Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) (1832 – 1898)
British author, mathematician, Anglican clergyman, logician, and amateur photographer, more famous under the pen name Lewis Carroll.
It may be taken as axiomatic that whatever Dodgson was thinking and feeling at the time found its way into his 'nonsense'.
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson's life in space-time colored his liberated life of the imagination.
O bitter is it to abide
In weariness alway:
At dawn to sigh for eventide,
At eventide for day.
Thy noon hath fled: thy sun hath shone:
The brightness of thy day is gone:
What need to lag and linger on
Till life be cold and gray?
I charm in vain; for never again,
All keenly as my glance I bend,
Will Memory, goddess coy,
Embody for my joy
Departed days, nor let me gaze
On thee, my fairy friend!
Mr. Dodgson had a great horror of being "lionised," and ingeniously silenced his tormentors by representing to them, indirectly, that "lewis Carroll," the author of "Alice," and "Mr. Dodgson" were two separate persons.
Dodgson of course was a meticulous traveler. He packed each article separately, well wrapped in paper to twice its bulk.
It was a soufflé of a speech, light, pleasant, digestible, and nourishing also.
We lament that we cannot go home again, cannot be a little child once more, and Lewis Carroll's works have enabled us to deny that reality momentarily, to indulge our dreams for one bright interval.
Never, surely, did any man make more friends among children than he did.
"Our Second Experiment", the Professor announced, as Bruno returned to his place, still thoughtfully rubbing his elbows, "is the production of that seldom-seen-but-greatly-to-be-admired phenomenon, Black Light! You have seen White Light, Red Light, Green Light, and so on: but never, till this wonderful day, have any eyes but mine seen Black Light! This box", carefully lifting it upon the table, and covering it with a heap of blankets, "is quite full of it. The way I made it was this - I took a lighted candle into a dark cupboard and shut the door. Of course the cupboard was then full of Yellow Light. Then I took a bottle of Black ink, and poured it over the candle: and, to my delight, every atom of the Yellow Light turned Black! That was indeed the proudest moment of my life! Then I filled a box with it. And now - would anyone like to get under the blankets and see it?"
The dying crimson of the West
That faintly tinged his haggard cheek,
Fell on her as she stood, and shed
A glory round the patient head.
Such were the lucidity of exposition and his mastery of the topic that it seems possible that, had he ever published it, the political theory of Britain would have been significantly different.
A Nursery Magician took
All little children by the hand:
And led them laughing through the book
Where Alice walks in Wonderland.
Phyllis Greenacre, quoted in Florence Becker Lennon, The Life of Lewis Carroll (1962), p.32
I NEVER loved a dear Gazelle –
Nor anything that cost me much:
High prices profit those who sell,
but why should I be fond of such?
It is not children who ought to read the works of Lewis Carroll; they are far better employed making mud-pies.
Less Bread! More Taxes!--and then all the people cheered again, and one man, who was more excited than the rest, flung his hat high into the air, and shouted (as well as I could make out) "Who roar for the Sub-Warden?" Everybody roared, but whether it was for the Sub-Warden, or not, did not clearly appear: some were shouting "Bread!" and some "Taxes!", but no one seemed to know what it was they really wanted.
And she arose, and in that darkening room
Stood lonely as a spirit of the night —
Stood calm and fearless in the gathered night —
And raised her eyes to heaven. There were tears
Upon her face, but in her heart was peace.
Peace that the world nor gives nor takes away!
As one who was a boy for much of his adult life, he was by our standards something of a fuddy-duddy in his youth.
He was the kind of man who kept a diagram showing where you sat when you dined with him and what you ate, lest he serve you the same dish when you came again.