The Secret World of Lewis Carroll

[RonPrice]

 ALICE IN WONDERLAND

 

Part 1:

 

The Secret World of Lewis Carroll was televised on ABCTV on 28/4/'15(8:30 to 9:30 p.m.). For fans of both literature and scandal The Secret World of Lewis Carroll (BBCTwo) was a  wonderfully engaging portrait which showed both the scandalous and the imaginative side of Carroll.  Martha Kearney, the presenter, left viewers with the question: "was Lewis Carroll a repressed paedophile?"

 

The Alice in Wonderland creator Lewis Carroll invented the Alice story on a river trip with his 10-year-old friend Alice Liddell, a self-possessed little girl, we were told, with whom Carroll was entranced.  This BBC documentary examined Carroll's relationship with children.  

 

He took photographs of Alice Liddell's two sisters in 1859. This enthusiasm for photography was a common, a mainstream and fashionable Victorian pastime. Carroll, though, seemed to be unusual at least insofar as his ceaseless pursuit of, and a passion for, juvenile feminine company and photographs. Some critics argue, though, that this personal idiosyncrasy of Carroll's was just a response to a prevalent aesthetic, artistic, and philosophical movement of the time.

 

Part 1.1:

 

The  English author, journalist, political commentator and television personality Will Self, interviewed in this doco, described Carroll as being 'a repressed paedophile'.  Classics and English expert Robert Douglas-Fairhurst argued, on the other hand, that however much it is "tempting to think of Carroll as a Victorian Jimmy Savile,¹ in fact, there are dozens and dozens of records from girls whom he befriended. They all made it clear that there was a kind of ritual to their friendship. It involved kissing them chastely and that was it.” Savile(1926-2011), it may never be forgotten, and you may remember, was one of Britain's most prolific predatory sexual offenders.

 

Part 2:

 

Many people believe Carroll was an innocent who simply enjoyed the company of children, and there is no evidence of misbehaviour. Program presenter, Kearney, tried to end on a positive note: “Perhaps we’ll never find out the truth about Lewis Carroll no matter how much we delve.” But, after her programme, many viewers were likely to have decided that they now knew precisely what the damning truth was. It must have been tough for Kearney to do all that delving into her hero's life as she did..

 

The programme located a previously unseen photograph almost certainly taken by Carroll.  It showed a girl stripped off, revealing her developed, adolescent body. And it seems she was Lorina, Alice’s older sister by three years. Carroll, who died in January 1898, befriended Alice Liddell and her two sisters when they were children. It was Miss Liddell who was the inspiration for the famous book. Researchers, working on this documentary of the 150th anniversary of the publication of the much-loved children's book, discovered these disturbing images.¹ -Ron Price with thanks to ¹Terry Ramsey, The Telegraph, 31/1/'15.

 

Part 3:

 

Dodgson¹ was also keenly

interested in adult women,

it should be emphasized to

all those who come to read

this my prose-poem, and he

had a sense of sin being the

devout Protestant that he was.

 

The year 1863 was a very big

year for this famous author, a

writer of some 100,000 letters,

who took his Alice manuscript

to Macmillan's. This work was

published in the last year of the

civil war, and the same year as

the first Western book written in

its entirety on the subject of the

Babi religion³ was published by

a university: '65 was a big year!

 

¹The name of the author of Alice in Wonderland was Charles Dodgson better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll.

² The American Civil War, 1861-1865; Congress passed the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery in America, and  Abraham Lincoln was shot & killed while attending the play "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theatre.

³ Mirza Kazem-Beg of St Petersberg University published Bab Babidy.

 

Ron Price

1 May 2015