The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition (The Annotated Books)

by Lewis Carroll

  The third is its slowness in taking a jest;

  Should you happen to venture on one,

  It will sigh like a thing that is deeply distressed:

  And it always looks grave at a pun.

  Tenniel’s illustration of the King looking around with a faint smile was clearly intended to show the King only a moment after the scene that appeared in the book’s frontispiece. The Knave has not altered his defiant stance, although the King (as Selwyn Goodacre noticed) has managed to change his crown, put on spectacles, and discard his orb and scepter, and the three court officials have fallen asleep. Observe that in both pictures Tenniel shaded the Knave’s nose to suggest that he is a lush. Victorians thought of criminals as heavy drinkers, and shading noses was a convention among cartoonists then, as it is now, to signify boozers. In The Nursery “Alice,” whose illustrations were hand-colored by Tenniel, the tip of the Knave’s nose is a rosy color in the frontispiece as well as in the picture in Chapter 8 where the Knave is presenting the King with his crown.

  CHARLES BENNETT’S FRONTISPIECE FOR

  The Fables of Aesop and Others.

  Jeffrey Stern, in Jabberwocky (Spring 1978), calls attention to many similarities between this frontispiece and the frontispiece of The Fables of Aesop and Others Translated into Human Nature (1857), illustrated by Tenniel’s fellow Punch artist Charles Henry Bennett:

  The Court clerk (the owl) has the stunned look of the King, and the Lion has an identical scowl to the Queen’s (she is even looking the same way). Some of the jurors and the bewigged bird/lawyers are in similar pose, and the pleading dog is in something of the same position as the Knave. All this would not mean very much but for the fact that Bennett’s book appeared in 1857—eight years before Wonderland. The fable illustrated, incidentally, is “Man tried at the Court of the Lion for the Ill-treatment of a Horse.”

  8. In Tenniel’s illustration of this scene the cards have become ordinary playing cards, though three have retained vestigial noses. In Peter Newell’s version some even have heads, arms, and legs.

  In many editions of Alice in Wonderland (I have not checked first editions), the card hidden by the six of spades has on its left margin the mysterious letters “B. ROLLITZ.” Perhaps he was an employee of the Dalziel brothers, who made the wood engravings.

  To underscore the return from dream to reality, as Richard Kelly notes in his contribution to Lewis Carroll: A Celebration, edited by Edward Guiliano, Tenniel has undressed the White Rabbit.

  9. This dream-within-a-dream motif (Alice’s sister dreaming of Alice’s dream) reoccurs in a more complicated form in the sequel. See Through the Looking-Glass, Chapter 4, Note 10.

  10. On the last page of Carroll’s hand-lettered manuscript of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, which he gave to Alice Liddell, he pasted an oval photograph of her face that he had taken in 1859 when she was seven, the age of Alice in the story. It was not until 1977 that Morton Cohen discovered concealed underneath this photograph a drawing of Alice’s face. It is the only known sketch Dodgson ever made of the real Alice.

  CONTENTS

  PREFACE TO THE 1897 EDITION

  I. LOOKING-GLASS HOUSE

  II. THE GARDEN OF LIVE FLOWERS

  III. LOOKING-GLASS INSECTS

  IV. TWEEDLEDUM AND TWEEDLEDEE

  V. WOOL AND WATER

  VI. HUMPTY DUMPTY

  VII. THE LION AND THE UNICORN

  VIII. “IT’S MY OWN INVENTION”

  IX. QUEEN ALICE

  X. SHAKING

  XI. WAKING

  XII. WHICH DREAMED IT?

  White Pawn (Alice) to play, and win in eleven moves.

  RED

  WHITE

  1. Alice meets R. Q. 1. R. Q. to K. R’s 4th

  2. Alice through Q’s 3d (by railway) to Q’s 4th (Tweedledum and Tweedledee ) 2. W. Q. to Q. B’s 4th (after shawl )

  3. Alice meets W. Q. (with shawl ) 3. W. Q. to Q. B’s 5th (becomes sheep )

  4. Alice to Q’s 5th (shop, river, shop ) 4. W. Q. to K. B’s 8th (leaves egg on shelf )

  5. Alice to Q’s 6th (Humpty Dumpty ) 5. W. Q. to Q. B’s 8th (flying from R. Kt. )

  6. Alice to Q’s 7th (forest ) 6. R. Kt. to K’s 2nd (ch.)

  7. W. Kt. takes R. Kt. 7. W. Kt. to K. B’s 5th

  8. Alice to Q’s 8th (coronation ) 8. R. Q. to K’s sq. (examination )

  9. Alice becomes Queen 9. Queens castle

  10. Alice castles (feast ) 10. W. Q. to Q. R’s 6th (soup )

  11. Alice takes R. Q. & wins

  PREFACE TO THE 1897 EDITION

  As the chess-problem, given on the previous page, has puzzled some of my readers, it may be well to explain that it is correctly worked out, so far as the moves are concerned. The alternation of Red and White is perhaps not so strictly observed as it might be, and the “castling” of the three Queens is merely a way of saying that they entered the palace:1 but the “check” of the White King at move 6, the capture of the Red Knight at move 7, and the final “checkmate” of the Red King, will be found, by any one who will take the trouble to set the pieces and play the moves as directed, to be strictly in accordance with the laws of the game.2

  The new words, in the poem “Jabberwocky,” have given rise to some differences of opinion as to their pronunciation: so it may be well to give instructions on that point also. Pronounce “slithy” as if it were the two words “sly, the”: make the “g” hard in “gyre” and “gimble”: and pronounce “rath” to rhyme with “bath.”

  For this sixty-first 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 1871), 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

  Child of the pure unclouded brow3

  And dreaming eyes of wonder!

  Though time be fleet, and I and thou

  Are half a life asunder,

  Thy loving smile will surely hail

  The love-gift of a fairy-tale.

  I have not seen thy sunny face,

  Nor heard thy silver laughter:

  No thought of me shall find a place

  In thy young life—s hereafter—4

  Enough that now thou wilt not fail

  To listen to my fairy-tale.

  A tale begun in other days,

  When summer suns were glowing—

  A simple chime, that served to time

  The rhythm of our rowing—

  Whose echoes live in memory yet,

  Though envious years would say “forget.”

  Come, hearken then, ere voice of dread,

  With bitter tidings laden,

  Shall summon to unwelcome bed5

  A melancholy maiden!

  We are but older children, dear,

  Who fret to find our bedtime near.

  Without, the frost, the blinding snow,

  The storm-wind’s moody madness—

  Within, the firelight’s ruddy glow,

  And childhood’s nest of gladness.

 
The magic words shall hold thee fast:

  Thou shalt not heed the raving blast.

  And, though the shadow of a sigh

  May tremble through the story,

  For “happy summer days”6 gone by,

  And vanish’d summer glory—

  It shall not touch, with breath of bale,7

  The pleasance8 of our fairy-tale.

  1. There is no chess move in which queens castle. Carroll is here explaining that when the three Queens (the Red Queen, the White Queen, and Alice) have entered the “castle,” they have moved to the eighth row, where pawns become queens.

  2. Carroll’s description of the chess problem, which underlies the book’s action, is accurate. One is at loss to account for the statement on page 48 of A Handbook of the Literature of the Rev. C. L. Dodgson, by Sidney Williams and Falconer Madan, that “no attempt” is made to execute a normal checkmate. The final mate is completely orthodox. It is true, however, as Carroll himself points out, that red and white do not alternate moves properly, and some of the “moves” listed by Carroll are not represented by actual movements of the pieces on the board (for example, Alice’s first, third, ninth and tenth “moves,” and the “castling” of the queens).

  The most serious violation of chess rules occurs near the end of the problem, when the White King is placed in check by the Red Queen without either side taking account of the fact. “Hardly a move has a sane purpose, from the point of view of chess,” writes Mr. Madan. It is true that both sides play an exceedingly careless game, but what else could one expect from the mad creatures behind the mirror? At two points the White Queen passes up a chance to checkmate and on another occasion she flees from the Red Knight when she could have captured him. Both oversights, however, are in keeping with her absent-mindedness.

  Considering the staggering difficulties involved in dovetailing a chess game with an amusing nonsense fantasy, Carroll does a remarkable job. At no time, for example, does Alice exchange words with a piece that is not then on a square alongside her own. Queens bustle about doing things while their husbands remain relatively fixed and impotent, just as in actual chess games. The White Knight’s eccentricities fit admirably the eccentric way in which Knights move; even the tendency of the Knights to fall off their horses, on one side or the other, suggests the knight’s move, which is two squares in one direction followed by one square to the right or left. In order to assist the reader in integrating the chess moves with the story, each move will be noted in the text at the precise point where it occurs.

  The rows of the giant chessboard are separated from each other by brooks. The columns are divided by hedges. Throughout the problem Alice remains on the queen’s file except for her final move when (as queen) she captures the Red Queen to checkmate the dozing Red King. It is amusing to note that it is the Red Queen who persuades Alice to advance along her file to the eighth square. The Queen is protecting herself with this advice, for white has at the outset an easy, though inelegant, checkmate in three moves. The White Knight first checks at KKt.3. If the Red King moves to either Q6 or Q5, white can mate with the Queen at QB3. The only alternative is for the Red King to move to K4. The White Queen then checks on QB5, forcing the Red King to K3. The Queen then mates on Q6. This calls, of course, for an alertness of mind not possessed by either the Knight or Queen.

  Attempts have been made to work out a better sequence of chess moves that would both fit the narrative and at the same time conform to all the rules of the game. The most ambitious attempt of this sort that I have come across is to be found in the British Chess Magazine (Vol. 30, May 1910, page 181). Donald M. Liddell presents an entire chess game, starting with the Bird Opening and ending with a mate by Alice when she enters the eighth square on her sixty-sixth move! The choice of opening is appropriate, for no chess expert ever had a more hilarious and eccentric style of play than the Englishman H. E. Bird. Whether Donald Liddell is related to the Liddells I have not been able to determine.

  In the Middle Ages and Renaissance chess games were sometimes played with human pieces on enormous fields (see Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel, Book 5, Chapters 24 and 25), but I know of no earlier attempt than Carroll’s to base a fictional narrative on animated chess pieces. It has been done many times since, mostly by science-fiction writers. A recent example is Poul Anderson’s fine short story The Immortal Game (Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1954).

  For many reasons chess pieces are singularly appropriate to the second Alice book. They complement the playing cards of the first book, permitting the return of kings and queens; the loss of knaves is more than offset by the acquisition of knights. Alice’s bewildering changes of size in the first book are replaced by equally bewildering changes of place, occasioned of course by the movements of chess pieces over the board. By a happy accident chess also ties in beautifully with the mirror-reflection motif. Not only do rooks, bishops, and knights come in pairs, but the asymmetric arrangement of one player’s pieces at the start of a game (asymmetric because of the positions of king and queen) is an exact mirror reflection of his opponent’s pieces. Finally, the mad quality of the chess game conforms to the mad logic of the looking-glass world.

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  (As arranged before commencement of game.)

  The above list of dramatis personae appeared in early editions of the book before Carroll replaced it with his 1896 preface. Removing it was wise because it only adds confusion to the chess game. I will cite only one instance. If the Tweedle brothers are the two white rooks, asked Denis Crutch in a lecture on the chess game (published in Jabberwocky, Summer 1972), then who is the white rook on the first row of Carroll’s diagram?

  The arrangement of the words in the starting position of a chess game makes it easy to identify each piece and pawn. Observe that the bishops, never mentioned in the story, are here linked to the Sheep, Aged man, Walrus, and Crow, though for no discernible reason.

  3. Proofs of the prefatory poem have survived with alterations in Carroll’s handwriting. The changes made for the first edition are listed on page 60 of The Lewis Carroll Handbook (Oxford, 1931) by Sidney Williams and Falconer Madan. In stanza 4, line 4, “A melancholy maiden” replaced “A wilful weary maiden.” In stanza 5, line 1, “Without, the frost, the blinding snow” replaced “Without, the whirling wind and snow,” and the next line, “The storm-wind’s moody madness” replaced “That lash themselves to madness.”

  4. Although the majority of Carroll’s child-friends broke off contact with him (or he with them) after their adolescence, the sad presentment of these lines proved groundless. Among the finest tributes ever paid to Carroll are the recollections of him expressed by Alice in her later years.

  5. “unwelcome bed”: A reference to the melancholy maiden’s death, with the Christian implication that it will be merely a bedtime slumber, and, as Freudian critics never tire of pointing out, perhaps with subconscious overtones of the marriage bed.

  6. The three words in quotation marks are the last three words of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

  7. “breath of bale”: breath of sorrow.

  8. “pleasance”: The word was “pleasures” in proofs of the book. Carroll cleverly changed it to the archaic “pleasance” so he could introduce Alice Liddell’s middle name.

  CHAPTER I

  Looking-Glass House

  One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it—it was the black kitten’s fault entirely. For the white kitten had been having its face washed by the old cat for the last quarter of an hour (and bearing it pretty well, considering): so you see that it couldn’t have had any hand in the mischief.

  The way Dinah washed her children’s faces was this: first she held the poor thing down by its ear with one paw, and then with the other paw she rubbed its face all over, the wrong way, beginning at the nose: and just now, as I said, she was hard at work on the white kitten, which was lying quite still and trying to purr—no doubt feeling that it
was all meant for its good.

  But the black kitten had been finished with earlier in the afternoon, and so, while Alice was sitting curled up in a corner of the great arm-chair, half talking to herself and half asleep, the kitten had been having a grand game of romps with the ball of worsted Alice had been trying to wind up, and had been rolling it up and down till it had all come undone again; and there it was, spread over the hearth-rug, all knots and tangles, with the kitten running after its own tail in the middle.

  “Oh, you wicked wicked little thing!” cried Alice, catching up the kitten, and giving it a little kiss to make it understand that it was in disgrace. “Really, Dinah ought to have taught you better manners! You ought, Dinah, you know you ought!” she added, looking reproachfully at the old cat, and speaking in as cross a voice as she could manage—and then she scrambled back into the arm-chair, taking the kitten and the worsted with her, and began winding up the ball again. But she didn’t get on very fast, as she was talking all the time, sometimes to the kitten, and sometimes to herself. Kitty sat very demurely on her knee, pretending to watch the progress of the winding, and now and then putting out one paw and gently touching the ball, as if it would be glad to help if it might.

  “Do you know what to-morrow is, Kitty?” Alice began. “You’d have guessed if you’d been up in the window with me—only Dinah was making you tidy, so you couldn’t. I was watching the boys getting in sticks for the bonfire1—and it wants plenty of sticks, Kitty! Only it got so cold, and it snowed so, they had to leave off. Never mind, Kitty, we’ll go and see the bonfire to-morrow.” Here Alice wound two or three turns of the worsted round the kitten’s neck, just to see how it would look: this led to a scramble, in which the ball rolled down upon the floor, and yards and yards of it got unwound again.