The Curious Door
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
d de e Knight Letter d de e The Lewis Carroll Society of North America Winter 2011 Volume II Issue 17 Number 87 d de e Contents d de e The Rectory Umbrella 1 Of Books and Things g g Occupy Wonderland! 1 Simon Says 44 clare imholtz mark burstein A Perfect and Absolute Mystery 5 The Love-Ins 44 doug howick mark burstein Through a Carrollian Lens: Emily Aguilo-Perez 14 Beware of Greeks Bearing Snarks 44 doug howick The Curious Door: Charles Dodgson & the Iffley Yew 18alison gopnik & alvy ray smith Snarked! 0, 1, and 2 45 andrew ogus The Hunting of Alice in Seven Fits 25 adriana peliano AAIW in NYC Wonderland: the Text Generation 45 cindy watter mischmasch The Logic Pamphlets of Lewis Carroll 46 g sen wong Leaves from the Deanery Garden— Serendipity—Ravings 34 Forgotten the English? Alice aux pays des mervielles 51 andrew ogus On the Discovery of an English “Jabberwocky” 36 alan levinovitz From Our Far-flung Correspondents All Must Have Prizes 38 g joel birnbaum Art & Illustration—Articles & Academia Carrollian Notes Books—Cyberspace—Events, Exhibits, & Places g Movies & Television—Music—Performing Arts—Things 53 Beaver Problems: Snark Arithmetic & Truculent Allusion 40 august a. imholtz, jr. LITTLE ALICE in America 41 clare imholtz Lewis Carroll: Man of Science 43 fran abeles d e The Curious Door: Charles Dodgson m the Iffley Yew alison gopnik & alvy ray smith. d e lice’s Adventures in Wonderland lives because The door in the tree is also the subject of a full- it speaks to the imagination of children ev- page illustration by Dodgson—one that was not re- Aerywhere. But it is so potent partly because produced by Tenniel in the later book (Fig. 1). it was originally composed for and about one par- We suggest that this curious tree was based on a ticular child. Charles Dodgson turned the everyday, real tree, the Iffley Yew, a very old hollow tree with a specific, banal events of Alice Liddell’s life into magic four-foot opening in one side—a child-sized doorway, and dreams—or rather, he revealed the magical and if not a door—growing in the churchyard in the village dreamlike character of each child’s experience of of Iffley, two miles down the Thames from Oxford. the everyday, specific, and banal. Dinah, the treacle We will establish the following: well, and the Sheep’s shop are enchanted versions of 1. The Iffley Yew was well known in the early specific, real cats and wells and shops, and the wet, nineteenth century, and Dodgson would almost bedraggled party of animals in the pool of tears was certainly have read about it as a picturesque and originally a wet, bedraggled party of spinster sisters historically significant local landmark. and children caught in an English summer rainstorm. 2. Dodgson knew Iffley well, particularly the These transformations of the everyday into the ex- Church, and visited it often, particularly be- traordinary help make Wonderland so compelling. tween 1862 and 1864 when he was writing Alice’s We suggest another such link between the real Adventures under Ground. He had several cleri- life of Charles Dodgson and the Liddell sisters and cal friends who lived there. He planned to take what looks like a particularly surreal and unlikely photographs there. detail in the book—the door in the tree. The door 3. Dodgson went to Iffley with Alice Liddell and appears after Alice leaves the Mad Tea Party, and it her sisters on at least two occasions, and possibly leads her back to the hall: more. 4. There is a photograph of the Iffley Yew by the “At any rate I’ll never go there again!” said Oxford photographer Henry Taunt that we Alice as she picked her way through the wood. can date to between May 18, 1862, and March “It’s the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all 8, 1866, a period roughly contemporaneous my life!” Just as she said this, she noticed that with the composition of Alice’s Adventures under one of the trees had a door leading right into Ground. The photograph shows the opening it. “That’s very curious!” she thought. “But ev- in the tree clearly, and the tree bears a striking erything’s curious today. I think I may as well resemblance to Dodgson’s illustration. go in at once.” And in she went. The passage is very similar in Alice’s Adventures The Iffley Yew under Ground, Dodgson’s original version of the story, Iffley Church was, and is, famous as one of the most which included more specific references to actual beautiful and best preserved Romanesque churches events. However, it takes place just after Alice encoun- in England. It dates from the 1170s, with very few ters the pigeon, and it has one significant difference: alterations since. It is particularly well known for its the “door” is a “doorway.” fantastical, grotesque, and very Carrollian carvings of real and mythical animals, including gryphons.1 In “However, I’ve got to my right size again: the churchyard there is an exceptionally large and the next thing is, to get into that beautiful old yew tree, currently some 25 feet in girth. The tree garden—how is that to be done, I wonder?” is hollow. Currently, the cavity has been partially filled Just as she said this, she noticed that one of with concrete, stones, and earth, but the east side still the trees had a doorway leading right into it. has an opening about three feet high and a foot off “That’s very curious!” she thought, “but every- the ground. From the outside, the opening is now thing’s curious today: I may as well go in.” And completely hidden by the branches that reach to the in she went. ground (Fig. 2). 17 Figure 2 Figure 1. Dodgson’s illustration for Alice’s Figure 3. Illustration from Skelton’s Antiquities of Oxfordshire, 1823. Adventures under Ground. The tree was rather different in the nineteenth the highest part. The height of the tree is 22 century, however. Descriptions and pictures of the ft.; and there are about 20 principal branches, tree appear in many sources. It was described care- all of which, except two, are in a very vigor- fully in John Loudon’s standard Trees and Shrubs of ous and flourishing state. The diameter of the Great Britain in 1838: head is 25 ft. each way.2 The Iffley Yew stands in Iffley churchyard, In The Gentleman’s Magazine of 1804 there is a near Oxford, nearly opposite the south-east description of two bored travelers who “alternately corner of the church, and between that and thrust themselves into the tree,” a description which an ancient cross. This tree is supposed to be fits the dimensions described in Loudon.3 The tree coeval with the church, which, it is believed, was also described and illustrated in Oxford guide- was built previously to the Norman conquest. books such as The Oxford University and City Guide of The dimensions of the tree, kindly taken for 1818,4 Antiquities of Oxfordshire of 1823 (Fig. 3),5 and us in September, 1836, by Mr. Baxter, were as Memorials of Oxford of 1837,6 among others. Engrav- follows:—Girt of the trunk, at 2 ft. from the ings of it appeared in The Illustrated London News of ground, 20 ft., and at 4 ft. from the ground, 18457 and The Penny Illustrated News of 1850.8 The de- where the branches begin, 17 ft. The trunk is scriptions emphasize both the great age of the tree now little more than a shell, and there is an and its picturesque appearance. It also appeared at opening on the east side of the tree which is length in the self-consciously “artistic” travel writ- 4 ft. high, and about 4 ft. in width; the cavity ings of The Wanderings of a Pen and Pencil by Francis P. within is 7 ft. long, 4 ft. wide, and 4 ft. high in Palmer and Alfred Crowquill in 1846, which include 18 Figure 4. Illustration from The Art-Journal of June 1, 1857. appealingly Victorian descriptions of both the Iffley cate of photography. We know that Dodgson read it, cottages (“dainty bowers of delight” where “the syl- since some of his first photographs in 1856 were pho- labubs in the open air were charming”) and the Yew tographs of pages from the Journal.11 itself: “The roots of this surprising vegetable hero So the Yew, like the Church, was well known as a were probably strong in earth when Richard the Lion- picturesque, historically significant, and romantically hearted was beating down the Paynim chivalry in the (if not always entirely accurately) depicted ancient Holy Land.”9 relic in Dodgson’s time. Most significantly of all, for our purposes, the tree was both described and illustrated, with the opening dodgson in iffley prominently depicted, in The Art-Journal of June 1, Dodgson’s diaries record two visits to Iffley in 1857.12 1857 (Fig. 4): The diaries from April 1858 to April 1862 are missing. Eleven further visits are recorded in the period be- The church-yard contains an aged yew tree— tween May 1862, when the diaries recommence, and so aged that no stretch of fancy is required to November 1864, when Dodgson presented the fin- believe it was planted when the first stone of ished Alice’s Adventures under Ground to Alice Liddell.13 the sacred structure was laid.* Dodgson had several friends and acquaintances who lived in Iffley between 1857 and 1864.