That evening, at Plumbley’s Hotel, Dodgson made notes in his diary about the children he’d met on the seashore. He was attempting to keep his spirits up. Next to the name ‘Daisy’ he made a large emphatic cross, and then, after a pause, added a thoughtful question mark. There was certainly something very attractive about the child, even though her forwardness terrified him. Perhaps it was the image of her in the garden with the wings. For some deep reason, Victorians always liked to picture small girls as figuring somewhere between a corpse and a chicken. Next to ‘Annie’ he wrote ‘A triumph, pic soon’ and next to ‘Jessie’ he wrote ‘Needs work. Unimpressed by bunny tricks. Poss not child at all, but imposter midget?’
What a life for a grown man with a huge intellect: sucking up to kiddies on their holidays. Yet every day he recorded the names of the new conquests, and calculated whether their parents would let him share them for a couple of hours. Sharing was Dodgson’s life, really. The way he looked at it, other people seemed to have lives not so much full to the brim as wastefully overflowing; they generated left-overs of all sorts; it seemed therefore an offence against the Almighty not to cream off some of the surplus. Great trees are good for nothing but shade, as the saying is. So Dodgson shared other people’s fame when he took their pictures. He shared other people’s poems when he made a parody. He shared other people’s teatimes when he dropped by at six. And the little girls? Well, he would never have one of his own.
He stood up and made a decision. He would attend the phrenology lecture. In Oxford or London, he would not have risked the impropriety, but here in the Isle of Wight he could mingle with the artisans and housemaids, and pay his tuppence for the privilege. He always loved a show, as long as there was no harm in it; and to be honest, the social opportunities of Freshwater had been a bit of a disappointment thus far. No response to his letter from Farringford yet; and as for Dimbola Lodge, he was so anxious about being hauled in to pose for Mrs Cameron as Beowulf with a coal scuttle on his head that he had started going past on all fours.
Even from the photographic view, he had got nowhere in Freshwater. Both evenings since his arrival he had stayed in his hotel, alone, writing little letters to child-friends, closing his eyes to picture them with not much on, and polishing his equipment vigorously with a rag.
And why should he not attend the lecture? From all that the dear, pretty Ellen had told him, none of the resident geniuses of Freshwater would stoop to the level of Lorenzo Fowler (‘Old Watts will never let me go,’ she said), so Dodgson felt safe from recognition if he joined the throng. No, the biggest worry was the possibility of audience participation. The great Lorenzo would require heads to practise on; what if Fowler called Dodgson on stage? Phrenologized him in front of a hall full of people? Pulled the secrets out of his head like a magician producing a coloured scarf from a nose? Dodgson reached for a hat and tugged it firmly on his head. He placed another on top of it. And then the boater.
Dodgson had been phrenologized once before, and had hated it utterly. Even years later, the thought of it made him feel nauseous. That another person should touch one’s head, even in a private consulting room in Edinburgh – the intimacy was outrageous, horrifying. And then one must endure the diagnosis, too. Dodgson’s outstandingly logical mind had been deduced in Edinburgh; also his abnormally large love of children. But ‘Emulous’ this insolent Scotsman had called him, to Dodgson’s indignance. Emulous? Why, he was no more emulous than any other distinguished man of letters writing in England today, if he might include himself in that company (and he thought, on the whole, he might).
Dodgson resolved to stand firm against Mr Fowler if the question of volunteers arose. He wished only to watch the phrenologizing of the lesser orders. If asked to participate, he must simply say no in the firmest possible way.
He practised it now.
‘You are very k-k—’ he began.
‘Thank you but n-n—’
‘I f-f—feel I must decl-cl—’
As usual with the Reverend C. L. Dodgson, the firm words needed work.
It was eight o’clock when he left the hotel, and the sun had almost disappeared behind the western downs, but the bay beneath glowed sapphire as though lit from within, the surf danced, and Dodgson felt a surge of happiness. His skin still burned from the day, and he shivered in the sea breeze, but he decided not to return for a scarf, even though he had prudently packed a nice woollen one when leaving Oxford. Life for Dodgson was a succession of resisted urges – as he walked up the lane to Dimbola (it was on the way), he wanted to turn up his collar; he wanted also to break into a frantic run; he fancied snorting like a buffalo, or striking an Anglo-Saxon attitude. But he resisted all of these things, and hardly admitted them even to himself. No wonder he didn’t want a scientist poking at the assorted giveaway offal inside his head.
All the rooms at Dimbola Lodge were lit this evening (a typical extravagance of the Cameron woman) and since the curtains were open, he saw as he approached that all sorts of merry larks were taking place inside, including the table and sideboards set for a fashionable dinner à la russe – a wasteful method of dining, in Dodgson’s opinion. Heaps of fruit, there were, too; and Mrs Cameron darted from room to room with a dripping photographic print in her hands, letting chemicals fall on the table linen as well as on the bare heads of her guests. Dodgson noted that Mr Watts, the painter, was taking an enthusiastic interest in Mrs Cameron’s efforts, while pocketing some biscuits for later, and that Miss Terry was nowhere to be seen.
Dodgson clucked at the mess Mrs Cameron made; it was quite unnecessary. In all his years photographing, Dodgson had never sustained the smallest mark or abrasion from his hobby, yet Mrs Cameron ran around with fingers blackened by the chemicals to the state of rotten bananas. ‘This is not dirt, but art!’ she exclaimed. But the story was told that the great Garibaldi, visiting Tennyson to plant that tree in the garden, had sent her packing, assuming she was a gypsy. He gave her sixpence, apparently, and warned her in Italian that God’s eye was upon us all.
This sea breeze was surprisingly nippy. Dodgson sheltered beside Dimbola’s briar to readjust his sleeves and cuffs, and was pleased that he had done so, for straightaway from the house came two maids, evidently heading in the same direction as himself.
He let them pass. They didn’t see him. One he recognized to be the Irish Mary Ryan; the other must be the famously photogenic Mary Ann. And as if reading his thoughts, the unknown girl threw back her head to observe the first stars, and a beam of silver light picked out her chiselled profile, illuminating her with a kind of halo. It was quite a spooky gift this girl had, actually – even a religious chap like Dodgson had to acknowledge it.
Luckily Mary Ryan noticed what she was doing.
‘Will you stop that!’ she snapped.
Mary Ann lowered her face and stuck out her tongue, and the sublime patina fled.
Dodgson was just about to move when a door slammed at Dimbola again, and another figure came hurrying past – one of Mrs Cameron’s sons, perhaps? – a slim young man in a peaked cap who muttered to himself as he walked. There was nothing very remarkable in that, of course; a man may mutter. No, it was what he muttered that intrigued Dodgson.
‘My name is, er, um, Herbert Pocket,’ he said, in a squeaky and then a gruff tone.
Dodgson wrinkled his nose. What? My name is, er, um, Herbert Pocket? Why would the young chap be telling himself his own name? Also, why wasn’t he completely sure what it was?
‘Yes sir, Herbert’s my name, sir,’ Mr Pocket continued, ‘Down from Lunnon; don’t know nobody in the districk –’
Dodgson followed quietly behind. Herbert’s stride was lengthening, and he was beginning to stick out his elbows like the ears on a pitcher. What on earth was going on? Herbert poked some loose hair up into the hat, impatiently. He seemed to have a thin waist and ample chest, too; there was a suggestion of hips, moreover. Dodgson would have said ‘Curiouser and curiouser’, but true to his instincts, resisted it. He knew it might take him all evening to get it out.
Jessie Fowler had known no other life than this. A hundred times she had heard her father announce to a complete stranger, ‘Now, I don’t know you from a side of sole leather, is that correct, sir?’ And a hundred times the subject had grimaced and shrugged that he supposed the case was so.
The useful thing about phrenology, from the showmanship point of view, was that it really worked. There was no need of trickery. What made one phrenologist better than another were presentation, entertainment, and the quantity of easily affordable products available for sale at the exit. Lorenzo had made and squandered a personal fortune from phrenology, mostly out of selling pamphlets at a penny a go. Getting the character analysis correct was merely the first, easy stage; Lorenzo honestly thought nothing of it. Back in America, where he hit the sawdust trail thirty years before with his big brother Orson, the Phrenological Fowlers were know to be infallible. Imposters they exposed, murderers they accused, the secrets of human distress they diagnosed with compassion. Almost never had they been run out of town. Those stout fingers could not be fooled. The Fowlers were awesome.
‘No Conscientiousness whatsoever!’ Orson once exclaimed, his hand flying off a volunteer head as though subjected to a shock of electricity.
‘Oh! No Conscientiousness!’ repeated the audience with a lot of hissing, as they glanced at one another, wondering exactly what this meant.
Orson bit his lip. Cautiously (as though the head might explode if he pushed it in the wrong place) he continued his search for clues of depravity. The audience held its breath. He lifted a handful of hair and peeked beneath. ‘No Approbativeness!’ he cried (the audience recoiled). ‘No Shame!’ He backed away from the head, and begged the audience to tell him what this man had done. He killed a female slave, they said. Orson shook his own head and drooped his shoulders, as though all the strength had been taken from him by the evil of this man. The Fowlers sold out all their pamphlets that famous night in Virginia, even the dog-eared unsaleable ones about the modern miracle of the broad bean and the cause of female suffrage.
Jessie’s role on these English tours was to pick out the volunteers, and also to help with the heads and charts at the beginning of the show. Lorenzo always began slowly with a history of the science and a quick run-down of the ‘congeries of organs’ that comprised the brain. ‘Three storeys and a skylight,’ was how he genially explained cranial organization – with the base instincts such as sexuality (Amativeness) in the cerebellum, then reflective and perceptive qualities as you moved further upstairs (‘You can see more from the top floor!’); and finally Veneration and Hope and Benevolence with the best view of all. You could always tell an archbishop or theologian from the high cathedral dome of his head, Lorenzo explained. And it’s true, when you think about it. People who have been dropped head-first on a stone floor in infancy almost never make it into the higher echelons of the church.
During the lecture, Jessie kept her eye on the audience, and smoothed her special stage frock. It was a misguided shade of coral. She would pay particular attention to the people who surreptitiously removed their hats and ran their hands over their Self Esteem. As she looked out now, she could see several people she recognized from the beach, including Mr Dodgson (that pedagogue), who was currently poking his Amativeness with a small pencil. She would have him, she resolved quickly, if only to pay him back for all the ‘I love my love with a D’ business. She also alighted on the Irish maid from Mrs Cameron’s house, who had a broad space between her eyebrows – a quality Lorenzo always admired in a woman, since it betokened Individuality.
Jessie listened to the lecture, though she had heard it all before – the pygmies and Napoleon and the Idiot of Amsterdam (aged twenty-five). Lorenzo gave her the Montrose Calculator and she indicated the enormous Organ of Number beside his eyes while mugging in Scots. She watched Dodgson reach up and touch his own head again. Dodgson had Number and Causality so obvious that Lorenzo would instantly guess he was a logician. In phrenological terms Dodgson was a gift; she could hardly wait to give him to her pa.
But tonight Lorenzo was not to be rushed; he was making his public wait and wait. He was displaying Benjamin Robert Haydon now, showing his lack of Firmness but also his Individuality.
‘Persons who have this organ large,’ he said, ‘are apt to personify abstractions.’ Jessie noticed that when he said this, a slim young lad in the audience frowned under his peaked cap as though deeply interested.
Jessie was very proud of her father sometimes. These people were ripe for the picking. By the time she finally raided the stalls for volunteers, she would be knocked down in the commotion.
‘And now,’ said Lorenzo, ‘My daughter Jessie will ask some of you to join me on this little stage. At no extra cost I will conduct a personal analysis. Please do not resist the call; do not insult me by refusing. Our time is short enough.’
Jessie tugged at his sleeve, as though excited.
‘Yes, my dear,’ he commanded her grandly. ‘Find me a head!’
Dodgson watched with astonishment the downright eagerness of the paying public to be made laughing stocks. Every time Jessie plunged into the audience, he resolved to leave the hall before she did it again – yet something (let’s call it prurience) repeatedly prevented him. Up they went, one after another, to be told that their Ideality was superior to their Adhesiveness, each nodding gravely as if making a mental note, and feeling in their pockets for change (charts and explanations were on sale after). One volunteer had Approbativeness out of all proportion – ‘An intense need for approval, ladies and gentlemen!’ – and then proved the diagnosis, rather neatly, by asking nervously ‘But I do hope that’s a good thing?’
Dodgson watched enthralled, horrified, especially in that portion of the evening devoted to Mary Ryan, who spoke up well under questioning, was found to have a good mind and strong character, and even agreed to be hypnotized.
‘In this experiment,’ said Lorenzo, ‘I will demonstrate the power of Phreno-Magnetism.’
‘Oooh,’ said the audience.
‘Phreno-Magnetism is the very latest development, and luckily for you Freshwater folks I am its principal exponent. By hypnosis we may cure the diseases of the brain, direct the mind to purity. For we all strive for perfection, do we not?’
The audience, who had perhaps never looked at itself in quite such a flattering light before, cheerfully agreed that perfection was all it lived for.
‘By hypnotizing this young lady I can not only indicate the organs of her brain, but obtain direct access to them. Prepare to be amazed. Simply by touching the Organ of Self Esteem, for example, I will alter this young woman’s demeanour.’
Mary, in her trance, sat staring forward at the audience, looking slightly disgruntled as she always did.
‘Mary, I will now excite your Organ of Self Esteem,’ said Lorenzo, and with his beautiful hands smoothing and swarming over her head, he exerted pressure with his thumbs on a back section of her skull. Dodgson was astonished at her reaction. Mary Ryan sat up straight, held her nose in the air, and gave a look of such confidence that some of the audience started to titter.
‘Please do not laugh,’ commanded Lorenzo. ‘Self Esteem is a very serious matter. Mary, tell us what you do from day to day.’
The hall fell silent. Mary spoke quietly, but they all heard.
‘I do work that is beneath me.’
Mary Ann leaned forward.
‘Why do you continue with it?’ asked Lorenzo.
‘Because I am indebted to my mistress.’
‘Indebted? I see. You mean you are grateful to her?’
‘No, that’s different.’
‘You are proud, Mary!’
‘Not proud, but I know my worth. I may not be beautiful but I am educated. I am not seventeen, but I am tall and stately. I will marry well.’
‘You will?’
‘I know it.’
Mary Ann Hillier guffawed, and stopped herself. The audience was agog, but Dodgson shifted in his seat. He hated seeing someone so vulnerable and off-guard. He also hated to hear the lower orders getting above themselves.
‘So much for Self Esteem,’ said Lorenzo, releasing his grip. ‘I must explain that if I asked anybody those questions they would reply in the same surprising way. Our true estimation of ourselves may be masked by daily convenience, but the self esteem remains intact, waiting its moment. It is a flame that is never snuffed out.’
‘Tho much is taken, much abides?’ said Mary, still in her trance.
‘Precisely,’ said Lorenzo, pleasantly surprised. ‘I will now excite your Organ of Mirthfulness, Mary.’ And as he pressed her temples with his fingers Mary started to laugh so cheerfully that the audience laughed with her, and Lorenzo brought her gently out of her trance. Finding herself laughing and joyful, she grasped his hand and would not let go until Jessie grabbed at her skirt and pulled it.
‘Thank you, sir,’ she said to Lorenzo, wiping her eyes. ‘I don’t know what you did to me, sir, but don’t I feel a whole lot better for it?’
All this was very intriguing for Dodgson, but he never forgot his original resolve to leave while someone else was on stage. The last thing he wanted was to be trapped by his own curiosity. A couple of times he changed seats, to encourage his own false perception that he was invisible. He vowed that during the next demonstration he would definitely slip away – and yet, when the next sitter proved to be the mysterious young er-um-Herbert from Dimbola Lodge, he found himself lingering dangerously. There was something very familiar about the young fellow; he made Dodgson think of Twelfth Night for some reason, in which he had once seen Miss Terry play Viola.
Herbert was on stage already, but refusing absolutely to remove his cap. And the audience jeered at him, to take it off.
‘Come now,’ said Lorenzo, ‘You must be reasonable.’
‘Either read me with my cap on, or not at all,’ said the fellow in his gruff breathless voice.
Lorenzo acquiesced, saying he had never done such a thing before, in thirty years as a practical phrenologist. But when he started to feel the youth’s head, he stopped grumbling, because he soon found several things to intrigue him.
‘I find that you have large Amativeness, combined with large Hope and small Caution. This will tend to warp your judgement in matters of love, and blind you to obvious failings in the object of your affections.’
The boy looked up at him in amazement. ‘It doesn’t say all that, does it?’ he said.
‘Ah, I see I have hit on a truth,’ said Lorenzo.
The boy denied it, but looked glum. Down in the audience, Mary Ann nudged Mary Ryan; she liked the look of this boy.
‘I think I have never felt a Caution as small as this, sir,’ continued Lorenzo. ‘It will lead you to many rash deeds. You must remember never to confuse Courage with Carelessness, Firmness with Foolhardiness. You would make a fine actor, sir, incidentally.’
‘Oh good,’ squeaked Herbert faintly, and tried to rise from his chair. It was clear he would like to step down, but Lorenzo was enjoying himself too much. In all his years of phrenology, he had never encountered a transvestite before – not even on the island of Manhattan! Yet here was one, amazingly, in this little place at the back end of the Isle of Wight.
He ran his fingers across Herbert’s fine white neck, making him shudder. ‘You have a large Organ of Marvellousness, too – which means you love novelty and adventure,’ he announced to the hall, and then he leaned forward and whispered in Herbert’s ear. ‘Luckily I have Marvellousness large as well. Perhaps we should get together.’
He placed his big hands on Herbert’s narrow shoulders. And then he let him go.
‘I must explain something now,’ said Lorenzo. ‘This boy seems sad when I tell him what I read in his head. But I think he should be grateful. He is much too young to have made a bad marriage. There is no sign of a beard on his cheek. The motto of the Fowlers is Self Made or Never Made, and I stand by it, young sir. The findings of phrenology are lessons, not prescriptions. Man can, and must, overcome any failing in his nature. How else will he ever be perfect? Now that you know yourself, sir, you must never allow yourself to marry in the hope of being able to work a reform after marriage. You are lucky to receive this warning. It is a lesson many people wish they had been taught!’ But Dodgson noticed how the boy still looked glum, even while the hall cheered and laughed Lorenzo for his wisdom.
Lorenzo turned again to his people, and pressed his hands together. ‘When you leave here tonight, I want you to write your own epitaph in legible characters on a slip of paper. Make these epitaphs as flattering and eulogistic as possible. Then spend the remainder of your lives endeavouring not only to reach the standard you have raised, but to go far beyond it.’
Jessie looked up at him in admiration as the crowd threw hats in the air. She felt a lump in her throat. What a man!
‘And now!’ said Lorenzo. The audience held its breath, while Jessie stood on tiptoe and whispered in his ear. Lorenzo grinned, and looked directly at Dodgson in the back row.
‘And now!’ he repeated, ‘We have time for the last, but most special, demonstration of the evening.’ He pointed at Dodgson. ‘Would you come forward, please, sir? It has not escaped my daughter Jessie’s attention how closely you have followed proceedings this evening!’
Dodgson felt his body jerk with the shock. Trapped and sick, he wanted to shut up like a telescope. Jessie ran straight to the back row and pointed to him and the audience turned round to look. ‘Go wan then!’ they heckled. ‘Wouldn’t you guess it ud be an overner tho?’ (They were disappointed. The star turn was someone from the mainland.)
Should he run? Should he shout ‘Fire’? Miserably Dodgson stumbled to the front and took his seat in a chair beside Lorenzo. Up close, he could see that the man wore a small amount of theatrical make-up. His big pliable hands smelled of sandalwood and other people’s hair oil. Dodgson realized he had at last discovered something other people had that he did not wish to share.
‘If I may ask your forbearance, ladies and gentlemen, I will ask my assistant Jessie to tell you her first impressions of our friend’s head here. For at this point it is my great pleasure to ask Jessie Fowler – the Infant Phrenologist! – to take her very first public reading!’
Dodgson blinked in horror as the crowd cheered.
‘May I ask your name, sir?’
Dodgson clenched his fists, swallowed hard and got it out. ‘Dodgson,’ he said.
‘Mr Dodgson,’ said Jessie, stepping forward with a big threatening smile. (She got a round of applause.) ‘I thought we might start with the base of your cranium, where I perceive, ladies and gentlemen, that the Organ of Philoprogenitiveness is considerably enlarged.’
She said ‘Organ of Philoprogenitiveness’ as if it was ‘Bread and butter’. Which in a way, of course, it was.
Dodgson fought for breath. ‘We ought to explain, Jessie,’ added Lorenzo, ‘that Philoprogenitiveness is the love of children.’
‘It is, father. It is a great addition in a parent, and I have always been glad to know that you have it substantial, Pa.’
The audience laughed at the cute, pre-rehearsed joke, but Dodgson felt weightless in his distress. Jessie had climbed on a stool behind his chair. He could feel her breath on his ear. He could smell her clothes. And then, gently, Jessie laid her small warm fingers on the back of Dodgson’s skull and massaged it. The unprecedented intimacy of this contact with an eight-year-old girl – in front of a hundred people – made Dodgson want to scream like a railway engine.
‘Mr Dodgson, may I ask if you have any children of your own?’ began Jessie. But he heard it only as in a dream. Jessie, who had been all set to ask what the name ‘Daisy’ meant to him, had already lost her first client, as Dodgson’s conscious psyche simply snapped under the strain. His body twitched and whiplashed beneath her hands.
‘Pa!’ she cried in horror, and Lorenzo leapt forward to assure the audience everything was under control. But the good people of Freshwater stood up and gasped, with their hands to their mouths, as Dodgson reeled and writhed in his chair. No one had ever seen anything like it. Dodgson reeled and writhed, he stretched and drawled; and finally – some might say inevitably – he fainted in coils.