INTRODUCTION
Literature is important because it is enjoyable, it offers the readers a potential escape from real life’s disappointments. Because of its capacity of entertaining people, literature survives and becomes immortal. Literature is thought-provoking, develops one’s imagination and language. It can take you to different, even unknown spaces, put you in the shoes of a character, make you live in another era and make you see another cultures and viewpoints.
In my paper, I will discuss the importance of literature in children’s life. Entitled “Victorian Literature for Children: Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, this paper deals with the innovative techniques Lewis Carroll used in his masterpiece to make it appealing to children. He was the first to give children what they wanted: a story to enjoy.
I have chosen this theme because Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland brings out the child in me and I have been intrigued by it since I first heard the story. It makes your mind go to fantastic places with the help of the strange creatures Alice meets along the way.
Why has this novel aimed for children drawn everybody’s attention? Because it inaugurates a new era of children’s literature: books that did not have to be didactic. Lewis Carroll gives children an imaginative world in which children could let their minds wander free. The result was a story where logic and nonsense were embraced. Carroll made the fantasy world popular in the world of children’s publishing. And nowadays, we can all enjoy it, even if we are not children anymore.
In the first chapter, entitled “An Overview of the Victorian Period and Literature”, we will treat aspects of the Victorian era, an era in which Britain was the superpower of the world, an era in which industry progressed considerably as a result of the Industrial Revolution, an era in which prudery reigned over the Victorian society. As for the field of literature, the novel was the predominant literary species and reading fiction was a mean of relaxing. A lot of works were printed and available to the reading audience, because of the development of printing machines. This chapter will be divided into four sections: “The Victorian Age”, which describes the era: its regime, main events and technical developments; “The Victorian Frame of Mind”, which describes the moral values of the society; “The Victorian Literature”, which is a general overview of literature produced in the Victorian period and “The Victorian Novel& Realism”, which describes what was depicted in Victorian novels and presents several famous authors of Victorian novels.
The second chapter, “An Outline of Lewis Carroll’s/Charles Lutwidge Dodgson’s life and work”, presents the man with two names: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and Lewis Carroll, a genius, both in mathematics and literature. Charles Dodgson was rather a sober man, while Carroll was a delightful company to children to whom he enjoyed telling stories. Everyone knew Charles Dodgson and Lewis Carroll was the same person, even though he denied having any contribution to Carroll’s books. The chapter starts with an abstract introduction, followed by the sections: “The Life of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson/ Lewis Carroll”, in which we will present the life led by the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; “Lewis Carroll’s/ Charles Lutwidge Dodgson literary work”, in which we will give an account of the works of literature published under the name of Lewis Carroll and of the mathematical works published under the name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson; “Charles Lutwidge Dodgson- Photographer and Inventor” in which names of the famous people Dodgson photographed will be given and his inventions will be presented; “Lewis Carroll’s literary devices”, a short presentation of the techniques he uses in his works; “Lewis Carroll- a man of controversies?” in which we will talk about the shifting reputation of the famous author and the mysteries surrounding his life.
In Chapter three, “Victorian Literature for Children: Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, we will present the plot, characters, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’s themes, motifs, symbols and the importance of Lewis Carroll’s work for the literature of children. Children’s books are one of the most important forms of writing we have because it inspires the undeveloped mind in the long run. The book’s complexity makes it children’s literature’s masterpiece. The chapter will begin with a little introduction and will be followed by the sections: “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland- Summary”, in which the plot will be presented, chapter by chapter; “The Fantastic Characters of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, in which we will give an account of all the characters of the story and a little description; “Themes, Motifs and Symbols in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, in which themes, motifs and symbols will be discussed upon and “Victorian Literature for Children: Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, in which we will discuss the importance of the work for children’s literature, its connections with the Victorian environment of children and some of its hidden meanings critics have talked about.
To conclude, this paper will give us the chance to widen our knowledge about the man who wrote under the pen name of Lewis Carroll, about the works that have enchanted millions of children from the whole world, and in particularly, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which is ranked as one of the best book for children of all times.
“Always speak the truth, think before you speak, and write it down afterwards.”
-Lewis Carroll
Chapter I: An Overview of the Victorian Period and Literature
1.1. The Victorian Age
The Victorian Age is still not exactly defined, because there is a lot of information to be interpreted and different point of views to take into consideration. What is accurate is that the word ‘’development’’ is a key-word that describes this era. There were advances in the political domain, in the socio-economic domain and in the cultural one. From mentalities to scientific, technological and medical knowledge, everything was changing for the better. The economic growth was obvious and the technical progress was one of its consequences. Although for many people this era was exceptional, for some it was a period of cultural decline, anarchy of spirit, widespread poverty and poor-working conditions. Some were sure that the history of Victorian Age would never be written:
‘’It would have been futile to hope to tell you even a précis of the truth about the Victorian age, for the shortest précis must fill innumerable volumes’’.
The one to rule England during this period of prosperity was Queen Victoria who became Queen of England after the death of her uncle, King William IV. She was the first English monarch to see her name given to the period of her reign whilst still alive. During her reign, the middle class was educated and contained a great number of people all because of the profits gained from the overseas British Empire, as well as from the industrial improvements in England. The real governing authority was the Parliament, though. Victoria’s reign seemed unique from the previous ones, two major events proving it: the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution . The French Revolution’s ‘’liberty, equality and fraternity’’ claimed by French intellectuals and artists enthused English people. The Revolution’s purpose was to annihilate the corrupt and undemocratic system. At the end of the eighteenth century, however, the Reign of Terror (French: Régime de la terreur) had started. The French Jacobins were using the guillotine to purify France. From 1790 on, France and England were always in conflict until 1815, when the final battle between English and France took place at Waterloo. Napoleon Bonaparte, self-proclaimed Emperor since 1804, was defeated and exiled. After 1815, the British Tories started to limit people’s rights and liberties for fear that a revolution might start in England as well.
Some historians claim that the Victorian Period actually started in 1815, when the war ended and others claim that it really began in 1832, with the Reform Bill and that it ended in 1902 with the end of the Boer War .
The Industrial Revolution was possible because of trade, foreign exploration and conquest in India, Africa and the Americas, population growth, bigger markets and most importantly, British economy. London was a huge commercial centre even before the revolution due to its great naval power, its continuous foreign expansion and its business-oriented commercial class. Two of the developments which revolutionised England were coal power and steam power. Industrial towns like Manchester (the biggest industrial centre), Bradford, Birmingham, began to portrait a new flourishing England. Railroads were invented too. (The railway system of Great Britain is the oldest in the world.) Economic matters were solved through ‘’laissez-faire’’ , the state trying to stay away from issues concerning trade. Many of the effects of industrialization were: urbanization, employment and unemployment , low wages, long work-hours, crowded houses, disease like: typhus and cholera.
During Victoria’s reign, Great Britain was, apart from a powerful island nation, the centre of a global empire: the British Empire, which contained almost a quarter of the Earth’s land surface and which ruled more than 400 million people. Australia, Canada, Cyprus, Egypt, Hong Kong, British India (now Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka), Ireland, Malta, New Zealand, Nigeria, Singapore were between the countries colonised by 1907. Among the political coordinates of the Victorian Era were expansion, socialism, liberalism.
Victorian Era can be divided into:
1. The Early Victorian Period (1830-1850) – when England prepared the conditions to become an industrial and modern state;
2. The Mid-Victorian Period (1851-1870) – when England obtained economic power and political preeminence;
3. The Late Victorian Period (1871-1901) – when England witnessed a gradual decline of its economy and politics.
1.2. The Victorian Frame of Mind
Some of the Victorian values were:
1. Bourgeois ideals;
2. Hard work, sense of duty;
3. Morality;
4. Patriotism;
5. Respectability;
6. Sexuality.
1. Victorian people were organised by Bourgeois ideals. Families were patriarchal, the father being the breadwinner, the spring of authority and discipline, his position being imposed by Divine Providence, and whom women and children had to obey. Women, on the contrary, were supervising the education of their children, were managers of home affairs and budgets, but also had an obedient position.
2. Hard work, sense of duty was strongly encouraged. Work-days were really long (between 14-18 hours per day) and children of poor families were exploited. Often, employers preferred women and children, as they were accepting lower wages. Labour laws appeared only after the reformist wave in the 1830’s.
3. Morality was one of the most important concerns of the Victorian Age. This morality, especially sexual morality had its roots within the Queen’s and her husband’s attitude, who knew that the previous monarchs had led a morally-lacking life. The country grew ridiculously puritanical : sober manners and speech, interdiction of men to smoke in public and of women to ride a bike, very formal garments. However, at the end of the century, people began to react against these traditional ideals.
4. Patriotism, influenced by ideas of racial superiority, alongside with civil pride and national fervour, were some of the most predominant values during that period. British people were convinced that some were fated to be led by others, according to racial differences.
5. The pattern which differentiated the lower classes from the middle ones was respectability, a blend of ethics, severity, and compliance to social standards. Respectability entailed regular attendance at church, well-behaved conduct and charitable actions.
6. Repression of sexuality and extreme prudery seemed to be very extreme features during this era. Words connected with sexuality were rejected and people were referring to legs and arms as ‘’extremities’’ and ‘’limbs’’ . Ironically, Queen Victoria enjoyed drawing and collecting male nude-figure drawings and one time she even offered her husband one as a gift.
1.3. The Victorian Literature
The literature fabricated in the Victorian Age as a connection between the writers of the Romantic period and the divergent literature of the twentieth century is labeled as the ‘’Victorian Literature’’.
The technological innovations of the nineteenth-century life genuinely had a great effect on literature. It became more accessible, more diverse and more read by sundry audiences. The progress of machine-made paper and rotary steam press had begun to diminish the cost of printing by 1820. Monthly journals began to proliferate. Blackwood’s, The London Review. The Westminster Review, Fraser were among the most popular before 1832.
A bank crisis in 1825 had an impact on the literary field and, as a consequence, numerous important publishing companies became insolvent: Constable- publisher of Encyclopedia Britannica and Sir Walter Scott .
Literate poor people read ballads, broadsheets , traditional chapbooks and penny dreadfuls like The Calendar of Horrors : A Series of Romantic Legends, Terrific Tales, Awful Narrations. Literature became even more distorted because of the idea of a national literature. American literature and English literature came to resemble. The most popular international bestseller was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which sold approximately one and a half million copies in the 1850’s.
Many critics in 1830 observed that newspapers and journals were full of political analysis, and even John Stuart Mill claimed that literature would ‘’degrade’’ because of the prevalence of periodicals.
Victorian poetry was not as famous as the last century. Alfred Tennyson was one of the most read poets of the Victorian Age, but despite the impression, William Wordsworth’s place in the sympathies of knowledgeable Victorians was not taken by any contemporary poet.
‘’Wordsworth has gone from us-and ye,
Ah, may ye feel his voice as we.
He too upon a wintry clime
Had fallen- on this iron time
Of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears.
He found us when the age had bound
Our souls in its benumbing round;
He spoke and loos’d our heart in tears.
He laid us as we lay at birth
On the cool flowery lap of earth;
Smiles broke from us and we had ease.
The hills were round us, and the breeze
Went o’er the sun-lit fields again:
Our foreheads felt the wind and rain.
Our youth return’d: for there was shed
On spirits that had long be dead,
Spirits dried up and closely-furl’d,
The freshness of the early world.’’ The variety of disruption and supreme moral effort in Wordsworth’s poems is a keener and more strenuous response to the modern demythologized world than what we find in any Victorian poet.
A short time ago, the Victorian era was thought of as one of literary decline, disintegration, uninventiveness, its literature was massively criticized because of its sentimentalism and hypocrisy. At the present time it is being acclaimed as an era of massive accomplishment regarding the literary field, even as the greatest in English literary history. Such authors as Benjamin Disraeli, Leslie Stephen or George Eliot are beginning to receive attention from the reading public, while writers as William MakepeaceThackeray, George Meredith, Tennyson, Mrs. Humphry Ward, Robert Browning and others, after loads of ovations during their lifetime, went out of favour in the olden days.
Even though critical opinion of Victorian poetry has not changed lots, the era is no more viewed just as one of cultural impoverishment and mediocrity, not only because of its scientific developments, but also because of great writings as: Sir James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough, John Stuart Mill’s Logic, George Grote’s History of Greece, Francis Herbert Bradley’s Ethical Studies and Appearance and Reality and Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species. It is when we look beyond literature when we realize how much virgin ground was cultivated by the Victorians. Yet, the account does not add up to an exceptional literary era. Not numerous outstanding novels, poems, plays were written in those times, but there were enormous quantities of captivating, heterogeneous reading-matter: biographies and autobiographies, periodical journalism, criticism, books of travel and for children, history.
Early Victorians wanted to improve the condition of England, to tone down fanaticism, to become accustomed to the progress of science. At the end of the nineteenth century, writers detected that the middle-class principles, which they had helped to establish, were complacent and intolerably ‘’Philistine’’ . In this time, serious satirists could have step in, but apart from Samuel Butler , minor satiric writing was fabricated.
Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray(1891) is perhaps the most representative writing for the bewilderment of that time, a story in which the protagonist, a beautiful young man grows obsessed with his physical appearance and stays forever young, even though his heart is cold as ice.
Novelists grew more independent and their writings were widely read. Women novelists, like Jane Austen and Fanny Burney, found more generous opportunities. The novel, in the same way as Elizabethan drama did, served as a prevalent necessity, making the cruel conditions of Victorian life seem less hard:
‘’The only effect I ardently long to produce by my writings is that those who read them should be better able to imagine and to feel the pains and the joys of those who differ from themselves in everything but the broad fact of being struggling, erring human creatures… My artistic bent is directed not at all to the presentation of eminently irreproachable characters, but to the presentation of mixed human beings in such a way as to call forth tolerant judgement, pity and sympathy.’’
Given this point, there are four categories of Victorian literature:
1. Non-fiction (Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Matthew Arnold) – essays, longer works of philosophical, historical and artistic analysis intended to discuss the problems of English society.
2. Prose (the novel as the most popular literary species of Victorian literature) -Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, George Eliot, the Brontë sisters.
3. Poetry – Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
4. Drama – Oscar Wilde.
1.4. The Victorian Novel& Realism
Being tired of the idealization of world the Romantics have been preoccupied with, the middle class demanded as lecture realistic novels which portrayed the contemporary world exactly as it was. Realism puts emphasis on the ordinary (situation, person, life), rejects the noble and the heroic and welcomes the comic, the middle class and the pedestrian. Victorian realism implied: reality portrayal (the real capitalist England being described, presenting it as it was, with the social inequity and the horrible conditions poor classes lived under); preach-like tendency (man is viewed as capable of reaching perfection); a hero belonging to the lower class (being compared to people from the middle class); the novel as favoured literary species (its structure allowing for a full description of the aspects targeted).
Charles Dickens was one of the most popular realistic writers. Some examples of realistic Victorian novels are Jane Eyre (written by Charlotte Brontë), Jude the Obscure (written by Thomas Hardy), Oliver Twist (written by Charles Dickens).
Victorian writers can be divided into Early Victorians: Charles Dickens, the Brontë sisters (Charlotte and Emily) and George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans ) and Later Victorians : Thomas Hardy, Oscar Wilde, William Makepeace Thackeray, George Meredith, Elizabeth Gaskell.
The Victorian era inaugurated the prevalence of the novel as the most convenient literary species to debate the real issues of the epoch and not just to entertain the readers. What drama and poetry had represented in previous ages (i.e. Romanticism and Renaissance) the novel grew to be for this one, as it was extensively demanded by the reading public.
‘’Leisure time’’ appeared for both women and men in the nineteenth century, which signified that the novel was for both genders a way of distracting after a hard day’s work. Victorian novels were most commonly published in or altogether with newspapers, every week or month a sequential installment.
The literary trend of the Victorian novel was realism as people wanted to read the genuine observations or remarks of reality made by the writer.
‘’Art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow-men beyond the bonds of our personal lot. All the more sacred is the task of the artist when he undertakes to paint the life of the people. Falsification here is far more pernicious than in the more artificial aspects of life… The thing for mankind to know is not what are the motifs and influences which the moralist thinks ought to act on the labourer or the artisan, but what are the motifs and influences that do act on him.’’
The realist Victorian novel focuses on the background and on characterization. There is an abundance of details concerning both the story and the characters. The hero’s life in the Victorian novel is generally presented chronologically from childhood to maturity, and ultimately, to old age. The characters are introduced to the reader either by fully portraying them from the start of the novel or the character develops as the story progresses. Every Victorian novel tended to contain a profound moral. Therefore, the writer had the assignment to teach valuable lessons of morality and virtue, to indulge the readers into meditating upon the characters’ actions and to depict reality.
There were two predominant techniques in the Victorian novel:
1. first-person narration (autobiography): usage of the grammatical first person (I, we); subjective view, either active character or mere observer in the story; the perspective of a single character.
e.g. ‘’I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.’’ (Brontë, Charlote; Brontë, Emily; Brontë , Anne; “Three Novels by the Brontë Sisters”, Coyote Canyon Press, 2011, p. 3)
2. third-person narration (omniscient author): objective narration; actions related in third person (he,she,them); observant narrator. Examples: William Makepeace Thackeray, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot.
e.g. ‘’For in the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vacations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good member who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little. The story of their coming to be shapen after the average and fit to be packed by the gross, is hardly ever told even in their consciousness; for perhaps their ardour in generous unpaid toil cooled as imperceptibly as the ardour of other youthful loves, till one day their earlier self walked like a ghost in its old home and made the new furniture ghastly.’’ (Eliot, George, ‘’Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life’’, Broadview Press, 2004, p. 139)
There are two main generations of Victorian novels:
1. the first generation of Victorian novelists: Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, the Brontë sisters, George Eliot; viewed as spokesmen of the Victorian period.
2. the second generation of Victorian novelists: George Meredith, Samuel Butler, Thomas Hardy.
Chapter II: An Outline of Lewis Carroll’s/Charles Dodgson’s life and work
Abstract
This is a story about two different people. One was named Lewis Carroll and the other Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.
Lewis Carroll was an unpredictable humorous man. He wrote poems and stories for children, his books having titles like: The Hunting of the Snark, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There. Ridiculous and absurd incidents fill up the pages of his books. As for the poems, they are abounding in silliness and nonsense. In his books, imaginary worlds are portrayed, worlds where chess pieces chat and quarrel, worlds where a child could all of a sudden grow large or small, worlds where a rabbit panics over being late, worlds where instead of mallets, flamingoes are used in playing croquet , worlds where a mad hatter throws a tea party for a dormouse . Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was a sober man, a mathematician who wrote books having titles like: The Formulae of Plane Trigonometry and A Syllabus of Plane Algebraic Geometry. Charles spent his complete adult life at Oxford University in England, writing about advanced mathematics and teaching.
Even though when Dodgson was asked if he had any contribution to the books written by Lewis Carroll, he answered that he “neither claimed nor acknowledged any connection with the books not published under his name”, everyone know that Mr. Carroll and Mr. Dodgson were the same person.
2.1. The Life of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson/ Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, the man who came to be known as Lewis Carroll, was born on January 27th, 1832, during the reign of William IV, in the parsonage of Daresbury in Cheshire. His father, Charles Dodgson, Curate of the parish, paid to have his first son’s birth published in The Times of London.
The Dodgson family originated from north-country people. Dodgson’s father married his first cousin, Frances Jane Lutwidge, in 1827. His first son was the third child of a family which would have eleven children in total. Young Dodgson lived eleven years in Daresbury: “in this quiet home the boy invented the strangest diversions for himself; he made pets of the most odd and unlikely animals, and numbered certain snails and toads among his intimate friends. He tried also to encourage civilized warfare among earthworms, by supplying them with small pieces of pipe, with which they might fight if so disposed. His notions of charity at this age were somewhat rudimentary, he used to peel rushes with the idea that the pith would afterwards “be given to the poor”, though what possible use they could put it to he never attempted to explain. Indeed he seems at this time to have actually lived in that charming “Wonderland” which he afterwards described so vividly; but for all that he was a thorough boy, and loved to climb the trees and to scramble about in the old marl-pits.” In little Charles Dodgson’s education, the father had an important role. “One day, when Charles was a very small boy, he came up to his father and showed him a book of logarithms, with the request, “Please explain.” Mr. Dodgson told him that he was much too young to understand anything about such a difficult subject. The child listened to what his father said, and appeared to think it irrelevant, for he still insisted, “But, please, explain!”
At the age of eleven years, the Dodgsons were given the living of Croft-on-Tees in the North Riding of Yorkshire. The house in which they moved was much better than the previous one and Dodgson later commemorated it in the Rectory Umbrella. The Daresbury parsonage burnt down in 1884, but Lewis Carroll is celebrated by a plaque there, and the stained-glass windows in the church where he first heard his father’s sermon and where he was baptized depict illustrated characters from the Alice stories. They dwelt in there from 1843 to 1868 (a quarter of a century). His father came to earn more than a thousand pounds a year, enough to satisfactorily supply for his family and to give donations to philanthropic programs.
Dodgson enjoyed inventing games for the entertainment of his sisters and brothers. He assembled a train from a barrel, a little truck and a wheelbarrow , which transported passengers from “one station” in the Rectory garden to another. Passengers could buy tickets from him and in every station was a refreshment-room.
In the Dodgsons’ residence cleanliness, order, diligence and rule of denial prevailed. They used to pray together every morning and evening. Sacrosanct is the word which better described their Sundays. They would read the Bible and religious books, they would have cold meals so that servants would not work on Sunday. Also the children were not allowed to play games on Lord’s Day. Dodgson was “thin, tallish…always very serious, as though in deep study, but particularly pleasant when spoken to and in subsequent conversation.” He studied English literature, mathematics, the classics and Latin. He was influenced by his father’s religious beliefs. He was sensitive, remarkably skillful, earnest, but he was handicapped from a premature age, not only because of his stammer, but he was also deaf in the right ear. At the age of twelve, he was sent by his father to school at Richmond. His impressions of life at school are rendered in one letter he wrote to his elder sisters, dated August 5th.
“My dear Fanny and Memy,—¬I hope you are all getting on well, as also the sweet twins, the boys I think that I like the best, are Harry Austin, and all the Tates of which there are 7 besides a little girl who came down to dinner the first day, but not since, and I also like Edmund Tremlet, and William and Edward Swire, Tremlet is a sharp little fellow about 7 years old, the youngest in the school, I also like Kemp and Mawley. The rest of the boys that I know are Bertram, Harry and Dick Wilson, and two Robinsons, I will tell you all about them when I return. The boys have played two tricks upon me which were these—¬they first proposed to play at “King of the Cobblers” and asked if I would be king, to which I agreed. Then they made me sit down and sat (on the ground) in a circle round me, and told me to say “Go to work” which I said, and they immediately began kicking me and knocking me on all sides. The next game they proposed was “Peter, the red lion,” and they made a mark on a tombstone (for we were playing in the churchyard) and one of the boys walked with his eyes shut, holding out his finger, trying to touch the mark; then a little boy came forward to lead the rest and led a good many very near the mark; at last it was my turn; they told me to shut my eyes well, and the next minute I had my finger in the mouth of one of the boys, who had stood (I believe) before the tombstone with his mouth open. For 2 nights I slept alone, and for the rest of the time with Ned Swire. The boys play me no tricks now. The only fault (tell Mama) that there has been was coming in one day to dinner just after grace. On Sunday we went to church in the morning, and sat in a large pew with Mr. Fielding, the church we went to is close by Mr. Tate’s house, we did not go in the afternoon but Mr. Tate read a discourse to the boys on the 5th commandment. We went to church again in the evening. Papa wished me to tell him all the texts I had heard preached upon, please to tell him that I could not hear it in the morning nor hardly one sentence of the sermon, but the one in the evening was I Cor. i. 23. I believe it was a farewell sermon, but I am not sure. Mrs. Tate has looked through my clothes and left in the trunk a great many that will not be wanted. I have had 3 misfortunes in my clothes etc. 1st, I cannot find my tooth-brush, so that I have not brushed my teeth for 3 or 4 days, 2nd, I cannot find my blotting paper, and 3rd, I have no shoe-horn. The chief games are, football, wrestling, leap frog, and fighting. Excuse bad writing.
Yr affec’ brother Charles.
To SKEFF (his younger brother aged 6)
My dear Skeff,—¬Roar not lest thou be abolished. Yours etc.,—.”
The difficulties he encountered at school surely had an impact on him, but in later school days he was the guardian of the small and weak.
He started to create Latin verses at a very young age, which he wrote down in his diary, disregarding the many mistakes they contained. He also had a story published in the school magazine, named “The Unknown One”. His schoolmaster, Mr. Tate, gained his affection and vice versa. Charles’s yearning for mathematical answers may have been boosted by Mr. Tate, also the one who helped him join the list of higher mathematics.
When Dodgson was departing from Richmond after sixteen months, Mr. Tate wrote about him the following:
“Be assured that I shall always feel a peculiar interest in the gentle, intelligent, and well-conducted boy who is now leaving us.”
At the end of 1845, he came back in Croft, where he celebrated altogether with his family Christmas and he left again on January 27th, 1846, his fourteenth birthday, this time to enter Rugby , even though his father had been educated at Westminster. Why Rugby? The apparent reasons are that it was nearer to Croft than to London, and mostly because it was enjoying its status as England’s best public school, the outcome of Dr. Thomas Arnold’s contribution as a ruler, from 1828 to 1842. The one who supplanted Arnold was Archibald Campbell Tait, who later in his life became Archbishop of Canterbury in the Church of England. Dodgson took at Rugby twenty classes, out of which sixteen were in Scripture, history and classics, two in French and two in mathematics. However, here also he encountered bullying, fagging, stealing and drinking . But he managed well in his studies and even won prizes. In 1848, Dodgson’s father received a letter from his mathematics teacher, R.B. Mayor who observed: “I have not had a more promising boy his age since I came to Rugby.”
In a passage from a missing diary reproduced byDodgson’s nephew, he seemed to be miserable: “I cannot say that I look back upon my life at a Public School with any sensations of pleasure, or that any earthly considerations would induce me to go through my three years again” .
In 1849, he came back to Craft, where he spent about a year preparing for Oxford. He fully enjoyed his time there and he even enjoyed some spare time, accompanied by his loving mother and his brothers and sisters. He could also return to the family magazine project: The Rectory Magazine and The Rectory Umbrella . While most compositions in The Rectory Magazine belong to him, but not entirely, The Rectory Umbrella was written just by him. They contained essays, drawings, imaginative jottings, stories, mock book reviews, a mishmash of verse and faked letters. Over the years, his talents developed. His refinement became evident beginning with the age of eighteen as his pieces were more sustained and complex.
Dodgson’s father was the one making the decisions regarding his son’s education, decisions not questioned by him. He wrote a letter to an old friend of his, Canon E.B. Pusey of Christ Church, Oxford, asking if he could propose his son for a studentship at the cathedral college. His early command of the classics and mathematics and his record at Rugby assured his acceptance at Oxford. Dodgson still had eight months to prepare himself for college life and meantime, he was at home with his sisters, who saw in him a great source of entertainment. He helped his parents with his younger brothers and sisters and he helped his father to care for the needy and poor people in the parish. He set up a schedule, which involved studying and writing, in order to prepare for Oxford.
He left for Oxford on January 24th, 1851, three days before his birthday. Sadly, he had to come back at Croft again after only two days, due to a tragic event. His mother had all of a sudden passed away because of ‘’inflammation of the brain” , leaving the family shocked and inconsolable. The family faced a domestic crisis too, as the two youngest children were four and seven years old, and the eldest sisters, aged twenty and twenty-two, were not thought to be sufficiently experienced to manage the household. Menella Bute Smedley , a cousin, came in their rescue but was soon changed for Lucy Lutwidge, the dead mother’s younger unmarried sister, a former contributor to the family magazine and a regular guest.
His prior academic years swung between alluring distraction and high ability. He was abnormally skillful and achievement came easily to him, even though he didn’t work hard all the time. He was given first-class honours in Mathematics Moderations in 1852, and was soon afterwards nominated to a Studentship by his father's old friend Canon Edward Pusey. In 1854, he was awarded first-class honours in the Final Honours School of Mathematics, being first on the list, graduating Bachelor of Arts. The following year he was unsuccessful in achieving a major scholarship because of lack of studying. Still, in 1855, his gift as a mathematician won him the Christ Church Mathematical Lectureship, which he kept on winning for the following twenty-six years. On October 15th, 1855 he was made a “Master of the House”, which meant that he had all the benefits of a Master of Arts inside the Christ Church. The year 1855 was very lively for him, also becoming a Sub-Librarian. He also began publishing poems in The Comic Times, which in 1856 became The Train. He took his Master’s degree in 1857. In the same year he became friends with Alfred Tennyson and John Ruskin . Despite being unhappy in his early days there, Dodgson was to remain at Christ Church. In 1861, he was designated deacon by the Bishop of Oxford and he would preach from time to time, his sermons being enjoyable. He was a teacher at Christ Church until 1881, but remained in residence there until his passing. His father, the Archdeacon Dodgson died on June 21st, 1868 after a several-days illness, which depressed him because he saw in his father the ideal Christian man. He suffered of pneumonia caused by influenza , which took his life on January 14th, 1898, while being at his sister’s house in Guildford, two weeks before his 66th birthday. He was buried at the Mount Cemetery in Guildford.