Was Lewis Carroll a pedophile?

[NoJo]

The "Alice" books are the third most translated books in the world, after the bible and Shakespeare's works.
The author remains a mystery and subject to a lot of speculation, partly due to the missing four volumes and neatly excised pages in his scrupulously kept daily diary.

But was he a pedophile? Rather than bore you with the minutae of his personal life, I'll present you with a little-known poem of his, (his first diary entry after the missing four volumes) and let you decide:

Stolen Waters
(May 9 1862)


The light was faint, and soft the air
That breathed around the place;
And she was lithe and tall and fair,
And with a wayward grace
Her queenly head she bare -


With glowing cheek, with gleaming eye,
She met me on the way;
My spirit owned the witchery
Within her smile that lay;
I followed her, I know not why.


The trees were thick with many a fruit,
The grass with many a flower;
My soul was dead, my tongue was mute
In that accursed hour.


And in my dream, with silvery voice
She said or seemed to say
'Youth is the season to rejoice'-
I could not say her nay,
I could not choose but stay.


She plucked a branch above her head
With rarest fruitage laden.
'Drink of the juice sir Knight', she said,
'Tis good for knight and maiden.'


Oh blind my eyes that would not trace:
Oh deaf my ear that would not heed -
The mocking smile upon her face,
The mocking voice of greed!


I drank the juice and straightway felt
A fire within my brain:
My soul within me seemed to melt
In sweet delirious pain.


'Sweet is the stolen draught' she said:
'Hath sweetness stint or measure?
Pleasant the secret hoard of bread:
What bars us from our pleasure?'


'Yea, take we pleasure while we may,'
I heard myself replying.
In the red sunset far away
My happier life was dying:
My heart was sad, my voice was gay.


And unawares, I know not how,
I kissed her dainty finger tips,
I kissed her on the lily brow,
I kissed her on the false, false lips-
That burning kiss, I feel it now!


'True love gives true love of the best:
Then take', I cried, 'my heart to thee!'
The very heart from out my breast
I plucked, I gave it willingly.
Her very heart she gave to me -
Then died the glory from the west.


In the gray light I saw her face,
And it was withered old and gray:
The flowers were fading in their place
The grass was fading where we lay.


Forth from her, like a hunted deer,
Through all that ghastly night I fled,
And still behind me seemed to hear
Her fierce unflagging tread,
And scarce drew breath for fear.


Yet marked I well how strangely seemed
The heart within my breast to sleep:
Silent it lay, or so I dreamed,
With never a throb or leap


For hers was now my heart, she said,
The heart that once had been my own,
And in my breast I bore instead
A cold cold heart of stone;
So grew the morning overhead.


The sun shone downward throught the trees
His old familiar flame.
All ancient sounds upon the breeze
From copse and meadow came-
But I was not the same


They call me mad: I smile, I weep
Uncaring how or why
Yea, when one's heart is laid asleep,
What better than to die?


To die! To die? And yet,
I drink of Life today
Deep as the thirsty traveller drinks
Of fountain by the way.
My voice is sad, my heart is gay.


When yestereve was on the wane
I heard a clear voice singing
So sweetly that, like summer rain,
My happy tears came springing:
My human heart returned again.


A rosy child -
Sitting and singing in a garden fair; The joy of hearing, seeing;
The simple joy of being -
Or twining roses in the golden hair
That ripples free and wild


A sweet pale child -
Wearily looking to the purple west -
Waiting the great Forever
That suddeny shall sever
The cruel chains that hold her from her rest -
By earth joys unbeguiled.


An angel-child -
Gazing with living eyes on a dead face -
The mortal form forsaken,
That none may now awaken -
That lieth painless, moveless in her place,
As though in death she smiled.


Be as a child -
So shalt thou sing for very joy of breath.
So shalt thou wait thy dying
In holy transport lying -
So pass rejoicing through the gate of Death
In garment undefiled.


Then call me what they will, I know
That now my soul is glad:
If this be madness, better so:
Far better to be mad,
Weeping or smiling as I go.


For if I weep, it is that now
I see how deep a loss is mine,
And feel how brightly round my brow
The coronal might shine,
Had I but kept my early vow -


And if I smile, it is that now
I see the promise of the years -
The garland waiting for my brow,
That must be won with tears -
With pain - with death - I care not how.

​

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Literature isn't reality, and fantasy isn't reality...
Was he attracted to his "Alice"?
I wouldn't doubt it. Does that makes him a pedophile?
We don't choose the fantasies that attract us... they are what our psyche is using to get our attention, in some way...

The question really is, did he literalize that fantasy? Did he act on it? We'll never know. He was a very heavy opium user (many were in the day) and he had a great deal of friendships with a great many young girls. That's known. What isn't known is if it went any further than affection.

Also remember that we are talking about a different era and time... and that most of the "allegations" that he was a pedophile come from biographies starting in the 1930's or later... a modern spin put on it. A lot had changed between the 1850's and the 1930's & 40's. We have an almost maniacal and fanatical view of this subject nowadays, and any man who wants to be, say, an elementary teacher, or work exclusively with children, or who spends an inordinate amount of time playing with children, is suspect.

We have an "if there's smoke there's fire" attitude about it all. That isn't always the case. With subjects like pedophilia, our culture takes the "guilty until proven innocent" route more often than not.

 

[wishfulthinking]

I wouldn't convict him on that poem. Me as well as anyone here knows that a written fantasy isn't what one would always want in reality.

I guess [and this will sound very strange] is that one motive I might have thought for paedophilia would be to feel young again. If he was a paedophile, then it only made him very much aware of his age and mortality. So I could be wrong or right or not even close.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

If he was a paedophile, then it only made him very much aware of his age and mortality. So I could be wrong or right or not even close.

there is the core of it, really... whatever the reason, there IS a reason we have the fantasies that we do... pedophilia included (or any of the "philias" on doc's long list!)... so what is it that the fantasy is asking/telling? What does it want from us? It's not about literalizing the fantasy... it's almost never that or just that... there is a meaning in it asking to be found...

 

[3113]

Was he attracted to young girls?
Absolutely.
Did he hate for them to grow up?
Absolutely.

A painfully shy mathematician who taught rough and ungrateful college boys, who never married and never, so far as we know, had a lady friend, he was only comfortable in the company of prepubescent girls--usually girls with a bold personality, including the aforementioned Alice. We know for a fact that he was also an avid photographer in that early time of photography and took pictures of these girls in the nude (always with their mother's consent and presence during these sessions). These he later burned when, in his own time, there was a suggestion that they might be inappropriate.

But you have to remember, in his time as well and up till recently, photos of naked children were thought to be cute, sweet, innocent, pure. Carroll was part of a movement in England that believed that children, especially girls, were innocent. Like Adam and Eve before the fall. They certainly wouldn't condone "sullying" such purity with sex.

So we're back to definition. I'm sure Carroll was attracted to young girls and likely that included sexually. But I would also argue that he probably never acted on it. I believe this because, like J.M. Barry, I think he was one of those Victorian men who was raised so narrowly, so distantly from the physical that he really would not know what to do even if he got up the courage to do it. He was that painfully shy--that sad and lonely a man.

He might well have dreamed of doing more, but I rather doubt that he ever did, either because his belief in childhood purity wouldn't let him, or he just did not have the courage. Does merely having the attraction make him a pediophile? That's the question.

 

[shereads]

The "Alice" books are the third most translated books in the world, after the bible and Shakespeare's works.
The author remains a mystery and subject to a lot of speculation, partly due to the missing four volumes and neatly excised pages in his scrupulously kept daily diary.

But was he a pedophile? Rather than bore you with the minutae of his personal life, I'll present you with a little-known poem of his, (his first diary entry after the missing four volumes) and let you decide:

Stolen Waters
(May 9 1862)


The light was faint, and soft the air
That breathed around the place;
And she was lithe and tall and fair,
And with a wayward grace
Her queenly head she bare -


With glowing cheek, with gleaming eye,
She met me on the way;
My spirit owned the witchery
Within her smile that lay;
I followed her, I know not why.


The trees were thick with many a fruit,
The grass with many a flower;
My soul was dead, my tongue was mute
In that accursed hour.


And in my dream, with silvery voice
She said or seemed to say
'Youth is the season to rejoice'-
I could not say her nay,
I could not choose but stay.


She plucked a branch above her head
With rarest fruitage laden.
'Drink of the juice sir Knight', she said,
'Tis good for knight and maiden.'


Oh blind my eyes that would not trace:
Oh deaf my ear that would not heed -
The mocking smile upon her face,
The mocking voice of greed!


I drank the juice and straightway felt
A fire within my brain:
My soul within me seemed to melt
In sweet delirious pain.


'Sweet is the stolen draught' she said:
'Hath sweetness stint or measure?
Pleasant the secret hoard of bread:
What bars us from our pleasure?'


'Yea, take we pleasure while we may,'
I heard myself replying.
In the red sunset far away
My happier life was dying:
My heart was sad, my voice was gay.


And unawares, I know not how,
I kissed her dainty finger tips,
I kissed her on the lily brow,
I kissed her on the false, false lips-
That burning kiss, I feel it now!


'True love gives true love of the best:
Then take', I cried, 'my heart to thee!'
The very heart from out my breast
I plucked, I gave it willingly.
Her very heart she gave to me -
Then died the glory from the west.


In the gray light I saw her face,
And it was withered old and gray:
The flowers were fading in their place
The grass was fading where we lay.


Forth from her, like a hunted deer,
Through all that ghastly night I fled,
And still behind me seemed to hear
Her fierce unflagging tread,
And scarce drew breath for fear.


Yet marked I well how strangely seemed
The heart within my breast to sleep:
Silent it lay, or so I dreamed,
With never a throb or leap


For hers was now my heart, she said,
The heart that once had been my own,
And in my breast I bore instead
A cold cold heart of stone;
So grew the morning overhead.


The sun shone downward throught the trees
His old familiar flame.
All ancient sounds upon the breeze
From copse and meadow came-
But I was not the same


They call me mad: I smile, I weep
Uncaring how or why
Yea, when one's heart is laid asleep,
What better than to die?


To die! To die? And yet,
I drink of Life today
Deep as the thirsty traveller drinks
Of fountain by the way.
My voice is sad, my heart is gay.


When yestereve was on the wane
I heard a clear voice singing
So sweetly that, like summer rain,
My happy tears came springing:
My human heart returned again.


A rosy child -
Sitting and singing in a garden fair; The joy of hearing, seeing;
The simple joy of being -
Or twining roses in the golden hair
That ripples free and wild


A sweet pale child -
Wearily looking to the purple west -
Waiting the great Forever
That suddeny shall sever
The cruel chains that hold her from her rest -
By earth joys unbeguiled.


An angel-child -
Gazing with living eyes on a dead face -
The mortal form forsaken,
That none may now awaken -
That lieth painless, moveless in her place,
As though in death she smiled.


Be as a child -
So shalt thou sing for very joy of breath.
So shalt thou wait thy dying
In holy transport lying -
So pass rejoicing through the gate of Death
In garment undefiled.


Then call me what they will, I know
That now my soul is glad:
If this be madness, better so:
Far better to be mad,
Weeping or smiling as I go.


For if I weep, it is that now
I see how deep a loss is mine,
And feel how brightly round my brow
The coronal might shine,
Had I but kept my early vow -


And if I smile, it is that now
I see the promise of the years -
The garland waiting for my brow,
That must be won with tears -
With pain - with death - I care not how.

​

Not a pedophile, maybe. But definitely a funny uncle.

 

[shereads]

Does merely having the attraction make him a pediophile? That's the question.

The other question is whether you'd let him babysit.

 

[NoJo]

Having spent the last months reading the two latest thoughtful and detailed biographies of Carroll, which were written after new facts have emerged about the man and his life, I'm still puzzled by the poem.

 

[sincerely_helene]

Get back to work.

 

[NoJo]

Get back to work.

I'm working with the other hand. Get back to sleep.

 

[Salvor-Hardon]

Having spent the last months reading the two latest thoughtful and detailed biographies of Carroll, which were written after new facts have emerged about the man and his life, I'm still puzzled by the poem.

This is something that bothers me. Granted I hated history in highschool and college and would not pick up a biography of anyone unless she was hot and there were pictures included, but biographies as studies almost always seem to be interpretations, rather than presentations of lifes.

Were someone to do a biography of me, depending on which set of facts they were able to get and piece together, they could paint me as a decent up right sunday school teacher and about as squeky clean as Ward Cleaver or as a deeply perverted and kinky sensualist that makes the neighborhood slut look chaste. And both would be thoughtful detailed accurate accounts.

To me, if you want to know me, ask me. After I am dead rread my journals, and if you try to infer anything from them, you are wrong. What is there is what is there, anything else is pure speculation and crap.

No wonder he destroyed passages of his journal and his other creative works.

Not meant to lash out at you Joe, but....... damn historians are irritating fuckers.

 

[3113]

Not meant to lash out at you Joe, but....... damn historians are irritating fuckers.

True enough, but I still love biographies. I think two things are helpful, the first is that there be more than one biography out there. The more the better, as you get different points of view and can find those intersections--agreements between biographers that seem to ring true.

Also, with enough quoted passages from letters and such, you can often make up your own mind.

Second, a reader of such things must always take care to see if the biographer has any ajendas. Biographies come out on people who aren't even dead, written by biographers with an ajenda. You have to take those with a grain of salt, as they're not even trying to be objective.

In this instance, I wouldn't read a biography on Carroll if it was merely someone trying to prove he was a pediophile. That's a book with an ajenda and it will prove its point anyway it can. Contrariwise (as Carroll would say), any modern book on Carroll is going to have to address the subject. It's just too much a part/question of Lewis Carroll lore at this point to be ignored. A thoughtful investagation, with no ajenda, is fine.

 

[Salvor-Hardon]

True enough, but I still love biographies. I think two things are helpful, the first is that there be more than one biography out there. The more the better, as you get different points of view and can find those intersections--agreements between biographers that seem to ring true.

Also, with enough quoted passages from letters and such, you can often make up your own mind.

Second, a reader of such things must always take care to see if the biographer has any ajendas. Even with people still alive and well, biographies come out on them just to put a bad spin on them rather than to really reveal to readers interesting facts about who they are.

True very true..... and its probably my suspicious nature but I assume every biographer has an agenda, not just to study a life. Too many studies of Da Vinci being gay or Shakespeare being gay/bi/into sheep/ whatever have lead me to believe that every biographer wants to either aligne themselves with some influential historical figure and thus make them selves seem better or else wants to "expose the dark secrets" and thus minimize the influence of greatness past.

Maybe if biographies came with "personal agenda of the writer" stickers the way many artists have an "artist's philosophy" on teh back of their works.

"Sally Biowriter is a rampant donkey porker, who hates women, thinks that Japan should get reparations for the misrepresentation of ninjas in western media and one day aspires to make Beth Kopekni rue teh day she won prom queen over Sally."

 

[3113]

"Sally Biowriter is a rampant donkey porker, who hates women, thinks that Japan should get reparations for the misrepresentation of ninjas in western media and one day aspires to make Beth Kopekni rue teh day she won prom queen over Sally."

LOL! Yeah, I know what you mean. Shakespeare biographies are among the worst. Biographers should be required to act like scientists...no coming up with a theory and chasing it it down with whatever facts seem to fit (Shakespeare was really Francis Bacon! No...wait, Queen Elizabeth! No, wait, Christopher Marlowe...). You do the research and you create the theory from the facts, not the other way around.

 

[Salvor-Hardon]

LOL! Yeah, I know what you mean. Shakespeare biographies are among the worst. Biographers should be required to act like scientists...no coming up with a theory and chasing it it down with whatever facts seem to fit (Shakespeare was really Lord Byron! No...wait, Queen Elizabeth! No, wait...). You do the research and you create the theory from the facts, not the other way around.

OH Totally!

I think I earned bonus points with a college lit prof for a paper stating that Shakespeare was infact the love child of Francis Bacon and Queen Elizabeth, stolen by aliens and given mental telepathy. What made it funny was that I cited the same sources as a serious paper but drew slightly different conclusions.

 

[Carmenica Diaz]

Not meant to lash out at you Joe, but....... damn historians are irritating fuckers.

Irritating in a good way, I hope.

 

[Salvor-Hardon]

Irritating in a good way, I hope.

From the avatars you've used, and the posts of yours I've read, I'd make an exception for you Carmenica.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Read some heinlin. Particularly his Lazarus Long stuff.

I've see in proposed, on several occasions, that Carrol, heinlin and others whose work is littered with innuendo in that direction, were probably sexually attracted to young girls. The theory I've seen most often, is that they used their writing as a vehicle to constuctively use an otherwise shameful impulse.

The real trick, as many of us know, is that you just can't tell much about the author's proclivities from his/her work. By and large, really good authors write a story that is so engrossing, you don't even think about the author as you read.

Carrol being a pedophile is a pretty hard sell to me. I'm not expert enough on the time period to know what would constitute normal purportment. I always think of President Buchannon. People have claimed for years he was our first gay president, pointing to the fact he never married and lived with another gent in a flat for many years. Seems suspicious, but at the time, it was common for men to live together. Likewise, Richard the Lion heart is often accounted to be gay. The argument is he never slept with is wife, spent all his time in the company of men, etc. etc. But again, the times make it hard to say. His marriage was purely political. HE did spend all his time in the company of men, but he was also on crusade or planning a crusade, which was, as far as I can tell, the football of his era. All the heros o fhis times were warriors, it was how you showed you were great. There is evidence, but iterpreting that evidence without a solid grasp on the times is very difficult.

 

[NoJo]

Historians, if they're any good, will have an agenda. History is hermeneutics, not science. Human life is too messy, rich and complex to merely report, and a overly strong claim to objectivity is dangerous.

That said, I approached the subject of Carroll with an open mind when I read his biographies. He simply does not fit neatly into any clear categories, although most aspects of his personality can been seen reflected in one or other of his contemporaries (particulaly in William Blake, whose poetry he greatly admired).

The "Alice" books resonated with me very strongly as a child. They were the first books I read myself, at the age of 7 (Alice's Age in the first book). My Russian mother was unable to read them to me to my satisfaction, and I still remember snatching the book from her in an Alice-like assertion of my independence.

The books, and Tenniels illustrations, permeate my life, as they do for many people, particularly people who like maths and games of logic, which I've always done.

I'd always accepted the received wisdom, perpetrated by the most thorough and accurate of his biographers, that he was sexually attracted to little girls. But the evidence is far from clear. He certainly loved children in a way that few but the most Romantic (with a capital "R") Christians could understand.

 

[amicus]

What an excellent, excellent thread! A pleasure to read.

Thank y'all!


amicus...

 

[NoJo]

Having tried and failed to get my kids to enjoy the "Alice" books, I have the sad feeling that, in the West at least, culture has drifted too far from Victorian England for children to be able to see Dodgson's timeless message to them: You are people.

 

[3113]

Having tried and failed to get my kids to enjoy the "Alice" books, I have the sad feeling that, in the West at least, culture has drifted too far from Victorian England for children to be able to see Dodgson's timeless message to them: You are people.

Hey, Victorian England lives in the Harry Potter books Not that I think they're a match for Alice, but let's face it, the Alice books have a lot of inside jokes that go over the heads of most 21st century kids. The Potter books have inside jokes they understand, hence part of their popularity.

Still remarkably "Victorian" for all that with their boarding school setting and luddite (anti-technology) sentiments.

 

[NoJo]

Hey, Victorian England lives in the Harry Potter books Not that I think they're a match for Alice, but let's face it, the Alice books have a lot of inside jokes that go over the heads of most 21st century kids. The Potter books have inside jokes they understand, hence part of their popularity.

Still remarkably "Victorian" for all that with their boarding school setting and luddite (anti-technology) sentiments.

Don't get me started on Harry Potter. Please.

 

[shereads]

For most of Lewis Carroll's life, the legal age of consent for girls was 13. If he did have a thing for girls on the cusp of adolescence, was there any reason for him to fear exposure?

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Don't get me started on Harry Potter. Please.

How come?