On 14 August 1868, a youthful-looking clergyman came to Guildford for the first time. He was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, then aged 36, and he was on a house hunting expedition. He was already famous as Lewis Carroll, the author of ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’, which had been published three years earlier. However, it is unlikely that anyone he met on this visit to Guildford realised who he was.
Born in Daresbury in 1832, Charles Dodgson was the eldest of eleven children born to the Rector and his wife. The parsonage was some distance from the village, and the children mostly played amongst themselves. The family moved to Croft in the North Riding in 1843.
Charles went to Rugby School in 1846. When he was nineteen he went up to Christchurch College in Oxford. He took his BA in Mathematics and Classics in 1854 and became a maths tutor at the college. At that time, a university teacher was required to become a clergyman. In 1861 he took deacon’s orders and became ‘the Reverend Dodgson’.
He soon got to know Henry Liddell, Dean of Christchurch, and his family. In the summer of 1862 he took the Dean’s children on a boat trip. During the trip he told young Alice Liddell the story of a girl who had a series of adventures after she followed a white rabbit underground. The story so entranced the child that she asked him to write it down. It was published, as ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ in 1865, with illustrations by Sir John Tenniel.
His father died in June 1868. Charles became head of the family, responsible for finding a home for his six unmarried sisters. We do not know for certain why the Dodgsons, a north country family on both sides, should have considered moving to Guildford. The most likely explanation is Lewis Carroll’s friendship with his old Rugby schoolmate Rev G R Portal, rector of Albury near Guildford.
He soon found a suitable house. By November the Dodgson family had moved into The Chestnuts. It was a roomy house, built about 1861, near the Castle ruins, and some sixty yards from the present museum building.
It remained the family headquarters until the surviving Misses Dodgson gave up the tenancy in 1919. However, they continued to live in Guildford with some of their nieces. After the last Miss Dodgson died in 1930 the remaining members of the family left Guildford, ending a connection of over sixty years.
Lewis Carroll never actually lived in Guildford. He was a don and mathematical lecturer at Christchurch, Oxford, where he had his own rooms and kept his papers and personal belongings. However, The Chestnuts was rented in his name and he had a parliamentary vote in the Guildford constituency. His diaries make it clear that he was constantly up and down to Guildford, staying for a few days at a time. He always spent several weeks at Christmas with the family, although the house was sometimes so full that he had to stay at a local hotel.
The household consisted of six Misses Dodgson (one of them later took a house at Brighton on her own). For several years it included Miss Lucy Lutwidge, Lewis Carroll’s aunt who had kept house at Croft after the death of Mrs Dodgson. His brother, Skeffington, must have been a frequent visitor for some years while he held curacies in West Surrey. The youngest brother, Edwin, made The Chestnuts his base while he was studying for the Ministry and when he was on leave from Tristan da Cunha or missionary work in Zanzibar.
As soon as the nephews and nieces were old enough they, too, visited the family home and later remembered their visits with pleasure. The house was largely furnished with pieces brought from the old home at Croft, and the cupboards were full of toys and games. All of the Dodgsons were fond of children. In their own childhood the eleven brothers and sisters had made their own amusements. Lewis Carroll was particularly good at inventing games and puzzles, and continued to do so until the end of his life.
Guildford Museum has some cut-out paper dolls with changes of costume, which one of Carroll’s sisters had made for a child at Croft. Many old treasures from their own nursery ended up at The Chestnuts and are now in the Museum. These include a history jigsaw of William IV’s time and a ‘Wheel of Life’, which are usually on display.
The Dodgsons already knew several families in the neighbourhood and soon made more friends. These included the family of Dr Merriman, the headmaster of the Royal Grammar School, the Haydons, a banking family next door, and the clergy of the various churches.
One of the rarest of Lewis Carroll’s writings is the 'Guildford Gazette Extraordinary'. This was an imitation newspaper in which he gave the text of an elaborate charade acted by the Dodgsons and their friends at Christmas 1869, together with a mock review of the performance. Home-made entertainments of this sort were a great feature of Dodgson family life. The second Alice book, 'Through the Looking Glass and what Alice found there' was completed while he was staying in Guildford in 1871.
Lewis Carroll was a great walker. Even towards the end of his life he would walk twenty or more miles. When in Guildford he was fond of tramping over the Downs, and thought nothing of a walk to Farnham across the Hog’s Back. On one of these walks, on 18 July 1875, the last line of his nonsense masterpiece 'The Hunting of the Snark’ came into his head. This line was, ‘For the Snark was a Boojum you see’. Four days later the remaining three lines of the last verse came to him. The rest of the poem was written in stages over the next six months.
The Misses Dodgsons were active in all kinds of church and charitable work. Most of this was in connection with the nearby St Mary’s Church, although Edwin Dodgson and one or two of his sisters attended St Nicolas Church. Lewis Carroll was often invited to preach at St Mary’s and his signature is seen many times in the Service Books, together with the text for his sermon. In 1881 he retired as a lecturer, but continued to live at Christchurch. In about 1895 Lewis Carroll’s health began to deteriorate. On his Christmas visit to The Chestnuts in 1897 he caught influenza, and, in spite of devoted nursing, died on 14 January 1898, a fortnight before his sixty-sixth birthday.
His funeral service was held in St Mary’s Church. He was buried in the cemetery on The Mount, just inside the gates, where his grave and the memorial cross erected by his brothers and sisters can be seen. His aunt, Lucy Lutwidge, and several of his sisters are buried in the same cemetery.