Monday 28 March 2011

My Granny's memoirs - Lewis Carroll

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) photo from Wikipedia

Alice and the Duchess by Tenniel from alice in wonderland.net
On a recent visit to Mum and Dad's, Mum reminded me of some memoirs that Granny had written, based on memories from 1904 - 1914. Now and again, I'll add a few into my blog posts as Granny had an interesting early life, far removed from how we all live today. I'm going to start with some shameless name dropping. In this extract, Granny is talking about her mother.


At one time in her early years, Mother lived with an aunt in Oxford where she had lessons in logic from Professor Dodgson, Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland. He asked her what was her favourite fruit and she replied, "Strawberries". "Then nothing is better than strawberries," said the Professor. Mother agreed. "And what do you like least?" "Liver", said Mother, after some thought. "But liver is better than nothing". "I suppose so", said Mother. "Well, if liver is better than nothing, and nothing is better than strawberries, then liver must be better than strawberries". All very confusing to a little girl.

It does sound like one of the conversations Alice would have with a character from Wonderland!

2 comments:

  1. That is fantastic! How lucky for 'Mother' to have such conversations with the master of curious.

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  2. Dear Chaelen
    Thank you for your comment. Unfortunately, I don't think Granny has recorded any other such interesting conversations with illustrious persons, but her memoirs are full of details and descriptions of her life. I'm lucky that my Mum persuaded her to write them down.

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