The Mystery of Lewis Carroll

by Jenny Woolf

  Carroll was also capable of staying silent for long periods, with the result that some people hardly noticed him at all. Mark Twain met him once, and remembered of him that he was interesting – but only to look at, for ‘… he was the stillest and shyest full-grown man I have ever met except “Uncle Remus”’. Throughout a brisk conversation that was taking place, Twain went on, ‘Carroll sat still all the while except that now and then he answered a question. His answers were brief. I do not remember that he elaborated any of them.’9

  Carroll’s silence in unfamiliar company may have been due in part to his stammer, which became worse in unfamiliar or stressful situations. Although his lifetime saw the introduction of the telephone and recording machine, no sound recordings exist of him, for one of the things known to have tormented him most was the physical affliction of his speech defect. An early Carroll biographer, Roger Lancelyn Green, confessed that he was himself a stammerer, and in his sympathetic portrayal of Carroll he described what a terrible burden it is, and how ‘dreadfully’ the sufferer is cut off from other people. In his fascinating book Knotted Tongues, the author Benson Bobrick also considers the difficulties of many well-known stammerers, including Carroll. Bobrick describes the experience of stammering as similar to holding a phone conversation when hearing a fractionally delayed echo of one’s own voice, and describes in detail the anguish of having one’s primary means of self-expression out of control.10

  To other people, Carroll’s stammer seemed fairly mild and did not matter a great deal. But it mattered very much to Carroll himself, for he spent a great deal of time, effort and money on trying to cure it. He once said that those who did not suffer from ‘hesitation’, as he called it, could not really imagine what a drawback in life it was.11

  In his day, nobody had any real idea what caused stammering. It is now thought to be a result of a slight neurological malfunction that makes it hard for the sufferer to coordinate the huge number of tiny factors that enable intelligible speech. It can be worsened by anxiety, either the sufferer’s own, or the anxiety of parents who try to correct speech too early in their child’s development. A tendency to stammer or stutter is thought to be inherited, and it does seem as if this was a factor with Carroll. His parents were first cousins, and most of their children had speech difficulties of various types.

  Carroll’s problem was hesitation and ‘blocking’ on certain consonant combinations, and its degree of severity was affected by how he was feeling. When he was tired, stressed or had to meet people whom he did not want to chat with, his stammer was far worse than when he felt enthusiastic or relaxed. By contrast, it never seemed to stand in his way when he was keen to make a good impression. His letters are full of descriptions of how readily he engaged with others when his enthusiasm overcame his reticence.

  In 1859, for instance, he told his cousin William how he had decided to call at the house of his literary hero, Tennyson, whom he had met two years previously. Citing what he airily told William was the ‘inalienable right of a freeborn Briton’ to make a morning call, he made his way to the poet’s house. A servant directed him over to Tennyson, who was taken by surprise and (in a pleasing glimpse of domesticity) was mowing his lawn wearing, according to Carroll, a broad-brimmed ‘wide-awake’ hat and spectacles.12 In this fashion, Carroll had edged himself into the circles he admired, stammer or no stammer.

  Carroll rarely held forth upon his innermost feelings, and it was only the amount of time, money and effort he spent on trying to resolve his hesitation that reveals what a problem he found it in his everyday life. His friend Margaret Mayhew recalled with real regret how hard she had found it, as a teenager, to suppress her giggles at hearing him speak in public, but May Barber, an Eastbourne friend, described his problem with sympathy and precision:

  [It was] rather terrifying. It wasn’t exactly a stammer, because there was no noise, he just opened his mouth. But there was a wait, a very nervous wait from everybody’s point of view; it was very curious. He didn’t always have it, but sometimes he did … he’d suddenly stop and you wondered if you’d done anything wrong. Then you looked at him and you knew that you hadn’t, it was all right. You got used to it after a bit. He fought it very wonderfully. …13

  Like many other stammerers, Carroll found reading aloud far more difficult than normal everyday conversation. When he was reading, he could look ahead and see difficult words coming up, and this immediately made him anxious. He eventually managed to deal with the problem of public speaking by memorising the main points of what he was going to say, for fortunately he had an excellent memory right up to the end of his life.

  After his ordination as deacon, he became particularly upset if he hesitated while preaching, or reading from the Bible, because he hated the idea of making people laugh at the word of God. Ina Liddell, older sister of Alice, offered a particularly unpleasant recollection of his difficulties in this area, as she looked back in 1930. ‘He stuttered badly at times,’ she told the biographer Florence Becker Lennon. ‘As the Students were, in those days, allowed to choose a senior Student to read the lessons in Chapel, they always chose him for the lesson 13th Chapter of the Acts of the Apostles 9th verse, where Saul’s name is changed to Paul and it was a long time before P-P-P could be got into Paul.’14

  In 1861, that teasing must have been fresh in Carroll’s mind, for in that year he paid his first visit to James Hunt, a speech therapist. Hunt lived at Ore, near Hastings, on the south coast. He was one of the most celebrated 19th-century authorities on stuttering and stammering, and is estimated to have treated about 1,700 patients in his short lifetime. He made a clear distinction between stammering and stuttering. The stammering patient, he said, found it hard or impossible to make some elementary speech sounds, and had a hesitating, often convulsive delivery, but no repetition of the initial sounds. By contrast, what Hunt called ‘stuttering’ involved repetition of initial sounds and muscular contortions, as the sufferer found it hard to enunciate syllables, words and sentences. Carroll was a stammerer by this definition, thereby disproving the truth of one of the hoary old tales that is sometimes told about him, that he referred to himself as ‘the Dodo’ because he was repeating the first syllable of his name as a stutterer might.

  Hunt’s therapy was based on his belief that the ‘discipline of the vocal and articulating organs under an experienced instructor’ – that is, himself, or his father, Thomas, also a speech therapist – provided a solution to speech difficulties. The Hunt system carefully analysed the exact form of the speech defect, the manner of breathing and the use of the lips and the tongue. By patient and repetitive re-training, Hunt boasted that he taught the patient to speak consciously in the way that other men spoke unconsciously. He picturesquely reminded sufferers that nature had fitted them for speech, and so he would aid them to ‘replace nature on her throne’.15

  Carroll told his sister Mary that Hunt’s system helped him. He did not say whether he personally liked Hunt, but since Hunt was a racist even by Victorian standards, a supporter of slavery and a critic of missionary work, it is unlikely that he did.

  Hunt died in 1869, and Carroll does not refer to his speech therapy again until 5 June 1872, when he wrote in his diary that it may be a day ‘of the greatest importance to me’. He had been to Nottingham and heard a Dr Lewin lecture on his system to cure stammering. Sadly, that came to nothing, and soon afterwards, in July 1873 Carroll approached James Hunt’s brother-in-law, Henry F Rivers, who had taken over Hunt’s practice after his death. Rivers was running classes for stammering schoolboys, and Carroll, who was then 41, wrote to ask if the boys had gone away: ‘On that depends my idea of coming for a day or two. I feel rather too (let us say) “middle-aged” to care to join a class of boys’.16

  Having established that he did not have to consult Rivers in company with boys, Carroll asked him if he could help him with the sounds he found particularly difficult, ‘… my difficulties with “p” in such combinations as “impossible”, “them
patience”, “the power”, “spake”, which combinations have lately beaten me when trying to read in the presence of others, in spite of my feeling quite cool, and trying my best to do it “on rule”.’17 ‘These failures’, he added, ‘have rather deferred the hope I had formed of being very soon able to help in Church again, for if I break down in reading to only one or two, I should be all the worse, I fear, for the presence of a congregation.’18

  He obviously liked Rivers, and quickly became friendly with him and his wife. After the initial meetings, his diary mentions many social get-togethers with the Rivers family as well as consultations, and he recommended Rivers to various friends. His surviving letters to Rivers are light and joking in tone yet there are unmistakable undertones of distress. In late 1873 he wrote to ask Rivers for another meeting, saying he was ‘in a bad way’ for speaking, and felt deeply discouraged. ‘I actually so entirely broke down, twice lately, over a hard “C”, that I had to spell the word! Once was in a shop, which made it more annoying; however it is an annoyance one must make up one’s mind to bear, I suppose, now and then – especially when, as now, I have been rather hard worked. I expect you would pronounce me now decidedly worse, both in reading and speaking, than I was …’19

  Shortly afterwards, he wrote to Rivers again: ‘Thanks for advice about hard “C”, which I acknowledge as my vanquisher in single-hand combat, at present. As to working the jaw more, your advice is within my power, generally: but as to the direction to “keep the back of the tongue down”, in the moment of difficulty, I fear you might almost as well advise me to stand on my head!’20

  In 1874 he paid for his sisters to attend Rivers, with satisfactory results, and he told Rivers that he had been speaking far better, and felt greatly comforted. So impressed was he that he came up with another potential patient for Rivers. This was an undergraduate in straitened circumstances called Rees, whom Carroll hoped Rivers might treat for a reduced fee. Rivers did not exactly jump at the chance of offering his services cheap, but Carroll persisted, and eventually, he got Rees taken on at a special price. After that, he and the undergraduate practised reading aloud together and helping each other with their pronunciation.

  It seems that Carroll had hopes that he might achieve a real cure, but after the late 1870s, references to Rivers in his diary also die away. Rivers had helped, but obviously not enough. By 1890 Carroll was confessing to a Miss Alice Cooper that he could not give an address at her school: he found the prospect of public speaking too formidable with his speech defect. After his death, a Voice Cultivation Machine appeared as Lot 198 in Brooke’s auction catalogue of his possessions. No further details survive, but it may have been an Ammoniaphone, a commercially produced device which claimed to relieve coughs, asthma and throat or chest problems as well as improve the voice.

  No doubt Carroll read as thoroughly about the oppressive problem of stammering as he did about other physical matters. His intense interest in medical matters was sparked when he was in his twenties at the dramatic sight of a colleague falling to the ground in an epileptic fit. He realized that he was unable to help, and was inspired to learn more. In the course of doing so, he attended St Bartholomew’s Hospital to view an operation being performed upon a man with an abcess below the knee joint.

  In those days operating theatres were blood-and-sawdust places, with no attention paid to hygiene. The operating rooms resembled a ‘theatre’, even down to the gallery where spectators could gather and watch operations. John Flint South, an eminent early 19th-century surgeon once commented that spectators would stand ‘packed like herrings in a barrel, but not so quiet’ with those in the back rows continually pushing those in front of them out of the way and yelling ‘Heads, heads!’ because the heads of the surgeons sometimes interfered with their view.21 The surgeons wore filthy bloodstained, pus-smeared clothes, and the entire spectacle must have been disgusting. Carroll obviously expected it to be so, but he later observed in his diary that he had not found the operation quite as bad as he had anticipated. At least the patient had not suffered, for the operation had been done under the influence of chloroform, which produced at first convulsions and then a stupor. The surgeon told the onlookers that 3 inches of the man’s bone was destroyed, and he went on to amputate the leg above the knee. Carroll recalled:

  The whole thing lasted more than an hour. I fully expected to turn ill at the sight, and be forced to go away, and was much surprised to find that I could bear it perfectly well. I doubt if I could have done this, had the man been suffering pain all the while, but it was quite evident that he felt nothing. This is an experiment I have long been anxious to make, in order to know whether I might rely on myself to be of any use in cases of emergency, and I am very glad to believe that I might. Still I don’t think I should enjoy seeing much of it.22

  Over the years, Carroll put together a huge library of medical books, many of which were later bequeathed to a doctor nephew. Unfortunately very little information exists about this collection, for Carroll’s own catalogue of it has disappeared, and the books were destroyed some years later in a fire at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington.

  As well as reading about medicine, Carroll took pains to obtain hands-on experience of treating others. In particular he nursed, visited and sat with the sick – something which would have been expected of the women of the family, but not necessarily of the men. He was happy to keep his favourite Uncle Skeffington company when he was ill with facial erysipelas in January 1872, and noted that he could be useful not only in reading and writing for him, but also in keeping him company.

  He also helped to nurse his dying godson Charlie Wilcox in the early 1870s. He was sensitive to the needs of invalids, and turning melancholy thoughts towards laughter was one of the things he characteristically did in all situations. His efforts with Charlie included making up ‘The Hunting of the Snark’, which lightly and humorously transforms the horror of oblivion into something less terrible.

  His attempts to sooth and cheer were not always appreciated, however, since tact does not seem to have been one of his nursing skills. Between 1888 and 1892, he went to some trouble to visit a paralysed young woman called Louie Taylor, who was distantly related to him by marriage. He gave Louie’s plight considerable thought, and even made her a device so that she could read books more easily while lying in bed. Louie’s actual complaint was vague, however, and Carroll was unable to stop himself from suggesting that she might be able to move about more if she put her mind to it. This remark infuriated her so much that she told him to stay out of her life forever; a command which he received with wry dismay. 23

  Even though he never studied medicine formally, Carroll also enjoyed looking after other people as a homeopathic practitioner. He owned several books on homeopathy, boxes of homeopathic medicines were among his possessions when he died, and his diary sometimes tells of occasions when he administered homeopathic remedies. He also recommended homeopathy to his brother Edwin when Edwin went off to be a missionary abroad.24 He himself generally used conventional doctors, although for a while he did use a homeopath friend of his, Edward Shuldham, for minor complaints. It seems he did not trust Shuldham’s diagnoses very well. He consulted him for an oval patch of pink on his skin, which shone as if it had been varnished, but then rejected Shuldham’s verdict of ringworm and diagnosed it as erythema and treated it himself. After that, his only other recorded foray into homeopathy was when he visited a Dr Burnett in late 1888 and took madder in water, night and morning, to treat eczema, varicosis, and a disordered spleen.

  Carroll’s interest in homeopathy may have led him to avoid taking too many strong and potent medicines. That is something which may, paradoxically, have improved his health, since in those days drugs which are now known to be dangerous were in constant use. Sherlock Holmes famously injected 7 per cent cocaine; and nobody thought worse of him for it, because both cocaine and morphine were then thought to be essentially harmless.

  Opium in the form of laudanum was
another popular drug that was often used to help with pain, reduce irritation, check sweating and induce sleep. If gin was the ‘mother’s ruin’ of the lower classes, then laudanum was the bane of the menopausal middle-class lady. Not only was it dispensed without prescription, but it could be made at home by anyone willing to gather up a few basketfuls of withered poppies and spend an hour or two preparing them into a dose, which was then mixed with sugar or alcohol to make it palatable. If an antidote was needed, then a dubious mix of potassium bromide and spirit of ether was recommended.

  Although Carroll is now something of an iconic figure for psychedelic drug users, there is only the tiniest shred of evidence that he ever took laudanum, morphine, cocaine, magic mushrooms or indeed that he sampled any mind-altering drugs at all. In the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, is a jotting on the obverse of a sheet of paper on which Carroll has written about one of his favourite topics, ‘Where the day Begins’. It appears to be a recipe involving 2 grams of opium, plus camphor, divided into ten pills. Very short, it is undated, and may have been for him, or for someone else.

  Carroll’s general health was excellent, something he probably owed partially to the care taken of him by his mother and father when he was young, and the habits which they passed on to him. He died a few days short of his 66th birthday, but his brothers and sisters all survived infancy and lived to a good age, dying between the ages of 71 and 90 years old. His mother’s letters when her children were small show how carefully the Dodgson parents sought the best medical care when their children were ill, and did everything possible to preserve their health. To have 11 children survive was most unusual at that time, when cholera was rife, knowledge of disease prevention was scanty and most families lost at least one child and often many more.