Curiouser and Curiouser
The White Knight. A Study of C. L. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). By Alexander L. Taylor. (Oliver and Boyd. 16s.) THIS book is a fresh and learned tribute to the vitality of a perennially intriguing author who has already been subjected to textual criticism and bibliographical research on a scale almost Shakespearean, and whose characters have won the same loyalty and half-humorous devotion that are accorded to Sherlock Holmes. It is not intended primarily as a biography, though it covers the ground in a summary fashion, but rather as a study of the influences that may have affected Dodgson in writing his books. • Drawing on the theological, the scientific, and the local Oxford controversies of the Victorian period, Mr. Taylor is successful in suggesting what manner of complicated thought may have been whirling in Dodgson's mind at the relevant dates. Viewed as a contribution to the background sources of Dodgson's inspiration, the book is always interesting and often plausible. But unfortunately Mr. Taylor has spoiled his book by being dogmatic and over-confident and by showing little understand- ing of the way in which an artist's mind—in this case the mind of an artist who was primarily trying to please children—unconsciously assimilates and transmutes his material. Mr. Taylor " knows all the answers," and by being a little too serious and a little too clever he tends to forfeit the reader's confidence.
Mr. Taylor's main thesis, as stated in his preface, is that " Carrot- lian nonsense ' is in fact a branch of allegory and satire " (though he is not consistent, for he later tells us that " It would, in my opinion, be quite wrong to regard Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as an allegory or a satire"). Dodgson's own explanations of his intentions are often brushed aside. For instance, Dodgson once said : " I distinctly remember, now as I write, how, in a desperate attempt to strike out some new line of fairy-lore, I had sent my heroine straight down a rabbit-hole, to begin with, without the least idea what was to happen afterwards." This does not sto0 Mr. Taylor from attributing the origin of Alice's fall to a reading-party at Whitby several years earlier, at which Dodgson may have had an opportunity of discussing the Statics and Dynamics of Particles with the Rev. Bartholomew Price. Referring to the " Jabberwocky " poem, Dodgson once told a correspondent : " I'm afraid I can't explain vorpal blade ' for you." Mr. Taylor has no such inhibi- tions : " Vorpal seems to be concocted," he tells us, " out of Verbal and Gospel by taking alternate letters from each, and the poem vaguely burlesques the dragon-slayer of The Faerie Queen, ' whose sword was the word of God." Dodgson said of The Hunting of the Snark " I'm very much afraid I didn't mean anything but nonsense ! "—but this has not deterred Mr..Taylor from making a number of discoveries. Again, according to Mr. Taylor, Tweedle- dunr's " nice new rattle " disguises a reference to High Church " ritual " (although Dodgson was here using the words of a well- known nursery-rhyme), and the ink-bottle in Looking-glass House draws from him a quotation 'from Swift, that " Ink is the great missive weapon, in all the battles of the learned...." Mr. Taylor's urge to find direct explanations or meanings becomes in the end tedious. He could just as well carry his search into the many charmingly nonsensical letters that Dodgson wrote to his child- friends. Why he does not do so, I don't know, except that perhaps it may have dawned on him that this would be rather too ridiculous. Mr. Taylor makes much of the idea that Dodgson " fell in love " with Alice Liddell ; his quotations from Sylvie and Bruno are un- doubtedly interesting and apposite in this context. But here again he over-reaches himself. He quotes (not quite accurately) the locus classicus on this question, the comment of Dodgson's nephew S. D. Collingwood on Three Sunsets :— " One cannot read this little volume without feeling that the shadow of some disappointment lay over Lewis Carroll's life. Such I believe to have been the case; and it was this that gave him his wonderful sympathy with all who suffered. But those who loved him would not wish to lift the veil from these dead sanctities, nor would any purpose be served by so doing."
By the end of his book Mr. Taylor, convinced of the rightness of his own theory, has decided that Dodgson " determined that the secret should die with him, except that he told Collingwood, who respected his confidence and left it out of his biography." I know of nothing that would justify Mr. Taylor in reading this into Collingwood's words. It is possible, though we may never know for certain, that Dodgson did go through an emotional crisis, not unconnected with Alice Liddell, in the 'sixties ; but I doubt if this was anything so definite as the " falling in love " that Mr. Taylor envisages. Indeed I think it probable that Dodgson's real affection, or love, for Alice arose primarily because she was a little girl and therefore could not possibly become—at the crucial period—a serious object of romance for one who was never, or so I surmise, a very likely candidate for matrimony.
Being rather less serious-minded than Mr. Taylor, his book has made me think about Beatrix Poger's Tale of Peter Rabbit, which was first sketched in 1893, thougftot published until 1900. Could it not have been based—if only subconsciously—on the dock-strike of 1889, 1 wondered at first, with Flopsy representing Will Thorne, Mopsy as Tom Mann, Cotton-tail as John Burns, and Peter as Ben Tillett ? I decided eventually that Miss Potter might have been too young to have paid much attention to the dock-strike, but I am now having less difficulty in seeing the story as an allegory of the political events of 1893, with Peter as Balfour and Mr. McGregor as Glad- . stone. Much hard work, I know,, lies ahead of this investigation ; but then there is a lot of hard work in Mr. Taylor's book (and I must say that some of it makes rather hard reading too).
DEREK HUDSON.
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