Upon looking at the photoshoot in close from the previous post, I've found out that the character 'Alice' was actually inspired by a real person. A girl which Lewis Carroll enjoyed photographing. Her name is Alice Liddell, and there are many evidence that she inspired Lewis heavily into creating the character, Alice.Alice and Charles Dodgson
On 25th February 1856, Henry Liddell, the new Dean, moved into the Deanery at Christ Church. At this time Dodgson was sub-librarian and the window of his room overlooked the Deanery garden, where Alice and her sisters played. Dodgson came in contact with the Liddell’s via the Dean’s niece, Fredrika Liddell, whom he had sketched. He met the Liddell family in February 1856 during a train trip. Two months later, on 25 April, he met Alice during a photo session with his friend Reginals Southey, on which occasion he was photographing Christ Church Cathedral. He was able to meet her and her sisters properly on 3 June when he photographed them.
From then on, Alice, Lorina and Edith visited Dodgson regularly, and Dodgson formed a strong friendship with them, but his relation with Mrs. Liddell and the Dean was not very heartily.
By the latter part of 1856 Mrs. Liddell had asked Dodgson not to take anymore photographs, and he understood that he was intruding too much. But when the Liddell’s went on a vacation and left the children in the care of their governess, Miss Prickett (it was rumoured that Dodgson had an affair with her, but he wrote in his diary that he thought it ‘so groundless a rumour’), she let Dodgson visit the children again, and this continued when their parents returned.
During the period of publishing ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’, Dodgson’s relationship with Alice began to diminish; her mother became concerned about their friendship and limited his access to them. From July until December 1863 he did not see them at all, and after that he saw them rarely.
Lewis also dedicated a poem in his novel to Alice Liddell, where the first letter of each line resembles her full name:
A boat beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July--
Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear--
Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die.
Autumn frosts have slain July.
Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.
Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.
In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:
Ever drifting down the stream--
Lingering in the golden gleam--
Life, what is it but a dream?
