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Alice Pleasance Liddell Hargreaves

By Daniel Smith, Dramaturg for Boojum! and Caffeine Theatre Associate Artistic Director

Much like the characters of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and Lewis Carroll, Alice Liddell is present in two incarnations in Boojum! Alice, as a child, questions Dodgson and Carroll about the meaning of “The Hunting of the Snark”.  The grown-up Mrs. Hargreaves joins in the Snark Hunt and shares her memories of Dodgson, and how they grew apart as she became an adult. 

Born May 4, 1852, the fourth of ten children, Alice Pleasance Liddell is best known for having asked Charles Lutwidge Dodgson to tell her a story.  This happened while Alice, Lorina, and Edith Liddell were in a rowboat with Dodgson and Reverend Robinson Duckworth on July 4, 1852.  Duckworth was rowing.  Alice asked Dodgson to write the story down, and he presented her with a manuscript entitled Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, which was later revised and published as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.  A sequel sent Alice through the Looking-Glass to play a chess game during which she crossed a brook to reach the eighth square and become a queen. 

Alice was also a frequent photographic subject for Dodgson.  The portrait of Alice as a beggar is perhaps the best-known photograph that Dodgson took. 

In 1880, Alice Liddell married the wealthy Reginald Hargreaves, a cricket player.  Two of their three sons were killed in WWI.  The third son, Caryl, was apparently not named after Lewis Carroll.  But Mrs. Hargreaves is said to have asked Lewis Carroll to be Caryl’s godfather and to have received no reply. 

After Reginald Hargreaves died in 1926, Mrs. Hargreaves sold her copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland at auction for over 15,000 pounds.  She died in 1934.  Her tombstone identifies her as “The ‘Alice’ in Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland.’”