The Annotated Alice

by Lewis Carroll

Still, the resemblance of Tenniel’s Alice to Millais’s daughter in church is so striking that it is impossible to believe Tenniel was not at least aware of it. You can form your own opinion by studying the two pictures reproduced below.

  5. A comparison of the illustration of the man in white paper with Tenniel’s political cartoons in Punch leaves little doubt that the face under the folded paper hat is Benjamin Disraeli’s. Tenniel and/or Carroll may have had in mind the “white papers” (official documents) with which such statesmen are surrounded.

  6. It is easy to overlook the humor in having a horse passenger call out not “change horses” but “change engines.”

  7. There is an old joke based on this pun. “I’m a little hoarse,” a person says, then adds, “I have a little colt.”

  8. In England, packages containing glass objects are commonly labeled “Glass, with care.”

  9. Head was Victorian slang for a postage stamp. Because Alice has a head, the voices suggest she should be posted. Note the grim suggestion of a post with an enemy’s severed head on top.

  10. Carroll may have intended this as a quote of the first line of a Mother Goose melody:

  I would, if I could,

  If I couldn’t how could I?

  I couldn’t, without I could, could I?

  Could you, without you could, could ye?

  Could ye? could ye?

  Could you, without you could, could ye?

  11. In the “Wasp in a Wig” episode (reprinted in this book) the aged Wasp’s long sigh may have expressed Carroll’s sadness over the gulf time had placed between himself and Alice. George Garcin says in a letter that he thinks the Gnat’s sigh carries similar overtones. Time, symbolized by the train, is carrying Alice (his “dear friend, and an old friend”) the “wrong way”—toward womanhood, when she will soon be lost to him. This passage of time may be the “shadow of a sigh” in the last stanza of Carroll’s prefatory poem.

  Fred Madden, writing on “Orthographic Transformations in Through the Looking-Glass,” in Jabberwocky (Autumn 1985), has an intriguing explanation of why Carroll put a gnat in the railway carriage alongside a goat. In Carroll’s game of Doublets, the word gnat becomes goat by the change of a single letter. Madden supports this contention by referring to a word ladder that actually appears in Carroll’s pamphlet Doublets: A Word Puzzle (Macmillan, third edition, 1880, page 31), in which Carroll changed GNAT to BITE in six steps: GNAT, GOAT, BOAT, BOLT, BOLE, BILE, BITE.

  12. The train’s leap completes Alice’s move of P-Q4. In Carroll’s original manuscript Alice grabbed the hair of an old lady in the carriage, but on June 1, 1870, Tenniel wrote Carroll:

  My Dear Dodgson:

  I think that when the jump occurs in the railway scene you might very well make Alice lay hold of the goat’s beard as being the object nearest to her hand—instead of the old lady’s hair. The jerk would actually throw them together.

  Don’t think me brutal, but I am bound to say that the “wasp” chapter does not interest me in the least, and I can’t see my way to a picture. If you want to shorten the book, I can’t help thinking—with all submission—that this is your opportunity.

  In an agony of haste,

  Yours sincerely,

  J. TENNIEL

  Carroll adopted both suggestions. The old lady and a thirteenth chapter about the wasp were removed.

  13. Snapdragon (or flapdragon) is the name of a pastime that delighted Victorian children during the Christmas season. A shallow bowl was filled with brandy, raisins were tossed in, and the brandy set on fire. Players tried to snatch raisins from the flickering blue flames and pop them, still blazing, into their mouths. The burning raisins also were called snapdragons.

  14. Frumenty is a wheat pudding, usually prepared with sugar, spice, and raisins.

  15. Yossi Natanson, an Israeli correspondent, points out that Alice knows she can’t go back because she is a pawn and pawns are unable to move backward.

  16. Queen Victoria, Charles Lovett informed me, owned a spaniel named Dash that was well known in England. The queen was often photographed and painted with Dash at her side or on her lap.

  17. Alice may be thinking of Lily, the name of the white pawn whose place she has taken, and also of her own last name, Liddell. Perhaps, as readers Josephine van Dyk and Mrs. Carlton Hyman independently proposed, Alice is vaguely recalling the sound of her first name, which seems to begin with an L—“L-is.” Ada Brown supported this conjecture by sending the following lines from “Bruno’s Picnic,” a chapter in Carroll’s Sylvie and Bruno Concluded: “What does an Apple-Tree begin with, when it wants to speak?” asks Sylvie. The narrator replies: “Doesn’t ‘Apple-Tree’ always begin with ‘Eh!’?”

  In Language and Lewis Carroll (Mouton, 1970), Robert Sutherland points out that the theme of forgetting one’s name is common in Carroll’s writings. “Who are you?” the Caterpillar asks Alice, and she is too confused to answer; the Red Queen admonishes Alice, “Remember who you are!”; the man in white paper tells her, “So young a child ought to know where she’s going, even if she doesn’t know her name”; the White Queen is so frightened by thunder that she forgets her name; the Baker forgets his name in The Hunting of the Snark, and so does the Professor in Sylvie and Bruno. Perhaps this theme reflects Carroll’s own confusion over whether he is Charles Dodgson, the Oxford professor, or Lewis Carroll, writer of fantasy and nonsense.

  18. Fred Madden (see this chapter’s Note 11) observes that Alice, a pawn, is here meeting a fawn, and that in Carroll’s game of doublets the change of a single letter turns pawn to fawn. According to Carroll’s Dramatis Personae, at the beginning of the book, the fawn is actually a pawn in the chess game. Presumably the two pawns, both white, are now adjacent to each other.

  19. The wood in which things have no name is in fact the universe itself, as it is apart from symbol-manipulating creatures who label portions of it because—as Alice earlier remarked with pragmatic wisdom—“it’s useful to the people that name them.” The realization that the world by itself contains no signs—that there is no connection whatever between things and their names except by way of a mind that finds the tags useful—is by no means a trivial philosophic insight. The fawn’s delight in recalling its name reminds one of the old joke about Adam naming the tiger the tiger because it looked like a tiger.

  20. Reader Greg Stone calls my attention to the way “house” and the names of the Tweedle brothers are left-right reversed on these signs, in keeping with the fact that Carroll intended the brothers to be mirror images of each other.

  21. Carroll clearly intended this last clause and title of the next chapter to be a rhymed couplet:

  Feeling sure that they must be

  Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

  Chapter IV

  Tweedledum

  and Tweedledee

  They were standing under a tree, each with an arm round the other’s neck, and Alice knew which was which in a moment, because one of them had “DUM” embroidered on his collar, and the other “DEE.” “I suppose they’ve each got ‘TWEEDLE’ round at the back of the collar,” she said to herself.

  They stood so still that she quite forgot they were alive, and she was just going round to see if the word “TWEEDLE” was written at the back of each collar, when she was startled by a voice coming from the one marked “DUM.”

  “If you think we’re wax-works,” he said, “you ought to pay, you know. Wax-works weren’t made to be looked at for nothing. Nohow!”

  “Contrariwise,” added the one marked “DEE,” “if you think we’re alive, you ought to speak.”

  “I’m sure I’m very sorry,” was all Alice could say; for the words of the old song kept ringing through her head like the ticking of a clock, and she could hardly help saying them out loud:—1

  “Tweedledum and Tweedledee

  Agreed to have a battle;

  For Tweedledum said Tweedledee

  Had spoiled his nice new rattle.

  Just
then flew down a monstrous crow,

  As black as a tar-barrel;

  Which frightened both the heroes so,

  They quite forgot their quarrel.”

  “I know what you’re thinking about,” said Tweedledum; “but it isn’t so, nohow.”

  “Contrariwise,” continued Tweedledee, “if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.”

  “I was thinking,” Alice said very politely, “which is the best way out of this wood: it’s getting so dark. Would you tell me, please?”

  But the fat little men only looked at each other and grinned.

  They looked so exactly like a couple of great schoolboys, that Alice couldn’t help pointing her finger at Tweedledum, and saying “First Boy!”2

  “Nohow!” Tweedledum cried out briskly, and shut his mouth up again with a snap.

  “Next Boy!” said Alice, passing on to Tweedledee, though she felt quite certain he would only shout out “Contrariwise!” and so he did.

  “You’ve begun wrong!” cried Tweedledum. “The first thing in a visit is to say ‘How d’ye do?’ and shake hands!” And here the two brothers gave each other a hug, and then they held out the two hands that were free, to shake hands with her.3

  Alice did not like shaking hands with either of them first, for fear of hurting the other one’s feelings; so, as the best way out of the difficulty, she took hold of both hands at once: the next moment they were dancing round in a ring. This seemed quite natural (she remembered afterwards), and she was not even surprised to hear music playing: it seemed to come from the tree under which they were dancing, and it was done (as well as she could make it out) by the branches rubbing one across the other, like fiddles and fiddle-sticks.

  “But it certainly was funny,” (Alice said afterwards, when she was telling her sister the history of all this,) “to find myself singing ‘Here we go round the mulberry bush.’ I don’t know when I began it, but somehow I felt as if I’d been singing it a long long time!”

  The other two dancers were fat, and very soon out of breath. “Four times round is enough for one dance,” Tweedledum panted out, and they left off dancing as suddenly as they had begun: the music stopped at the same moment.

  Then they let go of Alice’s hands, and stood looking at her for a minute: there was a rather awkward pause, as Alice didn’t know how to begin a conversation with people she had just been dancing with. “It would never do to say ‘How d’ye do?’ now,” she said to herself: “we seem to have got beyond that, somehow!”

  “I hope you’re not much tired?” she said at last.

  “Nohow. And thank you very much for asking,” said Tweedledum.

  “So much obliged!” added Tweedledee. “You like poetry?”

  “Ye-es, pretty well—some poetry,” Alice said doubtfully. “Would you tell me which road leads out of the wood?”

  “What shall I repeat to her?” said Tweedledee, looking round at Tweedledum with great solemn eyes, and not noticing Alice’s question.

  “‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ is the longest,” Tweedledum replied, giving his brother an affectionate hug.

  Tweedledee began instantly:

  “The sun was shining—”

  Here Alice ventured to interrupt him. “If it’s very long,” she said, as politely as she could, “would you please tell me first which road—”

  Tweedledee smiled gently, and began again:4

  “The sun was shining on the sea,

  Shining with all his might:

  He did his very best to make

  The billows smooth and bright—

  And this was odd, because it was

  The middle of the night.

  The moon was shining sulkily,

  Because she thought the sun

  Had got no business to be there

  After the day was done—

  ‘It’s very rude of him,’ she said,

  ‘To come and spoil the fun!’

  The sea was wet as wet could be,

  The sands were dry as dry.

  You could not see a cloud, because

  No cloud was in the sky:

  No birds were flying overhead—

  There were no birds to fly.5

  The Walrus and the Carpenter

  Were walking close at hand.6

  They wept like anything to see

  Such quantities of sand:

  ‘If this were only cleared away,’

  They said, ‘it would be grand!’

  ‘If seven maids with seven mops

  Swept it for half a year,

  Do you suppose,’ the Walrus said.

  ‘That they could get it clear?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said the Carpenter,

  And shed a bitter tear.

  ‘O Oysters, come and walk with us!’

  The Walrus did beseech.

  ‘A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,

  Along the briny beach:

  We cannot do with more than four,

  To give a hand to each.’

  The eldest Oyster looked at him,

  But never a word he said:

  The eldest Oyster winked his eye,

  And shook his heavy head—

  Meaning to say he did not choose

  To leave the oyster-bed.

  But four young Oysters hurried up,

  All eager for the treat:

  Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,

  Their shoes were clean and neat—

  And this was odd, because, you know,

  They hadn’t any feet.

  Four other Oysters followed them,

  And yet another four;

  And thick and fast they came at last,

  And more, and more, and more—

  All hopping through the frothy waves,

  And scrambling to the shore.

  The Walrus and the Carpenter

  Walked on a mile or so,

  And then they rested on a rock

  Conveniently low:

  And all the little Oysters stood

  And waited in a row.

  ‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,

  ‘To talk of many things:

  Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—

  Of cabbages—and kings—7

  And why the sea is boiling hot—

  And whether pigs have wings’

  ‘But wait a bit,’ the Oysters cried,

  ‘Before we have our chat;

  For some of us are out of breath,

  And all of us are fat!’

  ‘No hurry!’ said the Carpenter.

  They thanked him much for that.

  ‘A loaf of bread,’ the Walrus said,

  ‘Is what we chiefly need:

  Pepper and vinegar besides

  Are very good indeed—

  Now, if you’re ready, Oysters dear,

  We can begin to feed.’

  ‘But not on us!’ the Oysters cried,

  Turning a little blue.

  ‘After such kindness, that would be

  A dismal thing to do!’

  ‘The night is fine,’ the Walrus said.

  ‘Do you admire the view?

  ‘It was so kind of you to come!

  And you are very nice!’

  The Carpenter said nothing but

  ‘Cut us another slice.

  I wish you were not quite so deaf—

  I’ve had to ask you twice!’

  ‘It seems a shame,’ the Walrus said,

  ‘To play them such a trick.

  After we’ve brought them out so far,

  And made them trot so quick!’

  The Carpenter said nothing but

  ‘The butter’s spread too thick!’

  ‘I weep for you,’ the Walrus said:

  ‘I deeply sympathize.’

  With sobs and tears he sorted out

  Those of the largest size,

  Holding his pocket-handkerchief


  Before his streaming eyes.

  ‘O Oysters,’ said the Carpenter,

  ‘You’ve had a pleasant run!

  Shall we be trotting home again?’

  But answer came there none—

  And this was scarcely odd, because

  They’d eaten every one.”8

  “I like the Walrus best,” said Alice: “because he was a little sorry for the poor oysters.”

  “He ate more than the Carpenter, though,” said Tweedledee. “You see he held his handkerchief in front, so that the Carpenter couldn’t count how many he took: contrariwise.”

  “That was mean!” Alice said indignantly. “Then I like the Carpenter best—if he didn’t eat so many as the Walrus.”

  “But he ate as many as he could get,” said Tweedledum.

  This was a puzzler.9 After a pause, Alice began, “Well! They were both very unpleasant characters—” Here she checked herself in some alarm, at hearing something that sounded to her like the puffing of a large steam-engine in the wood near them, though she feared it was more likely to be a wild beast. “Are there any lions or tigers about here?” she asked timidly.

  “It’s only the Red King snoring,” said Tweedledee.

  “Come and look at him!” the brothers cried, and they each took one of Alice’s hands, and led her up to where the King was sleeping.

  “Isn’t he a lovely sight?” said Tweedledum.

  Alice couldn’t say honestly that he was. He had a tall red night-cap on, with a tassel, and he was lying crumpled up into a sort of untidy heap, and snoring loud—“fit to snore his head off!” as Tweedledum remarked.

  “I’m afraid he’ll catch cold with lying on the damp grass,” said Alice, who was a very thoughtful little girl.

  “He’s dreaming now,” said Tweedledee: “and what do you think he’s dreaming about?”

  Alice said “Nobody can guess that.”

  “Why, about you!” Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly. “And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you’d be?”

  “Where I am now, of course,” said Alice.

  “Not you!” Tweedledee retorted contemptuously. “You’d be nowhere. Why, you’re only a sort of thing in his dream!”10