Some people had suspicions, but many did not act on them. In the 1930s, biographers and researchers questioned his relationship with the ten-year-old girl to whom he first told his story (Smithsonian.com). In 1863, Carroll proposed to eleven-year-old Alice, too young even by Victorian mores. Alice told Carroll that she was ten years old, but was actually fourteen, or old enough to entertain formal suitors (Smithsonian.com). In 1887, Carroll wrote his Sweet Dream Child, the real Alice had faded into the distance of memory. He played with the shapes of the “real” world, sometimes making things more orderly, sometimes making them less so. In the 1990s, Donald Thomas, Michael Backwell and Morton Cohen suggested that he had pedophilic urges but never acted on them. Alice's mother began to notice strange things happening between the two of them and thought the relationship they needed had to end. Alice's parents did not see Carroll for months because of his relationship with Alice (Smithsonian.com)