sillhouette of Charles Dodgson, aged about eight

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, or "Lewis Carroll," as he was to become known, was born on January 27 1832, in the little parsonage of Daresbury in Cheshire, the oldest boy but already the third child of the four-and-a-half year marriage of Charles Dodgson, clergyman, and his cousin Frances Jane Lutwidge.

The Dodgson family was predominantly northern English, with Irish connections, Conservative, Anglican, High Church, upper middle class, and inclining towards the two good old upper middle class professions of the army and the Church. Eight more children followed young Charles into the world and, incredibly for the time, all of the brood--- seven girls and four boys, Frances Jane (known as Fanny), Elizabeth, Charles, Caroline, Mary, Skeffington, Wilfred, Louisa, Margaret, Henrietta and Edwin -- survived into adulthood.

Dodgson's own drawing of 'the children of the north'; representing, in joke form, his own extensive family and their home,Croft Rectory

In truth, the known facts of Charles Dodgson's life before 1855 when the first surviving diary-volume begins are so sketchy they could be recorded on half a sheet of A4 paper. He kept family magazines, amused his sisters and brothers with games and stories. When Charles was 11 his father was given the living of Croft-on-Tees in north Yorkshire, and the whole family moved to the spacious Rectory. This remained their home for the next 25 years, though there's not much record of young Charles' family life. Dodgson senior made some progress through the ranks of the church: he published some sermons, translated the writings of the Roman early Christian writer Tertullian, became an Archdeacon of Ripon cathedral, and involved himself, sometimes influentially and with great partisan vigour, in the intense religious disputes that were dividing the Anglican church. He was High Church, a friend of Edward Pusey, an admirer of Newman and the Tractarian movement , and he seems to have done his best to instil such views in his children.

Young Charles grew out of infancy into a bright, articulate boy. It is often said that he was naturally left-handed and suffered severe psychological trauma by being forced to counteract this tendency, but there is no documentary evidence to support this. Indeed, although evidence is sparse, his early childhood does appear to have been a happy one.

Unti the age of 12 he was educated at home by his gentle and adoring mother. The reading lists she carefully prepared for him testify not only to her devotion and dedication to the son she called 'dearest Charlie', but also, and less happily, to the rather stultifying 'properness' of Dodgson family life: almost all the books on his mother's list are religious texts of the preachy kind that Lewis Carroll would one day satirise in the pages of his first 'Alice' book. Yet his precocity shows even here: at the age of seven the child was reading The Pilgrim's Progress.

At twelve young Charles was sent away to a small private school at nearby Richmond, where he appears to have been happy and settled. But in 1845, he moved on to Rugby,the great English public school made famous and infamous by the novel Tom Brown's Schooldays. Perhaps inevitably he was less happy in this harsh and uncompromising environment, for as he wrote some years after leaving the place.

I cannot say ... that any earthly considerations would induce me to go through my three years again ... I can honestly say that if I could have been ... secure from annoyance at night, the hardships of the daily life would have been comparative trifles to bear.

The nature of this nocturnal 'annoyance' will probably never now be fully understood, but it may be that he is delicately referring to some form of sexual abuse. Scholastically, though, he excelled with apparent ease. "I have not had a more promising boy his age since I came to Rugby" observed R.B. Mayor, the Maths master.

Biography compiled by the webmaster © carrollmyth.com/lewiscarroll.cc
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