Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[BIAD]

@BIAD - Holy Rockin Alice I did not know that! The rock nor about Carroll...

(Just as a little add-on -if I may, to the 'Alice' post)


In the afternoon on the fourth of July in 1862, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) was with the Liddell sisters
enjoying some boating on the river Thames and entertaining the daughters of his Dean at Oxford University with his
newly-formed fantastic tale of regarding a girl called Alice.

The book 'Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland' would be published later in July of 1865 and Lewis would be so
unhappy with the reproduction that he recalled all the copies. It's believed only six are known to survive today.
It wouldn't be until November of the same year that the second edition would be published and by then, Carroll
had managed to cajole the story into a better reflection of how he strangely perceived reality.

A decade before the tranquil boat ride with the Liddell girls, Lewis Carroll's father was the Canon-in-residence at
Ripon Cathedral and spent three months of each year on the hallowed estate. The young man was there during
the Cathedral's restoration and one part of the renovations was enhancing the misericords, the wooden ledges
on which members of the clergy could rest their rumps while standing.

The unnamed craftsman decorated the cleric stalls with curious carvings of creatures such as pelicans, griffins,
dragons, monkeys and Blemya, which were headless, shrunken humanoids from Greek legend. One display
shows a griffin chasing a rabbit towards its burrow.


Carvings on the misericords.

Four years after the publication of 'Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland', Lewis' sister -Mary, married the Reverend
Charles Collingwood and lived in the Holy Trinity Rectory of the North-East village of Southwick. The Collingwoods
are said to have had a stuffed walrus at their home and just four miles north in Whitburn, Carroll is said to have
met a carpenter coming home from a Sunderland ship-building company.

"The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things:
Of shoes, and ships, and sealing-wax, Of cabbages, and kings,
And why the sea is boiling hot, And whether pigs have wings."

Although, some suggest Carroll's idea for the Walrus & The Carpenter poem could've came from his visits to Whitby
where his brother got married in the coastal village of Sleights.

As mentioned in an earlier post, the north-eastern hamlet of Whitburn seems to surface quite markedly in the Lewis
Carroll narratives. He did visit Baronet and prominent Freemason Sir Hedworth Williamson's -now-demolished manor
house in Whitburn village. It was here where the young Carroll played croquet and watched white rabbits that the once
Member of Parliament and  High Sheriff of Durham had introduced to his estate.


Whitburn Hall.

In 'Alice Through the Looking Glass', Carroll related his Jabberwocky poem and in it he denotes 'my beamish boy' as
the slayer of the weird beast. Leaving the Sockburn Worm connection to one side, 'Beamish' is also a village in County
Durham.
...................

Forgive my interruption of your fine thread.