The Connection Most Visitors Don’t Know
The connection between Alice Liddell and Llandudno is well known. The real-life inspiration for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland spent many of her childhood holidays at Penmorfa, her family’s house overlooking the West Shore. But there is another Llandudno story involving the Liddells which belongs not to Alice’s childhood, but to her early adulthood.
It involves Queen Victoria’s youngest son, Prince Leopold, a possible royal romance, Alice’s younger sister Edith, an incognito visit to the Imperial Hotel and a sequence of events in 1873 which remains tantalisingly unresolved.
Prince Leopold Comes to Oxford
Prince Leopold George Duncan Albert was born in 1853, the youngest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He suffered from haemophilia, which made his childhood unusually restricted and caused his mother to be highly protective of him. Nevertheless, Leopold was intelligent, independently minded and determined to attend university.
On 27 November 1872, aged nineteen, he matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford. Dean Henry Liddell — Alice’s father — was one of those given responsibility for the young prince while he was there. This brought Leopold into the social world of the Liddell family. The Deanery at Christ Church was one of the centres of Oxford social life, and Leopold became acquainted with Henry and Lorina Liddell and their daughters, including Alice and her younger sister Edith.
The little girl who had inspired Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland was now a young woman. Alice was twenty when Leopold arrived at Oxford and turned twenty-one in May 1873. Leopold himself turned twenty that April. Edith, born in 1854, was about eighteen or nineteen. They were, in other words, a group of young adults of very similar ages.
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Leopold Falls in Love
Research published by the Lewis Carroll Society records that in the spring of 1873 Leopold confided to close friends that he was in love. More than that, he was talking about marriage. The woman was described as an Oxford girl, but her name does not appear in the surviving Royal Household records.
There was evidently enough gossip surrounding Leopold and the Liddell daughters for Lewis Carroll himself to make fun of it. In his satirical The Vision of the Three T’s, Carroll portrayed Mrs Liddell as a “King-fisher” interested in catching a prized “Gold-fish”. The joke has been interpreted as an unmistakable reference to the possibility of Mrs Liddell acquiring a royal son-in-law. Contemporary undergraduate satire also linked Leopold and his friends with the Liddell daughters.
So the idea of a potential royal marriage was not simply a romantic story invented by later generations. Something was being talked about in Oxford at the time. What we do not know with certainty is which Liddell daughter was involved.
Was It Alice?
Tradition has generally identified Alice Liddell as Leopold’s romantic interest. There are some intriguing later connections. When Alice married Reginald Hargreaves in 1880, she wore a pearl horseshoe brooch given to her by Leopold as a wedding present. Three years later Alice asked Leopold to become godfather to her second son. Leopold accepted, and Alice and Reginald named the boy Leopold Reginald Hargreaves.
At almost exactly the same time, Leopold wrote to Alice telling her that he and his wife intended to call their newborn daughter Alice. It is easy to see why a story of lost romance developed around them. But there is an important qualification: the Lewis Carroll Society research itself says explicitly that identifying Alice as Leopold’s love comes from tradition rather than documentary record.
What About Edith?
Prince Leopold’s biographer Charlotte Zeepvat researched his life using extensive correspondence and material from the Royal Archives. Her work has led subsequent accounts to suggest that Edith Liddell — Alice’s younger sister — may actually have been the object of Leopold’s affection rather than Alice.
That possibility changes the character of the story considerably. Edith was almost exactly Leopold’s contemporary: born in 1854, only about a year after him. There is not enough evidence at present to declare that Leopold was in love with Edith. Equally, there is not enough evidence to declare that he was in love with Alice. What can safely be said is this: Prince Leopold was in love with an unnamed Oxford woman and was considering marriage at precisely the period in which he had become closely associated with the Liddell family, and contemporary gossip connected him specifically with the Liddell daughters.
Then something happened.
Queen Victoria Calls Him Away
In May 1873, Queen Victoria summoned Leopold away from Oxford to Balmoral. According to the Lewis Carroll Society account, he subsequently did not see the Liddells again until December 1873. The implication, which the research raises without stating directly, is that this may have represented a deliberate cooling-off period. After that, the talk of marriage had disappeared.
It is tempting to conclude that Victoria had discovered the relationship and stopped it. The evidence does not quite allow us to say that. What we can say is that Leopold had been discussing marriage in the spring, the Queen then summoned him away, contact with the Liddells apparently stopped for several months, and the proposed marriage came to nothing.
And during those intervening months something very curious happened in Llandudno.
August 1873: Prince Leopold Appears in Llandudno
Penmorfa had been the Liddell family’s Llandudno holiday home for years. The family retained it until 1873, when the long Llandudno chapter of Alice’s childhood and adolescence finally came to an end. On the other side of the town stood a relatively new establishment: the Imperial Hotel, created in 1872 by combining a row of earlier boarding houses on the North Shore.
In August 1873, Prince Leopold came to Llandudno. According to the Imperial’s own history, he stayed at the hotel incognito, accompanied by his aide. An independent local-history account goes further, saying there is “good evidence” for the visit and credits the information to John Lawson-Reay of the Llandudno & Colwyn Bay History Society and Adrian Hughes of Llandudno’s Home Front Museum.
This is the point at which the story becomes genuinely tantalising. Consider the sequence:
- Prince Leopold had told friends he was in love and was talking about marriage.
- The Liddell family was at the centre of his Oxford social life.
- There was contemporary gossip about Leopold becoming a Liddell son-in-law.
- Queen Victoria summoned him away in May.
- Contact with the Liddells apparently ceased.
- And in August — in the final year of the Liddells’ ownership of Penmorfa — Leopold turned up quietly in Llandudno and checked in under a false identity.
Why?
Did Leopold Meet Alice or Edith in Llandudno?
This is the question to which we currently do not have an answer. There is no evidence yet uncovered that Leopold visited Penmorfa. There is no letter currently available saying that he met Alice. There is no diary entry saying that he met Edith.
There is an additional problem for the romantic theory. The Lewis Carroll Society research says that Leopold did not see the Liddells between May and December 1873. If that chronology is correct, his Llandudno visit cannot have involved a meeting with them. But it leaves a remarkable coincidence unexplained: why did the young prince appear incognito in the seaside town so closely associated with the family at precisely this moment in their lives?
The original hotel register, newspaper report or other primary document behind the Imperial Hotel claim has not yet been publicly identified. Until it is, the responsible conclusion is: Leopold’s presence in Llandudno in August 1873 is supported by established local historical sources, but the underlying primary record has yet to be found. The mystery is better than an invented conclusion.
Edith’s Tragic Ending
Whatever happened between Leopold and the Liddells in 1873, the story acquired a much darker dimension three years later. Edith became engaged to Aubrey Harcourt, one of Leopold’s Oxford friends. She never reached her wedding.
On 26 June 1876, Edith Liddell died at only twenty-two. Robert Douglas-Fairhurst’s The Story of Alice records that she contracted measles and subsequently died of peritonitis, only weeks before her intended wedding. That explains why shorter modern accounts variously give “measles” and “peritonitis” as her cause of death: measles was the preceding illness, peritonitis the fatal complication.
Four days after Edith’s death, on 30 June 1876, one of the men carrying her coffin was Prince Leopold. This is not later folklore. A contemporary newspaper report — reproduced in the Nelson Evening Mail of 22 September 1876 — specifically records Leopold acting as a pall-bearer at Edith’s funeral.
If Edith really had once been the woman Leopold wanted to marry, the significance of that moment hardly needs embellishment. But again, history does not quite give us permission to make that final leap.
Three Very Different Lives
Alice Liddell lived until 1934 and reached the age of eighty-two. She married Reginald Hargreaves, had three sons and lived long enough to see the story inspired by her childhood become an international literary phenomenon. In 1932 she sold Carroll’s original manuscript of Alice’s Adventures Underground at Sotheby’s to meet death duties. She visited America in 1932, where she was treated as a celebrity at Columbia University’s Carroll centenary.
Edith Liddell died in 1876 at only twenty-two, just three years after the mysterious events of 1873, and weeks before her wedding.
Prince Leopold died in 1884 at only thirty. His haemophilia contributed to his early death following a fall while staying at Cannes. He had married Princess Helena of Waldeck and Pyrmont in 1882 and had one son and one daughter. The daughter was named Alice.
Within little more than a decade of that summer in Llandudno, two of its three possible protagonists were dead. Alice survived them by another half-century.
Fact, Possibility and Speculation
The story is strongest when those three things are kept separate.
What we know: Prince Leopold arrived at Christ Church in November 1872 and became close to the Liddell household. In spring 1873 he told friends he was in love with an Oxford woman and discussed marriage. Contemporary satire connected Leopold with the possibility of marrying into the Liddell family. Queen Victoria summoned Leopold away in May 1873 and his contact with the Liddells apparently ceased until December. Penmorfa remained the Liddells’ Llandudno home until 1873. Prince Leopold stayed incognito at Llandudno’s Imperial Hotel in August 1873 according to established local historical accounts. Prince Leopold was one of Edith’s pall-bearers when she died three years later.
What is possible: Leopold’s unnamed love may have been Alice. It may instead have been Edith. Queen Victoria may have deliberately intervened to prevent a relationship developing. Leopold’s visit to Llandudno may somehow have been connected with the Liddells.
What we cannot currently claim: We cannot say that Leopold travelled to Llandudno to see Alice. We cannot say that he met Edith there. We cannot even yet demonstrate that either sister was physically at Penmorfa on the exact dates of Leopold’s visit. That evidence may exist somewhere in an archive. It has not yet been produced.
A Story Fiction Has Already Noticed
Unsurprisingly, the relationship between Alice and Leopold has attracted novelists and dramatists. Melanie Benjamin’s historical novel Alice I Have Been fictionalises Alice’s adult life and includes the Leopold romance. Mark Saltzman’s musical Alice, Formerly of Wonderland explicitly constructs its story around a secret romance between Alice and Leopold opposed by Queen Victoria. Frank Beddor’s fantasy The Looking Glass Wars also incorporates Leopold, with its alternative version of Alice preparing to marry the prince before events in Wonderland intervene.
What seems much less explored is the Llandudno episode itself. That may be because it is difficult to resolve. But that is also precisely what makes it compelling. The famous Llandudno Alice story is about childhood, imagination, sand dunes and family holidays. This second story is very different: it concerns Alice as a young woman, her sister Edith, a twenty-year-old prince struggling against the restrictions imposed upon him by Queen Victoria, an unexplained romance at Oxford and an incognito journey to Llandudno during the final year of Penmorfa.
Perhaps another letter, newspaper report, visitor book or diary entry remains somewhere in an archive and will eventually explain why Prince Leopold was quietly staying in Llandudno in August 1873. For the moment, we do not know. And that is perhaps the most intriguing part of the story.
Sources and Further Reading
The distinction between documented fact and historical speculation is important in this story. The principal sources used are:
1. Henry Lewis Thompson, Henry George Liddell, D.D., Dean of Christ Church, Oxford (John Murray, 1899). An early biography of Alice and Edith’s father. It records the family’s occupation of Penmorfa and the dates of their Llandudno summers.
2. Edward Wakeling, “Mr. Dodgson and the Royal Family, Part I”, Knight Letter, Winter 2003, Lewis Carroll Society of North America. This is the key source for the Leopold story. Wakeling records Leopold’s matriculation at Oxford in November 1872, his social involvement with the Liddell household, and the fact that in spring 1873 he told close friends that he was in love with an Oxford woman and was talking about marriage. Wakeling also records the contemporary satire linking Leopold with the Liddell daughters, and states explicitly that the identification of Alice as Leopold’s love comes from “tradition rather than record.” He documents the pearl horseshoe wedding gift and the later exchange in which Leopold became godfather to Alice’s son while telling her his own daughter would be named Alice.
3. Charlotte Zeepvat, Prince Leopold: The Untold Story of Queen Victoria’s Youngest Son (Sutton Publishing, 1998). The major modern biography of Leopold, based on previously unpublished correspondence and material from the Royal Archives. Zeepvat concludes that Leopold’s letters suggest it was Edith, not Alice, whom he loved — a conclusion that conflicts directly with the traditional story.
4. Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, The Story of Alice: Lewis Carroll and the Secret History of Wonderland (2015). Douglas-Fairhurst, Professor of English Literature at Oxford, provides the clearest account of Edith’s final illness, recording that she contracted measles and subsequently died of peritonitis in June 1876, shortly before her intended wedding.
5. The Imperial Hotel, Llandudno, historical archive. The hotel’s published history records that Prince Leopold stayed at the Imperial in August 1873, travelling incognito with his aide. The underlying contemporary document on which this claim is based has not been publicly identified.
6. Richard Hoare, Geograph, with information from John Lawson-Reay (Llandudno & Colwyn Bay History Society) and Adrian Hughes (Llandudno Home Front Museum). This independent local-history account records “good evidence” for Leopold’s incognito stay at the Imperial with his aide-de-camp in August 1873.
7. Home News, 1876, reproduced in the Nelson Evening Mail, 22 September 1876. A contemporary newspaper report explicitly records Prince Leopold acting as pall-bearer at Edith Liddell’s funeral — considerably stronger evidence for that detail than later retellings of the story.
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