Lewis Carroll

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (January 27, 1832 – January 14, 1898), better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll, was a British author, mathematician, logician, Anglican clergyman and photographer.

Character

The young adult Charles Dodgson was about six foot tall, slender and handsome in a soft-focused dreamy sort of way, with curling brown hair and blue eyes. At the unusually late age of seventeen, 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 and which was to plague him throughout his entire life.

Related Topics:
Whooping cough - Stammer

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The stammer has always been a potent part of the myth. It is part of the mythology that Carroll only stammered in adult company, and was free and fluent with children, but there is no evidence to support this idea. Many children of his acquaintance remembered the stammer while many adults failed to notice it. It came and went for its own reasons, but not as a clichéd manifestation of fear of the adult world. Dodgson himself was far more acutely aware of it than most people he met. Although his stammer troubled him — even obsessed him sometimes — it was never bad enough to stop him using his other qualities to do well in society.

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He was naturally gregarious and egoistic enough to relish attention and admiration. At a time when people devised their own amusements and singing and recitation were required social skills, the young Dodgson 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 reputedly quite good at charades.

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There are brief hints at a soaring sense of the spiritual and the divine; small moments that reveal a rich and intensely lived inner life. 'That is a wild and beautiful bit of poetry, the song of "call the cattle home",' he suddenly observed, in the midst of an analysis of Charles Kingsley's novel Alton Locke:

Related Topics:
Charles Kingsley - Alton Locke

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I remember hearing it sung at Albrighton: I wonder if any one there could have entered into the spirit of Alton Locke. I think not. I think the character of most that I meet is merely refined animal... How few seem to care for the only subjects of real interest in life.

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He was also quite socially ambitious, anxious to make his mark on the world in some way, as a writer, or as an artist. It was perhaps the realisation that his talent as an artist was not sufficient that he eventually turned to photography. His scholastic career was seen as something of a stop-gap to other more exciting attainments that he desired.

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In the interim between his early published writing and the success of Alice, he began to move in the Pre-Raphaelite social circle. He first met John Ruskin in 1857 and became friendly with him. Dodgson developed a close relationship with the Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his family, and also knew William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Arthur Hughes among other artists. He also knew the fairy-tale author George MacDonald well - it was the enthusiastic reception of Alice by the young MacDonald daughters that convinced him to submit the work for publication.

Related Topics:
Pre-Raphaelite - John Ruskin - 1857 - Dante Gabriel Rossetti - William Holman Hunt - John Everett Millais - Arthur Hughes - George MacDonald

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