Alice Liddell




	'The Real Alice' by Dodgeson, 1859.

Her name was Alice Pleasance Liddell... On the 25th of April in 1856, a young Mr. Dodgsen went with a borrowed camera to photograph Christ Church Cathedral. He had no luck with his pictures but he did find in the garden the three daughters of the Dean. This was his first meeting with Alice, then one week away from her fourth birthday.
This meeting, and the purchase of his own camera equipment was the start to a unique friendship between Dodgsen and the Liddell children, and Alice in particular, who was about to inspire him to become, not
only a photographer and companion but an author of rare genius as well.

Photography was only one aspect of the friendship with the Liddell children, Dodgsen escorted them to the University Museum (with its display cases of specimens from around the world, including a preserved Dodo), The Botanical Gardens,The Magdalen College Deer Park or they would walk through the town to Folly Bridge and rent a boat to row up and down the River Isis, as that stretch of the Thames was called, as it flowed through Oxford.




	The Liddell Sisters.

In later years Alice recalled that "when we went on the river... with Mr. Dodgsen... he always bought out with him a large basket full of cakes, and a kettle... On rarer occasions we went out for the whole day with him, and then we took a larger basket with luncheon... cold chicken and salad and all sorts of good things. One of our favourite whole-day excursions was to row down to Nuneham and picnic in the woods there".


	It was on a Tuesday in June 1862 that Dodgsen organised such a party to picnic at Nuneham. Along with his sisters Fanny and Elizabeth and their Aunt Lucy, who were visiting at the time, the group included three of the Liddell sisters and Dodgsen's friend Robinson Duckworth. After spending the day walking in the park the group was caught in a sudden rainstorm. The adventure ended with evening tea in Dodgsen's rooms. This damp outing would long have been forgotten but for its later transformation in Alice in Wonderland into a wetting for another Alice in a pool of her own tears. In the tale the party becomes a congregation of birds: Lorina became the Lory, Edith the Eaglet, Duckworth became the Duck and Dodgsen, turned himself into the Dodo, whose name sounded like Do-do-dodgsen's when he stammered.




		Nuneham Bridge in the mid-1800s.




			Left: Here�s a detail of Lewis Carroll�s first picture of Alice. Click on the picture to see the entire photo. For more about Alice, click on the highlighted text.