There we were happily reading and scribbling and a-colouring in Em, and all of a sudden it seemed there had been an explosion!
What began in 'The Bookroom' hasn't stayed in 'The Bookroom' and GiGi's lovely evening sitting room sofa is surrounded by books. Grumpa calls it her 'obsession', and Dimbola's up-coming 'Alice' exhibition is just over a month away.
I think you'll enjoy it Emily, we've got some amazing books from the first UK edition, to a stunning Arthur Rackham, and even a recording from the 1960's with Arthur Askey for a radio show. Auntie Lottie is making a 'Red and White Queen Mannequin' and a lovely lady from Southsea is loaning her private museum display! Alice through the ages, all the different illustrators from Tenniel to date.
However my pretty, it means Granny has got to get a move on, and your little book goes to print at the end of the week- eek!
So, you've seen the cover, and were happy with that. Let's get on to the first chapter...
Freshwater Bay
In the summer of 1864, a socially aspiring young man of 32 took a railway journey followed by a boat trip to the Isle of Wight. He booked himself in to the smart 'Plumbly's Hotel' shown here in a Victorian chromolithograph of Freshwater Bay.
His stay was to be of three weeks duration, and it was the third time he had visited this charming and remote spot.
His first visit, was in May 1859, and appears to all intents and purposes to have been a contrivance to meet the areas most celebrated inhabitant, the Poet Laureate Tennyson.
This, 'I just happened to be in the vicinity and dropped by as is my inalienable right' followed a similar one to meet the Poet and family in Autumn 1857, when they were staying with friends in Coniston.
Armed with his own particular brand of calling card - his photographs, he used his skill as his entree to important houses to make the acquaintance of those who ordinarily ignored his existence. This visit had been planned following an earlier photographic session with Tennyson's young niece Agnes Weld, and therefore his reason for calling.
His day-job as a lowly Mathematician commanded a wage that was far too negligible to warrant status, or the chance of marriage in a social circle he desired to be included into.
He was a shy, stammering insomniac, with a clever twist of mind and a peculiar humour inherited from his very Reverand Father.
This fastidious and timid exterior covered a deep and busy interior. A meticulous recorder and diarist, whose busy head calmed in the presence of children, had an incorrigible habit of perceiving 'slights' and taking offense at behaviour and remarks of others, and had a very specific outlet for revenge- as we shall discover.
At this time, mostly, his revenge had been vented in the form of 'Squibs' ( political and social 'firecrackers' set to get tongues wagging ) and had been published anonymously until one day when he decided on a pen-name made up from the Latin version of his name.
Lewis Carroll.
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, as Lewis Carroll wrote the most well-known of all childrens books- 'Alice in Wonderland' published in 1865, inspired by a boat trip in 1862 with the young Liddell sisters of which Alice became the central muse.
Our story concerns a time, when Dodgson was putting one manuscript to bed, and had a free-floating idea for a sequel.
Here at Freshwater Bay, his focus began to shift, from one childrens story-book to another- a flip of the mind into the Looking Glass, and an altogether more sophisticated squib...
Let us get introduced to a new cast of characters to join the Alice crew.
Off to the Bookroom now Em, I'll send you more this week as it gets writ!
Your ever-loving Grand-mother GiGi, xxx
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