The Complete Alice in Wonderland (2 page)

“Sometimes to tease us—and perhaps being really tired—Mr. Dodgson would stop suddenly and say, ‘And that’s all till next time.’ ‘Ah, but it is next time,’ would be the exclamation from all three; and after some persuasion the story would start afresh.

“Another day, perhaps the story would begin in the boat, and Mr. Dodgson, in the middle of telling a thrilling adventure, would pretend to go fast asleep, to our great dismay.”

Carroll, we know now, was indeed growing weary of the endless storytelling, as he wrote this aside in his diary on August 6, 1862: “... Had to go on with my interminable fairy-tale of ‘
Alice’s Adventures
.’” We are fortunate that he did so, and that Alice persisted in asking for more stories!

Surely, the tale would have died if Alice had not insisted on its immortality. Captain Caryl Hargreaves (Alice’s son), sharing his mother’s memoirs with the world in 1932, revealed the following additional secrets which bring us fuller understanding:

“Nearly all of
Alice’s Adventures Under Ground
[the first draft of
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
] was told on that blazing summer afternoon with the heat haze shimmering over the meadows where the party landed to shelter for a while in the shadow cast by the haycocks near Godstow. I [Alice] think the stories he told us that afternoon must have been better than usual, because I have such a distinct recollection of the expedition, and also, on the next day I started to pester him to write down the story for me, which I had never done before. It was due to my ‘going on, going on’ and importunity that, after saying he would think about it, he eventually gave the hesitating promise which started him writing it down at all.

It was only long after Carroll and Alice became famous—indeed, timeless and unforgettable—that Carroll set forth his own full awareness of the importance of those lost summer days. It is with his most heartfelt and revelatory words that our understanding comes to its fulfillment:

“Many a day had we rowed together on that quiet stream—the three little maidens and I—and many a fairy tale had been extemporised for their benefit—whether it were at times when the narrator was ‘i’ the vein,’ and fancies unsought came crowding thick upon him, or at times when the jaded Muse was goaded into action, and plodded meekly on, more because she had to say something than that she had something to say—yet none of these many tales got written down: they lived and died, like summer midges, each in its own golden afternoon until there came a day when, as it chanced, one of my little listeners petitioned that the tale might be written out for her. That was many a year ago, but I distinctly remember, now as I write, how, in a desperate attempt to strike out some new line of fairy-lore, I had sent my heroine straight down a rabbit-hole, to begin with, without the least idea what was to happen afterwards. And so, to please a child I loved (I don’t remember any other motive), I printed in manuscript, and illustrated with my own crude designs—designs that rebelled against every law of Anatomy or Art (for I had never had a lesson in drawing)—the book which I have just had published in facsimile. In writing it out, I added many fresh ideas, which seemed to grow of themselves upon the original stock; and many more added themselves when, years afterwards, I wrote it all over again for publication: but (this may interest some readers of ‘Alice’ to know) every such idea and nearly every word of the dialogue,
came of itself
. Sometimes an idea comes at night, when I have had to get up and strike a light to note it down—sometimes when out on a lonely winter walk, when I have had to stop, and with half-frozen fingers jot down a few words which should keep the new-born idea from perishing—but whenever or however it comes,
it comes of itself
. I cannot set invention going like a clock, by any voluntary winding up: nor do I believe that any
original
writing (and what other writing is worth preserving?) was ever so produced. ... ‘Alice’ and the ‘Looking-Glass’ are made up almost wholly of bits and scraps, single ideas which came of themselves. Poor they may have been; but at least they were the best I had to offer ...”

“Stand forth, then, from the shadowy past, ‘Alice,’ the child of my dreams. Full many a year has slipped away, since that ‘golden afternoon’ that gave thee birth, but I can call it up almost as clearly as if it were yesterday—the cloudless blue above, the watery mirror below, the boat drifting idly on its way, the tinkle of the drops that fell from the oars, as they waved so sleepily to and fro, and (the one bright gleam of life in all the slumberous scene) the three eager faces, hungry for news of fairy-land, and who would not be said ‘nay’ to: from whose lips ‘tell us a story, please,’ had all the stern immutability of Fate!”

ALICE’S ADVENTURES

IN WONDERLAND

By

LEWIS CARROLL

With Illustrations By

JOHN TENNIEL

Preface to the Seventy-Ninth Thousand

AS ALICE is about to appear on the Stage, and as the lines beginning: “’tis the voice of the Lobster” were found to be too fragmentary for dramatic purposes four lines have been added to the first stanza and six to the second, while the Oyster has been developed into a Panther.

Christmas
, 1886

Preface to the Eighty-Sixth Thousand

ENQUIRIES have been so often addressed to me, as to whether any answer to the Hatter’s Riddle can be imagined, that I may as well put on record here what seems to me to be a fairly appropriate answer, vis. “Because it can produce a few notes, though they are
very
flat; and it is
nevar
(
sic
, intentional by the author as “raven” written backwards) put with the wrong end in front! This, however, is merely an afterthought: the Riddle, as originally invented, had no answer at all.

For this eighty-sixth thousand, fresh electrotypes have been taken from the wood-blocks (which, never having been used for printing from, are in as good condition as when first cut in 1865), and the whole book has been set up afresh with new type. If the artistic qualities of this re-issue fall short, in any particular, of those possessed by the original issue, it will not be for want of painstaking on the part of author, publisher, or printer.

I take this opportunity of announcing that the Nursery “Alice,” hitherto priced at four shillings, net, is now to be had on the same terms as the ordinary shilling picture-books—although I feel sure that it is, in every quality (except the
text
itself, on which I am not qualified to pronounce), greatly superior to them. Four shillings was a perfectly reasonable price to charge, considering the very heavy initial outlay I had incurred: still, as the Public have practically said “We will
not
give more than a shilling for a picture-book, however artistically got-up,” I am content to reckon my outlay on the book as so much dead loss, and, rather than let the little ones, for whom it was written, go without it, I am selling it at a price which is, to me, much the same thing as
giving
it away.

Christmas
, 1896

A Note on the Text

DUE TO the limitations of electronic formatting—and the difficulties caused by the framing of customizable font sizes—the poem “The Mouse’s Tale” does not appear in the shape of a tail (as it originally appeared in the book). The remainder of the text of
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
, however, has been meticulously prepared with full respect toward the author’s own intentions.

Prefatory Poem

All in the golden afternoon

Full leisurely we glide;

For both our oars, with little skill,

By little arms are plied,

While little hands make vain pretence

Our wanderings to guide.

Ah, cruel Three! In such an hour,

Beneath such dreamy weather,

To beg a tale of breath too weak

To stir the tiniest feather!

Yet what can one poor voice avail

Against three tongues together?

Imperious Prima flashes forth

Her edict “to begin it”;

In gentler tones Secunda hopes

“There will be nonsense in it!”

While Tertia interrupts the tale

Not
more
than once a minute.

Anon, to sudden silence won,

In fancy they pursue

The dream-child moving through a land

Of wonders wild and new,

In friendly chat with bird or beast—

And half believe it true.

And ever, as the story drained

The wells of fancy dry,

And faintly strove that weary one

To put the subject by,

“The rest next time—” “It
is
next time!”

The happy voices cry.

Thus grew the tale of Wonderland:

Thus slowly, one by one,

Its quaint events were hammered out—

And now the tale is done,

And home we steer, a merry crew,

Beneath the setting sun.

Alice! A childish story take,

And, with a gentle hand,

Lay it where Childhood’s dreams are twined

In Memory’s mystic band,

Like pilgrim’s wither’d wreath of flowers

Pluck’d in a far-off land.

Chapter I

Down the Rabbit-Hole

ALICE WAS beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?”

So she was considering, in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.

There was nothing so
very
remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so
very
much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!” (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but, when the Rabbit actually
took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket
, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and, burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.