The Alice Behind Wonderland by Simon Winchester

Author:Simon Winchester [Winchester, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literary Criticism, Children's Literature, General
ISBN: 0195396197
Google: X_fR-2n40oEC
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2011-02-17T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

THE FIRST MAKINGS OF ART

THE FIRST IMAGES WERE RATHER POOR, TO THE SURPRISE OF neither man. Southey was the more experienced of the pair—he had been taking pictures for more than a year, had already produced an album, and had ignited sufficient enthusiasm in Dodgson for his friend to have begun the pastime the year before, had his income then allowed it.

The pictures that survive from the early summer of 1856 are thus nearly all the results of Southey’s labors. All of them are portraits, each trimmed into neat and tiny shapes, usually oval, and mounted in albums now stored away at Princeton. There is a portrait of an unknown young Christ Church man, gazing thoughtfully into the camera; a self-portrait, with Southey looking to his left, with a similar expression of dreamy contemplation; and an image of Dodgson himself, the left half of his face in semi-profile, hair neatly pomaded but with curls cascading over his ears. His left hand is pressed against his cheek, emerging from a dark and oversized sleeve that might be that of a smoking jacket, were one not aware that Dodgson abhorred smoking (and would leave the room if anyone lit a Lucifer or that kind of cheap clay pipe known as a churchwarden), and he is seated firmly against the back of a chair that appears to be covered in vivid and very un-Oxford-like tiger skin, so that the setting appears more bordello than academe. This is probably the earliest photographic glimpse we have of Dodgson, mathematics teacher, Anglican clergyman, and journeyman writer.

Southey produced one other photograph of significance to the story during those first few weeks of May. Dodgson managed to persuade the nine-year-old Harry Liddell to come over from the deanery to Southey’s rooms to sit for a picture. The result was barely usable—Harry fidgeted too much for a good exposure—but it did afford the two the opportunity to go to see the dean and show him his son’s image. Liddell was enchanted, and asked Dodgson to stay to lunch. Mrs. Liddell was, on this early occasion, even more delighted—though her enchantment toward Dodgson and his photography is reckoned to have diminished over subsequent years—and the children probably circled the pair with frantic requests of “Show me! Show me!” And there was the governess, Mary Prickett, who gazed with guarded admiration at the young scholar, so evidently a man of talent and romance.

The camera turned out to open all manner of doors for Dodgson—to the world of the deanery, to the Liddell family, and to a universe of good society, much of whose membership he would photograph over the coming years. He used the remaining weeks of that Trinity Term to consolidate his friendship with the dean’s family. He took Harry boating, and then Ina—Lorina, named after her mother—came for a second expedition. Gradually and steadily, Dodgson became more aware that, much as he liked the company of his peers, he truly loved the company of children. Harry and Ina

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