,’ the Warden said …

  Sylvie and Bruno

  Lewis Carroll was very interested in the ways and workings of both the human body and the human mind. Always interested in medicine, he had taken the trouble to learn about and practice homeopathy, and was particularly fascinated by the effects of the mind on the body. Artistically, he cared little for landscapes or still lifes, but he closely supervised his illustrators’ depictions of the human form, and his comments on them are penetratingly sharp and observant. He loved to look at human beauty, particularly female beauty, and had, as he once mentioned to an illustrator, a passion for symmetry.

  Yet there is a paradox at the heart of his love of harmonious beauty and symmetry. His own body was notably asymmetrical, and a friend, the artist Mrs E L Shute, remembered that his face had two very different profiles. His left eyelid drooped, his left shoulder appeared higher than the right and the corners of his mouth did not match. These characteristics hardly show in photographs of him, but they gave him what the mathematician Ethel Rowell affectionately recalled as his ‘own particular crooked smile’.1 In addition, his stance was excessively upright, he had a quick, abrupt and slightly unsteady gait, and he was deaf in one ear. All this, together with his stammer, must have presented a general physical impression that was vaguely off-balance. Yet it was a pleasant one, for his crooked smile was described as tender, whimsical and ironic, and his manner had considerable charm – when he felt like being charming.

  Carroll’s movements were quick and his general demeanour was said to be very alert. He was dark haired and very pale, with light blue-grey eyes that were said to notice everything. Although his hair became iron grey in later life, it remained thick and wavy. All his life, he shunned bushy whiskers and kept to the slightly Bohemian, long haired, clean-shaven appearance that had been popular in his youth.

  His mouth was slightly compressed when in repose, and some people considered him handsome. Indeed, photographs show that as a young man he was rather good looking. His friend Gertrude Thomson described him as having a sensitive face, ‘dreamy’ eyes and a finely modelled, beautifully formed head.2 So lyrical, indeed, were her descriptions of Carroll that some commentators have wondered if she was in love with him.

  His asymmetry did not handicap him or affect his health. He was deft in his movements, and healthy enough for his favourite walk at the age of 55 to have been 18 miles in four and three-quarter hours.3 It is not known whether there was a physical reason why he carried himself so extremely straight – as if he had a poker down his back, as Alice Liddell unkindly remarked in her little memoir – with the result that his top hat was forever slipping off the back of his head.4

  An old lady who remembered him well copied his unusual gait for the benefit of the 20th-century biographer John Pudney, who described it as resembling someone wading through very long grass.5 This stiffness and awkward gait may not have been a lifelong peculiarity, however, as it has been speculated that it was caused by the synovitis of the knee from which Carroll suffered later in life. The Carroll of the many reminiscences that date from the later part of his life was in many ways a very different man from the one who wrote Alice in Wonderland.

  Nothing exists to suggest what caused this slight asymmetry and no family documents have come to light which refer to it. Yet in poetry and fairy tale, in comedy and legend, oddly-shaped people are often villainous, silly or magical. It is something that would not have escaped anyone as devoted to fantastical literature as Carroll.

  He was of medium height and seems to have been pleased with his very slender figure. He was not anorexic, as has sometimes been claimed, for he appreciated what he ate, but he took little more than the minimum necessary to preserve health. As a young man he was remembered as bringing along plenty of cakes on outings, but in later life he would sometimes survive on a light breakfast, followed by lunch consisting only of dry biscuits, or a slice of melon with ginger, with either a two-course supper at night or simply more fruit.

  He did enjoy the occasional brandy snap – a thin and brittle sweetmeat made of butter, sugar, syrup, flour, ginger and brandy – but as he grew older, he began to disapprove of ‘greed’ – along with so many other things of which he disapproved. The young actress Isa Bowman was not impressed by this trait of his, and always remembered how he would take her on long walks and allow her just one rock-cake as a reward at the end of it.

  Most of his photographs show him wearing well-pressed, well-fitting clothes, although his white clerical tie tended to straggle at times. In a different world, he might have enjoyed fashion. One of the earliest, pre-clerical photographs shows a decidedly dandyish youth with a large cravat, a checked waistcoat and a jacket which contemporary fashion plates confirm was in the very latest style. Fascinated by visual appearances, he also took a real interest in the clothes worn by his friends, both on stage and in the genre photographs he created during his photography years.

  Carroll spoke carefully and enunciated clearly, and his voice was quiet and high in pitch. To William, the brother of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, he gave a strong impression of ‘a certain externalism of polite propriety’, and his manner of speech was often described as dry or donnish. However, Gertrude Thomson said the donnishness disappeared instantly in private, and he had a very pleasant, ringing laugh, although it was rarely heard.6

  Most of the photographs that exist of him were taken with longish exposures that could not capture fleeting expressions. As a result, they make him look solemn, soulful or even rather depressed. In later life people remarked that he often looked forbidding, but this grave demeanour would instantly fall away and his whole manner would change when he smiled or laughed.

  Some idea of how he appeared in life can be gathered from a group of lively sketches which the celebrated caricaturist Harry Furniss did when Carroll was in his fifties. Although less well known than the photographs, these sketches are much more expressive. Needless to say, they were done without Carroll’s knowledge or consent. Furniss was a brilliant draughtsman, and excellent at catching likenesses. Like all Victorian cartoonists, he drew in an essentially realistic and well-finished style compared with most modern-day caricaturists.

  Carroll hired him to illustrate a couple of books, but Furniss, a mischievous man, seems to have decided to sneak some satirical sketches of the reclusive author with the aim of making money from them later – which he did. They are apparently the only pictures to have survived that show Carroll as he was towards the end of his life, and they suggest a man with considerable vitality, and a certain eccentricity. He looks as if he is living amiably in a world full of his own fascinating thoughts, and the closeness with which he holds a book in one of the drawings suggest that he may have been short-sighted. The most rarely reproduced of the sketches, and the most illuminating, shows Carroll in three-quarter length: very thin, self-possessed, alert, and with the left shoulder higher than the right. The face, in profile, is smiling – and it’s a merry and slightly tricksy smile.

  Carroll was notoriously shy of publicity, something that may have been associated with his attitude to his own appearance, for he seemed rather sensitive to comments about it. This is shown in a recollection by his actress friend, Isa Bowman, who wrote:

  I had an idle trick
of drawing caricatures when I was a child, and one day when he was writing some letters, I began to make a picture of him on the back of an envelope. I quite forget what the drawing was like – probably it was an abominable libel – but suddenly he turned round and saw what I was doing. He got up from his seat and turned very red, frightening me very much. Then he took my poor little drawing, and tearing it into small pieces, threw it into the fire without a word.

  Afterwards, he came suddenly to me and saying nothing, caught me up in his arms and kissed me passionately. Now the incident comes back to me very clearly, and I can see it as if it happened but yesterday – the sudden snatching of my picture, the hurried striding across the room, and then the tender light in his face as he caught me up to him and kissed me.7

  The word ‘passionate’ refers to high emotion, not sexuality. So did Isa’s innocent drawing perhaps portray features of Carroll’s appearance – the asymmetry, perhaps – that he preferred to ignore? In later life he refused to give photographs of himself if he thought they would be seen by anyone but the recipient. He, who loved taking photographs of others, said that he detested the feeling that just anyone could have his picture and look at him.

  Children always found him approachable and kindly, and they nearly always took a positive view of his appearance. Most of the criticisms of his appearance and demeanour come from colleagues with whom Carroll did not enjoy socialising. The literary biographer William Tuckwell described how Carroll, an ‘unalluring personage’ seemed to see nobody and speak to nobody as he strode in an unfriendly way about the streets. In fact, Tuckwell hardly knew Carroll, relying on comments from those who had had more to do with him, but those he spoke to must have portrayed him as a man who made college life discordant. Tuckwell also describes Carroll’s appearance as ‘grave and repellent’ – ‘repellent’ here in its older sense of ‘unapproachable’.8