Biography

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Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was born in Daresbury, Cheshire on January 27, 1832. His father Charles Dodgson was a charming Rector of Daresbury, later a canon and still later an archdeacon. His mother Frances Jane Lutwidge was a gentle and a shadowy person. Charles I was the eldest son, though he was third among the 11 children. Following is the sequence of the Dodgson children -Menella Dodgson, Elizabeth, Charles Lutwidge, Caroline, Mary, Sheffington Humo, Wilfred Longley, Louisa, Margaret, Henrietta and Edwin Heron.[br /]
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Charles, even as a child, had been bubbling with ideas and was very clever. He was both a romantic and a rationalist. His romance, however, was grounded in logic and mathematics.[br /]
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The Dodgson children, living as they did in an isolated country village, had few friends outside the family. Yet they found little difficulty in entertaining themselves. Young Charles always showed a great aptitude for inventing games and amusing all. He made a train with railway stations in the Rectory garden. He played a conjurer in a brown wig and a long white robe and he made a troupe of marionettes and a stage with the aid of the family and a village carpenter. He wrote short plays and manipulated the string. The most popular of his writings then was The Tragedy of King John.[br /]
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He also made pets of snails and toads and tried to promote modern warfare among earthworms by giving them small pieces of clay pipes as weapons. He and his siblings were first taught at home and later enrolled into private schools, such as Richmond. This was followed by college preparatory and public schools. After attending the Richmond School, Charles proceeded to Rugby school. He disliked his four years at the public school, due to innate shyness and also because he was bullied there. He also endured several illnesses, one of which left him deaf in one ear. During his childhood, he liked one schoolmaster about whom he wrote later: "I loved my kind old schoolmaster" who was then said to be only in his forties. His name was Mr Tate. His first name has not come down to us. One of the few surviving documents of Charles' school days is a letter, probably his first, to his sisters from Richmond. While it is, no doubt, humorous, it also has a tinge of pathos.[br /]
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"My dear Fanny and Memy, [br /]

I hope you are all getting on well, as also the Sweet twins, the boys I think that I like the best, are Harry Austin and all the Tates of which there are of beside a little girl who came down to dinner the first day, but not since…The boys have played two tricks upon me which were these - they first proposed to play at 'King of the Cobbler's and asked if I would be king, to which I agreed.[br /]
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Then they made me sit down and sat (on the ground) in a circle round me, and told me to say 'Go to work' which I said, and they immediately began kicking and knocking me on all sides…For 2 nights I slept alone, and for the rest of the time with Ned Swire. The boys play me no tricks now. The only fault (tell Mama) that there has been was coming in one day to dinner just after grace…Papa wished me to tell him all the texts I had heard preached upon, please to tell him that I could not hear it in the morning nor hardly one sentence of the Sumon, by throne in the evening was I cor. 1.23…I have had 3 misfortunes in my clothes, etc. 1st I cannot find my toothbrush, so that I have not brushed my teeth for 3 or 4 days, 2nd I cannot find my blotting paper, and 3rd I have no shoe-horn. The chief games are, football, leap frog, and fighting. Excuse bad writing.[br /]
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Yr, [br /]

Affect Brother Charles."[br /]
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Long after he left school, his name was remembered as a boy who knew well how to raise his fists in defence for a righteous cause.[br /]
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When Charles moved to Croft at the age of 12, one notable thing was the beginning of 'Rectory Magazine' to which all family members were supposed to contribute. In fact, Charles wrote nearly all those that survive, beginning with 'Useful and Instructive Poetry' (1845 published 1954) and 'Mischmasch' (1853-62, published with 'The Rectory Umbrella in 1962).[br /]
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An interesting fact about his parents was that they were first cousins and deeply religious. His family was pre-dominantly Northern English with an Irish connection. They were conservative Anglican, High Church, upper middle class, and were inclined towards two good professions of the army and Church. His great-grandfather Charles Dodgson also had risen through the ranks of the church to become a bishop. His grandfather, another Charles, had been an army captain, killed most romantically in action in 1803 while his two sons were still kids. The elder of these - yet another Charles (Lewis's father), reverted to the other family business and took holy orders. He went to the Westminster School, and then to Oxford. He was 'mathematically brilliant' and won an astonishing double first. It could have been turned into a prelude to a brilliant career. Instead, he married his cousin Lewis or Charles Lutwidge Dodgson's mother in 1827.[br /]
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[b]The Pilgrim's Progress[/b][br /]
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Young Charles grew up as a bright and articulate boy. In the early years he was educated at home. His 'reading lists', preserved in the family, testify to a precocious intellect. At the age of seven, the child read The Pilgrim's Progress. It is said he was left-handed and often suffered severe psychological trauma by being forced to counteract but there is no documentary evidence. It is also said that Charles used to stammer. His mother had died of 'Inflammation of the Brain'. Perhaps it was meningitis or a stroke, at the age of 47.[br /]
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Michael Bakewell says about Charles as a child, "Dodgson was busy and easily offended old maidish…shy, withdrawn, over sensitive…[br /]
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Later on, his seven years at Rugby constituted a marking time for him and a slow downward slide for his school. Charles with his natural love for excellence suffered from every manifestation of the old Adam. His ingenious mind never rested from the problem of finding a way out without damaging the beloved box. He kept no dairy at school - all we have is this note of 1855 : During my stay I made I suppose some progress in learning of various kinds, but none of it was done 'Con amore', and I spent an incalculable time writing out impositions - this last I consider one of the chief faults of Rugby School. I made some friends there…but I cannot say that I look back upon life at a Public School with any sensations of pleasure, or that any earthly consideration could induce me to go through my three years again."[br /]
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This shows that Charles did not enjoy the life at public school. We have a poem The Palace of Humbug :[br /]
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[i]"And one, a dotard grim and gray,[br /]

Who wasteth childhood happy day.[br /]

In work more profitless than play[br /]
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Whose icy breast no pity warms[br /]

Whose little victims sit in Swarms[br /]

And slowly sob on lower forms."[/i][br /]
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Perhaps, Charles found a way of living, or perhaps he did not choose to write of his misery at the time.[br /]
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As a child, he took an early interest in mathematics. On being told that logarithms were too difficult for a child to understand, his response was "Yes, but please explain".[br /]
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After Rugby, he was taught by his father for a year, during which time he also matriculated from Christ Church, Oxford (May 23, 1850). He went into residence as an undergraduate there on January 24, 1851. Charles excelled in his mathematical and classical studies in 1852. On the strength of his performance in examinations, he was nominated to a studentship (called a scholarship in other colleges). Apart from the loss of his parents, his life moved smoothly and quickly. He took a BA and MA, a Boulter scholarship, a Bostoch scholarship, first class honors in mathematics, second in 'Classical Moderations', third (but still honors) in history and philosophy. He was made a Student of Christ Church, as said before. Later he became the sub-librarian. He was later appointed as a lecturer in mathematics, full member of the teaching staff. He became a deacon of the Church of England and Climax Curator of the Common Room, a sort of club steward.[br /]
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[b]His Appearance[/b][br /]
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Young Charles Dodgson was about six feet tall, slender and handsome 'in a soft focussed dreamy sort of way' with curly brown hair and blue eyes. At the age of 17, he suffered a severe attack of whooping cough, which left him with poor hearing in his right ear and was probably responsible for his chronically weak chest in later life. The only overt defect he carried into adulthood was what he referred to as his 'hesitation' - a stammer he had acquired in early childhood. It would plague him through his life. His stammering also seems to be a potent part of myth. It is a part of the mythology that Carroll only stammered in adult company but was free and fluent with children. Though there is no evidence to support this.[br /]
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Although the stammering troubled him and obsessed him sometimes, it was never enough to stop him from using other qualities to do well in society. He was naturally gregarious and strong enough to relish attention and admiration. At a time when people devised their own amusements, and singing and recitation were required for social status, this youth was well equipped as an engaging entertainer. He could sing tolerably well and was not afraid to do so in front of an audience. He was adept at mimicry and story telling. He was also ambitious. He wanted to make a mark in this world in some way, as a writer, as an artist. The scholastic career was only a stopgap to other rare exciting achievements.[br /]
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While studying, he continued to write and compiled a scrapbook of his best writings, called 'Mischmasch'. It included a four-line verse, entitled 'Stanza of Anglo-Saxon Poetry', that was to become the first verse of his later nonsense poem Jabberwocky. Starting in 1858, Charles prepared himself for Holy Orders, attending the Cuddleston Theological College till his ordination as a deacon in December 1861. He intended to become a priest but never pursued the theological road further. His career, as a logician, made him write about a sermon : "We believe that Bible is true, because our Holy Mother, the church tells us it is. I pity the unfortunate clergyman, if he is even bold enough to enter any Young Men's Debating Club."[br /]
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In 1860, Dodgson published his first two mathematical textbooks and by February 1861, had completed another and started on four more. He also contributed to the magazine 'The Train', signing as 'BB'. Edmund Yates, its editor, asked Dodgson for a full pseudonym. Dodgson sent him a list of names like Edgan Cuthwellis, Edgas UC Westhall and Lewis Carroll. Yates chose the last of them.[br /]
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[b]Photography Session[/b][br /]
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Besides writing, Charles was also known for fine photography of children and adults in 1857. Charles's photography opened up other avenues for him. While at Croft, he photographed the niece of Tennyson's wife, Agnes Grace Weld. The great poet called one of the photographs of the girl, dressed as Little Red Riding Hood, 'a gem' and this comment encouraged Charles to seek out Tennyson at Trent Lodge in the Lake District. In May 1859 and in April 1862, Charles stayed at Freshwater on the Isle of Wight where Tennyson lived. During the first visit, Charles managed to get Tennyson to sit for a photo-session. On the second visit, Tennyson was too busy but Charles photographed his sons, Hallam and Lionet. He also had sessions with Ruskin, Faraday and other personalities. He photographed children in every possible costume and situation. Later, he gave up his hobby altogether thinking it was taking too much of his time.[br /]
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Charles had published a number of humorous items in verse and prose and a few serious poems in his youth. The earliest of these appeared anonymously. In March 1856, a poem called Solitude was published. His humorous and other verses were collected in 1869 as Phantasmagoria and other poems and later separated as Ryme and Reason and Three sunsets and other poems. He had also written The Hunting of the Snark, which was a nonsense poem that is rivaled only by the best of Edward Lear.[br /]
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Charles was always a student and throughout his life he excelled in academics. Charles never seemed to have shown any real financial worries. In 1857, he wrote of the year "I began it as poor bachelor student, with no definite plans all expectations; I end it as master and tutor in Christ Church with an income of more than £300 a year. His brothers, Skebbington and Wilfred, followed him at Christ Church, and eventually Edwin too, like Charles and Skebbington, was ordained. Charles's studentship corresponded to a teaching fellowship though "it was not meant to tie him down to lectures and examination". He tutored men who were working for honors in mathematics. Still he was not considered a tutor because he was not responsible for their progress in other subjects.[br /]
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[b]Two Events[/b][br /]
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In 1853, two important events took place that had a profound effect on Charles' life. Henry Liddell arrived as the new Dean at Christ Church. Charles was introduced to the Liddell children. Liddell had previously been the head master at Westminster school and was known for his A Greek English Lexicon. He had a son, Harry, and three daughters, Lorina Charlotte and Alice. Charles first came into contact with the Liddell family in August 1855 through the Dean's niece, Fredrila Liddell. Charles was charmed by the little girl and within a couple of days sketched her. He first met the Dean and the rest of his family in February 1856 during a train trip to the Oxford boat races. Two months later, during a photographic session in the Deanery garden, he talked with Alice and the other Liddell children for a long time.[br /]
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Charles built a strong friendship with the Liddell children; he was a frequent visitor to the Deanery for their photographs. In the latter part of 1856, Mrs Liddell asked Charles not to take photographs and he took this as a hint that he was intruding too much. Fortunately, the Liddells took their winter vacation abroad and left the children in the care of their governess, Miss Prickett. The governess allowed Charles to meet the children again as often as he liked and he continued to do so even after their parents returned. He started taking the children to boating trips on the Thames during the summer months. Alice remembered in 1932 that they used to sit on the big sofa on each side of him, while he told them stories, illustrating them by pencil and ink drawings as he went along. He seemed to have an endless store of these fantastic tales, which he made up as he told them, drawing busily on a large sheet of paper all the time. They were not always entirely new. Sometimes, they were new version of old stories, sometimes, they started on the old basis but grew into new tales owing to the frequent interruptions.[br /]
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On July 1862, Charles and his friend Robinson Duckwarth, Fellow of Trinity, rowed the three Liddell children up the Thames from Oxford to Godslow. They went up to Godslow, had tea and rowed back again during which about 80-30 stories had been told with many songs. At the Deanery door, 10-year-old Alice said: "Oh Mr Dodgson, I wish you would write out Alice's adventures for me."[br /]
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A reference to this is found in Dodgson's diary : "I told them the fairy tale of Alice's Adventures Underground, which I undertook to write out for Alice." Charles himself recollected in 1887, how, in a desperate attempt to strike out some new lines of fairy love, he sent his heroine straight down a rabbit-hole without the least idea of what was to happen afterwards. Charles was able to write the story as told but also added an extra adventure that had been told on other occasions. He illustrated it with his own crude but distinctive drawings and gave the finished 'product' to Alice Liddell with no thought of hearing it again. The novelist Henry Kingsley, while visiting the deanery, chanced to pick it up from the drawing room and urged Mrs Liddell to persuade the author to publish it. Charles, surprised at this, consulted his friend George Macdonald, an author of some of the best children's stories. Macdonald took the manuscripts home to be read to his children, and his son Greville aged six, declared that he "wished there were 60,000 volumes of it."[br /]
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Charles then revised it accordingly for publication. He cut out some references to the previous picnic and added more stories told to the Liddells to make up a volume of the desired length. At Duckworth's suggestion, he got introduced to John Tenniel, Punch magazine's cartoonist, whom he commissioned to make illustrations to his specification. The book was published as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865.[br /]
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The first edition was withdrawn because of bad painting, and only about 21 copies survived. Though the reprint was ready by Christmas in the same year, it was dated 1866 and there is no answer to the mystery of Alice's success. Many explanations have been suggested but like the Mad Hatter's riddle, they are no more than afterthoughts. The book is not an allegory; it has no hidden meaning or message, either religious, political, or psychological, as some have tried to prove. Its only undertone is of a gentle satire on education. Various attempts have been made to solve the 'riddle of Lewis Carroll' himself and these include efforts to prove that he showed symptoms of jealousy when his favored lady came to tell him that they were engaged to be married. He had contemplated marriage with some of them, notably with Alice Liddell. But there is little or no evidence to back this up.[br /]
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The Alice books are frankly dream stories. Both have an elaborate and rather orgiastic nightmarish awakening though only in the first does the dreamer directs the dream. Both use the material of the universal dream as folk tale; their prime value lies in this articulation of the inarticulate impressions of childhood and in their multiple use on several planes simultaneously. This makes them interesting to all ages and cultural levels. Many people, who have read it, fail to notice the plot. The story revolves about the golden key to the enchanted garden and Alice's endless frustrations and wanderings in bypaths until she enters at last, to find the flower. But the place is populated by disagreeable persons attempting to play Croquet under trying circumstances. The garden is an equally rich symbol if we call it adult life viewed by a child or vice versa. The protean Alice with her formulae for growing and shrinking and cutting back and faith across the borders of childhood and maturity, yet remaining always a wise child, is of course Charles himself. He seems increasingly like a maiden aunt with the heart of a girl even with all the satire and the refined cruelties of his verse.[br /]
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[b]Insomnia Problem[/b][br /]
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It is said that Charles suffered from insomnia. A testimony of Charles' insomnia and the various devices he used to get sleep is included in the book Pillow Problems. He inverted several night writing aids; the best was the Typhlograph, which he later re-christened the Nyctograph. This was a series of cardboard squares in a blind alphabet of his inventions he wrote on the edges and corners of the squares. Since his dream was exiled to the nursery, it gradually split from his acceptable public self. This is the Dodgson-Carroll split. It must finally appear that he did not always present the same two segments. In those long nights of insomnia, the interaction between conscious choice and unconscious desires gradually perfected his poetic instrument. One incident with a friend, Isa, who played Alice on the stage, shows how Charles overtook Lewis Carroll.[br /]
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One afternoon when he had been strolling with her in Christ Church meadows, holding her hand and explaining how rivers flow down hill to the sea, another don came suddenly. Lewis Carroll vanished and the embarrassed Charles emerged for the rest of the walk. She says, "he became difficult to understand and talked in a nervous and preoccupied manner." The shyness and stammering that left him in his house of ease with girl-children, returned abruptly when he was floated back into the adult world.[br /]
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Charles took long walks during the day and often retired fatigued. He had a fair amount of mental work to do but his short hours of sleep seemed to have produced no ill effects. His letters sometimes mention that it was three o'clock, and it is not certain he fell asleep promptly even then. He surely had a constitution that required little sleep but also had some chronic problem.[br /]
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It has also been hinted that his sex symbolism, and therefore presumably his sex lib remained on an emotional level. It seems that he made at least one attempt to escape from celibacy into matrimony. If there was such an attempt, as the falling in love, occurred between the telling of the first Alice story in 1862 and the printing of the second late in 1871, it suggested increased sentimentally.[br /]
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One lady, who was taken out by Charles when she was a child, told Derek Hudson she was rather surprised to be kissed by him in the middle of a performance in a theatre. "As their daughters approached the 'dangerous age' some mothers grew understandably cautious, and Charles' diary for 1880 records that he kissed a girl in that year whom he thought to be 14 but who turned out to be 17. Then he wrote a 'mock apology' and the mother replied sternly "we shall see that it does not occur."[br /]
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Later in his life, Charles attempted a return to the Alice vein but only produced Sylvie and Bruno (1889) and its second volume, Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893), which has been described aptly as "one of the most interesting failures in English literature". As a last social gesture, Charles accepted the curatorship of the Common Room in 1882. He resigned in a year but it took eight more years to make the resignation at St. Mary's in Guilford, where he had been visiting his sister in Christmas. On March 7, he preached his only sermon at St. Mary's in Oxford, on two texts, one from the Litany. While he was at Guilford, he offered to give a series of lectures on logic at Abbott's Hospital there.[br /]
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All through his life, Charles had health problems. Like in 1885, he begins to record the scintillating scotma, as it is now called, which he described as 'moving fortification', sometimes accompanied by migraines headache. In 1889 and 1890 he had a series of medications which were finally effective. On March 4, 1892, he succeeded in breaking away. "A memorable day for me. I have long wished to resign the Curatorship, but no success as seemed ready… the sense of relief, at being free from the burdensome office, which has cost me a large amount of time and trouble, is very delightful. I was made Curator in December 1882, so I have held the office more then nine years."[br /]
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Later in 1894, Charles wrote about the death of his friends. In his old age he was more willing to preach. He opened 1897 by treating a boil, first in one knee, then the other, followed by cystitis and lumbago. In 1897, he fainted in the chapel. At that time, he struck his nose to some object and bled profusely.[br /]
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In 1894 he wrote :[br /]

"I am 62, and though I'm in good working order now (I can easily work 10 hours a day) I can't in reason expect many more years of it. At present I'm hard at work (I have been for months) on my Logic book. It has really been on hand for a dozen years" (the 'months' refer to preparing for the press).
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In April 1897, he recorded his '18 mile round," which took five hours and 27 minutes. This was not quite enough, for two months later he bought a 'Whitely Exercises", which pleased him so much that he also bought several for friends.[br /]
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His health and mental faculties were perfect in the beginning of 1898. On January 5, he received the news of the brief illness and death of his brother-in-law. The telegram asked Charles to come to his sister, which he planned to do it the next day. But he suffered from influenza so badly that he could not even recite family prayers. Within a week, he had bronchial symptoms. He asked his sisters to read the hymn of which every stanza ends, "Thy will be done". He was in no sense ready to die -though his work was unfinished his mind was active. His death fits into no pattern of necessity. It was a stab in the dark.[br /]
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On January 13, he said, "Take away those pillows - I shall need them no more." By next afternoon, he was past needing anything and the doctor left the death chamber saying to his sisters, "How young your brother looks!" He was buried in the Guilford cemetery under a simple white cross cut with his name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. And below it, the name of Lewis Carroll united in death.[br /]
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