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Post by ermete22 on Apr 26, 2008 7:30:17 GMT -5
I never found a reasonable explanation of the censorship of Carroll's diary by his family. There is a point that seems, at least to me, very strange: around 1960, if my memory does not fail, Menella declared they would never explained the reason for such a drestic intervention on Carroll's diary. Why so many years after his death there was some reason not to uncover the contents missing? Carlo
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Post by mikeindex on Apr 26, 2008 9:50:34 GMT -5
I don't suppose a cut-and-dried explanation will ever be found, due to the evidence having been cut out of the diary!
I suspect that by the end of her life Menella's obsession with keeping the secret may have taken precedence over whatever the secret actually was! At all events she certainly had a flair for the Gothic.
Mike
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Post by otherprofessor on Apr 27, 2008 4:41:51 GMT -5
Is it not true that Dodgson himself removed most of the missing pages?
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Post by ermete22 on Apr 29, 2008 15:46:21 GMT -5
I have never heard about the possibility that Carroll cut the pages of his diary, but it is not absurd. It is improbable that he lost some vloumes of them after his dearh. Carlo
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Post by hermionethestork on Apr 30, 2008 8:59:43 GMT -5
I have never heard about the possibility that Carroll cut the pages of his diary, but it is not absurd. It is improbable that he lost some vloumes of them after his dearh. Carlo No, but some other person may have lost them.
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Post by ermete22 on May 4, 2008 5:42:26 GMT -5
Of course you are right (in priniciple) but 1) the family has admitted that they cut pages from the remaining volumes 2) the family's version is that they lost the volumes some years after Carroll's death (as far as I remember) when Carroll was already a very known prsonality, surely after the first biography written by the nephew as he cites notes you do not find in the volumes that survived. More precisely, I think, they declared to have lost the missing volumes while moving from one house to another. It seems very improbable (to me) that they were not able to estimate at least the potential economical value of the diary. Some time my (possibly wrong) intuition tells me that every time someone cannot find a reasonable explanation of strange events, psychopatology is used; too much. Carlo
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Jules
Rook
The trombone frightens me
Posts: 45
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Post by Jules on May 6, 2008 9:45:54 GMT -5
Since pages have been cut out it seems a bit naive to assume all the volumes were simply lost by accident!
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Post by ermete22 on May 6, 2008 12:38:07 GMT -5
I complitely agree with you; the problem is why. I have made very poor and incomplete researches about the family; maybe they were all strange persons, a little out of mind as it is suggested directly or implicitly by many biographers. What is anyhow suggested in general is that they cut and "lost" the diaries because they contained embarassing para-sexual notes by Carroll. This you cannot evidently take for granted, but it is in general assumed to be the case. I often ask myself if there were most serious, reasonable motives, also because they did not cut or "lost" a page where, talking about a girl of 5-7 years of name Alexandra, relative to the Liddells, Carroll says incredible things which could well justify the suspect of pedophilia. If the motivation of the family was to keep Carroll's supposed pedophilia a secret they should have at least cut that page. I do not know more than that, but it seems a sensible reason that what they wanted keep secret was something else. Carlo
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pleasance1
Bishop
"It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards" the Queen remarked.
Posts: 11
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Post by pleasance1 on May 18, 2008 9:12:52 GMT -5
The diaries of Charles Dodgson's that do exist are not exactly dripping with scandalous gossip. They are a fairly dry perfunctory record of dates, people and places. It seems that Mr Dodgson did not really use his diaries for pouring out his personal feelings. So it seems odd that the "lost diary pages" should suddenly contain such deep and personal sentiments that his relatives had to cut them out for fear of public scandal. I have thought that perhaps the pages referred to a family matter that the neices did not want brought to light, and have perhaps inadvertantly caused the very scandal they had hoped to avoid. I reckon whatever the pages and lost diaries contain, it is not nearly as dramatic and shocking as we would like to think.
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Post by johntufail on May 18, 2008 18:01:11 GMT -5
Hi Pleasance,
Although you are right in saying that Dodgson's diaries do not gossip, they do contain, occassionally, personal thoughts. This is most especially the case in the earlier years of the diaries. They also, of couse, contain basic details of journey's taken and people met.
Occasionally he genuinely uses the diaries to challenge himself. For example, after reading Kingsley's 'Alton Lock' he despais of his personal ability to meet the challenge that Kingsley sets out in the book (He subsequently befriended Maurice and became (as he states in the S&B preface) a member of the Broad Church movement.
What he didn't do, unfortunately for us, was EVER to detail any of the political, theological o other potentially 'embarassing' details of his conversations in the various meetings, social gatherings etc he had with his friends. The very nearest we ever come to this is when he recounts a discussion he had with his friend St John Tyrwhitt in the 1850's when he mentioned he listened closely to his advice reagrding Kingsley.
However, this does not mean that the missing diaries did not contain information that the Carroll family did not want to suppress. I happen to agree with you that I do not believe that the missing diaries would contain anythin that you or I would find shocking. However, I do believe that the Carroll family determined early on to provide a 'sanitised' version of Carroll that was basically in the family's best interest. I don't believe this was a malicious decision. In part it was probably because the family didn't really understand the importance of Caroll's works. However, there can be little doubt that the Carroll family was also, at the very least, 'uncomfortable' with Carroll's Broad Church Leanings and, no doubt, completely stupefied and embarrased by his confessons in Sylvie and Bruno about his theological syncretism!
I can imagine the rsponse of a family faced with this and neither wanting or being equipped to respond to this sort of examination. It makes complete sense to me that the family would want to proide as blase' account of Carroll's life as possible. Witness the Collingwood biography.
Whi could blame them?
Regards
JT
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Post by chanelno5 on May 19, 2008 3:51:41 GMT -5
But like don't we know what a couple of the pages were about now? Isn't that right someone found them?
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Post by johntufail on May 19, 2008 16:08:47 GMT -5
Not that I've heard!
You may be thinking of the detective work that Karoline Leach did in uncovering various preiously unknown notes etc - none of which were excised diary pages - though they did point towards who may have done some of the excising.
One day, someone will write an exciting adventure novel a la Dan Brown, about the unearthing of the missing diaries (with much murder and mayhem). Until then it looks as though wishful thinking will be the order of the day.
Regards
JT
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Post by hermionethestork on May 20, 2008 7:25:06 GMT -5
You're thinking of the Cut Pages in Diary documentThis is what Wiki says: This paper, known as the "cut pages in diary document", was compiled by various members of Carroll's family after his death. Part of it at least was presumably written at the time that some of the pages were being mutilated, as it offers a brief summary of two diary pages that are now missing, including the one for June 27, 1863. The summary for this page states that Mrs. Liddell told Dodgson there was gossip circulating about him and the Liddell family's governess, as well as about his relationship with "Ina", presumably Alice's older sister, Lorina Liddell. The "break" with the Liddell family that occurred soon after was presumably in response to this gossip.[41][42] An alternate interpretation has been made regarding Carroll's rumored involvement with "Ina": Lorina was also the name of Alice Liddell's mother. What is deemed most crucial and surprising is that the entry seems to make it clear Dodgson's break with the family was not connected with Alice at all.
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Jules
Rook
The trombone frightens me
Posts: 45
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Post by Jules on May 20, 2008 8:13:36 GMT -5
You're thinking of the Cut Pages in Diary documentThis is what Wiki says: This paper, known as the "cut pages in diary document", was compiled by various members of Carroll's family after his death. Part of it at least was presumably written at the time that some of the pages were being mutilated, as it offers a brief summary of two diary pages that are now missing, including the one for June 27, 1863. The summary for this page states that Mrs. Liddell told Dodgson there was gossip circulating about him and the Liddell family's governess, as well as about his relationship with "Ina", presumably Alice's older sister, Lorina Liddell. The "break" with the Liddell family that occurred soon after was presumably in response to this gossip.[41][42] An alternate interpretation has been made regarding Carroll's rumored involvement with "Ina": Lorina was also the name of Alice Liddell's mother. What is deemed most crucial and surprising is that the entry seems to make it clear Dodgson's break with the family was not connected with Alice at all. When I first read about this all I could think was why would someone cut the pages out and then keep a record of what was on them? I still don't get it
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Post by johntufail on May 20, 2008 11:27:15 GMT -5
That, I assume, is because you had the good fortune never to meet the people involved! From all I have heard of the various Carroll relatives and descendents involed in the Carroll archive saga, they ranged from characters from an early Kingsley Amis novel to people who existed in their very own Snarkian universe - with a few strays from PG Woodhouse along the way.
Regards
JT
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