The Case of Lewis Carroll
How should we interpret art that provoked no controversy at the time it was made, but rather fit comfortably within the prevailing conventions? Can it be charged today with the gravest of offenses?
By Urszula Pieczek and Maciej Topolski
On a warm day, July 4, 1862, thirty-year-old Charles Lutwidge Dodgson – amateur photographer and lecturer in mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford – spent the afternoon in a boat on the river Isis, also known as the Thames, with ten-year-old Alice Liddell and her sisters, the elder Lorina and the younger Edith. They had picnic baskets with them, and sang songs. At one point the girls organized a contest, the winner of which was to sit beside the "great mathematician." Afterward they asked him to tell them a story to pass the time. That was when Dodgson began spinning the tale of Alice and her adventures.
Robinson Duckworth, a friend of the young lecturer's who accompanied them, recalled that "golden afternoon" this way: "I rowed stroke and he rowed bow... but the story was actually composed and spoken over my shoulder for the benefit of Alice Liddell, who was acting as 'cox' of our gig... I remember turning round and saying, 'Dodgson, is this an extempore romance of yours?' And he replied, 'Yes, I'm inventing as we go along.'"
