by Jenny Woolf
He also had many male friends and got on well with men, but they do not seem to have attracted him emotionally and he did not (like so many of those who had been through the public school system) end up gravitating towards sentimental relationships with other men. His time at Rugby school is said to have revolted his sensitive nature, and although Collingwood discreetly does not go into further details, there are many contemporary descriptions of the appalling obscenity of boys’ life at public schools, including flogging and the only too aptly named system of fagging, in which small boys were expected unquestioningly to perform tasks for older boys. Carroll seems to have ended up despising overt maleness and masculinity, and perhaps that included his own.
Carroll did not desire men and boys, and he could not have women, so his preoccupation with little girls therefore seemed to his contemporaries to be a total rejection of sexuality. He probably believed it was. We, with a modern perspective, however, can see how ideas of sexuality – even though it was rejected sexuality, or non-sexuality – thereby attached to his friendships with girls.
It is not fair to call it paedophiliac, for if he had sensed any inward carnality in his love of children, his highly developed moral sense would have forced him to avoid them, just as he had avoided over-closeness with women during his years of sexual potency. He said that what he got from his child friends was love, which he equated with the pure love of God. It kept him emotionally grounded and did not tempt him to evil.
Of course, marrying might have solved some of his conflicts. It would also have given him more problems, not least the task of finding an occupation sufficiently lucrative to support a wife and family in reasonable style. However, he showed no inclination to marry. The formal structure of mid-Victorian courtship, in which the feelings of individuals were not of great account, had little to do with romantic love and was more a matter of joining families, settling individuals down and rearing children. Carroll, an incorrigible individualist, had enough family life and more than enough family responsibility, and his bachelor life at Christ Church offered the space to make his own decisions in a way that would have been impossible if he had had his own wife and children.
Moreover, a strong vein of fear, distress and cynicism runs through his references to marriage, although these are usually veiled in humour. There was indeed justification for the common contemporary view that women were forever trying to snare a man for his money. Women, after all, had few other chances to get away from home and secure a reasonable life. Carroll’s strong romantic and sentimental streak was endearing, but it always made him react strongly to the idea of someone giving themselves to a person who did not value them. He seemed most unsure of whether true, overwhelming marital love (‘… second only to your love for Him who Himself is “Love”,’ as he told a friend)5 could exist for him in the real world.
As he grew older, Carroll was increasingly perceived as a recluse. His diaries belie this, since he records an extensive social life right up until his death. His reclusiveness was experienced mostly by his Christ Church neighbours and the conventional people who formed the backbone of polite Oxford society. He made few efforts to fit in with them, and sometimes one gets the impression that he obtained a decided pleasure from annoying and irritating them. He particularly hated attending get-togethers where he might be lionized as the creator of Alice. He had, it seems, ambivalent feelings towards the books, and refused always to answer questions about them. He also refused to elucidate any of the other hidden meanings in his works, although there are undoubtedly many of them. Like so much else, he took these secrets with him to the grave.
Now, in the end, I find that the Carroll who has emerged from my researches is a man that I like, despite his faults. The underlying humour of his precise, kindly, unexpected nature shows in his many letters, which still crackle with life after more than a century. Those letters, thoughtful, quirky, charming and entertaining, now fetch hundreds or even thousands of dollars at auction.
But even if they had not been worth a penny, I still wish my childhood dream had been possible. I really would have liked to receive one addressed to me.
Appendix
Report of Dr Yvonne Hart on
Carroll’s neurological symptoms,
August 2008
[The dates refer to entries either in the The Letters of Lewis Carroll and The Diaries of Lewis Carroll.]
The descriptions of ‘fortifications’ followed by headache are most suggestive of migraine. The description of only one eye being involved (first the left, and on another occasion, the right) is unusual, but may occur in ‘retinal’ migraine. This usually causes either temporary blindness in one eye or a patch of blindness, but may include scintillations. In fact, it is common in medical practice to find people describing visual disturbances involving one eye when they have a disturbance involving the same field of vision in both eyes (as occurs in migraine), but I imagine one may assume that Carroll would have tried closing each eye in turn to establish firmly that only one eye was affected!
Migraine aura not followed by headache (12 June 1888; 2 September 1889) is also very common, and if it was the same as that described in Dr Latham’s book on ‘bilious headache’ (which I confess I have not read), it sounds quite likely that it was migraine.
Epilepsy. 20 January 1886 – I cannot really comment on the episode of 20 January 1886, as there is no description. Certainly after a seizure people may have a headache and not feel their usual self, but it would be unusual for this to last for 10 days. It is possible that the episode on 6 February 1891 was a seizure. Loss of consciousness for an hour could not be attributed to a faint, unless it was complicated by a significant head injury, and I would be suspicious that it was a seizure (the DVLA1 would count it as an ‘unwitnessed loss of consciousness with seizure markers’ if anyone with such a story were to apply for a driving licence today). These days he would be investigated with MRI scan of the brain (showing the structure of the brain) and EEG (looking at the electrical activity of the brain), but even if he had epilepsy, both of these could be normal in between attacks.
With regard to the visual distortions, ‘macropsia’ and ‘micropsia’ are recognised in migraine as well as epilepsy. If one were to postulate that they were a manifestation of epilepsy, I would not be put off by the fact that his other manifestations of epilepsy did not appear for decades – it is not particularly uncommon for people to present with their first generalised tonic clonic seizure (‘convulsion’) and for one then to elicit a history of minor seizures, unrecognised as such by the patient, going on for several years. I agree that although ‘eerie’ unreal or ‘dream states’ could be a symptom of epilepsy, they are non-specific and couldn’t confirm that diagnosis.
In summary, therefore, I think it very likely that he had migraine. I think it is possible that he also had epilepsy (and there is considerable debate in the medical world as to the extent to which these conditions may be linked), but without further evidence (preferably in the form of an eyewitness description of the episodes of loss of consciousness), I would have considerable doubt about this.
Select Bibliography
Primary sources
Amor, Anne Clark (ed), Letters to Skeffington Dodgson from his Father (The Lewis Carroll Society, London: 1990)
Bowman, Isa, Lewis Carroll as I Knew Him, with a new introduction by Morton N Cohen, (Dover Publications, New York: 1972)
Cohen, Morton N (ed), with the assistance of Roger Lancelyn Green, The Letters of Lewis Carroll, 2 Vols (Macmillan, London: 1979)
Cohen, Morton N (ed), Lewis Carroll: Interviews and Recollections (University of Iowa Press, Iowa City: 1989)
Cohen, Morton N (ed), Lewis Carroll and the Kitchins: Containing twenty-five letters not previously published and nineteen of his photographs (Lewis Carroll Society of North America: 1980)
Collingwood, Stuart Dodgson, The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (T Fisher Unwin, London: 1898)
Dodgson C L (Wakeling, Edward (ed))
, Lewis Carroll’s Diaries: the Private Journals of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll Society, Luton: 1993–2007). The complete diary, 1855–98; nine volumes with commentary; volume 10 contains the index and supplementary notes.
Dodgson C L (Lancelyn Green, Roger (ed)) The Diaries of Lewis Carroll, Vol I: 1855–67 and Vol II: 1867–98 (Cassell & Co, London: 1953; reprint Greenwood Press, London: 1971) A and C Hargreaves, ‘Alice’s Recollections of Carrollian Days
As Told to her Son’, Cornhill Magazine, July 1932
Secondary sources
Clark, Anne, Lewis Carroll, a Biography (J M Dent & Sons, London: 1979)
Cohen, Morton N Lewis Carroll: A Biography (Macmillan, London: 1995)
Cohen, Morton N and Wakeling, E, Lewis Carroll and his Illustrators: Collaborations and Correspondence 1865–1898 (Macmillan, London: 2003)
Cohen, Morton N, Lewis Carroll and the House of Macmillan (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 1987)
Gernsheim, Helmut, Lewis Carroll: Photographer, (Dover Publications, London: 1969; revised edition 1970)
Hudson, Derek, Lewis Carroll (Constable, London: 1954)
Journals of the Lewis Carroll Society, UK and the Lewis Carroll Society of North America
Leach, Karoline, In the Shadow of the Dreamchild: a New Understanding of Lewis Carroll (Peter Owen, London: 1999)
Lennon, Florence Becker, Lewis Carroll (Cassell, London: 1947) (Published in the USA as Victoria Through the Looking Glass: The Life of Lewis Carroll)
Lovett, Charlie, Lewis Carroll Among His Books: A Descriptive Catalogue Of The Private Library Of Charles L. Dodgson (McFarland & Co, Jefferson, NC: 2005)
Nickel, Douglas R, Dreaming in Pictures, the Photography of Lewis Carroll (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2002)
Phillips, Robert (ed), Aspects of Alice: Lewis Carroll’s Dreamchild as seen through the Critics’ Looking Glasses, 1865–1971 (Victor Gollancz, London: 1972)
Reed, Langford, The Life of Lewis Carroll (W & G Foyle, London :1932)
Stern, Jeffrey, Lewis Carroll, Bibliophile (White Stone Publications, Lewis Carroll Society, London: 1997)
Taylor, Roger and Wakeling, Edward, Lewis Carroll, Photographer: The Princeton University Library Albums (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ: 2002)
Wilson, Robin, Lewis Carroll in Numberland: His Fantastical Mathematical Logical Life (Allen Lane, London: 2008)
Woolf, Jenny, Lewis Carroll in his Own Account (Jabberwock Press, London: 2005)
Notes
Abbreviations
Berg: Henry W and Albert A Berg Collection, New York Public Library, New York
Berol: Alfred C Berol Collection, Fales Library, New York University
Bowman: Isa Bowman, Lewis Carroll As I Knew Him (Dover, 1972)
Cohen: Morton N Cohen, Lewis Carroll: A Biography (Macmillan, 1995)
Collected Letters: Morton N Cohen, The Letters of Lewis Carroll, 2 Vols (1979)
Collingwood: Stuart Dodgson Collingwood, The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (1898)
Diary: Dodgson C L (Wakeling, Edward (ed)), Lewis Carroll’s Diaries: the Private Journals of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1993–2007)
Gernsheim: Helmut Gernsheim, Lewis Carroll, Photographer (1949)
Houghton: Houghton Library, Harvard University
Huntington Henry E Huntington Library, California.
Hudson: Derek Hudson, Lewis Carroll (1954)
Interviews and Recollections: Morton N Cohen (ed), Lewis Carroll: Interviews and Recollections (1989)
Langford Reed: Langford Reed, Lewis Carroll (1932)
Lennon: Florence Becker Lennon Papers, Special Collections Department, University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries
Lindseth: Collection of Jon Lindseth
Rosenbach: Philip H and ASW Rosenbach Foundation, Philadelphia
Texas: Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas
Thomson: E Gertrude Thomson, ‘Lewis Carroll, A Sketch by An Artist Friend’, The Gentlewoman Magazine, February 1898, in Interviews and Recollections, pp 228–37
Introduction
1. Florence Becker Lennon Collection, University of Colorado at Boulder.
Chapter 1
1. Collingwood, p 11.
2. Letter from Mrs F Dodgson to Lucy Lutwidge, 24 March (no year) in Diary, Vol 1, p 24.
3. C L Dodgson to Mrs Richards, 13 March 1882, Collected Letters.
4. Facsimile, Hudson, p 27.
5. Collingwood, p 12
6. 31 January 1855, Berol.
7. Private letter to author, 17 October 2008.
8. Sarah Stanfield, ‘The Dodgson Sisters’, The Carrollian, Lewis Carroll Society, Autumn 1998.
9. Catherine Lucy, Diary entry quoted in Interviews and Recollections’, p 214.
10. Private letter to author 17 October 2008.
11. 5 August 1844, Houghton.
12. Collingwood, p 24.
13. Ibid, p 24.
14. J W Ley, ‘From Youth Onwards’, Mid Devon Times, c 1895.
15. Collingwood, p 30.
16. Ibid, p 23.
17. Diary, 18 March 1857.
18. Collingwood, p 30.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid, p 29.
21. Diary, 20 August 1867.
22. Reproduced in Morton N Cohen and Edward Wakeling (eds), Lewis Carroll and his Illustrators: Collaborations and Correspondence 1865–1898 (Macmillan, London: 2003)
23. Letter from C L Dodgson to Frances, Elizabeth and Skeffington Dodgson, 5 August [1844], Houghton.
24. Collingwood, p 13.
25. Ibid.
26. Langford Reed, Lewis Carroll (W & G Foyle, London: 1932).
27. Privately printed by Parker of Oxford, 1874.
28. Handwritten in The Rectory Magazine Dodgson family magazine, c 1847.
29. Ibid.
30. 13 January 1870, Berol.
31. Letter from Fanny Dodgson to Lucy Lutwidge, 18 April 1836, (unpublished) Collection of Caroline Luke.
32. Private Dodgson family letter, 1846.
33. 15 August 1877, Berol.
34. 16 June 1895, Guildford High School collection.
35. Anne Clark Amor, Letters to Skeffington Dodgson from his Father (Lewis Carroll Society, London: 1990)
36. Ibid, 1 November 1862.
37. 6 Jan 1840, Dodgson Family Collection.
38. Collingwood, p 131.
39. Ibid, p 45.
Chapter 2
1. Collingwood, p 39.
2. The Rectory Umbrella (handwritten Dodgson family magazine), 1849.
3. Collingwood, p 85.
4. Ibid, p 29.
5. Margaret Fletcher, O Call Back Yesterday (Shakespeare Head Press, Stratford-upon-Avon: 1939) p 29.
6. Letter from C L Dodgson to F P Cobbe, 21 May 1875, Huntington.
7. Diary, 26 November 1856.
8. Warren Weaver, ‘Lewis Carroll, Mathematician’, Scientific American, April 1956.
9. H L Thompson, George Henry Liddell, D.D., Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, A Memoir (Holt, 1899).
10. This missing volume is mysterious. It apparently only covered three months, while the other volumes covered longer periods. It was still in existence on Carroll’s death and it is a puzzle why it was so short and why it disappeared.
11. The Times, 19 December 1931, p 6.
12. Harper’s Magazine, February 1943, pp 319–23.
13. Jabberwocky, Vol 5, No 1, Lewis Carroll Society.
14. 18 May 1878, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge collection.
15. C L Dodgson, Twelve Months in A Curatorship, By One Who Has Tried It (Privately Printed, 1884).
16. Unpublished manuscript, May 1897, Morris L Parrish Collection, Princeton University Library.
17. Letter from C L Dodgson to S Collingwood, 29 December 1891, Berol.
18. Lewis Carroll, ‘Answers to Knot 2, “A Tangled Tale”’, The Monthly Packet (1880).
19. Lewis Carroll, ‘Answers to Knot 10, “A Tangled T
ale”’, The Monthly Packet (1885).
20. C L Dodgson, Curiosa Mathematica, Part II: Pillow Problems, (Macmillan 1893) p 2. Problem No 5; the answer is 2/3.
21. This acrostic is quoted in full in Chapter 6, pp 176–77.
22. Texas.
23. Cornhill Magazine, March 1898, pp 303–10.
24. Michael Sadler, Michael Ernest Sadler, A Memoir by his Son (Constable, London: 1949) p 95.
25. Letter to The Times, July 1957.
26. 28 February 1882, Mrs S E Scourfield collection, at present displayed in Oxford University Museum.
Chapter 3
1. Harper’s Magazine, February 1943, p 319.
2. Thomson, p 235.
3. Diary, 25 February 1887.
4. A and C Hargreaves, ‘Alice’s Recollections of Carrollian Days As Told to her Son’, Cornhill Magazine, July 1932.
5. John Pudney, Lewis Carroll and his World (Thames & Hudson, London: 1976) p 120.
6. Thomson, pp 166–7.
7. Bowman, p 19.
8. William Tuckwell, Reminiscences of Oxford (Cassell, London: 1900) pp 160–3.
9. Mark Twain, ‘Chapters from my Autobiography’, Chapter VI, North American Review, 1906.
10. Roger Lancelyn Green, The Story of Lewis Carroll (Methuen 1954) and Benson Bobrick, Knotted Tongues: Stuttering in History and the Quest for a Cure (Simon & Schuster, 1995).
11. Edith Blakemore, 1 February 1891, Berol.
12. Letter from C L Dodgson to W E Wilcox, 11 May 1859, Berol.
13. ‘More Recollections of Lewis Carroll, The Listener, 6 February 1958.
14. Lorina Liddell to Florence Becker Lennon, 4 May 1930, Lennon.
15. James Hunt, Treatise on the Cure of Stammering (Longman Brown, 1854)
16. 24 July 1873, New York Public Library collection.
17. 1 September 1873, Facsimile, Collection Dr. Joyce Hines, reprinted in Collected Letters p.194”.
18. Ibid.
19. 19 December 1873, Scripps College collection, California.
20. 27 December 1873, Houghton.
21. St. Thomas’s Hospital, quoted in visitor information material about the Old Operating Theatre.
