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Lewis Carroll: A Biography (1996)

por Michael Bakewell

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This is the first biography of Lewis Carroll for 16 years. It explores the complex and contradictory character of the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a man as strange and singular as any of the creations of his alter ego, Lewis Carroll.
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How much did he know and when did he know it?

That is the question that must always be asked about a biographer of Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), because so much of the information about his life was kept secret for so long. His photographic negatives and his personal letters were mostly destroyed. His diaries were kept secret for so long that four of thirteen volumes disappeared. When they were first published, they had been heavily abridged, and occasionally physically doctored, and the editor (Roger Lancelyn Green) was not allowed to see the originals. It wasn't until about a century after Dodgson's death that the diaries were truly given to the public. It took a long time to gather a decent collection of his letters, too. The sad effect of all this is that, although some of his child-friends lived until the 1950s and even beyond that, we never had (for instance) a chance for the friends to respond to the diaries.

The result is that, until fairly recently, each new biography had a little more source information than the one before -- more testimonials, more letters, more diary entries -- and often created an entirely new Dodgson as a result. This book comes near but not at the end of the process: It has access to the Green editions of the diaries, and to photocopies of some additional parts, but not the final diary editions by Edward Wakeling. Nor does it have access to some of the most recent information about Dodgson's photography (which shows that he didn't take nearly as many nude photographs as people seem to think).

The result is, I think, just a little distorted. In some parts, it is very insightful -- it makes clear the long, slow meander that turned Dodgson from the rebel who wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, featuring the original Spunky Girl Who Isn't Going to Sit Still for a Male Dominated World, into the prig who would walk out on a play because a child said "damme" and whose most notable work was the turgid, minimally comprehensible Sylvie and Bruno. And yet, I don't think Bakewell really explains why Dodgson lost his way so completely. This is one of the big things a biography must explain, and Bakewell talks about the issue a lot but never really gets down to it.

And I think Bakewell goes on a little bit too much about Dodgson and nude photography. Let's be clear: Dodgson was always happiest around people younger than he was, especially girls. (We should emphasize that, in his later years, it wasn't just children; while the best friend of his old age was probably Enid Stevens, who was still a pre-teen, he also spent a lot of time with women such as Gertrude Chataway and Beatrice Hatch and Ethel Hatch, who by then were in their mid- to late twenties, and it was "Bee" Hatch who received what seems to have been the last letter he ever sent to one of his friends.) And, yes, he took nude photographs of some of them, certainly including two of the Hatch girls (since the pictures have survived) and probably at least one of Chataway (probably his closest friend after Alice Liddell, since he dedicated The Hunting of the Snark to her). And he certainly talked about kissing girls a lot. There is no question but that a lot of Dodgson's behavior would almost certainly make any modern person say "yuck!" -- although it should be kept in mind that most Victorians had a similar ridiculous view of children; Dodgson wasn't the only one who was constantly pawing pre-adolescents. It's just that he's the one we hear about, since he wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. At least he wasn't marrying twelve-year-olds, as many of his contemporaries did!

And I really don't think Bakewell understands Dodgson's relationship to Alice Liddell, either, which is fundamental to his whole life. Fundamental not because Dodgson was enamored of Liddell -- he was, eventually. But only eventually. At the time he wrote Alice's Adventures, he was just as close to her older sister Lorina and younger sister Edith. It was after he and the Liddell family had had their great unexplained quarrel that Alice became the One and Only Alice -- the child-friend he spent thirty years trying to repair his relationship with (but whose memory he so re-wrote that it's easy to see why she wasn't interested).

Now ask yourself: Who moons on about a relationship for thirty years after it's ended? It's not a guy who just gets his jollies about young girls. Rather, it's a guy who sees the world in an unusual way and wants to be around people who also see the world in an unusual way. And a man who becomes friends with them -- and wants to be friends forever. Dodgson was never fickle; he would retain a friendship as long as the child was willing (and on several occasions wrote feelingly to his adult friends about how so many child-friends abandoned him).

So I think Bakewell gives too much time to the nude photos and the pawing, and too little to the friendships. Could he have done better, given the knowledge he had available? Certainly it would have been harder than it is now. This is not a crazy biography, like those of Florence Becker Lennon or Karoline Leach. You will learn things about Dodgson you probably would not have learned elsewhere. But I just can't believe that Bakewell truly understood Dodgson. ( )
1 vota waltzmn | Jan 9, 2019 |
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For Melissa,
who has encourages, helped and suffered this
book at every stage, kept it afloat, driven me round
its locations and read its text with a patient and
diligent eye,
with my love,
and for Leo,
companion of my morning walks round Richmond and of my
first visit to Croft Rectory.
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Introduction
'The Rev. C.L. Dodgson', wrote Virginia Woolf, 'had no life,' and, in the sense that he did not elope with a bed-ridden lady poet, or search for the source of the Nile, or declare himself the head of a fledgling Balkan republic, I suppose that this is true.
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This is the first biography of Lewis Carroll for 16 years. It explores the complex and contradictory character of the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a man as strange and singular as any of the creations of his alter ego, Lewis Carroll.

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