"Your Sexagenarian Lover..."

"YOUR SEXAGENARIAN LOVER...":

The ages of Charles Dodgson's female friends as reflected in The Letters of Lewis Carroll

by Karoline Leach

The jacket-notes of The Letters of Lewis Carroll (Macmillan, 1979) make it plain that letters from Lewis Carroll to his famed collection of 'child-friends' are expected and intended by the editor to represent a majority of what is on offer to readers:

But by far the largest number are those intended to puzzle or delight the many young girls he ardently cultivated and who meant so much to him. These letters to child friends are often gems from Wonderland...No less interesting are the letters to the children's parents arranging to 'borrow' this young friend or that... ('Letters' ed. Cohen, 1979; jacket notes)

The first surprising thing about that statement is that is not true. Curiously, despite the jacket-notes' claim, letters from Carroll to children simply do not represent 'by far the largest' number in the collection.

The second surprising thing is that, on inspection, it turns out the largest number of letters in the collection are to woman-friends aged 20 or more, and his letters to young female children are outnumbered by those to older girls and women (an age range he is traditionally supposed to have disliked and almost pathologically avoided) by a factor of 3-2 in Volume I and 7-1 in Volume II.

(We have to emphasise in view of recent claims by Morton N. Cohen that this is woman- friends, specifically excluding family, business acquaintances and the mothers of child-friends unless the friendship with the mother can be shown to have been the primary source of attachment.)

So, in claiming 'by far the largest number' of letters were to children the editors were apparently voicing expectation - the expectation everyone had about Carroll - and not the reality of their own sampling. This may be understandable, but it is still regrettable in an important work of reference. But , more curious perhaps is the matter of "why?"; why do letters to children feature in such surprisingly small numbers in this volume - particularly when the editorial intention was evidently for them to form a significant majority? The matter is made even more curious by the fact that this is not an isolated example.

Over a century ago, a very similar thing seems to have happened to Lewis Carroll's very first biographer, his nephew Stuart Collingwood. He intended to devote a large section of his book to Dodgson's correspondence with his already legendary 'child-friends', and being Dodgson's nephew, with unlimited access to family papers, as well as person al acquaintance with many of Dodgson's female friends, he was in the best position possible to acquire as many of these letters as he needed. However, for some reason he doesn't seem to have been able to. In fact he seems to have been unable to find even e nough letters to little ones to fill his required space, and to have had to pad them out with other material, with the result that something over half his published collection of Carroll's letters to supposed 'child-friends' were actually letters to teenagers or grown women aged over 20. In somewhat questionable practise, he got over this awkward anomaly by omitting to mention the ages of the females in question. Again, when Morton Cohen was writing his biography of Carroll (1995) he seems to have encountered a similar situation. In writing a chapter somewhat sensationally called 'The Pursuit of Innocents' that purported to analyse Dodgson's numerous and potentially exploitative relationships with pre-pubescent girls, and the supposed 'differing sexual appetites' that underpinned them, Cohen was apparently unable to find sufficient 'little girl' examples to make his case, and like Collingwood, padded his material by including Dodgson's friendships with post-pubescent girls and grown women in his assemblage of supposed children. Again, like Collingwood, he tended not to include the girls' ages, thus giving the impression to the casual reader that they were all uniformly 'little', but background checks yield the fact that (again) about half the sample of letters were actually to girls aged 14 or more and about a quarter were to women aged over 18. The irony of a chapter entitled 'the Pursuit of Innocents' and devoted to a supposed analysis of Carroll's sexual fixation on pre-pubescent children, in which over 25% of the 'little girls' referred to were adult women, did not seem to impact on Cohen or his publishers.

So far as I have been able to determine, a similar story seems to have unfolded each time any author has depended on finding hard data in support of Le wis Carroll's utterly exclusive and bizarre passion for very little girls. It seems that each time a writer goes to the subject of Carroll and his child-friends with the expectation of finding large amounts of material, and each time it seems the material isn't available in the quantities or character that is expected. Instead of a homogeneous sample of 'little girls', the evidence provides something more complex, and possibly more inconvenient. Something which is often subsequently crushed or manipulated into supporting a story it doesn't actually support at all.

This is not, of course to suggest that Lewis Carroll had no interest in children, or that there are no letters to children in the published volumes. We are all familiar with the flirtatious letters to little 'favourites' like 10 year old Gertrude Chataway, or 11 year old Agnes Hull, or the younger sisters of his actress-friend Isa Bowman, offering kisses and hugs, like the somewhat infamous 'kissing letter' to Chataway [October 28 1876, Letters vol. 1 p. 260]. Such letters exist plentifully and are meaningful in any assessment of his social interaction. It is simply that they are nothing like as numerous, or as wholly representative of the extent of Carroll's correspondence as has long been assumed. These letters are often-quoted and reproduced, whereas by contrast we are less familiar, indeed almost totally unfamiliar, with the corpus of affectionate, warm and flirtatious letters to teenagers and grown women. Although many of them are there between the leaves of the published ,em> letters in large quantities, actually outnumbering the letters to younger females, they somehow remain invisible, overwritten by the expectation of 'little girls'. But let's, for once, take a look at some of them, shall we? I can't quote all 434 of the letters to older female friends reproduced in the published volumes, but we can offer a few examples to try and redress the balance.

It was 16 year old Clara Halyburton Cunynghame who inspired 36 year old Charles Dodgson to this possibly regrettable but unquestionably romantic and sentimental bout of versification:

Oh Caledonian Maiden

Oh Hallie shy and still

When 'ere I hear sweet music

On you my thoughts will fill

I shall think of those "half-hours"

In Ripon spent with you;

I shall dream of sweet Beethoven And of Mendelssohn so true

.... Think how I loved your music

Not for itself alone

But for the hands that played it

The mind that felt its tone

(Letters vol I, p. 110-12, January 1868)

The poem quoted above apparently accompanies an 'inscription' in Dodgson's hand that reads:

Dedicated with profound respect to Miss Clara Hallyburton(sic) Cunnynghame from her humble Servant The Author, In remembrance of January 1868 (Letters vol I, p. 110n)

We are left to wonder what Hallie's parents made of his attentions to their daughter, and indeed what Dodgson himself wanted his behaviour to convey. At 16 Hallie was of an age when suitors would have been expected. Writing poems like this to her would seemingly carry a danger of his intentions being interpreted as romantic. Did he intend them to be taken this way? Or was he simply being rather riskily flirtatious with this young girl? We have no information about this at all at present. More generally, examples like these (and it is not isolated) indicate that the long held belief that Lewis Carroll only began associating with physically mature girls as he entered late middle age, is as misleading as the other diagnoses of his social and emotional life have appeared to be. On the contrary, the Letters seem to show that relatively mature teenage females were forming a significant part of his social interaction before he was 40 years old and still exceedingly marriageable.

In later life it was to 24 year old Edith Miller that 62 year old Dodgson wrote on Sept. 3 1894:

Though your crimes are such as lambs cannot forgive, nor worms forget, yet as it happens, I'm neither a lamb nor a worm; so perhaps I can manage it. Please remember that, so long as Beatrice is here, it will be strictly proper for either of you to call, even alone. I think your mother will agree in this view. And even after she has left, need you be supposed to know it for a week or so? Your sexagenarian lover CLD.

19 year old Ethel Arnold received the following letter from the still-marriageable 53 year old Dodgson because her elder sister Judy (aged 22) had neglected to kiss him goodbye the previous day:

You will be kind enough to tell Judy...that I may forget but cannot forgive her utterly heartless behaviour in my rooms yesterday...I will be even with her some day; some sultry afternoon, when she is here, half fainting with thirst, I will produce a bottle of delicious cool lemonade. This I will uncork and pour it foaming into a large tumbler: and then, after putting the tumbler well within her reach, she shall have the satisfaction of seeing me drink it myself! Not a drop shall reach her lips.! (Letters, vol. I Feb. 24 1885)

And to his 22 year old mathematics protégé, Edith Rix that 56 year old Dodgson wrote while holidaying alone at Eastbourne: 'Oh Edith, I wish you could come and stay here a bit ! I believe the 'Mrs. Grundy' risk might be altogether avoided by simply arranging two or three visits to be paid consecutively, Eastbourne to be one.... I am possibly also going to have Edith Barnes down for another visit (you will be shocked to hear she is 20 this year!)...(Letters vol II, p. 715, August 1888)

'Mrs Grundy' was Dodgson's joking personification for the social disapproval he tended to encounter through his involvement in some of these adult friendships. According to his own testimony he was the subject of some malign gossip on the subject (indeed it was his adult friendships not his associations with children that were the source of all the trouble he encountered while alive; there is to my knowledge no record of his friendships with children ever being cause for disapproving comment).

It was to a former child photographic model, Beatrice Hatch, aged 28 and well passed the age when his interest is supposed to have faded that 62 year old Dodgson wrote this softly intimate and flirtatious letter:

My dear Bee, it's ever so long since I've had the pleasure of seeing you here. Won't you suggest a day when I may fetch you (say at about 5.30) for dinner and to stay, afterwards, as long as you like, only _not_ later than 3am. There I draw the line! (Letters vol II. p. 1026, June 7 1894)

And again to the same young woman:

My dear Bee... The reason I have, for so long a time, not visited the hive...is not (as you might imagine) that I think there is no more honey in it! Will you come again to dine with me? Any day would suit me and I would fetch you at 6.30. Ever your affectionate CLD (Letters vol II, p. 1105 Nov. 21, 1896)

Such woman-friendships appear to have been a feature of Dodgson's social interactions throughout his adult life, though details of those occurring earlier in his life are scanty and few if any letters seem to survive, Dodgson was seemingly close to a number of women, either similar to his own age or somewhat older, even while still an eligible bachelor in his 20s and 30s. There was Mary Bayne, the widowed mother of his close friend Thomas Vere Bayne with whom he shared many visits to London to see plays and visit art galleries. There was Catherine Lloyd, eight years his senior and the sister of a college friend. He remained friends with her until the end of his life, and they were still holidaying together at Eastbourne when they were both in their sixties. Scanty interest has ever been expended on researching these relationships so little remains known about them at this time.

Then there were the woman-friends who were married to other men. These too seem to have been a factor in his social life from his early adulthood, though again, little is known of his earliest friendships beyond passing references to names that can rarely be identified. The earliest such married woman-friend of which there is any significant documentation, is Lorina Liddell, mother of Alice. But even here evidence is scanty, and the only surviving letters date from many years after his friendship with the lady and her children had ceased to be factor in his life. Nonetheless the few letters that remain hint ambiguously at an interaction more complex than the usually understood one involving Lewis Carroll and the 'real Alice's' family. This, for example was what he wrote to Lorina on the occasion of her husband's retirement from the college:

To me life in Christ Church will be a totally different thing when the faces, familiar to me for 36 years, are seen no more among us. It seems but yesterday when the Dean and you first arrived: yet I was hardly more than a boy then; and many of the pleasantest memories of those early years - that foolish time that seemed as if it would last forever - are bound up with the names of yourself and your children: and now I am an old man, already beginning to feel a litttle weary of life - at any rate weary of it's pleasures and only caring to go on, on the chance of doing a little more work . (Letters, vol II, p. 870, November 12 1891) It's perhaps notable that he confides to her tha t his memories are 'bound up' with the names of her and her children - but not apparently with her husband, the children's father. And indeed this is a pattern that was to be repeated a few times in Dodgson's friendships with married women and their children; the friendship would be close and quasi-paternal, and would tend to exclude the father to some extent, sometimes almost totally. This was the case with Constance Burch and her daughter; with Sarah Blakemore and her daughter, and to a slightly lesser extent with Mrs Poole and her daughters, Mrs Mallam and her children, the Rix daughters and their mother.

His later married -woman-friendships are somewhat better, though not extensively, documented, and several examples of his letters to these ladies are r eproduced in the Letters. It was to Mrs Poole the mother of 13 year old Dorothy, a pupil at the Oxford High School that Dodgson wrote:

Child-society is very delightful to me: but I confess that grown-up society is much _more_ interesting! In fact most of my 'child-friends' are now about 25… (Letters vol. II p. 1104, Nov. 16 1896)

Dodgson befriended Dorothy first and had her to dinner once, but then turned attention to her mother, inviting her to follow her daughter's example:

Now I wonder whether you, encouraged by the circumstance that your daughter has returned alive, will brave the ogre's den, and come and dine with me?

One seemingly very close married woman friend has several letters quoted in the published Letters. Her name was Constance Burch, and when they met Dodgson was 61 and she was 38, and the mother of a little girl - another Dorothy - Dodgson befriended. The fragments of the correspondence between Dodgson and Constance published in the Letters tell their own story.

In May 1893 Dodgson wrote to Constance, whom he had met just a short while before, inviting her to spend a few days in London with him:

When, lately I took Winifred Stevens* to town , one Saturday, and on to my sister's house at Guildford for the Sunday, I lent her a small portmanteau ...In this she managed to pack an evening dress, and all she needed for her visit... Now, I may be able, on June 3rd, or else the 10th...to make a similar expedition with you...If you can come (as I much hope you will be able) could you manage with that amount of luggage? (if not never mind) You would, I hope, allow me to take my usual course of paying _all_ expenses, including your cab down to the station... [Letters vol II ,May 20 1893] (NB:The 'Winifred' in question is 19 year old Winifred Stevens, who was engaged to be married when she had this weekend away with CLD - presumably - as Morton Cohen has observed - her fiance was a very trusting or open- minded man.)

Dodgson took Constance to town later that summer – they visited art galleries together, saw a show and spent the night in his sisters' Guildford home before returning to Oxford. A few days later he wrote her this little note:

You have not told me whose photo in Charles 1 you would like to have as a memento of our trip....May I fetch you some day this week at say 3.30 for a stroll, tea, dinner, and as much evening as you feel equal too? I don't think we should bore each other to any unendurable extent! (Letters vol. II, p. 962-3, July 2 1893)

They remained friends for some years, though - after a visit to Dodgson from her husband for undisclosed reasons - they seem to have stopped dining alone and spending so much time together.

At the moment it seems letters like these and the social and/or emotional interaction they reflect exist in a kind of limbo inside Lewis Carroll's biography. Although the editor of the Letters doesn't try to hide the fact that they exist, and even though he faithfully records the unchaperoned trips to Eastbourne and London that Dodgson made with these ladies, yet somehow they do not impact perceptibly on any one, even the editor himself. The expectation that Dodgson was somehow defined by girl-children, that they formed 'the largest part' of his correspondence and were the key to the understanding of his life seems so powerful within us all that anything which is not girl-children is intuitively deemed unmeaning, however large a part it seems to have played in his life.

But the fact that, in direct contradiction of its own claim, the published Letters contain more letters to adult woman-friends than to 'little girls' is not a small or isolated example of such anomalies as I have shown above. It is part of a coherent picture which inevitably shows that the reality of Lewis Carroll's relations with the opposite sex does not match the mythology attached to it, even when it is quite forcibly constrained into doing so. All these factors demand further consideration and investigation and a preparedness on our part to change our way of looking at this almost too-famous man.

Does the great mass of his still unpublished correspondence conform to this pattern? Does it confirm Dodgson's numerous female-friendships contained only a minority - and sometimes quite a small minority -of 'little girls?' At present we don't know, as no analysis has yet been attempted. But it would be very interesting and possibly revealing to see it done.

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MORE DETAILED BREAKDOWN OF THE PERCENTAGES

There are 541 letters to Dodgson's female friends* published in the Letters:

147 are to girls aged 1-13;

184 are to girls aged 14-19

250 are to women aged 20+.

*(we have to emphasise in view of recent claims by Morton N. Cohen that this is woman- friends, specifically excluding family, business acquaintances and the mothers of child- friends unless the friendship with the mother can be shown to have been the primary source of attachment.)

LETTERS TO ‘LITTLE GIRLS’

In the published Letters there are a total of 147 letters from Dodgson to female children aged under 13:

108 in Volume I 39 in Volume II

It is, surprisingly perhaps, the age group with fewest letters overall.

LETTERS TO TEENAGE GIRLS

In the published Letters there are a total of 184 letters from Dodgson to female friends aged 14 -19:

102 in Volume I 82 in Volume II.

After 1869, Dodgson's letters to teenage girl-friends outnumber those to young childfriends in all but 9 of the remaining 28 years of his life.

LETTERS TO ADULT WOMEN FRIENDS

In the published Letters there are 250 letters to female friends aged 20 +

53 in Volume I 197 in Volume II.

It is, surprisingly, the age group with the most letters overall. As stated above this does NOT include female relations or mere business or professional acquaintances; only women-friends with whom Dodgson appears to have shared a degree of fairly close social interaction or emotional intimacy have been counted.