Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Decoded

by David Day

  This was probably a judicious way of describing natural history, as the construction of this new temple to science had largely been financed by the Oxford University Press’s sales of “the First Book of God,” the Oxford Bible.

  The museum was also the first major building project undertaken by Dean Liddell in an ambitious plan for the architectural expansion and transformation of the University of Oxford. With Dean Liddell and Canon Arthur Stanley’s recommendation, Dr. Acland was advised concerning the museum’s architectural design and decor by John Ruskin, the high priest of the then fashionable neo-Gothic architecture.

  Carroll gives a clue to the identity of the White Rabbit’s house when Alice hears “a crash of broken glass.” Alice, we are told, assumes the White Rabbit has fallen through “a cucumber-frame, or something of the sort.” After a few other crashes, she thinks: “What a number of cucumber frames there must be!”

  To solve this riddle, we must look to popular key phrases of the time. “Cucumber frame” was the Victorian term for a glass greenhouse. One of the great events of this era was the 1851 Great Exhibition in the spectacular exhibition halls of the Crystal Palace, in London’s Hyde Park. It was a building enthusiastically described in a letter by Carroll to his sister Elizabeth as a “fairyland.” The Crystal Palace was the world’s first massive prefabricated glass-and-iron structure. Although it proved to be a great success, its initial detractors in the press frequently quoted John Ruskin’s opinion that it was essentially “a cucumber frame between two chimneys.”

  Alas! It was too late to wish that! She went on growing, and growing, and very soon had to kneel down on the floor: in another minute there was not even room for this, and she tried the effect of lying down with one elbow against the door, and the other arm curled round her head. Still she went on growing, and, as a last resource, she put one arm out of the window, and one foot up the chimney, and said to herself “Now I can do no more, whatever happens. What will become of me?”

  Luckily for Alice, the little magic bottle had now had its full effect, and she grew no larger: still it was very uncomfortable, and, as there seemed to be no sort of chance of her ever getting out of the room again, no wonder she felt unhappy.

  The Natural History Museum’s architects attempted to integrate this new technology into their High Gothic Revival structure by installing an iron-and-glass roof that would allow natural light into its central exhibition hall. However, the builders’ expertise with this new technology was not on par with that of the Crystal Palace engineers, and the roof collapsed. At considerable cost, it had to be rebuilt. This explains Alice’s remark: “I wonder what they will do next! If they had any sense, they’d take the roof off.”

  A decade later, Lewis Carroll wrote a satirical squib entitled “The Blank Cheque” that reflects on the construction of the “High Art” Gothic Natural History Museum. Besides its “cucumber frames,” the White Rabbit’s house appears to have a great number of windows and chimneys in common with the neo-Gothic museum.

  In “The Blank Cheque,” a thinly veiled characterization of Dean Liddell’s wife describes the construction of “houses that were all windows and chimneys—what they call ‘High Art,’ I believe. We tried a conservatory once on the High-Art principle, and (would you believe it?) the man stuck the roof up on a lot of rods like so many knitting needles! Of course it soon came down about our ears, and we had to do it all over again.” The conservatory would have been understood by all to be Oxford’s Natural History Museum.

  Elias Ashmole was the model for the theosophical White Rabbit.

  ROSICRUCIAN RABBIT HOUSE The natural history collection of the University of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum (including its unique dodo specimen) formed the basis of the new Oxford University Museum of Natural History. The founder and curator of the Ashmolean was the model for Carroll’s theosophical White Rabbit, ELIAS ASHMOLE (1617–1692), who was also a physician, antiquary, astrologer, alchemist, Freemason and member of the Royal Society. Furthermore, he was the adopted son of William Backhouse, a Fellow of Carroll’s own Christ Church and a celebrated early Rosicrucian alchemist.

  Just as the Wonderland White Rabbit was a herald to the King of Hearts, so Elias Ashmole was appointed Windsor Herald—an officer of the College of Arms—to King James I. And like the White Rabbit in Wonderland’s royal court, Elias Ashmole became an authority on court protocol and ceremony.

  Ashmole is also easily linked to the mythological White Rabbit through his coat of arms, which is surmounted by the figure of the Greco-Roman god Hermes, or Mercury, the herald to the Olympian gods. Like the White Rabbit, Mercury was a psychopomp. He was the underworld guide for both dreamers and the dead. The White Rabbit guided Alice down into the underground world of Wonderland; Mercury guided Persephone from Hades back to the living world.

  In the Hermetic alchemical tradition, Mercury was the Medieval Latin Mercurius, who was also the Greco-Egyptian Hermes Trismegistus: the father of alchemy and the supposed author of the sacred ancient alchemical text the Emerald Tablet. Curiously, the introductory engraving of Ashmole’s most important alchemical work, Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum (1652), displays an emblematic border with rabbits feeding in a garden.

  Ashmole’s coat of arms contains a clue to his other identity.

  Like the White Rabbit, Mercury was a psychopomp, or “guide of souls.”

  The title of this chapter, “The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill,” is also directly related to the construction of the Museum of Natural History. Given that the Oxford White Rabbit, Dr. Acland, had to submit Dean Liddell’s expenditure bill to the Congregation—the university’s parliament of senior members—for payment (and keeping in mind that Liddell rhymes with “fiddle” and sounds like “little”) the title can be translated to read, “Dr. Acland Sends in a Liddell Bill.”

  “Liddell Bill” it may have been, but it certainly wasn’t little. It was an enormous one that had to be reduced and redrafted. Carroll opposed the bill and wanted to know who was going to pay, and consequently allowed Alice to provide the indignant answer. Rather than footing the bill, she discovers she “can kick a little,” and soundly boots the unfortunate little lizard Bill—or “Liddell Bill”—out of the house.

  “It was much pleasanter at home,” thought poor Alice, “when one wasn’t always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered about by mice and rabbits. I almost wish I hadn’t gone down that rabbit-hole—and yet—and yet—it’s rather curious, you know, this sort of life! I do wonder what can have happened to me! When I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one! There ought to be a book written about me, that there ought! And when I grow up, I’ll write one—but I’m grown up now,” she added in a sorrowful tone; “at least there’s no room to grow up any more here.”

  “But then,” thought Alice, “shall I never get any older than I am now? That’ll be a comfort, one way—never to be an old woman—but then—always to have lessons to learn! Oh, I shouldn’t like that!”

  “Oh, you foolish Alice!” she answered herself. “How can you learn lessons in here? Why, there’s hardly room for you, and no room at all for any lesson-books!”

  And so she went on, taking first one side and then the other, and making quite a conversation of it altogether; but after a few minutes she heard a voice outside, and stopped to listen.

  An interesting aside to the disputes over the Liddell Bill suggests that the White Rabbit’s Pat the gardener was the Museum’s Irish stonemason JAMES O’SHEA. Under the direction of John Ruskin, O’Shea was charged with creating a “stone garden” in the form of decorative carvings of plants and animals throughout the museum. When funds ran low, the Congregation refused to pay for any further work. A vengeful O’Shea proceeded—without pay—to carve caricatures of college authorities on the faces of parrots and owls around the entrance to the building. Humourless Congregationalists had to pay to have the creatures’ faces removed.

 
James O’Shea: Revenge by gargoyle.

  The identity of Bill the Lizard gives this episode another level of interpretation—and we discover that we must also deal with another bill and another house entirely. On the level of national politics, Bill the Lizard was meant to be BENJAMIN DISRAELI (1804–1881), who became prime minister in 1874. The transformation of Benjamin Disraeli into Bill the Lizard can be achieved by taking the letters in “B. Lizard” and rearranging them to give us “B. Dzrali,” a phonetic anagram for “B. Disraeli.”

  Disraeli: Finance minister and future PM.

  “Mary Ann! Mary Ann!” said the voice. “Fetch me my gloves this moment!” Then came a little pattering of feet on the stairs. Alice knew it was the Rabbit coming to look for her, and she trembled till she shook the house, quite forgetting that she was now about a thousand times as large as the Rabbit, and had no reason to be afraid of it.

  Presently the Rabbit came up to the door, and tried to open it; but, as the door opened inwards, and Alice’s elbow was pressed hard against it, that attempt proved a failure. Alice heard it say to itself “Then I’ll go round and get in at the window.”

  “That you won’t!” thought Alice, and, after waiting till she fancied she heard the Rabbit just under the window, she suddenly spread out her hand, and made a snatch in the air. She did not get hold of anything, but she heard a little shriek and a fall, and a crash of broken glass, from which she concluded that it was just possible it had fallen into a cucumber-frame, or something of the sort.

  Gladstone: Brawls with Disraeli in Looking-Glass.

  The anagram is even more appropriate given that “Dizzy” was the nickname given him by the popular press. In one famous Punch cartoon, Dizzy is a circus entertainer climbing what he called “the greasy pole” of politics; in Wonderland, he is the Lizard climbing on ladders up onto the roof, then down a chimney. In Through the Looking-Glass, Disraeli is caricatured twice, once as the man in the paper hat on the train with Alice, and in the second case as the Unicorn in a brawl with his great opponent the Lion—that other great Victorian prime minister, William Ewart Gladstone.

  Illustration for The Hunting of the Snark—with lizard suggested by Carroll—by Henry Holiday (1839–1927).

  Aside from anagrams and climbing skills, there is one other reason that Disraeli is portrayed as the Lizard. Just as Bill the Lizard was kicked out of the Wonderland house, in 1852 Disraeli was the chancellor of the exchequer—finance minister—who first introduced what is now the modern form of income tax—that is, a variable income-based taxation system. The income tax bill became law, but it caused such a furor that Dizzy was kicked out of the House as chancellor, and his party ended up in the opposition benches.

  Next came an angry voice—the Rabbit’s—“Pat! Pat! Where are you?” And then a voice she had never heard before, “Sure then I’m here! Digging for apples, yer honour!”

  “Digging for apples, indeed!” said the Rabbit angrily. “Here! Come and help me out of this!” (Sounds of more broken glass.)

  “Now tell me, Pat, what’s that in the window?”

  “Sure, it’s an arm, yer honour!” (He pronounced it “arrum.”)

  “An arm, you goose! Who ever saw one that size? Why, it fills the whole window!”

  “Sure, it does, yer honour: but it’s an arm for all that.”

  “Well, it’s got no business there, at any rate: go and take it away!”

  Further confirmation that Disraeli is the Lizard comes in Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark (1876). There we find an illustration with a little pickpocket lizard at work with his hand in someone’s pocket. He is obviously a tax-collecting lizard, as we can clearly see a paper labelled “income tax” protruding from his own pocket. It appears Carroll continued to blame Disraeli for the institution of the income-based taxation system. In another poem, Carroll carps that “the worst of human ills … are ‘little bills’!” This also goes some way toward explaining Alice’s comment, “Why, they seem to put everything upon Bill!”

  Like the sorcerer who returns to the chaos brought about by his apprentice, the White Rabbit tries to find a way to stop Alice from destroying his house. After many attempts, he finally orders delivery of a “barrowful” of white pebbles that transform into little cakes. When Alice eats one, she becomes small enough to escape through the door. Once outside, she flees from a mob of animals and runs off into a wood.

  She finds, though, that her predicament is worse than ever. She has shrunk down to three inches and is almost trampled by an over-friendly giant puppy.

  There was a long silence after this, and Alice could only hear whispers now and then; such as, “Sure, I don’t like it, yer honour, at all, at all!” “Do as I tell you, you coward!” and at last she spread out her hand again, and made another snatch in the air. This time there were two little shrieks, and more sounds of broken glass. “What a number of cucumber-frames there must be!” thought Alice. “I wonder what they’ll do next! As for pulling me out of the window, I only wish they could! I’m sure I don’t want to stay in here any longer!”

  She waited for some time without hearing anything more: at last came a rumbling of little cart-wheels, and the sound of a good many voices all talking together: she made out the words: “Where’s the other ladder?—Why, I hadn’t to bring but one. Bill’s got the other—Bill! Fetch it here, lad!—Here, put ’em up at this corner—No, tie ’em together first—they don’t reach half high enough yet—Oh, they’ll do well enough. Don’t be particular—Here, Bill! Catch hold of this rope—Will the roof bear?—Mind that loose slate—Oh, it’s coming down! Heads below!” (a loud crash)—“Now, who did that?—It was Bill, I fancy—Who’s to go down the chimney?—Nay, I shan’t! You do it!—That I won’t, then!—Bill’s to go down—Here, Bill! The master says you’re to go down the chimney!”

  The above-ground identity of the “enormous puppy” has always been something of a puzzle. A clue, though, may be in its habitat: the grounds of the Natural History Museum. The most celebrated event to take place in the newly constructed museum was the 1860 debate between Thomas Huxley and Samuel Wilberforce, the bishop of Oxford, over Darwin’s new theory of evolution.

  As the critic William Empson observes, Darwinian ideas permeate Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. This is especially evident in the Pool of Tears and, as we shall see, in the Duchess’s kitchen. There must have been some reason for Carroll to illustrate apes with dodos and other animals emerging from the salty primeval waters of the Pool of Tears (in both the Under Ground and Wonderland versions).

  Charles Darwin: His ideas permeate Wonderland.

  We do know that in the years before and during the composition of Wonderland, Carroll took considerable notice of the dispute over Darwin’s 1859 publication of On the Origin of Species, and that Carroll’s library contained twenty books on Darwinian evolution. Indeed, one of these—an argument for what is now called creation science and intelligent design—was entitled Paley’s Evidence of Christianity, which might have suggested the title of Wonderland’s final chapter: “Alice’s Evidence.”

  “Oh! So Bill’s got to come down the chimney, has he?” said Alice to herself. “Why, they seem to put everything upon Bill! I wouldn’t be in Bill’s place for a good deal: this fireplace is narrow, to be sure; but I think I can kick a little!”

  She drew her foot as far down the chimney as she could, and waited till she heard a little animal (she couldn’t guess of what sort it was) scratching and scrambling about in the chimney close above her: then, saying to herself “This is Bill,” she gave one sharp kick, and waited to see what would happen next.

  The first thing she heard was a general chorus of “There goes Bill!” then the Rabbit’s voice along—“Catch him, you by the hedge!” then silence, and then another confusion of voices—“Hold up his head—Brandy now—Don’t choke him—How was it, old fellow? What happened to you? Tell us all about it!”

  With all this in mind, it has been suggested that the “enormous p
uppy” was meant to be CHARLES DARWIN (1809–1882). The puppy in Carroll’s mind (but not in that of his illustrator, John Tenniel) may have been a beagle, and consequently could have been an allusion both to Darwin’s ship the Beagle and to his book (owned by Carroll) The Voyage of the Beagle.

  PEBBLES AND CALCULUS What is being suggested by these “little pebbles” and their magical power to transform? The Latin for “pebble” is calculus, which is also the name of a branch of mathematics that concerns itself with change, and the manipulation of the infinitely large and the infinitely small. Notable as well is the delivery of a “barrowful” of pebbles: it was Isaac Barrow, in tandem with Isaac Newton, who discovered the formulation of infinitesimal calculus—a subject about which Alice has “not the smallest idea.”

  Why do the pebbles become cakes? The subject of Lewis Carroll’s essay “Feeding the Mind” (1884) suggests they may be metaphorically food for thought, an idea that relates to Plato’s observation that theorems “are to be enjoyed as much as possible, as if they were ambrosia and nectar.” Cakes are also treats, or in mathematical terminology, “treatments,” meaning experiments. This interpretation perhaps explains why the first cake eaten by Alice in the great hall had no effect until she decided to “set to work, and very soon finished off the cake.”

  Last came a little feeble, squeaking voice (“That’s Bill,” thought Alice), “Well, I hardly know—No more, thank ye; I’m better now—but I’m a deal too flustered to tell you—all I know is, something comes at me like a Jack-in-the-box, and up I goes like a sky-rocket!”