Origin of the species- 'The Mad Hatter'

Dearest Em,

Before we begin on Matters Hatter, we need to explode a few myths;

1. The Mad Hatter was simply The Hatter, 'twas the March Hare who was mad.

2. The Mad bit was added throughout the strands of time. Hatters were supposed to have poisoned their brains with the lead that they worked with on their hat 'lasts'.

3. Our Hatter was called this akin to Ladies getting a bad name and tarnished as 'being no better than a shop girl'.

There has been a theory that the Hatter was based upon an Oxford furniture dealer known as The Mad Hatter who exhibited his 'Registered Alarum Bedstead' which Dodgson would have seen at 'The Great Exhibition', at Crystal Palace in 1851, and would knowing Dodgson's liking for inventions, have caught his attention.

Dodgson also, kept a train of thought going, often for years. So he may well have been influenced by this fellow.

However- my money is on....

Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol Oxford.

Photographed here at Freshwater Bay 

by Julia Margaret Cameron 1864.

I might have mentioned him to you before Emily. He's the chap who stayed here at GiGi's house, every Christmas and Easter holiday, while he worked away at translating 'Plato' and visiting the Tennysons. He taught Hallam and Lionel chess.

Mr Jowett also came in for some disdain from our Dodgson, in 1865 he published an 'anonymous' squib- as Jowett had just received a massive stipend. This was entitled 'The New Method of Evaluation as applied to II.' It carried a motto " Little Jack Horner sat in a corner eating his Christmas pie. "

Benjamin Jowett was an extraordinary person. Shy, pedagogal, driven and a reformer. His background was also extraordinary. Away from his family and living alone in lodgings at eleven years old, while he attended St Pauls and often in the holidays too, he set himself apart from a close clan. There were two scholarly Jowetts, the first- Joseph, was co-incidentally Regus Professor of Civil Law at Cambridge from 1782-1813. 

I say co-incidentally for two reasons. Firstly because he was also remarkable in the family history for a shared set of genes that made up a peculiar physicality in the two Jowetts. He had an 'exquisite falsetto voice' , was given to masculine friendships, looked 'cherubic' with a puny physique running to plumpness, and a calmness in the face of opposition.

The second was that it was only these two Jowetts who did not descend into financial ruin, and followed a scholastic career.

When the Jowett seniors businesses declined, it was expected during this time, that 'one would turn to trade'. Trade generally here meant as a Furrier, or a 'Hatter'.

So, our mocking Dodgson to my mind, used Benjamin as his 'Hatter', giving us a clue as to his singing in 'Alice in Wonderland' ( the Jowetts all sang, relentlessly it seems. )

But also Emily, I must bring in here my growing theory that the Dodgsons knew all this, they knew what Lewis Carroll was about in his writings. ( Maybe, just maybe, that's why certain pages of his diary are still missing? ) Anyhow, his nephew and Biographer Stuart Dodgson Collingwood writes in his 'The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll' thus-

" In Mr Dodgson's mess were Philip Pusey, the late Rev. G.C. Woodhouse, and among others, one who still lives in "Alice in Wonderland" as the 'Hatter'. "

Anyways, our Hatter turns up in 'Through the Looking Glass' as two characters ( think Emily- Red and White Queen stuff ) 'Haigha' and 'Hatta' ( one to fetch and one to carry ) and further as a cameo in Chapter Five 'Wool and Water' where he is described as the King's Messenger, who is in prison, following his expected fate in 'Alice'.

Here is the unfortunate chap, locked up in his prison cell, lamenting:-

Dear Hatter, we wish you well, don't we Emily?

Until next time, your ever-loving Grand-mother GiGi xxx

Credits amongst others, this time:- 'Jowett' by Geoffrey Faber, 'Lewis Carroll Through the Looking Glass' by Angela Carpenter, as the main ones.