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Lewis Carroll was no stranger to controversy even in his own lifetime - although his love of children was never part of the problem. Now, though, times have changed, and modern attitudes and preoccupations are very different indeed from those which held sway when Carroll was alive.
Accordingly, I occasionally get correspondence from people who believe that Carroll was a paedophile or closet paedophile. It is an accusation which would have astonished Carroll and the many children who knew him well and remembered him with great affection all their lives.
Since I don't think he was a paedophile myself, I don't like spending too much time discussing this unsavoury subject in connection with him. But I feel I occasionally have a duty to bring it up, because so many assertions are confidently and wrongly made, and there is little point in ignoring them. I received an email recently which has given the opportunity to look at this. I hope the writer won't mind my quoting some relevant bits of his email and replying to it here.
He says that "His (Carroll's) actions - getting involved in charitable work concerning children, secrecy, fascination with pornography, taking nude photos, 'grooming' women and children are quite common characteristics of 'dormant' paedophiles. "
Let me go over the writer's comments one at a time.
First, "Getting involved in charitable work concerning children." Carroll did not get involved in children's charities in person. He donated money through his bank as part of his personal system of giving to many charities that helped a variety of vulnerable individuals, including children, women, the sick and the poor. These charities happened to include one which tracked down and prosecuted paedophiles. We have no record that Carroll discussed any of this charitable giving with anyone, so he was not doing it for show, nor did he participate in any of the charities' practical activities. He simply helped fund their work.
Second, he was not secretive about his feelings for children or his nude depictions of children. He spoke openly about child nudity and his interest in it, with many people, including the childrens' parents. He believed that if people concealed parts of the human body, it suggested that they saw something wrong about it, so he preferred either draped or undraped figures to partially draped ones. He saw children's nudity as God's handiwork in its purest and godliest form. It is a view that is unfashionable now, but it was appropriate to his own culture.
Third, he was not fascinated by pornography, as the writer of the letter states. In fact, not only is there absolutely no evidence for this assertion, but he is on record as saying he disapproved of pornography. There are also private writings which show that he disapproved of commercial exploitation of sex and thought badly of men who indulged in it. After his unexpected death his deeply religious family cleared his rooms. They then went on to emphasise his love of children in two whole chapters of a biography - something they would never have done had they found anything abnormal or indecent relating to children in his most personal papers or books.
Fourth, he did as we know take nude photos, which he and many others of his period saw as art. Attitudes to nude photographs of children have of course changed drastically even within living memory, and it is anachronistic to project modern ideas so far into the past.
Finally, he was very kind and attentive to children, and took them seriously (most unusual at the time, when they were supposed to be "seen and not heard") but it is not clear why this should be considered "grooming". Children who left recollections of Lewis Carroll - including some of those whom he photographed nude - had extremely affectionate and positive memories of his gentleness and kindness, and some specifically said he gave them a feeling of self worth and personal value which stayed with them all their lives. Even those who didn't care for him (and there were some) did not find him creepy or disturbing - just a bit boring or babyish with his puzzles and stories. There was not the slightest hint that he ever "groomed" any child for anything.
I am not trying to be critical of the person who wrote to me. He said he was writing a book on paedophilia and was understandably concerned with signs and symptoms of the modern paedophile. But his note is a very good example of how people have pinned - and continue to pin - their personal preoccupations on Carroll.