Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Decoded

by David Day

  “So you did, old fellow!” said the others.

  “We must burn the house down!” said the Rabbit’s voice. And Alice called out as loud as she could, “If you do, I’ll set Dinah at you!”

  There was a dead silence instantly, and Alice thought to herself, “I wonder what they will do next! If they had any sense, they’d take the roof off.” After a minute or two, they began moving about again, and Alice heard the Rabbit say, “A barrowful will do, to begin with.”

  “A barrowful of what?” thought Alice. But she had not long to doubt, for the next moment a shower of little pebbles came rattling in at the window, and some of them hit her in the face. “I’ll put a stop to this,” she said to herself, and shouted out “You’d better not do that again!”, which produced another dead silence.

  Alice noticed with some surprise that the pebbles were all turning into little cakes as they lay on the floor, and a bright idea came into her head. “If I eat one of these cakes,” she thought, “it’s sure to make some change in my size; and as it can’t possibly make me larger, it must make me smaller, I suppose.”

  So she swallowed one of the cakes, and was delighted to find that she began shrinking directly. As soon as she was small enough to get through the door, she ran out of the house, and found quite a crowd of little animals and birds waiting outside. The poor little Lizard, Bill, was in the middle, being held up by two guinea-pigs, who were giving it something out of a bottle. They all made a rush at Alice the moment she appeared; but she ran off as hard as she could, and soon found herself safe in a thick wood.

  “The first thing I’ve got to do,” said Alice to herself, as she wandered about in the wood, “is to grow to my right size again; and the second thing is to find my way into that lovely garden. I think that will be the best plan.”

  It sounded an excellent plan, no doubt, and very neatly and simply arranged; the only difficulty was, that she had not the smallest idea how to set about it; and while she was peering about anxiously among the trees, a little sharp bark just over her head made her look up in a great hurry.

  An enormous puppy was looking down at her with large round eyes, and feebly stretching out one paw, trying to touch her. “Poor little thing!” said Alice, in a coaxing tone, and she tried hard to whistle to it; but she was terribly frightened all the time at the thought that it might be hungry, in which case it would be very likely to eat her up in spite of all her coaxing.

  Hardly knowing what she did, she picked up a little bit of stick, and held it out to the puppy; whereupon the puppy jumped into the air off all its feet at once, with a yelp of delight, and rushed at the stick, and made believe to worry it; then Alice dodged behind a great thistle, to keep herself from being run over; and the moment she appeared on the other side, the puppy made another rush at the stick, and tumbled head over heels in its hurry to get hold of it; then Alice, thinking it was very like having a game of play with a cart-horse, and expecting every moment to be trampled under its feet, ran round the thistle again; then the puppy began a series of short charges at the stick, running a very little way forwards each time and a long way back, and barking hoarsely all the while, till at last it sat down a good way off, panting, with its tongue hanging out of its mouth, and its great eyes half shut.

  This seemed to Alice a good opportunity for making her escape; so she set off at once, and ran till she was quite tired and out of breath, and till the puppy’s bark sounded quite faint in the distance.

  “And yet what a dear little puppy it was!” said Alice, as she leant against a buttercup to rest herself, and fanned herself with one of the leaves. “I should have liked teaching it tricks very much, if—if I’d only been the right size to do it! Oh dear! I’d nearly forgotten that I’ve got to grow up again! Let me see—how is it to be managed? I suppose I ought to eat or drink something or other; but the great question is, what?”

  The great question certainly was, what? Alice looked all round her at the flowers and the blades of grass, but she did not see anything that looked like the right thing to eat or drink under the circumstances. There was a large mushroom growing near her, about the same height as herself; and, when she had looked under it, and on both sides of it, and behind it, it occurred to her that she might as well look and see what was on the top of it.

  She stretched herself up on tiptoe, and peeped over the edge of the mushroom, and her eyes immediately met those of a large caterpillar, that was sitting on the top with its arms folded, quietly smoking a long hookah, and taking not the smallest notice of her or of anything else.

  An alternative suggestion is that the enormous puppy was meant to be THOMAS HUXLEY (1825–1895), who—as the quintessential defender of the theory of evolution—became known as “Darwin’s Bulldog.”

  Whether these allusions were intended or not, Lewis Carroll during the Wonderland years was very familiar with the issues and personalities involved in the debate over evolution. What’s more, he photographed Thomas Huxley and Samuel Wilberforce along with virtually every significant participant and member of the audience at that famous debate in the White Rabbit’s house: the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

  Also, rather remarkably given that he was very much a skeptic about evolution, Carroll had previously written to Charles Darwin to offer his services as a photographer for a physiological study of apes and humans.

  Thomas Huxley: Did he evolve into a puppy?

  Chapter 5: Advice from a Caterpillar

  “Who are you?”

  DE QUINCEY’S CATERPILLAR After fleeing the White Rabbit’s house, Alice is once again only three inches tall. This at least is a good size for meeting the Caterpillar, one of the most mysterious beings in Wonderland. The Caterpillar is blue and arrogant. He rather rudely asks Alice, “Who are you?” In despair, Alice answers that she hardly knows because she keeps changing in size and shape all the time. The Caterpillar doesn’t see this as a problem; after all, for a creature destined to metamorphose into a butterfly, transformation of size and shape is entirely natural.

  The hookah-smoking Caterpillar became a celebrated figure in the 1960s drug culture. There was a belief in some quarters that Wonderland was written under the influence of opium or psilocybin mushrooms. From his journals, it is clear that Carroll knew a considerable amount about the use of opium and on at least one occasion had consulted a medical doctor about it. Also, as a classicist he would have been familiar with the theory that ancient Greek cults ingested mushrooms to induce trances and visions. However, there is no evidence that Carroll ever indulged in any hallucinatory substance.

  Thomas De Quincey: Carroll was addicted to his writing.

  ADVICE FROM A CATERPILLAR.

  The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice.

  “Who are you?” said the Caterpillar.

  This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I—I hardly know, sir, just at present—at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”

  “What do you mean by that?” said the Caterpillar sternly. “Explain yourself!”

  “I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, sir” said Alice, “because I’m not myself, you see.”

  “I don’t see,” said the Caterpillar.

  “I’m afraid I can’t put it more clearly,” Alice replied very politely, “for I can’t understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.”

  “It isn’t,” said the Caterpillar.

  The nineteenth-century model for the Caterpillar was THOMAS DE QUINCEY (1785–1859), whose book Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) was Carroll’s primary source of information on the contents of the hookah. In November 1857, the young Carroll recorded in his diary: “Finished the first volume of De Quincey. It is perfectly delightful reading,
and full of information of all kinds.” He read the second volume a month later and eventually acquired all fourteen volumes of De Quincey’s writings. That same month, Carroll committed himself to a reading program for the year, organized by category: mathematics, history, and so on. For the prose and poetry category, he chose only two authors: De Quincey and William Shakespeare.

  De Quincey was a prodigy and wild child who was admitted to Oxford as an undergraduate at the age of fifteen. Later, he lived in London and the Lake District, where he became friends with William Wordsworth, Charles Lamb and fellow opium addict Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Like the Caterpillar, he was sought out by some for his intelligent discourse and penetrating insights, but was just as often avoided by others because he was perceived as something of a social misfit.

  It seems likely that certain aspects of Wonderland’s dream world were influenced by a second-hand experience of the drug—Carroll’s reading of De Quincey. Observe, for example, the shifting, surreal nature of time, space and proportion in Alice’s Wonderland dream, then compare it to De Quincey’s description: “The sense of space, and in the end, the sense of time, were both powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes, &c., were exhibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to receive. Space swelled, and was amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity. This, however, did not disturb me so much as the vast expansion of time; I sometimes seemed to have lived for 70 or 100 years in one night.”

  “Well, perhaps you haven’t found it so yet,” said Alice; “but when you have to turn into a chrysalis—you will some day, you know—and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you’ll feel it a little queer, won’t you?”

  “Not a bit,” said the Caterpillar.

  “Well, perhaps your feelings may be different,” said Alice: “all I know is, it would feel very queer to me.”

  “You!” said the Caterpillar contemptuously. “Who are you?”

  Which brought them back again to the beginning of the conversation. Alice felt a little irritated at the Caterpillar’s making such very short remarks, and she drew herself up and said, very gravely, “I think, you ought to tell me who you are, first.”

  “Why?” said the Caterpillar.

  Here was another puzzling question; and, as Alice could not think of any good reason, and as the Caterpillar seemed to be in a very unpleasant state of mind, she turned away.

  “Come back!” the Caterpillar called after her. “I’ve something important to say!”

  This sounded promising, certainly. Alice turned and came back again.

  Although the nineteenth-century Oxford model for the Caterpillar was Thomas De Quincey, any classically educated Victorian contemporary of Carroll’s would easily perceive in the Caterpillar the multiple allusions to the ancient Greek philosopher, mathematician and semi-divine mystic PYTHAGORAS OF SAMOS (C. 570–C. 495 BC). Today, Pythagoras is almost solely known for his geometric theorem: in a right-angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides—that is, a2 + b2 = c2. However, in Carroll’s time the life, theories and beliefs of Pythagoras were popularly known and discussed in fashionable society. His teaching concerning metempsychosis—the transmigration and reincarnation of the soul—is suggested by his personification as the metamorphosing Caterpillar.

  As well, the Caterpillar’s interrogations of Alice are strongly suggestive of Pythagoras’s teachings, which were allied to the dictates of Apollo, whose temples were inscribed with the mottos “Know thyself” and “Moderation in all things.” Immediately upon their first encounter, the Pythagorean Caterpillar addresses the first of these maxims by asking Alice, “Who are you?”

  Alice is unsure in her answer, and squirms and dithers before the impatient Caterpillar, who prods her further: ‘ “You!’ said the Caterpillar contemptuously. ‘Who are you?’ ” Alice is so put out by the Caterpillar’s apparent rudeness that she begins to walk off. The Caterpillar calls her back and gives her another opportunity to resolve her identity crisis.

  “Keep your temper,” says the Caterpillar. Alice is perplexed, but does follow his advice, “swallowing down her anger as well as she could.” Pythagorean tempering is a harmonic system that applies equally to music, philosophy and mathematics. Here the Caterpillar is teaching Alice the Pythagorean belief that through tempering the spirit, the mind is freed to control the physical problems of the body. “Are you content now?” asks the Caterpillar. The Caterpillar-Pythagoras advocates a mental state of meditative calm, removed from the extremes of human emotion, before his pupil is fully capable of understanding.

  Pythagoras: There were many other sides to him.

  “Keep your temper,” said the Caterpillar.

  “Is that all?” said Alice, swallowing down her anger as well as she could.

  “No,” said the Caterpillar.

  Alice thought she might as well wait, as she had nothing else to do, and perhaps after all it might tell her something worth hearing. For some minutes it puffed away without speaking, but at last it unfolded its arms, took the hookah out of its mouth again, and said, “So you think you’re changed, do you?”

  “I’m afraid I am, sir,” said Alice. “I can’t remember things as I used—and I don’t keep the same size for ten minutes together!”

  “Can’t remember what things?” said the Caterpillar.

  “Well, I’ve tried to say ‘How doth the little busy bee,’ but it all came different!” Alice replied in a very melancholy voice.

  A harmonic system: Pythagoreans’ Hymn to the Rising Sun, by Fedor Andreevich Bronnikov, 1869.

  A TELEPATHIC CATERPILLAR

  Alice is astonished to discover that the Caterpillar is capable of reading her thoughts “just as if she had asked it aloud.” In the creation of his mind-reading Caterpillar, Carroll reveals an interest in psychic phenomena that was lifelong, and strongly apparent in all of his writing. He was a member of the Ghost Society For Paranormal Investigation (1862) and the Society For Psychical Research (1882). He became interested in many aspects of psychic phenomena, including such fads as automatic writing, ghost painting, transcendental physics and psychophysics.

  Nearly all of Carroll’s creative writing and occasional poems were on themes related to these interests, including an entire collection entitled Phantasmagoria (1869). These themes are discernible in both Alice books and especially in his two Sylvie and Bruno novels.

  On the subject of telepathy, Carroll wrote: “All seems to point to the existence of a natural force, allied to electricity and nerve-force, by which brain can act on brain. I think we are close on the day when this shall be classed among the known natural forces, and its laws tabulated, and when the scientific sceptics, who always shut their eyes, till the last moment, to any evidence that seems to point beyond materialism, will have to accept it as a proved fact in nature.”

  Max Müller: Carroll’s colleague and an authority on theosophy.

  It was this fascination with other psychic dimensions that Carroll would explore in ever-greater depth over his lifetime. In Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, he explains, “I have supposed a Human being to be capable of various psychical states, with varying degrees of consciousness,” and writes that people may become conscious of these dimensions “by actual transference of their immaterial essence, such as we meet with in ‘Esoteric Buddhism.’ ”

  Lewis Carroll reveals a great deal with his use of the term “Esoteric Buddhism.” For as the famous medium Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) explained in the first line of the introduction to her Secret Doctrine: “Since the appearance of Theosophical literature in England, it has become customary to call its teachings ‘Esoteric Buddhism.’ ”

  Carroll’s interest in theosophy long preceded Mme. Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society and the later Order of the Golden Dawn. As Carroll was well aware—and his Oxford colleague Max Müller explained in his Theosophy, or Psychological Religion—the term theosophy was coined by the Alexand
rian mystics and Neoplatonists of the fourth century AD. It was derived from the Greek theosophia, meaning “god-wisdom” or “knowledge of the divine.” It entered the English language in the seventeenth century and came to mean “wisdom about God and nature obtained through mystical study.”

  We know that Carroll was familiar with many of the works of Thomas Taylor, whose writings in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries did so much to revive theosophy and other esoteric studies that were an inspiration to many of the poets Carroll most admired: Blake, Shelley, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Tennyson and Browning. However, Carroll’s writing was most profoundly influenced on this level by a specific branch of theosophical literature: the Brotherhood of the Rosicrucians.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton: Penned “mightier than the sword.”

  “I felt the desire to make myself acquainted with the true origins and tenets of the singular sect known by the name of Rosicrucians.” So began Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Zanoni: A Rosicrucian Tale, a flamboyant gothic novel about an immortal Rosicrucian. The book is filled with revelations concerning Rosicrucian mysteries, initiations and alchemical practices.

  Although the Rosicrucian movement declared itself in 1614, it became part of popular culture only with the 1842 publication of Zanoni. Baron Lytton, author of The Last Days of Pompeii, was among the most popular gothic novelists of his day. Today he is best remembered for coining such popular phrases as “the great unwashed” and “the pen is mightier than the sword,” and his famous opening line, “It was a dark and stormy night.”

  Carroll read Zanoni, and it certainly provoked his interest in the Rosicrucians. But it was far from being his only source of knowledge about Rosicrucian theosophy. It is likely his readings included that of the Oxford Caterpillar Thomas De Quincey’s 1824 “Historico-Critical Inquiry into the Origin of the Rosicrucians and the Free-Masons.” And in that work, De Quincey states his opinion that “Freemasonry is neither more nor less than Rosicrucianism as modified by those who transplanted it to England.”