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 Arthur 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 thorn and the thistle grow broader and higher;
The clothes that hang on him are turning to rags;
And his money still wastes till he starves or he begs.
I made him a visit, still hoping to find
That he took better care for improving his mind:
He told me his dreams, talked of eating and drinking;
But he scarce reads his Bible, and never loves thinking.
Said I then to my heart, “Here’s a lesson for me,”
This man’s but a picture of what I might be:
But thanks to my friends for their care in my breeding,<
br />
Who taught me betimes to love working and reading.
Carroll’s burlesque of Watts’s doggerel underwent a good many changes. Before 1886 all editions of Alice had a first verse of four lines and a second verse that was interrupted after the second line. Carroll supplied the missing two lines for William Boyd’s Songs from Alice in Wonderland, a book published in 1870. The full stanza then read:
I passed by his garden, and marked, with one eye,
How the owl and the oyster were sharing a pie,
While the duck and the Dodo, the lizard and cat
Were swimming in milk round the brim of a hat.
In 1886 Carroll revised and enlarged the poem to sixteen lines for the stage musical of Alice. This is the final version, which appears in editions of Alice after 1886. It is hard to believe, but an Essex vicar actually wrote a letter to The St. James’ Gazette accusing Carroll of irreverence because of the Biblical allusion in the first line of his parody.
8. Selwyn Goodacre passed on to me his daughter’s observation that Tenniel carefully followed Alice’s remark by drawing the lobster with its feet in the first position in ballet.
9. The grim final words, “eating the owl,” appear in the 1886 printed edition of Savile Clarke’s operetta. Another and probably earlier version of the last couplet, given in Stuart Collingwood’s biography, runs:
But the panther obtained both the fork and the knife,
So, when he lost his temper, the owl lost its life.
Carrollians have amused themselves by replacing “eating the owl” with other phrases, which are reported from time to time in the Lewis Carroll Society’s newsletter, Bandersnatch. Here are some proposed endings: “taking a prowl,” “wiping his jowl,” “giving a howl,” “taking a trowel,” “kissing the fowl,” “giving a scowl,” and “donning a cowl.”
10. On August 1, 1862, Carroll records in his diary that the Liddell sisters sang for him the popular song “Star of the Evening.” The words and music were by James M. Sayles.
Beautiful star in heav’n so bright,
Softly falls thy silv’ry light,
As thou movest from earth afar,
Star of the evening, beautiful star.
CHORUS
Beautiful star,
Beautiful star,
Star of the evening, beautiful star.
In Fancy’s eye thou seem’st to say,
Follow me, come from earth away.
Upward thy spirit’s pinions try,
To realms of love beyond the sky.
Shine on, oh star of love divine,
And may our soul’s affection twine
Around thee as thou movest afar,
Star of the twilight, beautiful star.
Carroll’s second stanza, with its E. E. Cummings-like partition of “pennyworth,” does not appear in the original manuscript. The divisions of “beautiful,” “soup,” and “evening” suggest the manner in which the original song was sung. Cary Grant sobbed through the song in his role of the Mock Turtle in Paramount’s undistinguished 1933 movie version of Alice.
Several readers have informed me that marine turtles often appear to weep copiously—especially females, when they make nocturnal egg-laying visits to the shore. One reader, Henry Smith, explains why: Reptilian kidneys are not made to deal efficiently with removing salt from water. Marine turtles are equipped with a special gland that discharges salty water through a duct at the outside corners of each eye. Underwater the secretion washes away, but when the turtle is on land the secretion resembles a flood of tears. Carroll, who had a lively interest in zoology, undoubtedly knew of this phenomenon.
Chapter XI
Who Stole the
Tarts?
The King and Queen of Hearts were seated on their throne when they arrived, with a great crowd assembled about them—all sorts of little birds and beasts, as well as the whole pack of cards: the Knave was standing before them, in chains, with a soldier on each side to guard him; and near the King was the White Rabbit, with a trumpet in one hand, and a scroll of parchment in the other. In the very middle of the court was a table, with a large dish of tarts upon it: they looked so good, that it made Alice quite hungry to look at them—“I wish they’d get the trial done,” she thought, “and hand round the refreshments!” But there seemed to be no chance of this; so she began looking at everything about her to pass away the time.
Alice had never been in a court of justice before, but she had read about them in books, and she was quite pleased to find that she knew the name of nearly everything there. “That’s the judge,” she said to herself, “because of his great wig.”
The judge, by the way, was the King; and, as he wore his crown over the wig (look at the frontispiece if you want to see how he did it), he did not look at all comfortable, and it was certainly not becoming.
“And that’s the jury-box,” thought Alice; “and those twelve creatures,” (she was obliged to say “creatures,” you see, because some of them were animals, and some were birds,) “I suppose they are the jurors.” She said this last word two or three times over to herself, being rather proud of it: for she thought, and rightly too, that very few little girls of her age knew the meaning of it at all. However, “jurymen” would have done just as well.
The twelve jurors were all writing very busily on slates. “What are they doing?” Alice whispered to the Gryphon. “They ca’n’t have anything to put down yet, before the trial’s begun.”
“They’re putting down their names,” the Gryphon whispered in reply, “for fear they should forget them before the end of the trial.”
“Stupid things!” Alice began in a loud indignant voice; but she stopped herself hastily, for the White Rabbit cried out “Silence in the court!”, and the King put on his spectacles and looked anxiously round, to make out who was talking.
Alice could see, as well as if she were looking over their shoulders, that all the jurors were writing down “Stupid things!” on their slates, and she could even make out that one of them didn’t know how to spell “stupid,” and that he had to ask his neighbour to tell him. “A nice muddle their slates’ll be in, before the trial’s over!” thought Alice.
One of the jurors had a pencil that squeaked. This, of course, Alice could not stand, and she went round the court and got behind him, and very soon found an opportunity of taking it away. She did it so quickly that the poor little juror (it was Bill, the Lizard) could not make out at all what had become of it; so, after hunting all about for it, he was obliged to write with one finger for the rest of the day; and this was of very little use, as it left no mark on the slate.
“Herald, read the accusation!” said the King.
On this the White Rabbit blew three blasts on the trumpet, and then unrolled the parchment-scroll, and read as follows:—1
“The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts,
All on a summer day:
The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts
And took them quite away!”
“Consider your verdict,” the King said to the jury.
“Not yet, not yet!” the Rabbit hastily interrupted. “There’s a great deal to come before that!”
“Call the first witness,” said the King; and the White Rabbit blew three blasts on the trumpet, and called out “First witness!”
The first witness was the Hatter. He came in with a teacup in one hand and a piece of bread-and-butter in the other. “I beg pardon, your Majesty,” he began, “for bringing these in; but I hadn’t quite finished my tea when I was sent for.”
“You ought to have finished,” said the King. “When did you begin?”
The Hatter looked at the March Hare, who had followed him into the court, arm-in-arm with the Dormouse. “Fourteenth of March, I think it was,” he said.
“Fifteenth,” said the March Hare.
“Sixteenth,” said the Dormouse.
“Write that down,” the King said to the jury; and the jury eagerly wrote down all thre
e dates on their slates, and then added them up, and reduced the answer to shillings and pence.
“Take off your hat,” the King said to the Hatter.
“It isn’t mine,” said the Hatter.
“Stolen!” the King exclaimed, turning to the jury, who instantly made a memorandum of the fact.
“I keep them to sell,” the Hatter added as an explanation. “I’ve none of my own. I’m a hatter.”
Here the Queen put on her spectacles, and began staring hard at the Hatter, who turned pale and fidgeted.
“Give your evidence,” said the King; “and don’t be nervous, or I’ll have you executed on the spot.”
This did not seem to encourage the witness at all: he kept shifting from one foot to the other, looking uneasily at the Queen, and in his confusion he bit a large piece out of his teacup instead of the bread-and-butter.2
Just at this moment Alice felt a very curious sensation, which puzzled her a good deal until she made out what it was: she was beginning to grow larger again, and she thought at first she would get up and leave the court; but on second thoughts she decided to remain where she was as long as there was room for her.
“I wish you wouldn’t squeeze so,” said the Dormouse, who was sitting next to her. “I can hardly breathe.”
“I ca’n’t help it,” said Alice very meekly: “I’m growing.”
“You’ve no right to grow here,” said the Dormouse.
“Don’t talk nonsense,” said Alice more boldly: “you know you’re growing too.”
“Yes, but I grow at a reasonable pace,” said the Dormouse: “not in that ridiculous fashion.” And he got up very sulkily and crossed over to the other side of the court.
All this time the Queen had never left off staring at the Hatter, and, just as the Dormouse crossed the court, she said, to one of the officers of the court, “Bring me the list of the singers in the last concert!” on which the wretched Hatter trembled so, that he shook off both his shoes.3
“Give your evidence,” the King repeated angrily, “or I’ll have you executed, whether you’re nervous or not.”
The Annotated Alice Page 16