Alice in Wonderland

Late last year, the Athenaeum Theatre advertised a stage production of Alice in Wonderland for children in January.  When I saw the email in my inbox, I instantly thought with delighted relief, ‘Christmas presents for my nieces, sorted!’

Unfortunately, a QR code on a smart phone does not lend itself well to being wrapped in Christmas paper, instead I printed up a colouring-in picture of Walt Disney’s version of Alice and included a handwritten a note saying, “The bearer of this ticket is going to the Athenaeum Theatre with Aunty Kim”.

While wrapping the makeshift presents on Christmas Eve, I had a moment of doubt. I was vetoing requests that had filtered through the family. I was giving my present of choice. Let’s be honest, taking the girls to the theatre is just as much a present to me as it is to them. ‘Too late’, I thought, ‘I have made my decision. They’re getting an immersive trip down a rabbit hole to a world imagined by Lewis Carroll in 1865.’

Generations of young children have been falling down this rabbit hole and giving the story of Alice in Wonderland as a gift. There’s an old book in the family history collection belonging to my paternal grandmother with an inscription written in a child’s hand, Wishing Dear Dorathy A happy birthday From Nancy Macbeth. 

Birthday wish inscription on book

Childhood book collections

I have two versions of Alice in Wonderland in my collection. A Little Golden Book of Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland meets the white rabbit printed in 1980 and a faithful reproduction of both Lewis Carroll’s stories of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass with the famous etched drawings by John Tenniel published in 1978.

Walt Disney’s ‘Alice in Wonderland meets the White Rabbit’ A Little Golden Book, edition published 1980.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, edition published in 1978.

My working from home “office” – an old table and kitchen chair – is in the spare bedroom adjacent to a simply designed, dark wooden bookcase.  When my mother, an only child, moved my grandfather from his home in Albert Park to our house in North Ringwood after my grandmother died, almost all of their dark wood furniture came with him (except for some pieces chosen by my paternal aunts in the mid-1980s). The bookcase was positioned in the kitchen under the bench bar counter in the meals area of my childhood home. It stored the telephone and telephone books, a myriad of cook books, scrap paper and paraphernalia, which were hastily piled there every time the kitchen was tidied up. Today in my adulthood home, the bookcase fits perfectly along the shortest wall in this study, and houses a collection of old books that have found their way into the family history collection as well as a remnant selection of the old cookbooks it used to house. As I sit here working or listening in to virtual meetings, there has been many a lengthy gaze at the old cloth spines and meandering thoughts about the book owners and their stories.

Bookcase with old books.

Alice in Wonderland in the book collection

Standing tall, despite its small stature, is a maroon coloured leather-bound copy of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland – printed by Collins Clear Type Press and illustrated by C. Pears and T.H Robinson. It is undated but likely printed in the 1920-1930s. My aunty Moon claimed the book in her childhood, writing her name on two different pages in pencil and ink. Her mother, (my paternal grandmother) has her name and address written in neat adult-like cursive, Dorothy Donovan 140 Robinson Road, Hawthorn. On another page, an ink inscription reveals the true origins. The giver and receiver of this book. Written in a child’s hand, the inscription says, Wishing Dear Dorathy A happy birthday from Nancy Macbeth.

Inscriptions on book gifted to Dorothy Donovan

Truth be told, I really don’t know much about my grandmother’s family, the Donovans. I know that they lived in Chillingollah (in the Wimmera), Hawthorn (at Robinson Road and Elphin Grove) and Seymour. There is quite a bit of primary material in the Donovan family collection, but I haven’t interrogated it much yet. Two initial questions came to mind when looking at the inscription in the book. Who is Nancy Macbeth and how old was Dorothy when she lived at Robinson Road?  These questions took me straight down a rabbit hole and I could only answer one of the two questions.

A rabbit hole called Robinson Road

My mother’s family history notes state that Dorothy, born in 1915, lived in Redesdale until she was four years old. I knew from family folklore that the house at Robinson Road no longer exists, as it was converted to parkland, but interestingly, Google maps drops a pin to where number 140 used to be. There are not many clues in the family collection, although a bereavement letter to the Bidstrup family, revealing an elaborate flourishing penmanship by Dorothy’s father, Jeremiah Donovan, records the family at “Doon Brae” in Robinson Road in 1920.

J.J Donovan’s letter to the Bidstrup family 25 October 1920

I spent a fair bit of time piecing together public records to determine the family’s tenure at Robinson Road, immersing myself in Hawthorn Council Minutes and the Hawthorn rate records. They revealed one answer to my key questions, my grandmother lived at Robinsons Road from 1920, aged five, until 1926, when she was eleven years old.

Nancy Macbeth, an elusive white rabbit?

In my quest to understand more about the Donovans and Robinson Road, I looked through the Donovan photograph albums in the archives. There was a decorative cardboard frame without a photograph. I turned it over to discover a caption on the back. So often I’ve looked at a photo and lamented its caption-less back, but it is rare to have a caption without a photo, also worthy of another lament (!). This caption brought me tantalisingly close to exactly where I wanted to go in the archives. ‘Dorothy Donovan (Meagher) & cousin Nancy Ramsay taken at Robinson’s Road Hawthorn about 1922.’

Who was Nancy Ramsay? Could Nancy Ramsay be Nancy Macbeth?

So off I go, further down the rabbit hole in search of Nancy Macbeth (no such luck) however, my Grandmother’s cousin, Nancy Ramsay, was a much easier pursuit. Nancy Ramsay’s mother, Bridget McCormack (the younger sister of Dorothy’s mother) married Robert Ogilvy Ramsay in 1902. Their third child, Nancy Margaret Ramsay was born in 1913. Nancy did not know her father. He succumbed to a short and fatal case of meningitis in 1915 when he was in the prime of his life,  a young father and successful businessman aged 38. Robert Ramsay was already a well-respected community member and Justice of the Peace but was also the proprietor of the Seymour Telegraph newspaper. There is very little more to go on, but in one obscure article was the note that Bridget (revealed only as Robert Ramsay’s widow) was still maintaining the Telegraph operations fourteen years after her husband death in 1930.

Did my grandmother’s cousin, Nancy Ramsay, in close earshot of the printing press, seeing and hearing her mother converse with the journalists and editors, subconsciously absorb the publishing and literary pursuits of her parents? Did young Nancy Ramsay call herself Nancy Macbeth and delight in the choice of Alice in Wonderland as the perfect birthday gift for her dear cousin?

Dorothy Donovan (left) and her cousin, Nancy Ramsay, undated.

When I gave my gifts on Christmas day, my heart skipped a beat at my nieces’ mirrored reactions. They’re from different sides of the family so one received her gift at Christmas lunch and the other at Christmas dinner. They both raced to their respective mothers after unwrapping the drawing and exclaimed “look at what I got from Aunty Kim!”. Their mothers put on a superb display of surprise and I still smile at the sweet memory of instant joy and excitement the girls had in response to their gift.