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Route 3: The long walk

 

For most readers this will be the end of the trail, but for a few energetic people there is still the brisk walk upon which Charles Dodgson took Mrs Shute, the wife of a Student at Christ Church in the 1880s:

 

“These were the pre-bicycle, pre-car days, and people walked more than they do now. I walked as diligently as any of Jane Austen’s heroines, and many were the delightful rambles LC took me. By Mesopotamia*, up Headington Hill to Joe Pullen’s tree**, down to Iffley, round the 4-mile grind***, over Folly Bridge, along the tow path and hack by Kennington; he talking all the way...”

 

Isa Bowman had described his outdoor wear at about this time: “In the coldest weather he would never wear an overcoat and he had a curious habit of always wearing, in all seasons of the year, a pair of grey and black cotton gloves.”

 

* Mesopotamia: Greek for ‘between the rivers’. In Oxford it starts from the entrance to the Parks by Linacre College, and crosses the Cherwell near the Rollers (where punts are pulled up an incline on ŕ series of metal rollers). From there you leave the Parks at King’s Mill Lodge Gate and go along King’s Mill Lane to Marston Road, and up to Headington Hill.

 

** Joe Pullen’s tree: Reverend Joseph Pullen (1631- 1714) vicar of St Peter-in-the-East where he is buried walked daily to the top of Headington Hill and stopped to admire the view. In about I680 he planted an elm there, which flourished but sadly was destroyed by fire in 1910. A tablet in the wall of Davenport House on Pullen’s Lane records the event.

 

*** 4-mile grind: “To take a grind” was University slang in 1860 for a walk or constitutional. The return walk from Folly Bridge to Iffley is about 4 miles.

 

 

It is said by some that this is the scene across Otmoor near the village of Beckley. Cycle or drive there and see if you agree.

 

Epilogue

 

Away, next morning, Maggie went

From Oxford town: but yet

The happy hours she there had spent

She could not soon forget.

 

The train is gone, it rumbles on:

The engine-whistle screams;

But Maggie deep in rosy sleep…

And softly in her dreams,

Whispers the Battle-cry of Freedom.

 

“Oxford, good-bye!”

She seems to sigh.

“You dear old City,

With gardens pretty,

And Lanes and flowers,

And college towers,

And Tom’s great bell...

Farewell – farewell…”

 

 

ISBN 1 874361 02 9

 

 

Bibliography

 

Batey, Mavis D.D., Alice’s Adventures in Oxford, Pitkin Pictorial, 1989.

 

Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, (a facsimile) Dover Publications, 1965 (and regularly reprinted).

 

Carroll, Lewis, The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll, Penguin Books, 1988.

 

Clarke, Anne, Lewis Carroll: A Biography, J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd, 1979.

 

Clarke, Anne, The Real Alice, Michael Joseph, 1981.

 

Cohen, Morton N. (editor), Lewis Carroll: Interviews and Recollections, Macmillan Press Ltd, 1989.



 

Gardner, Martin, The Annotated Alice, Penguin Books Ltd, 1970 (and reprinted regularly).

 


Date: 2016-03-03; view: 819


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