by Jenny Woolf
His friend Margaret Mayhew gave a vivid description of his difficulty. Recalling her first sight of him speaking in public, she completely failed to remember what he had been talking about, but did recall that he ‘opened his mouth wide enough for his tongue to be seen wagging up and down, and in addition to this, carried away by the theme of his discourse, he became quite emotional, making me afraid that he would break down in tears.’ She was unable to stifle her giggles, despite feeling terribly ashamed of herself.16
As a means of dealing with his humiliating speech hesitation, Carroll developed a method whereby he never wrote his sermons down, but jotted down headings only, and then prepared them mentally beforehand. Having laid the headings out in his mind, he would then progress through them logically. He spoke with great earnestness, usually slowly, and was described as sometimes almost forgetting his audience as he spoke.
Reading this and other descriptions of his preaching, one gets the impression that he was not an inspiring preacher, just as he had not been an inspiring lecturer. He sometimes felt so anxious before a sermon that he would feel he could not go through with it at all. It was a relief all round that he was rarely asked to preach.
As well as grimly struggling through church services in this way, he tried increasingly stridently to make others behave in what he considered to be a reverent manner. This is one of the aspects of his religious life which has been best remembered, probably because most of those who left recollections of him only knew him in later life. It happened, like the rest of his transformation, rather gradually. As he left his thirties, this light-hearted, tolerant and mischievous man gradually and deliberately boxed himself inside a grotesque prison of moral self-regulation. The younger writer who would not allow ‘Lewis Carroll’ to offer his friends anything with a moral gradually became the older man whose concern for ‘morality’ became one of his defining characteristics.
Some of the more extreme elements of his behaviour may have been an eccentric attempt to copy his father, who died when Carroll was 36. Whether Carroll felt he was now taking on his father’s religious mantle as head of the family, or whether it was a hardening of his response to whatever sin he felt he had committed in his twenties, it is hard to say. His father was notable for his upstanding morality and absolute refusal to jest upon any religious subjects.
Yet, although it was not in Carroll’s gentle and sympathetic nature to be a zealot, in another of the contradictions which make him so puzzling his personal image in fact eventually became so extraordinarily moralistic that at times it almost resembled a caricature. Perhaps, unconsciously, it was a caricature. Carroll was an incorrigible parodist, even though he took his own moralizing deadly seriously. He presented his reverence, devoutness and propriety in a way which often aroused some amusement, yet got the message over with such bold strokes that even the most stupid and unobservant onlooker could recognize and remember it. Then, having been presented so unmistakably with what they were supposed to see, people obligingly saw it.
His friend Mrs Shute mentioned that he would avert his eyes and ‘turn his back as much as possible’ while helping her over stiles, so that he could not possibly catch a glimpse of her legs and feet. The mental picture this evokes is comical, and even she, as a respectable Victorian lady, thought it rather strange. Yet, however ridiculous, this elaborate charade successfully conveyed to her his intended message that he was, in her words, ‘the pink of propriety’.17
Some of his colleagues are reported to have been genuinely intimidated by his primness and, considering that they were nearly all Victorian clergymen, he must have behaved primly indeed. He kept a close eye on would-be funny stories in the Christ Church Common Room and could be guaranteed to ruin any anecdote that touched upon his religious sensibilities.
He also spent considerable thought on laboriously working out every detail of the personal moral guidelines with which he regulated his own behaviour. The details of many of these personal guidelines were, needless to say, a mystery to most people, and sometimes raised a smile. His irrepressible illustrator Harry Furniss was probably not too startled to receive a note from Carroll curtly informing him that he had returned four tickets to Furniss’s forthcoming cabinet entertainment because it promised ‘clever imitations of Dr. Talmage’s sermons’, and Carroll was sure these were bound to be profane.18
Carroll was also outraged at the sight of men dressed as women in theatricals, even though cross-dressers had pleasantly entertained him in his younger days. He also annoyed, upset and irritated his actor friends by lecturing them on the morality of the plays in which they appeared. Even the characters which his actor friends pretended to be did not escape his anxious moralizing. Ellen Terry remembered how she was made to feel thoroughly bad by his criticism of one scene in which her character had to remove some clothes. Isa Bowman recalled in her memoir that he was never quite as nice to her when she was playing bad characters, as when he saw her playing ‘nice’ girls.
Yet this was the man who was dogged with gossip about women in every recorded decade of his life. His friendship with Isa alone attracted so much that he had to lodge her with neighbours. As for Terry, she seems to have had a running joke with him about the only-too-grown-up ‘little girls’ he brought to her performances, and her letters to him contain several humorous references to these.
Carroll seemed unable to realize that he himself was striving to achieve freedom from the oppressive morality which he had driven himself to adopt. He did not perceive any contradictions in his own behaviour. The fact that his desperate grasping at freedom sometimes scandalized others merely irritated him and made him complain about ‘Mrs Grundy’. The moral minefield through which he picked his way in later life was very real to him, but the bigger picture, if there ever had been one, seems to have entirely disappeared from his view. So one day he was turning his back on young ladies at stiles in case he caught a glimpse of their precious ankles. The next he was taking photographs of other equally respectable young ladies wearing gymnastic dress which showed off their ankles and a lot more besides. He was willing to deny that God was almighty, yet raged at anyone who demonstrated the slightest hint of disrespect for Almighty God. He was a man living in a permanent state of mental stress about religion, yet his faith was genuine and his religion was absolutely central to his picture of himself.
Carroll would no doubt have been outraged at the idea that religion and superstition had much in common, but his library and also his diary show that he had an interest in everything and anything pertaining to magic and the supernatural. Perhaps here was an area in which his festering spiritual anxiety did not torture him. In magic and fairy tale, he could think what he liked about non-material life without the spectre of God’s disapproval and the pain of his own sins looming over him.
He was a founder member of the Society for Psychical Research, and his nephew Stuart Collingwood wrote that he took a great interest in occult phenomena. He was not alone. The huge upheavals in religion during the Victorian period led many people, of all social classes, down these particular by-ways. It is not for nothing that the Victorian period is the great age of the ghost story and the scary gothic fantasy. Although Darwin had, as Samuel Butler later put it, effectively ‘banished Mind from the Universe’, many books appeared detailing various ways that Darwinism did not preclude eternal life. So, with the advent of Darwinism, old beliefs in spirits and witches were dusted down and converted for the modern age as people clamoured to find some real evidence that there was another world beyond the tangible one.
Mediums became popular, with their strange powers and manifestations of sounds and sights, their levitation, automatic writing, telepathy and clairvoyance. Carroll’s personal library included a large variety of intriguing publications (some rather sensational) on medium confessions, demonical possession, miracles, ghosts of the living, the supernatural in nature, and the history of the black arts.
It will, perhaps, be no surprise to learn that his diary di
d not go into these matters, but it did at times refer to some of the more weighty publications he was thinking about. From this, and other sources, we know that he owned a number of important books on the supernatural, ranging from Henry Drummond’s carefully considered Natural Law of the Spirit World, which endeavours to link spiritual and physical existence scientifically, to Lights and Shadows of Spiritualism by the celebrated medium D D Home and Cotton Mather’s Wonders of the Invisible World, Being an Account of the Trials of Several Witches Lately Executed in New-England. Some of his books on magic and witchcraft were also rare and valuable, such as Saducismus Triumphatus, Full and Plain Evidence concerning Witches and Apparitions by the 17th-century preacher Joseph Glanvil, and Daniel Defoe’s A System of Magick or A History of the Black Art.
It is tantalising to think of Carroll sitting reading these or similar works on a dark and stormy night by the light of a guttering candle, as he probably really did, and yet not know what he thought. Still, we do know at least that he liked to read his sinister supernatural books at night, if the Eastbourne Gazette of 19 January 1898 is to be believed. This paper contains an anonymous recollection of Carroll by a man who had been an undergraduate at Christ Church. Although Carroll was often criticized for being uninterested in undergraduates, this was not true, for he was very willing to help those who wanted to learn. The author of the letter to the Eastbourne Gazette had been invited to Carroll’s rooms for a study session, and had been kindly received. While he was there, he noted that, ‘the books which lined the walls of his bedroom were nearly all of them volumes relating to psychic phenomena in its many different forms.’
The comment that Carroll’s bedroom was ‘lined’ with these books suggests that there were many of them. In his book on Carroll’s library, Jeffrey Stern lists only 32, so either the anonymous undergraduate was wrong, or else many of the books were disposed of before they were catalogued.19 The undergraduate went on to say that Carroll told him that his especial interest was in the investigation of hypnotic and will power manifestations; in other words, the calling up spirits while in a trance.
Nothing that Carroll may have written about hypnotic and willpower suggestions survives to give an insight into why these aspects of the paranormal particularly interested him. He dropped vague hints that, during his times of deepest spiritual distress, something unusual had happened to him to encourage him, and the tone of these hints suggests that a manifestation or ghostly vision may have occurred. As always, he was not going to let posterity know about it.
It was also Carroll’s interest in ghosts that led to his meeting with the artist Thomas Heaphy, who experienced one of the most elaborate and best-known ghostly encounters of the 19th century. In his diary, Carroll notes that he ‘called and introduced myself to Heaphy the artist, with no further pretext than my admiration for his pictures … and the fact that Arthur Wilcox had corresponded with him about the ghost-story he wrote in All the Year Round.’20
Heaphy was keen on ghosts, but he was a deeply religious man, and his story was commonly believed to be true. If so, it was indeed most amazing; if not, it was an excellent story. It involved several inexplicable meetings and extraordinary coincidences, taking place over several months. In the course of these, Heaphy unwittingly dined with a lady ghost, who sat down at the table with the family and ate with surprising heartiness for one so insubstantial.
Carroll viewed the portrait which Heaphy had painted of the ghostly lady, but it is not clear whether he believed that Heaphy really had his experience. However, he noted some further details which Heaphy gave him of the extraordinary meeting, including that the mystery ghost had been cramped and crowded out by the family governess who had also come down to join the dinner table that night.
Despite his keen interest in spirits and hypnotic manifestations, there is no record that Carroll attended any séances, although he would undoubtedly have heard all about them and it seems unlikely that a man so curious would have completely refrained from investigating them in person.
Table-rapping séances, introduced into England in the 1850s, were at first regarded as a kind of parlour game and were not taken too seriously. Churchmen were divided about them – although Bishop Wilberforce, predictably, came out against them. Séances were by no means always immoral (although some séances were said to be ‘introducing’ sessions between men and women), but they were known for their socially relaxed atmosphere and certain normal restrictions on conventional middle-class behaviour did not apply. This was part of their attraction: people of opposite sexes who barely knew each other could sit in the dark together, sing together and hold hands. The Dodgsons’ rigorous beliefs probably did not include trivializing any contact there might be with spirits of the dead, and they probably did not approve of the hand-holding either.
Carroll left no comments about his thoughts on séances, although the final scene from Looking-Glass with its levitating tables and flying food has distinct echoes of the Victorian séance experience. But a little incident in Paris also raises the slight and intriguing possibility that Carroll may have encountered the famous medium Mrs Guppy shortly before her marriage, when she was still known as Miss Nichol.
In 1867, he went on a trip to Russia with the renowned preacher H P Liddon. On the way back, in September, the two men stopped for a few days in Paris. Carroll soon checked out of the Hotel Louvre where he was staying with Liddon and went instead to stay in L’Hotel des Deux-Mondes (Hotel of the Two Worlds). The reason for his move, he noted in his journal, was that the hotel where he was staying with Liddon was ‘too large’ for comfort.21
This was an extremely strange reason for moving out. No doubt the Louvre hotel was too large, but throughout the rest of the trip Carroll had endured many discomforts cheerfully and hardily. He had shown no desire for alternative accommodation, however grisly the sleeping arrangements may have been – and they had sometimes been very uncomfortable indeed. He and Liddon seem to have established a reasonable modus vivendi together during their journey, and remained friends after the trip.
But he was writing the journal of his Russian trip up in two special volumes, giving far more full an account than for his regular diary, and illustrating it too. He almost certainly intended to pass it around family and friends after he returned home so that they could read what he had done on his travels. The Louvre’s uncomfortable size undoubtedly provided a truthful reason for moving out, even if it was not the complete reason. It might mask another reason, which he would not then have to explain.
Carroll had been told about the Deux-Mondes by an American lady with whom he had socialized in Moscow. The hotel was a respectable place, but it was of particular interest to spiritualists, who had enthusiastically adopted the idea of there being ‘two worlds’, and used the phrase in a number of connections. And, as it happens, Miss Nichol, (who would became Mrs Guppy later that year) spent most of the late 1860s on the continent, living in Italy and touring other cities, and L’Hotel des Deux-Mondes was the place in which she conducted her séances when she visited Paris at that time.22
She was, as one might expect, a fraud; but her séances were most entertaining, and made a particular feature of flowers and food. She was known to shower the assembled spectators with flowers, apples, grapes, candied pineapple, live ducks and even chunks of ice as part of her interesting communications with the dead. It sounds intriguing, and if the ever-inquisitive Carroll had wished to research a séance, Paris would certainly have been the place to do it, well away from his ordinary life.
Yet even if he did experience the manifestations of Mrs Guppy or one of her colleagues, and even if (as suggested later) he used some of this material in Looking-Glass, it hardly seems likely that attending séances would have convinced him to believe in them. When it came to spirits and ghosts, Carroll demonstrated a sturdy rationalism which kept his inexhaustible curiosity in check. In a letter to his friend James Langton Clarke, written some years after the trip abroad, he declared that he did not
think psychic phenomena could be entirely put down to trickery, although he did not think that disembodied spirits were much to do with it.23
He was corresponding with Clarke about the ‘two rings’ experiment devised by Johann Zöllner, a professor of physics at the University of Leipzig who was convinced that spirits lived in the Fourth Dimension. Carroll had touched upon the Fourth Dimension himself in a mathematical paper of 1859. He had also read a Society for Psychical Research pamphlet on thought-reading, and given it serious consideration. He had concluded that the evidence available suggested there was some kind of natural and yet unidentified force, allied to electricity, by which brains could act upon each other. So although he believed that the spiritual medium upon whom Zöllner had conducted the experiment was a fraud, he suggested that everything seemed to point to the existence of a yet-unknown natural force, ‘allied to electricity and nerve-force, by which brain can act on brain’.
It was a sensible conclusion, and one which may yet turn out to be true. Carroll told Langton Clarke that he thought this ‘force’ would be eventually classed among known natural forces, and its laws set out. ‘The scientific sceptics, who always shut their eyes till the last moment to any evidence that seems to point beyond materialism, will have to accept it as a proved fact,’ he continued.24
Caroll never laid claim to any psychic abilities himself, although he believed that he had had at least one telepathic experience in 1891, which he duly recorded in his diary.
