2. The term caucus originated in the United States in reference to a meeting of the leaders of a faction to decide on a candidate or policy. It was adopted in England with a slightly different meaning, referring to a system of highly disciplined party organization by committees. It was generally used by one party as an abusive term for the organization of an opposing party. Carroll may have intended his caucus-race to symbolize the fact that committee members generally do a lot of running around in circles, getting nowhere, and with everybody wanting a political plum. It has been suggested that he was influenced by the caucus of crows in Chapter 7 of Water Babies, a scene that Charles Kingsley obviously intended as barbed political satire, but the two scenes have little in common.
The caucus-race does not appear in the original manuscript, Alice’s Adventures Under Ground. It replaces the following deleted passage, based on the episode cited in Note 10 of the previous chapter.
“I only meant to say,” said the Dodo in rather an offended tone, “that I know of a house near here, where we could get the young lady and the rest of the party dried, and then we could listen comfortably to the story which I think you were good enough to promise to tell us,” bowing gravely to the mouse.
The mouse made no objection to this, and the whole party moved along the river bank, (for the pool had by this time begun to flow out of the hall, and the edge of it was fringed with rushes and forget-me-nots,) in a slow procession, the Dodo leading the way. After a time the Dodo became impatient, and, leaving the Duck to bring up the rest of the party, moved on at a quicker pace with Alice, the Lory and the Eaglet, and soon brought them to a little cottage, and there they sat snugly by the fire, wrapped up in blankets, until the rest of the party had arrived, and they were all dry again.
The thimble, taken from Alice and then returned to her, may symbolize the way governments take taxes from the pockets of citizens, then return the money in the form of political projects. See “The Dodo and the Caucus-Race,” by Narda Lacey Schwartz, in Jabberwocky (Winter 1977), and “The Caucus-Race in Alice in Wonderland: A Very Drying Exercise,” by August Imholtz, Jr., in Jabberwocky (Autumn 1981). The running in the caucus-race, according to Alfreda Blanchard in Jabberwocky (Summer 1982), may signify the running of politicians for office.
In his drawing of this scene Tenniel was forced to put human hands under the Dodo’s small, degenerate wings. How else could it hold a thimble?
3. Comfits are hard sweetmeats made by preserving dried fruits or seeds with sugar and covering them with a thin coating of syrup.
4. The mouse’s tale is perhaps the best-known example in English of emblematic, or figured, verse: poems printed in such a way that they resemble something related to their subject matter. The affectation goes back to ancient Greece. Practitioners have included such distinguished bards as Robert Herrick, George Herbert, Stéphane Mallarmé, Dylan Thomas, E. E. Cummings, and the modern French poet Guillaume Apollinaire. For a spirited if not convincing defense of emblematic verse as a serious art form, see Charles Boultenhouse’s article, “Poems in the Shapes of Things,” in the Art News Annual (1959). Other examples of the form will be found in Portfolio magazine (Summer 1950), C. C. Bombaugh’s Gleanings for the Curious (1867, revised), William S. Walsh’s Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities (1892), and Carolyn Wells’s A Whimsey Anthology (1906).
Tennyson once told Carroll that he had dreamed a lengthy poem about fairies, which began with very long lines, then the lines got shorter and shorter until the poem ended with fifty or sixty lines of two syllables each. (Tennyson thought highly of the poem in his sleep, but forgot it completely when he awoke.) The opinion has been expressed (The Diaries of Lewis Carroll, Vol. I, page 146) that this may have given Carroll the idea for his mouse’s tale.
In the original manuscript of the book, an entirely different poem appears as the tale; in a way a more appropriate one, for it fulfills the mouse’s promise to explain why he dislikes cats and dogs, whereas the tale as it appears here contains no reference to cats. The original tale, as Carroll hand-lettered it, reads as follows:
We lived beneath the mat,
Warm and snug and fat.
But one woe, and that
Was the cat!
To our joys a clog.
In our eyes a fog.
On our hearts a log
Was the dog!
When the cat’s away,
Then the mice will play.
But, alas! one day;
(So they say)
Came the dog and cat,
Hunting for a rat,
Crushed the mice all flat,
Each one as he sat,
Underneath the mat,
Warm and snug and fat.
Think of that!
The American logician and philosopher Charles Peirce was much interested in the visual analogue of poetic onomatopoeia. Among his unpublished papers there is a copy of Poe’s “The Raven,” written with a technique that Peirce called “art chirography,” the words formed so as to convey a visual impression of the poem’s ideas. This is not as absurd as it seems. The technique is employed frequently today in the lettering of advertisements, book jackets, titles of magazine stories and articles, cinema and TV titles, and so on.
I did not know, until I read about it in Under the Quizzing Glass, by R. B. Shaberman and Denis Crutch, that Carroll once proposed an additional change in the poem’s final quatrain. It was among thirty-seven corrections that he listed in his copy of the 1866 edition of the book. The revised stanza would have been:
Said the mouse to the cur. “Such a trial, dear sir.
With no jury or judge, would be tedious and dry.”
“I’ll be judge, I’ll be jury,” said cunning old Fury:
“I’ll try the whole cause, and condemn you to die.”
Fury was the name of a fox terrier owned by Carroll’s child-friend Eveline Hull. Morton Cohen, in a note on page 358 of The Letters of Lewis Carroll (Oxford, 1979), speculates that the dog was named after the cur in the mouse’s tale. He quotes an entry from Carroll’s diary (omitted from the published version) telling how Fury developed hydrophobia and had to be shot, which was done in Carroll’s presence.
In 1989 two New Jersey teenage students at the Pennington School, Gary Graham and Jeffrey Maiden, made an unusual discovery. Carroll’s mouse poem has the structure of what is known as a “tail rhyme”—a rhyming couplet followed by a short unrhymed line. By lengthening the last line, Carroll turned his tail poem into a pattern which, if printed in traditional form as shown, resembles a mouse with a long tail! For details of the discovery, see “Tail in Tail(s): A Study Worthy of Alice’s Friends,” in the New York Times (May 1, 1991, p. A23).
In 1995 David and Maxine Schaefer, of Silver Spring, Maryland, privately published a small hardcover book titled The Tale of the Mouse’s Tail. Illustrated by Jonathan Dixon, this delightful volume reproduces all the different ways the mouse’s tale has been pictured in editions of Alice in Wonderland throughout the world.
5. Cf. “The Barrister’s Dream” (Fit 6 of The Hunting of the Snark), in which the Snark serves as judge and jury as well as counsel for the defense.
6. This line was later quoted by Carroll himself to head the answers for a series of ten mathematical brain-teasers (he called them “knots”) that he contributed to The Monthly Packet in 1880. In 1885 they appeared in book form as A Tangled Tale.
Chapter IV
The Rabbit Sends
in a Little Bill
It was the White Rabbit, trotting slowly back again, and looking anxiously about as it went, as if it had lost something; and she heard it muttering to itself, “The Duchess! The Duchess! Oh my dear paws! Oh my fur and whiskers! She’ll get me executed, as sure as ferrets are ferrets!1 Where can I have dropped them, I wonder?” Alice guessed in a moment that it was looking for the fan and the pair of white kid-gloves, and she very good-naturedly began hunting about for them, but they were nowhere to be seen—everything seemed to have changed si
nce her swim in the pool; and the great hall, with the glass table and the little door, had vanished completely.
Very soon the Rabbit noticed Alice, as she went hunting about, and called out to her, in an angry tone, “Why, Mary Ann,2 what are you doing out here? Run home this moment, and fetch me a pair of gloves and a fan! Quick, now!”3 And Alice was so much frightened that she ran off at once in the direction it pointed to, without trying to explain the mistake that it had made.
“He took me for his housemaid,” she said to herself as she ran. “How surprised he’ll be when he finds out who I am! But I’d better take him his fan and gloves—that is, if I can find them.” As she said this, she came upon a neat little house, on the door of which was a bright brass plate with the name “W. RABBIT” engraved upon it. She went in without knocking, and hurried upstairs, in great fear lest she should meet the real Mary Ann, and be turned out of the house before she had found the fan and gloves.
“How queer it seems,” Alice said to herself, “to be going messages for a rabbit!4 I suppose Dinah’ll be sending me on messages next!” And she began fancying the sort of thing that would happen: “‘Miss Alice! Come here directly, and get ready for your walk!’ ‘Coming in a minute, nurse! But I’ve got to watch this mouse-hole till Dinah comes back, and see that the mouse doesn’t get out.’ Only I don’t think,” Alice went on, “that they’d let Dinah stop in the house if it began ordering people about like that!”
By this time she had found her way into a tidy little room with a table in the window, and on it (as she had hoped) a fan and two or three pairs of tiny white kid-gloves: she took up the fan and a pair of the gloves, and was just going to leave the room, when her eye fell upon a little bottle that stood near the looking-glass. There was no label this time with the words “DRINK ME,” but nevertheless she uncorked it and put it to her lips. “I know something interesting is sure to happen,” she said to herself, “whenever I eat or drink anything: so I’ll just see what this bottle does. I do hope it’ll make me grow large again, for really I’m quite tired of being such a tiny little thing!”
It did so indeed, and much sooner than she had expected: before she had drunk half the bottle, she found her head pressing against the ceiling, and had to stoop to save her neck from being broken. She hastily put down the bottle, saying to herself “That’s quite enough—I hope I sha’n’t grow any more—As it is, I ca’n’t get out at the door—I do wish I hadn’t drunk quite so much!”
Alas! It was too late to wish that! She went on growing, and growing, and very soon had to kneel down on the floor: in another minute there was not even room for this, and she tried the effect of lying down with one elbow against the door, and the other arm curled round her head. Still she went on growing, and, as a last resource, she put one arm out of the window, and one foot up the chimney, and said to herself “Now I can do no more, whatever happens. What will become of me?”
Luckily for Alice, the little magic bottle had now had its full effect, and she grew no larger: still it was very uncomfortable, and, as there seemed to be no sort of chance of her ever getting out of the room again, no wonder she felt unhappy.
“It was much pleasanter at home,” thought poor Alice, “when one wasn’t always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered about by mice and rabbits. I almost wish I hadn’t gone down that rabbit-hole—and yet—and yet—it’s rather curious, you know, this sort of life! I do wonder what can have happened to me! When I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one! There ought to be a book written about me, that there ought! And when I grow up, I’ll write one—but I’m grown up now,” she added in a sorrowful tone: “at least there’s no room to grow up any more here.”
“But then,” thought Alice, “shall I never get any older than I am now? That’ll be a comfort, one way—never to be an old woman—but then—always to have lessons to learn! Oh, I shouldn’t like that!”5
“Oh, you foolish Alice!” she answered herself. “How can you learn lessons in here? Why, there’s hardly room for you, and no room at all for any lesson-books!”
And so she went on, taking first one side and then the other, and making quite a conversation of it altogether; but after a few minutes she heard a voice outside, and stopped to listen.
“Mary Ann! Mary Ann!” said the voice. “Fetch me my gloves this moment!”6 Then came a little pattering of feet on the stairs. Alice knew it was the Rabbit coming to look for her, and she trembled till she shook the house, quite forgetting that she was now about a thousand times as large as the Rabbit, and had no reason to be afraid of it.
Presently the Rabbit came up to the door, and tried to open it; but, as the door opened inwards, and Alice’s elbow was pressed hard against it, that attempt proved a failure. Alice heard it say to itself “Then I’ll go round and get in at the window.”
“That you wo’n’t!” thought Alice, and, after waiting till she fancied she heard the Rabbit just under the window, she suddenly spread out her hand, and made a snatch in the air. She did not get hold of anything, but she heard a little shriek and a fall, and a crash of broken glass, from which she concluded that it was just possible it had fallen into a cucumber-frame,7 or something of the sort.
Next came an angry voice—the Rabbit’s—“Pat! Pat! Where are you?” And then a voice she had never heard before, “Sure then I’m here! Digging for apples, yer honour!”8
“Digging for apples, indeed!” said the Rabbit angrily. “Here! Come and help me out of this!” (Sounds of more broken glass.)
“Now tell me, Pat, what’s that in the window?”
“Sure, it’s an arm, yer honour!” (He pronounced it “arrum.”)
“An arm, you goose! Who ever saw one that size? Why, it fills the whole window!”
“Sure, it does, yer honour: but it’s an arm for all that.”
“Well, it’s got no business there, at any rate: go and take it away!”
There was a long silence after this, and Alice could only hear whispers now and then; such as “Sure, I don’t like it, yer honour, at all, at all!” “Do as I tell you, you coward!”, and at last she spread out her hand again, and made another snatch in the air. This time there were two little shrieks, and more sounds of broken glass. “What a number of cucumber-frames there must be!” thought Alice. “I wonder what they’ll do next! As for pulling me out of the window, I only wish they could! I’m sure I don’t want to stay in here any longer!”
She waited for some time without hearing anything more: at last came a rumbling of little cart-wheels, and the sound of a good many voices all talking together: she made out the words: “Where’s the other ladder?—Why, I hadn’t to bring but one. Bill’s got the other—Bill! Fetch it here, lad!—Here, put ’em up at this corner—No, tie ’em together first—they don’t reach half high enough yet—Oh, they’ll do well enough. Don’t be particular—Here, Bill! Catch hold of this rope—Will the roof bear?—Mind that loose slate—Oh, it’s coming down! Heads below!” (a loud crash)—“Now, who did that?—It was Bill, I fancy—Who’s to go down the chimney?—Nay, I sha’n’t! You do it!—That I wo’n’t, then!—Bill’s got to go down—Here, Bill! The master says you’ve got to go down the chimney!”
“Oh! So Bill’s got to come down the chimney, has he?” said Alice to herself. “Why, they seem to put everything upon Bill! I wouldn’t be in Bill’s place for a good deal: this fireplace is narrow, to be sure; but I think I can kick a little!”
She drew her foot as far down the chimney as she could, and waited till she heard a little animal (she couldn’t guess of what sort it was) scratching and scrambling about in the chimney close above her: then, saying to herself “This is Bill,” she gave one sharp kick, and waited to see what would happen next.
The first thing she heard was a general chorus of “There goes Bill!” then the Rabbit’s voice alone—“Catch him, you by the hedge!” then silence, and then another confusion of voices—“Hold up his
head—Brandy now—Don’t choke him—How was it, old fellow? What happened to you? Tell us all about it!”
Last came a little feeble, squeaking voice (“That’s Bill,” thought Alice), “Well, I hardly know—No more, thank ye; I’m better now—but I’m a deal too flustered to tell you—all I know is, something comes at me like a Jack-in-the-box, and up I goes like a sky-rocket!”
“So you did, old fellow!” said the others.
“We must burn the house down!” said the Rabbit’s voice. And Alice called out, as loud as she could, “If you do, I’ll set Dinah at you!”
There was a dead silence instantly, and Alice thought to herself “I wonder what they will do next! If they had any sense, they’d take the roof off.” After a minute or two, they began moving about again, and Alice heard the Rabbit say “A barrowful will do, to begin with.”
“A barrowful of what?” thought Alice. But she had not long to doubt, for the next moment a shower of little pebbles came rattling in at the window, and some of them hit her in the face. “I’ll put a stop to this,” she said to herself, and shouted out “You’d better not do that again!”, which produced another dead silence.
Alice noticed, with some surprise, that the pebbles were all turning into little cakes as they lay on the floor, and a bright idea came into her head. “If I eat one of these cakes,” she thought, “it’s sure to make some change in my size; and, as it ca’n’t possibly make me larger, it must make me smaller, I suppose.”
So she swallowed one of the cakes, and was delighted to find that she began shrinking directly. As soon as she was small enough to get through the door, she ran out of the house, and found quite a crowd of little animals and birds waiting outside. The poor little Lizard, Bill, was in the middle, being held up by two guinea-pigs, who were giving it something out of a bottle. They all made a rush at Alice the moment she appeared; but she ran off as hard as she could, and soon found herself safe in a thick wood.
The Annotated Alice Page 7