Isa Bowman (1874–1958)

It's not all Isa Bowman's fault. But it isn't for lack of trying.

Charles Dodgson ("Lewis Carroll") was a very private man, who became famous for his works without really becoming known to the public. No celebrity author he! When he suddenly died, there was an instant rush to get information about him. This took three forms. Many of his friends offered short reminiscences. The Dodgson family brought out an authorized (and thoroughly sanitized) biography. And Isa Bowman produced this book.

It show more isn't a biography, although there are some elements of that, and it isn't just another reminiscence, although it's mostly built around Bowman's memories. This makes it very useful to Dodgson historians, since it is one of the few substantial near-contemporary sources from someone who genuinely knew him well (Dodgson dedicated his book Sylvie and Bruno to Bowman).

But there is always the question of just how far to trust it, because -- as many authors have noted -- Bowman went to substantial lengths to portray herself as younger than she was. Her friendship with Dodgson took place when she was in her teens, which in the late Victorian era was far more scandalous than for an older man to be friends with a pre-teen. It is true that the larger share of Dodgson's friends were younger than Isa, and almost all of them female, but Dodgson did not avoid older women -- what seems to be his very last truly personal letter was written to Beatrice Hatch, who by then was in her thirties. Similarly, he and Gertrude Chataway visited together when she was pushing thirty. And Dodgson was still trying to get Alice Liddell to once again be his friend when she was in her thirties. He liked women of all ages -- he just didn't know how to approach them when the got older, and most of the friends he made when they were children got tired of a relationship that never really changed.

But Bowman, by giving the impression that she was very young when she knew him, helped cement the impression that he only cared about very young girls -- which has now turned into an impression that he preyed upon them. That's not really Bowman's fault, because she was trying to make everything look innocent (and there is every reason to think the relationship was innocent). But it always forces us to wonder what else she might have distorted. (Case in point: She called herself the "real Alice in Wonderland" -- based on the fact that she played Alice in a stage production, and Dodgson helped her get the part. But the real "Alice" was of course Alice Pleasance Liddell Hargreaves.) And the book helped inspire an industry of much-too-Freudian analysis and false narratives about Dodgson. (Including at least three fictional accounts of the relationships between Dodgson and young girls which are demonstrably false but that couldn't be bothered to try to find some facts.)

So students of Dodgson should both be glad to have this book and be cautious of it. Glad, because there is so much here that we could not find anywhere else. Cautious, because it isn't entirely trustworthy, and because Isa had clearly drifted away from Dodgson in her later years; she was not one of his more loyal child-friends. This is a snapshot of a short period of Dodgson's career. It's the clearest snapshot we have. But it doesn't really illuminate the rest of his life. show less

With an introduction by Mothon N. Cohen.
"Lewis Carroll first met Isa Bowman in September, 1887. He was fifity-five, a clergyman and Oxford Don; she, thirteen, a child actress. Although Isa Bowman seems to have neglected "Uncle Charles" during the last few years of his life, she certainly balanced the scales by honoring his memory with this charming memoir, written the year after his death."