Anne Clark Amor (1933–2012)

Say again? Whose dream child is it exactly?

This book is the first real biography of Alice Pleasance Liddell Hargreaves, who as a ten-year-old inspired Charles Dodgson/Lewis Carroll to write the two "Alice" books. Thus there is some reason to call her his dream child. He certainly seems to have loved Alice -- he went into a profound depression when he could no longer meet her, and spend thirty years trying to get her to be his friend again.

But Alice was a good deal more than that -- she was herself a fine artist, an extremely intelligent woman, a very determined manager who was probably loved by a prince and ended up marrying, at a relatively late age, a very wealthy sportsman. She lost two of her three sons in World War I. She earned an honorary doctorate at eighty. Her story would be well worth telling even if she hadn't inspired Dodgson to write one of the world's greatest works of nonsense.

So this book needed to be written. I'm not disputing that. But I am bothered by the way it comes out. The Alice it portrays strikes me as more than a little unreal. Alice seems to have loved Dodgson as a child -- and despised him as an adult. At least, that's how she acted, although their relationship has extreme ambiguities (e.g. she named one of her sons "Caryl"). This biography seems to be too intent on making the relationship work. In other words, it puts too much "Alice" in Alice. That makes it hard to trust.

On the evidence, Alice Liddell was not just Charles Dodgson's dream child. In this book at least, she was Anne Clark's dream child also.… (más)

The history of Lewis Carroll biographies has had several stages. The first was the period immediately after his death, when none of his papers had been published. A few decades after that, a few more letters had come to light, but still nothing of his diaries. Then his diaries were released in a somewhat bowdlerized form, then finally the surviving volumes were released in full -- including the curious fact that several pages had been cut out.

The first period was one of lionization. Dodgson's/Carroll's nephew wrote a biography full of praise, and everyone sought to emulate that. The second phase saw a mass of wild speculations, about being in love, or lust, with Alice Liddell, and other goofy ideas. The third saw things settle down a little, but no one realized how much was yet to be revealed. Now, we are seeing a new sort of speculation, less psychosexual (all the serious biographers have dropped that) but revealing much more just how unusual Dodgson was. (The explanation is pretty clear; he was autistic. But no biography, to date, has really taken that into account.)

This biography is one of the leading productions of the third period. Anne Clark still has an immense respect for Dodgson, and she still suffers from the problems of not having the complete diaries. Sometimes, as a result, she makes assertions which seem pretty unlikely in light of what we now know. But none of her ideas are crazy in the way the early twentieth century speculations were crazy. It merely seems as if she likes Dodgson a little too much.

Her feelings, and the information to which she doesn't have access, mean that this is certainly not the first biography one should turn to. (That distinction probably belongs to Morton N. Cohen's.) But if you are willing to read three or four biographies, this is a very useful work. It's like reading the perspective of one of Dodgson's personal friends: A little too complimentary, a little too incomplete, but very cozy. Just remember that there were more secrets to come.… (más)