‘Lewis Carroll’
‘Lewis Carroll’ is the pseudonym of Charles
Lutwidge Dodgson (the ‘g’ in
Dodgson is silent). ‘Lewis’ is derived from Lutwidge (in English
Ludovic or Louis). ‘Carroll’ is a variation on the name Charles
that originates from the Latin ‘Carolus’. Charles Dodgson, according to the
memory of Alice Liddell, the original Alice, ‘carried himself upright,
almost more than upright, as if he had swallowed a poker.’ He was a thin
man who walked eighteen miles a day, timed to take five hours and twenty-five
minutes. Dodgson had a stutter (or ‘hesitation’ as he called it)
and would introduce himself as ‘Do-do-do-dson’. Hence, he was known
as ‘Dodo’,
a creature that makes a brief appearance in Wonderland.
Dodgson was an inventor, like the kindly White Knight (“It’s my own invention!”). Among Dodgson’s theoretical inventions were a travel chess set with attachments to be placed in holes on a board, a word game where words were created from various square letters (essentially a prototype Scrabble™) and a betting system that guaranteed winnings at the Derby. The latter, he pointed out, was impractical because no bookmaker would ever accept such a combination of bets.
