“Because people don’t fall off quite so often, when they’ve had much practice.”
“I’ve had plenty of practice,” the Knight said very gravely: “plenty of practice!”
Alice could think of nothing better to say than “Indeed?” but she said it as heartily as she could. They went on a little way in silence after this, the Knight with his eyes shut, muttering to himself, and Alice watching anxiously for the next tumble.
“The great art of riding,” the Knight suddenly began in a loud voice, waving his right arm as he spoke, “is to keep—” Here the sentence ended as suddenly as it had begun, as the Knight fell heavily on the top of his head exactly in the path where Alice was walking. She was quite frightened this time, and said in an anxious tone, as she picked him up, “I hope no bones are broken?”
“None to speak of,” the Knight said, as if he didn’t mind breaking two or three of them. “The great art of riding, as I was saying, is—to keep your balance properly. Like this, you know—”
He let go the bridle, and stretched out both his arms to show Alice what he meant, and this time he fell flat on his back, right under the horse’s feet.
“Plenty of practice!” he went on repeating, all the time that Alice was getting him on his feet again. “Plenty of practice!”
“It’s too ridiculous!” cried Alice, losing all her patience this time. “You ought to have a wooden horse on wheels, that you ought!”
“Does that kind go smoothly?” the Knight asked in a tone of great interest, clasping his arms round the horse’s neck as he spoke, just in time to save himself from tumbling off again.
“Much more smoothly than a live horse,” Alice said, with a little scream of laughter, in spite of all she could do to prevent it.
“I’ll get one,” the Knight said thoughtfully to himself. “One or two—several.”
There was a short silence after this, and then the Knight went on again. “I’m a great hand at inventing things. Now, I daresay you noticed, the last time you picked me up, that I was looking rather thoughtful?”
“You were a little grave,” said Alice.
“Well, just then I was inventing a new way of getting over a gate—would you like to hear it?”
“Very much indeed,” Alice said politely.
“I’ll tell you how I came to think of it,” said the Knight. “You see, I said to myself ‘The only difficulty is with the feet: the head is high enough already.’ Now, first I put my head on the top of the gate—then the head’s high enough—then I stand on my head—then the feet are high enough, you see—then I’m over, you see.”
“Yes, I suppose you’d be over when that was done,” Alice said thoughtfully: “but don’t you think it would be rather hard?”
“I haven’t tried it yet,” the Knight said, gravely; “so I ca’n’t tell for certain—but I’m afraid it would be a little hard.”
He looked so vexed at the idea, that Alice changed the subject hastily. “What a curious helmet you’ve got!” she said cheerfully. “Is that your invention too?”
The Knight looked down proudly at his helmet, which hung from the saddle. “Yes,” he said; “but I’ve invented a better one than that—like a sugar-loaf.8 When I used to wear it, if I fell off the horse, it always touched the ground directly. So I had a very little way to fall, you see—But there was the danger of falling into it, to be sure. That happened to me once—and the worst of it was, before I could get out again, the other White Knight came and put it on. He thought it was his own helmet.”
The Knight looked so solemn about it that Alice did not dare to laugh. “I’m afraid you must have hurt him,” she said in a trembling voice, “being on the top of his head.”
“I had to kick him, of course,” the Knight said, very seriously. “And then he took the helmet off again—but it took hours and hours to get me out. I was as fast as—as lightning, you know.”
“But that’s a different kind of fastness,” Alice objected.
The Knight shook his head. “It was all kinds of fastness with me, I can assure you!” he said. He raised his hands in some excitement as he said this, and instantly rolled out of the saddle, and fell headlong into a deep ditch.
Alice ran to the side of the ditch to look for him. She was rather startled by the fall, as for some time he had kept on very well, and she was afraid that he really was hurt this time. However, though she could see nothing but the soles of his feet, she was much relieved to hear that he was talking on in his usual tone. “All kinds of fastness,” he repeated: “but it was careless of him to put another man’s helmet on—with the man in it, too.”
“How can you go on talking so quietly, head downwards?” Alice asked, as she dragged him out by the feet, and laid him in a heap on the bank.
The Knight looked surprised at the question. “What does it matter where my body happens to be?” he said. “My mind goes on working all the same. In fact, the more head-downwards I am, the more I keep inventing new things.”
“Now the cleverest thing of the sort that I ever did,” he went on after a pause, “was inventing a new pudding during the meat-course.”
“In time to have it cooked for the next course?” said Alice. “Well, that was quick work, certainly!”
“Well, not the next course,” the Knight said in a slow thoughtful tone: “no, certainly not the next course.”
“Then it would have to be the next day. I suppose you wouldn’t have two pudding-courses in one dinner?”
“Well, not the next day,” the Knight repeated as before: “not the next day. In fact,” he went on, holding his head down, and his voice getting lower and lower, “I don’t believe that pudding ever was cooked! In fact, I don’t believe that pudding ever will be cooked! And yet it was a very clever pudding to invent.”9
“What did you mean it to be made of?” Alice asked, hoping to cheer him up, for the poor Knight seemed quite low-spirited about it.
“It began with blotting-paper,” the Knight answered with a groan.
“That wouldn’t be very nice, I’m afraid—”
“Not very nice alone,” he interrupted, quite eagerly: “but you’ve no idea what a difference it makes, mixing it with other things—such as gunpowder and sealing-wax. And here I must leave you.” They had just come to the end of the wood.
Alice could only look puzzled: she was thinking of the pudding.
“You are sad,” the Knight said in an anxious tone: “let me sing you a song to comfort you.”
“Is it very long?” Alice asked, for she had heard a good deal of poetry that day.
“It’s long,” said the Knight, “but it’s very, very beautiful. Everybody that hears me sing it—either it brings the tears into their eyes, or else—”
“Or else what?” said Alice, for the Knight had made a sudden pause.
“Or else it doesn’t, you know.10 The name of the song is called ‘Haddocks’ Eyes.’”
“Oh, that’s the name of the song, is it?” Alice said, trying to feel interested.
“No, you don’t understand,” the Knight said, looking a little vexed. “That’s what the name is called. The name really is ‘The Aged Aged Man.’”
“Then I ought to have said ‘That’s what the song is called’?” Alice corrected herself.
“No, you oughtn’t: that’s quite another thing! The song is called ‘Ways and Means’11 but that’s only what it’s called, you know!”
“Well, what is the song, then?” said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered.
“I was coming to that,” the Knight said. “The song really is ‘A-sitting on a Gate’:12 and the tune’s my own invention.’
So saying, he stopped his horse and let the reins fall on its neck: then, slowly beating time with one hand, and with a faint smile lighting up his gentle foolish face, as if he enjoyed the music of his song, he began.
Of all the strange things that Alice saw in her journey Through The Looking-Glass, this was the one that she
always remembered most clearly. Years afterwards she could bring the whole scene back again, as if it had been only yesterday—the mild blue eyes and kindly smile of the Knight—the setting sun gleaming through his hair, and shining on his armour in a blaze of light that quite dazzled her—the horse quietly moving about, with the reins hanging loose on his neck, cropping the grass at her feet—and the black shadows of the forest behind—all this she took in like a picture, as, with one hand shading her eyes, she leant against a tree, watching the strange pair, and listening, in a half-dream, to the melancholy music of the song.13
“But the tune isn’t his own invention,” she said to herself: “it’s ‘I give thee all, I can no more.’” She stood and listened very attentively, but no tears came into her eyes.
“I’ll tell thee everything I can:
There’s little to relate.
I saw an aged aged man,
A-sitting on a gate.
‘Who are you, aged man?’ I said.
‘And how is it you live?’
And his answer trickled through my head,
Like water through a sieve.
He said ‘I look for butterflies
That sleep among the wheat:
I make them into mutton-pies,
And sell them in the street.
I sell them unto men,’ he said,
‘Who sail on stormy seas;
And that’s the way I get my bread—
A trifle, if you please.’
But I was thinking of a plan
To dye one’s whiskers green,
And always use so large a fan
That they could not be seen.14
So, having no reply to give
To what the old man said,
I cried ‘Come, tell me how you live!’
And thumped him on the head.
His accents mild took up the tale:
He said ‘I go my ways,
And when I find a mountain-rill,
I set it in a blaze;
And thence they make a stuff they call
Rowland’s Macassar-Oil15—
Yet twopence-halfpenny is all
They give me for my toil.’
But I was thinking of a way
To feed oneself on batter,
And so go on from day to day
Getting a little fatter.
I shook him well from side to side,
Until his face was blue:
‘Come, tell me how you live,’ I cried,
‘And what it is you do!’
He said ‘I hunt for haddocks’ eyes
Among the heather bright,
And work them into waistcoat-buttons
In the silent night.
And these I do not sell for gold
Or coin of silvery shine,
But for a copper halfpenny,
And that will purchase nine.
‘I sometimes dig for buttered rolls,
Or set limed twigs16 for crabs:
I sometimes search the grassy knolls
For wheels of Hansom-cabs.17
And that’s the way’ (he gave a wink)
‘By which I get my wealth—
And very gladly will I drink
Your Honour’s noble health.’
I heard him then, for I had just
Completed my design
To keep the Menai bridge18 from rust
By boiling it in wine.
I thanked him much for telling me
The way he got his wealth,
But chiefly for his wish that he
Might drink my noble health.
And now, if e’er by chance I put
My fingers into glue,
Or madly squeeze a right-hand foot
Into a left-hand shoe,19
Or if I drop upon my toe
A very heavy weight,
I weep, for it reminds me so
Of that old man I used to know—
Whose look was mild, whose speech was slow,
Whose hair was whiter than the snow,
Whose face was very like a crow,
With eyes, like cinders, all aglow,20
Who seemed distracted with his woe,
Who rocked his body to and fro,
And muttered mumblingly and low,
As if his mouth were full of dough,
Who snorted like a buffalo—
That summer evening long ago,
A-sitting on a gate.”
As the Knight sang the last words of the ballad, he gathered up the reins, and turned his horse’s head along the road by which they had come. “You’ve only a few yards to go,” he said, “down the hill and over that little brook, and then you’ll be a Queen—But you’ll stay and see me off first?” he added as Alice turned with an eager look in the direction to which he pointed. “I sha’n’t be long. You’ll wait and wave your handkerchief when I get to that turn in the road! I think it’ll encourage me, you see.”
“Of course I’ll wait,” said Alice: “and thank you very much for coming so far—and for the song—I liked it very much.”
“I hope so,” the Knight said doubtfully: “but you didn’t cry so much as I thought you would.”
So they shook hands, and then the Knight rode slowly away into the forest. “It wo’n’t take long to see him off, I expect,” Alice said to herself, as she stood watching him. “There he goes! Right on his head as usual! However, he gets on again pretty easily—that comes of having so many things hung round the horse—” So she went on talking to herself, as she watched the horse walking leisurely along the road, and the Knight tumbling off, first on one side and then on the other. After the fourth or fifth tumble he reached the turn, and then she waved her handkerchief to him, and waited till he was out of sight.21
“I hope it encouraged him,” she said, as she turned to run down the hill: “and now for the last brook, and to be a Queen! How grand it sounds!” A very few steps brought her to the edge of the brook.22 “The Eighth Square at last!” she cried as she bounded across,
and threw herself down to rest on a lawn as soft as moss, with little flower-beds dotted about it here and there. “Oh, how glad I am to get here! And what is this on my head?” she exclaimed in a tone of dismay, as she put her hands up to something very heavy, that fitted tight all round her head.
“But how can it have got there without my knowing it?” she said to herself, as she lifted it off, and set it on her lap to make out what it could possibly be.
It was a golden crown.23
1. The Red Knight has moved to K2; a powerful move in a conventional chess game, for he simultaneously checks the White King and attacks the White Queen. The Queen is lost unless the Red Knight can be removed from the board.
2. The White Knight, landing on the square occupied by the Red Knight (the square adjacent to Alice on her east side), absent-mindedly shouts, “Check!”; actually he checks only his own King. The defeat of the Red Knight indicates a move of Kt. X Kt. in the chess game.
Although most Carrollians agree that Carroll intended the White Knight to represent himself, other candidates have been proposed. Don Quixote is an obvious choice, and the parallels are ably defended in John Hinz’s “Alice Meets the Don,” in the South Atlantic Quarterly (Vol. 52, 1953, pages 253–66), reprinted in Aspects of Alice (Vanguard, 1971), edited by Robert Phillips.
Charles Edwards wrote to tell me about a passage in Cervantes’s novel (Part 2, Chapter 4) in which the Don asks a poet to write an acrostic poem, the initial letters of its lines to spell “Dulcinea del Toboso.” The poet finds seventeen letters awkward for a poem with regular stanzas because seventeen is a prime number with no divisors. The Don advises him to work hard on it because “no woman will believe that those verses were made for her where her name is not plainly discerned.” “Alice Pleasance Liddell” has twenty-one letters. This made it possible for Carroll, in his acrostic terminal poem, to have seven stanzas of three lines each.
Another candidate for the White Kni
ght is a chemist and inventor who was a friend of Carroll’s and is often mentioned in Carroll’s diary. See “The Chemist in Allegory: Augustus Vernon Harcourt and the White Knight,” by M. Christine King, Journal of Chemical Education (March 1983). Other candidates are considered in Chapter 7 of Michael Hancher’s The Tenniel Illustrations to the “Alice” Books. Because Tenniel in later life had a handlebar mustache (and his nose resembled that of the White Knight), it has been suggested that Tenniel drew the Knight as a caricature of himself. This seems farfetched because at the time that he drew the White Knight he did not wear a mustache.
Tenniel’s frontispiece picture of the White Knight in many ways resembles Albrecht Dürer’s etching of the Knight in the presence of Death and the Devil. Was this intentional? When I wrote to Michael Hancher for his opinion, he called my attention to Tenniel’s cartoon in Punch (March 5, 1887), titled “The Knight and His Companion (Suggested by Dürer’s famous picture).” The Knight represents Bismarck and his companion is Socialism. “Obviously Tenniel had a copy of the Dürer in front of him when he drew this cartoon,” Hancher wrote. “My hunch is that he did not when he drew the Looking-Glass frontispiece, but that he called it up out of his remarkable visual memory.”
“The White Knight,” Carroll wrote to Tenniel, “must not have whiskers; he must not be made to look old.” Nowhere in the text does Carroll mention a mustache, nor does he indicate the knight’s age. Tenniel’s handlebar mustache and Newell’s bushy mustache were the artists’ additions. Perhaps Tenniel, sensing that the White Knight was Carroll, gave him a balding, elderly look to contrast his age with that of Alice.
Jeffrey Stern, in his article “Carroll Identifies Himself at Last” (Jabberwocky, Summer/Autumn 1990), describes a game board hand-drawn by Carroll that was recently discovered. The nature of the game is unknown, but on the underside of the cardboard sheet Carroll had written “Olive Butler, from the White Knight. Nov. 21, 1892.” “So, at last,” Stern comments, “we know for certain that Carroll did portray himself as the White Knight.”
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