Back Through the Looking Glass

Having just finished reading the latest scholarly article proving definitively that the protagonist in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was not Alice Liddell, I pulled my rather well-worn copy of Lewis Carroll’s book from the shelf and spent a few minutes enjoying the clever verses.

The author of the scholarly piece had presented numerous well-reasoned arguments, including statements from both Carroll and Alice, and I suspect that the piece was part of the author’s tenure packet at her university.  The article was (and as I suspect the author realized) completely wrong.  There is a hell of a problem coming up with a new topic if you are writing about 19th century English Literature.

Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a close friend of the Liddell family and a frequent guest in their home.  The Liddell children (including Alice), were enchanted with his magical ability to tell long stories involving animals and make-believe places and frequently begged him for more stories.  Because Dodgson/Carroll kept meticulous diaries, we know exactly when his most famous story was invented.  On July 4, 1862, while on a boating holiday, he told the Liddell children the story that would eventually make him famous.

Alice Liddell was enchanted with the story and begged Carroll to write the story down for her.  After a long delay, he obliged, presenting her with a hand lettered copy of the manuscript.  A second copy was delivered to an editor, and the so-called ‘Alice’ books (of which Through the Looking Glass was a sequel to the original novel) became a world-wide phenomenon.  

There is little doubt that the story was created for Alice Liddell, Carroll’s own diaries document this.  Alice kept her original copy of the tales until late in life, when pressing financial needs forced its sale to an American collector for what today would be more than a million dollars.  Following World War II, a fund was raised in America, the book was purchased and given to the people of Great Britain in admiration for the country’s resistance to the aims of Adolf Hitler before the United States.  Today it is on display at the British Library.

There are other obvious clues.  The book is dedicated to Alice Liddell, both the real and literary Alice are the same age and share the same birthday, and the last 21 lines of the book contain an acrostic.  Reading down, the first letter of each line spells out Alice’s full name:  Alice Pleasance Liddell.  Carroll was also a prolific photographer and took several pictures of Alice.  There is even speculation that the six-month rift in Carroll’s friendship with the Liddell family in 1863 may be because the author asked the family to arrange a marriage with the eleven-year-old Alice.  Exactly what happened will remain a mystery since the relevant pages in Carroll’s diaries were cut out by one of Carroll’s descendants.  An alternate theory suggests that Carroll was romantically interested in the family’s nanny.

If arranging a marriage with a pre-teen sounds….strange…, remember that this was the Victorian era and such arrangements were common, though the actual marriage would normally be delayed until the bride was a more suitable age.  Carroll’s brother became engaged to a girl of fourteen, with the marriage delayed for six years.

Carroll was an academic, more interested in math and logic than in writing fiction.  There is a great story, possibly apocryphal, that Queen Victoria was fan of the Alice books and asked the author for a copy of his next work, so he promptly mailed her a copy of An Elementary Treatise on Determinants, With Their Application to Simultaneous Linear Equations and Algebraic Equation.

Less well known are Carroll’s many inventions, most of which involved the written word, perhaps because Carroll suffered from stammering and found writing more comfortable than speaking.  He invented a nyctograph, a device that allowed the user to write notes in the dark, an improved postal money order, a device for the bedridden to more easily read books, and several ciphers.  Carroll also invented a ranked voting system similar to what is currently befuddling voters in New York City mayoral election.

Carroll had a fondness for word games, inventing a precursor to the game Scrabble.  Even his pen name is a complicated word play on his real name translated into Latin.  Newspapers still regularly published a puzzle that Carroll invented, that the author called a Word Ladder.  You’ve seen these, you start with a word and by changing one letter at a time, you end with a different word in a stated number of steps.  For example, HEAD becomes TAIL in five steps: HEAD, HEAL, TEAL, TELL TALL, TAIL.  The game is known by a variety of names, and though it is played in many languages, few today remember the inventor’s name.

There is one invention by Carroll that I am particularly fond of:  his postage stamp case.  Carroll was a prolific letter writer, sending and receiving tens of thousands of letters in his life, each carefully recorded in a journal system he invented.   The case, called the Wonderland Postage Stamp Case, was illustrated with scenes from his novel and included 12 slots for various sized stamps.  Since a first edition is worth well over $8,000, and I would love to own one, it is not really the case that intrigues me:  Included inside the case is a small pamphlet titled, Eight or Nine Words About Letter Writing.  It is fascinating reading.

The Internet seems to have killed off the art of writing letters.  Rarely do I receive an actual letter in my mailbox unless it is one of the infrequent missives from one of my granddaughters.  This is a shame since a letter from a friend is a cherished item and a courtesy we should not let die out.  As Emily Dickinson said, “A letter is a joy of Earth—it is denied the Gods.”

Here is one of his rules, one that should be required reading before anyone is allowed to open an account with Facebook:

My sixth Rule (and my last remark about controversial correspondence) is, don’t try to have the last word! How many a controversy would be nipped in the bud, if each was anxious to let the other have the last word! Never mind how telling a rejoinder you leave unuttered: never mind your friend’s supposing that you are silent from lack of anything to say: let the thing drop, as soon as it is possible without discourtesy: remember ‘speech is silvern, but silence is golden’! (N.B.—If you are a gentleman, and your friend a lady, this Rule is superfluous: you won’t get the last word!)

I think we would all be better off if we wrote more letters and posted on social media less.  The rules and advice that Carroll gives in this small pamphlet reflect a courtesy that we need to recapture.  Fortunately, you can read the pamphlet without paying the $8,000 a first edition would set you back.  You can read it here for free.

And you can write me and tell me what you think of his rules.