4. If the Hatter had not been interrupted he would have said “tea tray.” He is thinking of the song he sang at the Mad Tea Party about the bat that twinkled in the sky like a tea tray.
CHAPTER XII
Alice’s Evidence
“Here!” cried Alice, quite forgetting in the flurry of the moment how large she had grown in the last few minutes, and she jumped up in such a hurry that she tipped over the jury-box with the edge of her skirt, upsetting all the jurymen on to the heads of the crowd below, and there they lay sprawling about, reminding her very much of a globe of gold-fish she had accidentally upset the week before.1
“Oh, I beg your pardon!” she exclaimed in a tone of great dismay, and began picking them up again as quickly as she could, for the accident of the gold-fish kept running in her head, and she had a vague sort of idea that they must be collected at once and put back into the jury-box, or they would die.
“The trial cannot proceed,” said the King, in a very grave voice, “until all the jurymen are back in their proper places—all,” he repeated with great emphasis, looking hard at Alice as he said so.
Alice looked at the jury-box, and saw that, in her haste, she had put the Lizard in head downwards, and the poor little thing was waving its tail about in a melancholy way, being quite unable to move. She soon got it out again, and put it right; “not that it signifies much,” she said to herself; “I should think it would be quite as much use in the trial one way up as the other.”
As soon as the jury had a little recovered from the shock of being upset, and their slates and pencils had been found and handed back to them, they set to work very diligently to write out a history of the accident, all except the Lizard, who seemed too much overcome to do anything but sit with its mouth open, gazing up into the roof of the court.
“What do you know about this business?” the King said to Alice.
“Nothing,” said Alice.
“Nothing whatever?” persisted the King.
“Nothing whatever,” said Alice.
“That’s very important,” the King said, turning to the jury. They were just beginning to write this down on their slates, when the White Rabbit interrupted: “Unimportant, your Majesty means, of course,” he said, in a very respectful tone, but frowning and making faces at him as he spoke.
“Unimportant, of course, I meant,” the King hastily said, and went on to himself in an undertone, “important—unimportant—unimportant—important—” as if he were trying which word sounded best.
Some of the jury wrote it down “important,” and some “unimportant.” Alice could see this, as she was near enough to look over their slates; “but it doesn’t matter a bit,” she thought to herself.
At this moment the King, who had been for some time busily writing in his note-book, called out “Silence!”, and read out from his book, “Rule Forty-two.2 All persons more than a mile high to leave the court.”
Everybody looked at Alice.
“I’m not a mile high,” said Alice.
“You are,” said the King.
“Nearly two miles high,” added the Queen.
“Well, I sha’n’t go, at any rate,” said Alice: “besides, that’s not a regular rule: you invented it just now.”
“It’s the oldest rule in the book,” said the King.
“Then it ought to be Number One,” said Alice.
The King turned pale, and shut his note-book hastily. “Consider your verdict,” he said to the jury, in a low trembling voice.
“There’s more evidence to come yet, please your Majesty,” said the White Rabbit, jumping up in a great hurry: “this paper has just been picked up.”
“What’s in it?” said the Queen.
“I haven’t opened it yet,” said the White Rabbit; “but it seems to be a letter, written by the prisoner to—to somebody.”
“It must have been that,” said the King, “unless it was written to nobody, which isn’t usual, you know.”
“Who is it directed to?” said one of the jurymen.
“It isn’t directed at all,” said the White Rabbit: “in fact, there’s nothing written on the outside.” He unfolded the paper as he spoke, and added “It isn’t a letter, after all: it’s a set of verses.”
“Are they in the prisoner’s handwriting?” asked another of the jurymen.
“No, they’re not,” said the White Rabbit, “and that’s the queerest thing about it.” (The jury all looked puzzled.)
“He must have imitated somebody else’s hand,” said the King. (The jury all brightened up again.)
“Please your Majesty,” said the Knave, “I didn’t write it, and they ca’n’t prove that I did: there’s no name signed at the end.”3
“If you didn’t sign it,” said the King, “that only makes the matter worse. You must have meant some mischief, or else you’d have signed your name like an honest man.”
There was a general clapping of hands at this: it was the first really clever thing the King had said that day.
“That proves his guilt, of course,” said the Queen: “so, off with—.”
“It doesn’t prove anything of the sort!” said Alice. “Why, you don’t even know what they’re about!”
“Read them,” said the King.
The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. “Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?” he asked.
“Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”
There was dead silence in the court, whilst the White Rabbit read out these verses:—4
“They told me you had been to her,
And mentioned me to him:
She gave me a good character,
But said I could not swim.
He sent them word I had not gone
(We know it to be true):
If she should push the matter on,
What would become of you?
I gave her one, they gave him two,
You gave us three or more;
They all returned from him to you,
Though they were mine before.
If I or she should chance to be
Involved in this affair,
He trusts to you to set them free,
Exactly as we were.
My notion was that you had been
(Before she had this fit)
An obstacle that came between
Him, and ourselves, and it.
Don’t let him know she liked them best,
For this must ever be
A secret, kept from all the rest,
Between yourself and me.”
“That’s the most important piece of evidence we’ve heard yet,” said the King, rubbing his hands; “so now let the jury—”
“If any one of them can explain it,” said Alice, (she had grown so large in the last few minutes that she wasn’t a bit afraid of interrupting him,) “I’ll give him sixpence.5 I don’t believe there’s an atom of meaning in it.”
The jury all wrote down, on their slates, “She doesn’t believe there’s an atom of meaning in it,” but none of them attempted to explain the paper.
“If there’s no meaning in it,” said the King, “that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we needn’t try to find any. And yet I don’t know,” he went on, spreading out the verses on his knee, and looking at them with one eye; “I seem to see some meaning in them, after all. ‘—said I could not swim—’ you ca’n’t swim, can you?” he added, turning to the Knave.
The Knave shook his head sadly. “Do I look like it?” he said. (Which he certainly did not, being made entirely of cardboard.)
“All right, so far,” said the King; and he went on muttering over the verses to himself: “ ‘We know it to be true’—that’s the jury, of course—‘If she should push the matter on’—that must be the Queen—‘What would become of you?’— What, indeed!—‘I gave her one, they gave him two’—why, that must be what he did with the tarts, you know—”
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br /> “But it goes on ‘they all returned from him to you,’ ” said Alice.
“Why, there they are?” said the King triumphantly, pointing to the tarts on the table. “Nothing can be clearer than that. Then again—‘before she had this fit’—you never had fits, my dear, I think?” he said to the Queen.
“Never!” said the Queen, furiously, throwing an inkstand at the Lizard as she spoke. (The unfortunate little Bill had left off writing on his slate with one finger, as he found it made no mark; but he now hastily began again, using the ink, that was trickling down his face, as long as it lasted.)6
“Then the words don’t fit you,” said the King, looking round the court with a smile. There was a dead silence.7
“It’s a pun!” the King added in an angry tone, and everybody laughed. “Let the jury consider their verdict,” the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.
“No, no!” said the Queen. “Sentence first—verdict afterwards.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” said Alice loudly. “The idea of having the sentence first!”
“Hold your tongue!” said the Queen, turning purple.
“I wo’n’t!” said Alice.
“Off with her head!” the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody moved.
“Who cares for you?” said Alice (she had grown to her full size by this time). “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!”
At this the whole pack rose up into the air, and came flying down upon her;8 she gave a little scream, half of fright and half of anger, and tried to beat them off, and found herself lying on the bank, with her head in the lap of her sister, who was gently brushing away some dead leaves that had fluttered down from the trees upon her face.
“Wake up, Alice dear!” said her sister. “Why, what a long sleep you’ve had!”
“Oh, I’ve had such a curious dream!” said Alice. And she told her sister, as well as she could remember them, all these strange Adventures of hers that you have just been reading about; and, when she had finished, her sister kissed her, and said “It was a curious dream, dear, certainly; but now run in to your tea: it’s getting late.” So Alice got up and ran off, thinking while she ran, as well she might, what a wonderful dream it had been.
But her sister sat still just as she left her, leaning her head on her hand, watching the setting sun, and thinking of little Alice and all her wonderful Adventures, till she too began dreaming after a fashion, and this was her dream:—
First, she dreamed about little Alice herself: once again the tiny hands were clasped upon her knee, and the bright eager eyes were looking up into hers—she could hear the very tones of her voice, and see that queer little toss of her head to keep back the wandering hair that would always get into her eyes—and still as she listened, or seemed to listen, the whole place around her became alive with the strange creatures of her little sister’s dream.9
The long grass rustled at her feet as the White Rabbit hurried by—the frightened Mouse splashed his way through the neighbouring pool—she could hear the rattle of the teacups as the March Hare and his friends shared their never-ending meal, and the shrill voice of the Queen ordering off her unfortunate guests to execution—once more the pig-baby was sneezing on the Duchess’s knee, while plates and dishes crashed around it—once more the shriek of the Gryphon, the squeaking of the Lizard’s slate-pencil, and the choking of the suppressed guinea-pigs, filled the air, mixed up with the distant sob of the miserable Mock Turtle.
So she sat on, with closed eyes, and half believed herself in Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open them again, and all would change to dull reality—the grass would be only rustling in the wind, and the pool rippling to the waving of the reeds—the rattling teacups would change to tinkling sheep-bells, and the Queen’s shrill cries to the voice of the shepherd-boy—and the sneeze of the baby, the shriek of the Gryphon, and all the other queer noises, would change (she knew) to the confused clamour of the busy farm-yard—while the lowing of the cattle in the distance would take the place of the Mock Turtle’s heavy sobs.
Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood; and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago; and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days.10
1. In The Nursery “Alice” Carroll points out that all twelve jury members are visible in Tenniel’s drawing of this scene, and he lists them as a frog, dormouse, rat, ferret, hedgehog, lizard, bantam cock, mole, duck, squirrel, storkling, mousling. Of the last two Carroll writes: “Mr. Tenniel says the screaming bird is a Storkling (of course you know what that is?) and the little white head is a Mousling. Isn’t it a little Darling?”
2. The number forty-two held a special meaning for Carroll. The first Alice book had forty-two illustrations. An important nautical rule, Rule 42, is cited in Carroll’s preface to The Hunting of the Snark, and in Fit 1, stanza 7, the Baker comes aboard the ship with forty-two carefully packed boxes. In his poem “Phantasmagoria,” Canto 1, stanza 16, Carroll gives his age as forty-two although he was five years younger at the time. In Through the Looking-Glass the White King sends 4,207 horses and men to restore Humpty Dumpty, and seven is a factor of forty-two. Alice’s age in the second book is seven years and six months, and seven times six equals forty-two. It is probably coincidental, but (as Philip Benham has observed) each Alice book has twelve chapters, or twenty-four in all, and twenty-four is forty-two backwards.
For more numerology about forty-two—in Carroll’s life, in the Bible, in the Sherlock Holmes canon, and elsewhere—see the forty-second issue of Bandersnatch, the newsletter of England’s Lewis Carroll Society. (The issue was published in January 1942 plus 42.) See also Edward Wakeling’s “What I Tell You Forty-two Times Is True!” (Jabberwocky, Autumn 1977), his “Further Findings About the Number Forty-two” (Jabberwocky, Winter/Spring 1988) and Note 32 of my Annotated Snark as it appears in The Hunting of the Snark (William Kaufmann, Inc., 1981). In Douglas Adams’s popular science-fiction novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, forty-two is said to be the answer to the “Ultimate Question about Everything.” See Chapter 1, Note 4, for still another forty-two.
3. If the Knave didn’t write it, asks Selwyn Goodacre, how did he know it wasn’t signed?
4. The White Rabbit’s evidence consists of six verses with confused pronouns and very little sense. They are taken in considerably revised form from Carroll’s eight-verse nonsense poem, “She’s All My Fancy Painted Him,” which first appeared in The Comic Times of London in 1855. The first line of the original copies the first line of “Alice Gray,” a sentimental song by William Mee that was popular at the time. The rest of the poem has no resemblance to the song except in meter.
Carroll’s earlier version, with his introductory note, follows:
This affecting fragment was found in MS. among the papers of the well-known author of “Was it You or I?” a tragedy, and the two popular novels, “Sister and Son,” and “The Niece’s Legacy, or the Grateful Grandfather.”
She’s all my fancy painted him
(I make no idle boast);
If he or you had lost a limb,
Which would have suffered most?
He said that you had been to her,
And seen me here before;
But, in another character,
She was the same of yore.
There was not one that spoke to us,
Of all that thronged the street:
So he sadly got into a ’bus,
And pattered with his feet.
They sent him word I had not gone
(We know it to be true);
If she should push the matter on,
; What would become of you?
They gave her one, they gave me two,
They gave us three or more;
They all returned from him to you,
Though they were mine before.
If I or she should chance to be
Involved in this affair,
He trusts to you to set them free,
Exactly as we were.
It seemed to me that you had been
(Before she had this fit)
An obstacle, that came between
Him, and ourselves, and it.
Don’t let him know she liked them best,
For this must ever be
A secret, kept from all the rest,
Between yourself and me.
Did Carroll introduce this poem into his story because the song behind it tells of the unrequited love of a man for a girl named Alice? I quote from John M. Shaw’s booklet (cited in Note 4 of Chapter 6) the song’s opening stanzas:
She’s all my fancy painted her,
She’s lovely, she’s divine,
But her heart it is another’s,
She never can be mine.
Yet loved I as man never loved,
A love without decay,
O, my heart, my heart is breaking
For the love of Alice Gray.
5. “A statement that is a measure of her increasing confidence,” comments Selwyn Goodacre (Jabberwocky, Spring 1982), “because we know she hasn’t a coin in her pocket—she told the Dodo she only had the thimble.”
6. This is the first of two references to throwing ink on someone’s face. In the first chapter of Through the Looking-Glass, Alice intends to revive the White King by tossing ink on his face.
7. A similar reaction to a pun is one of the five characteristic traits of a snark, as we learn in the second “fit” of Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark:
The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition (The Annotated Books) Page 17