“Oh, don’t go on like that!” cried the poor Queen, wringing her hands in despair. “Consider what a great girl you are. Consider what a long way you’ve come to-day. Consider what o’clock it is. Consider anything, only don’t cry!”
Alice could not help laughing at this, even in the midst of her tears. “Can you keep from crying by considering things?” she asked.
“That’s the way it’s done,” the Queen said with great decision: “nobody can do two things at once, you know.6 Let’s consider your age to begin with—how old are you?”
“I’m seven and a half, exactly.”
“You needn’t say ‘exactually,’ ” the Queen remarked. “I can believe it without that. Now I’ll give you something to believe. I’m just one hundred and one, five months and a day.”
“I ca’n’t believe that!” said Alice.
“Ca’n’t you?” the Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one ca’n’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.7 There goes the shawl again!”
The brooch had come undone as she spoke, and a sudden gust of wind blew the Queen’s shawl across a little brook. The Queen spread out her arms again, and went flying after it,8 and this time she succeeded in catching it for herself. “I’ve got it!” she cried in a triumphant tone. “Now you shall see me pin it on again, all by myself!”
“Then I hope your finger is better now?” Alice said very politely, as she crossed the little brook after the Queen.9
“Oh, much better!” cried the Queen, her voice rising into a squeak as she went on. “Much be-etter! Be-etter! Be-e-e-etter! Be-e-ehh!” The last word ended in a long bleat, so like a sheep that Alice quite started.
She looked at the Queen, who seemed to have suddenly wrapped herself up in wool. Alice rubbed her eyes, and looked again. She couldn’t make out what had happened at all. Was she in a shop? And was that really—was it really a sheep that was sitting on the other side of the counter? Rub as she would, she could make nothing more of it: she was in a little dark shop,10 leaning with her elbows on the counter, and opposite to her was an old Sheep, sitting in an arm-chair, knitting, and every now and then leaving off to look at her through a great pair of spectacles.
“What is it you want to buy?” the Sheep said at last, looking up for a moment from her knitting.
“I don’t quite know yet,” Alice said very gently. “I should like to look all round me first, if I might.”
“You may look in front of you, and on both sides, if you like,” said the Sheep; “but you ca’n’t look all round you—unless you’ve got eyes at the back of your head.”
But these, as it happened, Alice had not got: so she contented herself with turning round, looking at the shelves as she came to them.
The shop seemed to be full of all manner of curious things—but the oddest part of it all was that, whenever she looked hard at any shelf, to make out exactly what it had on it, that particular shelf was always quite empty, though the others round it were crowded as full as they could hold.11
“Things flow about so here!”12 she said at last in a plaintive tone, after she had spent a minute or so in vainly pursuing a large bright thing, that looked sometimes like a doll and sometimes like a work-box, and was always in the shelf next above the one she was looking at. “And this one is the most provoking of all—but I’ll tell you what—” she added, as a sudden thought struck her. “I’ll follow it up to the very top shelf of all. It’ll puzzle it to go through the ceiling, I expect!”
But even this plan failed: the “thing” went through the ceiling as quietly as possible, as if it were quite used to it.
“Are you a child or a teetotum?”13 the Sheep said, as she took up another pair of needles. “You’ll make me giddy soon, if you go on turning round like that.” She was now working with fourteen pairs at once, and Alice couldn’t help looking at her in great astonishment.
“How can she knit with so many?” the puzzled child thought to herself. “She gets more and more like a porcupine every minute!”
“Can you row?” the Sheep asked, handing her a pair of knitting-needles as she spoke.
“Yes, a little—but not on land—and not with needles—” Alice was beginning to say, when suddenly the needles turned into oars in her hands, and she found they were in a little boat, gliding along between banks: so there was nothing for it but to do her best.
“Feather!”14 cried the Sheep, as she took up another pair of needles.
This didn’t sound like a remark that needed any answer: so Alice said nothing, but pulled away. There was something very queer about the water, she thought, as every now and then the oars got fast in it, and would hardly come out again.
“Feather! Feather!” the Sheep cried again, taking more needles. “You’ll be catching a crab15 directly.”
“A dear little crab!” thought Alice. “I should like that.”
“Didn’t you hear me say ‘Feather’?” the Sheep cried angrily, taking up quite a bunch of needles.
“Indeed I did,” said Alice: “you’ve said it very often—and very loud. Please where are the crabs?”
“In the water, of course!” said the Sheep, sticking some of the needles into her hair, as her hands were full. “Feather, I say!”
“Why do you say ‘Feather’ so often?” Alice asked at last, rather vexed. “I’m not a bird!”
“You are,” said the Sheep: “you’re a little goose.”
This offended Alice a little, so there was no more conversation for a minute or two, while the boat glided gently on, sometimes among beds of weeds (which made the oars stick fast in the water, worse than ever), and sometimes under trees, but always with the same tall river-banks frowning over their heads.
“Oh, please! There are some scented rushes!” Alice cried in a sudden transport of delight. “There really are—and such beauties!”
“You needn’t say ‘please’ to me about ’em,” the Sheep said, without looking up from her knitting: “I didn’t put ’em there, and I’m not going to take ’em away.”
“No, but I meant—please, may we wait and pick some?” Alice pleaded. “If you don’t mind stopping the boat for a minute.”
“How am I to stop it?” said the Sheep. “If you leave off rowing, it’ll stop of itself.”
So the boat was left to drift down the stream as it would, till it glided gently in among the waving rushes. And then the little sleeves were carefully rolled up, and the little arms were plunged in elbow-deep, to get hold of the rushes a good long way down before breaking them off—and for a while Alice forgot all about the Sheep and the knitting, as she bent over the side of the boat, with just the ends of her tangled hair dipping into the water—while with bright eager eyes she caught at one bunch after another of the darling scented rushes.
“I only hope the boat won’t tipple over!” she said to herself. “Oh, what a lovely one! Only I couldn’t quite reach it.” And it certainly did seem a little provoking (“almost as if it happened on purpose,” she thought) that, though she managed to pick plenty of beautiful rushes as the boat glided by, there was always a more lovely one that she couldn’t reach.
“The prettiest are always further!” she said at last, with a sigh at the obstinacy of the rushes in growing so far off, as, with flushed cheeks and dripping hair and hands, she scrambled back into her place, and began to arrange her new-found treasures.
What mattered it to her just then that the rushes had begun to fade, and to lose all their scent and beauty, from the very moment that she picked them?16 Even real scented rushes, you know, last only a very little while—and these, being dream-rushes, melted away almost like snow, as they lay in heaps at her feet—but Alice hardl
y noticed this, there were so many other curious things to think about.
They hadn’t gone much farther before the blade of one of the oars got fast in the water and wouldn’t come out again (so Alice explained it afterwards), and the consequence was that the handle of it caught her under the chin, and, in spite of a series of little shrieks of “Oh, oh, oh!” from poor Alice, it swept her straight off the seat, and down among the heap of rushes.
However, she wasn’t a bit hurt, and was soon up again: the Sheep went on with her knitting all the while, just as if nothing had happened. “That was a nice crab you caught!” she remarked, as Alice got back into her place, very much relieved to find herself still in the boat.
“Was it? I didn’t see it,” said Alice, peeping cautiously over the side of the boat into the dark water. “I wish it hadn’t let go—I should so like a little crab to take home with me!” But the Sheep only laughed scornfully, and went on with her knitting.
“Are there many crabs here?” said Alice.
“Crabs, and all sorts of things,” said the Sheep: “plenty of choice, only make up your mind. Now, what do you want to buy?”
“To buy!” Alice echoed in a tone that was half astonished and half frightened—for the oars, and the boat, and the river, had vanished all in a moment, and she was back again in the little dark shop.
“I should like to buy an egg, please,” she said timidly. “How do you sell them?”
“Fivepence farthing for one—twopence for two,” the Sheep replied.
“Then two are cheaper than one?” Alice said in a surprised tone, taking out her purse.
“Only you must eat them both, if you buy two,” said the Sheep.
“Then I’ll have one, please,” said Alice, as she put the money down on the counter. For she thought to herself, “They mightn’t be at all nice, you know.”17
The Sheep took the money, and put it away in a box: then she said “I never put things into people’s hands—that would never do—you must get it for yourself.” And so saying, she went off to the other end of the shop,18 and set the egg upright on a shelf.19
“I wonder why it wouldn’t do?” thought Alice, as she groped her way among the tables and chairs, for the shop was very dark towards the end. “The egg seems to get further away the more I walk towards it. Let me see, is this a chair? Why, it’s got branches, I declare! How very odd to find trees growing here! And actually here’s a little brook! Well, this is the very queerest shop I ever saw!”20
So she went on, wondering more and more at every step, as everything turned into a tree the moment she came up to it, and she quite expected the egg to do the same.
1. By running wildly to QB4, the White Queen arrives on the square directly west of Alice. The fact that queens do a lot of running throughout the story is an allusion to their power of moving an unlimited distance in all directions across the board. With characteristic carelessness the White Queen has just passed up an opportunity to checkmate the Red King by moving to K3. In his article “Alice on the Stage” Carroll writes of the White Queen as follows:
Lastly, the White Queen seemed, to my dreaming fancy, gentle, stupid, fat and pale; helpless as an infant; and with a slow, maundering, bewildered air about her just suggesting imbecility, but never quite passing into it; that would be, I think, fatal to any comic effect she might otherwise produce. There is a character strangely like her in Wilkie Collins’ novel No Name: by two different converging paths we have somehow reached the same ideal, and Mrs. Wragg and the White Queen might have been twin-sisters.
The role of the White Queen was played by Louise Fazenda in Paramount’s film version.
2. Edwin Marsden recalls in a letter that when growing up in Massachusetts he was taught to whisper “Bread and butter, bread and butter” whenever he was being circled by a wasp, bee, or other insect. The phrase was intended to keep one from being stung. If this was a custom in Victorian England, it may explain the White Queen’s use of the phrase while being pursued by the giant crow.
It is also possible that the Queen, who is running with outstretched arms “as if she were flying,” is imagining that she is one of the Bread-and-butter-flies encountered by Alice in Chapter 3. “Bread and butter” seems to be much on her mind. In Chapter 9 she asks Alice: “Divide a loaf by a knife—what’s the answer to that?” The Red Queen interrupts Alice to answer this problem in division with the reply “Bread-and-butter, of course,” meaning that after cutting a slice of bread, you butter it.
In the United States a more common use of bread and butter occurs when two people, walking together, are forced to “divide” and go on both sides of a tree, post, or similar obstruction.
Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English gives several colloquial meanings of bread and butter current in Victorian England. One of them is “schoolgirlish”; a girl who acts like a schoolgirl was called a “schoolgirlish miss.” The White Queen may be applying the phrase to Alice.
3. In AA I completely missed the way Carroll plays on the Latin word iam (i and j are interchangeable in classical Latin), which means “now.” The word iam is used in the past and future tenses, but in the present tense the word for “now” is nunc. I received more letters about this than about any other oversight, mostly from Latin teachers. They tell me that the Queen’s remark is often used in class as a mnemonic for recalling the proper usage of the word.
4. In Carroll’s Sylvie and Bruno Concluded there is a wild episode in which events go backward in time in response to turning the “reversal peg” on the German professor’s Outlandish Watch.
Carroll was as fascinated by time reversal as he was by mirror reversals. In The Story of Lewis Carroll, Isa Bowman tells of Carroll’s fondness for playing tunes backward on music boxes to produce what he called “music standing on its head.” In Chapter 5 of Carroll’s “Isa’s Visit to Oxford,” he speaks of playing an orguinette backward. This American device operated with a perforated roll of paper like the roll of a player piano, which could be rotated by turning a handle:
They put one [roll] in wrong end first, and had a tune backwards, and soon found themselves in the day before yesterday. So they dared not go on, for fear of making Isa so young she would not be able to talk. The A.A.M. [Aged Aged Man] does not like visitors who only howl, and get red in the face, from morning to night.
In a letter (November 30, 1879) to child-friend Edith Blakemore, Carroll said he was so busy and tired that he would go back to bed the minute after he got up, “and sometimes I go to bed again a minute before I get up.”
Since Carroll used it, “backward living” has been the basis of many fantasy and science-fiction tales. The best known is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s story “The Strange Case of Benjamin Button.”
5. The King’s Messenger, as Tenniel’s illustration makes clear and as we shall see in Chapter 7, is none other than the Mad Hatter of the previous book.
In keeping with the whimsical idea that Tenniel anticipated the face of Bertrand Russell when he drew the Mad Hatter, Peter Heath claims that the picture of the Hatter in prison (facing page, top) shows Russell, circa 1918, working on his Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy while in a British prison for opposing England’s entry into the First World War. Evidently Carroll asked Tenniel to redraw this picture, because a different version of it has survived. It is reproduced below from Michael Hearn’s article “Alice’s Other Parent: Sir John Tenniel as Lewis Carroll’s Illustrator,” in the American Book Collector (May/June 1983).
Why is the Mad Hatter being punished? It seems to be for a crime he has yet to commit, but behind the mirror time can go either way. Perhaps he has had a stay of execution for “murdering the time”—that is, singing out of rhythm at a concert given by the Queen of Hearts in the previous book (Chapter 7). You will recall that the Queen had ordered him beheaded.
The Queen’s remark about the “week after next” is echoed in Chapter 9 when the creature with the long beak, before he shuts a door, tells
Alice, “No admittance till the week after next.”
AN UNUSED TENNIEL ILLUSTRATION.
6. Carroll practiced the White Queen’s advice. In his introduction to Pillow Problems he speaks of working mathematical problems in his head at night, during wakeful hours, as a kind of mental work-therapy to prevent less wholesome thoughts from tormenting him. “There are sceptical thoughts, which seem for the moment to uproot the firmest faith: there are blasphemous thoughts, which dart unbidden into the most reverent souls; there are unholy thoughts, which torture, with their hateful presence, the fancy that would fain be pure. Against all these some real mental work is a most helpful ally.”
7. “I believe it,” declared Tertullian in an oft-quoted defense of the paradoxical character of certain Christian doctrines, “because it is absurd.” In a letter to child-friend Mary MacDonald, 1864, Carroll warned:
Don’t be in such a hurry to believe next time—I’ll tell you why—If you set to work to believe everything, you will tire out the muscles of your mind, and then you’ll be so weak you won’t be able to believe the simplest true things. Only last week a friend of mine set to work to believe Jack-the-giant-killer. He managed to do it, but he was so exhausted by it that when I told him it was raining (which was true) he couldn’t believe it, but rushed out into the street without his hat or umbrella, the consequence of which was his hair got seriously damp, and one curl didn’t recover its right shape for nearly two days.
8. The White Queen moves forward one square to QB5.
9. Alice likewise advances one square. This carries her to Q5 alongside of the Queen (now a sheep) again.
10. Williams and Madan, in their Handbook of the Literature of the Rev. C. L. Dodgson, reveal (and they reproduce a photograph to prove it) that Tenniel’s two pictures of the shop faithfully copy the window and door of a small grocery shop at 83 Saint Aldgate’s Street, Oxford. Tenniel was careful, however, to reverse the positions of door and window as well as the sign giving the price of tea as two shillings. These reversals support the view that Alice is not an anti-Alice.
The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition (The Annotated Books) Page 27