How do you get to Wonderland?

It’s June of 1989. I’m riding in a large blue hired motor coach with a group of twenty people. Basil, our driver, is racing along a rural four-lane highway through the English countryside. We are participants in an English Children’s Literature class led by my college lit professor, Jacqueline - Jackie - Jackson. 

Each stop thus far on the trip has been full of thrilling exploits in its own right, but this excursion has special significance: It’s Alice in Wonderland day. 

Some of my class members have already studied Alice in Jackie’s regular Children’s Literature class. Several of us have dressed as our favorite characters from the novel to attend one of Jackie's annual Alice in Wonderland potluck feasts. Most of us have even had the opportunity to make use of the Alice-themed bathroom at Jackie’s house. Jackie and her daughters painted scenes from the novel on the walls of the bathroom years ago, when the children were little. 

Now we’re headed to the source, to have a tea party/picnic at the place where the Alice stories were first spun by Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) to his friends’ children. Needless to say, we’re all in high spirits.  

Not far out of Oxford, Jackie confers with Basil, who slows the coach and eases it to a stop along the side of the auto route. ‘Grab your things and follow me,’ Jackie shouts. A few minutes of commotion ensue as we gather up our notebooks, pens, backpacks, and picnic goodies.

Once off the bus we mill about, getting our bearings. We don’t appear to be anywhere in particular. There is farmland on both sides of the auto route, looking neat and trim as English fields somehow manage to do. The pasture nearest us is fenced with wood posts and barbed wire. 

Jackie does a quick head count. Before we can start asking questions she waves Basil on and forges down the slight grade from the highway, headed for the fence.

At Jackie’s direction, we climb over the fence and begin traipsing through the fields. None of us bothers to question whether we’re trespassing, or where she’s taking us. In the past five or six days of the trip, we’ve learned to appreciate Jackie’s unorthodox leadership style. We merely shoulder our belongings and string along behind her.

Jackie cuts across the pasture as if she’s done this a thousand times (it’s very likely she has), to a small break in a line of trees opposite the auto route. From there we make our way to a narrow lane lined with hedges. As we hike along, Jackie explains that the lane was too narrow for the bus. We’ll rendezvous with Basil at the auto route in a few hours.

We reach the end of the hedges. In the open pasture before us stand the remains of an ancient stone building, a portion of which was obviously a chapel at one time. Beyond this lies the river Thames. 

We gawk as Jackie tells us the building is Godstow Nunnery, built in the 1130s as a convent for Benedictine nuns. It was infamous forty years later for being the place where Rosamund, mistress of King Henry the Second, lived for a time. She was buried there upon her death. 

Jackie sets us loose to get a feel for the place, telling us to be back at the east wall of the abbey in an hour for tea. I wander through a gap in the perimeter wall of the chapel. The roof is long gone but a few peaked windows remain; ivy has taken the place of any glass that may once have existed. 

Photo courtesy of http://www.afreeman.org/2008/02/09/godstow-nunnery/ 

Running a hand along the rough stone, I try to imagine a time when the building functioned as a working abbey, try to picture the lives of the people who once inhabited the structure. Their eras and customs seem as different from where I stand as the land of the looking glass was to Alice. 

The hour of free time flies by. We gather back at the designated spot, unfurl our blankets, and commence picnicking. While we eat, two of our classmates deliver their class project on Lewis Carroll, the Liddell children, and how an Oxford mathematician caused the story of Alice came about. 

The women are in the middle of their report when a lone cow strolls around one corner of the abbey and stops, blinking at us. We glance at her, surprised, having not seen a soul the entire time we'd been there. With unflappable grace, the cow lowers her nose to the grass. The two women resume their talk. 

A few minutes later, however, we are surrounded by an entire herd of cattle, which has descended on us in the direction from which the first cow arrived. All is bedlam for a while as we abandon the picnic, forget the lecture, and scramble about photographing, petting and - in the case of one classmate - recording audio of the cattle. 

All the class participants are Midwesterners. A herd of Holsteins isn’t a novelty to any of us, but now that they’re here we couldn't be more thrilled. 

We examine the likelihood that we have crashed the cows' luncheon spot and not the other way around. It's decided that we must seem as strange to the cattle as the Mad Hatter and his crew were to Alice when she crashed that party. 

Original Mad Hatter scene from the book, illustration by Sir John Tenniel. Found at
http://www.luckypalm.com/graphics-and-clip-art/childrens-book-illustrations/alice-in-wonderland-mad-hatter-graphic/

Unlike the Mad Hatter, the bovine contingent are merely confused and perhaps slightly annoyed by our hilarity. They ignore us as best they can, munch some choice blades of grass. Within fifteen minutes they’ve moved along to another part of the pasture. 

After the cows are gone Jackie reins us back in. We settle down for the last bit of the lecture. As our Alice in Wonderland day comes to a close we take a few last-minute group shots in front of the nunnery wall. Then we trek back up to the auto route, where Basil is waiting to convey us to the next stop on our literary adventure. 

I went on to house-sit for Jackie one summer. I could never pass the Alice bathroom without thinking of the abbey, the picnic...and the cows.

Rendering of the abbey in 1882. With cows, of course.
 http://thames.me.uk/s01860.htm

* * * * * * * * * * *

Unfortunately, my photos of the trip to England have not been converted to digital form. Plus they are stored in a box in a garage 750 miles from where I currently reside. The photos here are from the Web, with gratitude to the folks whose sites are credited beneath each photo. 

If you’d like to learn more about Godstow Nunnery, go here:

- http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=1485 This gives basic facts about the history, use, and dissolution of the nunnery.

- http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=40178 This has further history of the workings of the abbey through the 1500s.

- http://www.thamespathway.com/chapter4/godstow-nunnery.aspx This is a fascinating blog by a man who decided to walk from one end of the Thames to the other. The entry after the one about Godstow gives a brief introduction to Charles Dodgson and some really cool, lesser-known facts about him. 

Jackie has published a dozen or more books over the past fifty years, most of which are out of print but well worth the read if you can find them. To find out more about Jackie and her writing, go here: www.jacqueline-jackson.com. She also writes a weekly poem for the Illinois Times, a weekly free publication in Springfield, IL, which you can read here: www.illinoistimes.com