The Annotated Alice

by Lewis Carroll

  Evidently Humpty Dumpty was very angry, though he said nothing for a minute or two. When he did speak again, it was in a deep growl.

  “It is a—most—provoking—thing,” he said at last, “when a person doesn’t know a cravat from a belt!”

  “I know it’s very ignorant of me,” Alice said, in so humble a tone that Humpty Dumpty relented.

  “It’s a cravat, child, and a beautiful one, as you say. It’s a present from the White King and Queen. There now!”

  “Is it really?” said Alice, quite pleased to find that she had chosen a good subject, after all.

  “They gave it me,” Humpty Dumpty continued thoughtfully, as he crossed one knee over the other and clasped his hands round it, “they gave it me—for an un-birthday present.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Alice said with a puzzled air.

  “I’m not offended,” said Humpty Dumpty.

  “I mean, what is an un-birthday present?”

  “A present given when it isn’t your birthday, of course.”

  Alice considered a little. “I like birthday presents best,” she said at last.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” cried Humpty Dumpty. “How many days are there in a year?”

  “Three hundred and sixty-five,” said Alice.

  “And how many birthdays have you?”

  “One.”

  “And if you take one from three hundred and sixty-five, what remains?”

  “Three hundred and sixty-four, of course.”

  Humpty Dumpty looked doubtful. “I’d rather see that done on paper,” he said.8

  Alice couldn’t help smiling as she took out her memorandum-book, and worked the sum for him:

  365

  1

  364

  Humpty Dumpty took the book, and looked at it carefully. “That seems to be done right—” he began.

  “You’re holding it upside down!” Alice interrupted.

  “To be sure I was!” Humpty Dumpty said gaily, as she turned it round for him. “I thought it looked a little queer. As I was saying, that seems to be done right—though I haven’t time to look it over thoroughly just now—and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents—”

  “Certainly,” said Alice.

  “And only one for birthday presents, you know. There’s glory for you!”

  “I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’” Alice said.

  Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’”9

  “But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument,’” Alice objected.

  “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

  “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”10

  “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”11

  Alice was too much puzzled to say anything; so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. “They’ve a temper, some of them—particularly verbs: they’re the proudest—adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs—however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That’s what I say!”

  “Would you tell me, please,” said Alice, “what that means?”

  “Now you talk like a reasonable child,” said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. “I meant by ‘impenetrability’ that we’ve had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you’d mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don’t mean to stop here all the rest of your life.”

  “That’s a great deal to make one word mean,” Alice said in a thoughtful tone.

  “When I make a word do a lot of work like that,” said Humpty Dumpty, “I always pay it extra.”

  “Oh!” said Alice. She was too much puzzled to make any other remark.

  “Ah, you should see ’em come round me of a Saturday night,” Humpty Dumpty went on, wagging his head gravely from side to side, “for to get their wages, you know.”

  (Alice didn’t venture to ask what he paid them with; and so you see I ca’n’t tell you.)

  “You seem very clever at explaining words, Sir,” said Alice. “Would you kindly tell me the meaning of the poem called ‘Jabberwocky’?”

  “Let’s hear it,” said Humpty Dumpty. “I can explain all the poems that ever were invented—and a good many that haven’t been invented just yet.”

  This sounded very hopeful, so Alice repeated the first verse:—

  “’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

  All mimsy were the borogoves,

  And the mome raths outgrabe.”

  “That’s enough to begin with,” Humpty Dumpty interrupted: “there are plenty of hard words there. ‘Brillig’ means four o’clock in the afternoon—the time when you begin broiling things for dinner.”

  “That’ll do very well,” said Alice: “and ‘slithy’?”

  “Well, ‘slithy’ means ‘lithe and slimy.’ ‘Lithe’ is the same as ‘active.’ You see it’s like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.”12

  “I see it now,” Alice remarked thoughtfully: “and what are ‘toves’?”

  “Well, ‘toves’ are something like badgers—they’re something like lizards—and they’re something like corkscrews.”

  “They must be very curious-looking creatures.”

  “They are that,” said Humpty Dumpty: “also they make their nests under sun-dials—also they live on cheese.”

  “And what’s to ‘gyre’ and to ‘gimble’?”

  “To ‘gyre’ is to go round and round like a gyroscope. To ‘gimble’ is to make holes like a gimblet.”

  “And ‘the wabe’ is the grass-plot round a sun-dial, I suppose?” said Alice, surprised at her own ingenuity.

  “Of course it is. It’s called ‘wabe,’ you know, because it goes a long way before it, and a long way behind it—”

  “And a long way beyond it on each side,”13 Alice added.

  “Exactly so. Well then, ‘mimsy’ is ‘flimsy and miserable’ (there’s another portmanteau for you). And a ‘borogove’ is a thin shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round—something like a live mop.”

  “And then ‘mome raths’?” said Alice. “I’m afraid I’m giving you a great deal of trouble.”

  “Well, a ‘rath’ is a sort of green pig: but ‘mome’ I’m not certain about. I think it’s short for ‘from home’—meaning that they’d lost their way, you know.”14

  “And what does ‘outgrabe’ mean?”

  “Well, ‘outgribing’ is something between bellowing and whistling, with a kind of sneeze in the middle: however, you’ll hear it done, maybe—down in the wood yonder—and, when you’ve once heard it, you’ll be quite content. Who’s been repeating all that hard stuff to you?”

  “I read it in a book,” said Alice. “But I had some poetry repeated to me much easier than that, by—Tweedledee, I think it was.”

  “As to poetry, you know,” said Humpty Dumpty, stretching out one of his great hands, “I can repeat poetry as well as other folk, if it comes to that—”

  “Oh, it needn’t come to that!” Alice hastily said, hoping to keep him from beginning.

  “The piece I’m going to repeat,” he went on without noticing her remark, “was written entirely for your amusement.”

  Alice felt that in that case she really ought to listen to it; so she sat down, and said “Thank you” rather sadly.

  “In winter, when the fields are white,

  I sing this song for your delight—15

  only I don’t sing it,” he added, as an explanation.

  “I see you don’t,” said Alice.

  “If you can see whether I’m singing or not, you’ve sharper eyes th
an most,” Humpty Dumpty remarked severely. Alice was silent.

  “In spring, when woods are getting green,

  I’ll try and tell you what I mean:”

  “Thank you very much,” said Alice.

  “In summer, when the days are long,

  Perhaps you’ll understand the song:

  In autumn, when the leaves are brown,

  Take pen and ink, and write it down.”

  “I will, if I can remember it so long,” said Alice.

  “You needn’t go on making remarks like that,” Humpty Dumpty said: “they’re not sensible, and they put me out.”

  “I sent a message to the fish:

  I told them ‘This is what I wish.’

  The little fishes of the sea,

  They sent an answer back to me.

  The little fishes’ answer was

  ‘We cannot do it, Sir, because—’”

  “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand,” said Alice.

  “It gets easier further on,” Humpty Dumpty replied.

  “I sent to them again to say

  ‘It will be better to obey.’

  The fishes answered, with a grin,

  ‘Why, what a temper you are in!’

  I told them once, I told them twice:

  They would not listen to advice.

  I took a kettle large and new,

  Fit for the deed I had to do.

  My heart went hop, my heart went thump:

  I filled the kettle at the pump.

  Then some one came to me and said

  ‘The little fishes are in bed.’

  I said to him, I said it plain,

  ‘Then you must wake them up again.’

  I said it very loud and clear:

  I went and shouted in his ear.”

  Humpty Dumpty raised his voice almost to a scream as he repeated this verse, and Alice thought, with a shudder, “I wouldn’t have been the messenger for anything!”

  “But he was very stiff and proud:

  He said ‘You needn’t shout so loud!’16

  And he was very proud and stiff:

  He said ‘I’d go and wake them, if—’

  I took a corkscrew from the shelf:

  I went to wake them up myself.

  And when I found the door was locked,

  I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked.

  And when I found the door was shut,

  I tried to turn the handle, but—”17

  There was a long pause.

  “Is that all?” Alice timidly asked.

  “That’s all,” said Humpty Dumpty. “Good-bye.”

  This was rather sudden, Alice thought: but, after such a very strong hint that she ought to be going, she felt that it would hardly be civil to stay. So she got up, and held out her hand. “Good-bye, till we meet again!” she said as cheerfully as she could.

  “I shouldn’t know you again if we did meet,” Humpty Dumpty replied in a discontented tone, giving her one of his fingers to shake:18 “you’re so exactly like other people.”

  “The face is what one goes by, generally,” Alice remarked in a thoughtful tone.

  “That’s just what I complain of,” said Humpty Dumpty. “Your face is the same as everybody has—the two eyes, so—” (marking their places in the air with his thumb) “nose in the middle, mouth under. It’s always the same. Now if you had the two eyes on the same side of the nose, for instance—or the mouth at the top—that would be some help.”

  “It wouldn’t look nice,” Alice objected. But Humpty Dumpty only shut his eyes, and said “Wait till you’ve tried.”

  Alice waited a minute to see if he would speak again, but, as he never opened his eyes or took any further notice of her, she said “Good-bye!” once more, and, getting no answer to this, she quietly walked away: but she couldn’t help saying to herself, as she went, “Of all the unsatisfactory—” (she repeated this aloud, as it was a great comfort to have such a long word to say) “of all the unsatisfactory people I ever met—” She never finished the sentence, for at this moment a heavy crash shook the forest from end to end.19

  1. Neither Tenniel nor Newell, Everett Bleiler points out in a letter, show Humpty sitting with his legs crossed, a position which would make his perch more precarious.

  2. Michael Hancher, in his book on Tenniel’s art, calls attention to a subtlety in Tenniel’s picture of Humpty that shows how extremely narrow the top of the wall is. At the right of the drawing you can see the wall in cross section. It is topped by an almost pointed coping!

  3. The Humpty Dumpty episode, like the episodes about the Jack of Hearts, the Tweedle twins, and the Lion and the Unicorn, elaborates on the incidents related in a familiar nursery rhyme. Another and quite different elaboration will be found in L. Frank Baum’s first book for children, Mother Goose in Prose (1897). In recent years Mr. Dumpty has been editing a children’s magazine (Humpty Dumpty’s Magazine, published by Parents Institute). I had the privilege of working under him for eight years, as chronicler of the adventures of his son, Humpty Dumpty, Junior. A high point in Paramount’s film version of Alice was the portrayal of Humpty by W. C. Fields.

  4. Peter Alexander, in his excellent paper “Logic and the Humor of Lewis Carroll” (Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical Society, Vol. 6, May 1951, pages 551–66), calls attention to a Carrollian inversion here that is easily overlooked. In real life proper names seldom have a meaning other than the fact that they denote an individual object, whereas other words have general, universal meanings. In Humpty Dumpty’s realm, the reverse is true. Ordinary words mean whatever Humpty wants them to mean, whereas proper names like “Alice” and “Humpty Dumpty” are supposed to have general significance. Mr. Alexander’s thesis, with which one must heartily concur, is that Carroll’s humor is strongly colored by his interest in formal logic.

  5. Molly Martin calls attention, in a letter, to the word “breaking,” anticipating Humpty’s fall.

  6. These remarks of Humpty (note also his frequent use of the word “proud” in the rest of his conversation with Alice) reveal the pride that goeth before his fall.

  7. As others have noted, this is the subtlest, grimmest, easiest-to-miss quip in the Alice books. No wonder that Alice, quick to catch an implication, changes the subject.

  8. Humpty Dumpty is a philologist and philosopher skilled primarily in linguistic matters. Perhaps Carroll is suggesting here that such types, exceedingly plentiful both then and now in the Oxford area, are seldom gifted mathematically.

  9. In “Humpty Dumpty and Heresy; Or, the Case of the Curate’s Egg,” in the Western Humanities Review (Spring 1968), Wilbur Gaffney argues that Humpty’s definition of glory may have been influenced by a passage in a book by that egotistical British egghead, philosopher Thomas Hobbes:

  Sudden glory, is the passion which maketh those grimaces called LAUGHTER; and is caused either by some sudden act of their own, that pleaseth them [such as, obviously, coming out with a nice knock-down argument]; or by the apprehension of some deformed thing in another, by comparison whereof they suddenly applaud themselves. And it is incident most to them, that are conscious of the fewest abilities in themselves; who are forced to keep themselves in their own favour, by observing the imperfections of others.

  Janis Lull, in Lewis Carroll: A Celebration, observes that the White Knight declares his “knock-down” dispute with the Red Knight in Chapter 8 a “glorious victory.”

  Remove the l from glory, Carroll observes at the end of the sixth knot in A Tangled Tale, and you get gory. An adjective describing the end of a knockdown argument?

  10. In his article “The Stage and the Spirit of Reverence,” Carroll put it this way: “no word has a meaning inseparably attached to it; a word means what the speaker intends by it, and what the hearer understands by it, and that is all…This thought may serve to lessen the horror of some of the language used by the lower classes, which, it is a comfort to remember, is often a mere collection of unmeaning sounds
, so far as speaker and hearer are concerned.”

  11. Lewis Carroll was fully aware of the profundity in Humpty Dumpty’s whimsical discourse on semantics. Humpty takes the point of view known in the Middle Ages as nominalism; the view that universal terms do not refer to objective existences but are nothing more than flatus vocis, verbal utterances. The view was skillfully defended by William of Occam and is now held by almost all contemporary logical empiricists.

  Even in logic and mathematics, where terms are usually more precise than in other subject matters, enormous confusion often results from a failure to realize that words mean “neither more nor less” than what they are intended to mean. In Carroll’s time a lively controversy in formal logic concerned the “existential import” of Aristotle’s four basic propositions. Do the universal statements “All A is B” and “No A is B” imply that A is a set that actually contains members? Is it implied in the particular statements “Some A is B” and “Some A is not B”?

  Carroll answers these questions at some length on page 165 of his Symbolic Logic. The passage is worth quoting, for it is straight from the broad mouth of Humpty Dumpty.

  The writers, and editors, of the Logical text-books which run in the ordinary grooves—to whom I shall hereafter refer by the (I hope inoffensive) title “The Logicians”—take, on this subject, what seems to me to be a more humble position than is at all necessary. They speak of the Copula of a Proposition “with bated breath”; almost as if it were a living, conscious Entity, capable of declaring for itself what it chose to mean, and that we, poor human creatures, had nothing to do but to ascertain what was its sovereign will and pleasure, and submit to it.

  In opposition to this view, I maintain that any writer of a book is fully authorised in attaching any meaning he likes to any word or phrase he intends to use. If I find an author saying, at the beginning of his book. “Let it be understood that by the word ‘black’ I shall always mean ‘white’, and that by the word ‘white’ I shall always mean ‘black’,” I meekly accept his ruling, however injudicious I may think it.