The Real Alice and Remarkable Secrets of Wonderland World

In this feature, originally inspired by the layered world of Alice in Wonderland, we step into a story where imagination, memory and reality blur together in unexpected ways. What begins as a children’s tale becomes something far more intricate. Alice in Wonderland is filled with real people, hidden meanings, and illustrations that shaped how generations now see Wonderland. Ever wondered where the idea of a Dodo, a Duck, a Lory and a Eaglet came from? From Lewis Carroll’s mathematical mind to John Tenniel’s defining illustrations, this is a story of how books are built as much by readers and artists as by authors. This is an article from the It’s the Little Things printed Issue of .Cent guest-edited by Betty Jackson and Molly Malloy. Explore the story here The Real Alice and Remarkable Secrets of Wonderland World. Image on left John Tenniel.

Hertfordshire Library

Back in the 1980s, when I worked for the Hertfordshire Library Service, I once spent the day with Raymond Briggs, the children’s author and book illustrator. He was one of a batch of children’s authors invited to the county to talk to classes of children from local schools. I was designated as his minder, meaning that I had to look after him for the day, making sure he found the right room for his sessions, had flipchart, pens, coffee, taking care of him at lunch time.The combination of his preference for a local pub over the canteen and no class for the first session of the afternoon meant that we had plenty of time to chat. Already well known for his Father Christmas and Snowman books, he was just about to publish Gentleman Jim, and we discussed his plan for the cover illustration, which was not in accord with his publisher’s ideas.

Illustration Styles

In conversation, he also mentioned that he collected different editions of Robinson Crusoe. “As an illustrator myself,” he said, “I like to see how other artists have dealt with the story. They often picture the same episodes; there is always an illustration of the finding of the footprint.” Having always had an interest in book illustration, the idea of collecting different editions of a book, illustrated by different artists, appealed to me.In trying to decide on a suitable book to collect, I found myself formulating guidelines to help concentrate my choice. First, the book would have to be out of copyright so that it could be published without incurring royalty payments. Secondly, it would need to be popular, or it would not be economically viable for a publisher. Thirdly, it would probably have to be a children’s book, as they are often illustrated, and adult books seldom are.

Image John Tenniel

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

This narrowed down the field somewhat. I decided on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: there were already a couple of copies in the house, a paperback with the original John Tenniel illustrations and a rather fragile copy, bound in red suede with an Art Nouveau emblem on the front, illustrated by W.H. Walker. In the same way that I found, when I read the story to my eight-year-old daughter, that there are different levels of meaning and understanding in the book, there are also subtleties, messages and jokes in the illustrations. Tenniel’s man in the paper suit in the train in Through the Looking-Glass is obviously modelled on Benjamin Disraeli, the Prime Minister of the time. I was entertained to find that Ralph Steadman had followed suit, as it were, and included Edward Heath in the same scene in his 1972 edition.

Image John Tenniel

Second-hand Books

Carroll had included very little descriptive matter in his text, which gives a great deal of latitude to his illustrators. Much of the familiar iconography of the characters is the result of Tenniel’s vision. It was he, for instance, who put the 10/6 price tag in the Hatter’s hat. And his interpretation of a Mock Turtle has influenced other artists ever since. Margaret Tarrant, in 1916, was one of the few who came up with a fresh idea, making the turtle’s body a soup can. It is said that Bessie Pease Gutmann, when commissioned to illustrate an edition in 1908, insisted on a text that had had all the illustrations covered up so that she could not be influenced by them. The result was a straightforward turtle but a most peculiar Gryphon, looking more like a salamander. And so, I started the collection, thinking that, initially, as I haunted charity and second-hand bookshops, did the rounds of the car-boot and jumble sales, I would find a number of different editions and then, gradually, they would tail off until I would find only the occasional item new to me. Quite the opposite happened. As I became more interested in the search and the subject, things simply escalated. From the start, I was happy to include Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, but then, having bought The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll, I realised that there was more to come – The Hunting of the Snark, Sylvie and Bruno and more.

Image John Tenniel

Society of Author’s

Then, one day, I found, amongst the bargain books in a local bookshop, a copy of Beyond the Looking Glass, a biography of Alice Liddell, the original Alice to whom and about whom the story had first been told. This set me off on finding out more about the man behind the stories, Lewis Carroll, or Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, to use his real name. The more I learned about him, the more interesting he became – his mathematics, his photography, his interest in art and the theatre, his friendship with the pre-Raphaelites and the theatrical Terry family.

In about 1986, I joined the Lewis Carroll Society, meeting other enthusiasts and making friends. I have stayed with some of them in Washington and California, been invited to give talks in Israel and Bulgaria. Now Secretary of the Society, I am the first contact, by letter, telephone or email, for enquirers from all over the world, trying to answer their questions – if I can’t, then I know a man who does. – Alan White

Hand Illustrated Image John Tenniel

Alice Liddell, the real Alice, was one of the daughters of Henry Liddell, the Dean of Christ Church. Charles Dodgson first met her when he and his friend Reginald Southey went to photograph the Christ Church Cathedral from the Deanery garden. Alice and two of her sisters, Lorina, the elder, and Edith, who was younger, were playing in the garden, and Charles persuaded them to sit in the foreground of his picture. The photograph was a failure, but the meeting changed the course of children’s literature.

Charles became good friends with the children of the family. One afternoon in the summer of 1862, Dodgson, accompanied by a colleague, Robinson Duckworth, took the three Liddell sisters on a river trip for a picnic in Godstow. While he rowed, in response to the request, “Tell us a story,” Charles Dodgson made up a fairy tale about a young girl who followed a white rabbit down a rabbit hole. It was so successful that, at the end of the outing, Alice asked that it be written down. It was, and it was published in 1865 as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland under the pseudonym of Lewis Carroll.

With a little background reading, I began to understand why the sisters enjoyed it so much. They were in it! The Pool of Tears scene, which appears early in the book, shortly after Alice completed her fall down the rabbit-hole, refers back, it seems, to a previous trip on the river when the weather had not been as kind to them as on this occasion, and they had had to abandon ship and find shelter in a local cottage. According to the text, “…the pool was getting quite crowded with the birds and animals that had fallen into it: there was a Duck and a Dodo, a Lory and an Eaglet, and several other curious creatures.” Alice was the eponymous heroine, of course, but Lorina appears as the Lory – why else choose such an obscurely exotic bird as a species of Australasian parrot? – and Edith is the Eaglet. The Duck is obviously Robinson Duckworth, and the Dodo is Dodgson himself, a reference to his speech hesitation. One can imagine him introducing himself as Do-Do-Dodgson.

Image John Tenniel

I wondered if a little more detective work would reveal more about the story. My feeling is that if, like Lewis Carroll, you are making up a story as you go along, then the characters do not spring fully formed from nowhere but creep out of the compartments of your memory and the recesses of your brain. That way, they will be familiar to you and, hopefully, recognisable to your listeners. How, for instance, would the girls have known what a dodo was? I found the answer to this in the University Museum in Oxford, designed by John Ruskin, the Victorian artist and critic, who, at one time, was engaged to teach Alice drawing. The Museum appears to have changed little since it opened in 1860 and has a large collection of geological and natural history exhibits. The stuffed animals and reconstructed skeletons must have been (as they still are) very attractive to children.

Lewis Carroll and Alice visited the Museum on a number of occasions. This museum is one of the few in the country to house the remains of a dodo. The exhibit is rather pathetic, little more than a skull and a foot, but it is accompanied by a large picture of a dodo as it looked in life, painted by Jan Savery in the 17th century. What I find interesting are the other animals in the picture – a couple of parrots (was this the inspiration for including a lory in the story?), a frog and a lizard, all of whom appear in Alice’s Adventures.
In a display case nearby is a rather unusual skeleton of a flamingo – unusual in that it is mounted in a feeding position, rather than the more normal upright stance. I could just imagine Alice asking why it is standing so awkwardly and being told that it is playing croquet.

Image John Tenniel

The crocodile specimen is huge, if you look closely, you can see a definite grin on his face. “How cheerfully he seems to grin… With gently smiling jaws,” as Alice recited to herself as she tried to make sense of the hall of doors at the bottom of the rabbit-hole. The turtle, on the other hand, has a distinctly morose expression, which could easily have prompted Carroll to make his Mock Turtle so sad. “Mock Turtle” is the obvious answer to the childish question, “What is mock turtle soup made from?” but I wondered why, later in the story just before the final courtroom scene, Lewis Carroll had paired his Mock Turtle with a Gryphon, a fabulous beast with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle, until I visited the kitchen of Christ Church, the college where Carroll taught and Alice lived.

The kitchen is the oldest part of the college, built in 1529 by Cardinal Wolsey. Over the enormous fireplace at which one could spit-roast more than seventy chickens at once) were two turtle shells, flanking Wolsey’s coat of arms. And Cardinal Wolsey’s coat of arms is supported by two gryphons rampant.

Image John Tenniel

Charles Dodgson was a mathematician who taught mathematics and logic at Christ Church, and those with an inclination towards mathematics seem to find plenty to entertain them in the Alice stories. Falling down the rabbit hole, Alice tries to remember the things she used to know: “Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen and four times seven is–oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at this rate!” An endless source of amusement is also Lewis Carroll’s preoccupation with the number 42. The King accuses Alice of breaking Rule Forty-two, “the oldest rule in the book”: all persons more than a mile high to leave the court.

In the Hunting of the Snark, the Baker comes aboard the ship with forty-two carefully packed boxes. I once asked a fellow member about the numbers of the card gardeners painting the roses red. “I realise that 2, 5 and 7 are prime numbers”, I said, “But so is three. Why didn’t Carroll use three?” “Add together the numbers on the cards”, he said, “And multiply them by three.”

Alice in Wonderland isn’t just Carroll’s words or simply a children’s story, it’s a collaboration across generations of artists and has created an eternity of enthusiasts. It’s a layered work of art, a product of real relationships and a playground for artists, readers, and collectors.

Find out more about Lewis Carroll here
Lewis Carroll Society

Explore the original illustrations by John Tenniel here
The British Library

Learn more about Alice Liddell, the real Alice, here
Victoria & Albert Musuem

Discover different illustrated editions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland here
Victoria & Albert Museum

If you enjoyed reading The Real Alice and Remarkable Secrets of Wonderland World, then why not read The Passing on of Knowledge is Powerful and Beautiful, here.

.Cent Magazine London, Luxury Mindset