Twain and Carroll – ‘The Dream-Brothers’
Introduction
In my work with organisations, I often
recommend the works of Lewis Carroll and Mark Twain to clients and colleagues
as a colourful, non-scientific, stylish and imaginative description of how companies
deal with change and disruption. ‘Alice in Wonderland’ (Carroll, 1867)
describes a situation where things are disordered because nothing has changed
and everything works the way it always has. “A Connecticut Yankee in King
Arthur’s Court”, (Twain, 1889) shows what happens if you introduce changes into
a system without considering the context and the consequences. A high-level
view of their lives and works (see table below) throws up some interesting
similarities and differences. Outwardly the quiet Oxford don does not look as
though he would have anything in common with the American extrovert apart from
their literary success. However, there are opportunities for exploration at a
literary and behavioral level that could provide entertainment and education.
The table below gives some categories that we
can consider in assessing each against the other and how their experiences
influenced their lives. For example, they were both interested in the
paranormal but had a different view on foreign travel. Their personal
connections indicate their variety of interests and curiosity.
Table 1 – High-Level View of Twain and Carroll
|
Twain
|
Carroll
|
|
Themes
|
Change, Disruption, Time, Space and Hierarchy
|
Change, Disruption, Time, Space and Hierarchy
|
|
Modern Influence
|
Marx Brothers, Freud, W C Fields
|
Marx Brothers, The Beatles
|
|
Marketing Skills
|
Twain was a great self-promoter with tours and
lectures
|
Carroll was a product marketing specialist. The
‘Alice’ brand was used on items including ‘The Wonderland Postage-Stamp
Case’, Biscuit Tins.
|
|
Education
|
Left school and became an apprentice. A lot of
self-education from libraries. Writing from an early age. Spoke German.
|
Local school, then Rugby, then Oxford as a student
then teacher. He was writing from an early age.
|
|
Travel
|
Travelled across the World for book tours and
research. Lived abroad frequently.
|
One trip abroad to Russia and spent college
vacations in Eastbourne for many years.
|
|
Inventions
|
Invested in typesetting, He also had patents for a
self-pasting scrapbook, a fastener for shirts and a history trivia game.
|
Created a mechanical bat and a note taking machine
to use in the dark, justifying margins on typewriters. He had ideas for ideas
for a postal order and double-sided adhesive tape
|
|
Interests outside of Writing
|
Publishing, Travel – his best-selling work in his
lifetime was ‘The Innocents Abroad’. The Paranormal – he was a member of the
Society for Psychical Research.
|
Photography, The Theatre, Puzzles, Word Games, Logic
and Poetry. He wrote a book on ‘Euclid and his Rivals’. The Paranormal – He
was a member of the Society for Psychical Research.
|
|
Other writing
|
Historical fiction such as ‘Personal Recollections
of Joan of Arc’, ‘The Private Life of Adam and Eve’
|
A number of pamphlets that included vivisection,
voting strategies and vaccination.
|
|
Connections
|
Ulysses Grant, Nikola Tesla, P T Barnum, Bram Stoker
|
The Rosettis, George MacDonald, Ellen Terry
|
They were both extremely productive individuals. The timeline below
gives an idea of their output during their lives but does not include all of
their work including non-fiction, speeches, pamphlets and correspondence.
Figure 1 - Timeline of Lifetime Events and Publications
They met only once at a dinner with a common
friend who was George MacDonald, the writer. Twain notes in his autobiography
that Carroll was interesting to look at, “for he was the stillest and shyest
full-grown man I have ever met except ’Uncle Remus’. Dr Macdonald and several other lively talkers
were present, and the talk went briskly on for a couple of hours, but Carroll
sat still all the while except that now and then he answered a question. His
answers were brief. I do not remember that he elaborated any of them”. However,
he also referred to Carroll as his ‘dream-brother’ which shows the regard he
had for Carroll’s work. They both used pseudonyms and perhaps these
were also dual personas. Mark Twain's real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens.
Before he became a writer, he held a variety of jobs including piloting a
steamboat up and down the Mississippi River. Biographer Justin Kaplan suggests that
the name ‘Mark Twain’ derived from the common practice of marking up two drinks
on credit elsewhere it is suggested it was the cry for a measured river depth
of two fathoms (12 feet), which was safe water for a steamboat. Lewis Carroll’s real name was Charles
Lutwidge Dodgson. The name change occurred as follows: Carroll took his
original name "Charles Lutwidge" translated this into Latin as "Carolus
Ludovicus". This was then translated back into English as "Carroll
Lewis" and then reversed to make "Lewis Carroll". This was many
years before Google Translate but Carroll, like many students, knew Latin. Aside
from his other interests, Carroll was a teacher at Oxford University. He wanted to keep his personas separate so
much that he would refuse letters sent to “Lewis Carroll, Christ Church,
Oxford”, claiming no such person lived there.
The casual observer would describe Twain as
the bold risk-taker and Carroll as the more conservative individual. The truth
is they were both risk-takers. Carroll paid for the publication of ‘Alice in
Wonderland’ himself which meant that he received better royalties but it was a
big risk for an unknown Oxford teacher who could not even afford to get
married. We cannot imagine the outcome if ‘Alice in Wonderland’ had not turned
Carroll into ‘the tycoon of whimsy’ as described in The New Yorker (Gopnik,
1995). He could have been in serious financial trouble. Twain was involved in
printing and publishing, and he became an investor in a typesetting invention.
This cost him millions in today’s money, and he had to undertake lectures and book
tours to pay for the costs and the debts to the investors. Twain and Carroll
were both were prepared to back their judgement with their own money.
The Worlds of Wonderland and
Camelot
The ‘Alice’ stories and ‘A Connecticut Yankee
at the court of King Arthur’ both deal with people who travel into another
place where time is different and the habits of the local population are not
what they are used to. They are in alternate universes with a particular social
structure where the normal rules have been suspended, and they have to work out
a way to deal with them.
Twain’s book was an exploration of utopian
fiction looking at the psychology and the social impact of changes to an alien
environment. Twain’s hero, Hank Morgan, travels to medieval Camelot via a blow
to the head while working in a car factory. He unsuccessfully attempts to
introduce modern democratic ideas with devastating results. With Carroll, Alice
also enters an unconscious state before she falls down a hole following a white
rabbit. In Wonderland she has to come to terms a new set of rules and not the
one that she left. Things do not work
out well for her, and she ends up in court.
Their Love of Inventions
Twain was an early adopter of the typewriter
and a long-time enthusiast of new science and technology, Twain lost the bulk
of his fortune by investing huge sums on a typesetting machine, buying the
rights to the apparatus outright in 1889. The machine was overcomplicated and
frequently broke down, and “before it could be made to work consistently,”
writes the University of Virginia’s Mark Twain library, “the Linotype machine
swept the market [Twain] had hoped to corner.”
Carroll was an early adopter of photography
and took pictures of the celebrities of the day such as members of the Royal
family, the Rosetti family and Tennyson, the poet laureate. He also came up
with ideas for postal orders, queuing systems outside the theatre, voting
systems. In this Victorian-era there were so many possibilities due to
industrialisation, railways where things could be standardised, invented or
improved.
The advances in typesetting and photography
during these times had a similar impact to that of the internet had on modern-day. Before photography, only the rich could get likenesses of themselves via portraits.
As typesetting improved more books could become available and literacy would
improve.
It is also noted that Carroll went to the
Great Exhibition in London in 1851 and Twain to the 1889 World Exhibition in
Paris. These particular exhibitions were used to promote British and American
advancement, respectively, to an interested world and attracted attention and
visitors.
Influence on Language
Twain and Carroll particularly influenced
writers and comedians by their use of language and paradox. We can see their style
represented with ‘The Marx Brothers’ who use words to develop comic
possibilities and with other comedians who are looking to subvert our
certainties or stereotypes such as W.C Fields. Lewis Carroll used language in a
colourful way and he invented new words that we use today such as ‘galumph’ and
‘chortle’. This technique of ‘portmanteau words’ is used, particularly in
journalism and sociology, for example, metrosexual or chocaholic. The Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields are a rich
source of the type of material produced by Twain and Carroll.
‘Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?’
Groucho Marx in ‘Duck Soup’ sounding like the Cheshire Cat
Also, from ‘Duck
Soup’ although it sounds like a dialogue with Carroll’s Hatter:
Labor Minister: The
Department of Labor wishes to report that the workers of Freedonia are
demanding shorter hours.
Firefly: Very well,
then we'll give them shorter hours. We'll start by cutting their lunch hour to
20 minutes.
From ‘The Innocents Abroad’, ‘I must have a
prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it
up’ This could be Groucho Marx dialogue.
‘A crowded police docket is the surest of all signs
that trade is brisk and money plenty.’ Is it Twain Groucho Marx or W C Fields?
‘I once spent a
year in Philadelphia, I think it was on a Sunday.’ W. C. Fields observation on
time and place. Both Carroll and Twain were fond of time distortion in their
writing.
W C Fields said, ‘I
never voted for anybody. I always voted against.’ (Taylor,1967).
This would not be out of place in either ‘Alice in Wonderland’ or ‘Duck Soup
‘or ‘Horse Feathers’
From Lewis Carroll
we get the dialogue between the Alice and the Mock Turtle where Alice asks the
Mock Turtle what he learned at school and the answer is:
'Reeling and
Writhing, of course, to begin with,' the Mock Turtle replied; 'and then the
different branches of Arithmetic — Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and
Derision.'
From ‘Horse
Feathers’ we have the following discussion about education between Groucho and
Chico Marx.
Wagstaff: “As you
know, there is constant warfare between the red and white corpuscles. Now then,
baboons, what is a corpuscle?
Baravelli: That's
easy! First isa captain, then isa lieutenant, then isa corpuscle.
Conclusion
These two writers provided insight and
entertainment in equal measure and continue to enchant. This article does not
aim to explore in detail the rationale behind the differences and similarities.
Some will be cultural, environmental or individual but it is always interesting to contrast and compare two influential figures who co-existed but did not directly influence each other. We can consider whether this was an America v England effect, Mississippi v Oxford or just different sparks of genius flickering away.
References
Carroll L. 1865. Alice in Wonderland, MacMillan.
Carroll L. 1871. Alice Through the Looking Glass. MacMillan.
Twain M. 1889. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Chatto and Windus.
Twain M. 1872. Roughing It. American Publishing Company.
Twain M. 1869. The Innocents Abroad. American Publishing Company.
Taylor R. L.1967. W.C. Fields: His Follies and Fortunes. St Martin’s Press.
Gopnik A 1995. Wonderland, 02 October 1995 The New Yorker.
