The Annotated Alice

by Lewis Carroll

  23. Mome has a number of obsolete meanings such as mother, a blockhead, a carping critic, a buffoon, none of which, judging from Humpty Dumpty’s interpretation, Carroll had in mind.

  24. According to Humpty Dumpty, a rath is a green pig but in Carroll’s day it was a well-known old Irish word for an enclosure, usually a circular earthen wall, serving as a fort and place of residence for the head of a tribe.

  25. “But it fairly lost heart, and outgrabe in despair,” Snark, Fit 5, verse 10.

  26. The Jabberwock is not mentioned in the Snark, but in a letter to Mrs. Chataway (the mother of one of his child-friends) Carroll explains that the scene of the Snark is “an island frequented by the Jubjub and the Bandersnatch—no doubt the very island where the Jabberwock was slain.”

  When a class in the Girls’ Latin School, Boston, asked Carroll’s permission to name their school magazine The Jabberwock, he replied:

  Mr. Lewis Carroll has much pleasure in giving to the editors of the proposed magazine permission to use the title they wish for. He finds that the Anglo-Saxon word “wocer” or “wocor” signifies “offspring” or “fruit.” Taking “jabber” in its ordinary acceptation of “excited and voluble discussion,” this would give the meaning of “the result of much excited discussion.” Whether this phrase will have any application to the projected periodical, it will be for the future historian of American literature to determine. Mr. Carroll wishes all success to the forthcoming magazine.

  27. The Jubjub is mentioned five times in the Snark: Fit 4, verse 18, and Fit 5, verses 8, 9, 21, and 29.

  28. “…those frumious jaws,” Snark, Fit 7, verse 5. In the Snark’s preface Carroll writes:

  For instance, take the two words “fuming” and “furious.” Make up your mind that you will say both words, but leave it unsettled which you will say first. Now open your mouth and speak. If your thoughts incline ever so little towards “fuming,” you will say “fuming-furious”; if they turn, by even a hair’s breadth, towards “furious,” you will say “furious-fuming”; but if you have that rarest of gifts, a perfectly balanced mind, you will say “fruminous.” Supposing that, when Pistol uttered the well-known words:

  Under which king, Bezonian?

  Speak or die!

  Justice Shallow had felt certain that it was either William or Richard, but had not been able to settle which, so that he could not possibly say either name before the other, can it be doubted that, rather than die, he would have gasped out “Rilchiam!”?

  29. The Bandersnatch is mentioned again in Chapter 7, and in the Snark, Fit 7, verses 3, 4, and 6.

  30. Alexander L. Taylor, in his book on Carroll, The White Knight, shows how to get vorpal by taking letters alternately from verbal and gospel, but there is no evidence that Carroll resorted to such involved techniques in coining his words. In fact Carroll wrote to a child-friend: “I am afraid I can’t explain ‘vorpal blade’ for you—nor yet ‘tulgey wood.’”

  31. Manx was the Celtic name for the Isle of Man, hence the word came to be used in England for anything pertaining to the island. Its language was called Manx, its inhabitants Manxmen, and so on. Whether Carroll had this in mind when he coined manxome is not known.

  32. Tum-tum was a common colloquialism in Carroll’s day, referring to the sound of a stringed instrument, especially when monotonously strummed.

  33. “The Bellman looked uffish, and wrinkled his brow,” Snark, Fit 4, verse 1. In a letter to child-friend Maud Standen, 1877, Carroll wrote that “uffish” suggested to him “a state of mind when the voice is gruffish, the manner roughish, and the temper huffish.”

  34. Whiffling is not a Carrollian word. It had a variety of meanings in Carroll’s time, but usually had reference to blowing unsteadily in short puffs, hence it came to be a slang term for being variable and evasive. In an earlier century whiffling meant smoking and drinking.

  35. “If you take the three verbs ‘bleat,’ ‘murmur,’ and ‘warble,’” Carroll wrote in the letter cited above, “and select the bits I have underlined, it certainly makes ‘burble’: though I am afraid I can’t distinctly remember having made it in that way.” The word (apparently a combination of burst and bubble) had long been used in England as a variant of bubble (e.g., the burbling brook), as well as a word meaning “to perplex, confuse, or muddle” (“His life fallen into a horribly burbled state,” the Oxford English Dictionary quotes from an 1883 letter of Mrs. Carlyle’s). In modern aeronautics burbling refers to the turbulence that develops when air is not flowing smoothly around an object.

  36. Snickersnee is an old word for a large knife. It also means “to fight with a knife.” The Oxford English Dictionary quotes from The Mikado, Act 2: “As I gnashed my teeth, when from its sheath I drew my snicker-snee.”

  37. “The Beaver went simply galumphing about,” Snark, Fit 4, verse 17. This Carrollian word has entered the Oxford English Dictionary, where it is attributed to Carroll and defined as a combination of gallop and triumphant, meaning “to march on exultantly with irregular bounding movements.”

  38. Tenniel’s striking illustration for this stanza was originally intended as the book’s frontispiece, but it was so horrendous that Carroll feared it might be best to open the book on a milder scene. In 1871 he conducted a private poll of about thirty mothers by sending them the following printed letter:

  I am sending you, with this, a print of the proposed frontispiece for Through the Looking-glass. It has been suggested to me that it is too terrible a monster, and likely to alarm nervous and imaginative children; and that at any rate we had better begin the book with a pleasanter subject.

  So I am submitting the question to a number of friends, for which purpose I have had copies of the frontispiece printed off.

  We have three courses open to us:

  (1)To retain it as the frontispiece.

  (2)To transfer it to its proper place in the book (where the ballad occurs which it is intended to illustrate) and substitute a new frontispiece.

  (3)To omit it altogether.

  The last named course would be a great sacrifice of the time and trouble which the picture cost, and it would be a pity to adopt it unless it is really necessary.

  I should be grateful to have your opinion, (tested by exhibiting the picture to any children you think fit) as to which of these courses is best.

  Evidently most of the mothers favored the second course, for the picture of the White Knight on horseback became the frontispiece.

  Correspondent Mrs. Henry Morss, Jr., found a striking similarity between Tenniel’s Jabberwock and the dragon being slain by Saint George in a painting by Paolo Uccello, in London’s National Gallery. For other pictures of monsters that could have influenced Tenniel, see Chapter 8 of Michael Hancher’s The Tenniel Illustrations to the “Alice” Books.

  39. “But oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day,” Snark, Fit 3, verse 10. This is not a word invented by Carroll. The Oxford English Dictionary traces it back to 1530 as a variant of beaming, meaning “shining brightly, radiant.”

  40. A species of arctic duck that winters in northern Scotland is called the calloo after its evening call, “Calloo! Calloo!”

  More likely, as readers Albert L. Blackwell and Mrs. Carlton S. Hyman each point out, Carroll had in mind two forms of a Greek word, kalos, meaning beautiful, good or fair. They would be pronounced as Carroll spells them, and would fit well the meaning of the line.

  41. Chortled, a word coined by Carroll, also has worked its way into the Oxford English Dictionary, where it is defined as a blend of chuckle and snort.

  42. Still far from clear is whether “Jabberwocky” is in some sense a parody. Roger Green, in the London Times Literary Supplement (March 1, 1957) and more recently in The Lewis Carroll Handbook (1962), suggests that Carroll may have had in mind “The Shepherd of the Giant Mountains,” a long German ballad about how a young shepherd slays a monstrous Griffin. The ballad had been translated by Carroll’s cousin, Manella Bute Smedley, and published
in Sharpe’s London Magazine (March 7 and 21, 1846). “The similarity cannot be pinned down precisely,” writes Green. “Much is in the feeling and the atmosphere; the parody is of general style and outlook.”

  In Useful and Instructive Poetry, written by Carroll when he was thirteen (it was his first book), there is a parody of a passage from Shakespeare’s Henry the Fourth, Second Part, in which the Prince of Wales uses the word biggen. In Carroll’s version he explains to the puzzled king that the word “means a kind of woolen nightcap.” Later he introduces the word rigol.

  “What meaneth ‘rigol’?” asks the king.

  “My liege, I know not,” the prince replies, “save that it doth enter most apt into the metre.”

  “True, it doth,” the king agrees. “But wherefore use a word which hath no meaning?”

  The prince’s answer has a prophetic reference to the nonsense words of “Jabberwocky”: “My lord, the word is said, for it hath passed my lips, and all the powers upon this earth cannot unsay it.”

  For more on “Jabberwocky,” including how Carroll’s contemporaries responded to the poem and its influence on literature and the law, see Joseph Brabant’s Some Observations on Jabberwocky (Cheshire Cat Press, 1997).

  Chapter II

  The Garden

  of Live Flowers

  “I should see the garden far better,” said Alice to herself, “if I could get to the top of that hill: and here’s a path that leads straight to it—at least, no, it doesn’t do that—” (after going a few yards along the path, and turning several sharp corners), “but I suppose it will at last. But how curiously it twists! It’s more like a corkscrew than a path!1 Well, this turn goes to the hill, I suppose—no, it doesn’t! This goes straight back to the house! Well then, I’ll try it the other way.”

  And so she did: wandering up and down, and trying turn after turn, but always coming back to the house, do what she would. Indeed, once, when she turned a corner rather more quickly than usual, she ran against it before she could stop herself.

  “It’s no use talking about it,” Alice said, looking up at the house and pretending it was arguing with her. “I’m not going in again yet. I know I should have to get through the Looking-glass again—back into the old room—and there’d be an end of all my adventures!”

  So, resolutely turning her back upon the house, she set out once more down the path, determined to keep straight on till she got to the hill. For a few minutes all went on well, and she was just saying “I really shall do it this time—” when the path gave a sudden twist and shook itself (as she described it afterwards), and the next moment she found herself actually walking in at the door.

  “Oh, it’s too bad!” she cried. “I never saw such a house for getting in the way! Never!”

  However, there was the hill full in sight, so there was nothing to be done but start again. This time she came upon a large flower-bed, with a border of daisies, and a willow-tree growing in the middle.

  “O Tiger-lily!”2 said Alice, addressing herself to one that was waving gracefully about in the wind, “I wish you could talk!”

  “We can talk,” said the Tiger-lily, “when there’s anybody worth talking to.”

  Alice was so astonished that she couldn’t speak for a minute: it quite seemed to take her breath away. At length, as the Tiger-lily only went on waving about, she spoke again, in a timid voice—almost in a whisper. “And can all the flowers talk?”

  “As well as you can,” said the Tiger-lily. “And a great deal louder.”

  “It isn’t manners for us to begin, you know,” said the Rose, “and I really was wondering when you’d speak! Said I to myself, ‘Her face has got some sense in it, though it’s not a clever one!’ Still, you’re the right colour, and that goes a long way.”

  “I don’t care about the colour,” the Tiger-lily remarked. “If only her petals curled up a little more, she’d be all right.”

  Alice didn’t like being criticized, so she began asking questions. “Aren’t you sometimes frightened at being planted out here, with nobody to take care of you?”

  “There’s the tree in the middle,” said the Rose. “What else is it good for?”

  “But what could it do, if any danger came?” Alice asked.

  “It could bark,” said the Rose.

  “It says ‘Bough-wough!’” cried a Daisy. “That’s why its branches are called boughs!”

  “Didn’t you know that?” cried another Daisy. And here they all began shouting together, till the air seemed quite full of little shrill voices. “Silence, every one of you!” cried the Tiger-lily, waving itself passionately from side to side, and trembling with excitement. “They know I ca’n’t get at them!” it panted, bending its quivering head towards Alice, “or they wouldn’t dare to do it!”

  “Never mind!” Alice said in a soothing tone, and, stooping down to the daisies, who were just beginning again, she whispered “If you don’t hold your tongues, I’ll pick you!”

  There was silence in a moment, and several of the pink daisies turned white.3

  “That’s right!” said the Tiger-lily. “The daisies are worst of all. When one speaks, they all begin together, and it’s enough to make one wither to hear the way they go on!”

  “How is it you can all talk so nicely?” Alice said, hoping to get it into a better temper by a compliment. “I’ve been in many gardens before, but none of the flowers could talk.”

  “Put your hand down, and feel the ground,” said the Tiger-lily. “Then you’ll know why.”

  Alice did so. “It’s very hard,” she said; “but I don’t see what that has to do with it.”

  “In most gardens,” the Tiger-lily said, “they make the beds too soft—so that the flowers are always asleep.”

  This sounded a very good reason, and Alice was quite pleased to know it. “I never thought of that before!” she said.

  “It’s my opinion that you never think at all,” the Rose said, in a rather severe tone.

  “I never saw anybody that looked stupider,” a Violet4 said, so suddenly, that Alice quite jumped; for it hadn’t spoken before.

  “Hold your tongue!” cried the Tiger-lily. “As if you ever saw anybody! You keep your head under the leaves, and snore away there, till you know no more what’s going on in the world, than if you were a bud!”

  “Are there any more people in the garden besides me?” Alice said, not choosing to notice the Rose’s last remark.

  “There’s one other flower in the garden that can move about like you,” said the Rose. “I wonder how you do it—” (“You’re always wondering,” said the Tiger-lily), “but she’s more bushy than you are.”

  “Is she like me?” Alice asked eagerly, for the thought crossed her mind, “There’s another little girl in the garden, somewhere!”

  “Well, she has the same awkward shape as you,” the Rose said: “but she’s redder—and her petals are shorter, I think.”

  “They’re done up close, like a dahlia,” said the Tiger-lily: “not tumbled about, like yours.”

  “But that’s not your fault,” the Rose added kindly. “You’re beginning to fade, you know—and then one ca’n’t help one’s petals getting a little untidy.”

  Alice didn’t like this idea at all: so, to change the subject, she asked “Does she ever come out here?”

  “I daresay you’ll see her soon,” said the Rose. “She’s one of the kind that has nine spikes,5 you know.”

  “Where does she wear them?” Alice asked with some curiosity.

  “Why, all round her head, of course,” the Rose replied. “I was wondering you hadn’t got some too. I thought it was the regular rule.”

  “She’s coming!” cried the Larkspur. “I hear her footstep, thump, thump, along the gravel-walk!”6

  Alice looked round eagerly and found that it was the Red Queen. “She’s grown a good deal!” was her first remark. She had indeed: when Alice first found her in the ashes, she had been only three inches high—and
here she was, half a head taller than Alice herself!

  “It’s the fresh air that does it,” said the Rose: “wonderfully fine air it is, out here.”

  “I think I’ll go and meet her,” said Alice, for, though the flowers were interesting enough, she felt that it would be far grander to have a talk with a real Queen.

  “You ca’n’t possibly do that,” said the Rose: “I should advise you to walk the other way.”

  This sounded nonsense to Alice, so she said nothing, but set off at once towards the Red Queen. To her surprise she lost sight of her in a moment, and found herself walking in at the front-door again.

  A little provoked, she drew back, and, after looking everywhere for the Queen (whom she spied out at last, a long way off), she thought she would try the plan, this time, of walking in the opposite direction.

  It succeeded beautifully.7 She had not been walking a minute before she found herself face to face with the Red Queen, and full in sight of the hill she had been so long aiming at.

  “Where do you come from?” said the Red Queen. “And where are you going? Look up, speak nicely, and don’t twiddle your fingers all the time.”8

  Alice attended to all these directions, and explained, as well as she could, that she had lost her way.

  “I don’t know what you mean by your way,” said the Queen: “all the ways about here belong to me—but why did you come out here at all?” she added in a kinder tone. “Curtsey while you’re thinking what to say. It saves time.”

  Alice wondered a little at this, but she was too much in awe of the Queen to disbelieve it. “I’ll try it when I go home,” she thought to herself, “the next time I’m a little late for dinner.”

  “It’s time for you to answer now,” the Queen said, looking at her watch: “open your mouth a little wider when you speak, and always say ‘your Majesty.’”