Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Decoded

by David Day

  The episode in which the Mouse attempts to dry the other creatures after they emerge from the Pool of Tears relates to Heraclitus’s emphasis on the importance of the condition of the soul. He believed that worldly pleasures made the soul moist and helpless like a drunken man, but when the soul was dry, it became rational and virtuous.

  Like Heraclitus’s lectures, the Mouse’s lessons are so dry that his bored audience remains entirely uninterested, and “as wet as ever.”

  Nor does it end there. Something continues to make Alice rapidly and exponentially smaller. With only moments to spare, a very frightened Alice discovers the White Rabbit’s fan is responsible for this chilling effect on her size. She drops it just in time to stop herself from entirely vanishing.

  Slowly, Alice is coming to understand that—like the food and drink in Wonderland—many emblematic objects also possess certain powers. As white rabbits are sometimes used as magicians’ props, it should not be such a surprise that the Rabbit’s white gloves and fan have transforming powers.

  As she said this she looked down at her hands, and was surprised to see that she had put on one of the Rabbit’s little white kid gloves while she was talking. “How can I have done that?” she thought. “I must be growing small again.” She got up and went to the table to measure herself by it, and found that, as nearly as she could guess, she was now about two feet high, and was going on shrinking rapidly: she soon found out that the cause of this was the fan she was holding, and she dropped it hastily, just in time to avoid shrinking away altogether.

  “That was a narrow escape!” said Alice, a good deal frightened at the sudden change, but very glad to find herself still in existence. “And now for the garden!” And she ran with all speed back to the little door; but, alas! the little door was shut again, and the little golden key was lying on the glass table as before, “and things are worse than ever,” thought the poor child, “for I never was so small as this before, never! And I declare it’s too bad, that it is!”

  As she said these words her foot slipped, and in another moment, splash! she was up to her chin in salt water. Her first idea was that she had somehow fallen into the sea, “and in that case I can go back by railway,” she said to herself. (Alice had been to the seaside once in her life, and had come to the general conclusion that, wherever you go to on the English coast, you find a number of bathing machines in the sea, some children digging in the sand with wooden spades, then a row of lodging houses, and behind them a railway station.) However, she soon made out that she was in the pool of tears which she had wept when she was nine feet high.

  Just when it seems to the tiny Alice that her circumstances cannot get worse, she slips into a flood of tears and is carried down the hall and beyond. The entire “Pool of Tears” chapter is a characteristic Carrollian charade: an elaborate tableau built on the cliché “drowning in one’s tears.” It is a typical Lewis Carroll joke to amuse children with a literal interpretation of a common expression or figure of speech.

  But it is more than a joke. We are also told that Alice’s “first idea was that she had somehow fallen into the sea.” This thought is followed by a flight of fancy involving her memories of railway journeys to the seaside, where she had observed the very Victorian ritual of sea-bathing with the aid of “bathing machines”—changing rooms on wheels for overly modest swimmers.

  SIZE AND TEARS In “The Pool of Tears,” Alice despairs over her constantly fluctuating size. In this, Carroll has created a kind of charade whose answer is “Size and Tears.” This is the name of a poem he wrote during the time (1863) he was composing Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The title is a pun directly linking “sighs and tears” to “size and tiers,” a mathematician’s pun that suggests what Isaac Newton called fluents and fluxions—an early form of calculus used in solving problems in dynamics.

  Newton’s fluents and fluxions—terms for functions and their derivatives—are more obviously stated as “rates of change.” Like calculus, Newton’s fluents and fluxions can be described as a dynamic combination of algebra and geometry that measures curves and solves problems that static mathematics can’t because things are constantly changing (as Alice would say) “at any rate.”

  Converting tears to tiers is a typical Carrollian pun. A tier is a common term for levels in the step-by-step process of teaching mathematics. And as in calculus, the minutely sliced units of measurement that change from one infinitesimal moment to the next can be described as tiers.

  This process is also descriptive of Alice’s constant changes from one moment to the next; that is to say, she is caught up in the fluents and fluxions of size and tiers—or, stated another way, a flood of sighs and tears.

  This sighs/size and tears/tiers pun is, as we shall see later, also employed by Carroll in the sighs and tears of the Mock Turtle. Another example is in his poem “Melancholetta” (1862), in which he describes a weeping heroine in a theatre who looks up at the tiers of seats: “Her pensive glances wandered wide / From orchestra to rafter— / ‘Tier upon tier!’ she said, and sighed; / And silence followed after.”

  Carroll’s poem “Melancholetta” was based on Dürer’s allegorical engraving Melencolia I (1514).

  “I wish I hadn’t cried so much!” said Alice, as she swam about, trying to find her way out. “I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears! That will be a queer thing, to be sure! However, everything is queer to-day.”

  Just then she heard something splashing about in the pool a little way off, and she swam nearer to make out what it was: at first she thought it must be a walrus or hippopotamus, but then she remembered how small she was now, and she soon made out that it was only a mouse that had slipped in like herself.

  “Would it be of any use, now,” thought Alice, “to speak to this mouse? Everything is so out-of-the-way down here, that I should think very likely it can talk: at any rate, there’s no harm in trying.” So she began: “O Mouse, do you know the way out of this pool? I am very tired of swimming about here, O Mouse!” (Alice thought this must be the right way of speaking to a mouse: she had never done such a thing before, but she remembered having seen in her brother’s Latin Grammar, “A mouse—of a mouse—to a mouse—a mouse—O mouse!”) The mouse looked at her rather inquisitively, and seemed to her to wink with one of its little eyes, but it said nothing.

  Viewed in the context of the ancient Eleusinian Mysteries, Alice appears to have diminished not just in size but in status—from that of the presiding Great Goddess to that of one of her initiates, who must purify herself through ritual sea-bathing.

  While swimming in the Pool of Tears, Alice hears something enormous splashing about in the water with her. Forgetting how small she has become, she is surprised to discover the creature is not a hippopotamus but a mouse. Alice attempts to make polite conversation, but having never actually spoken to a mouse before, she has great difficulty finding the proper way to address the animal. Failing to get its attention in English, she then employs snatches of what little she knows of Latin and French.

  There are a number of private jokes here (and in the beginning of the following chapter) that have kept Carrollian scholars busy over the years. They relate to children’s lessons and books that would have been familiar to the Liddell girls. Martin Gardner credits Selwyn Goodacre for discovering the Latin grammar book belonging to Alice’s older brother Harry: the 1840 Comic Latin Grammar, written by Percival Leigh, a contributor to the weekly humour magazine Punch. It was a book owned by Carroll. Only one noun in the book is declined in full. It is not, however, mus, the Latin word for “mouse,” but rather interestingly enough musa, the Latin for “muse.”

  Hugh O’Brien appears to have identified Alice’s French lesson book, with its initial “chatte”-up line. Originally published in 1804, the book was rather ponderously entitled La Bagatelle: Intended to introduce children of three or four years old to some knowledge of the French Language. And Roger Lancelyn Green provides the solution t
o the origin of the Mouse’s dry-as-dust history lesson (at the opening of chapter 3): it proves to be directly quoted from Havilland Chepmell’s 1862 Short Course of History.

  The Chepmell history was exactly the kind of boring lessons-by-rote book that Carroll hated to see inflicted on children. The Liddell children were expected to study it, though, and it may provide a hint to the Mouse’s identity. For certainly, the person in charge of inflicting these prescribed lesson books on the sisters was the children’s governess, Miss Prickett.

  “Perhaps it doesn’t understand English,” thought Alice. “I daresay it’s a French mouse, come over with William the Conqueror.” (For, with all her knowledge of history, Alice had no very clear notion how long ago anything had happened.) So she began again: “Oú est ma chatte?” which was the first sentence in her French lesson-book. The Mouse gave a sudden leap out of the water, and seemed to quiver all over with fright. “Oh, I beg your pardon!” cried Alice hastily, afraid that she had hurt the poor animal’s feelings. “I quite forgot you didn’t like cats.”

  “Not like cats!” cried the Mouse, in a shrill, passionate voice. “Would you like cats if you were me?”

  In the Alice’s Adventures Under Ground version of the fairy tale, it is extremely likely that Lewis Carroll had MARY PRICKETT (1832–1920) in mind for the character of the Mouse. The daughter of the Trinity College butler, Prickett was twenty-six and unmarried when she became the Liddell children’s governess. Her life appeared to be entirely taken up with their care and education. And then, at the age of forty, Mary Prickett—remarkably, for the times—changed her life completely. She married a wealthy Oxford wine merchant, and for the next five decades was manager and proprietor of The Mitre inn, an historic seventeenth century coach-house on Oxford High Street.

  Mighty Mouse: Mary Prickett changed her life.

  Necessarily a rather strict and formal governess, Miss Prickett was also believed to be Carroll’s model for the Red Queen in Through the Looking-Glass. Carroll described the Red Queen in his “ ‘Alice’ on the Stage” as “the concentrated essence of all governesses!” In the first edition of Through the Looking-Glass, in “The Garden of Live Flowers” chapter, the Rose (Rhoda, one of the younger Liddells) says of the Red Queen: “She’s one of the thorny kind.” This is believed to be a private joke referring to “Pricks,” the children’s affectionate nickname for their governess.

  “Well, perhaps not,” said Alice in a soothing tone: “don’t be angry about it. And yet I wish I could show you our cat Dinah: I think you’d take a fancy to cats if you could only see her. She is such a dear quiet thing,” Alice went on, half to herself, as she swam lazily about in the pool, “and she sits purring so nicely by the fire, licking her paws and washing her face—and she is such a nice soft thing to nurse—and she’s such a capital one for catching mice—oh, I beg your pardon!” cried Alice again, for this time the Mouse was bristling all over, and she felt certain it must be really offended. “We won’t talk about her any more if you’d rather not.”

  “We indeed!” cried the Mouse, who was trembling down to the end of his tail. “As if I would talk on such a subject! Our family always hated cats: nasty, low, vulgar things! Don’t let me hear the name again!”

  Nonetheless, in Wonderland, Alice’s attempts to strike up a conversation with the Mouse fail miserably. This is largely because she isn’t quite able to see the world from the Mouse’s perspective. After her first gaffe with “ma chatte,” she prattles on about how wonderfully Dinah the cat is at catching mice and how valuable a neighbour’s dog is for its ability to kill rats. Later, in the company of birds, Alice will again create a stir when she proudly describes Dinah’s prowess in the slaughter of birds.

  Dinah was the actual name of one of the Liddell family’s two tabby cats. The other was called Villikins. The cats’ names come from “Villikins and His Dinah,” one of the most popular comic songs of the mid-Victorian period. Variations of this burlesque of an early nineteenth-century tragic folk song about star-crossed lovers was adapted many times: as “Sweet Betsy from Pike” in the U.S., “Dinki-di” in Australia and “The Anti-Confederation Song” in Newfoundland.

  “I won’t indeed!” said Alice, in a great hurry to change the subject of conversation. “Are you—are you fond—of—of dogs?” The Mouse did not answer, so Alice went on eagerly: “There is such a nice little dog near our house I should like to show you! A little bright-eyed terrier, you know, with oh, such long curly brown hair! And it’ll fetch things when you throw them, and it’ll sit up and beg for its dinner, and all sorts of things—I can’t remember half of them—and it belongs to a farmer, you know, and he says it’s so useful, it’s worth a hundred pounds! He says it kills all the rats and—oh dear!” cried Alice in a sorrowful tone, “I’m afraid I’ve offended it again!” For the Mouse was swimming away from her as hard as it could go, and making quite a commotion in the pool as it went.

  So she called softly after it, “Mouse dear! Do come back again, and we won’t talk about cats or dogs either, if you don’t like them!” When the Mouse heard this, it turned round and swam slowly back to her: its face was quite pale (with passion, Alice thought), and it said in a low trembling voice, “Let us get to the shore, and then I’ll tell you my history, and you’ll understand why it is I hate cats and dogs.”

  It was high time to go, for the pool was getting quite crowded with the birds and animals that had fallen into it: there was a Duck and a Dodo, a Lory and an Eaglet, and several other curious creatures. Alice led the way, and the whole party swam to the shore.

  Burlesques like “Villikins and His Dinah” were very much in vogue on the London stage at the time. Carroll could parody with the best of them, as he shows throughout Wonderland and Looking-Glass in his send-ups of well-known poems, rhymes and songs. He also published comic versions of serious works by such contemporary giants as Wordsworth, Tennyson and Longfellow.

  Dinah is called upon a number of times in Wonderland. Undoubtedly, this was because the real Alice—like the Wonderland Alice—loved to chat about her pet. Dinah is mentioned during the fall down the rabbit-hole, in the Pool of Tears, in the Caucus-race, in the White Rabbit’s house and even in the opening scene of Through the Looking-Glass, where she is the mother of two kittens, Kitty and Snowdrop, who also double as the Red and White Queens in the Looking-Glass chess game.

  At the end of “The Pool of Tears,” a repentant Alice promises not to bring up the subject of the offending carnivorous pets again. She is rejoined by the Mouse, and a number of other creatures, as they swim toward the shore.

  Chapter 3: A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale

  “I move that the meeting adjourn, for the immediate adoption of more energetic remedies—”

  THE DODO AND THE DODGSON On the bank of the Pool of Tears, Alice finds herself emerging with a variety of birds and animals from a kind of primordial soup. They are somewhat disgruntled as they discuss how they might best dry out. Alice begins chatting with two of the birds and has the strangest feeling that “she had known them all her life.” There are hints of Darwinian evolution here (in one of Tenniel’s engravings an ape can be seen, and in Carroll’s own drawings in the Under Ground manuscript, a pair of monkeys swim in the Pool of Tears), but as the creatures all seem capable of speech, the scene is perhaps also meant as a parody of the spiritualist craze of the time. Mediums often claimed they could communicate with the spirits of departed relatives through household pets such as dogs and parakeets.

  A CAUCUS-RACE AND A LONG TALE.

  They were indeed a queer-looking party that assembled on the bank—the birds with draggled feathers, the animals with their fur clinging close to them, and all dripping wet, cross, and uncomfortable.

  The first question of course was, how to get dry again: they had a consultation about this, and after a few minutes it seemed quite natural to Alice to find herself talking familiarly with them, as if she had known them all her life. Indeed, she had quite a long argument with
the Lory, who at last 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 no more to be said.

  After some discussion, the Mouse decides on the best way for everyone to dry out. With the strict authority of a schoolteacher, he demands silence and proceeds to deliver the driest of history lessons.

  As we have discovered, the Mouse’s lecture on the Norman kings is a direct quotation from a very boring lesson book of the time. Although the lecture is painfully dry, it does nothing to dry the wet animals, which prompts impatient remarks from the Lory, Duck, Eaglet and ultimately the Dodo.

  All these creatures have real-life identities that would be easily recognized by Alice and her sisters. Indeed, Alice is quite correct in her impression that “she had known them all her life.” Two were her sisters transformed into birds: LORINA CHARLOTTE LIDDELL (1849–1930) is the Lory—that is, a lorikeet, or small parrot—while the younger EDITH LIDDELL (1854–1876) is the Eaglet.

  Like the “golden afternoon” prelude poem and “The Pool of Tears,” this chapter contains several teasing private jokes meant for the Liddell sisters. The Lory-Lorina’s insistence that “I am older than you, and must know better” is reminiscent of her portrayal in the poem as “Imperious Prima” who “flashes forth / Her edict,” while the Eaglet-Edith’s curt interruption of the Dodo is entirely consistent with “Tertia” who “interrupts the tale / Not more than once a minute.”