The Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, And Little Girls

It is generally said that Alice Pleasance Liddell (1852-1934), daughter of Henry George Liddell (Dean of Christ Church, Oxford), was the inspiration for don Charles Lutwidge Dodgson ('Lewis Carroll') Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and that the in manuscript was given to her as a Christmas present in 1864.




However, there have been questions as to the relationship between Alice and Carroll. In fact, some question Carroll's desire for and relationship with other children. This based largely upon Carroll's photography.




In PHOTOGRAPHY REVIEW; Girls Loved Him, Pedophile or Not Sarah Boxer writes:

''His were sad, scrawny little nymphets, bedraggled and half-undressed, or rather semi-undraped, as if participating in some dusty and dreadful charade,'' said Vladimir Nabokov, the Russian translator of Lewis Carroll's ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.'' Nabokov noticed ''a pathetic affinity'' between Carroll, who photographed little girls clothed and naked, and Humbert Humbert, the pedophilic narrator of his own ''Lolita.''

But was Carroll a pedophile? As you walk through ''Reflections in a Looking Glass: A Lewis Carroll Centenary Exhibition,'' organized by the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin to mark his death in 1898 and now at the Equitable Gallery in Manhattan, the question seems oddly irrelevant. What is most startling, and attractive, in his portraits of girls is not what he saw in them but what they saw in him.

''Lewis Carroll . . . came to our country home to photograph the children,'' wrote Dymphna Ellis, one of the children Carroll photographed. She added: ''I feel sure I was a 'favorite.' He made every child that. He developed the photographs in our cellar . . . I remember the mess and the mystery . . . We cried when he went away . . . We were absolutely fearless with him. We felt he was one of us, and on our side against all the grown-ups.''

These don't sound like the words of a victim of childhood seduction. But something in them is still alarming: cellar, mess, mystery, fearless. The words make you think that whatever Carroll and his little subjects were up to, it was exciting and seductive for all concerned. They were co-conspirators.

In The Man Who Loved Little Girls, Ada Calhoun sums up our creepy feelings:

This aspect of Carroll's life raised a few eyebrows in his day, but speculation about it has intensified with the passing of time. Certainly Carroll idolized girls, wrote his stories down because they told him to, photographed them frequently. A brilliant and talented man, Carroll nevertheless had difficulty interacting with anyone who had hit puberty. He had a bad stutter around most adults and surrounded himself with armies of little girls. He is famously quoted as saying, "I am fond of children (except boys)," and photographed many pretty little girls -- some languidly stretched out on a bed, some nude. As a result, Lewis Carroll has a vaguely icky aura about him in some people's minds, leading to pop-culture references of a nasty nature.

Calhoun continues:

The nude form Carroll found especially inspiring, and while the HRHRC exhibit contains none of the nude photos themselves -- most of the few that survive reside at Princeton -- there are in the exhibit seven letters which Carroll wrote to Mrs. Annie Wood Gray Henderson between the years 1879 and 1881 about using her daughters Annie and Francis as nude models. In one, Carroll writes: "Their innocent unconsciousness is very beautiful, and gives one a feeling of reverence, as at the presence of something sacred." There was at the same time a reluctance to use boys in the same context. The girls' younger brother posed early on but in another of the letters Carroll said that the boy was not invited back to sit the next year because "a boy's head soon imbibes precocious ideas ... It is hard to say how soon the danger might not arise."

Calhoun, then continues to share the thoughts of Morton Cohen, a preeminent Carroll scholar, who belives that Carroll "remained beyond reproach in his behavior."

In interviews that Cohen conducted in the 1960s with some six or eight of the little old ladies who were once Carroll's child-friends, none of them ever said anything (even when pressed for the gory details) but that he was the nicest, the most gentle, charming, delightful, etc., etc., man they had ever known. Though Cohen believes that Carroll may indeed have wanted to marry one or more of the girls at various times, they came of age and it never happened. By all accounts, Carroll died celibate.

Edward Wakeling, Lewis Carroll Collector, Consultant, Researcher, and Writer, also champions Carroll.

In The Real Lewis Carroll, A Talk given to the Lewis Carroll Society (April 2003), says:

Let me list, in my view, the ten most frequently used myths about Dodgson – in no particular order of merit or level of controversy:

1. He was shy and ill at ease in the company of adults

2. He only liked little girls; he did not like little boys

3. There was a major split with the Liddell family in 1863

4. His relationship with his illustrator, John Tenniel, was strained and terminated after the publication of Through the Looking-Glass

5. He visited Alice Liddell at Llandudno and this inspired him to write Alice

6. He was a mediocre mathematician

7. He was a bad stammerer, but lost his stammer in the company of children

8. He wanted to marry Alice Liddell

9. His relationship with children was unhealthy

10. He gave up photography as a result of scandalous gossip.

There are other more spurious and far-fetched accusations such as the following which I will ignore and treat with the contempt they deserve:

11. He was Jack the Ripper

12. He had an affair with Alice’s mother

13. He didn’t write Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland at all - Queen Victoria did!

If I am going to convince you that these statements about Dodgson are mythical and untrue, I will need to provide you with strong and compelling evidence. This I am able to do. I shall use the primary source of his diaries to support my arguments, and the research material I have uncovered in order to edit them thoroughly. It will be a major task because most of you will have read various biographies, so these ideas will already be accepted and adopted as true. But I don’t mind the challenge. And, of course, it doesn’t really matter if you disbelieve what I say. If I just unsettle a few of your views and opinions concerning the real character of Dodgson, I shall be content.

Was Carroll inappropriate? Did he have inappropriate thoughts? We likely will never know... But it's worthy of questioning. Some turn to the cultural differences between 'now' and Victorian times for the answers. But that, my friends, will have to be another post.





Images via here and here. None of the nude images are to be found online -- I imagine that is by design.

For more information, see LookingForLewisCarroll.com, 'Everything is Queer To-day': Lewis Carroll's Alice Through the Jungian Looking-Glass and Dreamchild.