Curiouser and Curiouser

Lewis Carroll

There’s nothing better than getting home from the day’s grind and relaxing with a little literary nonsense. The stuff that is so far-fetched and ridiculous that you know it could never happen, is just the thing after a day of intense thinking and seriousness. Not only does it make you laugh, it kind of helps you to forget the problems of the day.

When I was a lot younger, I loved the books that took me away from reality and into some sort of fantasy world where nothing seemed likely, but I believed it was real because I believed anything was possible.  Now I’m a lot more sensible, I still like to think that those fantasy worlds exist, but I don’t usually tell people.

The Alice Garden - Guildford castle

When Charles Lutwidge Dodson was born in 1832, I’ll bet my last penny that nobody could have foreseen the imaginary world that he would create. In that small Parsonage in Daresbury, his religious family would never have known that this baby was going to create literary nonsense that would delight for centuries.

Christ Church where Dodson attended and Brendan & I
escaped from the tour.

Dodson was schooled at Richmond, Rugby and finally Oxford. (I recently visited Oxford with my son Brendan and we went on the worst (free but you can pay at the end if you liked it) tour of the place possible.  It was so bad that we buggered off before the end so that we wouldn’t feel lousy for not paying.) But let’s get back to our subject. Dodson enjoyed photography and there are numerous references to pictures of children but this is about the books he wrote, not his pictures, and those particular books supposedly began with his meeting the Liddell family in Oxford. There is still some speculation about his heroin Alice and whether or not she was based on Alice Liddell, but either way, the books are amazing.



Down the rabbit hole in Guildford

It all starts when Alice sees a rabbit with a pocket watch hurrying past and follows it down a rabbit hole. What follows after that is an amazing adventure in which Alice grows, shrinks and plays a bizarre game of croquet with the Queen of hearts. She meets creatures such as The Mad Hatter and the Cheshire Cat and ends with Alice waking up from a dream. 

Alice's Shop Oxford - rumour has it she used to buy sweets
here with her sisters.

When Dodson wrote the book he wrote under the name of Lewis Carroll. The transition from one name to another goes as follows.  Charles Lutwidge translated to Latin is Carolus Ludovicus which in English is Carroll Lewis.  He then reversed the name to come up with the pseudonym Lewis Carroll.  This kind of leads me into the sequel to the first book which of course is, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There. In the looking glass world it’s the opposite of what’s happening in the real world.  The time of year is winter where it’s snowing outside, but when Alice climbs through the looking glass, it’s a sunny day. This is where we’re introduced to Tweedledum and Tweedledee, The Walrus and The Carpenter and who could forget The Jabberwocky?



The Walrus & The Carpenter - London

Dodson was a genius.  He experimented with words as all writers do and came up with the most incredible names and characters which in my opinion, nobody could ever equal.  There is a lot more to this man than his writing, but that kind of makes him boring to me.  I prefer to imagine him as Lewis Carroll rowing a boat while he tells his story to the Liddell girls.

"The Chestnuts" where he passed away in Guildford

A few weeks before his 66^th birthday, Charles Dodson passed away at his sister’s home “The Chestnuts” in Guildford.  He is now buried at The Mount Cemetery also in Guildford and let me tell you right now, that when the say The Mount, they don’t mean the hill.  It’s quite a climb to the cemetery, but the reward was substantial and the hard work allows me to show you a photo of his grave. 

The grave of Charles Lutwidge Dodson - AKA Lewis Carroll
The Mount Cemetery Guildford

I said earlier that I like the kind of stories that take me into some kind of fantasy land, but I suppose that in some way shape or form, they all do.  None however will ever replace the Alice books as I’ve read them over and over again and I will continue to do so until my eyes fall bleeding from my head. This is the kind of story that I will read to my grandson and hopefully he will enjoy it as much as the Liddell girls did when Once upon a time supposedly in a row boat, Lewis Carroll emerged from the cocoon of Charles Dodson and helped us to believe as many as *six impossible things before breakfast.

*Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

http://www.chch.ox.ac.uk/
http://www.nicholsonspubs.co.uk/thewalrusandthecarpentermonumentlondon/
http://www.visitsurrey.com/things-to-do/guildford-castle-p44413
http://www.aliceinwonderlandshop.co.uk/