Complete Works of Lewis Carroll (268 page)

This book was handed over to the small Alice, who little dreamed at that time of the treasure she was to have in her keeping.
Over twenty years later, when Alice had become Mrs.
Reginald Hargreaves, the great popularity of “Alice in Wonderland” tempted the publishers to bring out a reproduction of the original manuscript.
This could not be done without borrowing the precious volume from the original Alice, who was willing to trust it in the hands of her old friend, knowing how over-careful he would be, and, as he resolved that he would not allow any workman to touch it, he had some funny experiences.

To reproduce a book it must first be photographed, and of course Lewis Carroll consulted an expert.
He offered to bring the book to London, to go daily to his studio and hold it in position to be photographed, turning over the pages one by one, but the photographer wished to do all that himself.
Finally, a man was found who was willing to come to Oxford and do the work in Lewis Carroll’s own way, while he stood near by turning over the pages himself rather than let him touch them.

The photographer succeeded in getting a fine set of negatives, and in October, 1880, Lewis Carroll sent the book in safe custody back to its owner, thinking his troubles were over.
The next step was to have plates made from the pictures, and these plates in turn could pass into print.
The photographer was prompt at first in delivering the plates as they were made, but, finally, like the
Baker
in “The Hunting of the Snark,” he “softly and suddenly vanished away,” holding still twenty-two of the fine blocks on which the plates were made, leaving the book so far—incomplete.

There ensued a lively search for the missing photographer.
This lasted for months, thereby delaying the publication of the book, which was due Christmas.
Then, as suddenly as he had disappeared, he reappeared like a ghost at the publishers, left eight of the twenty-two zinc blocks, and again vanished.
Finally, when a year had passed and poor Lewis Carroll, at his wits’ end, had resolved to borrow the book again in order to photograph the remaining fourteen pages, the man was frightened by threats of arrest, and delivered up the fourteen negatives which he had not yet transferred to the blocks.

The distracted author was glad to find them, even though he had to pay a second time for getting the blocks done properly.
However, the book was finished in time for the Christmas sale of 1886, just twenty-one years after “Alice” made her first bow, and the best thing about it was that all the profits were given to the Children’s Hospitals and Convalescent Homes for Sick Children.
It was thoroughly illustrated with thirty-seven of the author’s own drawings, and the grown-up “Alice” received a beautiful special copy bound in white vellum; but pretty as it was, it could not take the place of that other volume carefully written out for the sole pleasure of one little girl.
Nothing was too much trouble if it succeeded in giving pleasure to any little girl whom Lewis Carroll knew and loved; even those he did not really know, and consequently could not love, he sought to please, just because they were “little girls.”

Alice was among the chosen few who retained his friendship through the years.
She was his first favorite, and she was indirectly the source of his good luck, and we may be sure there was a certain winsomeness about her long after the elf-locks were gathered into decorous coils of dark hair.

True, the formal old bachelor came forward in their later association, and the numerous letters he wrote her always began “My dear Mrs.
Hargreaves,” but his fondness for her outlived many other passing affections.

To go back to the little Alice and the fair smiling river, and that wizard Lewis Carroll, who told the wonder tales so long ago.
Once the children had a taste of “Alice,” she grew to be a great favorite; sometimes a chapter was told on the river, sometimes in his study, often in the garden or after tea in Christ Church Meadows—in fact, wherever they caught a glimpse of the grave young man in cap and gown, the trio of small Liddells fell upon him, and in this fashion, as he tells us himself, “the quaint events were hammered out.”

When he presented the promised copy it might have passed forever from his mind, which was full of the higher mathematics he was teaching to the young men of Christ Church, but he chanced one day to show the manuscript to George Macdonald, the well-known writer, who was so charmed with it that he advised his friend to send it to a publisher.
He accordingly carried it to London, and Macmillan & Co.
took it at once.
This was a great surprise.
He never dreamed of his nonsense being considered seriously, and growing suddenly about as young as a great, big, bashful boy, he refused to allow his own rough illustrations to appear in print, so he hunted over the long list of his artist friends, for the genius who could best illustrate the adventures of his dream-child.
At last his friend, Tom Taylor, a well-known dramatist, suggested Mr.
Tenniel, the clever cartoonist for
Punch
, who was quite willing to undertake this rather odd bit of work, and on July 4, 1865, exactly three years since that memorable afternoon, Alice Liddell received the first printed copy of “Alice in Wonderland,” the name the author finally selected for his book.

His first idea, as we know, was “Alice’s Adventures Underground,” the second was “Alice’s Hour in Elfland,” but the last seemed best of all, for Wonderland might mean any place where wonderful things could happen.
And this was Lewis Carroll’s idea; anywhere the dream “Alice” chose to go would be Wonderland, and none knew better than he did how eagerly the child-mind paints its own fairy nooks and corners.

He was not at all excited about his first big venture; no doubt Alice herself took much more interest.
To feel that you are about to be put into print is certainly a great experience, almost as great as being photographed; and, knowing how conscientious Lewis Carroll was about little things, we may be quite sure that her suggestions crept into many of the pictures, while it is equally certain that the few additions he made to the original “Alice” were carefully considered and firmly insisted upon by this critical young person.

The first edition of two thousand copies was a great disappointment; the pictures were badly printed, and all who had bought them were asked to send them back with their names and addresses, as a new edition would be printed immediately and they would then receive perfect copies.
The old copies Lewis Carroll gave away to various homes and hospitals, while the new edition, upon which he feared a great loss, sold so rapidly that he was astonished, and still more so when edition after edition was demanded by the public, and far from being a failure, “Alice in Wonderland” brought her author both fame and money.

From that time forward, fortune smiled upon him; there were no strenuous efforts to increase his income.
“Alice” yielded him an abundance each year, and he was beset by none of the cares and perplexities which are the dragons most writers encounter with their literary swords.
He welcomed the fortune, not so much for the good it brought to him alone, but for the power it gave him to help others.
His countless charities are not recorded because they were swallowed up in the “little things” he did, not in the great benefits which are trumpeted over the world.
His own life, so simple, so full of purpose, flowed on as usual; he was not one to change his habits with the turn of Fortune’s wheel, no matter what it brought him.

Of course, everyone knew that a certain Lewis Carroll had written a clever, charming book of nonsense, called “Alice in Wonderland”; that he was an Oxford man, very much of a scholar, and little known outside of the University.
What people did not know was that this same Lewis Carroll had for a double a certain “grave and reverend” young “don,” named Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who, while “Alice” was making the whole world laugh, retired to his sanctum and wrote in rapid succession the following learned pamphlets: “The Condensation of Determinants,” “An Elementary Treatise on Determinants,” “The Fifth Book of Euclid, treated Algebraically,” “The Algebraic Formulæ for Responsions.”

Now, whatever these may be, they certainly did not interest children in the least, and Charles Lutwidge Dodgson did not care in the least, so long as he could smooth the thorny path of mathematics for his struggling undergraduates.
But Lewis Carroll was quite a different matter.
So long as the children were pleased, little he cared for algebra or geometry.

A funny tale is told about Queen Victoria.
It seems that Lewis Carroll sent the second presentation copy of “Alice in Wonderland” to Princess Beatrice, the Queen’s youngest daughter.
Her mother was so pleased with the book that she asked to have the author’s other works sent to her, and we can imagine her surprise when she received a large package of learned treatises by the mathematical lecturer of Christ Church College.

Who can tell through what curious byways the thought of the dream-child came dancing across the flagstones of the great “Tom Quad.”
Yet across those same flagstones danced the little Liddells when they thought there was any possibility of a romp or a story; for Lewis Carroll lived in the northwest angle, while the girls lived in the beautiful deanery in the northeast angle, and it was only a “puss-in-the-corner” game to get from one place to the other.

“Alice” was written on the ground floor of this northwest angle, and it was in this sunny room that Lewis Carroll and the real Alice held many a consultation about the new book.

All true fame is to a certain extent due to accident; an act of heroism is generally performed on the spur of the moment; a great poem is an inspiration; a great invention, though preceded possibly by years of study, is born of a single moment’s inspiration; so “Alice” came to Lewis Carroll on the wings of inspiration.
His study of girls and their varying moods has left its impress on a world of little girls, and there is scarcely a home to-day, in England or America, where there is not a special niche reserved for “Alice in Wonderland,” while this interesting young lady has been served up in French, German, Italian, and Dutch, and the famous poem of
Father William
has even been translated into Arabic.
Whether the Chinese or the Japanese have discovered this funny little dream-child we cannot tell, but perhaps in time she may journey there and amuse the little maids with the jet-black hair, the creamy skin, and the slanting eyes.
Perhaps she may even stir them to laughter.

Surely all must agree that the
Gryphon
himself bears a strong resemblance to the Chinese dragons, and it
might
be, such are the wonders of Wonderland, that the
Mock Turtle
can be found in Japan.
Who knows!
At any rate the little English Alice never thought of the consequences of that “golden afternoon”; it was good to be in the boat, to pull through the rippling waters and stir a faint breeze as the oars

“with little skill—

By little arms are plied”;

then to gather under the friendly shade of the hayrick and listen to the wonder tale “with lots of nonsense in it.”

Dear little Alice of Long Ago!
To you we owe a debt of gratitude.
All the little Alices of the past and all the little Alices of the future will have their Wonderland because, while floating up and down the river with the real Alice, Lewis Carroll found the Golden Key.

CHAPTER VII.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND AND WHAT SHE DID THERE.

Acertain little girl who had been poring over “Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There” with eager interest, when asked which of the “Alices” she preferred, answered at once that she thought “Through the Looking-Glass” was “stupider” than “Alice in Wonderland,” and when people laughed she was surprised, for she had enjoyed both books.

Stupid
was certainly not the word she meant to use, nor yet
silly
, which might have suggested itself if she had stopped to think.
Nonsense
is really what she meant, and only very poor nonsense can be stupid or silly.
Good nonsense is exceedingly clever; it takes clever people to write it and only clever people can understand and appreciate it, so when the real Alice hoped “there would be nonsense in it” she was only looking for what she was sure to find: something odd, bright, and funny, with a laugh tucked away in unexpected places.

Nonsense is very ancient and respectable, tracing its origin back to the days of the Court Fool, whose office it was to make merry for the king and courtiers.
An undersized man was usually selected, one with some deformity being preferred, whereat the courtiers might laugh; one with sharp tongue and ready wit, to make the time fly.
He was clothed in “motley”—that is, his dress, cut in the fashion of the times, was of many ill-assorted hues, while the fool’s cap with its bells, and the bauble or rattle which he held in his hand, completed his grotesque appearance.

To the Fool was allowed the freedom of the court and a close intimacy with his royal master, to whom he could say what he pleased without fear of offense; his duty was to amuse, and the sharper his wit the better.
It was called nonsense, though a sword could not thrust with keener malice, and historic moments have often hung upon a fool’s jest.
The history of the Court Fool is the history of mediæval England, France, Spain, and Italy, of a time when a quick figure of speech might turn the tide of war, and the Fool could reel off his “nonsense” when others dared not speak.
No one was spared; the king himself was often the victim of the fool’s tongue, and under the guise of nonsense much wisdom lurked.

So it has been ever since; the Court Jester has passed away with other old court customs, but the nonsense that was “writ in books” lived after them, so good, so wholesome that we laugh at it with its old-time swing and sting.

The nonsense that we find in books to-day is of a higher order than that of the poor little Court Fool who, swaggering outwardly, trembled inwardly, as he sent his barbed shaft of wit against some lordly breast.
The wisdom hides in the simple fun of everyday that makes life a thing of sunshine and holds the shadows back.

Lewis Carroll had this gift of nonsense more than any other writer of his time.
Dickens and Thackeray possessed wit and humor of a high quality, but they could not command so large an audience, for children turn to healthy nonsense as sunflowers to the sun, and Lewis Carroll gave them all they wanted.
“Grown-ups,” too, began to listen, detecting behind the fun much, perhaps, which had escaped even the author himself, until he put on his “grown-up” glasses and began to ponder.

Where the real charm lies in “Alice in Wonderland” would be very difficult to say.
If a thousand children were asked to pick out their favorite parts, it is probable that not ten of them would think alike.
A great many would say “I like
any
part,” and really with such a fascinating book how can one choose?
The very opening is enough to cure any little girl of drowsiness on a summer day, and the picture of the pompous little
White Rabbit
with his bulging waistcoat and his imposing watch chain, for all the world like an everyday Englishman, is a type no doubt that the lively little girls and the grave young “don” knew pretty well.

Every page gives one something to think about.
To begin with, the fact that
Alice
is dreaming, is plain from the beginning, and that very odd sensation of falling through space often comes during the first few moments of sleep.
A busy dreamer can accomplish a great deal in a very short time, as we all know, and the most remarkable things happen in the simplest way.
There is a story, for instance, of one little girl, who, after a nice warm bath, was carried to bed and tucked in up to her rosy chin.
Her heavy eyes shut immediately and lo!
in half a minute she was back in the big porcelain tub, splashing about like a little mermaid; then nurse pulled the stopper out, and through the waste-pipe went water, small girl, and all.
When she opened her eyes with a start, she found she had been dreaming
not quite two minutes
.
So suppose the real Alice had been dreaming a half an hour; it was quite long enough to skip through “Wonderland,” and to have delightful and curious things constantly happening.

It was the
White Rabbit
talking to himself that first attracted her, but a short stay in “Wonderland” got her quite used to all sorts of animals and their funny talk, and the way
she
had of growing larger or smaller on the shortest notice was very puzzling and amusing.
How like real people was this dream-child; how many everyday folks find themselves too small for great places, and too great for the small ones, and how many experiments they try to make themselves larger or smaller!
You see Lewis Carroll thought of all this, though he did not spoil his story by stopping to explain.
It is, indeed, poor nonsense that has to be explained every step of the way.

The dream “Alice” just at first was apt to cry if anything unusual or unpleasant happened; a bad habit with some children, the
real
Alice was given to understand.
At any rate, when she drank out of the bottle that tasted of “cherry tart, custard, pineapple, roast turkey, toffy, and hot buttered toast,” and found herself growing smaller and smaller, she cried, because she was only ten inches high and could not possibly reach the Golden Key on the glass table.
Then she took herself to task very sharply, saying: “Come, there’s no use in crying like that!
I advise you to leave off this minute!”

“She generally gave herself very good advice (though she seldom followed it), and sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to bring tears into her eyes, and once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having cheated herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself, for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people.
‘But it’s no use now,’ thought poor Alice, ‘to pretend to be two people, when there’s hardly enough left of me to make
one
respectable person.’”

Then when she found the little glass box with a cake in it marked “
Eat Me
” in currants, she decided that if she ate it something different might happen, for otherwise she would go out like a candle if she grew any smaller.
Of course, as soon as she swallowed the whole cake, she took a start and soon stood nine feet high in her slippers.

“‘Curiouser and curiouser!’
cried Alice (she was so surprised that for the moment she quite forgot to speak good English), ‘now I’m opening out like the largest telescope that ever was.
Good-bye, feet!’
(for when she looked down at her feet they seemed to be almost out of sight, they were getting so far off.) ‘Oh, my poor little feet!
I wonder who will put on your shoes and stockings for you now, dears?
I’m sure
I
shan’t be able!
I shall be a great deal too far off to trouble myself about you; you must manage the best way you can; but I must be kind to them,’ thought Alice, ‘or perhaps they won’t walk the way I want to go!
Let me see: I’ll give them a new pair of boots every Christmas.’”

“And she went on planning to herself how she would manage it.
‘They must go by the carrier,’ she thought; ‘and how funny it’ll seem, sending presents to one’s own feet, and how odd the directions will look!

Alice’s Right Foot, Esq.,

Hearthrug,

near the Fender,

(with Alice’s love).

Oh, dear, what nonsense I’m talking.’”

Perhaps it was just here that the children’s merriment broke forth; the idea of
Alice
being nine feet high was
too
ridiculous, but the poor dream “Alice” didn’t think so, for she sat down and began to cry again.

“‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself,’ said Alice, ‘a great girl like you’ (she might well say this) ‘to go on crying in this way!
Stop this moment I tell you!’
But she went on all the same, shedding gallons of tears until there was a large pool all around her about four inches deep and reaching half down the hall.”

This change she found more puzzling still: everything seemed mixed up, the Multiplication Table, Geography, even the verses which had been familiar to her from babyhood.
She tried to say “
How doth the little busy bee
,” but the words would not come right; instead she began repeating, in a hoarse, strange voice, the following noble lines:

“How doth the little crocodile

Improve his shining tail,

And pour the waters of the Nile

On every golden scale!

“How cheerfully he seems to grin,

How neatly spreads his claws,

And welcomes little fishes in,

With gently smiling jaws!”

Naturally this produced a sensation, for where is the child who speaks English who does not know that the busy bee “improves the shining hours!”

When the book was translated into French, however, this odd little rhyme not being known to the French children, the translator, M.
Henri Bué, had to substitute something else which they could understand—one of their own French rhymes made into a parody of La Fontaine’s “Maître Corbeau” (Master Raven).

When
Alice
began to shrink again, she went suddenly
splash
into that immense pool of tears she had shed when she was nine feet high.
Now
she was only two feet high and the water was up to her chin.
It was so salty, being tear-water, that she thought she had fallen into the sea, and in this sly fashion Lewis Carroll managed to smuggle in a timely word about the sad way some little girls have of shedding “oceans of tears” on the most trifling occasion.

It was on this briny trip that she fell in with the numbers of queer animals who had also taken refuge in the “Pool of Tears,” from the
Mouse
to the
Lory
, who had all fallen into the water and were eagerly swimming toward the shore.
They gained it at last and sat there, “the birds with draggled feathers, the animals with their fur clinging close to them, and all dripping wet, cross, and uncomfortable,” including
Alice
herself, whose long hair hung wet and straggling on her shoulders.

The
Lory
, of all the odd animals, was probably the oddest.
Alice
found herself talking familiarly with them all, and entering into quite a lengthy argument with the
Lory
in particular about how to get dry.
But the
Lory
“turned sulky and would only say: ‘I am older than you and must know better,’ and this ‘Alice’ would not allow without knowing how old it was, and as the ‘Lory’ positively refused to tell its age, there was nothing more to be said.”

Lewis Carroll himself made some interesting notes on the life history of this remarkable animal, which were first produced in
The Rectory Umbrella
long before he thought of popping it into “Wonderland.”
“This creature,” he writes, “is, we believe, a species of parrot.
Southey informs us that it is a bird of gorgeous plumery [plumage], and it is our private opinion that there never existed more than one, whose history, as far as practicable, we will now lay before our readers.”

“The time and place of the Lory’s birth is uncertain; the egg from which it was hatched was most probably, to judge from the colour of the bird, one of those magnificent Easter eggs which our readers have doubtless seen.
The experiment of hatching an Easter egg is at any rate worth trying.”

After a lengthy and confusing description he winds up as follows:

“Having thus stated all we know and a great deal we don’t know on this interesting subject, we must conclude.”

Alice
looked upon this domineering old bird of uncertain age quite as a matter of course, as, indeed, she looked upon everything that happened in Wonderland.