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Lewis Carroll (January 27, 1832-January 14, 1898), polishing his camera lens, taken March 28, 1863 by O. G. Rejlander |
Many are of the opinion that Lewis Carroll's attraction to young girls was sexual, while others argue that there's no proof to such allegations. What exactly would constitute "proof"? A confession in Carroll's own handwriting?
Accusations of pedophilia are part of what Karoline Leach calls the "Carroll Myth", and more recent biographers and scholars have built up a case to support the notion that Carroll had a normal, healthy preference for adult females. As far as popular perception goes, these revisionists are vastly outnumbered. The problem, these new scholars say, is that for more than a century biographers have perpetuated myths about Carroll, based on misinformation, lack of information, and shoddy research, as well as a gross misunderstanding of Victorian attitudes towards child nude photography.
Another reason cited for the "Carroll Myth" is that four of the thirteen volumes of his diaries are missing: Vol. 1 (1854); Vol. 3 (the last few months of 1855); Vols. 6 & 7 (April 1858 to May 1862). As well, some pages have been cut out from the existing nine volumes. Revisionists speculate that the missing diaries and pages were suppressed or destroyed by Carroll's relatives to conceal his friendships with grown women, some of whom were married, which they feared might be deemed scandalous. However, it's also possible that the family was trying to conceal something else.
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Mary Millais, daughter of painter John Everett Millais, one of the founding members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; taken July 21, 1865 at 7 Cromwell Place, London |
As Collingwood quoted from all of the diaries, it's clear that the four missing volumes disappeared sometime later. In a letter (February 3, 1932) to his cousin Menella, Collingwood wrote, "I don't think I ever had the complete diary, though possibly Uncle Wilfred had it." Leach has been utterly hostile towards Collingwood on this discrepancy: "In fact he had not simply 'had' the missing diaries," she says, "he was very likely one of the last people who had ever seen them. So, we are left wondering why he felt the need to lie about this to his cousin Menella." One wonders why Leach feels Collingwood's statement has to be a "lie". Derek Hudson, in his 1954 biography, LEWIS CARROLL, addressed the same statement with a more rational explanation in a footnote: "Here Collingwood was mistaken..."
The term "Victorian Child Cult", often used by Hugues Lebailly, has been bandied about so much on the internet, that the casual Carroll reader assumes it was some kind of movement, like Temperance or the Pre-Raphaelites. There was no "Victorian Child Cult". It's also an unfortunate choice of words, as it almost gives the impression of a secret society of pedophiles. One well-meaning person, responding to an open question online about Lewis Carroll, had this to say: "It is documented Carroll was a member of the Victorian Child Cult...Whom [sic] were an organization that took pictures of nude girls as it was not a taboo in their era of society . . ."
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Katie Brine, June 16, 1866, Badcock's Yard, Oxford. Her grandfather, Dr. E. B. Pusey, nominated Carroll for Studentship for Christ Church, Christmas Eve, 1852 |
But the revisionists are perceiving a veneration of children that never existed. Any Victorian who had eyes to see or ears to hear was certainly aware of how very many orphaned children were roaming the streets, eking out a survival as beggars, thieves and prostitutes, and of the awful conditions in orphan asylums and work houses. Lord Ashley estimated that there were 30,000 "naked, filthy, roaming lawless and deserted children in London." Most brothels had little girls available for clients with certain tastes, or could at least procure one upon request. Many factories employed children as young as 3, working 12 to 16 hours a day, six days a week. They were beaten to keep awake, fed gruel or a potato for lunch, and many of those little sleepy heads were maimed or killed in the machinery. Children were cheap labour, paid a few pennies a day, some of which was subtracted for food and lodgings, though their lodgings may have been nothing more than a hayloft. Yet the cries of those helpless waifs were so often ignored by the very society that supposedly cherished them so much.
There was also a sensational article about child prostitution, particularly in London, titled "The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon", written by William T. Stead, who conducted a thorough investigation. It was published in four parts in the PALL MALL GAZETTE. After reading the first part, which appeared July 6, 1885, Carroll wrote a letter the next day to Lord Salisbury attempting to have the articles suppressed: "I would ask you to look at the Pall Mall of last night, and see if it seems to you that the publication...of the most loathsome details of prostitution, is or is not conducive to public morality. If not, the sooner legal steps are taken, the better."
One brothel keeper told Stead: "I sent my own daughter out on the streets from my own brothel. I know a couple of very fine little girls now who will be sold before very long. They are bred and trained for the life. They must take the first step some time, and it is bad business not to make as much out of that as possible. Drunken parents often sell their children to brothel keepers. In the East-end, you can always pick up as many fresh girls as you want. In one street in Dalston you might buy a dozen. Sometimes the supply is in excess of the demand..."
Stead, in his attempts to test how easy it was to procure a young girl, was told that "after champagne and liquors, my old friend G––, M––lane, Hackney, agreed to hand over her own child, a pretty girl of eleven, for £5, if she could get no more."
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"Coates"; Annie Coates was the daughter of an employee at Croft Rectory, August 1857 |
Stead goes into great detail about how girls are lured into prostitution. As lurid as his report seems on the surface, he deemed it necessary, so that other girls wouldn't fall into the same trap, to warn parents who think their child is being sent to a "situation", and to show how these young girls are unwilling and unwitting victims in these insidious schemes, and not in any way responsible for their own "ruin".
"As a rule," said Stead, "the children who are sent to homes as 'fallen' at the age of ten, eleven, and twelve, are children of prostitutes, bred to the business, and broken in prematurely to their dreadful calling...One child in St. Cyprian's was turned out on to the streets by her mother to earn a living when ten."
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Isabella "Ella" Drury, Chestnuts, Guildford, September 1869. Carroll had just met the Drury sisters, Ella, Emmie and Minnie, that year |
Was Carroll worried that Stead's article would cast suspicion on his friendship with young girls? His letter to Lord Salisbury is odd in that he shows a total disregard for the welfare of the young girls, possibly because they were of a lower class and were "ruined". His only concern was that the articles would somehow corrupt young men.
Carroll was certainly guilty of snobbery. In a letter to Beatrice Hatch, dated February 16, 1894, he wrote: "I should like to know, for curiosity, who that sweet-looking girl was, aged 12, with a red nightcap -- I think she had a younger sister, also with a red nightcap. She was speaking to you when I came up to wish you good-night. I fear I must be content with her name only: the social gulf between us is probably too wide for it to be wise to make friends. Some of my little actress-friends are of a rather lower status than myself. But, below a certain line, it is hardly wise to let a girl have a 'gentleman' friend..."
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Beatrice "Birdie" Hatch (1866-1947), one of Carroll's favourite models |
If the Victorians were as accepting of child nudes as we're led to believe, then Carroll should have had no problem obtaining parental consent to take nude photos of young daughters. The fact is, he often had a hard time convincing mothers that his intentions were wholesome and that the result would be an aesthetic portrait suitable for displaying in the home, or at least including in a family album. When broaching the subject he would tread very carefully, and often employed euphemisms for nudity, such as "Eve's original dress" and "absence of drapery". Even in his own diary he used the term "sans habilement". "Oh the trouble I have sometimes had with ladies," Carroll wrote in a letter, discussing rejections and mistrust, "who will give fictitious reasons for things, and, when those break down, invent others, till at last they are driven to speak the truth!" Julia Margaret Cameron, being a woman, likely had an easier time of securing permission to take nude photos of children.
Carroll wrote to Mrs. E. Hatch on March 14, 1877, to discuss having a nude photo of her daughter Beatrice (Birdie) coloured by a lady named Miss Bond: "But I am shy of asking her the question, people have such different views, and it might be a shock to her feelings if I did so. Would you kindly do it for me?"
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Beatrice Hatch, March 24, 1874, Christ Church |
Carroll was offended enough to end the acquaintance. However, many years later he met Margaret Mayhew, who wasn't born until long after the episode mentioned above, and on February 19, 1896 he wrote Mrs. Mayhew asking if she would allow their friendship. Permission was granted. (In an interview, Margaret spoke about the incident that ruptured Carroll's relationship with the Mayhews, saying "...my mother's strict sense of Victorian propriety was shocked, and she refused the request.")
Carroll also made assurances to parents that the negatives were locked away in a safe, with instructions that they be destroyed upon his death. "I would not like (for the families' sakes) the possibility of their getting into other hands." What hands would those be? Surely not the people who viewed child nudes as an expression of innocence.
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Bessie Goundry, Badcock's Yard, Oxford, June 1864 |
Another argument made by Carroll revisionists is that his aversion to boys is also mythical, and makes his interest in girls seem more pronounced than it actually was. "I am fond of children (except boys)," he's often quoted from a letter to Kathleen Eschwege on October 24, 1879, "and have more child-friends than I could possibly count on my fingers, even if I were a centipede..." That adds up to a lot of girls, and he wasn't exaggerating: a diary entry for March 25, 1863 contains a list of the names of 107 girls "photographed or to be photographed".
To Edith Blakemore he said, "with little boys I'm out of my element altogether." He went on further with this anecdote: "I sent Sylvie and Bruno to an Oxford friend, and, in writing his thanks, he added, 'I think I must bring my little boy to see you.' So I wrote to say 'don't', or words to that effect: and he wrote again that he could hardly believe his eyes when he got my note. He thought I doted on all children. But I'm not omnivorous! -- like a pig. I pick and choose..."
In THE LEWIS CARROLL PICTURE BOOK, a former child friend, Ella Monier Williams, spoke of the last time she'd seen Carroll, two years earlier: "...he tried to prove to me -- the mother of six sons -- how infinitely superior he considered girls to boys."
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Evelyn Hatch, June 15, 1880, Christ Church |
Carroll added this post script to a letter to Margaret Cunnynghame (January 30, 1868): "My best love to yourself -- to your Mother my kindest regards -- to your small, fat, impertinent, ignorant brother my hatred. That is all."
While those words surely were written in jest, the sentiment was sincere enough. Less comical was a painful story Alice Collett told to Derek Hudson, which occurred when she was about five years old. While travelling with her family, her father bumped into Carroll, an old acquaintance: "There followed a journey I shall never forget and a time which might have been boring became entrancing. For kind 'Lewis Carroll' took me on his knee and told me stories and drew pictures for me. I had the luck to be called Alice and to have a quantity of fair hair, so he took a fancy to me, while my poor brother, who knew 'Alice' almost by heart, gazed at its author with adoring eyes but had no notice taken of him."
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Dymphna Ellis, July 25, 1865; daughter of the Rector of Cranbourne |
A curious note discovered in the Dodgson family archive appears to be a summary of two missing pages from Vol. 8 (pgs. 72 and 91, though the latter is mistakenly identified as 92), and pg. 110 from Vol. 11. Concerning the page from Vol. 8, which covered part of June 27, 1863, as well as June 28 and 29, the note says "L. C. learns from Mrs. Liddell that he is supposed to be using the children as a means of paying court to the governess. He is also supposed by some to be courting Ina." Carroll was rumoured to be courting Miss Prickett, the governess, as early as 1857, and he addressed it in an entry dated May 17 of that year: "I find to my great surprise that my notice of them (the children) is construed by some men into attentions to the governess, Miss Prickett." He goes on to call the rumours "groundless". He also cross-referenced the entry with a note: "(See June 27, 1863)". The note has been offered up as evidence that Carroll never had any romantic interest in Alice Liddell, who was 11 years old, at all, but in the more grown up Lorina, her older sister, or Miss Prickett. Of course, it's understandable if someone assumed Carroll was interested in Lorina, who was pretty and of a marriageable age, or the governess. Who would have guessed at some romantic interest in Alice?
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"It won't come smooth"; Irene McDonald, Elm Lodge, Hampstead, July 1863 |
One thing is sure: Carroll visited the Liddells far more frequently in 1863 than in previous years: "Destined to meet the Liddells perpetually just now..." he wrote in his diary February 17, 1863. He visited the Deanery 10 times in April, 9 times in May, and 8 times in June. That's when the mysterious split occurred. During the next few months he visited them not at all, and visited very rarely after that.
Mrs Liddell tore up all of Carroll's letters to Alice. In an article published in CORNHILL MAGAZINE (July 1932) Alice said, "I cannot remember what any of them were like, but it is an awful thought to contemplate what may have perished in the Deanery waste-paper basket."
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"Open your mouth and shut your eyes" Edith, Lorina and Alice Liddell, July 1860, Christ Church |
Carroll's uncle, Skeffington Lutwidge, got him interested in photography in 1855, and, after learning some of the basics with his friend, Reginald Southey, his own camera was delivered to him on May 1, 1856. To test it out, Carroll photographed just about anything that could be photographed, including Harry Liddell, the young son of the new dean at Christ Church college (where Carroll, a former pupil, became mathematical lecturer the year before, and retained that position until 1881). Eventually he would meet the Liddell girls, Lorina, Alice and Edith. He wrote in his diary on June 3: "Spent the morning at the Deanery, photographing the children."
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Alice Liddell, June 1857 |
Carroll first told the story of "Alice" July 4, 1862 while he, the three Liddell sisters (Lorina, 13; Alice, 10; Edith, 8), and Carroll's friend, Robinson Duckworth, rowed up the Isis river. Duckworth recalled that day in a letter to Collingwood:
"I rowed stroke and he rode bow in the famous Long Vacation voyage to Godstow when the three Miss Liddells were our passengers, and the story was actually composed and spoken over my shoulder for the benefit of Alice Liddell, who was acting as 'cox' of our gig. I remember turning round and saying, "Dodgson, is this an extempore romance of yours?" And he replied, "Yes, I'm inventing as we go along."
One wonders if Duckworth's question was meant to be ambiguous.
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Edith, Lorina and Alice Liddell, Summer 1858 |
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Alice Liddell, summer 1858, in profile against the sandstone wall in the Deanery garden at Christ Church |
Alice's son, Caryl Hargreaves, said "...that he [Carroll] very likely was in love with her -- if he was ever in love with anybody. I have always felt in my bones that probably was the case."
But if he was actually in love with Alice Liddell, he was never faithful. He kept a great number of little girl friends, and constantly replenished his stock, knowing that they would eventually grow up. And if his post-Alice child friends were a "different thing", he nonetheless smothered them all with kisses, both in person and in writing.
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A beautiful portrait of Annie Parkes, Farringford, Isle of Wight, August 13, 1864; note her reflection in the window |
The seemingly countless letters to his little girlfriends are delightful to read, full of humour, wit and playful teasing. Some are written backwards, some contain poems, puzzles, acrostics, hidden rhymes, drawings, and even come in the form of a rebus. One letter to Agnes Hughes circa 1871 displays some of the same cruel humour found in the "Alice" books:
My dear Agnes,
You lazy thing! What? I'm to divide the kisses myself, am I? Indeed, I won't take the trouble to do anything of the sort! But I'll tell you how to do it. First, you must take four of the kisses, and -- and that reminds me of a very curious thing that happened at half-past four yesterday. Three visitors came knocking at my door, begging me to let them in. And when I opened the door, who do you think they were? You'll never guess. Why, they were three cats! However, they all looked so cross and disagreeable that I took up the first thing I could lay my hand on (which happened to be the rolling-pin) and knocked them all down as flat as pan-cakes! "If you come knocking at my door," I said, "I shall come knocking at your heads." That was fair, wasn't it?
Another example of such a letter was written to Edith Blakemore on November 7, 1882:
My dear Edith,
How often you must find yourself in want of a pin! For instance, you go into a shop, and you say to the man, "I want the largest penny-bun you can give me for a half penny." And perhaps the man looks stupid and doesn't quite understand what you mean. Then how convenient it is to have a pin ready to stick into the back of his hand, while you say, "Now then! Look sharp, stupid!"
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Carroll's drawing of Edith Blakemore, at Eastbourne, September 14, 1880 |
Of Carroll's kisses in letters to girls, Florence Becker Lennon aptly put it that "His ability to convert danger into play was unique." In a letter to Gertrude Chataway, dated July 21, 1876, he ended the letter with "I send you 7 kisses (to last a week)..." A few months later, he wrote Gertrude a humorous letter dated October 28, 1876, telling her how he had gone to see a doctor to complain that he was tired. After a series of questions, the doctor determined that the source of his fatigue was his lips:
"Of course!" I said, "that's exactly what it is!" Then he looked very grave indeed, and said "I think you must have been giving too many kisses." "Well," I said, "I did give one kiss to a baby-child, a little friend of mine." "Think again," he said, "are you sure it was only one?" I thought again, and said "Perhaps it was eleven times." Then the Doctor said "You must not give her any more until your lips are quite rested again." "But what am I to do?" I said, "because, you see, I owe her a hundred and eighty-two more." Then he looked so grave that the tears ran down his cheeks, and he said "You may send them to her in a box." Then I remembered a little box that I once bought at Dover and thought that I would give it to some little girl or other. So I have packed them all in it very carefully: tell me if they come safe, or if any are lost on the way."
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The Smith girls playing chess: Fanny, Maria, Joanna, and Anne (and cat), Dinsdale Rectory, Yorkshire, Summer 1859 |
He wrote to Mary Mileham (September 6, 1885), "Thank you very much indeed for the peaches. They were delicious. Eating one was almost as nice as kissing you..."
His kisses, though, weren't just limited to greetings and farewells. According to Isa Bowman in her book, THE STORY OF LEWIS CARROLL (1899), she had drawn a caricature of Carroll, which he tore up and threw into the fire: "Afterwards he came suddenly to me, and saying nothing, caught me up in his arms and kissed me passionately. I was only some ten or eleven years of age at the time, but now the incident comes back to me very clearly, and I can see it as if it happened but yesterday -- the sudden snatching of my picture, the hurried striding across the room, and then the tender light in his face as he caught me up to him and kissed me."
Derek Hudson wrote in his biography: "...one lady, who was taken out by him as a child, has told the present writer that she was rather surprised to be kissed by him in the middle of a performance in the theatre."
The first reference to nude photography in Carroll's diaries was on May 21, 1867: "Mrs. L. brought Beatrice, and I took a photograph of the two; and several of Beatrice alone, 'sans habilement'." Though it appears he might have taken only 30 nude photos, only four of which survive, Carroll probably would have taken many more if circumstances were more favourable.
He first proposed taking nude photographs of one of his favourite child friends, Gertrude Chataway, to her mother in the post script to a letter written June 28, 1876: "If you should decide on sending over Gertrude and not coming yourself, would you kindly let me know what is the minimum amount of dress in which you are willing to have her taken?" He assured her that he rarely had a chance to photograph "so well-formed a subject for art."
Carroll wrote to Mrs Henderson June 21, 1881, "Today I write to ask if you would like to have any more copies of the full-front photographs of the children. I have 2 or 3 prints of each, but I intend to destroy all but one of each. That is all I want for myself, and (though I consider them perfectly innocent in themselves) there is really no friend to whom I should wish to give photographs which so entirely defy conventional rules. Miss Thomson is the only friend who has even seen them, and even to her I should not think of giving copies."
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Unknown girl, Badcock's Yard, Oxford, May 1868; Carroll had already taken a photo of Agnes Weld as Little Red Riding Hood on August 18, 1857, at Croft Rectory |
Carroll wrote to her again the next day: "...I would have been glad to hear from you (if you don't object to repeating it) what the terrible remark was which somebody made in Annie's hearing. Possibly it may be easier to write than to repeat viva voce. Her name I don't the least desire to know: I don't think it is good for one to know the name of anyone who has said anything against one. But it might be useful to know what is said -- as a warning of the risk incurred by transgressing the conventional rules of Society.
"One thing I will add to the note I left -- that your remark that you would even now, but for what has been said by others, have lent me Annie as a model, has gratified me nearly as much as if you were actually to do it. It is a mark of confidence which I sincerely value."
As persuasive as he could be in his carefully-worded letters, Carroll wasn't always successful in obtaining permission to photograph nudes, as mentioned above in the case of the Mayhew girls.
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Xie Kitchin, Carroll's most photographed subject |
Holiday, who illustrated Carroll's THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK (1876), also supplied Carroll with drawings to help him pose his subjects in photos. On January 15, 1874 Carroll wrote, "He showed me the drawings he is doing for me (suggestions for groups of two children -- nude studies -- for me to try to reproduce in photographs from life), which are quite exquisite."
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Xie Kitchin |
This drastic decision is the subject of some speculation. Carroll himself was never consistent with his reasons for giving up photography. He complained that it was taking up too much of his time, and required too much labour, when a professional studio could be used to take portraits of his friends. "The last photograph I took was in August 1880!" he said in a letter to a Mrs. Hunt, dated December 8, 1881; "Not one have I done this year: as there was no subject tempting enough to make me face the labour of getting the studio into working order again...It is a very tiring amusement, and anything which can be equally well, or better, done in a professional studio for a few shillings I would always rather have so done than go through the labour myself." This explanation doesn't ring true, however, since it seems unlikely that Carroll saw his photography as nothing more than a mechanical process. As Edward Wakeling said, Carroll was "a man who appreciated beauty in art, a regular visitor to art galleries and exhibitions, a friend of famous artists of his day. To some extent, he saw photography as an alternative to painting and sketching. He was never satisfied with his own attempts to draw. Photography gave him an opportunity to use and develop his aesthetic and artistic abilities. Later, when he gave copies of his photographs to sitters and their families, he would inscribe the picture as 'from the Artist' rather than 'from the Photographer.'" He wrote to E. Gertrude Thomson July 16, 1885, "It is 3 or 4 years now since I have photographed -- I have been too busy..." But his decision wasn't written in stone, for, in a letter to Miss Thomson, dated July 9, 1893, he hinted at the possibility of returning to photography: "If I had a dry plate camera, and time to work it, and could secure a child of really good figure, either a professional model, or (much better) a child of the upper-classes, I would put her into every pretty attitude I could think of, and could get in a single morning 50 or 100 such memoranda."
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Xie, Badcock yard studio, 1869 |
Carroll wrote to Gertrude Chataway's sister, Mrs. C. F. Moberly Bell, September 22, 1893, about the possibility of letting artist Gertrude Thomson use her 6-year-old daughter, Cynthia, "...in the very unusual character of a nude model", for THREE SUNSETS (which wouldn't be published until 1898).
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Eliza Hobson, Croft Rectory, August 1857 |
"And there upon the gleaming sands,
Between the ripples and the rocks,
Stood, mother-naked in the sun,
A little maid with golden locks."
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Such remarkable eyes has 8-year-old Sarah Hobson, beautifully captured in this August 1857 photo |
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A lovely picture of Mary Ellis (aged 9), July 26 or 27, 1865, Cranbourne. Carroll took a number of pictures of Mary and her three sisters at that time. |
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"Little Dear", Grace Denman, daughter of Lord Chief Justice Denman, Lambeth Palace, July 8, 1864 |
Carroll had some deep-seated need to tell everyone about his girlfriends, his outings with them, his photographing them. The girls knew that their friendship with Carroll wasn't unique, that there were hundreds of others, for he often mentioned them in letters. When he wrote to their mothers making a request for nude photos, or asking if they could accompany him for a day, or visit him at Eastbourne, he made it known how many other girls were allowed to do so. Even the public was made aware, as in a letter to the St. James's Gazette, published July 19, 1887 (though written on July 16) under his Carroll pseudonym: "I spent yesterday afternoon at Brighton, where for five hours I enjoyed the society of three exceedingly happy and healthy little girls, aged twelve, ten and seven."
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Kate Terry as Andromeda, Caversham Road, Kentish Town, July 15, 1865 |
To Adelaide Payne, he wrote on January 9, 1884, that "the majority (say 60 p.c.) of my child-friends cease to be friends at all after they grow up: about 30 p.c. develop 'yours affectionately' into 'yours truly': only about 10 p.c. keep up the old relationship unchanged." Adelaide was one of the 10 percent.
To Isabel Standen he wrote (August 5, 1885): "I always feel especially grateful to friends who, like you, have given me a child-friendship and a woman-friendship too. About 9 out of 10, I think, of my child-friendships get shipwrecked at the critical point 'where the stream and river meet'...and the child-friends, once so affectionate, become uninteresting acquaintances, whom I have no wish to set eyes on again."
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Xie Kitchin, "tuning", taken in Carroll's studio, July 1, 1876. The violin wasn't just a prop -- Xie really did play |
He wrote to Mrs. J. C. Egerton March 8, 1894, "Much of the brightness of my life, and it has been a wonderfully happy one, has come from the friendship of girl-friends. Twenty or thirty years ago, 'ten' was about my ideal age for such friends: now, 'twenty' or 'twenty-five' is nearer the mark." Still, his interest in little girls remained as intense as it ever was.
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Xie Kitchin, July 1, 1876; note the lines in Xie's stockings, the umbrella and the wicker chair |
He also made a habit of inviting girls to stay with him alone at his seaside resort. Most were allowed to, especially after assurances that they would have their own bedroom, a maid to look after them, and that both Carroll and his guest would be under the scrutiny of his landlady, Mrs. Dyer. He eventually took to inviting older girls. He invited 21-year-old Gertrude Chataway in a letter of September 7, 1890: "[I]f I live to next January, I shall be 59 years old. So it's not like a man of 30, or even a man of 40, proposing such a thing. I should hold it quite out of the question in either case. I never thought of such a thing, myself, until 5 years ago. Then, feeling I really had accumulated a good lot of years, I ventured to invite a little girl of 10, who was lent without the least demur. The next year I had one of 12 staying here for a week. The next year I invited one of 14, quite expecting a refusal, that time, on the ground of her being too old. To my surprise, and delight, her mother simply wrote, 'Irene may come to you for a week, or a fortnight. What day would you like to have her?' After taking her back, I boldly invited an elder sister of hers, aged 18. She came quite readily. I've had another 18-year-old since, and feel quite reckless now, as to ages: and, so far as I know, 'Mrs. Grundy' has made no remarks at all." At the end of the letter he added that "At present, there is, lying on the sofa by the open window of my tiny little sitting-room, a girl-friend from Oxford, aged 17. She came yesterday, and will stay perhaps a week."
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One of Carroll's early photographic efforts: Mary and Charlotte Webster, with Margaret Gatey, Crosthwaite, September 25, 1857 |
There were rumours at Eastbourne. Carroll wrote in his diary August 14, 1894, that May Miller, one of two sisters, was "engaged to dine with me; but Mrs. Miller wrote to say there was so much 'ill-natured gossip' afloat, she would rather I did not invite either girl without the other." Carroll often insisted that girls visit him alone. He wrote to Mrs. A. L. Moore July 24, 1896, "I don't think anyone knows what girl-nature is, who has only seen them in the presence of their mothers or sisters."
Mothers needn't have worried. Carroll had hundreds of little girlfriends over the years, and by all accounts he conducted himself with the utmost propriety. He took them out for a day and restored them to their homes safe and sound, and their cherished memories of Carroll were nothing short of pleasant
Enid Stevens offered this wonderful testament: "I know now that my friendship with him was probably the most valuable experience in a long life, and that it influenced my outlook more than anything that has happened since -- and wholly for good."
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Alice Liddell, July 1860 |