“—you advance twice—”
“Each with a lobster as a partner!” cried the Gryphon.
“Of course,” the Mock Turtle said: “advance twice, set to partners—”2
“—change lobsters, and retire in same order,” continued the Gryphon.
“Then, you know,” the Mock Turtle went on, “you throw the—”
“The lobsters!” shouted the Gryphon, with a bound into the air.
“—as far out to sea as you can—”
“Swim after them!” screamed the Gryphon.
“Turn a somersault in the sea!” cried the Mock Turtle, capering wildly about.
“Change lobsters again!” yelled the Gryphon at the top of its voice.
“Back to land again, and—that’s all the first figure,” said the Mock Turtle, suddenly dropping his voice; and the two creatures, who had been jumping about like mad things all this time, sat down again very sadly and quietly, and looked at Alice.
“It must be a very pretty dance,” said Alice timidly.
“Would you like to see a little of it?” said the Mock Turtle.
“Very much indeed,” said Alice.
“Come, let’s try the first figure!” said the Mock Turtle to the Gryphon. “We can do it without lobsters, you know. Which shall sing?”
“Oh, you sing,” said the Gryphon. “I’ve forgotten the words.”
So they began solemnly dancing round and round Alice, every now and then treading on her toes when they passed too close, and waving their fore-paws to mark the time, while the Mock Turtle sang this, very slowly and sadly:—3
“Will you walk a little faster?” said a whiting4 to a snail,
“There’s a porpoise close behind us, and he’s treading on my tail.
See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!
They are waiting on the shingle5—will you come and join the dance?
Will you, wo’n’t you, will you, wo’n’t you, will you join the dance?
Will you, wo’n’t you, will you, wo’n’t you, wo’n’t you join the dance?
“You can really have no notion how delightful it will be
When they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to sea!”
But the snail replied “Too far, too far!”, and gave a look askance—
Said he thanked the whiting kindly, but he would not join the dance.
Would not, could not, would not, could not, would not join the dance.
Would not, could not, would not, could not, could not join the dance.
“What matters it how far we go?” his scaly friend replied.
“There is another shore, you know, upon the other side.
The further off from England the nearer is to France—
Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance.
Will you, wo’n’t you, will you, wo’n’t you, will you join the dance?
Will you, wo’n’t you, will you, wo’n’t you, wo’n’t you join the dance?”
“Thank you, it’s a very interesting dance to watch,” said Alice, feeling very glad that it was over at last: “and I do so like that curious song about the whiting!”
“Oh, as to the whiting,” said the Mock Turtle, “they—you’ve seen them, of course?”
“Yes,” said Alice, “I’ve often seen them at dinn—” she checked herself hastily.
“I don’t know where Dinn may be,” said the Mock Turtle; “but, if you’ve seen them so often, of course you know what they’re like?”
“I believe so,” Alice replied thoughtfully. “They have their tails in their mouths6—and they’re all over crumbs.”
“You’re wrong about the crumbs,” said the Mock Turtle: “crumbs would all wash off in the sea. But they have their tails in their mouths; and the reason is—” here the Mock Turtle yawned and shut his eyes. “Tell her about the reason and all that,” he said to the Gryphon.
“The reason is,” said the Gryphon, “that they would go with the lobsters to the dance. So they got thrown out to sea. So they had to fall a long way. So they got their tails fast in their mouths. So they couldn’t get them out again. That’s all.”
“Thank you,” said Alice, “it’s very interesting. I never knew so much about a whiting before.”
“I can tell you more than that, if you like,” said the Gryphon. “Do you know why it’s called a whiting?”
“I never thought about it,” said Alice. “Why?”
“It does the boots and shoes,” the Gryphon replied very solemnly.
Alice was thoroughly puzzled. “Does the boots and shoes!” she repeated in a wondering tone.
“Why, what are your shoes done with?” said the Gryphon. “I mean, what makes them so shiny?”
Alice looked down at them, and considered a little before she gave her answer. “They’re done with blacking, I believe.”
“Boots and shoes under the sea,” the Gryphon went on in a deep voice, “are done with whiting. Now you know.”
“And what are they made of?” Alice asked in a tone of great curiosity.
“Soles and eels, of course,” the Gryphon replied, rather impatiently: “any shrimp could have told you that.”
“If I’d been the whiting,” said Alice, whose thoughts were still running on the song, “I’d have said to the porpoise ‘Keep back, please! We don’t want you with us!’ ”
“They were obliged to have him with them,” the Mock Turtle said. “No wise fish would go anywhere without a porpoise.”
“Wouldn’t it, really?” said Alice, in a tone of great surprise.
“Of course not,” said the Mock Turtle. “Why, if a fish came to me, and told me he was going a journey, I should say ‘With what porpoise?’ ”
“Don’t you mean ‘purpose’?” said Alice.
“I mean what I say,” the Mock Turtle replied, in an offended tone. And the Gryphon added “Come, let’s hear some of your adventures.”
“I could tell you my adventures—beginning from this morning,” said Alice a little timidly; “but it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
“Explain all that,” said the Mock Turtle.
“No, no! The adventures first,” said the Gryphon in an impatient tone: “explanations take such a dreadful time.”
So Alice began telling them her adventures from the time when she first saw the White Rabbit. She was a little nervous about it, just at first, the two creatures got so close to her, one on each side, and opened their eyes and mouths so very wide; but she gained courage as she went on. Her listeners were perfectly quiet till she got to the part about her repeating “You are old, Father William,” to the Caterpillar, and the words all coming different, and then the Mock Turtle drew a long breath, and said “That’s very curious!”
“It’s all about as curious as it can be,” said the Gryphon.
“It all came different!” the Mock Turtle repeated thoughtfully. “I should like to hear her try and repeat something now. Tell her to begin.” He looked at the Gryphon as if he thought it had some kind of authority over Alice.
“Stand up and repeat ‘ ’Tis the voice of the sluggard,’ ” said the Gryphon.
“How the creatures order one about, and make one repeat lessons!” thought Alice. “I might just as well be at school at once.” However, she got up, and began to repeat it, but her head was so full of the Lobster-Quadrille, that she hardly knew what she was saying; and the words came very queer indeed:—7
“ ’Tis the voice of the Lobster: I heard him declare
‘You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair.’
As a duck with its eyelids, so he with his nose
Trims his belt and his buttons, and turns out his toes.
When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a lark,
And will talk in contemptuous tones of the Shark:
But, when the tide rises and sharks are around,
His voice has a timid and tremulous
sound.”
“That’s different from what I used to say when I was a child,” said the Gryphon.
“Well, I never heard it before,” said the Mock Turtle; “but it sounds uncommon nonsense.”
Alice said nothing: she had sat down with her face in her hands, wondering if anything would ever happen in a natural way again.
“I should like to have it explained,” said the Mock Turtle.
“She ca’n’t explain it,” said the Gryphon hastily. “Go on with the next verse.”
“But about his toes?” the Mock Turtle persisted. “How could he turn them out with his nose, you know?”
“It’s the first position in dancing,”8 Alice said; but she was dreadfully puzzled by the whole thing, and longed to change the subject.
“Go on with the next verse,” the Gryphon repeated: “it begins ‘I passed by his garden.’ ”
Alice did not dare to disobey, though she felt sure it would all come wrong, and she went on in a trembling voice:—
“I passed by his garden, and marked, with one eye,
How the Owl and the Panther were sharing a pie:
The Panther took pie-crust, and gravy, and meat,
While the Owl had the dish as its share of the treat.
When the pie was all finished, the Owl, as a boon,
Was kindly permitted to pocket the spoon:
While the Panther received knife and fork with a growl,
And concluded the banquet by—”9
“What is the use of repeating all that stuff?” the Mock Turtle interrupted, “if you don’t explain it as you go on? It’s by far the most confusing thing I ever heard!”
“Yes, I think you’d better leave off,” said the Gryphon, and Alice was only too glad to do so.
“Shall we try another figure of the Lobster-Quadrille?” the Gryphon went on. “Or would you like the Mock Turtle to sing you another song?”
“Oh, a song, please, if the Mock Turtle would be so kind,” Alice replied, so eagerly that the Gryphon said, in a rather offended tone, “Hm! No accounting for tastes! Sing her ‘Turtle Soup,’ will you, old fellow?”
The Mock Turtle sighed deeply, and began, in a voice choked with sobs, to sing this:—10
“Beautiful Soup, so rich and green,
Waiting in a hot tureen!
Who for such dainties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
Beau—ootiful Soo—oop!
Beau—ootiful Soo—oop!
Soo—oop of the e—e—evening,
Beautiful, beautiful Soup!
“Beautiful Soup! Who cares for fish,
Game, or any other dish?
Who would not give all else for two p
ennyworth only of beautiful Soup?
Pennyworth only of beautiful soup?
Beau—ootiful Soo—oop!
Beau—ootiful Soo—oop!
Soo—oop of the e—e—evening,
Beautiful, beauti—FUL SOUP!”
“Chorus again!” cried the Gryphon, and the Mock Turtle had just begun to repeat it, when a cry of “The trial’s beginning!” was heard in the distance.
“Come on!” cried the Gryphon, and, taking Alice by the hand, it hurried off, without waiting for the end of the song.
“What trial is it?” Alice panted as she ran; but the Gryphon only answered “Come on!” and ran the faster, while more and more faintly came, carried on the breeze that followed them, the melancholy words:—
“Soo—oop of the e—e—evening,
Beautiful, beautiful Soup!”
1. The quadrille, a kind of square dance in five figures, was one of the most difficult of the ballroom dances fashionable at the time Carroll wrote his tale. The Liddell children had been taught the dance by a private tutor.
In one of his letters to a little girl, Carroll described his own dancing technique as follows:
As to dancing, my dear, I never dance, unless I am allowed to do it in my own peculiar way. There is no use trying to describe it: it has to be seen to be believed. The last house I tried it in, the floor broke through. But then it was a poor sort of floor—the beams were only six inches thick, hardly worth calling beams at all: stone arches are much more sensible, when any dancing, of my peculiar kind, is to be done. Did you ever see the Rhinoceros, and the Hippopotamus, at the Zoological Gardens, trying to dance a minuet together? It is a touching sight.
“Lobster Quadrille” could be an intended play on “Lancers Quadrille,” a walking square dance for eight to sixteen couples that was enormously popular in English ballrooms at the time Carroll wrote his Alice books. A variant of the quadrille, it consisted of five figures, each in a different meter. According to The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, the Lancers (as both the dance and its music were called) was invented by a Dublin dancing master and achieved an international following in the 1850s after being introduced in Paris. The Liddell children were taught the dance by a private tutor. The last stanza of the Mock Turtle’s song may reflect the popularity of the Lancers in France, and the tossing of the lobsters may allude to the tossing of lances in combat. Whether such tossing played a role in the dance I do not know.
2. A British correspondent who signed her letter “R. Reader” points out that “set to partners” means to face your partner, hop on one foot, then on the other.
3. The Mock Turtle’s song parodies the first line and adopts the meter of Mary Howitt’s poem (in turn based on an older song) “The Spider and the Fly.” The first stanza of Mrs. Howitt’s version reads:
“Will you walk into my parlour?” said the spider to the fly.
“ ’Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy.
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,
And I’ve got many curious things to show when you are there.”
“Oh, no, no,” said the little fly, “to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair can ne’er come down again.”
In Carroll’s original manuscript the Mock Turtle sings a different song:
Beneath the waters of the sea
Are lobsters thick as thick can be—
They love to dance with you and me.
My own, my gentle Salmon!
CHORUS
Salmon, come up! Salmon, go down!
Salmon, come twist your tail around!
Of all the fishes of the sea
There’s none so good as Salmon!
Here Carroll is parodying a Negro minstrel song, the chorus of which begins:
Sally come up! Sally go down!
Sally come twist your heel around!
An entry in Carroll’s diary on July 3, 1862 (the day before the famous expedition up the river Thames), mentions hearing the Liddell sisters (at a rainy-day get-together in the Deanery) sing this minstrel song “with great spirit.” Roger Green, in a note on this entry, provides the song’s second verse and chorus:
Last Monday night I gave a ball,
And I invite de Niggers all,
The thick, the thin, the short, the tall,
But none came up to Sally!
Sally come up! Sally go down!
Sally come twist your heel around!
De old man he’s gone down to town—
Oh Sally come down de middle!
Some verses end “Dar’s not a gal like Sally!”
In a letter (1886) to Henry Savile Clarke, who adapted the Alice books to the stage operetta, Carroll urged that his songs that parodied old nursery rhymes be sung to the traditional tunes, not set to new music. He singled out this song in particular. “It would take a very good composer to write anything better than the old sweet air of ‘Will you walk into my parlor, said the Spider to the Fly.’ ”
Tenniel’s political cartoon in Punch (March 8, 1899), captioned “Alice in Bumbleland,” features the same trio of Alice, Gryphon, and Mock Turtle. Alice is the conservative politician Art
hur James Balfour, the Gryphon is London, and the weeping Mock Turtle is the city of Westminster. Alice, the Gryphon, and an ordinary turtle appear in Tenniel’s earlier cartoon “Alice in Blunderland” (Punch, October 30, 1880). Other appearances of Alice in Punch are in Tenniel’s February 1, 1868, cartoon (Alice represents the United States), and in Tenniel’s frontispiece to the bound Volume 46 (1864).
4. A whiting is a food fish in the cod family.
5. Shingle is a word, more common in England than the United States, for that portion of the seaside where the beach is covered with large rounded stones and pebbles.
6. “When I wrote that,” Carroll is quoted as saying (in Stuart Collingwood’s The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll, page 402), “I believed that whiting really did have their tails in their mouths, but I have since been told that fishmongers put the tail through the eye, not in the mouth at all.”
A reader who signed her name only with “Alice” sent me a clipping of a letter from Craig Claiborne that appeared in The New Yorker (February 15, 1993). He describes a French dish known as merlan en colere or “whiting in anger,” prepared by “twisting the fish into a circle and tying or otherwise securing the tail in its mouth. It is then deep-fried (not boiled) and served with parsley, lemon, and tartar sauce. When it is served hot, it has a distinctly choleric, or irascible, appearance.”
7. The first line of this poem calls to mind the Biblical phrase “the voice of the turtle” (Song of Songs 2:12); actually it is a parody of the opening lines of “The Sluggard,” a dismal poem by Isaac Watts (see Note 5 of Chapter 2), which was well known to Carroll’s readers.
’Tis the voice of the sluggard; I heard him complain,
“You have wak’d me too soon, I must slumber again.”
As the door on its hinges, so he on his bed,
Turns his sides and his shoulders and his heavy head.
“A little more sleep, and a little more slumber;”
Thus he wastes half his days, and his hours without number,
And when he gets up, he sits folding his hands,
Or walks about sauntering, or trifling he stands.
I pass’d by his garden, and saw the wild brier,
The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition (The Annotated Books) Page 15