“If that doesn’t ‘drum them out of town,’ ” she thought to herself, “nothing ever will!”
1. The two horses are needed in the chess game to provide steeds for the two white knights.
2. Mathematicians, logicians, and some metaphysicians like to treat zero, the null class, and Nothing as if they were Something, and Carroll was no exception. In the first Alice book the Gryphon tells Alice that “they never executes nobody.” Here we encounter the unexecuted Nobody walking along the road, and later we learn that Nobody walks slower or faster than the Messenger. “If you see Nobody come into the room,” Carroll wrote to one of his child-friends, “please give him a kiss for me.” In Carroll’s book Euclid and His Modern Rivals, we meet Herr Niemand, a German professor whose name means “nobody.” When did Nobody first enter the Alice books? At the Mad Tea Party. “Nobody asked your opinion,” Alice said to the Mad Hatter. He turns up again in the book’s last chapter when the White Rabbit produces a letter that he says the Knave of Hearts has written to “somebody.” “Unless it was written to nobody,” comments the King, “which isn’t usual, you know.”
Critics have recalled how Ulysses deceived the one-eyed Polyphemus by calling himself Noman before putting out the giant’s eye. When Polyphemus cried out, “Noman is killing me!” no one took this to mean that someone was actually attacking him.
3. In his references to Anglo-Saxon attitudes Carroll is spoofing the Anglo-Saxon scholarship fashionable in his day. Harry Morgan Ayres, in his book Carroll’s Alice (Columbia University Press, 1936), reproduces some drawings of Anglo-Saxons in various costumes and attitudes, from the Caedmon Manuscript of the Junian codex (owned by Oxford’s Bodleian Library), and suggests that they may have been used as a source by both Carroll and Tenniel. A novel by Angus Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Attitudes, quotes this passage of Carroll’s on the title page.
4. Hatta is the Mad Hatter, newly released from prison, and Haigha, whose name, when pronounced to rhyme with “mayor,” sounds like “Hare,” is of course the March Hare. In his book Carroll’s Alice, Harry Morgan Ayres suggests that Carroll may have had in mind Daniel Henry Haigh, a noted nineteenth-century expert on Saxon runes and the author of two scholarly books about the Saxons.
It is curious that Alice fails to recognize either of her two old friends.
Just why Carroll disguised the Hatter and the Hare as Anglo-Saxon Messengers (and Tenniel underscored this whimsy by dressing them as Anglo-Saxons and giving them “Anglo-Saxon attitudes”) continues to be puzzling. “In the context of Alice’s dream,” writes Robert Sutherland in Language and Lewis Carroll (Mouton, 1970), “they come like ghosts to trouble scholars’ joy.”
The presence in Alice’s dream of the chess-men, the characters from nursery rhymes, the talking animals, the various more bizarre creatures is easily explained. They either have their counterparts in Alice’s waking experience or are the fantastic creations of a little girl’s dreaming mind. But the Anglo-Saxon Messengers! They are not mentioned in the first chapter, where various aspects of the dream are foreshadowed in Alice’s drawing-room. Are we to assume on Alice’s part a reading of Anglo-Saxon history in her schoolbooks? Or is the presence of the Anglo-Saxon Messengers a gratuitous addition of Carroll’s, constituting a minor flaw in the otherwise consistently conceived structure of the book? Is their presence an intrusion of a private joke at the expense of contemporary Anglo-Saxon scholarship, and a reflection of his own interest in British antiquity? The question of Dodgson’s intentions in creating the Anglo-Saxon Messengers is a vexed problem which will remain obscure until further information comes to light.
Roger Green (in Jabberwocky, Autumn 1971) offers the following guess. Carroll recorded in his diary (December 5, 1863) his attendance at a Christ Church theatrical that included a burlesque skit called “Alfred the Great.” Mrs. Liddell was there with her children. Green surmises that the skit included Anglo-Saxon settings and costumes, which may have given Carroll the idea of turning the Hatter and the Hare into Anglo-Saxon Messengers.
5. “I love my love with an A” was a popular parlor game in Victorian England. The first player recited:
I love my love with an A because he’s ———.
I hate him because he’s ———.
He took me to the Sign of the ———
And treated me with ———.
His name’s ———
And he lives at ———.
In each blank space the player used a suitable word beginning with A. The second player then repeated the same lines, using B instead of A, and the game continued in this fashion through the alphabet. Players unable to supply an acceptable word dropped out of the game. The wording of the recitation varied; the lines quoted above are taken from James Orchard Halliwell’s The Nursery Rhymes of England, a book popular in Carroll’s day. It was clever of Alice to start the game with H instead of A, for the Anglo-Saxon Messengers undoubtedly dropped their H’s.
6. “sal-volatile”: smelling salts.
7. Taking phrases literally instead of as they are commonly understood is characteristic of the creatures behind the looking-glass, and a basis for much of Carroll’s humor. Another good example occurs in Chapter 9, when the Red Queen tells Alice that she couldn’t deny something if she tried with both hands.
One of Carroll’s most amusing hoaxes furnishes still another instance of his fondness for this variety of nonsense. In 1873, when Ella Monier-Williams (a child-friend) let him borrow her travel diary, he returned the book with the following letter:
MY DEAR ELLA,
I return your book with many thanks; you will be wondering why I kept it so long. I understand, from what you said about it, that you have no idea of publishing any of it yourself, and hope you will not be annoyed at my sending three short chapters of extracts from it, to be published in The Monthly Packet. I have not given any names in full, nor put any more definite title to it than simply “Ella’s Diary, or The Experiences of an Oxford Professor’s Daughter, during a Month of Foreign Travel.”
I will faithfully hand over to you any money I may receive on account of it, from Miss Yonge, the editor of The Monthly Packet.
Your affect. friend,
C. L. DODGSON.
Ella suspected that he was joking, but began to take him seriously when she received a second letter containing the following passage:
I grieve to tell you that every word of my letter was strictly true. I will now tell you more—that Miss Yonge has not declined the MS., but she will not give more than a guinea a chapter. Will that be enough?
Carroll’s third letter cleared up the hoax:
MY DEAR ELLA,
I’m afraid I have hoaxed you too much. But it really was true. I “hoped you wouldn’t be annoyed at my etc.,” for the very good reason that I hadn’t done it. And I gave no other title than “Ella’s Diary,” nor did I give that title. Miss Yonge hasn’t declined it—because she hasn’t seen it. And I need hardly explain that she hasn’t given more than three guineas!
Not for three hundred guineas would I have shown it to any one—after I had promised you I wouldn’t.
In haste,
Yours affectionately,
C. L. D.
8. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, rivalry between the lion and unicorn goes back for thousands of years. The nursery rhyme is popularly supposed to have arisen in the early seventeenth century when the union of Scotland and England resulted in a new British coat of arms on which the Scottish unicorn and the British lion appear, as they do today, as the two supporters of the royal arms.
9. For reasons not clear, the White King, by running to see the Lion and Unicorn fight, violates his slow square-by-square way of moving in a chess game.
10. If Carroll intended his Lion and Unicorn to represent Gladstone and Disraeli (see Note 13 below), then this dialogue takes on an obvious meaning. Carroll, who was conservative in his political views and did not care for Gladstone, composed two remarkab
le anagrams on the full name, William Ewart Gladstone. They are: “Wilt tear down all images?” and “Wild agitator! Means well.” (See The Diaries of Lewis Carroll, Vol. II, page 277.)
11. The White Queen is moving from a square due west of the Red Knight to QB8. She really doesn’t have to flee—the Knight could not have taken her, whereas she could have taken him—but the move is characteristic of her stupidity.
12. “As large as life and quite as natural” was a common phrase in Carroll’s time (the Oxford English Dictionary quotes it from an 1853 source); but apparently Carroll was the first to substitute “twice” for “quite.” This is now the usual phrasing in both England and the United States.
13. Did Tenniel intend the beasts to caricature Gladstone and Disraeli, who often sparred with each other? Michael Hancher, in his book on Tenniel’s art, maintains that neither Carroll nor Tenniel had such resemblances in mind. He reproduces one of Tenniel’s Punch cartoons, showing a Scottish unicorn and a British lion, both drawn almost exactly like those in Alice, confronting one another.
14. See Chapter 9, note 8, of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
15. That is, a lion’s share. The phrase comes from a fable of Aesop’s that tells how a group of beasts divided the spoils of a hunt. The lion demanded one-fourth in virtue of his rank, another fourth for his superior courage, a third quarter for his wife and children. As for the remaining fourth, the lion adds, anyone who wishes to dispute it with him is free to do so.
16. Alice advances to Q7.
CHAPTER VIII
“It’s My Own Invention”
After a while the noise seemed gradually to die away, till all was dead silence, and Alice lifted up her head in some alarm. There was no one to be seen, and her first thought was that she must have been dreaming about the Lion and the Unicorn and those queer Anglo-Saxon Messengers. However, there was the great dish still lying at her feet, on which she had tried to cut the plum-cake, “So I wasn’t dreaming, after all,” she said to herself, “unless—unless we’re all part of the same dream. Only I do hope it’s my dream, and not the Red King’s! I don’t like belonging to another person’s dream,” she went on in a rather complaining tone: “I’ve a great mind to go and wake him, and see what happens!”
At this moment her thoughts were interrupted by a loud shouting of “Ahoy! Ahoy! Check!” and a Knight, dressed in crimson armour, came galloping down upon her, brandishing a great club. Just as he reached her,1 the horse stopped suddenly: “You’re my prisoner!” the Knight cried, as he tumbled off his horse.
Startled as she was, Alice was more frightened for him than for herself at the moment, and watched him with some anxiety as he mounted again. As soon as he was comfortably in the saddle, he began once more “You’re my—” but here another voice broke in “Ahoy! Ahoy! Check!” and Alice looked round in some surprise for the new enemy.
This time it was a White Knight.2 He drew up at Alice’s side, and tumbled off his horse just as the Red Knight had done: then he got on again, and the two Knights sat and looked at each other for some time without speaking. Alice looked from one to the other in some bewilderment.
“She’s my prisoner, you know!” the Red Knight said at last.
“Yes, but then I came and rescued her!” the White Knight replied.
“Well, we must fight for her, then,” said the Red Knight, as he took up his helmet (which hung from the saddle, and was something the shape of a horse’s head) and put it on.
“You will observe the Rules of Battle, of course?” the White Knight remarked, putting on his helmet too.
“I always do,” said the Red Knight, and they began banging away at each other with such fury that Alice got behind a tree to be out of the way of the blows.
“I wonder, now, what the Rules of Battle are,” she said to herself, as she watched the fight, timidly peeping out from her hiding-place. “One Rule seems to be, that if one Knight hits the other, he knocks him off his horse; and, if he misses, he tumbles off himself—and another Rule seems to be that they hold their clubs with their arms, as if they were Punch and Judy3—What a noise they make when they tumble! Just like a whole set of fire-irons falling into the fender! And how quiet the horses are! They let them get on and off them just as if they were tables!’
Another Rule of Battle, that Alice had not noticed, seemed to be that they always fell on their heads; and the battle ended with their both falling off in this way, side by side. When they got up again, they shook hands, and then the Red Knight mounted and galloped off.
“It was a glorious victory, wasn’t it?” said the White Knight, as he came up panting.
“I don’t know,” Alice said doubtfully. “I don’t want to be anybody’s prisoner. I want to be a Queen.”
“So you will, when you’ve crossed the next brook,” said the White Knight. “I’ll see you safe to the end of the wood—and then I must go back, you know. That’s the end of my move.”
“Thank you very much,” said Alice. “May I help you off with your helmet?” It was evidently more than he could manage by himself: however she managed to shake him out of it at last.
“Now one can breathe more easily,” said the Knight, putting back his shaggy hair with both hands, and turning his gentle face and large mild eyes to Alice. She thought she had never seen such a strange-looking soldier in all her life.4
He was dressed in tin armour, which seemed to fit him very badly, and he had a queer-shaped little deal box5 fastened across his shoulders, upside-down, and with the lid hanging open. Alice looked at it with great curiosity.
“I see you’re admiring my little box,” the Knight said in a friendly tone. “It’s my own invention—to keep clothes and sandwiches in. You see I carry it upside-down, so that the rain ca’n’t get in.”
“But the things can get out,” Alice gently remarked. “Do you know the lid’s open?”
“I didn’t know it,” the Knight said, a shade of vexation passing over his face. “Then all the things must have fallen out! And the box is no use without them.” He unfastened it as he spoke, and was just going to throw it into the bushes, when a sudden thought seemed to strike him, and he hung it carefully on a tree. “Can you guess why I did that?” he said to Alice.
Alice shook her head.
“In hopes some bees may make a nest in it—then I should get the honey.”
“But you’ve got a bee-hive—or something like one—fastened to the saddle,” said Alice.
“Yes, it’s a very good bee-hive,” the Knight said in a discontented tone, “one of the best kind. But not a single bee has come near it yet. And the other thing is a mouse-trap. I suppose the mice keep the bees out—or the bees keep the mice out, I don’t know which.”
“I was wondering what the mouse-trap was for,” said Alice. “It isn’t very likely there would be any mice on the horse’s back.”
“Not very likely, perhaps,” said the Knight; “but, if they do come, I don’t choose to have them running all about.”
“You see,” he went on after a pause, “it’s as well to be provided for everything. That’s the reason the horse has all those anklets round his feet.”
“But what are they for?” Alice asked in a tone of great curiosity.
“To guard against the bites of sharks,”6 the Knight replied. “It’s an invention of my own. And now help me on. I’ll go with you to the end of the wood—What’s that dish for?”
“It’s meant for plum-cake,” said Alice.
“We’d better take it with us,” the Knight said. “It’ll come in handy if we find any plum-cake. Help me to get it into this bag.”
This took a long time to manage, though Alice held the bag open very carefully, because the Knight was so very awkward in putting in the dish: the first two or three times that he tried he fell in himself instead. “It’s rather a tight fit, you see,” he said, as they got it in at last; “there are so many candlesticks in the bag.” And he hung it to the saddle, which was already loaded w
ith bunches of carrots, and fire-irons, and many other things.7
“I hope you’ve got your hair well fastened on?” he continued, as they set off.
“Only in the usual way,” Alice said, smiling.
“That’s hardly enough,” he said, anxiously. “You see the wind is so very strong here. It’s as strong as soup.”
“Have you invented a plan for keeping the hair from being blown of?” Alice enquired.
“Not yet,” said the Knight. “But I’ve got a plan for keeping it from falling off.”
“I should like to hear it, very much.”
“First you take an upright stick,” said the Knight. “Then you make your hair creep up it, like a fruit-tree. Now the reason hair falls off is because it hangs down—things never fall upwards, you know. It’s a plan of my own invention. You may try it if you like.”
It didn’t sound a comfortable plan, Alice thought, and for a few minutes she walked on in silence, puzzling over the idea, and every now and then stopping to help the poor Knight, who certainly was not a good rider.
Whenever the horse stopped (which it did very often), he fell off in front; and, whenever it went on again (which it generally did rather suddenly), he fell off behind. Otherwise he kept on pretty well, except that he had a habit of now and then falling off sideways; and, as he generally did this on the side on which Alice was walking, she soon found that it was the best plan not to walk quite close to the horse.
“I’m afraid you’ve not had much practice in riding,” she ventured to say, as she was helping him up from his fifth tumble.
The Knight looked very much surprised, and a little offended at the remark. “What makes you say that?” he asked, as he scrambled back into the saddle, keeping hold of Alice’s hair with one hand, to save himself from falling over on the other side.
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