ALS signed “C. L. Dodgson,” three pages on two adjoining black-bordered sheets, 4 x 6.25, July 21, 1873. Addressed from Christ Church, Oxford, a handwritten letter to speech therapist Rev. Henry Frederick Rivers, in full: “I see you advertise that your ‘term begins Aug. 5’ — If this means that the 6 or 7 boys which you have in the house are not now with you, & if you could conveniently receive me for 2 or 3 days previous to that date, I would try to squeeze the time out of any present engagements, that I might have the benefit of your hints & supervision in reading and speaking. If however you are yourself taking holiday, & would rather have entire rest, pray do not alter your plans on my account, as I might be able, at some time during the summer, to arrange to meet you in London, & have a few lessons in that way. With kind regards to Mrs. Rivers, I remain.” In fine condition. Dodgson suffered from a chronic stammer, or at least ‘hesitation,’ and in 1873 he engaged Rev. Rivers of Tunbridge Wells as his speech therapist. This is one of Dodgson's earliest letters to Rivers.
Over the entirety of his life, Charles Dodgson endured the frustration of having a stutter. In Lewis Carroll: A Biography, author Morton N. Cohen stated, ‘The newborn son was the third of what eventually became a family of eleven children, and if these bloodlines deserve credit for the creative genius we know to be Lewis Carroll's, so perhaps they bear the blame for the stammer epidemic in Charles' speech and in the speech of much of his brothers and sisters.’
One longtime friend, May Barber, described Carroll's speech, ‘Those stammering bouts were rather terrifying. It wasn't exactly a stammer because there was no noise, he just opened his mouth.’ When he was in the middle of telling a story ‘he suddenly stopped and you wondered if you had done anything wrong. Then you looked at him and you knew that you hadn't, it was all right.’
In 1859, Carroll undertook speech therapy lessons from James Hunt, who was considered the foremost speech correctionist in Great Britain at the time. Penned some 14 years later, this letter to Rivers underscores Dodgson’s diligent and optimistic approach to managing his speech disorder. An interesting letter concerning a little-known truth about the Alice in Wonderland author.
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