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Post by bettyboop on May 29, 2008 4:22:00 GMT -5
I don't see that the case for a 'myth' has been proved in any way. Jenny, the way you talk about Dodgson's father is making just as many assumptions based on no evidence as ever Cohen or Lennon did. And as for the Mrs Liddell theory - please!
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Post by jenny2write on May 29, 2008 5:27:56 GMT -5
What unfounded assumptions have I made about Archdeacon Dodgson? It's easy to say these things, but in this case I don't know why you think what I have said is unfounded. Please explain..
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Post by johntufail on May 29, 2008 6:40:40 GMT -5
Hi Betty,
I admit to being sceptical about the 'Mrs Liddle theory' myself. However I also have to say that it's author presents a far, far stronger case than any of the various Carroll loved Alice ersions i have read!
Perhaps you have unearthed some completely basic flaw in the 'Liddle theory' that I have missed to make it so worthy of your scorn. If you, by any chance elying on the Rankin critique, don't. Rankin's argument is wholly based on an idea of Carroll being some sexual innocent with (un-named) 'repressed tendencies). He fails to note that even Caoll's own family admit to some form of tragic romance.
Regards
JT
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Post by bettyboop on May 29, 2008 11:09:24 GMT -5
Jenny: Cohen's book is full of what a harsh father Dodgson snr was. You take an opposite view. You can't both be right, so either the evidence is clear and one of you is making giant assumptions, or the evidence is unclear and both of you are making giant assumptions. From what I gather there's not much evidence at all, and the fragments there are indicate he was a pretty standard Victorian stern papa, much as Cohen says. Collingwood says he was, the other grandchildren I believe said similar things. No one who knew him ever actually said he was liberal or gentle or pro-feminist or anything did they? They said he was hardworking, firm, Godly, so you are getting all your ideas about that side of him from your own assumptions and reading between the lines. John: Maybe they said he was innocent because he was Stranger things have happened!
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Post by jenny2write on May 29, 2008 11:46:52 GMT -5
So am I right that you haven't read anything he wrote himself, then? It sounds from what you say as if your comments are based on second hand inferences from what someone else said. I suggest you do read something he did write himself, at least. Here are extracts from a letter I picked out at random which he wrote to Skeffington at Oxford in 1857.
"My dear Skeffington, You must not suppose that I have been neglectful of your letter because I have not answered it - I was very glad indeed to get it and much interested in all that it told me about your proceedings - but it arrived when I was in the middle of my busiest preparations...which allowed me no time at all....for writing letters. I need not tell you how much and how often I think of you and Wilfred - at this particular time of you particularly....I had a long and extremely nice letter about you from Mr Sandford with whom you are evidently a great favourite...you must take care and not overwork yourself, which would only hinder instead of help you by confusing your head and making you unwell... I trust you will get through quite satisfactorily, but in any case both you and I will have every reason to be satisfied because you will have done your best, and the Duke of Wellington was never found able to do more...."
This letter was the first one I happened to see, and is typically warm and concerned and positive. Although Skeffington really struggled academically and seems to have had certain social problems, his father is never anything but encouraging. It beats me really how anyone can read these letters and think he wasn't a kindly and concerned man - he may indeed have had definite ideas of how he wanted his children to behave and Iam sure he wanted the best for them, but many of us who are parents will feel the same and try to offer our chidlren what we can, in our own particular ways. Jenny
Jenny
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Post by jenny2write on May 29, 2008 11:57:16 GMT -5
"No one who knew him ever actually said he was liberal or gentle or pro-feminist or anything did they" I forgot to say, no, probably they didn't, although liberal, gentle and pro-feminist are not in themselves necessarily positive or negative terms. "Liberal" did not mean quite the same then as it does now, and "pro feminist" was a totally unfamiliar concept in those days so nobody who knew him could have described him in those terms anyway. Carroll described his death as the worst blow that had ever befallen him.
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Post by bettyboop on May 29, 2008 14:47:25 GMT -5
So am I right that you haven't read anything he wrote himself, then? It sounds from what you say as if your comments are based on second hand inferences from what someone else said. I suggest you do read something he did write himself, at least. Here are extracts from a letter I picked out at random which he wrote to Skeffington at Oxford in 1857. "My dear Skeffington, You must not suppose that I have been neglectful of your letter because I have not answered it - I was very glad indeed to get it and much interested in all that it told me about your proceedings - but it arrived when I was in the middle of my busiest preparations...which allowed me no time at all....for writing letters. I need not tell you how much and how often I think of you and Wilfred - at this particular time of you particularly....I had a long and extremely nice letter about you from Mr Sandford with whom you are evidently a great favourite...you must take care and not overwork yourself, which would only hinder instead of help you by confusing your head and making you unwell... I trust you will get through quite satisfactorily, but in any case both you and I will have every reason to be satisfied because you will have done your best, and the Duke of Wellington was never found able to do more...." This letter was the first one I happened to see, and is typically warm and concerned and positive. Although Skeffington really struggled academically and seems to have had certain social problems, his father is never anything but encouraging. It beats me really how anyone can read these letters and think he wasn't a kindly and concerned man - he may indeed have had definite ideas of how he wanted his children to behave and Iam sure he wanted the best for them, but many of us who are parents will feel the same and try to offer our chidlren what we can, in our own particular ways. Jenny Jenny See Jenny I feel like you are confusing two issues here. A guy can be decent and honorable and doing what he thinks is best for his kids without being kind, cuddly and approachable, or even right. Doing what he thinks is best isn't the same as being someone who exuded love and tenderness. I don't get much of a warm tender vibe from that letter. I get a paternalistic concern which might be genuine but is far from snuggly. I just don't see where the evidence is for an all round cuddly accessible person. I don't say he was a tyrant, I just see evidence of a responsible, conscientious, remote, authoritarian typical Victorian papa. The fact his death hit Carroll hard tells us way more about Carroll than his pop IMO. People mourn people for so many reasons and some horrendous parents are deeply missed.
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Post by jenny2write on May 29, 2008 15:56:31 GMT -5
I didn't say he was snuggly or cuddly, they're the last words I'd use and the last qualities I'd apply to him. I didn't say he exuded tenderness. If you're going to criticise me for not providing evidence for something I don't think, then we've hit a dead end street!
Are you aware that men were expected to be very "manly" in 1850? Not all were of course but there was no idea that they should share in childcare, and if they didn't feel like paying any attention to their kids nobody tried to make them. It would have been socially acceptable for Mr D to be like that, but instead he took the trouble to travel over to CLD's boarding school to see how he had settled in. Blimey, even in MY (English) boarding school it would have been felt that was pandering to the kids. My school would never have allowed parents in just to see how their kids were getting on). In those days, many boarding schools also neglected and abused children - I'm talking even of expensive ones. It was considered that the kids should be toughened up and made used to hardship, poor food and discomfort to prepare them for difficulties they would encounter in life. Beating and physical abuse was no particular cause for removal unless the child was permanently injured. Well, Mr D sent CLD to a prep school with a kind and gentle teacher, and then to Rugby which was by far the most civilised of the public schools, even though it was as rough as hell by modern standards.
Mr D may not have been "pro feminist" (a concept that didn't exist then) but he wanted his girls to be independent because he said so and made provision for it - he regretted it would be a frugal life and was hurt that he had had to train them in frugality, but he said it was the only way they would have any independence (he hadn't much money). If he had not done this they would have had to work at ill paid, low status often lonely jobs (a governess got about £25 ($50) a YEAR in today's money - multiply that by fifty to get approximate buying power then - not exactly a fortune, eh?) or else marry someone -almost anyone - just to get an income. Pretty well the only alternative to those things would have been some form of prostitution. You can see why "pro-feminist" wasn't a concept. "Feminism" wasn't one, either. It was a much tougher world in those days.
.I think he was kind because the letter he wrote to the 8 year old Charles was kind - it was designed to please and entertain him. Unkind or remote people don't write those kind of letters to their kids. His wife was gentle, by all accounts -but I have found nothing to suggest that he was gentle. The documentation suggests he wasn't liberal in many ways - quite moralistic and stern in the face of what he considered "sin". I daresay too tht he was a mixture of qualities, like most people were.
And finally CLD referred to him as "my dear, dear father" which is not the way people usually refer to a parent they don't like. Nor do people say that the death of a parent many years ago was the worst thing that ever happened in their life, if actually they hated them. Or are you trying to make the case that CLD was lying the whole time about his dad? And if so, on what evidence?.
Nope, all in all, I'm not convinced that Mr D was like Cohen says. And I'm not impressed by your criticisms of me.
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Post by bettyboop on May 29, 2008 17:22:35 GMT -5
Nope, all in all, I'm not convinced that Mr D was like Cohen says. And I'm not impressed by your criticisms of me. I'm not criticising you dear, I don't know you at all, and I wouldn't presume to offer criticism of you. I was only trying to air for you why I think you are offering assumptions rather than facts. Well now I never suggested Carroll hated his pop. There's a certain amount of evidence he may have not always got on with him, but hate is a way strong claim I would never make. But grief is a funny old thing. You'd have to call Carroll describing his papa's dearh as the worst thing ever to happen to him an extreme kind of response would you not? On the old list where I lurked for a lot of years there was a post by the lady moderator (Anne?) that made a good point about why people grieve excessively. She said that people grieve more for those with whom they may have unfinished business than for those with whom they enjoyed whole and fulfilled relationships. A feeling of having lost the chance to put things right perhaps making it impossible to move on cleanly. I'm not saying this was the case for Carroll, but it certainly means the fact he grieved intensely for his father doesn't necessitate him having had a great relationship with the guy, and as I said already, the fact Carroll grieved so much tells us more about him than about the guy he was grieving for. You can't measure people by the amount other people love them or revere them. Bad people have been loved a lot and good people have been lonely and uncared for. It's not easily quantifiable. If I was writing a biography of Carroll, which I am not, I think I would have to say his father was by all accounts a stern guy, maybe a little distant, but doing his best to be a good parent in his own way. Beyond that, the evidence is murky. You use the murk to support your viewpoint of a happy family, Cohen uses it to support his view of dysfunction. You're both assuming, and I don't see that you are wiping away a myth by simply supplanting one assumption with another.
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Post by johntufail on May 29, 2008 17:54:38 GMT -5
Hi Bettyboop,
I'm sorry, but I have to correct you on Cohen. There is a wealth of eidence that Dodgson Snr was, within the context of his times and status, a most extraordinary father. There are huge recors of the games that all the children were encouraged to play, the amount of control the children were allowed oer their own lies (witness the family publications - something practiced only by the most liberal and 'bohemian' of familes. |i challenge anyone to find a comparable example of a person in Dodgson Snr's posotion (not only clergyman but one with significant patronage fom the Likes of Pusey!). There is also the unchallengeable evidence of the books that Carroll was (at least) allowed to read and were readily available in his father's library.
Cohen had to deliberately ignore all this in order to build his own portrait of Dodgson Snr.
The other thing to bear in mind is that from quite an early age (at laterst his ealy 20's) Carroll fell strongly under the influence of the Boad Church Movement (witness his diary entries regarding Coleridge and Kingsley in the early 1850's). Cohen tries to date this move from much later - his meeting with FD Maurice in the early 60's. It doesn't work. Carroll made a conscious choice to seek out Maurice in Vine St (London(because he was already well attuned to the Christian Socialist/Broad Church movement. His friendship with MacDonald also arose from his seeking out of like minds.
Bearing in mind all this - and his opposition to Pusey - there ineitably has to be some sort of tension between the son and the father. Afyer all, though clearly liberal in his attitude to paenting and education, Carroll's father was publicly High Church and relied on the Puseyite wing of this movement at least until the end of the 1840's and probably beyond. This combined with the death of Carroll's mother, who appears to have been the ideal facilitator, must have introduced some tensions between father and son.
Regards
JT
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Post by jenny2write on May 29, 2008 18:25:12 GMT -5
Well, bettyboop, let's call it a day with this discussion - you've given your theory based on the thougths of some lady who was on a mailing list you lurked on, plus an assertion about the "evidence" being murky to suggest anything else. I haven't seen any signs that you have any "evidence" - you certainly haven't quoted any - so I can't assess exactly how murky it is or whether it even exists at all!
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Post by bettyboop on May 29, 2008 19:47:57 GMT -5
Jenny: Dear, I'm not claiming to have any evidence other than what is there for all of us to see. It's not me making claims it's you and all the other biographers, and I am just saying that it all boils down to assumptions because the evidence is murky is all. No call to get nasty though, like Jules said, this is a friendly place, let's not go spoiling it. John: Congratulations sir on a very fair minded post! I think you probably have a very good compromise view in what you say.
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Post by jenny2write on May 30, 2008 1:50:01 GMT -5
I am usually a friendly person and I don't usually get caught up in flaming rows on either this or the other list. In fact, I don't think I ever have. But since I'm being paid to write a book - i.e. this is my work - and you're publicly stating that I'm drawing conclusions on weak evidence, I don't think it's unreasonable of me to take it up pretty strongly just to put the record straight.
If you had investigated the subject you would have come up with something more definite than just saying "everyone can see" whatever it is you thnk I'm doing. So I don't want to continue arguing with you about it.
It might help if you could think of what you yourself would do if someone went on record openly criticising the way you were doing your job, and see that I am just doing something similar. And please don't take this personally. I don't know you and you don't know me but hey maybe if we met we might like each other ;-)
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Jules
Rook
The trombone frightens me
Posts: 45
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Post by Jules on May 30, 2008 4:29:20 GMT -5
I am usually a friendly person and I don't usually get caught up in flaming rows on either this or the other list. In fact, I don't think I ever have. But since I'm being paid to write a book - i.e. this is my work - and you're publicly stating that I'm drawing conclusions on weak evidence, I don't think it's unreasonable of me to take it up pretty strongly just to put the record straight. But Cohen was paid to write a book too, and so was Leach and presumably all the rest of the biographers being discussed here. Being paid can't absolve you from criticism, rather it means you have to face more criticism because you are offering yourself as an expert. Betty's criticisms of you seem failry mild compared to the extreme things that have been said about the other writers.
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Post by jenny2write on May 30, 2008 7:36:46 GMT -5
Of course I agree . My was thinking that if I didn't refute Betty, then it may look like I haven't got any response to make to a genuine criticism. . But... well, who cares at the end of the day. Today I've been thinking it may be better to ignore posts that don't seem to make too much sense to me and get on with writing. It is quite time consuming to respond here and this certainly won't be the last comment that I don't agree with...
Betty sounds a nice person from other posts, and is entitled to his or her opinion.
(This has got way off topic by the way. ) Jenny
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