THERE was a man, a quiet unassuming person with dark-brown eyes and a particularly unruly forelock breaking away from the otherwise sleek head of hair. And there was a village, a hamlet in the heart of the Lincolnshire countryside, consisting of a church, an inn and a few scattered cottages. The common factor was Disney.
For Walt was on the trail – on the trail of his ancestors. "Private and personal. Norton Disney, Lincolnshire, England. Arrived after lunch," recorded the great man in his diary. The car stopped outside the ancient church of St. Peter, Norton Disney. Chicago-born Walt, the man who for twenty-one years has weaved fantasy for millions began a new adventure. He was on a flesh-and-blood quest and here lay the clues.
Pluto on his peregrinations sniffing an intriguing scent would not have shown more satisfaction than did his creator. In a church which had stood for seven centuries, Walt, his two daughters and his wife, listened to the vicar as he unravelled the past. It began with the Norman invasion – 1066 and all that. All that, Walt now realized, meant amongst other things the incursion of the first nobleman from D’Issigny, the Norman township, to this rustic English setting. "History’s strange," thought Walt, realizing this was not a wholly original idea.
Many things happen in the modern Disney world. If Donald Duck is not caught up in the coilsprings of a clock, then Mickey is waltzed into the mouth of a whale, plays a melody on its teeth and marches out again. Trees talk and rabbits laugh, elephants dance to operatic arias and dogs wear seven-league boots.
But apart from D'Issigny being corrupted into Disney, the addition of an inn and a few home-steads, little has changed in this English village. Walt handled the yellowed parchments, the old church registers written 500 years ago and bearing the signatures of his ancestors, the landed gentry, the squires and sheriffs of Norton Disney. It was a strangely peaceful, orderly world.
They were a distinguished family, but their only achievements recorded for posterity was the number of children they bore – usually nine or ten.
Though Mickey at this stage would have been indulging in a ghost hunt and Goofy might have been allowed a "Gosh !" Walt and his family were content with a muttered "Gee!" as they discovered the Disney name recorded many times in brass and stone in the church. And while Lilian pored over the carved effigy of "William Disne," Sheriff of Lincolnshire, who died in 1532, to see if there was any family resemblance, Walt commented on the fact that William was seven up on himself as far as children went.
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