Saturday, June 10, 2017

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)



Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
Author of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass

If modern westerners are not literary scholars or have an abiding interest in Lewis Carroll and his works they are probably puzzled by Lewis Carroll the man and somewhat scandalized by his relationship with little girls, especially Alice Liddell. What is missing in our superficial contact with the story of this remarkable man and Alice the almost equally remarkable woman is the background.

We must first remember the setting for what became a seventy year saga. It was early Victorian times, 1862. All the principals in this bit of literary history were strictly of the upper class in what was most certainly the most class conscious society of modern times. Dodgson himself came from a very conservative highly religious family in the North of England. He was the third of eleven children. His forebears were churchmen and military and were very rigid in their views. Dodgson never married and never achieved ordination to priesthood in the Church of England that was expected of all students at Christ Church College. Most students of this history believe that the reason he managed to avoid fulfilling the requirement for ordination was his stammer. It was not a terribly serious handicap and never manifested itself in his interactions with children. He may have felt reluctance to accept ordination because he believed he could never properly preach, but more likely it might have been simply that he honestly believed he was not a good Christian. His upbringing taught Hell Fire and Damnation and he simply did not accept the idea. He was however ordained a deacon and went by the title Reverend.

As a child and young man he did very well in school and passed with high honors. This got him a place at Oxford with no difficulty. He always had an interest in mathematics and logic and those became his eventual subjects and profession at Oxford where he spent the entire 50 years of his working life. But most particularly as a youngster he was fascinated by and very clever in his fixation on puzzles, word games, clever devices made from simple materials, and nonsense rhymes. Very early he became attracted to the new and revolutionary art and science of photography. Remember that the very first images ever recorded were made in the 1830s. There were a number of techniques and processes, all difficult and expensive, but the one he chose to pursue as a hobby was the wet colloidal method, only in existence for ten years when he began his photography practice.

If a person knows what it took to produce a decent image in those days they will certainly then know what talent and prodigious effort was actually required. First the photographer had to have a deep acquaintance with the complex chemical processes involved which used unfamiliar and expensive ingredients, but they had also to literally carry their entire photographic laboratory facility about with them to the chosen sites being pictured. What most do not know today is that in spite of the wet colloidal process being very early and long superseded by presumably better schemes it is employed today by hobbyists who passionately believe that it yields better images - deeper and richer tones and shades of grey. The process of getting a picture is described by what follows. Remember that Dodgson took thousands upon thousands of pictures, some of which have survived. Many are preserved in the archives of Princeton University and are available on line for viewing (copies available for purchase).

Melanie Benjamin in her novel (Alice That I Have Been) presents us with a fictional but no doubt a nearly accurate account of his making the picture of Alice in her gypsy outfit. In this wonderful image Alice is about seven and a half years of age, has never been allowed to play outdoors with any freedom, and certainly has never been allowed to dress in anything other than the highly confining and very voluminous dresses little girls were required to wear in those days.

 

Dodgson invites Alice to come out for the day, probably with a chaperone. They proceed to a park area of the College that Dodgson has chosen for the background and lighting. He has brought along the dress that he wants Alice to wear. In addition he has his equipment: a heavy camera and tripod, a kit containing all the chemicals including the colloidal solution and the meticulously cleaned glass plates, and a tent (probably very small) to exclude any blue light that might expose and ruin the plate while he is preparing it for exposure and later while he is developing it. They settle on a pose and a background and he then prepares the photographic surface by flowing the colloidal solution containing the metal salts over the glass. The plate in its holder is put into the back of the camera and the exposure is about to begin. Alice is cautioned to hold perfectly still in the chosen pose while he removes the black slide protecting the plate in the camera and then removes the lens cap. The exposure under these conditions takes about 45 seconds. If she makes the slightest move it must all be done again. He may then dry the plate at this time and develop the image back in his rooms or develop the image on site. Later he makes paper prints of the image in his quarters. See the wonderful result.
 
 
 
Benjamin takes the liberty of describing Alice’s problem with changing out of her stiff Victorian Little Girl’s Uniform into the gypsy outfit. Alice and her sisters have been tended and dressed by their ladies maid all their lives and haven’t a clue on how to work buttons or really do anything for themselves. All their waking hours are filled with lessons and typical Victorian activities. They do a lot of letter writing, study of geography, how to sing, dance, and learning to play an instrument. It is difficult for the modern person to quite understand the mind set of these people and the customs and habits of that age. Even watching Downton Abbey is really not enough to get clued in. When the modern American is shown a photo such as the one below and told that taking pictures of unclothed little girls was not unusual they tend to be outraged and cry “pedophile!” These little girls were in those days considered the perfect embodiment of innocent beauty and many of these pictures were commercialized as Christmas cards. A more familiar example of these tastes can be found in some of the work of Maxfield Parrish who painted in this genre during the 1920’s. I grew up with a very nice reproduction of his famous “Daybreak” hanging on the wall of the sun room where I had my bed for several years. As a child I used to gaze at that picture and wonder if the naked standing figure was male or female. I never reached a conclusion. The original of that painting recently sold at auction for 5.2 million dollars. The other odd fact (to us moderns) is that this fascination was limited to little girls below the age of puberty and specifically excluded little boys. Dodgson actually disliked little boys. They annoyed him very much. He once took a picture of a girl who later turned out to be 17 at the time. He thought she was younger and was very distressed, apologized profusely and destroyed the negatives. He routinely destroyed the negatives of his photographic subjects at the least objection or change of mind from either the subject or her parents.

 
 
 Daybreak by Maxfield Parrish-1922
 
There is probably no question that Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell had a very unusual relationship at that time. Alice, a very young exceedingly bright but unsophisticated young girl, surely felt a very strong attraction to this unusual and entertaining man – all the young children around the college then must have felt much the same. I am reminded by this situation of what must be an archetypal tale that surely has been repeated many times in the span of human existence – the Tale of the Pied Piper. It is clearly evident from the content of Lewis Carroll’s work that he had a vast knowledge and connection to the world of fairy tales and childish rhymes which we know today had deep and enduring meaning and often spoke of terrible things from times past (e.g. “Ring around the rosy,…” and the black death).

How did it all turn out? Alice had a normal growing up (for that era), probably fell madly in love at the age of 17 with Prince Leopold, youngest son of Queen Victoria and a student at the college, married someone else, had her share of joys and sorrows, poverty and riches, and eventually was recognized and feted in America as the famous “Alice.” She died in her eighties preceded in death by two of her three sons who lost their lives in WWI and her husband.

What happened to Lewis Carroll? He spent the years from 1865 when the first publication of his Alice story appeared to his death in 1898 as a resident don in Christ Church College of Oxford University. He produced a dozen unnoteworthy books of mathematics, did his lectures, and spent a great deal of time and energy in concert with his illustrator John Tenniel on the publication of various editions of his stories. He continued with photography and it is estimated took over 3000 pictures of little girls; some say as a futile attempt to recapture little Alice.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) was a profoundly important gift to Western Culture and his story is, not surprisingly, a little sad and has the character of an enduring tragedy.

Lewis Carroll’s tales have been translated into 171 languages, appeared in 8400 editions, and illustrated by over 1000 different artists (none better than John Tenniel). They have seen the silver screen, the tv set, and stage in numerous adaptations.

Coda: I recently found among my forgotten possessions a stunningly beautiful copy of a 1940 edition of the two Alice stories given to me by my mother in 1948. It is superbly bound and printed on a high quality cream paper; the first story printed in black and blood red and the second in black and royal blue. The frontispieces are two of the most noted of Tenniel’s drawings.