ALICE IS DEAD

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 19960, 19 November 1934, Page 5

ALICE IS DEAD

ORIGINAL OF LEWIS CARROLL S FAMOUS STORY MRS REGINALD HARGREAVES PASSES ON United Press Association— B.v Electric Telegraph—Copyright (Received November 17, 10.30 a.m.) LONDON, November 16. The death is announced of Mrs Reginald Hargreaves, the original of Alice in Wonderland. Mrs Hargreaves died peacefully in her sleep in the old house overlooking General Wolfe’s Statue in Westemham Green, happily characteristic of Alice’s old world personality. Although over eighty years of age when she visited the United States in 1932 for Lewis Carroll’s centenary, she enjoyed the trip immensely, and was greeted everywhere as a world-famous figure. Mrs Hargreaves recently prepared a special copy of “Alice in Wonderland,” which she inscribed "from the original Alice,” and presented it to Princess Elizabeth. Alice Pleasance Liddell, the original of Alice in Lewis Carroll’s famous books “Alice in Wonderland” and “Alice Through the Looking Glass,” was born in 1852 at Oxford. Carroll, whose real name was Charles L. Dodgson, was a tutor at “the House.” He was very fond of children and the three Liddell girls were great friends of his. It was on July 4. 1862, in the Long Vacation, that an expedition consisting of Lewis Carroll, Canon Duckworth, a Christ Church colleague, and the three little sisters set out on a river trip. As he and Duckworth rowed. he began to tell his immortal “Wonderland” story, addressing himself particularly to Alice, the second of the sisters, a beautiful child. At night on her suggestion he wrote down the tale and three years later it was published in an extended form with Tenniel’s delightful illustrations. Alice Liddell later became Mrs Hargreaves. When America to attend the Lewis Carroll centenary celebrations at Columbia University. On her return in June. 1932, she opened a Carroll centenary exhibition in London. A dainty little figure in brown, she sat with one hand resting on a stout stick. Peter Davies, the publisher, the original of Peter Pan in Barrie’s play, sat on her left.