The Man with the Child in His Eyes
A little girl kisses a melancholy man – the kind of sugary, sentimental image so beloved of the Victorian bourgeoisie and a variation on a theme that clings to the coat-tails of the twenty-first century as a nauseating mainstay of the painted plates advertised in the Sunday supplements of the quality press; only grannies would contemplate decorating their drawing-rooms with such images these days, perhaps indicative that the original meaning of this kind of devalued artwork has no relevance beyond the twee today.
The paintbrush’s role as the most accurate visual reproduction of reality was utterly usurped by the arrival of the camera, but as art responded by abandoning its previous pretence, early photography didn’t develop its own distinct identity and instead portrayed the human form in the same way as artists had since the Renaissance; that’s why nobody ever smiles on nineteenth century photographs. The manner of the poses in the more self-conscious first photographs, both with the backgrounds and props as well as the theatrical dress of the subjects, is wholly rooted in the style of the preceding medium. The fact that the process took some time meant that subjects posed just as they would for a painting. To amateurs with a keen artistic eye who didn’t possess a particular gift with a brush, photography was a means of expressing this, much as the sampler today enables those who aren’t great musicians to manipulate the talents of those who were.
Oxford don Charles Dodgson was one such amateur, and with the camera and all its accompanying paraphernalia being an expensive hobby beyond the reach or understanding of most, photography was firmly in the hands of such figures, ones that those desiring a photo of themselves or their children approached in the same way they’d approached portrait painters. The notion of such an instrument being put in the hands of the subject was anathema. This gave pioneering photographers the kind of authority that movie auteurs would later acquire and also free rein to decide upon the way in which they would portray their sitters.
The tradition of the naked winged cherub in art continued in photography; and whilst the medium in its infancy couldn’t convincingly create the illusion of flying children, the concept of purity and untainted innocence remained embodied in the ethereal, unclothed person of a pre-pubescent child. For all his innovations, Charles Dodgson adhered to this principle, as did his photographic contemporaries like Julia Margaret Cameron. Whereas it would have been inconceivable for anyone socially respectable to have photographed grown men and women posing naked in photographs, the Victorians – for all their alleged uptight morality – had no qualms about their children posing naked, which seems to suggest they didn’t regard the practice as morally dubious or see a sexual element to it. Dodgson’s photographs of children really need to be seen in this context.
Dodgson didn’t just photograph children; he also photographed prominent artistic figures of the day, such as Pre-Raphaelite painters, Millais and Rossetti, and the Poet Laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson; but his photographs of children remain his most well-known courtesy of his success as an author under the pen name Lewis Carroll. The story of how ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ arose from his ability to enchant the young daughters of his college’s dean with his gift for storytelling has long been the stuff of legend; and when Dodgson turned his other notable talent in the direction of the Liddell sisters, the images of them he produced have become as much a part of that legend as the joyfully imaginative books he wrote.
Being a sensitive sort, exposure to the more boisterous side of male nature during his spell at Rugby School perhaps dissuaded Dodgson (who possessed a socially crippling stammer) from entering that world once his schooling was over, and his seclusion from it in the more genteel male environs of Christ Church probably prevented him from evolving into a cynical, world-weary adult; he maintained the eyes and imagination of a child, so it is not unsurprising that he had such a natural rapport with children, who flocked around him because he didn’t appear as intimidating or authoritative as most adults they were accustomed to. He was the Victorian equivalent of today’s ‘cool uncle’, the childless relative nephews and nieces favour as a more laidback incarnation of their fathers, spared the responsibility of parenthood and capable of communicating with kids in a language they understand.
His relationship with the Liddell sisters may seem strange to modern sensibilities, but had their parents not been perfectly happy to hand the girls over to Dodgson for boat trips along the river, we would have been denied one of the enduring classics of children’s literature. It was Alice Liddell, the pushiest personality of the three, who entranced and inspired Dodgson the most; not only was she his muse when it came to his writing, she also featured in some of his most beautiful photographs, fixing the camera with an assured gaze of startling self-confidence that goes in some way to explaining the hold she appeared to have over him.
It’s feasible to suggest that Dodgson was emotionally immature, never having (as far as we know) formed a stable romantic relationship with a woman, so claims that he was ‘in love’ with Alice are probably accurate, in so much as he was capable of being in love with anyone. Does love therefore automatically equate with sex? Anyone who has experienced love of the unrequited nature will know this is not the case, and there is no concrete evidence that anything untoward occurred between Dodgson and Alice. However, the absence of evidence is filled by speculation, something that has surrounded their relationship far longer than the current need to pin the flag of paedophilia in the reputation of every historical artistic icon whose sexual proclivities are shrouded in mystery. At one time, homosexuality would do the trick, but that has become the mark of a martyr now and simply doesn’t stir up the required scandal.
The latest television documentary to focus on both the ‘Alice’ books and what went on between the real Alice and Dodgson was screened last weekend on BBC 2. The recent discovery of a photograph attributed to Dodgson and said to be of Alice’s elder sister Lorina was studied at great length, even though viewers were only allowed to see the top half of what was a full-frontal nude of an adolescent girl of perhaps fourteen. This cautious censorship is itself ridiculous in that I was able to find the uncensored image online the day after the programme aired – a naked Victorian who has been dead for over eighty years. It’s also worth remembering that this girl, whose identity was assumed but not confirmed to be Lorina, was of the age of consent at the time the photograph was taken, meaning Dodgson could have married her if he’d so wished.
On and on the debate rages – was Charles Dodgson a repressed paedophile, and did he consciously photograph children in poses he considered erotic? The answer to the first is perhaps, though we will never know; the answer to the second is that if he considered the poses erotic, then so did all the parents of the children he photographed, most of whom were present at the sitting; does that seem plausible to you? And, lest we forget, it’s only just over forty years since naked nymphets graced the record sleeves of Led Zeppelin and Blind Faith. Continue to view the past though the twisted prism of the present and you will see sin in everything.
Petunia Winegum
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February 5, 2015 at 9:39 am -
Glad you alluded to the Led Zeppelin cover, a source of embarrassment to the “model” now, but check out “Virgin Killer” by the Scorpions if you haven’t already. I used to have that on vinyl.
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February 5, 2015 at 9:56 am -
Next week the article about the man who was scouting for boys.
http://www.glgarden.org/ocg/archive1/brits.html
I wonder if these Bloggers are getting Royalties from the mighty Press Barons of the 21st century…
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February 5, 2015 at 12:36 pm -
It looks more like they blog out of pure jealousy.
I mean my interest is the blatant disregard for the law and how Yewtree etc is really perverting the presumption of innocence.
How many latent closet pedos are there who are obsessed with this stuff?
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February 5, 2015 at 10:45 am -
The paedo-hunters have to have continual targets to ‘expose’ so that their utter irrelevance remains hidden from view, let’s face it, does any normal person really, and I mean REALLY, care whether or not JS patted a willing teeny bum or kissed a pair of readily offered lips forty or more years ago? I would say no, but it serves to keep the more important stories of muslim rape and grooming gangs, murderous jihadis, rampant anti-semitism and the continual doing down of anyone White, Male and Christian off the front pages.
As for Charles Dodgson, the ‘worst’ of his photos are the idyll of innocence next to any top shelf magazine or internet site. The man had real talent and was an inspiration to writers and children both; that I would submit is what is so unforgivable, a White Englishman writing childrens stories and taking harmless phoograph with the full knowledge and consent of the parents. Dig him up and burn him! Next stop J M Barry (Peter Pan)!
Here is a sample of the work of Dodgson re photographing:
http://people.virginia.edu/~ds8s/carroll/hia.html-
February 5, 2015 at 10:48 am -
Barrie is on that website I referenced…
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February 5, 2015 at 11:07 am -
L Frank Baum* too! Bestiallity, older men trying to carry young girls off in balloons and those wicked witches is surely anti-feminist!
Burn him! Burn him!
*The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
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February 5, 2015 at 12:24 pm -
If feminists are to blame, that doesn’t account for the police force running after these claims. It’s not exactly renowned for being a hotbed of feminism. Perhaps the alacrity with which they’re pursuing the allegations is a form of insubordination, in the sense of recognising people who make claims for what they are but not emphasising that point to the powers that be and ultimately letting her and the rest dig their own grave. If any questions are asked, they can just say they were following orders and those were the rules.
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February 5, 2015 at 12:32 pm -
The police are riddled with political correctness at H.O. levels and I’m sure you’re right about “only following orders”. Over a decade ago I went with my son to a police recruitment session (he was interested). Massive amounts of the seminar were taken up with racial issues and a key speaker was the Black Officers Rep.. We lived in a county where if you saw a black person it was an event…. Mind you, our little piece of Blair’s Britain has radically altered since so maybe the cops knew what was coming next and their job was to make sure the force was ready for the New Order. Like the DPP thinks it’s her job to “challenge Society” as opposed to controlling criminals.
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February 5, 2015 at 11:06 am -
…….At one time, homosexuality would do the trick, but that has become the mark of a martyr now and simply doesn’t stir up the required scandal……..
That is one if the most astute observations I have read. The love that dare not speak it’s name.
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February 5, 2015 at 11:08 am -
More likely the love that wont shut its gob!
Frys on his high horse again!-
February 5, 2015 at 11:20 am -
It’s not hard to see how if Fry had kept banging on about being “asexual” and not been wise enough to become “gay” then he’d be in the Paedo-Frame-up for sure.
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February 5, 2015 at 11:07 am -
The Blind Faith cover picture was, I believe, of Ginger Baker’s daughter (& not erotic, just very artistic). I have the LP tucked away somewhere in the attic – must find it and check!
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February 5, 2015 at 11:08 am -
There’s a certain irony that it seems that the image of Dodgson as repressed or asexual or whatever may actually stem from his surviving relatives’ attempts to sanitise his diaries for publication after his death. The original texts show that he actually had a lot of friendships with older women, and moved in theatrical and artistic circles, which is obviously reflected in his photographs of Millais, Rossetti, and Tennyson. It would seem that in order to remove any hint of “scandal” – the perenial Victorian fear – his relatives removed all mention of these interactions and liasions. His dealing with children, however, were obviously viewed at the time as quite innocent and not in any way unusual, and hence were left. This created a false impression of a man who seemed only really to be interested in children, and eschewed adult company.
Even the original diaries themselves appear to have been “censored” with a pair of nail scissors, removing the pages that correlate to Dodgson’s schism with the Liddell family, allowing all sorts of wild suggestions to fill in the gaps as to what might have happened. A brief aide memoire by a relative’s hand of what the “cut pages” contained suggests that Dodgson may in fact have professed actual love for and/or asked to marry Lorina – at Petunia notes, quite legal at the time – or her mother, also called Lorina.
It is certainly unfortunate that Dogson photographs of children are presented out of the context of what was in fact a widespread and popular trend in the field at the time, and framed only as having been taken by a man some people think was a paedophile.
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February 5, 2015 at 3:36 pm -
Forgot to mention that the “cut pages” document also refers to mention in the missing diary pages of local gossip that Dodgson was using the children merely as an excuse to “court” the Liddell family governess, who obviously would have been very much an adult (Dogdson himself was 31 at the time).
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February 5, 2015 at 11:12 am -
The poisonous irony of all *this* is that they really perverting the course of humanity.
Up until a couple of years ago, even with the vultures of paedohysteria circling as they had been since the late 90s your average bloke was perfectly accepting of their perfectly natural dual role in life – that of a nurturing father & mentor, and that of a sexual being – without confusing the two. They being essential to the survival and thriving of the species.
Responsible fathers would chuckle “well, if there’s grass on the pitch” when socializing with other blokes knowing there was nothing *wrong* with having their heads slightly turned by their own daughter’s friends as they hit full bloom – it didn’t mean that they WOULD of course, just that *they would* metaphorically – men being designed through evolution to be attracted to the most fertile females.
Perhaps we’re just fortunate that it’s hard to tell a selfie-taking 25 year old from a selfie-taking 15 year now – and they are both generally as unappealing as each if you possess any sense of discernment or grounding. They’ve sown a bitter crop. -
February 5, 2015 at 12:02 pm -
I think there can be little doubt that Dodgson was a paedoPHILE, in the sense he would have understood the word. I call myself a Europhile, I ‘love’ Europe but it gives me no sexual gratification….I hope. As far as I know Philadelphia was never full of incestuous homosexuals. I very much doubt that CD was a paedo in the modern sense of the word, to my mind the ‘Lorina’ photo confirms what I have always suspected, namely, CD was a hebephile , in the modern sense of the word that his sexual PREFERENCE was girls just into puberty, whereby i assume the photo of ‘Lorina’ is genuine. The difference between his photos of naked little girls and the Lorina photo is striking. The little girls are naked cherubim, artistic muses and a portrayal of innocence, the Lorina photo is porn- and would have been considered such by CD’s contemporaries and victorian society- ‘porn’ not ‘kiddy porn’…paedophilia being in the eye of the beholder.
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February 5, 2015 at 12:24 pm -
Some of these Victorians were just plain morbid. I recall as a child being encourage to read “The Water Babies” and as the book started with the child protagonist evidently drowning, I can remember tossing the book aside in repugnance, and going back to my copy of the Hound of the Baskervilles, which seemed a far more worthwhile piece of work. Can’t be doing with “deep”; it’s too easy to misconstrue.
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February 5, 2015 at 2:19 pm -
My mother always said that the Victorians had a cultish obsession with death, but were horrified and repressed about sex, whereas in modern times the reverse is true.
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February 5, 2015 at 12:21 pm -
I have always felt that this photo said everything one needs to know (if anyone this far removed ‘needs’ to know) about CD’s sexuality.
http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/culture_test/alice3.jpgA girl on the verge of womanhood, as CD would have understood it. Or to put it more simply, he probably had a ‘husband bulge’ when taking that photo. The photos of the naked girls frolicking on the beach just made him laugh.
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February 5, 2015 at 1:52 pm -
About C19 photographs – one reason everyone looked serious and was posed stiffly was the long exposure time required. Any movement would have blurred the picture, so expressions had to be fixed.
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February 5, 2015 at 2:20 pm -
Street scenes from that eara are fascinating – lots of people standing stock-still, entranced by the novelty of the camera, but surrounded by the ethereal streaks of those who weren’t.
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February 5, 2015 at 2:10 pm -
There seems to be quite a strong political undercurrent to all the hype about paedophilia. Contrast the ‘noise’ about ‘possible paedophile rings involving politicians during the Thatcher era’ with the fairly notable lack of ‘noise’ following the Rotherham scandal. Note also the determined attempts to associate Savile with Thatcher. A lot of the attempts to smear historical figures seem to be aimed at figures that might be associated with ‘bourgeois values’. I wonder what their reaction would be if it were to be shown that (say) Kier Hardie or Karl Marx was a paedophile?
I’m inclined to the view that the protagonists of much of the hype are after political smears, and don’t really give a flying fig about a safer world for children.
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February 5, 2015 at 10:33 pm -
I find it telling that those the ‘left’ favour, such as Benjamin Britten or Roman Polansky, are given deference, despite being caught in flagrante; whilst those not in the ‘in-crowd’ are thrown to the wolves based on mere innuendo.
And as for the claim that censoring images protects children, I would point out that it must, logically, also protect the perpetrators; and thereby cover what gender or pseudo-gender they are.
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February 6, 2015 at 7:03 am -
Bizarre to linked Britten and Polanski together. The latter had what was in all probability consensual sex with a model who was underage, the former…? By curious coincidence the other day I was transferring some old VHS tapes, and on the very end of one there was a fragment of the start of David Hemming’s introduction to a new production of The Turn of the Screw. In it Hemming pointedly and vehemently denied that Britten had ever betrayed the trust of his parents when they let him live with the composer during his childhood, as preparation for his part in the opera.
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February 6, 2015 at 1:51 pm -
The link was that they are both favoured by the left, not that they are the same.
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February 5, 2015 at 3:59 pm -
I have long thought that this obcession with paedophilia was dangerous. Men who might have had that inclination but would never have followed it up because of the shame, may well have come to believe it is so common that they are not unusual perverts at all. If, as it seems, so many are doing it, it can’t be that wrong can it? I do wonder about the motivations of these obcessives and suspect it may well be their own dark side.
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February 5, 2015 at 4:40 pm -
“Continue to view the past though the twisted prism of the present and you will see sin in everything.” I’ll save that for later!
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February 5, 2015 at 5:19 pm -
If I am not mistaken Kate Middleton wrote her undergraduate thesis at St Andrew’s on Liddell’s photos. I would be very interesting to know what she wrote.
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February 5, 2015 at 6:04 pm -
We had a surprise visitor today after not seeing him for 48 years! He tracked us down doggedly. Fortunately not to accuse my husband of anything! He was a Queens Scout in my husbands East End troop. He came to thank him for showing him mountains, walking, fishing, surviving outdoors, camping and the countryside. He has has an OBE. He has been very successful in business. Lives in a sought after Thameside location. Just the very person that Baden-Powell was trying to help. Now BP’s name is dragged down by nasty people. Yes he was an odd man but he has done so many people so much good. Like other off beat men his name is being dragged through the mud. I lived near Daresbury as a child. So school taught us a lot about Dodgsons nonsense rhymes and stories as a local curate. Now kids would probably sniff at him as a ‘paedo’. Does it matter whether he was or wasn’t I wonder?
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February 5, 2015 at 7:28 pm -
‘…Continue to view the past though the twisted prism of the present and you will see sin in everything.’
“Paul Gadd, also known as Garry Glitter. You stand in the dock convicted by a jury of your peers. It is now my painful duty to pass sentence. You have been found guilty of the most serious matters after a diligent investigation by dedicated officers from Operation Yewtree etc. etc…”
I am going to add Gary Glitter to my personal list of stars whose subsequent conviction I very much regret – as they were, in the main persons who I looked up to as a youngster. These are: Stuart Hall and Rolf Harris, great men brought low.
But then I looked in the ‘Good Book’ and saw this: “… When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
1 Corinthians 13
King James VersionPerhaps what we are lacking is the latter?
by Public Domain
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February 6, 2015 at 9:57 am -
So if one now views, downloads or owns any of these Dodgson type images, is one committing an offence? My understanding is that while in the 1970’s it was quite legal for top shelf magazines and daily newspapers to have topless or even full frontal photographs of 16 year olds, changes in the law have made this illegal and anyone in posesstion of such old material is open to prosecution and indeed such prosecutions hane been brought. When it comes to “artistic” images and paintings I’m very unclear how the law works.
This brings to my mind that part of one of the infamous “Brass Eye” programmes – the one about child abuse with all those celebrities taking part – where an “art expert” is shown a painting slowly revealed little by little and being asked “is that acceptable?” or something like that.-
February 7, 2015 at 2:01 am -
I wasn’t sure what the law was, to be honest, which is why I didn’t post the link to the (alleged) Lorina Liddell picture – just in case. Not that it’s hard to find, mind; and not that the threat of being done for possession of an image almost 150 years old isn’t beyond ridiculous!
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February 7, 2015 at 12:07 pm -
The photograph shown on the BBC does not pass any attribution tests
It may be Lorina Liddell based on facial likeness but that is hardly definitive proof and their is no documentary trail to trace it back to Dodgson.
The fact that the photograph was developed using the colloidal glass plate technique is not enough to state that the photograph was taken by Dodgson as it was widely used by lots of other Victorian photographers including Julia Margaret Cameron who incidentally also photographed the Liddell girls. The fact it was from the same type of camera as used by Dodgson is no more significant than saying it came from an Iphone camera. I would also suggest that the photograph is also not of the quality of Dodgsons other works either in clarity or form and that as a master photographer if he wanted a bit of smut he would have come up with something a bit better than the a rather crude picture shown
One thing worth noting is that the BBC was also a bit sneaky in only showing the top half of the photo which makes the subject appear rather more child like than the full picture. If you hunt down the original on the internet you will see that the girl being portrayed most definitely has a womans rather than a childs set of hips so I would guess at the very least well into puberty and therefore by definition an adult in Victorian law.
The suppressed eroticism in Victorian child photos was certainly not only a feature of Dodgsons works. It would be interesting if the BBC had the courage to display for example JuIia Margaret Cameron’s Turtle Doves alongside Dogson’s pictures of Alice Liddell and then to challenge the viewer as to which is the more provocative. Needless, to say they have not got the balls to do anything so provocative particularly since Cameron is a woman and therefore by default does not get included on any list of eminent Victorian paedophiles.
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February 7, 2015 at 12:16 pm -
Presumably the BBC kept well away from the sculptures adornng their own HQ…..
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February 7, 2015 at 11:53 pm -
Having now watched the full documentary, I was struck by how poor the provenance of the photograph is. As Hugfow notes, saying it was created with the same processes that Dodgson used it the most tenuous of circumstantial evidence, and there is certainly no trail that traces the print back to Dodgson himself.
It was said that Dodgson numbered his negatives/prints, and the fact that none could be found on the print was simply hand-waved away by suggesting that it had been cropped. Whether this meant in the darkroom when printed, or physically with the paper print was not elaborated upon, probably because anyone with even a passing experience of developing and printing photographs can confirm that either is possible, but could not be proved either way. The documentation of the known numbered Dodgson negatives/prints was not addressed beyond a dismissive comment about incomplete records, and yet one would think that there must be somebody who can say how complete the known sequence of numbers in, and whether there are gaps that could have occurred around the time in question.
The latter is crucial if we are to take the hints of the programme that the photograph is Lorina, and that it is a reflection of the situation that led to the infamous “break” in 1863. This is, of course, something of a bait-and-switch. All the way through the documentary we are told repeatedly that it’s Alice that Dodgson is fixated with, and then – seemingly at the last minute – attention is diverted to Lorina. That fact that she was two years above the age of consent isn’t mentioned, because that puts the matter in a different perspective, even if we accept the idea that Dodgson was in love with her.
It all hangs on whether the Scala photograph is actually Lorina. At first glance there does appear to be a resemblance between the subject and Alice’s older sister, and yet there is much that does not ring true with the image if it is her and, if so, whether it was taken around 1863 when she was fourteen. “It is,” Martha Kearney assures us, “a picture which no parent would ever have consented to!” As Hugfow says, however, the body shape appears to be of someone older. Obviously there are some fourteen years olds who could have that figure, and yet there are many more 16, 18 and even 20 years olds who could, as well.
One most striking aspect is that the subject – whoever she was – was shot against a plain dark background, without any costumery or accessories, which would seem to make it unique compared to all the known and authenticated Dodgson photographs. In this it seems to have more in common with Victorian social, medical, or actual pornographic photography than anything Dodgson would have taken. Could it simply be that the anonymous photograph fell into the hands of a collector who noticed the resemblance to Lorina and let wishful thinking get the better of themselves, putting her name on the back and thus giving it the “obvious” attribution?
It’s notable that while the “cut pages” document is shown and read, it is said that the mention in it of “Ina” is the young Lorina, but does not mention that her mother was also called “Lorina,” and I think I’m right in saying there is no mention of the mother’s first name in the documentary at all. Thus it presents on only two readings of the “cut pages” document – the governess and Lorina junior – without mentioning the obvious third of Lorina senior.
One also can’t go without highlighting the ludicrous nature of Will Self denouncing Dodgson as an undoubted “repressed paedophile,” as if an unrepressed one would be somehow better. Self says: “It’s a problem when somebody writes a great book and they’re not a great person.” Strangely enough, I now find that to me that applies more to Will Self and his work than Charles Dodgson and his.
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February 8, 2015 at 7:59 pm -
Sadly the BBC program was typical of so many modern documentaries that have a habit of taking a tiny snippet of tendentious evidence and then claiming it is a sensational revelation all backed up by some very suspect logic. For example, the fact that a photograph was developed by the colloidon process merely means that it was most likely to have been produced some time between the late 1850s and the early 1880’s when it was the dominant medium. The BBC singularly failed to mention that the photographic process used by Dodgson was also being employed by virtually every other photographer of that era so would have been utilised to produce hundreds of thousands of photographs at the very minimum over a quarter of a century.
The BBC program also neglected to point out that the rift in Dodgson’s contact with the Liddell family which took place in 1863 was not permanent. In fact Dodgson’s last extant photographs of Alice Liddell and Lorina Liddell were taken in 1870 when the girls were 18 and 21 respectively. Obviously, whatever had created the break was deemed not sufficiently significant to terminate all contact with the family.
According to Edward Wakeling, the expert on Dodgson’s photography approximately 1% of his surviving 1000 photographs feature or partially clothed children (i.e. less than 20). This is certainly no more than any of his contemporaries were producing. Most of his other pictures of children were as conventional as those produced by any portrait photographers producing them for families today.
Fundamentally the problem with the documentary was the rather crude assumption that Dodgson’s surviving photographs of children etc and his friendship with the Liddell family are in some way an indication of his sexual predilections as a single male. In my opinion that is a completely bogus argument since there is no obvious reason why a photographer or a single man is any more likely to be a paedophile than someone who does not come in those categories. Moreover the BBC was making the fundamental mistake of assuming that what would have shocked Victorians is the same thing that we would regard as suspect.
The truth, if one is to believe the findings of Karoline Leach’s recent study of Dodgson, is a bit more complicated. Dodgson appears to have been neither an asexual innocent nor a rampant paedophile but a man who enjoyed unconventional friendships with women (and the emphasis here is on the word women rather than girls). For example, he was prepared to offer Maths tuition to female students who were excluded from Oxford University under the rules of the institution at the time. He was also prepared to take unchaperoned trips with both single and married ladies against the conventions of the time. There is also some evidence to suggest that some of his missing works of photography that are rumoured to have been destroyed by his family were slightly risque poses of some of his lady friends in acrobatic and swimming wear. These would have certainly been considered shocking particularly if any of the particiapants happened to be married. The irony is that what his heirs considered uncontroversial and left untouched were his photographs of children the very thing that are used to label him as closet paedophile today.
With regard to the photograph rather dubiously attributed by the program as a picture of Lorina by Dodgson I think the main drawback to the claim is the poor quality of the photograph both in composition and execution. Dodgson was a a true master of the art who clearly went to great pains in constructing his picture. His studio contained many props and backdrop that he routinely deployed to get the desired effect. Quite why he would have simply dropped those standards to get a snap that to be honest looks like a thousand other rather boring Victorian nude photographs is not clear. One suspects that the attribution has been made after Dodgson became famous and is based on the similarity in appearance between the model and one of the girls in Dodgson photos. If one is being uncharitable one might think the link has been made to increase the value of a photograph that would in every other way be unremarkable.
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February 9, 2015 at 12:04 pm -
Yes, context is everything. The fact that the “dubious” photographs take up such a small percentage of his work, and that there may have been suppressed risque shots of older women does put a very different slant on it. It is, in a way, similar to a someone now being nailed for one or two photographs on their computers that the authorities deem to transgress the law, out of a massive collection of those that don’t.
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February 6, 2015 at 11:40 am -
“If I am not mistaken Kate Middleton wrote her undergraduate thesis at St Andrew’s on Liddell’s photos. I would be very interesting to know what she wrote.”
She can write?
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February 9, 2015 at 2:08 pm -
I doubt she would have got into St Andrew’s in the first place if she couldn’t.
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February 7, 2015 at 5:36 pm -
History Today has taken a dim view of the BBC documentary, particularly its selective sourcing:
http://www.historytoday.com/fern-riddell/curiouser-and-curiouser-case-lewis-carroll
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February 8, 2015 at 8:59 am -
“We are told not to judge the Victorians by the morals of today; that the age of consent was only 12;…. ”
Curious that the modern writer equates morals with whatever the law happens to be at the time. I can imagine that the average Victorian in Huddersfield regarded 12 as far too young for consent or owt else, thankee very much. In fact, the average fadder wouldn’t regard any of his kids as grown-ups until they were 21 and in this sense what “the law” said was bloody irrelevant.
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February 8, 2015 at 1:22 pm -
Probably all very true, but then it seems as good an example as any to encapsulate why, in terms of social and sexual mores, the Victorian era really was another world. The entire notion of sex was very much repressed in polite society (contemporary accounts suggest things were a bit more relaxed further down the social scale), and yet marriage between older men and much younger women hardly raised an eyebrow. With childbirth being such a risky business, some husbands having multiple wives one after the other was not unusual. Older men were invariably better off both in terms of wealth and social standing, thus offering the sort of security and position for a young bride than a man of her own age could rarely match.
In this context, even if Dodgson really was “courting” the 14 year old Ina, it wouldn’t have been as jarring as it would be viewed today. Back then, such courtships could take many years and be completely chaste, a fact I suspect so many would have great difficulty in believing now. On the other hand, the governess, Mary Prickett, was actually the same age as Dodgson, so in 1863 would have been around 31. That she was reputedly the model for the Red Queen may cast doubt on whether Dodgson was ever interested in her.
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February 8, 2015 at 8:30 pm -
Strictly speaking te Victorians did not have an ‘age of consent’
They had a minimum legal age of marriage which was 12 for girls and 14 for boys.
Sexual relations outside marriage were frowned upon whatever the age of the participants
The average age of marriage in early Victorian England was surpringly late at 26 and only dropped to 22 by the end of the 19th century. However, it should be borne in mind that women were very likely to be younger than their husbands since the latter would normally not commit to marriage until they had the means or livelihood to sustain a family. Outside the working class marriage was a matter of property and courtships could go on for years
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February 10, 2015 at 12:05 pm -
I was in that BBC programme and have written a biography of Lewis Carroll. The photo supposedly of Lorina is a well known fraud but we were not allowed to say so. If you want to read an insider’s view of what went on, you could look at my blog post about it
. http://www.jabberwock.co.uk/blog-
February 10, 2015 at 12:08 pm -
Fantastic
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February 10, 2015 at 12:27 pm -
A blinding piece Jenny – I particularly liked this bit:
“In terms of providing balance, (a cardinal rule, supposedly, for BBC documentaries), the film didn’t make it clear that on one hand they had people with no relevant expertise, whose sensational personal hunches were offered airtime and discussion, and on the other hand they didn’t tell their own relevant experts anything about the image, so their opposing views were not given airtime or discussion. ”
You didn’t by any chance come across a Panorama ‘investigative reporter’ by the name of Meirion Jones whilst you were involved in this documentary did you? Just that the above paragraph perfectly describes his investigative technique…..
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February 10, 2015 at 1:25 pm -
No, I didn’t meet Meirion Jones. When did you encounter him?
It is sad but true that TV journalists nearly always have to omit important points, because it’s amazing how few points can be got over on a TV documentary. They have 30 or 60 mins, they have to “show it” not “tell it” and setting the scene, walking around, introducing everyone and speaking takes such a lot of time compared with just reading or listening. I think they reckon on getting over 2 or 3 points in half an hour and maybe editing down several days of film.
So it’s how they decide what to give the huge prize of airtime to, that interests me. When it’s all so expensive, they shouldn’t give airtime to waffle that goes nowhere, and omit the words of people who have something useful to say on the subject, or waste time dropping heavy hints and implying things, they should be getting on with it, every 30 seconds counts.
I have not had the chance to read much of your blog yet so I will look at some of the posts and see if Merion Jones appears in any of them!
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February 10, 2015 at 1:45 pm -
“No, I didn’t meet Meirion Jones. When did you encounter him?”
Ahh, got to babysit him a long time ago, snotty nosed little git, who obviously considered himself a ‘cut above’ we young ladies entrusted to entertain him, which is why I so well remember being instructed to go and find him a paper handkerchief…it seemed like the height of serfdom at the time.
Funny thing is, an an adult, he studiously portrays himself as a working class son of the valleys/supporter of the miners etc and never mentions his top flight public school background – but then a lot of ‘lefties’ like to assume the mantle of ‘working man’ as a sort of inverted snobbery.
Seems to me that these documentary makers start with a story that they want to portray and then eliminate anything that might detract from it and promote any half baked charlatan that can imply they are right. Its the total opposite of what I think of as rigorous investigation.
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February 10, 2015 at 4:43 pm -
* got to babysit him a long time ago, snotty nosed little git *
Careful, he might begin to……. remember……. things…..
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February 10, 2015 at 4:27 pm -
Oh wow, babysitting him!
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