And a real entry, too
She looked at the Queen, who seemed to have suddenly wrapped herself up in wool. Alice rubbed her eyes, and looked again. She couldn't make out what had happened at all. Was she in a shop? And was that really - was it really a sheep that was sitting on the other side of the counter? Rub as she would, she could make nothing more of it: she was in a little dark shop, leaning with her elbows on the counter, and opposite to her was an old Sheep, sitting in an arm-chair knitting, and every now and then leaving off to look at her through a great pair of spectacles.
I am happy to hear that more and more people have been paying visits to Wonderland* lately, whether in English or Swedish or any other language.
I forgot to reply to O.'s remark that En Tokig Tebjudning (which translates for example as Een getikte Theevisite sounds rather like an "onomatopaea" (spelled onomatopoeia in British, and, I think, can also be found as onomatopeia, onomatopea and onomatopee in Dutch): do you mean the sounds the Mad Hatter and the March Hare make would sound rather like this title?
I myself, together with a couple of friends that 'happened to be' 'in this same here country', have been to Wonderland, two weeks ago now. It took us some more trouble than falling through a rabbit-hole (rather, you could compare it with the effort it takes to enter "the loviest garden you ever saw"). But we made it. To Oxford I mean (hèhè: can't that girl just be clear for one sec?). And one place the two gentlemen were so kind as to unleash me in (and I must say, I controlled myself pretty well), was the shop. The Shop. THE mythical shop that turns into a little boat on a river (the Thames) and back into a shop in Looking-glass chapter V: "Wool and Water". THE famous shop were Alice Liddell would go in mid-nineteenth-century Oxford to buy her comfits (see chapter III of the first part). The Shop you can see in Tenniel's illustrations, though in mirror-image. The Shop in the building that's a half-millennium old now. The Shop opposite Christ Church, the College where Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (or Lewis Carroll, as you might know him) spent his life.
Yes: you can say I was rather glad to finally be there.
Nowadays it's an Aliciana-shop, where the Queen/Sheep has been replaced by a not very British (because Asian) Oxford-student, and where of course they sell the necessary amount of kitsch, but where they have some good Stuf as well.
So, I made a mental (in both senses of the word) list of all the china teapots and First Editions and Tenniel prints I'm gonna stuff my house with once I found the accessory lenient millionaire, and I bought a set of fabulous double-sidedly printed bookmarks with Carroll's own Adventures Underground-drawings. And I fi-nal-ly acquired one of Alice's best illustrators: Mervyn Peake.
That made my day a success (though had it not been for this, all the other wonderful things would have sufficed), and after this satisfaction of my most important Oxfordian desire, I was quite willing to be dragged to certain Tolkien-related venues, among which Two Trees. They were two very mysterious trees indeed, for that very night, they had either suddenly chosen to steal one Potter's Invisibility Garment, or, and this is what I personally suspect, they had mingled with a host of other Trees, so as to form, as it were, a Forest. Anyhow, we could not find them, but that kon de pret niet drukken. Quite the contrary. (Although I sincerely hope De heer M. will one day be able to locate them.)
I hope more about Oxonia later.
This is something I found in one of the articles I have been reading for my current essay: a reference to "A. Van Goudoever. 1731. Traiecti ad Rhenum. De nefanda libidine". (To inform the people to whom this doesn't ring a bell: Ab van Goudoever has just retired from teaching & professoring at University College Utrecht). It appears that our own Albert was er al vroeg bij! The article turns out not to be about the history of the human rights debate though, but about masturbating nuns (No kidding. 1731!). Mm...
Also, did you know the origins of the Blackadder font? The one used in the tv-series? The one you can actually buy here? They actually used the signature Guy Fawkes (the guy from the celebrations on November 5th) had to write down after his royal torture! Which they say explains the "sinister tremble" you can observe if you watch closely. (You can compare his signature before his (alleged) torture in the Tower of London, with the ones in between and afterwards.)
That was it for today.
Tomorrow is December 1.
*This is no metaphor for England: here I do really mean Alice's/Carroll's Wonderland.
posted by Anna P.H. Geurts | 6:01 pm
