Alice in Oxford

December 20, 2021 a good book a-roving the eye of the beholder

This is the second of two posts recounting my encounters with
Alice in Wonderland during a ten-day visit to the UK in October 2021.
(A link to the first post may be found at the bottom of this page.)

View of Tom Tower at Christ Church, seen from the top of the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin

Locks and keys

In October 2021, after several days (and two afternoon teas!) in London, I caught the train out to Oxford. I had heard much of “that sweet city with her dreaming spires” (in Matthew Arnold’s famous phrase), and I wanted to walk its streets, get a feel for the famous university, peep into college quadrangles, take in an evensong service, see the punts on the Isis (the local name for the Thames), and hear Great Tom in Christ Church tower sound the hours. I’d had no thought of Alice when making my plans, but the V&A exhibit reminded me that the College of Christ Church had been Charles Dodgson’s home for much of his adult life. And Alice Liddell, who inspired the eponymous books, was the young daughter of one of its deans. So it should perhaps have been no surprise to find that their shades still haunt this town.

My AirBnB was perfectly situated just down the street from Christ Church, so I passed the college at least twice a day going to and from the town center. Christ Church is one of the oldest, largest, and most prestigious of the forty-five colleges that make up Oxford University, with extensive grounds beyond its expansive quadrangle.

Christ Church Quadrangle

The oldest colleges are set cheek-by-jowl in the busy center of town, each with its own gate and quadrangle. During the height of the pandemic, many shut their doors to visitors. More recently, some have begun again to allow limited access — usually for a fee.

Pondering the many locked doors I encountered in Oxford, I couldn’t help thinking of Alice at the bottom of the rabbit hole, wandering a long hallway with many doors, all of which were locked. When she finally discovers a tiny key for a tiny door, she sees through it “the loveliest garden you ever saw.” But alas, Alice is too big to enter! I wondered if Dodgson might have been inspired by Oxford’s many locked doors, literal and figurative, to include this detail in his story. But perhaps not: Dodgson was an insider, after all, and it is usually outsiders who are most aware of these sorts of barriers.

Disinclined to pay a fee in order to experience the mystique of the university, I sought other means of access. I peeked through the gates into the gardens of several colleges, took in an organ recital at Exeter College so I could see its exquisite chapel, and attended evensong at Christ Church Cathedral so I could walk across its elegant quadrangle. But these contrivances only heightened for me the insider-outsider dynamic that infuses Oxford city and university.

LEFT: A peek into the quadrangle of Lincoln College. RIGHT: The Radcliffe Camera

I was especially struck when taking photos of the Radcliffe Camera, now part of the Bodleian Library. If you’re not affiliated with the university, you can’t go into this building — unless you’re taking a library tour, which must be booked weeks, if not months, in advance (and which, of course, I hadn’t done). The Camera is ringed by a lawn and an iron fence, to which students lock their bicycles, and a sign warns that “READERS ONLY” are allowed to enter. The privileged few lounge around the building, chatting or reading, while the rest of us are left, figuratively speaking, with our noses pressed against the glass.

What time is it in Oxford?

Tom Tower by night (Christ Church Quadrangle) — after evensong

One of Oxford’s peculiarities is that the university clocks are set five minutes behind standard time. In the 19th century, it became necessary to establish legal time zones in order to coordinate expanding lines of transportation and telecommunication across the country and the world. Before this, communities kept their own times, based on the local solar day; every degree of longitude corresponded to four minutes’ difference in time.

In 1840, the Great Western Railway began using Greenwich Mean Time as its standard. Gradually, local communities began to follow suit, and by 1855, 98% of public clocks were set to GMT. During this period of confusion, some British clocks were even made with two minute hands, one for GMT and one for local time! Charles Dodgson is said to have been inspired by this confusion of time to give his White Rabbit a watch and a perennial fear of being late — and to include a discussion of Time in the Mad Tea-Party scene:

“[I]f you only kept on good terms with [Time], he’d do almost anything you liked with the clock. For instance, suppose it were nine o’clock in the morning, just time to begin lessons: you’d only have to whisper a hint to Time, and round goes the clock in a twinkling! Half-past one, time for dinner!”

It was not until 1880 that GMT was established as standard time throughout Britain. However, the Oxford University dons chose to keep to their local time — Oxford Mean Time, five minutes behind GMT. So even today classes and concerts and other public events begin five minutes after the standard hour, and Great Tom tolls its nightly curfew at 9:05 p.m.

In the covered market

One of my first stops as I wandered about Oxford was the historic covered market, located on the High Street, where one can find restaurants and cafés, bakeries, shops selling fresh produce, clothing, gifts — and large paper lanterns in the form of characters from Alice in Wonderland. These whimsical sculptures were commissioned by the Oxford City Council in 2018 and are the work of artist Eilidh Bryan, who specializes in large-scale puppets and lanterns. They’re charming and a wonderful homage to Lewis Carroll and his literary creations.

Walking with Amal and Alice

The next day was my Oxford bus adventure, which you can read about in my post about traveling in a pandemic (link below). I got off the bus across from the Oxford Botanic Garden and Arboretum, thinking I might visit. But it was drizzling and the day’s special event was sold out, so I peeped through the entrance gate and then continued on my way. What was the special event? All I knew was that it was called “Little Amal Meets Alice.” But since it was sold out, I didn’t try to learn more.

Later on, however, I came out of the organ recital in Exeter College Chapel, to find hundreds of people gathered along Broad Street and clearly anticipating… something. When I asked, I was told there was a parade and that it would be there soon, so I decided to stick around and see what all the fuss was about. And in a few minutes Alice — an 12-foot-tall puppet Alice — came walking down the street!

Alice was accompanied by giant flowers — fashioned after those in Looking Glass’s Garden of Living Flowers — and followed by another enormous puppet figure: Little Amal, the heroine of this event.

The dream-child moving through a land 
Of wonders wild and new,
In friendly chat with bird or beast…
(from the epigraph to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland)

Clearly, I was not the only one to be entranced by the procession.

What was it all about? “Little Amal Meets Alice” was the Oxford segment of The Walk, a traveling arts festival designed to draw attention to the plight of displaced children. At the center of The Walk was Amal, a 3.5-meter-tall puppet of a young refugee girl, created by South Africa-based Handspring Puppets (of Warhorse fame). Amal’s 8000-kilometer journey began at the Turkish-Syrian border in July and ended in the UK in November, with more than one hundred stops and special events along the way.

As 2021 was the sesquicentennial of the publication of Through the Looking-Glass, the organizers of the Oxford segment of The Walk decided to bring Amal together with their own Alice. The Story Museum commissioned a new story on this theme from children’s book author and illustrator Nadine Kaadan.

Her story formed the framework of the performance, which began in the Botanic Garden and continued through the streets of Oxford. So all of those who, like me, missed the dramatics at the Garden had the chance to see and walk through the town with Amal and Alice. It was a treat, and I’m grateful that I happened upon it.

Dodgson and the dodo

After the parade, I made my way to my next stop: The Oxford University Museum of Natural History. The building has recently undergone a substantial renovation, and it’s a beautiful airy space which retains much of the feel of a nineteenth-century institution, with glass cases displaying taxidermied specimens, along with more modern explanatory panels.
The birds caught my eye, of course. I spotted a shoebill and a secretary bird, as well as a reconstructed dodo. I was especially intrigued by the dodo, because here was another connection to Dodgson and Alice.
A dodo in some form was first exhibited in Oxford in 1860, and it apparently was a favorite of Dodgson and Alice Liddell. Dodgson had a pronounced stammer, and it is said — perhaps apocryphally — that he referred to himself as “Dodo,” because of his difficulty in pronouncing his own name.
And of course, the Oxford dodo inspired Dodgson to include a dodo in Alice in Wonderland (1865). Carroll’s dodo is a rather grave and impressive character and is believed to represent Dodgson himself.

In this postcard (clockwise from upper left) you can see:

  • a reconstructed dodo skeleton from the “Curiouser and Curiouser” exhibit at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London
  • a dodo as depicted in Disney’s animated version of Alice in Wonderland (also from the V&A show)
  • Sir John Tenniel’s illustration of the Dodo presenting Alice with her own thimble as a prize in the caucus race
  • a reconstructed dodo by British taxidermist Derek Frampton (Oxford University Museum of Natural History)
  • George Edwards’ 1758 painting of a dodo
  • Jan Savery’s 1651 depiction of a dodo.

Digression: The Oxford dodo

The Oxford dodo consists only of a few remaining bits and pieces of the original specimen. Even so, these fragments — the head and one foot — are the only existing dodo specimen that includes soft tissue and are therefore one of the prizes of the museum’s collection. (The title of the Natural History Museum’s blog, “More Than A Dodo,” emphasizes the iconic importance of this particular artifact.) Over the decades, many casts have been made and dispersed to museums around the world, and scholars have studied this rare bird.
Coat of arms of Mauritius.svg - Wikimedia Commons
Coat of arms of Mauritius, featuring a dodo on the left

Dodos were endemic to Mauritius and its surrounding islands. They were first discovered by Dutch sailors, who landed there in 1598. The dodos were flightless and unafraid, having never encountered the like of these visitors. Over the following century, they were hunted by humans and by the animals they brought with them, their young and their eggs eaten. The last confirmed dodo sighting in the wild was in 1662; by 1700, there were no more dodos. And thus the dodo became an early symbol of human-induced extinction. (And of stupidity, though recent research suggests that this is a misconception.)

Scott Billings, in the Natural History Museum’s blog, informs us that “The Oxford Dodo specimen, as it has come to be known, originally came to the University of Oxford as part of the Tradescant Collection of specimens and artefacts compiled by father and son John Tradescant in London in the 17th century. It was thought to have been the remains of a bird recorded as being kept alive in a 17th-century London townhouse, but [a recent discovery has] cast doubt on this idea.”
As part of a effort to learn more about the structure of the Oxford dodo’s skull, researchers subjected it to high-intensity CAT scans and revealed, to everyone’s astonishment, that the back of the bird’s head had been peppered with lead shot. A mystery! For if the living bird had indeed been displayed in London, who would have shot it? And if it were shot on Mauritius, how, given the technology of the time, had it been preserved for the voyage to England? I’ll spare you the ins and outs of the speculation that has followed this discovery, but if you’re interested in knowing more, you’ll find links below.

Alice across the pond

Leaving Oxford with regret, I made my way back to the States, stopping to visit friends in Philadelphia. Even there, Alice pursued me! When one morning my friend Nan and I decided to visit the Mütter Museum at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, we discovered there a small display case which examined Alice In Wonderland from a medical perspective.
This exhibit, entitled “The Medical Oddities of Alice: Potions, Poisons, & Pathology,” had two areas of focus. One centered around the connections between the character of the Mad Hatter and poisoning from the mercury that was commonly used in the making of felt hats and even in certain medicines of the time. The exhibit also explored the possibility that certain fantastical elements of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland were inspired by Dodgson’s own ill health. Specifically, the author suffered from migraines, which he treated with laudanum, an opium derivative, and documented in his journals.
Many migraine sufferers experience sensations called an “aura” before the onset of the actual migraine. Auras can take the form of visual hallucinations that parallel Alice’s physical changes throughout the story. The particular cluster of hallucinations that has come to be known as “Alice in Wonderland Syndrome” includes:
  • micropsia, in which objects appear to be smaller than they actually are
  • macropsia, in which objects appear to be larger than they actually are
  • pelopsia, in which objects appear to be closer than they actually are
  • telopsia, in which objects appear to be farther away than they actually are, and
  • metamorphopsia, in which objects appear to be a different shape than they actually are.

The exhibit concludes:

To what degree we can, or should, view Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a “pathological product” is debatable. All humans derive sensory information both internally and from the world around us. Both normal and abnormal sensory experiences have affected our creativity since our very beginning… In our preoccupation with assigning names, categorizing, and pathologizing human achievement, where do we leave room for individual inspiration, creativity, and genius? While Carroll was a migraineur, he was also a gifted writer whose works have charmed and enthralled adults and children for 150 years. And if his hallucinations helped create his Wonderland then we are all richer from his experiences. In the end, pathology can inspire us, but it does not define us. 

Bravo to the Mütter Museum for this humane and broad-minded point of view!

Here’s a toast to rabbit holes—
and never knowing where they might take you!

Connections
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Alice in London

Flower power!