The White Queen looked timidly at Alice, who felt she ought to say something kind, but really couldn’t think of anything at the moment.
“She never was really well brought up,” the Red Queen went on: “but it’s amazing how good-tempered she is! Pat her on the head, and see how pleased she’ll be!” But this was more than Alice had courage to do.
“A little kindness—and putting her hair in papers8—would do wonders with her—”
The White Queen gave a deep sigh, and laid her head on Alice’s shoulder. “I am so sleepy!” she moaned.
“She’s tired, poor thing!” said the Red Queen. “Smooth her hair—lend her your nightcap—and sing her a soothing lullaby.”
“I haven’t got a nightcap with me,” said Alice, as she tried to obey the first direction: “and I don’t know any soothing lullabies.”
“I must do it myself, then,” said the Red Queen, and she began:—9
“Hush-a-by lady, in Alice’s lap!
Till the feast’s ready, we’ve time for a nap.
When the feast’s over, we’ll go to the ball—
Red Queen, and White Queen, and Alice, and all!
“And now you know the words,” she added, as she put her head down on Alice’s other shoulder, “just sing it through to me. I’m getting sleepy, too.” In another moment both Queens were fast asleep, and snoring loud.
“What am I to do?” exclaimed Alice, looking about in great perplexity, as first one round head, and then the other, rolled down from her shoulder, and lay like a heavy lump in her lap. “I don’t think it ever happened before, that any one had to take care of two Queens asleep at once! No, not in all the History of England—it couldn’t, you know, because there never was more than one Queen at a time. Do wake up, you heavy things!” she went on in an impatient tone; but there was no answer but a gentle snoring.
The snoring got more distinct every minute, and sounded more like a tune: at last she could even make out words, and she listened so eagerly that, when the two great heads suddenly vanished from her lap, she hardly missed them.
She was standing before an arched doorway, over which were the words “QUEEN ALICE” in large letters, and on each side of the arch there was a bell-handle; one was marked “Visitors’ Bell,” and the other “Servants’ Bell.”
“I’ll wait till the song’s over,” thought Alice, “and then I’ll ring the—the—which bell must I ring?” she went on, very much puzzled by the names. “I’m not a visitor, and I’m not a servant. There ought to be one marked ‘Queen,’ you know—”
Just then the door opened a little way, and a creature with a long beak put its head out for a moment and said “No admittance till the week after next!” and shut the door again with a bang.
Alice knocked and rang in vain for a long time; but at last a very old Frog, who was sitting under a tree, got up and hobbled slowly towards her: he was dressed in bright yellow, and had enormous boots on.10
“What is it, now?” the Frog said in a deep hoarse whisper.
Alice turned round, ready to find fault with anybody. “Where’s the servant whose business it is to answer the door?” she began angrily.
“Which door?” said the Frog.
Alice almost stamped with irritation at the slow drawl in which he spoke. “This door, of course!”
The Frog looked at the door with his large dull eyes for a minute: then he went nearer and rubbed it with his thumb, as if he were trying whether the paint would come off: then he looked at Alice.
“To answer the door?” he said. “What’s it been asking of?” He was so hoarse that Alice could scarcely hear him.11
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
“I speaks English, doesn’t I?” the Frog went on. “Or are you deaf? What did it ask you?”
“Nothing!” Alice said impatiently. “I’ve been knocking at it!”
“Shouldn’t do that—shouldn’t do that—” the Frog muttered. “Wexes12 it, you know.” Then he went up and gave the door a kick with one of his great feet. “You let it alone,” he panted out, as he hobbled back to his tree, “and it’ll let you alone, you know.”
At this moment the door was flung open, and a shrill voice was heard singing:—13
“To the Looking-Glass world it was Alice that said
“‘I’ve a sceptre in hand I’ve a crown on my head.
Let the Looking-Glass creatures, whatever they be
Come and dine with the Red Queen, the White Queen, and me!’”
And hundreds of voices joined in the chorus:—
“Then fill up the glasses as quick as you can,
And sprinkle the table with buttons and bran:
Put cats in the coffee, and mice in the tea—
And welcome Queen Alice with thirty-times-three!”
Then followed a confused noise of cheering, and Alice thought to herself “Thirty times three makes ninety. I wonder if any one’s counting?” In a minute there was silence again, and the same shrill voice sang another verse:—
“‘O Looking-Glass creatures,’ quoth Alice, ‘draw near!
’Tis an honour to see me, a favour to hear:
’Tis a privilege high to have dinner and tea
Along with the Red Queen, the White Queen, and me!’”
Then came the chorus again:—
“Then fill up the glasses with treacle and ink,
Or anything else that is pleasant to drink:
Mix sand with the cider, and wool with the wine—
And welcome Queen Alice with ninety-times-nine!”
“Ninety times nine!” Alice repeated in despair. “Oh, that’ll never be done! I’d better go in at once—” and in she went, and there was a dead silence the moment she appeared.
Alice glanced nervously along the table, as she walked up the large hall, and noticed that there were about fifty guests, of all kinds: some were animals, some birds, and there were even a few flowers among them. “I’m glad they’ve come without waiting to be asked,” she thought: “I should never have known who were the right people to invite!”
There were three chairs at the head of the table: the Red and White Queens had already taken two of them, but the middle one was empty. Alice sat down in it, rather uncomfortable at the silence, and longing for some one to speak.
At last the Red Queen began. “You’ve missed the soup and fish,” she said. “Put on the joint!” And the waiters set a leg of mutton before Alice, who looked at it rather anxiously, as she had never had to carve a joint before.
“You look a little shy: let me introduce you to that leg of mutton,” said the Red Queen. “Alice—Mutton: Mutton—Alice.” The leg of mutton got up in the dish and made a little bow to Alice; and Alice returned the bow, not knowing whether to be frightened or amused.
“May I give you a slice?” she said, taking up the knife and fork, and looking from one Queen to the other.
“Certainly not,” the Red Queen said, very decidedly: “it isn’t etiquette to cut any one you’ve been introduced to.14 Remove the joint!” And the waiters carried it off, and brought a large plum-pudding in its place.
“I wo’n’t be introduced to the pudding, please,” Alice said rather hastily, “or we shall get no dinner at all. May I give you some?”
But the Red Queen looked sulky, and growled “Pudding—Alice: Alice—Pudding. Remove the pudding!”, and the waiters took it away so quickly that Alice couldn’t return its bow.
However, she didn’t see why the Red Queen should be the only one to give orders; so, as an experiment, she called out “Waiter! Bring back the pudding!” and there it was again in a moment, like a conjuring-trick. It was so large that she couldn’t help feeling a little shy with it, as she had been with the mutton: however, she conquered her shyness by a great effort, and cut a slice and handed it to the Red Queen.
“What impertinence!” said the Pudding. “I wonder how you’d like it, if I were to cut a slice out of you, you creature!”15
It spoke in a thick, suety sort of voice, and Alice hadn’t a word to say in reply: she could only sit and look at it and gasp.
“Make a remark,” said the Red Queen: “it’s ridiculous to leave all the conversation to the pudding!”
“Do you know, I’ve had such a quantity of poetry repeated to me to-day,” Alice began, a little frightened at finding that, the moment she opened her lips, there was dead silence, and all eyes were fixed upon her; “and it’s a very curious thing, I think—every poem was about fishes in some way. Do you know why they’re so fond of fishes, all about here?”
She spoke to the Red Queen, whose answer was a little wide of the mark. “As to fishes,” she said, very slowly and solemnly, putting her mouth close to Alice’s ear, “her White Majesty knows a lovely riddle—all in poetry—all about fishes. Shall she repeat it?”
“Her Red Majesty’s very kind to mention it,” the White Queen murmured into Alice’s other ear, in a voice like the cooing of a pigeon. “It would be such a treat! May I?”
“Please do,” Alice said very politely.
The White Queen laughed with delight, and stroked Alice’s cheek. Then she began:
“‘First, the fish must be caught.’
That is easy: a baby, I think, could have caught it.
‘Next, the fish must be bought.’
That is easy: a penny, I think, would have bought it.
‘Now cook me the fish!’
That is easy, and will not take more than a minute.
‘Let it lie in a dish!’
That is easy, because it already is in it.
‘Bring it here! Let me sup!’
It is easy to set such a dish on the table.
‘Take the dish-cover up!’
Ah, that is so hard that I fear I’m unable!
For it holds it like glue—
Holds the lid to the dish, while it lies in the middle:
Which is easiest to do,
Un-dish-cover the fish, or dishcover the riddle?”16
“Take a minute to think about it, and then guess,” said the Red Queen. “Meanwhile, we’ll drink your health—Queen Alice’s health!” she screamed at the top of her voice, and all the guests began drinking it directly, and very queerly they managed it: some of them put their glasses upon their heads like extinguishers,17 and drank all that trickled down their faces—others upset the decanters, and drank the wine as it ran off the edges of the table—and three of them (who looked like kangaroos) scrambled into the dish of roast mutton, and began eagerly lapping up the gravy, “just like pigs in a trough!” thought Alice.
“You ought to return thanks in a neat speech,” the Red Queen said, frowning at Alice as she spoke.
“We must support you, you know,” the White Queen whispered, as Alice got up to do it, very obediently, but a little frightened.
“Thank you very much,” she whispered in reply, “but I can do quite well without.”
“That wouldn’t be at all the thing,” the Red Queen said very decidedly: so Alice tried to submit to it with a good grace.
(“And they did push so!” she said afterwards, when she was telling her sister the history of the feast. “You would have thought they wanted to squeeze me flat!”)
In fact it was rather difficult for her to keep in her place while she made her speech: the two Queens pushed her so, one on each side, that they nearly lifted her up into the air. “I rise to return thanks—” Alice began: and she really did rise as she spoke, several inches; but she got hold of the edge of the table, and managed to pull herself down again.
“Take care of yourself!” screamed the White Queen, seizing Alice’s hair with both her hands. “Something’s going to happen!”
And then (as Alice afterwards described it) all sorts of things happened in a moment. The candles all grew up to the ceiling, looking something like a bed of rushes with fireworks at the top. As to the bottles, they each took a pair of plates, which they hastily fitted on as wings, and so, with forks for legs, went fluttering about in all directions: “and very like birds they look,” Alice thought to herself, as well as she could in the dreadful confusion that was beginning.
At this moment she heard a hoarse laugh at her side, and turned to see what was the matter with the White Queen; but, instead of the Queen, there was the leg of mutton sitting in the chair. “Here I am!” cried a voice from the soup-tureen, and Alice turned again, just in time to see the Queen’s broad good-natured face grinning at her for a moment over the edge of the tureen, before she disappeared into the soup.18
There was not a moment to be lost. Already several of the guests were lying down in the dishes, and the soup-ladle was walking up the table towards Alice’s chair, and beckoning to her impatiently to get out of its way.
“I ca’n’t stand this any longer!” she cried, as she jumped up and seized the tablecloth with both hands: one good pull, and plates, dishes, guests, and candles came crashing down together in a heap on the floor.
“And as for you,” she went on, turning fiercely upon the Red Queen, whom she considered as the cause of all the mischief—but the Queen was no longer at her side—she had suddenly dwindled down to the size of a little doll, and was now on the table, merrily running round and round after her own shawl, which was trailing behind her.
At any other time, Alice would have felt surprised at this, but she was far too much excited to be surprised at anything now. “As for you,” she repeated, catching hold of the little creature in the very act of jumping over a bottle which had just lighted upon the table, “I’ll shake you into a kitten, that I will!”19
1. The Red Queen has just moved to the King’s square so that Alice now has a queen on each side of her. The White King is placed in check by this move, but neither side seems to notice it.
Ivor Davies, writing on “Looking-Glass Chess” in The Anglo-Welsh Review (Autumn 1970), has an explanation of why no one notices that the White King has been placed in check by the Red Queen’s move to the King’s square. One of the chess books in Carroll’s library was The Art of Chess-Play (1846) by George Walker. The book’s Law 20 states: “When you give check, you must apprize your adversary by saying aloud ‘check’; or he need not notice it, but may move as though check were not given.”
“The Red Queen did not say ‘Check,’” comments Davies. “Her silence was entirely logical because, at the moment of her arrival at King one, she said to Alice…‘Speak when you’re spoken to!’ Since no one had spoken to her she would have been breaking her own rule had she said ‘check.’”
Another informative paper on the book’s chess game is “Alice in Fairyland” by A. S. M. Dickins, in Jabberwocky (Winter 1976). A world expert on “fairy chess,” Dickins analyzes Carroll’s game as a mélange of fairy chess rules. He calls attention to Walker’s Law 14, which, incredibly, allows a player to make a series of consecutive moves in one turn provided the opponent doesn’t object!
2. Is the Red Queen, as conjectured by Selwyn Goodacre and several other correspondents, alluding to the fact that no move in chess can be taken back? Once it is made “you must take the consequences.” Modern chess rules are even more strict. If a piece is merely touched, it must be moved.
3. Carroll was particularly fond of Tuesdays. “Spent the day in London,” he wrote in his diary on Tuesday, April 10, 1877. “It was (like so many Tuesdays in my life) a very enjoyable day.” The joy on this occasion was his meeting of a modest little girl “who is about the most gloriously beautiful child (both face and figure) that I ever saw. One would like to do 100 photographs of her.”
4. It is easy to miss the Red Queen’s implication here that rich and clever are opposites, like warm and cold.
5. “riddle with no answer”: such as the Mad Hatter’s unanswered riddle about the raven and the writing desk.
6. Alice is recalling Humpty’s song (Chapter 6) in which he tells of taking a corkscrew and going to wake up the fish to punish them for not obeying him.
&n
bsp; Alice may not have been interrupted in her remark. She may simply be recalling Humpty’s poem in Chapter 6 with its inconclusive couplet:
The little fishes’ answer was
“We cannot do it, Sir, because—”
7. Molly Martin speculates in a letter that when the White Queen remembers a time when the roof came off and thunder rolled around the room, this might refer to the lid of a chess box being removed and the pieces rattling around in the box as a player starts removing them or dumping them on the table.
8. “papers”: papers around which locks of hair are wound for curling.
9. An obvious burlesque of the familiar nursery rhyme, “Hush-a-by baby, on the tree top…”
10. As Michael Hancher points out in his book, cited so often in previous notes, the Romanesque doorway in Tenniel’s picture of this scene is identical with a doorway he drew for the title page of the bound volume of Punch, July–December, 1853. Hancher also reproduces the illustration as Tenniel originally drew it, showing Alice with a crinoline skirt that resembles the lower part of chess queens, in keeping with her crown, which is identical with the crowns of the chess pieces.
Carroll, who is on record as saying “I hate crinoline fashion,” objected to five pictures by Tenniel that showed Alice in a crinoline skirt after she became a queen. Tenniel complied with Carroll’s request by redrawing all five pictures. His original sketches for the five are reproduced in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Justin Schiller and Selwyn Goodacre (privately printed, 1990).
The same Norman-arched doorway, Charles Lovett tells me, with its characteristic zigzag pattern, was drawn by Tenniel in his first commissioned book illustrations, the second series of the Book of British Ballads. The arch appears in the background of a scene accompanying a ballad called “King Estmere.”
In her booklet Alice’s Adventures in Oxford (1980) Mavis Batey says that the door is “clearly the door of her [Alice’s] father’s Chapter House”—the house where the business of Christ Church’s cathedral is conducted.
The Annotated Alice Page 35