The books > The Flamingo in the croquet game.

[martin050]

I know Lewis Carroll used a lot of in-jokes in his stories... Ones that he and Alice would both appreciate, but I can't see where the flamingo (in the croquet game) fits in, unless he took the Liddell girls to see them at the zoo.
Any ideas?

[edit by webmaster] Moved the topic to the appropriate subforum

[The Queen of Hearts]

I've always viewed as more of a joke about the game croquet, since as is pointed out in The Annotated Alice "Carroll spent a great deal of time inventing new an unusual ways of playing familiar games."

It is interesting to note, though, that originally in Alice's Adventures Under Ground, the Queen of Hearts/Marchioness of Mock Turtles uses ostriches instead of flamingos for the game.

[martin050]

I hadn't seen that, thank you.
On the same subject...I've read that the Liddell girls came across a hedgehog on the Deanery lawn while they were playing a game of croquet, which rolled into a ball when approached. Hence the hedgehog croquet ball in the Queen's game I suppose.

[Jess]

From the explanatory notes in the "Oxford World Classics" edition:

a curious croquet-ground: croquet was a favourite game with the Liddell children, and Dodgson played it often with Alice and her sisters in the Deanery garden. He invented for them a new version of the game, Croquet Castles, which he had printed privately at Oxford on 4 May 1863 (see The Lewis Carroll Picture Book, 1899, p.271). (Croquet Castles is reprinted in Hamlyn.)

live flamingoes: they were ostriches in A.A.U. (Ostriches bury their heads in the sand - as a child often does with the head of a croquet mallet in the turf.)

(although I do think I should point out that ostriches burying their heads in the sand is a myth.)

[martin050]

Many thanks for that interesting info Jess.