Word: dodgson
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...wonder is that, with so much to dislike. Dodgson had any room left for pleasure. Yet his Diaries, now published for the first time, show that when Dodgson was not sunk deep in indignation, he was full of buoyant zest. If his Diaries make dull reading, it is partly because the author of the Diaries is not "Lewis Carroll" or even "dynamite." He is a shy professor who talked with a stammer and had an honest heart and a love of anonymity. About this man the Diaries are a mine of information...
Pursuit of Heaven. Dodgson was hardly out of Oxford (and back into it again as a lecturer) when he decided that the world was all vanity and vexation of spirit. He believed that God had wisely implanted in man a "yearning" towards the world-to-come. in which place alone would man find an "eternity of happiness . . . the only perfect happiness." Since, however, man could not escape a period of earthly sojourn, it was up to him to make it as much like Heaven as possible...
Strangely enough. Dodgson believed that the London theater was the nearest thing to Heaven. Again and again he went to performances of what must have been his favorite play. Shakespeare's Henry VIII-"the greatest theatrical treat I ever . . . expect to have." He loved this play 1) because it showed the transitory nature of worldly greatness. 2) because it dramatized his yearning for divine bliss. Dodgson "almost held my breath to watch" when the deposed Queen Katharine of Aragon saw in a vision "a troop of angelic forms" hovering about her. "So could I fancy (if the thought...
...grew older, Dodgson learned the art of finding or creating "spirits of peace" that alleviated earthly wretchedness. Alice in Wonderland is the bright vision by which he is known, but it is a mere fragment of the whole-a solitary chip off the imagination of a man who built wonderlands in every spare moment. First in his fancy came the new and magic world of photography, and only the large shadow thrown by Lewis Carroll has prevented the Rev. Mr. Dodgson from being famed as one of the greatest of early photographers. He was also fascinated by anagrams, cipher writing...
...simply too happy for words, he would do as the Romans did and write in his diary: "I mark this day with a white stone, "t In so far as these Diaries cover his life (they have been shortened, and several volumes are lost), they show that Bachelor Dodgson was unspeakably happy on exactly 27 days. On 23 of these he had spent part or most of the day among the little girls to whom "Lewis Carroll" was dedicated...