(Re)Visions: Alice ((Re)Visions)

by Kaye Chazan

  “You are old, Father William,” the young man said,

  “And your hair has become very white;

  And yet you incessantly stand on your head—

  Do you think, at your age, it is right?’

  “In my youth,” Father William replied to his son,

  “I feared it might injure the brain;

  But, now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,

  Why, I do it again and again.”

  “You are old,” said the youth, “as I mentioned before,

  And have grown most uncommonly fat;

  Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door—

  Pray, what is the reason of that?”

  “In my youth,” said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,

  “I kept all my limbs very supple

  By the use of this ointment—one shilling the box—

  Allow me to sell you a couple?”

  “You are old,” said the youth, “and your jaws are too weak

  For anything tougher than suet;

  Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak—

  Pray how did you manage to do it?”

  “In my youth,” said his father, “I took to the law,

  And argued each case with my wife;

  And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw,

  Has lasted the rest of my life.”

  “You are old,” said the youth, “one would hardly suppose

  That your eye was as steady as ever;

  Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose—

  What made you so awfully clever?”

  “I have answered three questions, and that is enough,”

  Said his father; “don’t give yourself airs!

  Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?

  Be off, or I’ll kick you down stairs!”

  “That is not said right,” said the Caterpillar.

  “Not quite right, I’m afraid,” said Alice, timidly; “some of the words have got altered.”

  “It is wrong from beginning to end,” said the Caterpillar decidedly, and there was silence for some minutes.

  The Caterpillar was the first to speak.

  “What size do you want to be?” it asked.

  “Oh, I’m not particular as to size,” Alice hastily replied; “only one doesn’t like changing so often, you know.”

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

  Alice said nothing: she had never been so much contradicted in her life before, and she felt that she was losing her temper.

  “Are you content now?” said the Caterpillar.

  “Well, I should like to be a little larger, sir, if you wouldn’t mind,” said Alice: “three inches is such a wretched height to be.”

  “It is a very good height indeed!” said the Caterpillar angrily, rearing itself upright as it spoke (it was exactly three inches high).

  “But I’m not used to it!” pleaded poor Alice in a piteous tone. And she thought of herself, “I wish the creatures wouldn’t be so easily offended!”

  “You’ll get used to it in time,” said the Caterpillar; and it put the hookah into its mouth and began smoking again.

  This time Alice waited patiently until it chose to speak again. In a minute or two the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth and yawned once or twice, and shook itself. Then it got down off the mushroom, and crawled away in the grass, merely remarking as it went, “One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter.”

  “One side of what? The other side of what?” thought Alice to herself.

  “Of the mushroom,” said the Caterpillar, just as if she had asked it aloud; and in another moment it was out of sight.

  Alice remained looking thoughtfully at the mushroom for a minute, trying to make out which were the two sides of it; and as it was perfectly round, she found this a very difficult question. However, at last she stretched her arms round it as far as they would go, and broke off a bit of the edge with each hand.

  “And now which is which?” she said to herself, and nibbled a little of the right-hand bit to try the effect: the next moment she felt a violent blow underneath her chin: it had struck her foot!

  She was a good deal frightened by this very sudden change, but she felt that there was no time to be lost, as she was shrinking rapidly; so she set to work at once to eat some of the other bit. Her chin was pressed so closely against her foot, that there was hardly room to open her mouth; but she did it at last, and managed to swallow a morsel of the lefthand bit.

  “Come, my head’s free at last!” said Alice in a tone of delight, which changed into alarm in another moment, when she found that her shoulders were nowhere to be found: all she could see, when she looked down, was an immense length of neck, which seemed to rise like a stalk out of a sea of green leaves that lay far below her.

  “What can all that green stuff be?” said Alice. “And where have my shoulders got to? And oh, my poor hands, how is it I can’t see you?” She was moving them about as she spoke, but no result seemed to follow, except a little shaking among the distant green leaves.

  As there seemed to be no chance of getting her hands up to her head, she tried to get her head down to them, and was delighted to find that her neck would bend about easily in any direction, like a serpent. She had just succeeded in curving it down into a graceful zigzag, and was going to dive in among the leaves, which she found to be nothing but the tops of the trees under which she had been wandering, when a sharp hiss made her draw back in a hurry: a large pigeon had flown into her face, and was beating her violently with its wings.

  “Serpent!” screamed the Pigeon.

  “I’m not a serpent!” said Alice indignantly. “Let me alone!”

  “Serpent, I say again!” repeated the Pigeon, but in a more subdued tone, and added with a kind of sob, “I’ve tried every way, and nothing seems to suit them!”

  “I haven’t the least idea what you’re talking about,” said Alice.

  “I’ve tried the roots of trees, and I’ve tried banks, and I’ve tried hedges,” the Pigeon went on, without attending to her; “but those serpents! There’s no pleasing them!”

  Alice was more and more puzzled, but she thought there was no use in saying anything more till the Pigeon had finished.

  “As if it wasn’t trouble enough hatching the eggs,” said the Pigeon; “but I must be on the lookout for serpents night and day! Why, I haven’t had a wink of sleep these three weeks!”

  “I’m very sorry you’ve been annoyed,” said Alice, who was beginning to see its meaning.

  “And just as I’d taken the highest tree in the wood,” continued the Pigeon, raising its voice to a shriek, “and just as I was thinking I should be free of them at last, they must needs come wriggling down from the sky! Ugh, Serpent!”

  “But I’m not a serpent, I tell you!” said Alice. “I’m a—I’m a—”

  “Well! What are you?” said the Pigeon. “I can see you’re trying to invent something!”

  “I—I’m a little girl,” said Alice, rather doubtfully, as she remembered the number of changes she had gone through that day.

  “A likely story indeed!” said the Pigeon in a tone of the deepest contempt. “I’ve seen a good many little girls in my time, but never one with such a neck as that! No, no! You’re a serpent; and there’s no use denying it. I suppose you’ll be telling me next that you never tasted an egg!”

  “I have tasted eggs, certainly,” said Alice, who was a very truthful child; “but little girls eat eggs quite as much as serpents do, you know.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said the Pigeon; “but if they do, why then they’re a kind of serpent, that’s all I can say.”

  This was such a new idea to Alice, that she was quite silent for a minute or two, which gave the Pigeon the opportunity of adding, “You’re looking for eggs, I know that well enough; and what does it matter to me whether you’re a little girl or a
serpent?”

  “It matters a good deal to me,” said Alice hastily; “but I’m not looking for eggs, as it happens; and if I was, I shouldn’t want yours: I don’t like them raw.”

  “Well, be off, then!” said the Pigeon in a sulky tone, as it settled down again into its nest. Alice crouched down among the trees as well as she could, for her neck kept getting entangled among the branches, and every now and then she had to stop and untwist it. After a while, she remembered that she still held the pieces of mushroom in her hands, and she set to work very carefully, nibbling first at one and then at the other, and growing sometimes taller and sometimes shorter, until she had succeeded in bringing herself down to her usual height.

  It was so long since she had been anything near the right size, that it felt quite strange at first; but she got used to it in a few minutes, and began talking to herself, as usual. “Come, there’s half my plan done now! How puzzling all these changes are! I’m never sure what I’m going to be, from one minute to another! However, I’ve got back to my right size; the next thing is, to get into that beautiful garden—how is that to be done, I wonder?” As she said this, she came suddenly upon an open place, with a little house in it about four feet high. “Whoever lives there,” thought Alice, “it’ll never do to come upon them this size: why, I should frighten them out of their wits!” So she began nibbling at the righthand bit again, and did not venture to go near the house till she had brought herself down to nine inches high.

  VI.

  Pig and Pepper

  For a minute or two she stood looking at the house, and wondering what to do next, when suddenly a footman in livery came running out of the wood—(she considered him to be a footman because he was in livery: otherwise, judging by his face only, she would have called him a fish)—and rapped loudly at the door with his knuckles. It was opened by another footman in livery, with a round face, and large eyes like a frog; and both footmen, Alice noticed, had powdered hair that curled all over their heads. She felt very curious to know what it was all about, and crept a little way out of the wood to listen.

  The Fish-Footman began by producing from under his arm a great letter, nearly as large as himself, and this he handed over to the other, saying, in a solemn tone, “For the Duchess. An invitation from the Queen to play croquet.” The Frog-Footman repeated, in the same solemn tone, only changing the order of the words a little, “From the Queen. An invitation for the Duchess to play croquet.”

  Then they both bowed low, and their curls got entangled together.

  Alice laughed so much at this, that she had to run back into the wood for fear of their hearing her; and when she next peeped out the Fish-Footman was gone, and the other was sitting on the ground near the door, staring stupidly up into the sky.

  Alice went timidly up to the door, and knocked.

  “There’s no sort of use in knocking,” said the Footman, “and that for two reasons. First, because I’m on the same side of the door as you are; secondly, because they’re making such a noise inside, no one could possibly hear you.” And certainly there was a most extraordinary noise going on within—a constant howling and sneezing, and every now and then a great crash, as if a dish or kettle had been broken to pieces.

  “Please, then,” said Alice, “how am I to get in?”

  “There might be some sense in your knocking,” the Footman went on without attending to her, “if we had the door between us. For instance, if you were inside, you might knock, and I could let you out, you know.” He was looking up into the sky all the time he was speaking, and this Alice thought decidedly uncivil. “But perhaps he can’t help it,” she said to herself; “his eyes are so very nearly at the top of his head. But at any rate he might answer questions.—How am I to get in?” she repeated, aloud.

  “I shall sit here,” the Footman remarked, “till tomorrow—”

  At this moment the door of the house opened, and a large plate came skimming out, straight at the Footman’s head: it just grazed his nose, and broke to pieces against one of the trees behind him.

  “—or next day, maybe,” the Footman continued in the same tone, exactly as if nothing had happened.

  “How am I to get in?” asked Alice again, in a louder tone.

  “Are you to get in at all?” said the Footman. “That’s the first question, you know.”

  It was, no doubt: only Alice did not like to be told so. “It’s really dreadful,” she muttered to herself, “the way all the creatures argue. It’s enough to drive one crazy!”

  The Footman seemed to think this a good opportunity for repeating his remark, with variations. “I shall sit here,” he said, “on and off, for days and days.”

  “But what am I to do?” said Alice.

  “Anything you like,” said the Footman, and began whistling.

  “Oh, there’s no use in talking to him,” said Alice desperately: “he’s perfectly idiotic!” And she opened the door and went in.

  The door led right into a large kitchen, which was full of smoke from one end to the other: the Duchess was sitting on a three-legged stool in the middle, nursing a baby; the cook was leaning over the fire, stirring a large cauldron which seemed to be full of soup.

  “There’s certainly too much pepper in that soup!” Alice said to herself, as well as she could for sneezing.

  There was certainly too much of it in the air. Even the Duchess sneezed occasionally; and as for the baby, it was sneezing and howling alternately without a moment’s pause. The only things in the kitchen that did not sneeze, were the cook, and a large cat which was sitting on the hearth and grinning from ear to ear.

  “Please would you tell me,” said Alice, a little timidly, for she was not quite sure whether it was good manners for her to speak first, “why your cat grins like that?”

  “It’s a Cheshire cat,” said the Duchess, “and that’s why. Pig!”

  She said the last word with such sudden violence that Alice quite jumped; but she saw in another moment that it was addressed to the baby, and not to her, so she took courage, and went on again:—

  “I didn’t know that Cheshire cats always grinned; in fact, I didn’t know that cats could grin.”

  “They all can,” said the Duchess; “and most of ‘em do.”

  “I don’t know of any that do,” Alice said very politely, feeling quite pleased to have got into a conversation.

  “You don’t know much,” said the Duchess; “and that’s a fact.”

  Alice did not at all like the tone of this remark, and thought it would be as well to introduce some other subject of conversation. While she was trying to fix on one, the cook took the cauldron of soup off the fire, and at once set to work throwing everything within her reach at the Duchess and the baby—the fire-irons came first; then followed a shower of saucepans, plates, and dishes. The Duchess took no notice of them even when they hit her; and the baby was howling so much already, that it was quite impossible to say whether the blows hurt it or not.

  “Oh, please mind what you’re doing!” cried Alice, jumping up and down in an agony of terror. “Oh, there goes his precious nose,” as an unusually large saucepan flew close by it, and very nearly carried it off.

  “If everybody minded their own business,” the Duchess said in a hoarse growl, “the world would go round a deal faster than it does.”

  “Which would not be an advantage,” said Alice, who felt very glad to get an opportunity of showing off a little of her knowledge. “Just think of what work it would make with the day and night! You see the earth takes twenty-four hours to turn round on its axis—”

  “Talking of axes,” said the Duchess, “chop off her head!”

  Alice glanced rather anxiously at the cook, to see if she meant to take the hint; but the cook was busily stirring the soup, and seemed not to be listening, so she went on again: “Twenty-four hours, I think; or is it twelve? I—”

  “Oh, don’t bother me,” said the Duchess; “I never could abide figures!” And with that she b
egan nursing her child again, singing a sort of lullaby to it as she did so, and giving it a violent shake at the end of every line:

  Speak roughly to your little boy,

  And beat him when he sneezes:

  He only does it to annoy,

  Because he knows it teases.

  CHORUS.

  (In which the cook and the baby joined):—

  ‘Wow! wow! wow!’

  While the Duchess sang the second verse of the song, she kept tossing the baby violently up and down, and the poor little thing howled so, that Alice could hardly hear the words:—

  I speak severely to my boy,

  I beat him when he sneezes;

  For he can thoroughly enjoy

  The pepper when he pleases!

  CHORUS: Wow! wow! wow!’

  “Here! you may nurse it a bit, if you like!” the Duchess said to Alice, flinging the baby at her as she spoke. “I must go and get ready to play croquet with the Queen,” and she hurried out of the room. The cook threw a frying-pan after her as she went out, but it just missed her.