HUNTING THE SNARK

Chapter 2: The Garden Party

The Liddell family became famously social at college. Henry had a big brain and a gregarious nature, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I was jealous of both. Their home, for with so many children they rightfully eschewed the official residence of the Dean and took up residence at a manor house owned by a college benefactor and rented at a reasonable price to the Liddell clan, was a flat fronted mansion boasting a long drive and an even larger garden. It was here, on the soft green grass that at least a dozen grounds men kept manicured, but Henry would host the social events of the summer of 1857.

These garden parties were stuffed with Oxford's leading academics. As word spread of Liddell's hospitality, big thinkers from London joined to take refuge in the countryside from the city's awful heat, poor sanitation, and rampant disease.

Not one for socialising, myself, I often made the reverse journey, to spend my weekends in the comforting darkness of Ah Sing's den. But Henry had noticed my absence from the social circuit and made it his mission to, and I quote, "liven up my life with marriage and family."

I had no intention of pursuing either and was content to live out my days at college, surrounded by the civility of Oxford, and making the occasional journey to London to get my fix.

But it was not to be.

In the third weekend of June, I finally relented and agreed to remain in Oxford to attend Henry's Saturday afternoon fete. The only reason I agreed to attend this event was on the promise that the journalist Charles Dickens was attending and due to give a reading of his new story.

During this sweltering afternoon, during which I took to quenching my thirst with wine instead of water, a mistake I shall never forgive myself for, I found myself in a circle of mathematicians debating the very nature of Fermat's final theorem when I spotted young Alice wandering through the garden unaccompanied and squeezing under the garden fence as she was wont to do when planning an adventure or chasing squirrels.

On this day, with my mind distracted, and my body slowed by alcohol, she was chasing after a white rabbit.

Alice chasing animals was not ordinarily something to note. But this bunny was so white, so clean, that it belonged not in nature, but in a cage. If by chance it were wild rabbit, I'd give it 'til nightfall to become fox's food; it's white coat soon to be soaked in its own lifeblood as a fox rips its tendrils apart.

No, this was a domestic pet, which meant that it belonged to somebody. I wondered who would bring a white rabbit to a garden party, and stepped towards Alice to ensure she had intention to return it to its rightful owner (and not save it as her own) when Henry stopped me.

"There you are, Charles," he bellowed, putting his arm around me. I enjoyed the warmth of his affection, something my father never offered, but not the odour of his body.

"Q.E.D." I replied.

Henry laughed and turned me around to present me to a young lady.

"Let me introduce you to Margaret Appleby," he said.

Now I understood why he was so insistent that I attend this particular event. Henry was keen to marry me off, often noting that I was so much better with children than he that I ought to get on and start multiplying to build the Dodgson clan.

I'd often informed him that multiplication required two willing integers, but on this festive day, encouraged by drink, he would not take 'no, thank you,' as an acceptable answer.

He pushed me towards the plain looking young woman, whom I guessed by her pale colour and twitchy temperament was a sub aristocrat. She wasn't wholly unattractive, but held no appeal to me.