Lewis Carroll and Charles Lutwidge Dodgson as Alternate Personalities

Charles Dodgson (1832-1898) and Lewis Carroll were distinctly different personalities. But conventional wisdom is that Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland, was simply the pen name of Charles Dodgson, mathematician.

The only biography that dissents from conventional wisdom is The Life of Lewis Carroll by Langford Reed (London, W. & G. Foyle, 1932), which says that Dodgson had a split personality. Reed reports that Carroll’s illustrators and child friends could tell when he switched from one personality to the other.

According to illustrator Harry Furniss, illustrator Sir John Tenniel “refused to illustrate any more of Lewis Carroll’s works after Through the Looking Glass, and held very unfavorable views on what he called the ‘pretentiousness’ and ‘obstinacy’ of the Dodgson part of him. When he heard that Furniss was proposing to illustrate Sylvie and Bruno, he warned him in the following words: ‘I’ll give you a week, old chap; you will never be able to put up with the fellow any longer. He is impossible!”

But Furniss was able to work with him: “We worked together for seven years, and a kindlier man than Lewis Carroll never existed. Dodgson, the mathematician, was less acceptable. He subjected every illustration, when finished, to a minute examination under the magnifying glass. He would take a square inch of the drawing, count the lines I had made in that space and compare their number with those in a square inch of illustration for ‘Alice’ made by Tenniel! And, in due course, I would receive a long essay on the subject from Dodgson the mathematician…”

A woman who had known Carroll when she was a child actress, a Miss Bowman, recalled one occasion when: “Uncle Charles was so impressed by the realistic model of a little dog…that, in a moment the academic Dodgson, intent on geographical instruction [they were at a Panorama of Niagara Falls which was being exhibited in London], became effaced by the whimsical Carroll, who began relating to me a wonderful story about the dog which, he said, was really alive but trained to stand motionless for hours…Suddenly he began to stammer and looking round in some alarm I saw that a dozen grown-ups and children had gathered around and were listening with every appearance of amused interest. And it was not Mr. Carroll, but a very confused Mr. Dodgson who took me by the hand and led me quickly from the scene…”

Thus, some people were quite aware of his switches from one personality to the other. Did either of these personalities have amnesia, a memory gap, for the period of time that the other personality had been “out”? Evidently, since Carroll had a reputation for “absent-mindedness” [also see posts on Mark Twain’s absent-mindedness]:

“The absent-mindedness mentioned by Miss Beringer is further illustrated by the rather well-known story which relates how the subject of this biography once went to London to dine with a gentleman to whom he had only recently been introduced. Next morning he was stopped by this individual, while walking in the street. ‘I beg  your pardon,’ said Lewis Carroll, ‘but you have the advantage of me. I do not remember ever having seen you before.” “That is very strange,’ was the reply, ‘for I was your host last night!’”

So some people actually saw and recognized that Carroll would switch personalities, and he even had memory gaps as a consequence—Lewis Carroll had multiple personality—but that is not what you will read elsewhere.