I HE WHITE EHI G H T 4 STtDY OF C. L . DODGSON (LW LS CARROLL) ; b y ALEXANDER L , TAYLOR, M J i . ProQuest Number: 13838374 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 13838374 Published by ProQuest LLC(2019). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 4 8 1 0 6 - 1346 0 0 STB N T S. SUMMARY. CHAPTER I. BEFORE ALICE. CHAPTER II. THE LITTLE LOW DOOR. CHAPTER III. MR. DODGSON IN WONDERLAND. CHAPTER IV. ALICE WAVES HER HANDKERCHIEF. CHAPTER V. THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS. CHAPTER VI. CHASMS AND CRAGS. CHAPTER VII. OUTLAND, BIBLIOGRAPHY. SUMMARY. In "The White Knight," the story of C. L. Dodgson ("Lewis Carroll") is re-told. The original biography by Stuart Dodgson Collingwood was ¥/ritten in the lifetime of many people whose feelings had to be considered and information vital to an understanding of Dodgson as a man was deliberately suppressed. His relations with Alice Liddell and with the Liddell family were passed over in silence when they could not be represented as idyllic. Proof is now offered that Dodgson’s love for the child Alice Liddell did not end with her childhood but affected his entire life. Alice was more than the heroine of the "Adventures," more than the child to whom they were originally told. She acted on Dodgson as a powerful stimulus and catalyst, fusing in her service all his powers and rewarding him with a smile. At her feet he laid his mathematics, his imagination, wit and adult interest in the intellectual battles which raged in and about Oxford during the years in which "Alice" and "Through the Looking-glass" were composed. Robbed of her by disparity in age, the long-drawn-out hostility of the Dean and Mrs. Liddell and Alice’s preference for a younger man, he slowly disintegrated, aged prematurely and died without fulfilling the promise of his earlier work. The development of Dodgson*s ideas from "Rectory Umbrella" days, through "Alice" to "Through the Looking-glass" is traced in ii detail. It is shown that ’’Alice” in part and ’’Through the Looking-glass” as a whole can be appreciated by children only as ’’Gulliver* e Travels” is appreciated. In ’’The Hunting of the Snark” wit struggles, and in the long run triumphs over feelings akin to despair, while in ’’Sylvie and Bruno” genius has given way to mere ingenuity and creation to thinly disguised autobiography. The analytical parts are claimed as new and original, but new biographical material will also be found, concerning Dodgson and the Liddells. Much of this has been supplied by Miss P. Menella Dodgson who, -with her sisters, now has the surviving volumes of Dodgoor^s unpublished diary. During a correspondence which has extended over several years no request by the present writer has ever been refused. As a result, the picture has been transformed and much that in Collingwood appears casual and chatty acquires new significance in the light of this information. CHAPTER I BEFORE ALICE On January 27th, 1832, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was horn at Daresbury, near Warrington. His father and mother were full cousins and he was the eldest son and third of eleven children* all of whom stammered. His mother was a quiet, gentle person, whose influence, though life-long, was mild and the dominant personality in the Rectory was that of his father. Charles Dodgson, the elder was a very remarkable father to have. The son of a captain in the 4 th Dragoon Guards, he was born at Hamilton in Lanarkshire and educated at Westminster: and Christ Church, Oxford, where he took a double first in Classics and Mathematics. His father, the Captain, was the first break in a long line of churchmen and Charles Dodgson reverted to the family profession In 1830 he married his first cousin, Frances Jane Lutwidge and settled at Daresbury as Rector of that quiet, sleepy little place. It was thirteen years before Sir Robert Peel*s influence obtained for him the Grown living at Croft in Yorkshire. Soon afterwards, he was examining chaplain to the Bishop of Ripon; later Arch­ deacon of Richmond and in 1853 & Canon of Ripon Cathedral# That was his limit. He was comfortably off but never rich,a man of strong views, on the fringe of the important events which happened in the Church during his life time, a brilliant but never an eminent mathematician, a ripe Classical scholar, a reader of the Times, a wit. Of his qualifications to be the father of "Lewis Carroll," the two most important were his mathematics and his strong (but not extreme) views on Church affairs. In both of these, whether deliberately or inadvertently, he interested Charles at an early age, whereas the boy showed little aptitude for Latin, in which his father had been equally proficient. Charles had a natural aptitude for mathematics. As a mere child he found a book of logarithms and took it to his father with the request: "Please explain." His father smilingly told him he was much too young to understand so difficult a subject. "But." said young Dodgson, with devastating simplicity, "please explain." He was educated entirely at horne in the years he spent at Daresbury and for a year after that at Croft. During this period the Tracts for the Times were appearing and being read by his father whose theological position as he later revealed it in his sermon "Ritual Worship” of 1852 was that of Keble and even Newman up to the Tract XC period. Young Charles saw his father at work on his translation of 3 * Tertullian for the Library of the Fathers* He knew that Dr* Pusey was writing footnotes for it. Here were mysteries; Logarithms and the Primitive Church* numbers arranged according to some unfathomable system and a great incomprehensible Church controversy in which his own father was somehow involved. The boy would seek refuge in the garden where he made pets of snails and toads and tried to understand their ways of thought - with about equal success. He tried to interest earth worms in fighting but with no success at all. These were the early days of the railways and Charles must have been one of the first children in the world to play at trains. He had a model railway in the garden at Croft and, displaying a practical streak no doubt transmitted from his Yorkshire ancestors, sold tickets and refreshments to the passengers. He was always extremely conscious of the value of money and though generous with it in his later affluence, neither careless himself nor inclined to condone carelessness in others. In this the child was father of the man. He was also a born entertainer, and found an audience ready to hand in his numerous brothers and sisters. He enjoyed mystifying them and here again displayed a trait which remained with him throughout his life* One of his amusements was amateur conjuring and another marionettes. For the latter he wrote his own plays, but while this shows his bent towards writing It is still more important that he liked doing tilings 4* behind a screen, manipulating wires and making puppets dance, disguising his voice, producing things out of nowhere* Abracadabra! One winter he constructed a maze in the snovif all his life he enjoyed setting puzzles* At the age of twelve, Charles was sent to a private school at Richmond from which he wrote his first parody, to his brother Skeffington, aged six* ,fMy dear Skeff - Roar not lest thou be abolished* Yours, etc* - n All his life he was a parodist.. In his first report upon him, Mr Tate remarks upon his remarkable prowess in mathematics - scarcely surprising when one considers that few children of his age are coached by a first-class mathematicianf nevertheless it does prove his mathematical bent, for his progress in latin is less satisfactory and he had been coached by a first-class classical scholar. Mr Tate does not hesitate to credit him with genius, but advises his parents to conceal from him his 11 superiority over other boys*” His reports from Rugby, to which he proceeded in 1846 confirm his mathematical precociousness and for the first time we have direct evidence of his interest In theology. ttHis mathematical knowledge,” writes Dr Tait, tfis great for his age.” He does not say that his knowledge of the classics is great for his age but only "and I doubt not he will do himself credit in classics*” If he had already done himself credit. Dr Tait would doubtless have said so* ”As I believe I mentioned to you before, his examination for the Divinity prize was one of the most creditable exhibitions I have ever seen.” How Dr Tait was formerly one of the Four Tutors who protested against Kewman*s Tract XC, and a future archbishop of Canterbury. ”My dear father,” Dodgson wrote to a friend in the i860* s, ”was what is called a *High Churchman* and I naturally adopted these views.” Before he left Rugby he was evidently deeply interested in Church affairs and in mathematics; and he continued to be deeply interested in both as long as he lived.