3. Note how the White Rabbit’s angry ordering about of his servants, here and elsewhere in the chapter, is in keeping with his timid character as described by Carroll in the passage quoted in Note 2 of Chapter 2.
4. Going messages is a phrase still used in England. It means “running errands.”
5. In the Pennyroyal edition of Alice in Wonderland (University of California, 1982), James Kincaid glosses Alice’s remark this way:
This is a double-edged line and perhaps a poignant one, given Carroll’s feelings about his child-friends growing up. [His] letters are full of self-pitying jokes on the subject: “Some children have a most disagreeable way of getting grown-up. I hope you won’t do anything of that sort before we meet again.”
In his “Confessions of a Corrupt Annotator” (Jabberwocky, Spring 1982), Kincaid defends the right of annotators to take off in any direction they like. He cites the above note as an example. “The historical context does not call for a gloss, but the passage provides an opportunity to point out the ambivalence that may attend the central figure and her desire to grow up.” I thank Mr. Kincaid for supporting my own rambling.
6. This is the second time the White Rabbit has called for his gloves, but whether he ever obtained them we are not told. Gloves were as important to Carroll as they were to the Rabbit, both in reality and linguistically. “He was a little eccentric in his clothes,” Isa Bowman writes in The Story of Lewis Carroll (J. M. Dent, 1899). “In the coldest weather he would never wear an overcoat, and he had a curious habit of always wearing, in all seasons of the year, a pair of grey and black cotton gloves.”
Gloves are the topic of one of Carroll’s most amusing letters, written to Isa Bowman’s sister Maggie. Carroll pretended that when Maggie spoke of sending him “sacks full of love and baskets full of kisses,” she really meant to write “a sack full of gloves and a basket full of kittens!” A sack full of 1,000 gloves arrived, he goes on, and a basket of 250 kittens. He was thus able to put four gloves on each kitten to prevent their paws from scratching the schoolgirls to whom he gave the kittens:
So the little girls went dancing home again, and the next morning they came dancing back to school. The scratches were all healed, and they told me “The kittens have been good!” And, when any kitten wants to catch a mouse, it just takes off one of its gloves; and if it wants to catch two mice, it takes off two gloves; and if it wants to catch three mice, it takes off three gloves; and if it wants to catch four mice, it takes off all its gloves. But the moment they’ve caught the mice, they pop their gloves on again, because they know we can’t love them without their gloves. For, you see, “gloves” have got “love” inside them—there’s none outside.
7. A cucumber frame is a glass frame that provides heat for growing cucumbers by trapping solar radiation.
Carrollians have noticed that in Tenniel’s illustration of this scene the White Rabbit’s vest, white in an earlier picture, has become checked like his jacket.
8. Is this another French joke? As reader Michael Bergmann points out in a letter, “apple” is pomme in French, and “potato” is pomme de terre, or “apple of the earth.” No, it is an Irish joke. Pat is an Irish name and he speaks in an Irish brogue. As Everett Bleiler informs me, Irish apples was a nineteenth-century slang term for Irish potatoes.
What kind of animal is Pat, the apple digger? Carroll doesn’t say. Denis Crutch and R. B. Shaberman, in Under the Quizzing Glass, conjecture that Pat is one of the two guinea pigs who revive Bill after he has been kicked out of the chimney. During the trial of the Knave of Hearts both guinea pigs are in the courtroom, where they are “suppressed” for cheering.
9. Many commentators have felt that this puppy is out of place in Wonderland, as if it had wandered into Alice’s dream from the real world. Denis Crutch has observed that it is the only important creature in Wonderland who does not speak to Alice.
CHAPTER V
Advice from a Caterpillar
The Caterpillar1 and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice.
“Who are you?” said the Caterpillar.
This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I—I hardly know, Sir, just at present—at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”
“What do you mean by that?” said the Caterpillar, sternly. “Explain yourself!”
“I ca’n’t explain myself, I’m afraid, Sir,” said Alice, “because I’m not myself, you see.”
“I don’t see,” said the Caterpillar.
“I’m afraid I ca’n’t put it more clearly,” Alice replied, very politely, “for I ca’n’t understand it myself, to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.”
“It isn’t,” said the Caterpillar.
“Well, perhaps you haven’t found it so yet,” said Alice; “but when you have to turn into a chrysalis—you will some day, you know—and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you’ll feel it a little queer, wo’n’t you?”
“Not a bit,” said the Caterpillar.
“Well, perhaps your feelings may be different,” said Alice: “all I know is, it would feel very queer to me.”
“You!” said the Caterpillar contemptuously. “Who are you?”2
Which brought them back again to the beginning of the conversation. Alice felt a little irritated at the Caterpillar’s making such very short remarks, and she drew herself up and said, very gravely, “I think you ought to tell me who you are, first.”
“Why?” said the Caterpillar.
Here was another puzzling question; and, as Alice could not think of any good reason, and the Caterpillar seemed to be in a very unpleasant state of mind, she turned away.
“Come back!” the Caterpillar called after her. “I’ve something important to say!”
This sounded promising, certainly. Alice turned and came back again.
“Keep your temper,” said the Caterpillar.
“Is that all?” said Alice, swallowing down her anger as well as she could.
“No,” said the Caterpillar.
Alice thought she might as well wait, as she had nothing else to do, and perhaps after all it might tell her something worth hearing. For some minutes it puffed away without speaking; but at last it unfolded its arms, took the hookah out of its mouth again, and said “So you think you’re changed, do you?”
“I’m afraid I am, Sir,” said Alice. “I ca’n’t remember things as I used—and I don’t keep the same size for ten minutes together!”
“Ca’n’t remember what things?” said the Caterpillar.
“Well, I’ve tried to say ‘How doth the little busy bee,’ but it all came different!” Alice replied in a very melancholy voice.
“Repeat ‘You are old, Father William,’ ” said the Caterpillar.
Alice folded her hands,3 and began:—
“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—4
Allow me to sell you a couple?”
“You are old,” said the yout
h, “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—5
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 all 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 to 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 into the grass, merely remarking, as it went, “One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter.”6
“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;7 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 left-hand 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 ca’n’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, but 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 look-out 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 right-hand bit again, and did not venture to go near the house till she had brought herself down to nine inches high.
1. In The Nursery “Alice,” Carroll calls attention to the Caterpillar’s nose and chin in Tenniel’s drawing and explains that they are really two of its legs. Ned Sparks took the role of the Caterpillar in Paramount’s 1933 movie production of Alice, and Richard Haydn supplied the Caterpillar’s voice in Walt Disney’s 1951 animation of the tale. One of the most striking visual effects in the Disney film was obtained by having the Caterpillar illustrate his words by blowing multicolored smoke rings that assumed the shapes of letters and objects.
2. Fred Madden, in Jabberwocky (Summer/Autumn 1988), calls attention to a chapter titled “Popular Follies of Great Cities,” in Charles Mackay’s classic work, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841). Mackay tells of various catch phrases which sprang up suddenly in London. One such phrase was “Who are you,” spoken with emphasis on the first and last words. It appeared suddenly, “like a mushroom. . . . One day it was unheard, unknown, uninvented; the next day it pervaded London. . . . Every new comer into an alehouse tap room was asked unceremoniously ‘Who are you?’ ”
In “Who Are You: A Reply” (Jabberwocky, Winter/Spring 1990), John Clark points out that Carroll owned Mackay’s book and probably heard the question shouted at him when it was a short-lived London rage. Did he have this craze in mind when he had his blue Caterpillar, sitting on a mushroom, ask Alice, “Who are you?” It certainly seems possible. I first learned about the Mackay reference in a letter from Teller, of the Penn and Teller comedy/magic team.
The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition (The Annotated Books) Page 8