Lewis Carroll’s real name, as most of his adult admirers are aware, was
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, and he was born on January 27, 1832, in the
Cheshire village of Daresbury, where his father was the local parson.
In this secluded hamlet young Dodgson spent the first eleven years of
his life, and in his quaint diversions and hobbies gave promise of the
whimsical and bizarre genius which was destined to make him famous.
His biographer has left it on record that he made pets of snails and
other queer creatures, and endeavoured to encourage organised warfare
among insects by supplying them with pieces of stick with which they
might fight, if so disposed.
He also showed early signs of mathematical and scientific talent
which, if not rare enough to make the name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson
as imperishably and as internationally illustrious as that of Lewis
Carroll, rendered it well known in his own generation among his own
countrymen, and proved that he was one of those singular geniuses
whom, in his own quaint phraseology, he would have described as
a “portmanteau” man--that is to say, one man packed with several
individualities!
Of the delightful surroundings of his birthplace he has left the
following impression in his serious poem, “The Three Sunsets” (first
published in “All the Year Round” in 1860):
I watch the drowsy night expire,
And Fancy paints at my desire
Her magic pictures in the fire.
An island farm, ’midst seas of corn
Swayed by the wandering breath of morn,
The happy spot where I was born.
In 1843 the Rev. Mr. Dodgson became rector of Croft, a Durham village
near Darlington, with a quaint old church which contains a Norman
porch and an elaborate covered-in pew resembling a four-post bedstead.
Soon after the transference he was appointed examining chaplain to the
Bishop of Ripon, and later became Archdeacon of Richmond (Yorkshire),
and one of the Canons of Ripon Cathedral.
“Young Dodgson at this time,” says the authority already quoted, “was
very fond of inventing games for the amusement of his brothers and
sisters; he constructed a home-made train out of a wheelbarrow, a
barrel, and a small truck, which used to convey passengers from one
‘station’ in the rectory gardens to another. At each of these stations
there was a refreshment room, and the passengers had to purchase
tickets from him before they could enjoy the ride. The boy was also
a clever conjuror, and arrayed in a brown wig and a long white robe,
used to cause no little wonder to his audience by his sleight of hand
tricks. With the assistance of various members of the family and the
village carpenter he made a troupe of marionettes and a small theatre
for them to act in. He wrote all the plays himself and he was very
clever at manipulating the innumerable strings by which the movements
of his puppets were regulated.”