When Lewis Carroll declined to take full priest's orders in October 1862, he ought by rights to have been forced to leave his college and his post as Mathematical Lecturer. When he first went to see the Dean of his college (Henry Liddell, the real Alice's father),this was what he was told to expect. But for reasons that remain unexplained, the Dean apparently changed his mind over night and decided to say nothing and let Carroll remain in college. The magnitude of this oddness has only recently come to light. It meant in effect that Liddell was breaking important college rules and possibly risking his own job to permit Carroll to stay there. No one knows why he took this step. Carroll said nothing about the reasons in his diary. But the fact he remained to his death the only Christ Church Student not in full orders shows how strange and unexplained this interlude is. The more so as by this time Liddell and Carroll were on the verge of becoming political ememies, begging the question - why did Liddell take such a risky step for a man he apparently had no reason to want to protect?

<--BACK