{R~ birthdays, and Love [continued]}[5th December 1988]

[Redbook6:54-55)][19881205:1247c]{R~ birthdays, and Love [continued]}[5th December 1988]

19881205.1247

[continued]

Lewis Carroll (27/1/1832), the mathematician Charles Dodgson, is famous for his interest in (pre-pubescent) girls, clad and unclad;* but much of his writing (Sylvie and Bruno) features her cherubic younger brother. E Gertrude Thomson’s engravings of naked girl-children for his** serious poems are enchanting, although they don’t seem to have much to do with the poems.

I am intrigued to find recurring in the life and work of Carroll, who was born near the degree of R~, the same vision of innocence which I have encountered intensely when passing through it: and, in his non-Alice ‘straight’ writings, a great emphasis on Love. He was, of course, a clergyman,*** although he never took the final step to becoming a priest.

*[It seems that photography of unclad pre-pubescents may have been commonly accepted in Victorian and later times; the writer’s mother told him of having been compelled by her mother, as a pre-pubescent in the 1920s or very early 1930s, to be professionally photographed unclothed, over her vehement but unavailing protests. Even forty years or so later, she still felt resentful about it. It is also the case that even as late as the 1950s it was not unusual for pre-pubescents to be encouraged by their parents to run and play naked in the sunshine on beaches, in gardens and so forth, as being generally healthier. The writer’s father regarded wet swimsuits as a polio risk.]

**[Sylvie’s presumably]

***[ie Carroll/Dodgson’s]

****{& of course a mathematician!}

[continues]

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