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Knight Letter

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T/^^ Lewis Carroll Society of North America

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spring 2012

Volume II Issue 18

Number 88

Knight Letter is the official magazine of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America.

It is published twice a year and is distributed free to all members.

Editorial correspondence should be sent to

the Editor in Chief at mahendra373@hotmail.com.

SUBMISSIONS

Submissions for The Rectory Umbrella and Mischmasch should be sent to

mahendra373@hotmail.com or pcolacino@austin.rr.com.

' Submissions and suggestions for Serendipidity and Sic Sic Sic should be sent to

andrewogus@mindspring.com.

Submissions and suggestions for All Must Have Prizes should be sent to

joel@thebirenbaums.net.

Submissions and suggestions for From Our Far-Flung Correspondents should be sent to

FarFlungKnight@gmail.com.

© 201 2 The Lewis Carroll Society of North America ISSN 0193-886X

Mahendra Singh, Editor in Chief Patricia Colacino, Editor, Rectory Umbrella

Ann Buki, Editor, Carrollian Notes

Cindy Watter, Editor, Of Books and Things

James Welsch & Rachel Eley, Editors, From Our Far-Flung Correspondents

Mark Burstein, Production Editor

Andrew H. Ogus, Designer

THE LEWIS CARROLL SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA

President: Mark Burstein, president@lewiscarroll.org

Vice-President: Cindy Watter, hedgehogccw@sbcglobal.net

Secretary: Clare Imholtz, secretary@lewiscarroll.org

www.LewisCarroll.org

Annual membership dues are U.S. $35 (regular),

$50 (international), and $100 (sustaining).

Subscriptions, correspondence, and inquiries should be addressed to:

Clare Imholtz, LCSNA Secretary

11935 Beltsville Dr.

Beltsville, Maryland 20705

Additional contributors to this issue: Clare Imholtz, Dr. Selwyn Goodacre, Mark Richards and Rose Owens

On the cover: A tribute to the journey up the Isis, collage by Andrew Ogus.

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Contents

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THe ReCTORY UMBRSLLA

m

Boston Tea Party

MAHENDRA SINGH

A Frost in Brazil: Antonio Peticov

ROSE OWENS

Carrollian Juvenilia: Parisot's Unknown Translations

DOUGLAS PROCTOR

The Age of Alice

MARK BURSTEIN WITH GEOFFREY CHANDLER

Alice Through the Pinhole

MABLE ODESSEY

From Under Ground to Wonderland

MATT DEMAKOS

CARROLLIAN NOTGS

mr

SesquicenTenniel Poster

MISCHMASCH

leaves from the Deanery Garden

Serendipity

Sic Sic Sic

Ravings from the Writing Desk of

MARK BURSTEIN

All Must Have Prizes

MATT CRANDALL

Alicel50: A Call for Support

JOEL BIRENBAUM

lO

16 28

31

33 34

35

37

Alice into the Looking-Glass Art Exhibtiion

CLARE IMHOLTZ

Carroll's Typewriter

ROSE OWENS

Lewis &" Leonard

MARK BURSTEIN

OF BOOKS AND THINGS

38 38

39

The Alice Project's AAT^ 41

ANDREW OGUS

Wilfred Dodgson of Shropshire 41

AUGUST IMHOLTZ, JR.

John Vernon Lord's TTLG 43

ANDREW OGUS

The Carrollian Tale of Inspector Spectre 43

MAHENDRA SINGH

Yayoi Kusama 's AAIW 44

ANDREW OGUS

Everlasting 44

MARK BURSTEIN

Lostfish 's A Travers le mirroir 45

ANDREW OGUS

FROM OUR FAR-FLUNG CORReSPONOeNTS

Art &" Illustration — Articles & Academia — Books (sf Comics — Events, Exhibits, df Places — Internet isf Technology — Movies &" Television — Music — Performing Arts — Things 46

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his issue of the /<^ marks the ISO'*" anniver- sary of CLD & Go's boat ride upon the Isis on July 4th, 1862. Whether you are a devotee of the A to books or the Snark or Sylvie and Bruno, that seminal afternoon is the raison d'etre of all things Carrollian. On that particular day, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson truly became Lewis Carroll and conjured up his own version of an eternally radical art form, non- sense, which continues to enchant and sometimes even perplex us to this day.

To celebrate this white stone day, our talented designer, Andrew Ogus, has conceived and designed a special full-color poster of images, with a poem by Brian Sibley, commemorating this sesquicentennial of the conception of Alice's Adventures under Ground. In addition to Andrew's chromatic tribute, we also present the first part of a two-part analysis of AAUGhy Matt Demakos, a detailed and definitive account of the many differences between it and its final incarna- tion as AAIW.

The Spring Meeting in Cambridge, MA was en- livened by the announcement of the re-launching of the Canadian LCS and further updates on the Alicel50 project. Readers interested in participating in the latter should refer to page 37, where Joel Bi- renbaum goes into the details, and Canadian readers

interested in the former should contact Dayna Nuhn at sheerluck@sympatico.ca.

Francophiles will be intrigued (or maybe just shrug their shoulders) by our publication of a pre- viously unknown Henri Parisot translation of some juvenile poetry of LC, while movie buffs might enjoy our semi-exhaustive survey of the ages of the many cinematic Alices of the last 109 years. As usual, this is all interspersed with news of various Carrollians in Europe and Brazil doing things with pinholes and dead Italian surrealists plus the usual cavalcade of errant typewriters and other assorted bibliographic, musical, and Internet oddities of a nonsensical bent.

And on a penultimate note, we'd like to welcome Patricia Colacino and Rose Owens to our ragged band of KL contributors; Patricia is helping out with the Rectory Umbrella, and Rose is doing various writ- ing chores. Many thanks to both for giving so gener- ously of their time and talents.

In summation, this issue of the KL has a definite theme but refuses to change its usual contrariwise sys- tem of avoiding a definite theme, for if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't.

MAHENDRA SINGH

THe ReCTORY UMBReLLA

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BOSTON TEA PARTY

MAHENDRA SINGH

M round noon on Saturday, April 27, our Spring 2012 meeting was convened in the Houghton Library of Harvard University. The LCSNA has met before in this venue, and this particular session was especially auspicious since vari- ous watercolors, drawings, and prints by Edward Lear were on display in the meeting room as part of the library's Natural History of Ediuard Lear exhibition. These exquisite works by the other great master of High Nonsense provided a perfect ambience for our Carrollian activities.

The Houghton's coordinator of programs, Pe- ter Accardo, welcomed us to Harvard, which was, as he reminded us, the home of the fabled Harcourt Amory Collection, donated to the Houghton Library by Amory 's widow in 1926. Heather Cole, the assis- tant curator of the Houghton's Modern Books and Manuscripts collection, informed us that she was busy planning a major exhibit to celebrate the sesquicen- tennial in 2015.

Our president, Mark Burstein, then updated members on various Society issues. Our Facebook page has been updated, and all members and their friends and family are urged to "like" it (logically speaking, you have no choice). He also announced the dates and venues of upcoming meetings, which are recounted in his Ravings, p. 34.

No mention of Alice 150 could be complete with- out Joel Birenbaum, who gave us a brief update of the planned celebrations. He noted that Alicel50 could be encapsulated into two basic activities: the exhibi- tions and the conference. The former are many in number and scope and v«ll be designed to attract the general public. The latter will last two days and may well be be folded into the regular LCSNA meeting. Above all, as Joel pointed out, is the need to ensure that Alice 150 will appeal to the younger generation and that it will get them interested in both Lewis Car- roll and the Society. Please see page 37.

Our first speaker was Dr. Selwyn Goodacre, the former editor of Jabberwocky, the journal of the Lewis Carroll Society (UK) — now called The Carrollian — and a well-known and truly learned Carrollian. His bibliographic survey of the various print facsimiles of Alice's Adventure under Ground told a well-known story, but one that has rarely been done with such wit and charm. He covered the meteorological myth of cool and wet weather on July 4, 1862; Carroll's writing and illustrating the manuscript (and the story of the photo on the last page); the various facsimile printings dur- ing and after his lifetime and how they handled that page (including the text); the peregrinations of the manuscript itself and how it ended up in the British Library (and its occasional travels since); the tale of

Selwyn Goodacre

Matt Demakos

how the photograph was questioned and at long last removed to reveal the drawing underneath; and a won- derful Portuguese translation — ^with typeface and lay- out matching the original — from the talented Adriano Peliano, which Dr. Goodacre declared "a total gem."

Our next speaker was Matt Demakos, whose en- tire discussion of the textual variants between Under Ground and Wonderland can be found on p. 16 (and will be continued in the next issue).

At this point, the meeting paused so that Charlie Lovett could distribute keepsakes to the assembled members. His monograph, Feeding the Mind: A New Chapter in the Publication History of a "Sparkle from the Pen " of Lewis Carroll, shattered the myth of the publication history of this essay, long thought to have been first de- livered as a lecture in 1884 and not to have seen print until 1906. In fact, it was originally printed in 1861. Charlie's scholarship was impeccable, and his inclusion of facsimiles most generous. Dayna Nuhn announced the resurrection of the LCS Canada, a welcome bit of news indeed, and distributed a keepsake, A Return to Wonderland by Ada Leonora Harris, a short pastiche that originally was published in Blackie's Children's An- nual in 1929. To top off this outbreak of Canadian en- thusiasm, her fellow Torontonian, Oleg Lipchenko, had just received the first copies of his beautifully il- lustrated The Hunting of the Snark and was distributing copies to lucky subscriber members, and selling others.

Our next speaker was Mark Richards, the chair- man of the LCS (UK) , who had much to say about A Tangled Tale and its undeserved obscurity in Carrol- lian circles. He nominated it as Carroll's most typi-

cal work — as opposed to those maddeningly popular Alice books — on account of its highly evolved sense of word- and math play and its dry and incisive sense of humor. He urged members put off by the Tale's math- ematical puzzles to focus instead on the fine quality of their writing, for the latter quality is just as important to their final effect as the brain-teasers they contain.

A Tangled Tale first appeared in serial form in The Monthly Packet of Evening Readings for Members of the English Church, a magazine aimed at young Anglican girls and edited by Charlotte Yonge, a friend of Dodg- son's. One popular feature of the magazine was its "Spider Subjects," a regular column whose pseudony- mous respondents were dubbed Spiders. One would suppose that most of the Spiders were young girls, but it was clear from their answers that they were of all ages and sexes, but were, according to Mark, the ideal Carrollian readers.

Beginning in April 1880, Carroll contributed a series of problems to the journal, each of which he called a Knot. The first Knot was entitled "Excelsi- or"— probably as a gende jab at H. W. Longfellow's poem of that name — and involves a travel problem posed by two knights. The full solution and Carroll's gently mocking, humorous commentary upon the an- swers received appeared in June 1880.

Nine more Knots followed in the magazine, each setting a different problem and discussing the answers to the previous Knot. The problems ranged from genealogy to voting problems, the latter being a subject in which Carroll was deeply interested and had done original research.

Mark Richards

As the Knots appeared, certain patterns and pro- clivities became apparent, as the problems became more interlocked and more digressive. What had begun as disparate and unrelated puzzles began to share characters and situations with greater frequen- cy. The medieval knights of ELnot One reappeared in Knot Three as travelers in the impending twentieth century, reflecting a certain science-fiction, time-and- space theme in Carroll's work that reappears in full force with Sylvie and Bruno.

These enthusiasms continued unabated in Car- roll's commentary upon the submitted answers to his Knots and his concealment of his readers' identity with genuinely Carrollian pseudonyms. One fine one in particular was Bradshaw of the Future, a sly subver- sion of that famous Victorian compendium of railway schedules. The commentaries were increasingly hu- morous and at the same time demanding, for Carroll insisted upon all answers being properly worked out in full. Those who did not measure up were subjected to a good dose of Carrollian ribbing, which was not always well received by his victims, who were, in the- ory at least, young Anglican women. LC liberally be- stowed such epithets as "hapless," "malefactors," and even "desperate wrongdoers," upon them, and when his readers' protestations reached a certain pitch, he was forced to issue a defense in print.

The last Knot appeared in March 1885, and in July of that year Carroll approached Macmillan with the idea of publishing the collected Knots with their answers and commentaries as a Christmas book. The

Knots were modified slightly and their order changed, and the book appeared in the shops on December 22, 1885. Carroll had contracted the American illustrator A. B. Frost to provide ten drawings. In the approval stage, Carroll had entirely rejected four of the draw- ings, which so infuriated Frost that he refused to have anything more to do with the project.

The book was dedicated to Edith Rix, a young woman who first came to Carroll's attention when she submitted solutions to some of the magazine Knots. He had replied to her with a detailed critique, and over time they became good friends. He described her as the cleverest woman he had ever known, strong praise indeed, and he took a friendly interest in her religious and secular education — at one point even advising her mother to eschew sending young Edith to Girton College (in Cambridge University) on ac- count of the "fast and mannish" nature of the female students there. (Mark drily pointed out that his own wife was a Cambridge U. graduate, and furthermore, Edith turned out to be quite an eccentric by Victorian [and Carrollian] standards. She wore her hair short, rode a bicycle, and dispensed with wearing stockings in the countryside.)

On March 27, 1886, Carroll thanked Macmillan for forwarding him the mostly negative review clips, although the book sold well and went into four print- ings. It was deemed too trenchant by some critics, too full of puns by others, and it has not fared well with either biographers and scholars. Morton Cohen devoted little space to it, and Donald Thomas seems to have confused it with Pilloiv Problems. Curiously enough, Stuart CoUingwood called it the most popu- lar of all Carroll's works, although he may have had ulterior motives.

On the basis of various contemporary references and meanings, Richards speculated that the curious structure and tenor of the work might be a result of some sort of hidden authorial constraint. CoUing- wood's praise may provide a clue, if one proposes that many of the characters in the Knots are based upon friends and family of Carroll. Mark speculated that several of the Dodgson youngsters may be hidden in the book (Stuart and Bertram CoUingwood, in par- ticular) and that Professor Balbus may be a reference to the Republican consul, Lucius Cornelius Balbus, whose patronym in Latin means "the stammerer" — and his first two names do smack a bit of that other Latinized pseudonym, Lewis Carroll.

It was only fitting that our next speaker, Alan Tannenbaum, would give us a short talk about Ar- thur Burdett Frost, the semi-illustrator of A Tangled Tale and the fully engaged illustrator of Rhyme? and Reason?. Frost was born in Philadelphia in 1851 and became an engraver's apprentice when young. De- spite being told by his employer that he had no talent

Andrew Woodham's winning statue, Queen Victoria of Hearts

for drawing, he went on to have a successful career in illustration, beginning with his first major book, Charles Heber Clark's Out of the Hurly Burly, which sold extremely well but is forgotten today. Frost went on to work for Harper and Scribner's, did the original illustrations for the various Uncle Remus books by Joel Chandler Harris, and ultimately gained a name as a cartoonist and America's premier illustrator of sport- ing and rural scenes.

He joined Harper's art department in 1876 where he picked up various fresh styles — despite being col- orblind— and then went to London in 1878 to refine his professional techniques. It was there that he first met Carroll, who was then on the hunt for an illustra- tor for his 1869 collection of poems entided Phantas- magoria. At first, the (other) famous Punch cartoonist, Linley Sambourne, got the job, or at least part of it, "The Lang Coortin'" poem, for which Carroll pur- chased one illustration, which is now lost. Frost finally got the job and began working on it once he returned to the U.S.A.

The logistics of such a project were difficult in Victorian times; the artist would send blocks to the

Linda Cassady

U.K via steamship, and Carroll would do his correc- tions (or changes, which is not the same thing, de- spite some editorial delusions) and then return them to the U.S.A. The process took five years in all, and in 1883, "Phantasmagoria" and several other poems, including the Snark, were finally published by Mac- millan as Rhyme? and Reason ?.

Frost returned to Carroll but with less produc- tive results, as we heard earlier in Mark Richard's talk. Frost had been engaged to do A Tangled Tale until the two men fell out over excessive changes. As Allan noted, Frost was quite dismissive of Carroll in his letter to the bibliophile Ray Safford, calling the poet "the fussiest little man I ever met, finicky and fussy." Strong stuff from an illustrator, and indicative perhaps of the much stronger social and commercial position that illustrators held in the publishing circles of fin de siecle America.

Our next speaker was Linda Cassady, who, along with her husband George, sponsors the Wonder- land Award at the University of Southern California. Since 2004, they have been sponsoring this multidis- ciplinary competition among California university students, a contest open to any type of expression or elaboration upon the works of Lewis Carroll. The en- tries are judged by academics, creative professionals, and students on the basic criteria of Carrollian spirit, originality, quality, and a statement of purpose. Linda admitted that the latter had become a necessity after they had received some rather vague, indecipherable entries.

Christopher Morgan

The Wonderland 2012 first-prize winner was An- drew Woodham, a molecular biology student, who created a four-foot-tall statue made of playing cards, entided Queen Victoria of Hearts. There were many other winners in many other genres, including games, crafts, creative writing, poetry, music, movies, and even movement. The other genres' winning entries ranged from an intricately shaded and rendered pen drawing executed in a single line to a hilarious video involv- ing a young coed's quest for a live lobster to quadrille with on the sunny beaches of LaLaLand. A common denominator was the lack of a common denominator aside from their interest in Carroll. The students came from all disciplines, and they submitted work that often had nothing to do with their studies; a blood technician's chic fashion designs spring to this writer's mind as a good example. Linda said that several of the young people had remarked to her that working with Carroll's remarkable literary templates had relaxed them and given them a feeling of deep fulfillment that their regular studies did not always supply.

Linda and George are hoping to expand the competition beyond California's borders and one member of the audience pointed out to her how neatly the Wonderland Award might fit into the ever- evolving Alice 150 plans. For further information about the Cassadys' generous and fascinating contest, go online to http://www.usc.edu/libraries/news/ wonderland/ and http://dotsx.usc.edu/newsblog/ index. php/main/comments/photos_from_eighth- annual_wonderland_award_ceremony/. In addition.

you can see the 2009 Exhibit Catalogue at http:// omeka.usclibraries.com/exhibits/show/wonderland.

Our final speaker was Christopher Morgan, whom Mark Burstein introduced as a "geek god." In addition to his cosmic digital omnipotence, Mr. Morgan is a founding editor of Popular Computing, a musician, a bibliophile, a puzzle designer, and an organizer of the Gathering4Gardner. He is also an accomplished amateur magician, and his purpose at our meeting was to demonstrate Carroll's repertory of magic tricks to us.

Performing simple magic tricks and illusions for both adults and children was very popular in Victo- rian England, and Carroll's fondness for amateur magic has been well documented in various letters, diaries, and reminiscences. So, Mr. Morgan asked, which magic tricks did Carroll do? As it turns out, John Fisher's Magic ofLeivis Carroll and Martin Gard- ner's Th£ Universe in a Handkerchief ?ind Mathematics, Magic and Mystery furnished enough evidence to allow Chris to give us an abbreviated but authentic Carrol- lian conjuring session.

Lewis Carroll and Martin Gardner (who was voted one of the top 100 magicians of the century by Magic magazine) shared this passion but performed only for family and friends. Several tricks were demonstrated, beginning with the passing of a rope through the nose and proceeding onto a higher intellectual plane with some truly delightful illusions involving mirrors and missing parts of dollar bills.

One of the most effective tricks was the Handker- chief Mouse, which Isa Bowman also remarked upon, an intricate twisting up and manipulating of hand- kerchiefs until they leap around like maddened mice upon the magician's body. There were origami-like puzzles, card tricks, geometric paradoxes, and much more, all of them favorites of Carroll and clearly still entertaining to modern audiences.

Where did Carroll learn his magic and find his supplies? Morgan showed us advertisements for W. H. Cremer's Conjuring Saloon on Regent Street, where Carroll would have found "instructions given daily . . . with apparatus of the finest perfection."

Naturally, Carroll put some conjuring tricks in his books, in particular Looking-Glass. Morgan point- ed out and then performed the Sheep's standing- up of eggs in "Wool and Water," a common trick of the time. He also noted that Haigha's extraction of a sandwich from his Magic Bag was a variation of the so-called Egg Bag Trick.

In sum, both performance and explanations were quite entertaining and furnished all of us with an unexpected glimpse into the quotidian pastimes of Carroll and Victorian society. With that, our meet- ing officially closed, and most of us repaired to a nearby restaurant for food, drink, and stimulating conversation.

The next day, Sunday, furnished a special treat for members who were still in Boston. On a bright and very pleasant morning and "golden afternoon," about 42 members and guests were treated to a splen- did tour of the Tannenbaum collection, in Chelms- ford, Massachusetts, about 35 miles northwest of Boston. Climbing on a stepladder in Our Town stage manager fashion, Alan welcomed all to the huge li- brary room he and Alison had built onto their house, the older part of which dates from 1770. He spent less than a minute per shelf talking about the con- tents of the 84 bookshelves (behind glass doors, each with a cabinet knob depicting, in order, a scene from AAiW), the vitrines of figurines, the original illustra- tion art on the walls, and the collection of (the only two) Alice in Wonderland pinball machines ever pro-

duced— in working order! A special exhibit case held some of the rarer and unique items, including books from Carroll's own library, a blue The Hunting of the Snark inscribed by Carroll to Henry Holiday's daughter Winifred, a delightful mirror-writing inscribed card by Carroll in French, and much more. The guests spilled outside into the beautiful gardens to continue conversa- tions about all things Carroll — of which there seemed to be an unending supply. A liddle keepsake in celebra- tion of the 150th anniversary, a 1-inch-high facsimile of Under Ground made by Lee Ann Borgia, complete with the final-page drawing and the photo, was taken away by each of the attendees. All who were fortunate enough to be able to visit Alison and Alan owe them their grati- tude for a most splendiferous day.

Alaii Tannenbaum (far left) amidst his collection

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A TROST IN 5RAZIL: ANTONIO PETICOV

ROSE OWENS

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The recent spate ofCarrollian interest amongst Brazilian artists seems to continue unabated. Yet another fine artist, Antonio Peticov, has been inspired by the Alice novels to create various surrealist-inflected works. We interviewed Antonio via e-mail recently.

KL: Could you tell us something about your education and background and how you became an artist ?

ap: I did not go to any university because I was 12 years old when I discovered my vocation. Since then I've been researching and studying all things related to art and culture, wdth a predi- lection for math and themes such as illusions, ambiguity, and the fantastic. My attention has become focused on magic realism and sacred geometry.

I lived 15 months in England, 14 years in Milan, and another 14 years in New York City. Since 1999 I've been living and working in Sao Paulo, Brasil.

KL: What led you to Lewis Carroll?

AP: Lewis Carroll has been a presence in my life since I was a child, but his connections with Martin Gardner enlarged my interest in all of his work and life. When I was living in the States, I used to be a member of the LCSNA.

KL: Your style in the Carrollian pictures we've seen is very Mediterranean; there is an open, sunny, and yet mythic feeling to your work. It's reminiscent of Alberto Savinio. How did you make the connections betiveen Carroll and this other visual and artistic tradition ?

ap: I am indeed greatly indebted to Alberto Savinio, whose work has been an inspiration to me. However, during all the years that I lived abroad I was recognized as a "Brazilian painter," espe- cially owing to my intense use of colors in all of my work. In addition, pastel dravsdng has been one of my passions, and I often study old master drawings and etchings in search of inspiring images that I can reinterpret. Gustave Dore is also one of my favorites.

KL: It is unusual to see anyone illustrating Rhyme? and Reason?. What about these poems interests you?

ap: I have a volume of The Complete Illustrated Works of Lewis Carroll I am amazed by the work of A. B. Frost, who, besides Tenniel, best illustrated

Carroll's work. Besides, Lewis Carroll poems are delightful reading.

KL: Hoiv did you make the anamorphic art? It's very inter- esting and seems quite complex to execute.

AP: I first started doing anamorphic art by hand, with lots of "elbow grease." But now I have found a way of doing it using the computer.

KL: Are you active in the Brazilian LC Society ivith Adriana Peliano, and if so, have you done anything xuith the Society (or Adriana) that you want to show or discuss?

ap: I didn't know about the Brazilian LC Society until last October, when I organized a Brazilian "Celebration of the Mind" event here in Sao Paulo and had Adriana Peliano as one of the speakers. She was great explaining to us her rela- tion vnth Alice and the work that came after it.

KL: It seems that Brazilian artists interested in Carroll (that we know of) are creating work that is very ener- getic yet intellectual, very youthful yet looking to the past, and also deeply interested in surrealism. Do you have any theories about this Brazilian taste for CarroU and surrealism ?

ap: In truth, I know very few Brazilian artists who have any interest in Carroll's work. But I think that Adriana's work is superb.

Interested members can view and purchase more of Anto- nio's work online at either www.peticov.com.br or www. antoniopeticov. com. br.

'Unerringly, " by Antonio Petkoxi

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CAROLLIAN JUVENILIA: PARISOT'S UNKNOWN TRANSLATIONS

DOUGLAS PROCTOR

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I inherited from my father a copy of the French art magazine Cahiers d'art. It is numbered No. 5-10, and was published in late 1939. Although the mag- azine is devoted mostly to the visual arts, it does con- tain some short written material, including poetry. Imagine my surprise when I found a page devoted to poems written by Lewis Carroll, and translated into French by Henri Parisot. I confess that 1 did not rec- ognize any of them.

Before I go any further, I had better say a few things about my background. 1 am a retired gende- man, and my high school French has faded through the years, so I could not read these poems very well. 1 came to really appreciate Lewis Carroll in college. It was then that I discovered my love of science, math, and particularly logic. I was an avid reader of Scien- tific American, and Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games column. It was also then that a friend gave me The Annotated Alice. I enjoyed how Carroll played with logical concepts, and my father, who was an avid book collector, noticed this and found me a first edi- tion of The Hunting of the Snark and an early edition of Tangled Tales. I had great fun with these. Through the years I have returned to them many times, but I didn't explore the world of Carroll any further. Then my daughter gave me The Annotated Alice: The Defini- tive Edition last year. I had a great time reading it, and at the end I found out about the Lewis Carroll Society of North America. I explored the Web site, and joined the LCSNA.

I wanted to ask someone about the poems in Dad's old Cahiers d'art. On the LCSNA Web site was an option to ask questions. I asked about my magazine, and this started a correspondence with Mark Burs- tein I sent him a copy of the Lewis Carroll page. Mark was able to identify the poems as early verse, and said that Parisot was a respected translator of Carroll's works. Mark added that he had not seen these trans- lations before, and they might be rare. He encour- aged me to come to the fall meeting in New York, and bring the magazine. My wife and 1 did this, and had

a wonderful time, but no one was able to tell me any more about these translations.

Since then I have done some more searching on the Internet. I have found copies of Cahiers d'art for sale, but none as old as 1939. If the translations were commissioned by the magazine, they may not exist anywhere else. I am sure that many copies were sold in 1939, but I wonder how many of them have survived in private hands to today. I would also like to hear comments on the quality of the translations. I think they are good, but as I said before, my French is rusty. I would be very curious to hear any other infor- mation about them.

m

The first paragraph on the opposite page is a transla- tion from the French introduction as it appeared in the magazine; it is not completely accurate.

"Melodies" are four limericks (two together as verses in the third poem) that appeared as "Melodies" in the Dodgson family magazine Useful and Instructive Poetry (1845), the first beginning, "There was an old farmer of Readall." In the translation the limerick form has been abandoned, and the farmer has moved to Read- ing; similar liberties are taken throughout.

"^ Chanson de la Fausse Tortue" (The Mock Turtle's Song) is from Alice's Adventures under Ground (1865); "Beneath the Waters of the Sea," is an early version of the "Lobster-Quadrille" and parodies a Negro min- strel song Carroll heard the Liddell sisters singing the day before the Isis expedition. Parisot later translated both Wonderland and Under Ground in full, in which his translation of this poem is different.

""Unjouf is "As It Fell upon a Day" from The Rectory Magazine (1850); "Ma Fee" is "My Fairy" from Useful and Instructive Poetry.

These poems are commonly available in collections of Carroll's complete works. -Mark Burstein

LEWIS CARROLL

Poemes de Jeunesse

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THE FOUR POEMS BELOW WERE WRITTEN BETWEEN 1845 AND 1849, WHEN LEWIS CARROLL WAS ATTENDING SCHOOL, FIRST AT RICHMOND THEN RUGBY. DUR- ING THESE FIVE YEARS, CARROLL PUB- LISHED NO LESS THAN SEVEN "LITER- ARY reviews" IN THE FORM OF SMALL NOTEBOOK manuscripts: "USEFUL AND INSTRUCTIVE POETRY," "THE RECTORY magazine" "the comet," "the ROSE- BUD," "the star," "the will-o'-the- wisp," AND "the rectory UMBRELLA." THE POEM ENTITLED "MY FAIRY" DATES FROM 1845, WHEN LEWIS CARROLL WAS 13 YEARS OLD.

MELODIES

II y avait un vieux fermier de Reading Qui se faisait des trous dans la figure

avec une epingle; II I'enfon^ait bien plus profondement

qui'il ne faut Pour transpercer seulement la peau, Et pourtant, chose etrange a dire, il fut

nomme bedeau.

II y avait un vieux drapeir excentrique Qui portait un chapeau de papier brun; II s'eleva jusqu'a un certain point, Pourtant il paraissait hors de ses joints : La raison en etait «la vapeur», disait-il.

II y avait une fois un jeune homme

de Harcourt Qui devenait de plus en plus court; La raison de ce fait Etait I'auge qu'il avait sur la tete, Laquelle etait remplie du mortier le plus lourd.

Sa sceur, nommee Lucy Stevens,

Devenait de plus en plus mince;

La raison, la voici :

Elle couchait dehors sous la pluie

Et n'etait jamais invitee a aucun diner.

CHANSON DE LA FAUSSE TORTUE

Sous les eaux de la mer

Sont les homards epais comme ils peuvent

I'etre — lis aiment danser avec toi et moi, Mon cher et mon gentil Saumon!

chceur:

Saumon, viens par ici ! Saumon, viens par la! Saumon, viens entortiller ta queue autour! Parmi tous les poissons de la mer II n'en est pas un d'aussi bon que le Saumon!

UN JOUR Comme j'etais assis devant I'atre (Et oh, mais le cochon est gras !) Un homme monta le sentier en hate (Et en quoi me soucie-je de cela?)

Quand il parvint a la maison,

II s'arreta un instant pour souffler.

Quand il arriva devant la porte. Son visage devint plus pale qu'avant.

Quand il fit tourner la poignee, L'homme tomba evanoui sur le sol.

Quand il traversa le couloir,

Encore et encore je I'entendis tomber.

Quand il atteignit I'escalier,

II cria et arracha sa chevelure de corbeau.

Quand il penetra dans ma chambre (Et oh, mais le cochon est gras!) Je le transpergai d'une epingle d'or (Et en quoi me soucieje de cela?)

MA FEE J'ai une fee a mes cotes, Qui dit qu'il ne faut pas dormir, Quand la douleur me fait fondre en larmes, Elle dit : «I1 ne faut pas pleurer».

Si plein d'entrain je souris et grimace, Elle dit : «I1 ne faut pas rire»; Si dans mon verre je verse un peu de gin, Elle dit : «I1 ne faut pas boire».

Si par hasard je veux gouter un mets, Elle dit : «I1 ne faut pas mordre»; Si vers les guerres je me dirige en hate, Elle dit : «I1 ne faut pas se battre».

«Que faut-il faire?» m'ecriai-je a la fin.

Fatigue du penible devoir.

La fee tranquillement repond

Et dit : «I1 ne faut pas questionner».

Moralite : «I1 ne faut pas».

(Traduit de I'anglais par Henri Parisot.)

^

TkeAaeofAli

ice

MARK BURSTEIN WITH GEOFFREY CHANDLER

-^

^

Calling Alice "ageless" might prove to be more literal than metaphorical, a notion that also applies to the title of this article, which ad- dresses the perennial question, "Why is almost every film actress who plays Alice far too old?"

It is extremely unlikely, but not impossible, that Dodgson, toward the end of his life, attended an entertainment in a theater where a silent film was shown; however, we do know for certain that he had a wealth of experience with theatrical productions of his masterworks. Charles Lovett's excellent history, Alice on Stage (Westport, CT: Meckler, 1990), recounts Dodgson 's involvement with such endeavors, such as the diary entry for September 28, 1872, in which he noted an eight-year-old actress named Lydia Howard, who he felt "would do well to act 'Alice' if it should ever be dramatized."

On December 7, 1874, he attended the first such "staged" production, a private theatrical performance at the house of Thomas Arnold,' which featured Ar- nold's daughters and a family friend, Beatrice Fearon, nine, as Alice.- The reader may wish to peruse Lovett's book for its catalogue of many such productions, from the first professional one (Buckland's in 1876, featur- ing Martha Woolridge, ten, in the lead) through the famous 1886 Savile Clarke musical starring Phoebe Carlo, twelve, and its revival at the Globe Theatre in 1888, with Isa Bowman, fourteen, and beyond.

Alice Liddell was ten on the famous boating trip up the Isis where the tale was first told. But how old is the Alice of the stories themselves? Based on the crude drawings that Carroll himself did for Under Ground and the polished ones done by Tenniel for Wonderland, she could be anywhere from seven to ten. But, of course, the text of Looking-Glass (Chapter V) reveals her as being exactly seven-and-a-half in that tale, and Gardner's oft-cited footnotes posit rather definitively that therefore her adventures in Wonder- land took place on her seventh birthday.^

Despite the higher standards for realism in film than on the stage, the majority of actresses who have played Alice in movies have been in their teens or ear- ly twenties, a far cry from what Carroll originally envi- sioned. There have been only two where the age was even close to correct. Natalie Gregory in the two-part

made-for-television Irwin Allen production in 1985 was around nine during its filming.^ (That movie was inexplicably nominated for five Emmys, including one for hairstyling, which is somewhat odd given the ghasdy-looking blond wig Gregory wore throughout.)

The other actress is Kristyna Kohoutova in the stop-motion animated movie Neco z Alenky (1988), released in English as Alice, directed by a Czech, Jan Svankmajer. There is no official birth date given for the actress, but an undocumented reference on a website and our best guess make her out to be be- tween seven and eight when the movie was filmed. This strange film does not follow either of the two novels exactly, but at least the young actress does not wear any wigs. In fact, her hair and face are closer to Tenniel's drawings than those of any other actress playing Alice we've ever seen.

Mention could arguably be made of five-year-old Virginia Davis, who appeared in Disney's Alice's Won- derland in 1923, and Kathryn Beaumont, best known for the 1951 Disney cartoon, but who also appeared live as the character in a number of television shows (she was ten when she began fulfilling her contract).

There are a multitude of reasons for this discrep- ancy, of course, beginning with the talent and experi- ence needed to carry a motion picture, although it is hard to imagine that no suitable actresses of the right age could ever have been found. Child actors have often demonstrated immense gifts, from Shirley Tem- ple, who was but three whilst filming her first shorts and features, through Elle Fanning, who was even younger than that when she played in I Am Sam (and who was the most likely candidate for the role of Alice in a film proposed by Les Bohem to DreamWorks [KL 74:9]; she would have been exacdy seven). ^ There is also the misbegotten twentieth-century canard con- cerning Dodgson 's allegedly prurient interest in girls, which may also have informed these casting decisions to make her older.''

The problem is that it inherendy affects the gestalt. Interactions of adults — even ones who are "mad" or happen to be inhabiting the bodies of cater- pillars or cats — ^with teenagers are intrinsically differ- ent from their exchanges with a girl who has barely turned seven and has a child's view of the world.

lo

			"--- — --
JltJ|IMK4

Adventures in Wonderland

1991-1995

US

Disney

100 30-m episodes

Elisabeth Harnois

11-15

Alice

1965	UK	BBC "The Wednesday Play" (Dennis Potter)	72 m	Deborah Wading	16
2009	US	SyFy	2 90-m episodes	Caterina Scorsone* Janette Bundle**	27 12?

Alice in Wonderland or Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

1903	UK	Hepworth	8m	May Clark	13/14
1910	US	Edison	10 m	Gladys Hulette	14
1915	US	Nonpareil	52 m	Viola Savoy	15/16
1931	US	Commonwealth	55 m	Rudi Gilbert	18/19
1933	US	Paramount	lhl6m	Charlotte Henry	19
1948	US/France	Victorine	1 h 23 m	Carol Marsh	22
1966	UK	BBC	lhl5m	Anne-Marie Malik	13
1972	UK	Shaftel	lh41m	Fiona Fullerton	16
1985	US	CBS	3h7m	Natalie Gregory	9
1985	UK	Anglia	5 20-m episodes	Giselle Andrews	13
1988	Czechoslovakia	Svankmajer	lh26m	Kristyna Kohoutova	7/8?
1999	US	Hallmark/NBC	2h30m	Tina Majorino	13
2010	US	Disney	lh48m	Mia Wasikowska*	20

Dreamchild

1985

UK

PfH Ltd.

Ih34m

Amelia Shankley**

12

Through the Looking-Glass

1966	US	NBC	lhl2m	Judi Rolin	20
1973	UK	BBC	unknown	Sarah Sutton	11
1985	US	CBS	93 m	Natalie Gregory	9
1998	UK	Channel 4	1 h 23 m	Kate Beckinsale	25

* as an adult ** as a child

11

Following is a list of not all, but certainly the most important, movies, miniseries, and television specials, along with the age during filming of the actress play- ing Alice. Animated versions are not included, as voice actresses are indeed ageless, as Janet Waldo — who was 42 when she performed Alice in the 1966 Hanna-Barbera extravaganza and 63(!!) in an ani- mated Looking-Glass released by Australia's Burbank Films in 1987 — can attest to. We have also not includ- ed "adult" tides, filmings of other genres (e.g., stage productions, ice skating, ballet, opera, and musicals such as Alice at the Palace [1982] , in which she was por- trayed by a 32-year-old Meryl Streep), obscure films such as the 1928 Through a Looking-Glass for which we could not determine the age (or the name) of the actress, non-English-language films, etc. However, we did feel that certain films that are not strict adapta- tions but nevertheless portray a young Alice in her Wonderland are relevant.

Tom Arnold "The Younger" (1823 -1900) was a British

literary scholar, the son of Thomas Arnold, headmaster

of Rugby School. He was also the younger brother

of the poet Matthew Arnold, the father of author

Mrs. Humphiy Ward, the grandfather of Julian and

Aldous Huxley, and later in life a professor of English

literature at University College, Dublin, where one of his

students was James Joyce.

Miss Beatrice Fearon was born in 1865, according to

www.goodbytree.org/Genealogy/ginasfami/pafg342.

htm#13249.

The Annotated Alice (Wonderland, chapter VII, note 4, and Looking-Glass, chapter I, note 1); AA: The Definitive Edition (Wonderland, chapter VII, note 6, and ditto). In a meeting of the West Coast Chapter of the LCSNA on June 26, 1983, at the Los Angeles home of CBS VP Bill Self, Irwin Allen led a discussion on the miniseries he was considering making. One of the present authors (MB) distinctly remembers making the request of Mr. Allen that the actress "for once be about the right age." The late, beloved Carrollian Hilda Bohem's son, Les, won an Emmy for writing the Sci-Fi (now SyFy) channel's miniseries Taken, 2003, produced by Steven Spielberg. A notion explored by Emily Aguilo-Perez in her master's thesis, and summarized in a talk given to our Society last year (i^ 87:2-3).

Alice's 80th birthday.

12

-^

^^

Aliec Tliroii4|li tlie Piiili4»le

MABEL ODESSEY

^

■^

■^^C "W^^y interest in the Alice books was reignit- g \# % ed a couple of years ago when I first saw M. A.my friend Michael Cook's marionettes,

which depict the characters from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. The pup- pets were made by his mother, the artist Margaret Littleton Cook, in the 1940s. I immediately knew I wanted to use them for a photographic project. I didn't realize how inspiring the journey into Wonder- land would be.

Michael, a professional orchestra conductor, was thrilled to see the puppets live again through the pho- tographs, and he lent his voice to the sound installa- tion. On his advice I got a copy of Martin Gardner's Annotated Alice and immersed myself in the stories in preparation for making the photographs.

I was immediately captivated by the many levels on which the narrative functions. The challenge of photographing a dream world was very exciting. Per- ception, time, and identity are at the core of both the books and my photographic work. My objective was to evoke the atmosphere rather than to illustrate par- ticular scenes.

My technique is pinhole photography. Pinhole photography is the root of all photography (even Lew- is Carroll used more sophisticated equipment than I do). My homemade cameras are simple wooden box- es. They have a tiny aperture, literally a pinhole (no lens), no viewfinder, no wind-on, no auto anything. I use sheets of 5 X 4 inch film, and the exposures can take hours. For the Alice series I used a mixture of studio flash and tungsten lighting.

I found many parallels between my working methods and Carroll's stories. Both the books and the pho- tographic process date back to Vic- torian times, yet the modern pho- tographer, like the reader, brings to them a contemporary point of view. These photographs should evoke a new understanding, while a Victori- an framework remains present like a ghost, like Alice's formal, somewhat antiquated language.

The adventures begin with the fall down the rab- bit hole, and this is where I began the photographic work. Losing solid ground and letting go are always necessary when embarking on a journey or new proj- ect. When Alice lands, she suffers a kind of amnesia, which frees her to go further.

Her first interactions challenge her identity, her physical size, and her mental continuum. Who am I? — a fundamental existential question — hangs in the periphery of these pictures.

The Hatter declares, "You mustn't beat time or he won't do anything for you." Wonderland time, Look- ing Glass time, exposure time: rather than being con- densed into a millisecond, time is expanded to min- utes and hours.

Carroll refers to the subjective nature of dream- time: clocks staying at the same time, making time do what you want, or running to stay in the same place. In Victorian portraiture, the effect of time is to make the sitters look stiff and static. However, with pinhole photography, movement inevitably creeps into the long exposures and gives life to the puppets and the pictures.

Working with pinhole photography is very slow and reflective. Each stage of the process is both active and passive; between bouts of activity there is a lot of waiting. The lapse between making the exposure and developing the film allows one's memory and expectations of the image to ripen, so that when it comes time to print, ideas have often changed considerably.

Alice's fall

Perception, which is a critical theme in the books, is at the heart of the photographic work. Alice's experiences as a giant and as a tiny person are similar to the way camera angles and choice of viewpoint can change our under- standing. Humpty Dumpt)' talks about things meaning what you

13

want them to mean. Photography, like writing, recre- ates reality as one chooses. We can apply the literary and theatrical expression "suspension of disbelief — the observers know that they are not looking at some- thing real (it's a subjective view) but cannot help but believe it.

"Why it's a looking glass book, of course! And if I hold it up to a glass, the words will go the right way again." We can also compare the topsy-turvy Looking Glass world to the nature of black-and-white photog- raphy. The image that is projected through the pin- hole is upside down and back to front. The negatives are reversed spatially and tonally; dark areas appear light and vice versa. To arrive at a final print in which things appear the right way round, the photographer must first work with its opposite, the negative.

One often has to go in the wrong direction be- fore finding the right way. In the darkroom, scale and composition are manipulated to create menacing at- mospheres, or evoke fear, vulnerability, or whatever you choose.

There are also similarities with a game of chess, and like Carroll, although I try to stick to the rules, there are times when it's necessary to create my own. Each chess piece moves in a particular way; similarly, one cannot arrive at the final print without correcdy developing the film. Each photo is an adventure into unknown territory — ^you know the way to go, but you don't know where you are going to arrive. What is projected through the pinhole is inevitably different

from the way we see things. It is free from the subjec- tivity and editing that goes on in our brains; the im- ages reveal aspects often overlooked by the eye.

5!^

The third theme I explore in the installation is that of political satire and social criticism. Our contem- porary society would appear to be far from Victorian England, but Carroll's observations are still relevant today. Compare the Queen of Hearts to many dicta- tors: "the world's gone mad" or "upside down" and "nonsense rules." In every country we have judicial farces like the Knave's trial. We don't have to look far to find bureaucracies that function on their own logic and thrive on their own inefficiency.

Alice pursues the White Rabbit 14

Underlying these themes I also considered the Alice books from a Buddhist perspective. The adventure starts when Alice goes down the rabbit hole, to an inner world projected by her mind. She crosses the chessboard, becomes a queen, and wakes up — is this not a spiritual journey?

Along the way, she encounters manifestations of what in Buddhist language would be called disturb- ing emotions: anger (the Queen of Hearts), pride (Humpty Dumpty), fear (the White Rabbit), laziness (the Dormouse), to name a few. The Cheshire Cat tells Alice she must be mad to be there, since they are all mad there. Wonderland could in fact be compared to the Buddhist concept of samsara, our deluded mental condition that implies that our perception of reality is false. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum char- acterize the positive and negative duality inherent in this condition: "nothing would be what it is, but every- thing would be what it isn't. And contrariwise, what it is, it isn't, and what it isn't, it is. You see?"

Carroll himself brings up ideas similar to Bud- dhist concepts such as emptiness in Through the Look- ing Glass. Emptiness could be summarized as the essential quality of all things. Nothing exists in an absolutely independent way but only in interdepen- dence and because of causes and conditions. Alice's meeting with the fawn in "the wood where things have no names" brings this to mind. Consider the universe as a whole and all things as parts that relate to one another. In the wood, when Alice and the fawn meet, there is no fear to keep them apart. Upon leaving the wood, memory and convention return, and separate the two. Names are simply labels, and, Alice says, are "useful to the people that name them." Many of the puns in the books allude to the difference between the word and the thing. In Buddhism one aspect of the realization of emptiness is the vast spaciousness beyond language. Language and conceptualization contribute to keeping things separated and obscure

the connections and interdependence of all things. Carroll often uses nonsense as a means to refer to this.

Perception and illusion are common concerns in Buddhist philosophy and the photographic process. The pinhole camera without viewfinder indiscrimi- nately records the world of light and dark, challeng- ing our assumption that our view of reality is fixed and objective.

The photograph can be viewed in terms of empti- ness. It has no existence of its own, on its own, but is entirely dependent upon causes and conditions. Con- sider the subject of the photo, the materials it is made of, the light necessary to expose the film and paper, the photographer who sets in motion the process, and finally a viewer to interpret the image. Each of these contributes to the photograph, but they are not of the photograph. Even the word "photograph" ex- presses the interdependence of light and graphism.

As the work progressed, I found more and more underlying similarities between my photography and these books. The playful nature of the puppets and their use as a base for abstract concepts mirrored Car- roll's playful approach to language. The photographs become an invented physical evidence of Alice's jour-

ney through Wonderland and the Looking Glass. Al- ice is transformed from Carroll's fictional character into a marionnette character by Margaret Littleton, and then by me back into two dimensions, this time as a photograph.

"The Red Queen shook her head, 'You may call it "nonsense" if you like,' she said, 'but I've heard non- sense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!'"

The photographic and sound installation Al- ice aux pays de merueilles was on view at the Chateau de Lacaze, Lacaze, France, from the 28th of April through the 29th of May, 2012. You can find more in- formation about my work at www.mabelodessey.com.

Mabel Odessey was bom in New York and left the comforts of American suburbia at the age of 17. She lived on an Israeli kibbutz and traveled through Europe and North Africa. In the 1 980s, she discovered pinhole photography in the UK, luhere she also obtained her BA in Art and Design. For the last 20 years she has lived in southwest France with her family. She exhibits and leads workshops in North America and Europe.

The Queen of Hearts

15

^

From Under Ground to Wonderland

MATT DEMAKOS

■^

Alice was be^nning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations.

— Lexvis Carroll, Alice's Adventures under Ground

Were these the opening words to the story Lewis Carroll told on the famed river journey? Were these even nearly the same words he used 150 years ago, on the fourth day of July, when he and Robinson Duckworth rowed Alice Lid- dell and her two sisters to Godstow? His nephew and first biographer, Stuart Dodgson Collingwood, would have us believe so: "His memory was so good that I believe the story as he wrote it down was almost word for word the same that he had told in the boat." Oth- ers have written of a fidelity between the verbal and the written tale as well. Roger Lancelyn Green even claims that when Carroll wrote out Alice's Adventures under Ground, the handwritten version of the verbal tale promised to Alice, there were "big bits missing which Dodgson wrote in afterwards."'

Some writers are more skeptical. Not only do Jean Gattegno and James Playsted Wood suggest a sig- nificant difference between the verbal and handwrit- ten story,- but Lewis Carroll does so himself. "In writ- ing it out," he is on record as saying, "I added many fresh ideas."^ His revisions show no faithfulness to the original boat tale, and his words "fresh ideas" conflict with Collingwood's and Green's statements.

The skeptic can point out — some may say specu- late on — the probable differences between the verbal rendition and the first handwritten account (which Carroll eventually published in facsimile). It is highly unlikely, for example, that the verbal tale had the eight full verses of the "Father William" parody. Since Car- roll also admitted that he sent Alice "straight down a rabbit-hole, to begin with, without the least idea what was to happen afterwards,"' it is hardly likely he had the foresight to toss in all those delicious hints that Alice was dreaming, let alone to give Alice's sister a perfect slumber-inducing object, a thick-paragraphed book with "no pictures or conversations."''

We do not have to speculate, however, on the dif- ference between Under Ground and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the first published version of the tale.

as both can be easily pulled from the shelf and exam- ined. Broadly speaking, Alice's Adventures under Ground is a handwritten book of 12,772 words, consisting of a short one-line dedication, four untitled chapters, and amateurish illustrations by the author. Alice's Adven- tures in Wonderland, on the other hand, is a skillfully typeset book of 26,710 words, consisting of a long 42- line poetic dedication, twelve titled chapters, and pro- fessional illustrations by John Tenniel. Of these dif- ferences, Carroll only explained the altered title and the need for a professional illustrator. "I have tried my hand at drawing on the wood," he wrote Tom Tay- lor, a leading playwright, "and come to the conclusion that it would take much more time than I can afford, and that the result would not be satisfactory after all." Three and a half months later, he received Tenniel's consent to draw the illustrations, and six months later he shows concern over the tide. "I first thought of 'Alice's Adventures under Ground,'" he wrote to Taylor again, "but that was pronounced too like a lesson-book, in which instruction about mines would be administered in the form of a grill." After diagram- ming a few tides, Carroll concludes "Of all these I at present prefer 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.'"''

Figure 1 illustrates the growth in the text, the most significant difference between the two versions.The first section shows the four chapters of Under Ground, and the middle section shows the twelve chapters of Wonderland, with the light gray areas marking the approximate location of the lengthening text. The last section shows the percentage difference in words between Under Ground and Wonderland. (Figure 1 is based on the numbers in Figure 2.)

Still speaking broadly — we will discuss the plot differences later — Figure 1 shows the changes Carroll made from Under Ground chapter to Wonderland chap- ter. He split chapter one of Under Ground into two chapters, adding words or phrases sporadically, (the scattered gray areas in Figure 1). He split chapter two in half as well, but with a more concentrated addition.

i6

UNDERGROUND

WONDERLAND

20%

40%

60%

80%

VI. Pig and Pepper

VII. A Mad Tea-Party

VIII. The Queen's Croquet-Ground

IX. The Mock Turtle's Story

X. The Lobster Quadrille

XI. Who Stole the Tarts?

XII. Alice's Evidence

26,710

[ Epilogue ] -

Figure 1. Carroll's Additions to the Alice Story. The above maps out the difference between Alice's Adventures Under Ground ant? Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The first section represents Under Ground, dividing out the four untitled chapters. The middle section represents Wonderland, with the light areas mapping out the additions and the dark areas the commonalities with Under Grovmd. (Each light gray speck equals approximately 10 wards.) The diagonal lines illustrate the location of Vnder Ground 's chapter breaks in Wonderland. The last section represents the percentage o/Under Ground (dark areas) found in each chapter o/Wonderland. Diagram by Matt Demakos.

17

	Under Ground			Wonderland			Under Ground in Wonderland
Ch.	Words	%	Ch.	Words	%	Words	Growth	%	Chapter Titles
D	13	0.1%	D	229	0.9%	13	216	5.7%	[ Dedication ]
1	3929	30.8%	1	2157	8.1%	2023	134	93.8%	Down the Rabbit-Hole
2	3143	24.6%	2	2118	7.9%	1906	212	90.0%	The Pool of Tears
3	2528	19.8%	3	1700	6.4%	1299	401	76.4%	A Canciis-Race and a Long Tale
4	2897	22.7%	4	2658	10.0%	2438	220	91.7%	The Rabbit Sends in a LitUe Bill
E	262	2.1%	5	2170	8.1%	1810	360	83.4%	Advice from a Caterpillar
			6	2605	9.8%	0	2605	0.0%	Pig and Pepper
			7	2305	8.6%	124	2181	5.4%	A Mad Tea-Party
			8	2498	9.4%	1279	1219	51.2%	The Queen's Croquet-Ground
			9	2293	8.6%	703	1590	30.7%	The Mock Turde's Story
			10	1966	7.4%	609	1357	31.0%	The Lobster Quadrille
			11	1887	7.1%	100	1787	5.3%	Who Stole the Tarts?
		-'	12	1676	6.3%	206	1470	12.3%	Alice's Evidence
			E	448	1.7%	262	186	58.5%	[ Epilogue ]
	12772			26710		12772	13938	47.8%

Figure 2. SeparatinglJnder Ground 's Words mto Wonderland 's Chapters. The numbers pertain to the original publication dated 1866 (actually published in 1865), and not to any later edition. Long dashes, symbols, chap- ter numbers and titles, are not counted as words, and hyphenated words are counted as one word. Though the texts were carefully checked over, the numbers should be considered approximations.

the large gray area after the 5,000-word mark, which represents the insertion of the caucus-race. He also places the chapter break between chapters two and three a bit earlier for Wonderland. The most signifi- cant change made to chapter three, however, is the addition of two new chapters, "Pig and Pepper" and "A Mad Tea-Party." Finally, the figure shows that he tore the last chapter apart completely, expanding it and dividing it into five full chapters.

Several have spoken of the ideas that stretched Under Ground into Wonderland. "No doubt he added some of the earlier adventures," Alice (Liddell) Harg- reaves wrote, "to make up the difference between Al- ice in Wonderland and Alice's Adventures Underground.'"' Several biographers, such as Lennon,* use this state- ment as fact, and Roger Lancelyn Green, as stated earlier, believed the added material was actually left out of Under Ground. This complete faithfulness to the famed river journey or the idea that every con- cept in Wonderland musi have a connection to the Lid- dell family conflicts with Carroll's awn words. In his article "'Alice' on the Stage," he wrote unequivocally that "fresh ideas" were added not only when he first wrote out Under Ground but also when he expanded it into Wonderland: "and many more added themselves when, years afterwards, I wrote it all over again for publication." He also specified when and where these ideas occurred: "an idea comes at night, when I have had to get up and strike a light to note it down — sometimes when out on a lonely winter walk, when I have had to stop, and with half frozen fingers jot

down a few words." But what he stresses most of all in his article about the creation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is that every idea ""came of itself (Carroll's italics). He mentions the phrase, in slightly different wording, four times in one paragraph. "I cannot set invention going like a clock," he admitted. The ideas in Alice's Adventures and even Through the Looking-Glass were "made up almost wholly of bits and scraps."^

He does not mention, as Alice and others sug- gest, his new ideas coming from extempore storytell- ing. In truth. Wonderland's prefatory poem only paints a negative picture of such storytelling. The narrator's "leisurely" boating expedition is interrupted by a "cruel Three" who "in such an hour, / Beneath such dreamy weather" "beg a tale of breath too weak," which, after "its quaint events were hammered out," leaves the teller "weary" and his "wells of fancy dry." Note how the article's phrase "invention going like a clock" is analogous to the prefatory poem's "quaint events were hammered out," both suggesting not craftsmanship but labor or hackwork — a clang, clang, clang that cannot stop but must continue, even if un- inspired ("'The rest next time — ' 'It is next time!'"). The repeated phrase, ""came of itself can be read as a indictment as well against extempore storytelling, which can often be forced, producing mere padding (a form of writing Carroll takes pains to rail against in the article). Carroll's diary also shows him guard- ing against the pressures of creating impromptu tales by having a stock of known oral tales handy when an occasion called for one. No doubt Carroll was in im-

i8

[^fxU<)

But her sister eat still just as she left lier, leaning her head on her hand, watching the setting BUD, and thinking of little Alice and of all her wonderful adventures, till she too began dreajiiiiig after a fafihion, and this was her dream : —

She aaV an ancient citv./aud a quiet river^ winding ne\r it along the plaftn : boats were row- ing up and Mown the streann, and one of them hfid a merrApaJt'ty of chfldren on board— she could hear thet voices zxA laughter like distant music on theV^ater — And among them was another little Ali^, (ao yfehe named her in her dream,) who sat li^aiifg with bright eager eyes ' to a story that was\>«Ing told, and she tried to catch the" words of t\4 story, and lo 1 it was the dream of her o\viy\h.tle sister.

So the boat slo\^y Vound its way up the stream, under the bright \tu»m er sky, with its happy crew and its inusic of voices and laughter, till it passed round one of tt^ many turnings of the river, and eher saw it noVore,

-)3

z^'^hv,

through alJher^iper years, the simple and lov- ing Eeart of ber)childhood : and how she would

'"'^fherjbout herj other little cliildren, and make thevr eyes) bright and eager with many a won- derful talel perhaps even with these very

" advintm-es oE. the rtttl(> Aiw» of long-ago : and faovy she would feci \vith)all their simple sorrows, and find a, pleaaurej in all their simple joys,

^_ remembenng het owu. \ child-life, and the happy ^ummer days. I

/uB^r\ ^

Figure^. Galley Sheet for Mice's Adven- tures in Wonderland. Reproduced with the kind permission of The Governing Body of Christ Church, Oxford.

TtULtK^

1

pressive form on July 4, 1862, but the bulk of what we know as Wonderland, and likely most of its worthiness and its inspired ideas, were created in solitary, inter- mittent moments long after the initial boating expe- dition. Only a fraction, anywhere from twenty to thir- ty-five percent of Wonderland was told on that famous July day, the story being expanded on another boat trip (and perhaps on some previous occasion), again for Under Ground, and yet again for WonderlandJ"

Carroll did not discuss how these ideas took phys- ical shape, though there are several clues. There sur- vives a Wonderland galley sheet prepared by his printer vrith Carroll's correcdons, both deletions and inser- tions (see Figure 3)." What is already typeset, disre- garding Carroll's handwritten corrections, is a fine il- lustration of Under GroMn<i dissolving into Wonderland. It contains words solely found in Under Ground and words solely found in Wonderland, and a few words of its very own. Another clue is found in the only surviv- ing letter from Tenniel regarding Wonderland: "Could you manage to let me have the text of 'A Mad Tea- party' for a day or two? There is much more in it than my copy contains."'- Evidence of how Carroll physi-

cally worked is also found in the surviving text. Sur- prisingly, though he gready alters the last chapter of Under Ground, very little is thrown out, and at times, a small part of the original text is surrounded by long sections of new material. It would be more expected, with such a drastic revision, for a writer to disregard wholly the old material and write with an undistracted mind. But not Carroll — in his expansion of chapter 4, he uses all of Under Ground for the most part, except- ing one poem replacing another.

These clues show us that Carroll's methods for working on Wonderland were exactiy like his methods for Looking-Glass, The Hunting of the Snark, and the Syl- vie and Bruno books.'-* The galley sheet shows that he was in the habit, even at this early date, of sending text to a printer knowing full well it would only be used to make probable alterations. The Tenniel letter shows that Carroll worked haphazardly, squeezing in his "bits and scraps" to improve — let's not say fill out — the sto- ry. And this is also supported by the fact that he throws away little of Under Ground, even when gready altering the story line, which suggests that new material was be- ing added at different times, not all at once.

19

There are several sample title pages and several sample text pages, one even in double columns.'^ These show Carroll at work on the book, however, and not on the creation of the material within. Like the other documents, they do show the use of trial-and- error, a point we will discuss later on.

The first evidence that Carroll was writing for publication is his May 2, 1864, diary entry: "Sent Tenniell (sic) the first piece of slip set up for Alice's Adventures, from the beginning of Chap. III."'' This suggests that he actually began writing about a month before, when he received Tenniel's consent to draw.''' It is possible that he was reworking the text before engaging an illustrator, but it seems unlikely that he was expanding the text during the stage when he was considering illustrating the story himself; he was well aware of his procrastination with the Under Ground illustrations, and perhaps of his own lack of skill as well. The first sign of completing the text, although we have no idea if it was the full text, comes on De- cember 15, 1864, when he sends it to Macmillan: "It is the only complete copy I have. I hope you may not think it unfitted to come under your auspices."'" So, roughly speaking, Carroll created Wonderland from April to December, 1864.

What did he set out to accomplish in those months? Did he specifically decide to make the sto- ry more zany, more physical, more philosophical, or more refined? Or did he simply want to make it longer, having no regard to the overall effect? These concepts are best discussed after a chapter-by-chapter review.

Under Ground's chapter i

The first chapter of Under Ground begins with Alice sitting on a river bank with an elder sister, who is reading a book that bores the young girl. Alice spies a white rabbit and follows it down a rabbit hole. She falls slowly and eventually lands on sticks and shavings. After following the rabbit down a long passage, she comes into a hall with many doors, all of which are locked. On a glass table, she finds a golden key that fits a small door behind a curtain, not seen on a first time around. The door, about eighteen inches high, leads into a beautiful garden. Desiring to enter the garden, Alice goes back to the table and finds a botde with a label reading "DRINK ME." She drinks it and shrinks, but she cries when she realizes the door is locked and the key is on the table. Soon she finds an ebony box under the table — again, not seen before — ^with a cake in it and a card with the words "EAT ME." She first tries a bit of the cake and then finishes it off.

Alice soon grows so tall she says goodbye to her feet. Now being too large to fit through the door, she cries yet again, creating a pool of tears. She tries to ask the white rabbit for help, but he only gets scared and runs away, dropping his nosegay and gloves. She

begins to wonder if she is Gertrude or Florence and tries to recite "How doth the little crocodile." After unknowingly putting on the rabbit's gloves, she be- gins to shrink. She believes the nosegay is making her shrink too fast, so she drops it. She goes back to the curtained door, but it is locked, and the key, alas, is still on the table. At this time, however, she slips and finds herself in her own pool of tears. She hears a mouse splashing about and begins talking to it but unfortunately continually mentions Dinah, her cat, which angers it. The mouse promises to tell Alice why it hates cats and dogs, once they reach the shore. The chapter ends with Alice leading the animals, as many others have also fallen into the pool, to the shore. '^

As can be seen in Figure 1, of all four Under Ground chapters, the first is the most like Wonder- land. The chief differences are that Carroll splits the chapter in half (at the split in the paragraphs above) and adds 346 words, giving it about an eight percent growth. Section (b) shows this growth to be scattered rather than condensed.

There are several additions, all of which are rela- tively slight when compared to the additions in other chapters. When Alice is falling down the rabbit hole, Carroll now has her name the people she may meet on the other side of the earth:

"The Antipathies, I think — " (she was rather glad there was no one listening, this time, as it didn't sound at all the right word)

and he gives the White Rabbit some worrying to do before he ignores Alice's question:

he came trotting along in a great hurry, mut- tering to himself as he came, "Oh! the Duch- ess, the Duchess! Oh! won't she be savage if I've kept her waiting!"

Later in Under Ground^ the white rabbit explains to Alice that the Marchioness (who is the Duchess in Wonderland) and the Queen of Hearts are one and the same person. The above hints — and there will be two more hints — that Carroll was going to keep that re- lationship intact for Wonderland, as there is little rea- son in the plot for the White Rabbit to worry about the Duchess. In fact, we never learn what business the Rabbit had with the Duchess, or with the Queen for that matter."' Carroll also adds Alice's thought on how to properly speak to a mouse, as well as her Latin conjugation of the creature's name: "A mouse — of a mouse — to a mouse — a mouse — O mouse!" The lon- gest addition, however, which is noticeable in Figure 1 (around the 3,600-word mark), occurs when Alice, after she slips in her own pool of tears, thinks she could go back by railway:

"and in that case I can go back by railway," she said to herself. (Alice had been to the seaside once in her life, and had come to the general

80

^^^^^^^^^^^mllnjljn- iZmtind fl					K Wnnd^Innd J^^^^l
			1
The LiddeUs (¥), the Writing (*), 6?= the Pictures (♦)	The Writing (*), (Sr" the Pictures (♦)
I
17 Boat trip to Nuneham with Duckworth, "heavy rain"	¥	JUNE
3 Boat trip canceled, rain, hears "Sally Come Up," plays croquet 4 The Alice trip 5 Writes headings on train 8 Meets in Gallery	V	JULY
1 Does crest books and hears "Beautiful Star" 6 Continues "interminable fairy-tale" on boat trip to Godstow	V*	AUGUST
13 Falls in with, "a rare event of late," begins writing Alice, hopes to finish by Xmas 21 Crest books, parlour-Croquet in rooms, no Ina 28 Deanery, dinner, music, parlour- croquet	r	NOVEMBER
4 Spends three hours at deanery, story-telling, games, crest books	r	DECEMBER
: 1;
10 Finishes text before this date, pictures "not nearly done" 16 Deanery dinner, games 17 "destined to meet... perpetually" 19, 24 Meets girls	¥♦♦	FEBRUARY
9,10, 13,20,21 Meets girls 10 Borrows a natural history book to illustrate Alice from Deanery 13 Begins poem "in which I mean to embody something about Alice"	y#	MARCH
^7, 17, 21, 22, 27, 29 Sees the girls, sometimes without a sick Alice, visits them at grandparents, various activities	y	APRIL
1, 5, 6,14, 16, 20, 25, 16 Takes two boat trips, experiments with new croquet game, dines at the Deanery, takes 3 walks, Liddell baby dies	r	MAY
9, 15-18, 23-25, 27 Takes two boat trips, helps at the bazaar, takes to the Circus, tea at Deanery, receives	V	JUNE
		JULY	♦	16 Drawing on wood condemned 20 Sees Jewitt, woodcutter, will improve
5 Sees, with mother, at theatrical in Berner's rooms, "held aloof 17, 19 Writes to see girls, doing so two days later, music and talk	¥♦	DECEMBER	♦	20 Writes Tom Taylor: "Do you know Mr. Tenniel... whether he could undertake... a dozen wood-cuts... it has been read and liked by so many children. ..often asked to publish... I would send him the book..."

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The LiddeUs (V), the Writing (4), 6^ the Pictures (♦)

The Writing (#), (Sf the Pictures (♦)

FEBRUARY

25 calls on Tenniel with Tom Taylor letter, favourable, but must see book

12 Pictures "not yet" done

4 MARCH

APRIL

5"got his consent to draw ... for 'Alice's Adventures Underground"

6 Runs into, with Prickett, inspects new I V may grand stand

12 Tries in vain for a boat trip (Rhoda \ for Ina) "but Mrs. Liddell will not let any come in future — rather superfluous caution"

7 Runs into, with Prickett, on a walk V JUNE with Cookson

L

4 ♦ \ 2Sends Tenniel first slip, beginning of Chapter 3 I 17 Calls on Tenniel who is out : 30 Sees Tenniel

44

i 9 'Alice's Hour in Elfland'

I 21 Asks Taylor about title (diagrams)

; 21 Sees Tenniel (after Macmillan) who

agrees to new size ; 28 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'

\ 17 Tenniel not home

JUI^

AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

4 ; 2 Sends chapter three to Combe

♦ ; 19 Macmillan writes: title pages, likes dde, best to publish late Oct or early November, "Tenniel's drawings in the book need no such meretricious help"

13 The "pictures in MS finished"

OCTOBER

12 Calls on Tenniel, shows him drawing on wood "only thing he had," Alice sitting by pool of tears, settle on 34 pictures

28 Tenniel not home, at Dalziels, some pictures, all Father William

26 "MS. Finally sent to Alice"

4 NOVEMBER 4 : 20 Book delayed, perhaps owing to the

death of Tenniel's mother

DECEMBER

4 i 15 Sends Macmillan endre text

FEBRUARY MARCH

26 Sees Tenniel [no details]

8 Tenniel letter discusses "two Footmen," selects Hatter's riddle and Dormouse in Teapot, against Twinkle, mentions having incomplete text

8 Sees Tenniel, who is doing 30th picture

6 Sees Richmond's "The Sisters" painting: Ina too severe, Alice lovely, not quite natural, Edith best likeness

«♦

1 1 Runs into Prickett with Alice, "seems changed a good deal" not "for the better... the usual awkward stage of transition"

MAY

JUNE JULY

20 Sends last portion marked Press

4 Plans for Alice to receive white vellum copy on anniversary

: 19 Hears from Tenniel, dissatisfied with printing of pictures

# : 28 Tenniel approves print

NOVEMBER DECEMBER

14 Sends Alice "new impression"

24

conclusion, that wherever you go to on the English coast you find a number of bathing machines in the sea, some children digging in the sand with wooden spades, then a row of lodging houses, and behind them a railway station.)

There are several minor replacements. The "sticks and shavings" she falls on become "sticks and dry leaves" (shavings are indeed hard), and the little "door about eighteen inches high" becomes "about fifteen inches high." The change in height may be owed to Tenniel's illustration of Alice holding back the curtain hiding the door. If Carroll did not revise the height of the door, given the average height of girls today and the increasing height of human beings, Alice could only be some age older than nine, whereas the revi- sion makes her some age older than five. Since Carroll makes Alice exactly seven — though, admittedly, this is only known through a close reading of Looking-Glass — the revision seems justified.-" The "ebony box" with a card spelling out "EAT ME" becomes a "glass box," a more fairy-tale-like object, with currant lettering on the cake itself, and the "nosegay" the white rabbit is carrying, and which Alice picks up, becomes a "fan." Carroll may have decided to quell the notion that the rabbit was courting the Duchess (perhaps at Ten- niel's suggestion).-' The girls "Gertrude" and "Flor- ence," whom Alice describes unfavorably and whose identities she believes she may have assumed, become "Ada" and "Mabel." Alice had two real cousins with the names Florentia Emily Liddell and Gertrude Frances Elizabeth Liddell, and it would be inappropriate for a mass-produced book to portray them so insensitively, even if jokingly. There is litde doubt that the names refer to them, since Florentia, the daughter of Henry Thomas Liddell, the first Earl of Ravensworth, is comi- cally described as living in a "pokey little house," and with "next to no toys to play with."-- Lastly, Carroll adds a more precise size, "three inches high," to Alice after she shrinks for the last time.

The chapter also receives several style changes, true for the whole of the book. In Under Ground, Car- roll did not consistently place Alice's thoughts in quotation marks, but he did so for Wonderland. He also was not consistent in capitalizing the names of the main characters, but was so for Wonderland — ^the "white rabbit" becomes the "White Rabbit," for ex- ample. Even the "Mouse" gets more respect. Some of the characters did not receive a gender in the earlier work either, but in the later work they become "he" or "she" and "him" or "her," instead of the undigni- fied "it" (though there are exceptions, especially the birds). Lasdy, Under Ground tended to have long para- graphs, which Carroll wisely divided for Wonderland, although there are some cases of fusing paragraphs.

Just about every sentence in the chapter receives an alteration of some kind, whether it is a substitu-

Down. ciown. down. Would the fall never come to an end? "I wonder how many miles I've Allien by this time?" SIFsatd «he-aloud-ri "I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth. Let mc sec: that would be four thousand miles dowTi, I think — " (for , you see , Alice had Ica.'nt several t-hings of this sort in her lessons in the schoolroom, and though this was not a vtry good opportunity «(-tor showing off her knowledge, as there was no one to iw«f-liixten to her. still it was good practice to say it over t-) " — yes. that\ about the r.ght disuuicc r— but then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude or Loiitude line ohall I be in I've gpt to ■'" (Alice had h«-oM the slightest :dea what Longitude Latitude was, or Latitude Longitude cither, bu; she thought they were nice grand words to say.)

Presently she began again ■-. "I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth! How funny it'll be-teem to come out among the people that vtaVn with their hcjds downwards' The Antipathies. I think — " (she was nther glad there was no oi>e listening this time, as it didn't sound at all the right word) " — Hbut I shall have to a.sk them what the name of the country is, you know. Hicase, Ma'am, is this New Zealand or Australia?"

( and she tried to curtsey as she spoke . ( fancy curtseying as

you're falling through the air! dOo you think you could manage it?) " sAnd what an ignorant little girl she'll think me for asking! No, it'll never do to ask: perhaps I shall see it written up somewhere."

Figure 4. Sample Edits in Chapter 1 of Under Ground, forWon- deland. Additions are shaded, and deletions crossed out. Ital- ics represent underlining in Under Ground and are such in Wonderland. The insertion of the "Antipathies" is the longest in Wonderland's ^r5t chapter.

tion, an insertion, a relocation of a word, a deletion, or a change in punctuation. This is best illustrated in Figure 4, which gives a sample of Carroll's edit- ing. In actuality, the chapter received approximately 132 changes in punctuation, 128 substitutions (word, phrases, or sentences), eighty-four insertions, eigh- teen re-ordering of words, eighteen deletions, and eleven paragraph splits. Though this accounting will not be offered for the other three chapters, a flip through a document containing all the edits shows a steady stream of revisions throughout the work.

Under Ground's Chapter n

The second chapter begins with Alice and the animals assembling on the bank. To get them dry, the mouse, around whom they all sit, recites a history about Wil- liam the Conqueror, the driest thing he knows. The mouse pauses — only stopping once before, when the Lory interrupted — and asks Alice how she is get- ting on. As the plan does not seem to be working, the Dodo suggests "an immediate adoption of more energetic remedies — " which prompts the Duck to blurt out "Speak English!" The Dodo, offended, leads them to a cottage where they can get dry and where

25

the mouse can tell them his story. Alice, the Lory, and the Eaglet, led by the Dodo, arrive first and, comfort- ably wrapped in blankets, enjoy the warmth of the fire, while awaiting the others. Back on the bank, the mouse tells his "long tale," which Alice imagines as being in the shape of a tail. In poetic verse, he tells about living under a mat and how a dog and cat had sat on each rat crushing each flat. The Mouse accuses Alice of not listening and leaves, shaking its ears when Alice calls to it to come back. After Alice mentions that her cat Dinah could fetch it back, and her ability with birds as well, the other animals begin to depart. Alice soon is alone, "sorrowful and silent," and picks up her spirits again only to reminisce about her time vsdth the animals. But her prattling is interrupted by the sound of pattering feet.

It is a very anxious white rabbit, worrying about the Marchioness and his missing white gloves and nosegay. Mistaking Alice for Mary Ann, the rabbit demands she go back to his house to fetch the miss- ing items. She finds the house with the brass plate reading "W. RABBIT, ESQ." and locates the gloves. Before leaving, she drinks from a botde and grows so large she has to put her arm through a window to make room for herself. After first trying to open the door to get inside, the rabbit goes around to the win- dow. Alice makes a snatch at it, causing it to crash into what she believes is a cucumber-frame. After another snatch at the rabbit, and Pat the gardener, with yet more crashing noises, she hears that they are plan- ning to send Bill, a lizard, down the chimney. But she sends him flying with a kick of her foot. When they begin discussing the idea of burning down the house, Alice threatens to set Dinah on them. She suddenly begins to shrink, however, back to three inches tall. She runs out of the house, past a crowd of animals, some of which are nursing Bill. The animals rush at her, but she escapes into a deep wood.^^

Carroll again splits the chapter in two for Won- derland, as can be seen in Figure 1, but this time add- ing a short scene from Under Ground's chapter 3 to Wonderland's chapter 4, thus creating a new chapter break. That 385-word scene is Alice's encounter with the large puppy, which many have found to be odd- ly realistic in a book filled with unrealities. The less prominent location may show Carroll in agreement, or may have been an attempt to balance out the chap- ter lengths (at least at some stage in the rewriting), or it may have been done to allow the "Advice From a Caterpillar" chapter to begin with the tide charac- ter.-^ More notable, however, are the two scenes that lengthen the story, viewable on the figure after 5,000 words and after 8,000 words.

The first replaces the scene where the animals walk along the river to a house to dry off:

"I only meant to say," said the Dodo in a rather 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 pro- cession, 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.

Alice and her sisters would have recognized the episode as portraying an earlier boating expedition to Nuneham with Duckworth, two of Carroll's sisters, and his Aunt Lucy, when "heavy rain came on." The children had to walk three miles through the rain to a house Carroll knew, to dry off their clothes. As many know, the Dodo and the Duck represent Carroll and Duckworth, and the Lory and the Eaglet represent Lorina and Edith. As with the events in the story, Car- roll did split off from the others, arriving at the house with the faster-walking girls before the rest of the par- ty. Unlike the characters in the story, the party walked to the house in a drenching rain.^''

Carroll replaced the scene with the much longer caucus-race. Alice asks what it is, and the Dodo de- clares "the best way to explain it is to do it." In short, the Dodo draws "a sort of circle" — the animals run around for about a half hour — the Dodo declares the race over — he decides, after being asked, that all win prizes — ^Alice hands out comfits from her pocket. The scene ends with the Dodo solemnly presenting Alice with her prize, a thimble, also from her pocket.

The second scene to add weight to the text is a pure addition, and not a mere substitution. In Un- der Ground Alice simply begins to shrink after being trapped in the white rabbit's house. In Wonderland Carroll gives her a reason for shrinking. After Alice hears the others threatening to burn down the house, there is silence and Alice hears the Rabbit say, "A bar- rowful will do, to begin with." Suddenly, she is pelted by littie pebbles. They turn into cakes, however, and Alice eats them, believing that they certainly can't make her any bigger and so they must, and do, make her grow smaller.

There is another minor addition (just viewable in Figure 1 as a short gray line above the 5,000 word

26

mark) where Carroll has the Duck interrupt the Mouse's "William the Conqueror" speech, after the words "the patriotic archbishop of Canterbury, found it advisable — "

"Found what?" said the Duck.

"Found it," the Mouse replied rather crossly: "of course you know what 'it' means."

"I know what 'it' means well enough, when /find a thing," said the Duck: "it's gen- erally a frog or a worm. The question is, what did the archbishop find?"

The Mouse did not notice this question, but hurriedly went on.

Giving the interruption to the Duck may be the reason Carroll has the Eaglet instead of the Duck, as in Under Ground, interrupt the Dodo's lofty speech with "Speak English!"

There are two replacements that do not show up on Figure 1, as they are about the same word length as the originals. Carroll replaced the mouse's tale in Un- der Ground with a different poem in Wonderland. The new poem tells of a dog, Fury, who wants to prosecute a mouse and condemn it to death. Though the origi- nal poem may be considered poetically weak, the new poem, despite being better versed and rhymed, feels out of place. The original poem "fulfills the mouse's promise to explain why he dislikes cats and dogs," Martin Gardner explains, "whereas the tale as it ap- pears here contains no such reference to cats."-' The second substitution replaced a paragraph that con- tained references to the deleted cottage scene:

"I do wish some of them had stayed a little lon- ger! and I was getting to be such friends with them — really the Lory and I were almost like sisters! and so was that dear little Eaglet! And then the Duck and the Dodo! How nicely the Duck sang to us as we came along through the water: and if the Dodo hadn't known the way to that nice little cottage, I don't know when we should have got dry again — "

The deletion eliminated a three-part invoke. In the first part, the Lory and the Eaglet, who became "almost like sisters!" with Alice, represent her true sis- ters Lorina and Edith. In the middle part, the Duck, who "sang to us as we came along through the water," represents Duckworth, in truth, a talented singer. And in the last part, the Dodo, who knew "the way to that nice little cottage" represents Carroll, who did suggest the house in which the rowing party took shelter. Carroll replaced the paragraph with Alice's bemoaning that she may never see her cat again, thus retaining the character's melancholic state.

There are several minor changes in the chapter. When the mouse tells the driest thing he knows, they sit around Alice in the original but, more properly.

around the Mouse in the revision. The Marchioness gets the revised title of Duchess, a character that we meet later, and the white rabbit loses his courtesy title on his house plaque: "W. RABBIT, ESQ" becoming simply "W. RABBIT."

Of all the changes in the chapter, most attention has been given to the deletion of the cottage scene. Anne Clark uses the deletion to illustrate a point that Under Ground "contained a lot of private jokes which were amusing to Alice and her sisters, but which Dodgson felt would be unsuitable for a wider audi- ence." Gattegno writes, "details that were too true to history were left out,"-*^ a comment also referring to Alice's reminiscence of the scene.

But Carroll not only keeps some invokes and true events in the story, he adds some as well. He keeps the line where the Lory says "I am older than you, and must know best," certainly an invoke of the same timbre as the "almost like sisters" line, and he even corrects the last word to "better." He keeps the par- ody "Beautiful Soup," based on the sisters' singing of "Beautiful Star," and even adds a verse. He adds more invokes and true events in his names for the girls in the treacle well (which obliquely refer to the Liddell sisters), when he has the story take place on May 4 (Alice's real birthday), and when he creates the prefa- tory poem (a reference to the July 4 boating expedi- tion). He had no qualms about invokes per se, and even shows a predilection for them, which is exempli- fied in the ones found in Looking-GlassP

It is more likely that the cottage scene was delet- ed because Carroll noted that the chapter would have been awkwardly short if something were not added (see Figure 1). So he created a longer method for drying off the characters, one more in tune with the direction his new material was taking, perhaps first as an addition but ultimately as a replacement for the cottage scene. Naturally, the main attributes of the re- placement scene (zaniness, surrealism) hint at the at- tributes in the original scene he found objectionable (tameness, realism), especially since they oppose one another. He had to eliminate references to the de- leted scene and did so despite the elaborate in-joke; others, he knew, would be created or were already created. Carroll realized there was no place for Alice to become "almost like sisters" with the Lory and the Eaglet without the cottage scene, where the three, with the Dodo, "sat snugly by the fire, wrapped up in blankets, until the rest of the party had arrived," and there was certainly no place for the Duck to sing with- out the scene where "the whole party moved along the river bank ... in a slow procession."

Under Ground's CHAPTEB. hi

The third chapter of Under (/round begins with Alice wandering in the wood, determined to first grow big again and second to enter the "lovely garden." She

27

encounters a large puppy and inadvertently picks up a stick to protect herself. But the puppy believes Al- ice, who is hiding behind a thistle, wants to play with the stick. She finally escapes when it stops to pant, a good distance from Alice. As she rests against a but- tercup and fans herself with her hat, she realizes that she must eat or drink something to grow larger. She spies a mushroom and eventually finds a caterpillar smoking a long hookah on the top, "taking not the least notice of her."

After some time, the caterpillar languidly asks, "Who are you?" Alice, with some difficulty, explains how she isn't herself, and how confusing it is "to be so many different sizes in one day." The caterpillar does not sympathize; as Alice points out, it will even- tually turn into a chrysalis and into a butterfly. An- noyed with the caterpillar's temper, Alice walks away, but the creature calls her back again with something important to say: "Keep your temper." The caterpillar asks her to repeat "Father William," and Alice does so with the usual effect of its coming out all wrong. She states that she would like to be taller, as "three inches is a wretched height to be," which insults the creature. Before crawling off the mushroom and away in the grass, the caterpillar tells Alice, "the top will make you grow taller, and the stalk will make you grow shorter." Forgetting which does what, she tries the stalk and becomes suddenly shorter. She just manages, her chin barely able to open, to eat the top to make her taller. Her neck grows high above the trees, and when she winds her head back down again to see her hands, she meets a large pigeon, who calls her a "serpent!" The pigeon complains about ser- pents stealing her eggs, and Alice declares that she is a "little girl." She nibbles the different pieces of the mushroom until she is the right size again. Now with half her plan accomplished, she wonders how "to get into that beautiful garden — how is that to be done, I wonder?"

Just as Alice says the words, she spies a door in a tree and enters, finding herself back in the hall and near the glass table. With the help of the golden key and the pieces of mushroom (to make her fifteen inches high), not to mention her past experience, she finally manages to pass through the door and into the garden.'*'

As can be seen from Figure 1 , Carroll did not split the chapter in half like the two previous chapters — despite its having two main sections, the Caterpillar and the Pigeon scenes. Instead, he brings the chapter into Wonderland almost as is, being that it is the short- est in Under Ground and short enough for Wonderland, even if it retained the opening puppy-scene. Though the two new chapters — "Pig and Pepper" and "A Mad Tea-Party" — are technically within the chapter, Car- roll likely perceived them as additions between Under Ground?, two last chapters.

Carroll inserts the "Pig and Pepper" episode by having Alice not come across the door in the tree (the beginning of the third paragraph of the synopsis above) but across "an open place, with a little house in it about four feet high." And so begins the chaj> ter: the meeting with the frog- and fish-footmen — the strange occupants: the Duchess, Cook, cat, and baby — the ill treatment of the baby — the Cook's throwing of pans — the transformation of the baby into a pig — the meeting with the Cheshire Cat in a tree — its remark that "we're all mad here" — its van- ishing and reappearance, and its slow dissolve into a grin. The chapter ends with Alice at the house of the March Hare, and her eating a mushroom until she is two feet high.

As has already been mentioned, in Under Ground the Queen and the Marchioness are the same char- acter, a fact Alice learns from the white rabbit in the last chapter. Though Carroll cleaved the two apart for Wonderland, there is a vestige of the old relationship in "Pig and Pepper," despite its being a wholly new chapter. It occurs when the Duchess says, "Talking of axes" — a comment prompted by Alice's mention of the earth's axis — "chop off her head!" The threat predates the character of the Queen of Hearts, whose threats are also not taken too seriously, and hints — and there wdll be one more hint — that Carroll may have initially thought to keep the relationship intact while first composing the new chapter.

"A Mad Tea-Party" follows directly behind "Pig and Pepper." The plot is familiar to many, being one of the more popular chapters in the book: the meet- ing of the March Hare, the Hatter and the sleepy Dor- mouse— the large table with open seats — the raven and writing-desk riddle — the Hatter's "Twinkle, Twin- kle Little Bat" — the Dormouse's story of the sisters in a treacle well — and the placing of the Dormouse in the teapot. The chapter ends with Alice finding the tree with a door (the third paragraph of the synopsis above). Carroll edits the first part of the last sentence from:

Then she set to work eating the pieces of mushroom till she was about fifteen inches high.

to:

Then she went to work nibbling at the mush- room (she had kept a piece of it in her pocket) till she was about a foot high.

The edits respond to the previous changes. Since the door was changed from eighteen to fifteen inches high, Alice would naturally make herself lower than fifteen inches, and since two long chapters were add- ed after Alice's meeting with the Caterpillar, there is good reason to remind the readers about the pieces

28

of mushroom in her pocket. (Notice how skillfully he handles the reminder, wording it tangentially so as not to insult the older readers.) Since "A Mad Tea- Party" contains this little linking episode, technically, the only full chapter added to Wonderland is "Pig and Pepper."

Tenniel mentions in a letter to Carroll that in his copy of the "Mad Tea-Party," the scene where the Hatter asks his riddle — "Why is a raven like a writing- desk?" — "comes close upon" the "Twinkle twinkle" scene, but knowing full well that Carroll added materi- al to the chapter." This hints that either Carroll added the discussion about "I see what I eat" being the same as "I eat what I see" or that he added the discussion about the Hatter's watch, or perhaps both. Whatever was added, it shows Carroll working his new material, expanding and editing it as he did with the old.

The watch discussion also includes — after Alice refers to "Time" as "it" — the Hatter's retort: "If you knew Time as well as I do, you wouldn't talk about wasting it. It's him." Interestingly, part of Carroll's ed- iting duties at the time was to revise the use of pro- nouns (he, she, it, him, and her), which may have sug- gested the Hatter's comment. For example, the line about the Mock Turtle is changed from "Alice could hear it sighing as if its heart would break" to "Alice could hear him sighing as if his heart would break" (italics added).

Carroll has the caterpillar say, "the top will make you grow taller, and the stalk will make you grow short- er," but in Wonderland, he amusingly has the caterpil- lar say, "One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter" — a vagueness that adds a nice philosophical puzzle, solved wonder- fully by Alice's 180-degree reach. Wonderland has an added dialogue in which the Pigeon does not believe that little girls eat eggs (like snakes) and says that, if they do, then they are a kind of serpent, which also adds a nice philosophical touch, giving Alice pause. Lastly, Carroll adds a bit of emergency to Wonderland when Alice tastes the mushroom for the first time; she must quickly eat the other half before shrinking even more.

This essay will be concluded in the Fall 2012 issue of the KL.

Epigraph. Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures Under Ground: A Facsimile of the Original Lewis Carroll Manuscript (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1964), 1.

' Stuart Dodgson Collingwood, The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (New York: The Centuiy Co., 1898), 106; Roger Lancelyn Green, The Story of Lewis Carroll (New York: Henry Schuman, 1951), 58.

^ Jean Gattegno, Lewis Carroll: Fragments of a Looking-Glass, translated by Rosemai7 Sheed (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1974), 20;JamesPIaysted Wood, The SnarkWas

a Boojum: A Life of Lewis Carroll (New York: Pantheon, 1966), 68.

' Lewis Carroll, "'Alice' on the Stage," The Theatre, n.s., 9 (April 1887): p. 180.

' Ibid.

* Carroll, Under Ground, p. 1. For early examples of hints that Alice is dreaming, see Carroll, Under Ground, pp. 1, 4-5,7.

'' Lewis Carroll to Tom Taylor, December 20, 1863, and June 10, 1864, in The Letters of Lewis Carroll ed. Morton Cohen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 1:62, 65.

' Alice and Caiyl Hargreaves, "Alice's Recollections of Carrollian Days: As Told to her Son," The Comhill Magazine73, no. 433, n.s. (July 1932): p. 5.

" Florence Becker Lennon, Victoria Through the Looking- Glass: The Life of Lewis Carroll (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1945), p. 115.

■' "'Alice' on the Stage": p. 180.

'" Carroll only details one other time telling the Alice story. On a boat trip with a friend named Harcourt, he tried playing a game of "Ural Mountains," one he likely devised, which "did not prove very successful, and I had to go on with my interminable faiiy-tale of 'Alice's Adventures.'" If this indeed is only the second time he told the tale, his exaggerated phrasing is yet another negative description of extempore storytelling. Lewis Carroll, August 6, 1862, Lewis Carroll's Diaries: The Private Journals of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, ed. Edward Wakeling, vol. 4 (Luton, Beds: The Lewis Carroll Society, 1997), p. 115. For oral tales told to children, see under "Story- telling" in the index to the Diaries zbove (vol. 10, p. 122). ' ' Lewis Carroll, galley sheet for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Deanery Collection A8, Christ Church Library, Oxford. '■^ John Tenniel to Lewis Carroll, March 8, 1865, in Lewis Carroll and His Illustrators: Collaborations and Correspondence, 1865-1898, Morton Cohen and Edward Wakeling, eds. (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2003), p. 12. '^ See, for example, the galley sheets to the "Wasp in a Wig" episode (Lewis Carroll, A Wasp in a Wig: A "Suppressed" Episode o/Through the Looking-Glass and Wliat Alice Found There, Martin Gardner, ed. [London: Macmillan, 1977]); Henry Holiday's comments on working with Carroll for the illustrations to The Hunting of the Snark (Heniy Holiday, Reminiscences of my Life, in Lewis Carroll: Interviews and Recollections, Morton N. Cohen, ed. [Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1989], p. 119), and likewise, Harry Fiuni.ss's comments on working with him for the illustrations to the Sylvie and Bruno books (Hariy Furniss, Confessions of a Caricaturist, in Lewis Carroll: Interviews and Recollections, p. 225). '^ These documents, in Christ Church Library, are not dated, and some may have been created after the first publication of Wonderland, especially the version of the tale in two columns. '■'' Carroll, May 2, 1864, Lewis Carroll's Diaries, p. 297. Carroll may be referring to chapter 3 of Wonderland, where the animals assemble on the shore, instead of chapter 3 of Under Ground, where Alice meets the enormous puppy, as

29

the latter is not even a chapter break in Wonderland. Then again, it may refer to neither episode, given the fact that Carroll worked and reworked the book. Ibid., April 5, 1864, p. 284.

Lewis Carroll to Macmillan, December 15, 1864, in Lewis Carroll and the House of Macmillan, Morton Cohen and Anita Gandolfo, eds. (New York; Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 36.

Carroll, Under Ground: A Facsimile of the Original Lewis Carroll Manuscript (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1964), pp. 1-23. The text for Wonderland is based on a facsimile edition included in the Riverside Records boxed set, containing four LPs of Cyril Ritchard reading of the stoiy: Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (New York: Crown Publishers, 1957). The paragraph breaks in each of the four synopses given for Under Ground represent the chapter breaks in Wonderland. Owing to the nature of this paper, and so as not to burden the reader, who likely has another edition, citations will not be given for Wonderland. When Alice first sees the White Rabbit later in the book, he is in the grand procession "talking in a hurried nervous manner, smiling at everything that was said, and went by without noticing her." This may be Carroll's way of saying he was almost late, just stepping in line. Alice says in reference to the March Hare, "as this is May it won't be raving mad," and she later answers the Hatter that it is "The fourth." So the stoiy takes place on Alice Liddell's real birthday. But we only know she is seven from statements made in Looking-Glass. She tells the White Queen, "Tm seven and a half exactly" and Humpty Dumpty "Seven years and six months." That makes it November 4, which accords with the allusion to the next day being Guy Fawkes Day in the opening chapter. Though there is no way to prove that only six months elapsed between the stories, and not a year and a half, Tenniel's drawings make it a surety. Carroll, Wonderland, pp. 92, 99; Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking- Glass (London: Macmillan, 1872), pp. 3-4, 99, 119. For average height, see http://www.disabled-world.com/ artman/publish/height-weight-teens.shtml. Carroll altered the line "Were walking hand-in-hand" in "The Walrus and the Carpenter" poem "to suit the artist." It is unclear what Tenniel objected to, but it may have been the notion of a romantic relationship between an

animal and a human, as suggested here with the White

Rabbit and the Duchess. See Lewis Carroll to Edith A.

Goodier and Alice S. Wood, March 20, 1875, Letters,

p. 222.

Edward Wakeling, e-mail message to the author,

November 26, 2010. Florentia is not mentioned in the

diaries, nor in any notes. But Carroll met Gertrude and

wrote in his diaiy on September 21, 1855, very favorably

of her: "The youngest Liddell, Gertrude, is even prettier

than my little favourite Freddie: indeed she has quite

the most lovely face I ever saw in a child." She was about

three years old at the time. Lewis Carroll's Diaries: The

Private foumals of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, ed. Edward

Wakeling, vol. 1 (Luton, Beds: The Lewis Carroll Society,

1993), pp. 131-2.

Stuart Dodgson Collingwood, The Life and Letters of Lewis

Carroll (New York: The Centuiy Co., 1898), 106; Roger

Lancelyn Green, The Story of Lewis Carroll (New York:

Henry Schuman, 1951), 58.

Admittedly, Carroll's chapter titles do not always refer to

the initial topic in the chapter (for example, "The Mock

Turde's Story").

Gattegno, Lewis Carroll: Fragments, pp. 21-2. Gattegno

mentions the deletion of the phrase "fringed with rushes

and forget-me-nots," failing, however, to mention that the

whole scene was deleted.

Carroll, June 17, 1862, Diaries, vol. 4, pp. 81-2. For Alice

Liddell's memory of the incident, see Alice and Caryl

Hargreaves, "Alice's Recollections of Carrollian Days,"

p. 7.

Martin Gardner, The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition

(New York: Norton, 2000), p. 34.

Anne Clark, The Real Alice (New York: Stein and Day,

1981), pp. 93-4; Gattegno, Lewis Carroll: Fragments, p. 21.

See, for example, the word "pleasance," Alice Liddell's

middle name, in the prefatory poem (unpaged); the

terminal poem, an acrostic on her full name (mentioned

above as an Oxford allusion as well); and the Rose and

the Violet in "The Garden of Live Flowers" chapter,

Alice's sisters Rhoda and Violet (so it is said). Carroll,

Looking-Glass, pp. 28-34, 223-4.

Carroll, Under Ground, pp. 46-67.

See note 12.

30

-^

^

^

^

Leaves fROo:? t/:^6 Deanejiy Ganden

Dear Editor,

While working on our Alice 150 project, we discovered that Weaver cites a 1924 Budapest edition of Alice in Hungarian and in turn cites its listing in W & M, 1931. It is also listed in W, M & Green, 1962. Neither book gives a source. Weaver did not have a copy

Our Hungarian bibliographer finds the book in no Hungarian bibliography or library and so has concluded it is a "ghost" edition. I am making a survey of Carroll and Alice collectors to see if any- one has a copy. I lack the book. Anyone who has the book or knows of a copy can contact me at jalindseth@gmail.com Thank you, Jon Lindseth

-^

Dear Editor,

As you know, there is an ongoing controversy about the authorship of the Alice books. Another proof that they are in fact written by Queen Victoria herself may be found in the presence of a hyphen in both "Looking-Glass," the last word of the last title in the last of the series of two books, and in the Queen's own last name, "Saxe- Coburg."

Dr. Femly Bowers, BA, BFA, MA,

MFA, PhD, DOS, MD, DVM,

DoD,LLD

In transit in California

-JKh

Dear LCSNA,

On behalf of our Fourth grade students and staff, please accept my most sincere thanks and appre- ciation of your visit to our school. The members of the LCSNA did a truly remarkable job of making Alice and her fellow characters come alive for our students, many

of whom have not had the plea- sure of reading this classic.

Our students were amazed and delighted by the reading. I can tell from their reaction that the books will be treasured for many years. The special memory they will have about that presentation today and their special keepsake will last just as long.

I witnessed the students reading the books for the remainder of the school day; many of them are well on their way to finishing it in the next few hours. Thanks again for brightening our day, and for pass- ing on the special pleasures of a most wonderful book.

Sincerely,

Nicholas Leonardos

Principal

Maria L. Baldwin School

Cambridge, MA

31

... one scene segues into another like the scenes in Alice — and Carroll must of course have been inspired by the inconstant landscape of dreams ...

Penelope Lively, How It All Began, Viking Penguin, Neiv York, 2011.

The conclusion of the dream is almost as predictable in Lewis Carroll.

Donald Thomas, Henry Fielding, St. Martin 's Press, New York, 1991.

"It was the very best butter," he said, and for some reason this idiotic remark made Susan laugh as well.

... she didn't want to be found looking like a sick Cheshire cat. Margery Sharp, The Nutmeg Tree, Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 1937.

^

"...Means nothing to me, sir!" "Nor to me." Wycliffe grinned.

"In Alice, the jurymen added up

the dates given in evidence and

reduced their answers to pounds,

shillings, and pence."

Smith did not smile. "That

would be before we went metric,

I take it, sir."

W.J. Burley. Wycliffe and the Four Jacks. Avon Books, 1987.

-^

... he turns and looks back over their heads to the house bathed in brazen unnatural light. In its front courtyard a man with bucket and brush is methodically painting the plastic roses a brilliant, glamorous crimson.

Alison Lurie, Foreign Affairs, Random House, New York, 1 984.

Most of the names were famil- iar: George Bernard Shaw, W. T Stead, Cunningham-Grahame, Annie Besant, Lord Tennyson. Others meant little: Marie Spartali

Stilman, Adam Adamant, Olive

Schreiner, Alfred Waterhouse,

Edward Carpenter, C. L. Dodgson.

There were some surprises.

'Gilbert?' Sir Charles asked. 'Why?

The man's as much a vampire as

you or I.

Kim Newman, Anno Dracula, Simon and Schuster, 1992.

-^

[Mr. Aghayan] said: "We have a problem here. I want you, tomor- row, to go to the May Company, and buy me, and bring here, the Red Queen's costume." (Alice's Red Queen did not shop at the May Company.)

The New York Times, October 15, 2011, in the obituary of Ray Aghayan, costume designer and winner of an Emmy for a 1967 TV movie o/ Alice Through the Looking Glass. "

"Oh . . . well, you know that kind of cat that grins all the time? Heard of that? Well, I'm the kind that makes, you know, weird faces," said Maurice desperately. Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, Harper Collins, Neiv York, 2001.

HT

"Oh, if only one had a key and could get into the gardens and sit on one of those seats. I feel like Alice in Wonderland about it." Elizabeth Taylor, Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, The Viking Press, New York, 1971.

Maria, the untidy woman in charge, hair flying and papers everywhere on the desk, like the White Queen in steady employment, had said over the telephone that there was a nice house which had just come on the market. Should she send them the particulars?

Philip Hensher, King of the Badgers, Eaber and Faber, New York, 2011.

-^

But on most other matters, to change the metaphor, it was like going down the rabbit hole. Reginald Hill, The Woodcutter, Harper-Collins, New York, 2010.

M

There were blatant messages hanging opposite indecipherable jabberwocky.

Steve Martin, An Object of Beauty, Grand Central Publishing, Neiv York, 2010.

IS

Lewis Carroll .... claimed to have found 165 individual fairies depicted in The Quarrel Between Oberon and Titania. One at- traction of the business of such detailed scrutiny was that these scantily clad creatures are not "real" ladies, but innocuous fairies from another world, tastefully veiled in the trappings of allegory or myth.

Jeremy Paxman, The Victorians: Britain Through the Paintings of the Age, BBC Books, an imprint ofEbury Publishing Company, 2010.

-^

The mad, disheveled, but conge- nial older man in the back office with the missing teeth did nothing but put together anagrams based on Alice in Wonderland.

Edmund White, Jack Holmes & His Friend, Bloomsbury, New York, 2012.

32

BANDERSNATCH

\BAN-der-snach\ , noun;

1. An imaginary wild animal of fierce disposition.

2. A person of uncouth or uncon- ventional habits, attitudes, etc., especially one considered a men- ace, nuisance, or the like ... Bandersnatch was invented by Lewis Carroll in 1871 in his book Through the Looking-Glass.

Dictionary, com 's Word of the Day, Wednesday, October 5, 2011

I'Wt

An article in the SF Chronicle's Style section on Sunday, October 9, by Aidin Vaziri, "Mission's Viracocha Not Just a Glorified Garage Sale," says: "One of the prize pieces is a barely held together copy of 'Alice in Wonderland' from 1828. 'It's not all that rare,' Siegel [the pro- prietor] says. 'But it is a really nice piece.'"

A brief article about actor Bene- dict Cumberbatch in Tuesday's Washington Post included a quirky name change that looked more like an iPhone autocorrect fail.

H«h

A photo of what looked like a tj^o was tweeted by AFP photog- rapher Alex Ogle, who seemed to come across the name change by AFP journalist Susan Stumme.

In both the print and online versions of an article about the PBS Sherlock star criticizing Down- ton Abbey, Cumberbatch 's name appeared drastically differently the second time it was mentioned in the article. Even though editors spelled his name correctly in the article's lede, Cumberbatch was later referred to as "Bandersnatch Cummerbund" in the third para- graph.

"^

Here's a beautiful 1949 edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland a.nd Through the Looking Glass, illustrated by Leonard Weisgard — only the second version of the Lewis Carroll classic, and the first with color illus- trations. — post by Maria Popova on Brain Pickings.org.

The project attracts the attention of a clandestine American intel- ligence agency called the Director- ate of the Extremely Improbable, whose director. Red Queen (yes we are down the rabbit hole), says: "Our job is to assess threats to national security that we don't know exist, using methods we don't know work."

Cameron Martin, in a review of The Coincidence Engine by Sam Leath, NYT Book Review, March 25, 2012.

n

Reading the transcript of Tues- day's Republican debate on the economy is, for anyone who has actually been following economic events these past few years, like fall- ing down a rabbit hole. Suddenly, you find yourself in a fantasy world where nothing looks or behaves the way it does in real life ... Well, the Cheshire Cat-like Rick Perry — he seems to be fading out, bit by bit, until only the hair remains ... Paul Krugman, "Rabbit-Hole Economics, "The New York Times, October 14, 2011.

^i -^i -^i		Ife: Ife: )tk
Linda Cassady	^^^^%.	Ann Mayo
Gabriela Tully	^i^^^p Jl^	Elizabeth Rice-Munro
Claymore	^^^^r	Henri Ruizenaar
Heather Cole	R^« A	Melissa Sanders
Carrie Daignault	fBi^INK	Sarah Sterling
Brittany Erdman	^SLi/^	Sally Turlington
Jeremiah Farrell	Joan Frankel Beverly Hock Deborah J. Lightfoot	Christopher Tyle
Ife Ife Ife:	♦fe ^t^ ♦fe *fe ♦fe ife

33

^ ^tlClO h ^ ^^ MARK BURSTEIN

First, of course, kudos and props to those who made the spring Boston meeting such a suc- cess, Number One being Alan Tannenbaum, who arranged for the venue, speakers, dinner, after- party, transportation, hotel, and all such matters, in collaboration with his wife, Alison, to be sure. To the staff at the Houghton Library, in particular Peter Ac- cardo, coordinator of programs, and Heather Cole, exhibition curator, who will be curating a Carroll ex- hibition at the Houghton during the Alicel50 celebrations. To our visitors from afar: Selwyn and Janet Goodacre and Mark and Catherine Richards from England; Linda and George Cassady from the West Coast. And to the fine speakers: Selwyn, Mark Richards, Matt De- makos, Christopher Morgan, Lin- da Cassady, and Alan.

Boston is such a perfect venue: Where else can you literally take a train to Wonderland? It's the last stop on the MBTA Blue line, and is named after a defunct turn-of-the-century amuse- ment park. Harvard and the Houghton provided beauty, a sense of history, and pleasure. Although it was necessary to allow an extra hour to "pahk a cah in Hahvahd Yahd," it was well worth it.

Two significant anniversaries this year: first, Al- ice Liddell's 160th on May 4, which coincides with the annual Star Wars day ("May the Fourth be v«th you"). Still to come: July 4, 2012, the sesquicenTen- niel (150th anniversary) of a certain boat trip on the Isis, celebrated in this present issue. I can only repeat what I said in KL 87: "As this event will be falling on our national holiday celebrating our freedom from our erstwhile British oppressors, it may be difficult to get media coverage. ... If nothing else on that day, reenact it yourself: grab a copy of Under Ground or Wonderland to read (or download the Cyril Ritchard recording from Amazon into your mobile device), in- vite a child or three, pack a picnic, find a spot along a nearby river (extra credit if you row there) , and linger in the golden gleam."

34

Our updated meeting schedule for the next three years:

September 27, 2012, at the Fales Library at New York University, Washington Square campus in New York; confirmed speakers include Adam Gopnik on Sylvie and Bruno, Robin Wilson, author of Lezvis Carroll in Numberland, and David Schaefer on his discovery of a reel of a 1929 Looking-Glass.

April 20, 2013: Stephanie Lovett and Charlie Lovett will be our hosts in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Tentative plans include talks by Charlie Lovett, author of Alice, on Stage, and a reading or production of Dan Singer's new play about a meeting between Charles Dodgson and Charles Dickens.

Fall, 2013: Sculptor Karen Morti-

llaro, actor/ playwright Dan Singer,

and George and Linda Cassady will

arrange a meeting in Los Angeles.

Spring, 2014: "Somewhere in New

York," as the saying goes.

Fall, 2014: Dayna (McCausland) Nuhn, Mahendra Singh, and Andy Malcolm, along with Tania lanovskaia and Gleg Lipchenko, have agreed to host a joint LCSNA and LCSCanada meeting in Toronto.

Spring, 2015: San E

in conjunction

opening of the Center

for the

Study of

Children's

Literature

at San

Diego State

University.

FaU, 2015: Octo- ber 10-11 in New York City for Alice 150.

California

ALL MUST HAVE PRIZES

MATT CRANDALL

I don't know what it is about ceramic figu- rines, but people have loved and collected them for centuries. It is no different in the world of Alice and Disney. In fact, the Disney Company has spent a great deal of effort in recent de- cades promoting their own line of very expensive col- lectible ceramic figurines via the Walt Disney Classics Collection. But the history of Disney figurines goes all the way back to the 1930s, when Mickey Mouse was a worldwide sensation.

In the 1950s, when Disney's Alice in Wonderland was released, the Disney Company licensed several manufacturers around the world to produce ceramic figurines. In the United States there were four com- panies: Evan K. Shaw (formerly known as American Pottery, later known as Metlox), Hagen-Renaker, Re- gal China, and Leeds China.

Evan K. Shaw held a license to produce Disney figurines from about 1943 through 1955 or 1956 and produced some of the most beautiful Disney figu- rines ever. In 1951, they produced a series of eight character figures from Alice in Wonderland, and four teapots. The eight character figures are Alice, the White Rabbit, the Hatter, the March Hare, the Dor- mouse, Tweedledee, Tweedledum, and the Walrus. A few of these figures have overglaze painted details, so they are sometimes found without them: the Hat- ter's price tag, Tweedledee and Tweedledum 's col- lar names, and the White Rabbit's heart. The four teapots are not functional, but rather are whimsical figurines based on some of the crazy teapots seen in the film during the "Mad Tea Party" sequence. They have equally whimsical names: Tea 'n Cream, Tea 'n

Sugar, Tea for Three, and Magic Tea. There

are no identifying marks on any of the Evan

K. Shaw pieces; each bore a foil label with the

character's name, though these are seldom found intact. It is likely that the Alice figures were only pro- duced for the years 1951-52, and the teapot figures may not have been commercially available at all. The teapots do appear in the product catalog from 1951, and I have seen three in the collection of a former Metlox employee, who graciously sold two of the three to me — but otherwise, to my knowledge, no one has ever found one "in the wild."

Hagen-Renaker held the license for Disney figu- rines after Evan K Shaw, from 1955 tol961. Walt Dis- ney himself said that Hagen-Renaker produced the finest miniature figurines he had ever seen. Many of you probably know of Hagen-Renaker figurines, even if you do not recognize the name. The HR company produced (and still does produce) miniature animal figurines glued to small square cards. I myself remem- ber them in my local Hallmark store when I was grow- ing up. Hagen-Renaker produced a series of Disney miniatures that were sold exclusively in Disneyland. In 1956 the company added an Alice in Wonderland set to the line, designed by Nell Bortell, which consist- ed of four figures: Alice, the Hatter, the March Hare, and the Caterpillar.

The Alice figure did not come on a card; she is what is known as a shelf sitter. Instead of the card she had a foil label with her name on it (much like the Shaw figures), although the foil label is almost

Hagen Remaker's Alice

Shaw i White Rabbit

35

never found. The Caterpillar figure is a little odd — by himself he will not stand up properly. Collectors have speculated that the Caterpillar was originally supposed to be sold with a mushroom figurine. This would explain why his underside is curved, but I imagine that it would have been far too expensive to manufacture a two-part figurine. Several pictures have surfaced over the years of this figure sitting on a mushroom, but in all cases the mushroom was pur- chased separately by the collector just for display pur- poses. The Hatter is difficult to find, given his design: standing with outstretched arms and holding a tea- pot. The March Hare is perhaps the most entertain- ing of the Hagens, as he is holding just half a cup of tea. The Hatter and March Hare figures were origi- nally sold on the litde square cards, although finding them that way is extremely difficult.

The Alice in this set is much more common than the other figures, and it has been suggested that the other three figures were only sold in 1956 or there- abouts, while Alice was sold for a much longer pe- riod of time. There is no documentation of which I am aware, but painting styles on HR figures from this era varied, and as time went on, the painting became more simplistic. There are Alice figures that feature this simpler style of painting (known as "dot eyed" versions), but there have been no recorded instances of the other three in this painting style.

Regal China is probably best known for its Lit- tle Red Riding Hood series of cookie jars and other kitchen accessories, but they also produced a large tea set for Disney's Alice in Wonderland, with each piece boldly incised on the bottom: Alice in Wonderland © Walt Disney Productions. It is unclear if this set was pro- duced at the time of the film's release (presumably), but there is a photo dated 1953 that appeared in Life magazine showing Roy Disney seated in a room full of Disney merchandise, and one of the pieces of this set is visible. The set includes the following items: Alice

cookie jar, Alice salt and pepper shakers, Tweedledee and Tweedledum salt and pepper shakers. White Rab- bit creamer. White Rabbit sugar bowl. King of Hearts milk jug, and Mad Hatter teapot. Of this set the Mad Hatter teapot is the most sought after piece and is ex- tremely rare, although the sugar bowl is more difficult to find. The Alice S&P set comes in several colorways including full color, white with gold highlights, white with gold and painted highlights, and plain white or blank. I've also seen the White Rabbit creamer and sugar bowl, the cookie jar, and the Mad Hatter teapot as blanks.

The figures by Shaw, Hagen-Renaker, and Regal are very high-quality art pottery — the Shaw company catalog even goes so far as to call their pottery "na- tive American art." The pottery produced by Leeds China, which held a license to produce Disney pieces from 1944 tol954 is of a different quality altogether (choose your own adjective: utilitarian, lesser, inex- pensive, cheap). But that is not to say that some of the pieces they produced are not attractive, just not as pretty as from the other companies. For the most part, Leeds pieces consist of cookie jars, planters, salt and pepper shakers, and banks; and nearly all of their pieces (especially in the 1940s) were deco- rated overglaze. Fortunately, the Alice in Wonderland pieces (some of the last pieces they produced) were all decorated underglaze, with one exception. They produced a heart-shaped planter, a double planter, a very rare jumbo single planter, a bank, and a cookie jar. The cookie jar is the exception to the underglaze rule for Leeds: the blue variation of the cookie jar is entirely decorated overglaze, and is strange colors to boot, whereas the white variation is all underglaze. And there are variations on most of the other pieces too (I love variations). The heart planter comes plain and with gold highlights, as does the bank (the gold highlighted bank is exceptionally rare). The double planter comes in three different colors: blue, red, and yellow. All of the pieces can be found with either blue or black eyes. As previously noted, the Alice in Wonderland set was produced near the end of their license period, and are therefore in general much harder to find than other character pieces.

This only scratches the surface of the Disney figu- rines created for Alice in Wonderland. In future arti- cles, we will explore figures of the 1960s and 1970s, and the vast category of foreign figures. Until next time!

Regal's Tweedles salt and pepper set

36

AI,ICE15

CELEBRATING WONDERLAND

A Call for Support

JOEL BIRENBAUM

'^here are numerous opportunities for con- tributing to the success of Alice 150: Celebrat- ing Wonderland, and as specific needs arise we will notify you here.

-M-

We need an indexer for Volume 1 of Alice in a World of Wonderlands /The Translations of Lewis Carroll's Master- piece. This is an analysis of the more than 100 transla- tion languages. This volume will have about 125 es- says, both the introductory and the language essays. It is an all unpaid volunteer effort with over 170 writers. The book will go to the publisher in the fall of 2013 and be published in time for the Fall, 2015 "Alice 150" celebration in New York. Interested members should contact Jon Lindseth atJaHndseth@aol.com.

^

Columbia University will be mounting an exhibit fo- cused on the exhibit they had in 1932, on the occasion of the centennial of Carroll's birth. We would like to know if anyone has memorabilia from the 1932 event, and would be willing to lend it for display. We would

also like suggestions from our members on what Alice items they think would be particularly impactful in our exhibit of collectibles. Suggestions of other events that would broaden the appeal of our celebration also would be appreciated. No idea should be considered too big or too small. If you have items or suggestions, contact me atjoel@thebirenbaums.net.

jWr"

Although we are still looking for more brilliant ideas, the time has come to speak of implementing the ideas we already have. To this end we need qualified people to fill positions on the following committees: budget, fundraising, conference planning, education, graph- ic design, merchandizing, entertainment, hosting, and speakers bureau. If you are interested or know of anyone who could fill these positions, contact me at joel@thebirenbaums.net and we can go into further detail.

37

ALICE INTO THE LOOKING GLASS ART EXHIBITION

The Noyes Museum of Art The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, Oceanville, NJ

Clare Imholtz

The Noyes Museum of Art has just hosted the first multi-artist show dedicated to Alice that I know of in this country. If not the first, the show, which ran from Febru- ary 3 through May 20, 2012, was certainly the largest. And it was very popular: almost 500 people attended the opening. The Noyes exhibited some 30 paintings, sculptures, books, and other mul- timedia objets, featuring mostly regional (New Jersey, Pennsylva- nia, and New York) artists, but also some from as far away as Califor- nia, Florida (the popular Maggie Taylor), and Canada (LCSNA members Andy Malcolm and Tania lanovskaia) .

Upon entering the gallery, viewers immediately saw a large oil painting by Victor Grasso entitled Drink Me. Alice, wearing juvenile bee-stripe stockings and a much more grown-up shape-shifting blue party dress, strikes a note that is repeated by several other works in this exhibi- tion: the loneliness of girl- hood, the changes wrought by growth, the uncertainty and fears that must be faced as the external world be- comes curiouser, curiouser, and often more menacing. Works by Csilla Sadloch (Alice upside down on a swing), Sarah Petruziello (a tense, fully developed Queen Alice building a house of cards atop a dan- gerous substructure be- neath her skirt), and Nancy Morrow (Alice/Betty Boop clones falling, tumbling in an indeterminate space) seem to illustrate the same sense of threat and disjoint- edness.

Carrollian Notes

Some of the art strikes a lighter note: Valerie Young's extravagantly fanciful gold Alice Car, which makes you wonder if Alice (repre- sented by her shoes) is planning a road trip with Toad of Wind and Willoxvs fame; Marisa Dipaola's giant 10-foot X 10-foot soft White Rabbit house (who could resist crawling inside?); Jacqueline San- dro's winsome 12-foot-high Queen of Hearts, her gown made of old playing cards sewn and wired together; and Sally Laird Mcln- erney's Cheshire Cat, formed of honeysuckle vines, taxidermy eyes, and tines of plastic forks as teeth.

I was also very taken wdth, among others, Doreen Pritchard Adam's exquisite Caterpillar mosaic of Venetian glass, Andy Malcolm's psychologically fraught juxtapositions of classic Alice images with Alice Liddell as the beggar-girl, Tania lanovskaia's de- lightful multilevel (in every sense) Queen Alice, Dallas Piotrowksi's (an- other LCSNA member) elegant time-challenged White Rabbit, and Nancy Palermo's hilarious and very American depiction of Dee and Dum as two good ol' boys drinking beer outside their trailer on a warm summer night.

Alice, the gift that never stops giving. I hope other museums will be encouraged to host similar exhibitions, especially as her ses- quicentennial draws nigh.

"I'm Late" by Dallas Piotrowski

CARROLL'S TYPEWRITER

Rose Oivens

Memories of one of the world's most famous children's authors, Lewis Carroll, were evoked in a Leicestershire sale room in Febru- ary, when an early t^'pewriter came under the hammer at Gildings in Market Harborough.

It appears Carroll ac- quired the typewriter on May 3"', 1888, as his diary entry states, "May 4, (F). Chandler came across to show me hoiu to work the 'Hammond Type-Writer', which arrived yesterday. " It is still in work- ing order, in its original polished wood fitted case. Inside the attractively shaped lid, at the top of the manufacturers instructions, in clear, spidery black ink handwriting, it is inscribed 'Rev. C. L. Dodgson, Ch.Ch. Oxford'.

The Hammond type- writer itself is a rare item and the provenance for the typewriter is fascinat- ing — from Dodgson to the present. So while it is clear from the dates that Dodg-

38

son did not write his most famous Alice books on this machine, it is thought he completed a mathemat- ics treatise on it, as well as a small number of items of correspon- dence.

Mark Gilding said: "It is a very exciting item to be handling and we are pleased to be offering it for sale in our Fine Art 8c Antiques auction on February 21. 1 am sure that it will attract great interest through its association with such a well known Victorian gendeman who has achieved so much popu- larity over so long. To see his name and college handwritten in the lid is a fascinating personal link with him too.

"Also the typewriter itself is of tremendous appeal as it is so early when such office equipment was only really just being developed. These machines were made by James Hammond, who became suc- cessful in the 1880's. The fact that it is in such fine condition and of such a great design, complete in its original box, just adds to its inter- est to collectors from this country and further afield. My client has decided to offer the typewriter for sale in the hope that it will find a new home with a private collector or institution who will treasure this important object. Although it is difficult to assess how much this typewriter may realise in the cur- rent auction market, my pre-sale estimate is £2000-3000".

The typewriter sold for £6500 (plus premium) to Charles Lovett, who promises to make a keepsake on the typewriter for every at- tendee at the Society meeting on April 20, 2013 in North Carolina.

LEWIS 6^ LEONARD

Mark Burstein

The Arne Nixon Center for the Study of Children's Literature at the Henry Madden Library at California State University, Fresno, presented Down the Rabbit Hole with Lewis Carroll and Leonard Weisgard

... .^.^.MmO*^	i
h.	r	^ ^
Above, the typewriter's case. Right, the typewriter itself. Below, useful instruc-
tions. Note the handxvriting.	i	^Btoi^^alzT ''^	_,:,___ ^ ^

I j^<?>/, <?. J_,.X)o<jic^^0Ti, t>h. Ch,, Oxfcr

IMPORTANT.

The operator shouki first carefully study thcf pamphlet of t Before operatinR the machine one of the ribbon spools

ened by (?i\

inft a few bnck If both spool

ward turns to the thumb nut projectinR ce^^^^:'^^ are fast on their shafts the keys will work -^

trally abo'

hard, and whenever they do. one of the spools should be at once loosened.

The main spring should not be disturbed unless its tension is insuf- ficient, and then an additional quarter or half turn of its shaft will generally overcome any sluggish movement of the carriage. More than two additional turns should never be ffiven to the shaft of the main spring. Should the carrtajje refuse to move, or the hammer fail to work, it may be due to excessive tension of the main sprinft, which should be at once lessened.

To remove the type-wheel, take hold ol the hub with the thumb and second finder, press toward you on the knob of the catch with tho first finder and puH vertically upward. To replace type-wheel, push it down until the catch snaps over the hub. Keep the machine covered, so as to exclude dust at all times when not in use, .ind wipe its nrckel-plated and other accessible parts daily with a soft cloth or chamois skin.

hoi?Tw

from September 16 through Octo- ber 26, 201 1. 1 was most delighted when Angelica Carpenter invited me to return to the Nixon Center, site of our fall 2004 meeting {KL 74:9-13), to view the superb exhi- bition she and Diane Mello had cu- rated. In true nineteenth-century style, and in keeping with Alice's journey to the Third Square, I elected to undertake the voyage to Fresno via railroad.

Author and illustrator Leonard Weisgard was born in Connecticut in 1916, spent much of his child- hood in England, and moved to Denmark at the age of 53, where he remained for the rest of his life and where his descendants live today (two of them, his daughters, Chrissy and Abby, flew in for the exhibition opening). He was the

illustrator of more than 200 chil- dren's books, often in collabo ra- don with Margaret Wise Brown, and won the 1947 Caldecott medal for The Little Island, which Brown wrote under the pseudonym Golden MacDonald.

Seven of Weisgard 's original color illustrations, in his magical signature style, for a 1949 Harper 8c Brothers edition of Alice's Adven- tures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass were on display, along with its black-and-white chapter headers — and a panoply of other Carroll material — in the spacious Leon S. Peters Ellipse Gallery. The Pete P Peters Ellipse Bal- cony above contained a wealth of original art from Weisgard's other works, on loan from his family, from Little Golden Books to New

39

Yorker covers. The marriage of the two creators of works for children, Lewis and Leonard, was a fortu- itous one.

The Carroll exhibition, beauti- fully displayed in a spacious, sunlit room, consisted of around 200 books and 150 other artifacts, mostly from the Nixon's own su- perb collection, with a few items on loan from artists and collectors. To be seen were Carroll's crib- bage board, Alice's flutina, the Xie Kitchin Tea-Merchant (On Duty) photograph, letters, calling cards, felt sculptures, Limoges china, puzzles, games, lithographs by Anne Bachelier, woodcut illustra- tions by Barry Moser, whimsical art by Aliki and Dutch comic creator and illustrator Willy Schermele (her Wonderland came out 1950),

Alice-themed Peanuts originals, the complete set of as-yet-unpublished Edward Gorey-style illustrations by Byron Sewell (text by Joel Biren- baum), original art from local BFA students, and maquettes and ana- morphic bronze sculptures (nearly four feet tall) lent by Los Angeles artist Karen Mortillaro, whose truly astonishing work will be the theme of our spring 2014 meedng.

Other glass cases highlighted varied interpretations of the Alice stories, including first-edition picture books, translations, movie

scripts, poems, sheet music, pop- culture spin-offs, and an illumi- nated manuscript. Even the labels were a particular pleasure — not too surprising coming from An- gelica, whose Lewis Carroll Through the Looking Glass (Lerner, 2002) is a superb biography for tween read- ers. As befits a modern exhibition, the labels also contained QR codes for further exploration.

On the return train trip, in company vrith a Goat, a Beetie, a Horse, a gentieman dressed in white paper, a paronomastic Gnat, and a (wise) Guard staring at me through various optical devices, I happily reflected back on the day, certainly worth a thousand pounds a minute.

Karen Mortillaro's Pool of Tears

40

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

The Alice Project

Dan Bergevin, editor

Published by Capitalized Living

ISBN 13: 978-0-9802479-8-5

(hardcover) $29.95

ISBN 13: 0-9802479-8-5

(paperback) 22.95

Andrew Ogus

Once again AA/Wcontains mul- titudes: 58 very different artists have each contributed a single illustration to this project. The result is wildly uneven, ranging from the sublime to the ridicu- lous, the lovely to the horrifically inappropriate. It's probably not fair to single out only a few artists from the fifty-eight, but I particu- larly like the hilarious paper foot- men of RalfWandschnieder, the 3-D courtroom of Kristiaan der Nederlanden, the brilliant near abstraction of the growing Alice by Francesco Gulina, and Carmen Virginia Grisolia's subtly funny gardeners, with their clever visual pun. Federico Reyes Galvan's enormous, ingratiating puppy is matched with an elegant but elderly (well, at least grown-up) Alice.

This book is also a fascinating example of the changing face of publishing: From posting of the concept on the Web to publica- tion took a mere three months. At first glance, the interlaced chapter headings seem overdone, but they work well with the overall concept. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the dark type, whose font inex- plicably changes from attractively readable to darkly less so, between the introduction and the running text. Information on contacting each artist is provided, and all proceeds from the sale of the book go to Oxfam.

o\^ ^'^^ X,

iw

Wilfred Dodgson of Shropshire. Land Agent and Lewis Carroll's Brother

David Lansley

White Stone Publishing, 2011

£16

ISBN 978-0-904117-36-3

August A. Imholtz,Jr.

Even the most fervid Lewis Car- roll enthusiasts might ask, "Why a biography of Lewis Carroll's brother Wilfred?" Author David Lansley, who is certainly a Carroll enthusiast and a very serious Car- roll collector as well, answers that question straightaway in his book's preface:

Countless interpretations and biographical accounts have been written about Lewis Carroll. Increasingly, it became evident to me how scant and patchy was our knowledge of his brother, Wilfred. The brothers were very close and came from a large and loving family. As an important friend, companion, and first- hand witness of his brother, it seemed to me that a more com- plete picture of Wilfred might serve to inform us about aspects of Charles' character in a new way. The second inspiration for writing the book was the proxim- ity of Wilfred's Shropshire haunts to those of my own upbringing — the towns of Bridgnorth and Ludlow, the villages of Cleobury North and Burwarton and the Clee Hills.

It is often hard to serve two purposes equally well, but Lans- ley generally succeeds, though perhaps a little more with the local history — note that he puts Wilfred's career first in the book's

subtitle — than with any dramatic or telling revelations about his famous brother's life.

"Wilfred Longley Dodgson was born 9 September 1838 at the Daresbury parsonage in Cheshire, the seventh child and third son of the Rev. and Mrs. Charles Dodg- son"— so begins David Lansley 's biography of this brother of Lewis Carroll.

In the first several chapters, he treats the Dodgsons' family life at Croft, Wilfred's education at Twyford School, and his years at Christ Church with his older brother, from 1856 to 1860. Al- most as much attention is given in the early chapters to the family of Alice Donkin, whom Wilfred, after a lengthy courtship, married on August 8, 1871. At Oxford, Wilfred took his examination and passed the school of Literae Humaniores in 1860. He then, it is presumed, entered a kind of agricultural apprenticeship under Edward Donkin. He learned surveying — applied geometry, in a sense — as a preparation for his career as a land agent. His first position was with the firm of Pickering and Smith, which performed surveying and other work for the Ecclesiasti- cal Commissioners for England, the body charged with "the gen- eral management of Church prop- erty . . . and a proper distribution of Church funds."

Finally, in 1871, Wilfred secured what would remain his lifelong employment: the position of land agent for the Shropshire estates — some 16,000 acres — ofGustavus Russell Hamilton-Russell, Viscount Boyne. A land agent in Victorian England "was a managerial em- ployee who conducted the busi- ness affairs of a large landed estate for a member of the landed gentry of the United Kingdom, supervis-

41

ing the farming of the property by farm labourers and/or tenants and collecting rents or other pay- ments. In this context a land agent was a relatively privileged position and a senior member of the es- tate's staff." It was thus a respon- sible and relatively remunerative position, in Wilfred's case paying £180 per annum in 1880, or about £154,000 in today's currency. A paragraph or so about who Vis- count Boyne was, however, would have been helpful in understand- ing Wilfred's letters to him and his lordship's dealings with his land agent, as well as with the widow after Wilfred's death.

Carroll took several photo- graphs of the young Alice Jane Donkin — a different version of the well-known "Elopement" photo- graph reproduced from a private collection is reprinted — and later maintained a caring and help- ful relationship not only with his brother and sister-in-law but also with their children. For example, Lansley states that when Wilfred and Alice's daughter Edith went up to Oxford to begin her studies at Lady Margaret Hall (studies that lasted, unfortunately, only one term), Carroll "took good care of his niece ... had tea with her at her rooms during term, and saw her off to Cleobury."

Wilfred composed verse throughout his life, although neither in the quantity nor with the orginality of Carroll's brilliant pieces. One of Wilfred's poems ("A Better Gift") had been helped into print in the periodical The Sketch on May 16, 1894, by the efforts of brother Charles. That poem and another published one, "Amantium Irae" are reprinted by Lansley. He also prints — I believe for the first time, since it does not appear in Morton Cohen's The Letters of Lewis Carroll, where

one finds only a single letter from Charles to his brother Wilfred — a long letter of October 30, 1881, in response to Wilfred's request for assistance vrith a practical mathe- matical question regarding a prob- lem in hydraulics, namely "how many pipes of a small calibre will discharge in a given time as much as one of large calibre."

Mentions of Wilfred in the Carroll literature most familiar to Carrollians refer to his marriage to Alice Donkin ( a young woman 13 years his junior, in whom he had become interested when she was only 14 years old), and a cryptic passage in Carroll's diary entry for October 17, 1866. Since those two items have sometimes been con- fused, let's take the diary remark first. Carroll wrote:

On Saturday Uncle Skeffington dined with me, and on Sunday I dined with him at the Randolph, and on each occasion we had a good deal of conversation about Wilfred and about A.L. — it is a very anxious subject.

Lansley thinks the subjects are two: Wilfred's pursuit of Alice Jane Donkin is the first subject; quite separately, he construes the initials "A.L." to refer not to Alice Donkin (possible only by a slip of the pen) nor, more intriguingly, to "Alice Liddell," but rather to Carroll's "Aunt Lucy and the anxiety caused by her failing vision." In that latter exegesis, he follows the opinion of Edward Wakeling, however pedestrian such an explanation might appear to the conspiracy- inclined. Discussion of Wilfred's relations vrith the Donkin family and his marriage and long life with Alice — they had ten children — of course occupies much of Lansley 's narrative.

Wilfred was a committed con- servative politically, a fact borne out by his essay "The Rural Poor," which was published in The Land

Magazine oi A^riX 1899, and is re- printed in the book's Appendix I. Comparison with Carroll's politics would have been an interesting exercise.

In addition to his small tal- ent for light verse, an interest in sketching — many amusing examples of which are here re- produced— and his enthusiastic contributions to family magazines, Wilfred had much in common with Lewis Carroll, but there were also notable diffferences: Wilfred was a married man with ten chil- dren, he was a lifelong sportsman, he spent his life in practical pur- suits rather than the theoretical world of symbolic logic, and he moved in far less rarefied strata of society than his brother.

Sometimes Lansley seems to di- gress— not an unknown proclivity among those caught up in the web of details of genealogical research and local history — and he tells us just a little more, I believe, than we really may need to know.

If Lansley does not shine a spotlight on any previously un- known and critical events in Lewis Carroll's life, the light reflected by Wilfred rounds out our portrait of Carroll. Just as when we learn that Nixon liked dogs, that fact changes to a small degree, at least in some minds, how we regard him.

Lansley's work was exhaustively researched in so far as he drew extensively from local community archives, family papers and remi- niscences, published materials, and holdings of private collectors. The book itself is beautifully pro- duced by the British Lewis Carroll Society with over 50 illustrations, many published here for the first time. A number of these are in color, including a humorous sketch by Wilfred displaying some similarities to Lewis Carroll's own drawings.

42

M

Through the Looking-Glass, and

What Alice Found There

With illustrations and an

afterword by John Vernon Lord

and textual corrections and

foreword by Selwyn Goodacre

Artists' Choice Editions 2011

Standard edition:

ISBN 978-0-9558343-1-8

£98

Special Edition:

ISBN 978-0-955343-5-6

£320

Andrew Ogus

This new volume from John Ver- non Lord will delight aficionados of his work. As in his AAIW, a deep reading of the text has led Mr. Lord to some unusual concepts in his illustrations, as described in his afterword, and his TTLG shares the same virtues and vices of its prede- cessor (/a 83:39). Three-hundred and sixty-four colored boxes that at first glance suggest a periodic table represent a year of Unbirthdays, with a blank box for Alice's actual birthday; multiples of his own eye take the place of the staring guests at Queen Alice's feast. Once again there is a melange of illustration styles, including what seems to be a child's portrait of Humpty Dumpty (an entire book with such illustra- tions would certainly be interest- ing), an attractive broken egg, and a delightful frog. Alice barely ap- pears, as a pawn and prematurely on a stamp (surely she would have to become Queen before being so honored?). The Red Queen re- sembles Queen Victoria, the actual author, according to some. And once again the text is interrupted by pictures, with scatterings of marginalia. It is worth turning the very last pages of the volume, but I will not spoil the delights to be found there.

Selwyn Goodacre has contrib- uted a fascinating and thoughtful introduction, and Mr. Lord's after- word includes extremely interest- ing speculation on the other great Victorian nonsense writer, Edward

Lear. The special edition includes four giclee prints, one of which illustrates "The Wasp in a Wig" chapter, not included here.

The Carrollian Tales of

Inspector Spectre

Written and illustrated by Byron

Sewell, with contributions

by Edward Wakeling and

August A. Imholtz,Jr.

Evertype ISBN 978-1-904808-81-7

Mahendra Singh

Michael Everson deserves many kudos for making so many obscure and recondite Carrollian texts available to the general public. We've seen Lewis Carroll Espe- rantoed, Nyctographed, and even Zumorigenflitted, but we have not, as yet, seen Lewis Carroll subjected to the sordid realities of the police procedural.

We can thank Byron Sewell for resolving this situation with this

latest offering from Evertype. He has penned an ingenious (and perhaps inevitable) saga of crime, international intrigue, and even young romance, all of it spun out of a simple tale of grave robbing in Guildford. The violated grave is the Rev. C. L. Dodgson's, and the criminal violators are two dipso- maniac yeggs of a low mental and moral caliber, bent upon turning a quick profit by ransoming the Rev- erend's remains back to the Lewis Carroll Society.

The unflappable Inspector Spectre is assigned the case, and things move along at a snappy pace in a rather clever parody of the contemporary British crime novel/ TV show. The plot is nicely thick- ened by the criminals' startling discovery of the two books that were interred in the coffin along with their author: a first-edition A/Wand a diary — one of the infa- mous missing diaries, which have exercised the minds of Carrollians for so many years.

The two yeggs' attempt to sell both books and bodily remains is long, mosdy fruitiess, and utterly hilarious. It would be unfair to spoil the many surprises of the in- genious and black-humored plot; it is a comedy of errors turned Grand Guignol by the avenging spirit of the indignant Lewis Carroll. De- spite the best efforts of Scodand Yard and the LCS, things come to a disdnctly sdcky end for almost everyone involved in the Carrol- lian caper. Exploding phalanges, shell-shocked ungulates, and death-dealing poltergeists figure large in the story, and to top things off, Byron had the commercial instincts to throw a North Korean hit-squad into pulpy mix. Ripped from today's headlines indeed! In addidon, Julia Roberts, Kim Jong- Un, Edward Wakeling, and Mark Richards have various entertaining cameo roles.

The macabre plot is furnished with a romandc subplot involv-

43

ing two West Virginians who are following things through the medium of the National Enquirer. Tuck and Jada. Tuck is a Carrol- lian who's immured himself in the Appalachians for unknown reasons, and Jada is a widow (man- slaughtering widow, actually) with a penchant for strong drink and Alice-themed tight skirts.

Byron's pen and ink drawings perfectly grace the story; they re- minded this reader of the stippled and crosshatched drawings of the old Penguin science texts of the '60s, carefully rendered depictions of disparate scenes and objects done with a deadpan objecdvity.

But there's more than grave- robbing to this Evertype publica- tion. There's an interval of sorts in which Edward Wakeling lays out his own forensic skills in an excel- lent essay on the missing CLD diaries. It's all very carefully re- searched and thoroughly reasoned out, and in the end, Wakeling has built a watertight case against Charles Hassard Wilfrid Dodgson as the vandalizing executor and editor.

The second and final act of the book is a funny and very clever short story by August A. Imholtz, Jr. He's penned another Inspector Spectre mystery, "The Oxfordic Oracle," which is set in Carroll's lifetime and purports to explain the genesis of Sylvie and Bruno as well as various tidbits of Carrol- lian minutiae. A weird melange of spiritualism and noxious gases intoxicates a gaggle of disparate seance attendees, among whom is our CLD. The inebriated spiritual- ists have collective visions of a deli- cious CarroUian madness, and the reader will have great fun catching all the allusions and references. Among other things, nineteenth- century German Idealism endures a vigorous pummeling, which is always a good thing in print. The story is nicely explicated by Henry

Furniss's 56''fi drawings, and my sole quibble is that there could have been more of them and re- produced a bit larger.

In summation, a very funny read and strongly recommended. Lewis Carroll and crime make a great combination, especially when leavened with a bit of wickedly non sequitur hillbilly romance.

Lexvis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland

With artwork by Yayoi Kusama

Penguin Classics

Penguin USA, New York

ISBN 978-0-141-19730-2

Andreiu Ogus

The reader who is absent from the realms of modern art theory, chat, and learned critical explanation, leafing through Yayoi Kusama's Wonderland, may be led to ask, "What is the use of a book whose graphics threaten to overwhelm its text?" Certainly it's interesting, if not exactiy refreshing, to come across such an approach, where the familiar characters are for the most part replaced by brightly col- ored abstractions. There is an exu- berant irrelevance to the recycling of elements from Kusama's works, some op art-like, at least one reminiscent of Paul Klee's delicate line drawings. Her mushrooms are

cute when displaced from their original background, but what is the connection between a danc- ing pumpkin and pigs or pepper? Is an image from the trial scene a misunderstanding of what a tart is, or a charming, newly drawn picture of a strawberry-enhanced cake? Alas, without a catalogue rai- sonne or a great deal of research on the Internet or elsewhere, one cannot be sure.

In the spirit of the harshly col- ored pictures and hopefully mind- blowing drawings, the book is dotted throughout with Kusama's characteristic vivid polka dots, oc- casionally and imaginatively ex- ploding the text out of its pleasant format. Phrases sometimes sud- denly and wildly increase in size, much as Alice does. Was this the work of designer Stefanie Posavec or the artist? Such novel typogra- phy works well in this context. It's fun to speculate what it might be like in a more traditional setting.

On the very last page of the book, Ms. Kusama reiterates the assertion we read in KL 87: "I, Kusama, am the modern Alice in Wonderland."

Indeed?

-*-

Everlasting Mark Burstein Since our last issue, the titles released by the pertinacious Evertype include Alicia in Terra Miribili, an updated edition of the 1964 Latin translation by Clive Harcourt Carruthers with an extended glossary section (ISBN 978-1-904808-69-5); Alice's Adventures in Wonderland printed in Carroll's Nyctographic Square Alphabet {KL 75:8-10), with a foreword by Alan Tannenbaum (ISBN 978-1-904808-78-7); Byron W. Sewell's The CarroUian Tales of Inspector Spectre, illustrated by the author (ISBN 978-1-904808-81-7), reviewed on p. 43 ; Alice's Carrdnts in Wunnerlan, the first translation into Ulster Scots, by Anne Morri-

44

son-Smyth (ISBN 978-1-904808- 80-0); L's Aventuthes d'Alice en Emervil'lie, translated intojerriais, the Norman language of Jersey as spoken by William the Conqueror, by Geraint Jennings (ISBN 978- 1-904808-82-4); Dee Erldwnisse von Alice em Wundalaund, translated into Mennonite Low German, also known as Plautdietsch, by Jack Thiessen (ISBN 978-1-904808-83- 1); a new edition of Phyllis in Piskie- land, written in 1913 by J. Henry Harris and illustrated by Patten Wilson (ISBN 978-1-904808-84-8); La Aventuroj de Alico en Mirlando, an updated edition of Donald Broadribb's 1996 translation into Esperanto (ISBN 978-1-904808- 86-2); Les-Aventures d Alice o Peyis des Mervey, translated into Borain Picard by Andre Capron (ISBN 978-1-904808-87-9); La aventuras de Alisia en la pais de mervelias, trans- lated into Lingua Franca Nova by Simon Davies (ISBN 978-1-904808-

88-6); Na Hana Kupanaha a Aleka ma ka Aina 'Kamaha'o, translated into Hawaiian by R. Keao NeSmith (ISBN 978-1-904808-97-8); and a dark, humorous parody, The Haunting of the Snarkasbord: A Port- manteau by Alison Tannenbaum, Byron W. Sewell, Charlie Lovett, and August A. Imholtz,Jr. (ISBN 978-1-904808-98-5).

-^

A Trovers le miroir

Lewis Carroll

Translated by Jacques Papy

Illustrated by Lostfish

Mc Productions/Lostfish

Soleil Productions Paris 2011

Andrew Ogus

My initial reaction to the illustra- tions in this French TTLGwas, in fact, "How French!" I'm not quite sure what that means, but there is definitely something sophisticated, elegant, and intellectual going on here. The restricted color palette (brown, pink, a little blue) is ap>- pealing and often quite lovely, and very subtly applied. But the red noses and cheeks quickly become wearing; the mincing characters look essentially alike, except per- haps the disdainful White Sheep, who is more leonine than ovine.

The red Lion itself and the op>- posing white Unicom are effete, coyly posing dancers rather than fighters. Alice's costume is just this side of suggestive — ^well, sometimes it falls onto the other side; the striped stockings of the original Alice taper from voluptuous thighs to tiny ankles, providing too much evidence under minuscule skirts. In fact a strong whiff of eroticism floats throughout these affected il- lustrations, sometimes veering into the grotesque, where even the Red and White Knights have cleavage. The drawings are admittedly well executed in their very particular style, the type and layout attrac- tive. An edition not for children, and for few adults. Curiously, Mile. Lostfish has not done an accompa- nying AATW. Perhaps it's just as well.

45

ART 6i° ILLUSTRATION

The Noyes Museum of Art in Oceanville, NJ pre- sented exhibition called "Alice: Into the Looking Glass" iranrom February 3 until May 20. The show is described as a "diverse se- lection of works rang[ing] from illustrations based closely on Carroll's text, to works which allude more subdy to the original story, offering new and some- times challenging interpretations." Included is LCSNA member Dallas Piotrowski's The Clintons, delight- fully depicting Hillary and Bill as the Queen and King of Hearts. There was also a panel discussion called "Lewis Carroll and the Alice in Wonderland Stories" on March 20, featuring August Imholz.

The Publisher's Weekly blog PWxyz ranked "The 5 Books that Inspire the Most Tattoos," finding AAiWin second place. Their online re- search seems to be thorough, even if the methods aren't scientific: "We spent an untold number of hours combing the Internet's two most extensive literary tattoo sites: Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos and The Word Made Flesh, then cross-check- ing the most frequently occurring tattoos with Google searches and Google image searches, all to get to the bottom of what books in- spire the most tattoos and why." Lewis Carroll's book was beat out only by . . . Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, only because of the popularity of the phrase "So it goes." So it goes.

Jenny Portlock, a wood engraver from Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, UK, has taken inspiration from Lewis Carroll for years. Now you can see some of her art on her new website, www.woodengravings. eu. "I print my wood engravings and linocuts onto hand-made papers using an antique cast-iron press and have designed my own

exhibit was initiated at the fabulously named Maison d'Ailleurs Museum of Science-Fiction, Utopia and Extraordinary Jour- neys in Yverdonles-Bains, Switzerland.

imprint which is hand-embossed into each print," writes Pordock of her process. "Each original engrav- ing and linocut is part of a small limited edition and prices range from £50-£150."

Silver, Salt, and Sunlight, an evoca- tively titled exhibition at the Mu- seum of Fine Art, Boston, is cel- ebrating the pioneers of early photography in Britain and France. Lounging among the Roger Fentons and Francis Friths is Dodgson's picture Xie Kitchin Asleep on Sofa, taken in 1873. The exhibition will run until August 19,2012.

Mervyn Peake illustrated AAzW and The Hunting of the Snark in the 1940s, amongst many other imagi- native classics. His fantastic pic- tures were on display at the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle-upon- Tyne from October 15, 2011, to January 8, 2012, in honor of Peake 's 100th anniversary. This

m

(^i

All Far-Flung items and their links, implicit or

explicit, are from www. lewiscarroll.org/blog

and can be accessed by using its search box.

Famous Japanese illustra- tor Hirai Takako released a 2012 calendar called, naturally, Alice in Calendar- land, including pretty pictures of floating tea cups, floating hot dogs, houses of cards, and other Wonderland- themed imagery.

Three contemporary artists in- spired by Lewis Carroll exhibited at the Leith Gallery in Edinburgh, UK, during March 2012. Large, colorful, surrealist oils by Marie Louise Wrightson were the main event, accompanied by bronze sculptures from the Robert James Workshop and delicate mimsy borogoves wrought in stained glass by Emma Butier-Cole Aitken.

In Italy, the Modern and Contem- porary Art Museum of Trento and Rovereto hosted a grandiose cel- ebration of Alice from February 25 to June 3. On display are works by Max Ernst, John Everett Millais, and Anna Gaskell, among many others.

Finally, the museum event of the season has clearly been the Tate Liverpool's Alice in Wonderland exhibition, curated by Christoph Schulz, which ran from November 4, 2011, to January 29, 2012. Even for those (like us) unable to dash over to England to see it, the exhi- bition generated plenty of enter- taining reviews and commentary, as well as an outstanding cata- logue. The exhibition will be re- viewed in our next issue.

ARTICLES (fb'ACADEMIA

An article by the resident "Ex- plainer" Brian Palmer online at Slate last December sought to

46

answer the question "What do you do on a Scientology Cruise Ship?" "They hang out in the Starlight Room, play shuffleboard, and achieve Operating Thetan Level VIII," is part of his explanation. And, according to him, our favor- ite novel is also on the syllabus: "Classic examples [of training exer- cises] include staring another stu- dent in the face for hours without blinking, or reading Alice's Adven- tures in Wonderland to each other." This was news to us, but apparently the use of Carroll's classic in Scien- tology training is well documented. During the exercise, called "Dear Alice," the coach judges the trainee on whether the memorized passage of A4iWis communicated clearly.

Author Salman Rushdie celebrated the 140th anniversary of Through the Looking-Glass in a brief but per- sonal article for the January 2012 Vanity Fair. He cites Carroll's excel- lent sequel as an inspiration to writers suffering a "Follow-That Problem," name-dropping his own children's books in the process, and concluding: "it comforted me that a writer I admired so greatiy overcame his [follow-that] prob- lem with such brilliant flair."

C. M. Rubin is a regular contribu- tor to the Huffington Post on mat- ters of Aliceology. In the past year, she has posted articles on Alice's legacy ("Alice," December 15, 2011); on Sir William Blake Rich- mond's painting of the Liddells, The Sisters (1864), which was at the Tate Liverpool exhibit ("Alice — in Wales?" January 16, 2012); on the Alice in Wonderland show at the Modern and Contemporary Art Museum of Trento and Rovereto, and what Alice means to Italians ("Alice in Italy," February 23, 2012); and even an article called "Freedom: What Do July 4th and Alice in Wonderland Have in Com- mon?" (July 1, 2011). Rubin's is a distant relative of the Liddell fam- ily, her devotion to keeping Alice in the news is admirable.

The online magazine io9 (covering "science, science fiction, and the future") published a clever article called "What Happens When Alice and Anti-Alice Meet? (A Celebra- tion of Lewis Carroll's 180th Birth- day)" on January 27. The anony- mous author posits an anti-Alice, through the looking-glass, and compares Carroll's mirrored uni- verse to anti-matter in quantum mechanics. "Unbeknownst to Car- roll, matter and anti-matter have never much liked each other. The moment that Alice, a girl of matter, pokes her hand through the mir- ror and poof! is magically whisked into the reflection, she will ex- plode in a brilliant flash, emitting energy in proportion to her mass-

E9 n =mc-.

In "What Alice did" {Prospect Maga- zine, Issue 187), Richard Jenkyns, professor of classics at Lady Marga- ret Hall, Oxford, considers the lasting impact of the Alice books: "We have grown so used to bun- nies in bluejackets with brass but- tons that it is hard to remember how comparatively recent such things are ..."

Alice's great-grandson Hugh St Clair had a short article in the Hujfington Post, titled "What was the real Alice in Wonderland like? Her great-grandson is fascinated." The article, which was posted on- line on November 25, contains litde to surprise, except perhaps his admission, "As a child, I never read Alice."

As part of "Visions and Voices: the University of Southern California Arts and Humanities Initiative," experts from three different fields met for a discussion of "Wonder- land and the Mathematical Imagi- nary." The trio consisted of Marga- ret Wertheim, an Australian science writer; Francis Bonahon, a professor of mathematics at the use Dornsife College; and Jim Kincaid, Aerol Arnold Chair in English at the USC Dornsife Col- lege. Among them, the three

brought expertise in the cultural history of physics, coral reefs, hy- perbolic geometry, quantum topol- ogy, and Victorian culture, lunacy, and perversion. The discussion was held at the historic Edward L. Dohenyjr. Memorial Library, Los Angeles, CA, on February 22.

"Further Adventures in Wonder- land: The Afterlife of Alice" was a one-day conference held on De- cember 1, 2011, in Manchester, England. Speakers included Jus- tine Houyaux and Neil Elliott Beisson from the University of Mons in Belgium, who discussed Tom Waits and Alice, and Franziska Kohlt from the Univer- sity of Sheffield, whose paper was entitled "Into the X-Box and What Alice Found There: American McGee's Alice: Madness Returns."

The Nabokovian #67 (Fall 2011) contains the article "Sebastian Through the Looking Glass," by Zachary Fischman, which investi- gates Aj4zWas a subtext for The Real Life of Sebastian Knight ( 1941 ) , Nabokov's first novel in English.

Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. LXXII No. 3 (Spring 2011) contains "Parrish the Thought: Alice's Misadventures at Christ Church, Oxford," in which August A. Imholtz, Jr., discusses Morris Parrish 's littie-known failed attempt to donate his Lewis Carroll collec- tion to that Oxford college, a series of events that resulted in his giving it to Princeton instead.

Salmagundi, Nos. 172-173 (Fall 2011/Winter 2012), contains the essay "Lewis Carroll and Lolita," by Jeffrey Meyers.

Charles Jennings, a British "learn- ing and performance consultant," attempts to draw lessons in man- agement strategy from Lewis Car- roll in three articles published in issues of the magazine Inside learn- ing Technologies and Skills (Novem- ber 201 1, December 201 1, and January 2012). In the final article,

47

"Managers and Mad Hatters: Work that Stretches," Jennings suggests that many people feel that their managers, like the Hatter, pose riddles for them to resolve, without providing appropriate guidance or feedback.

-m-

BOOKS (&=■ COMICS

There's no arguing that Alice in Wonderland is the obvious tide for a prequel to the comic book series Return to Wonderland. Graphic nov- elist Raven Gregory has now writ- ten several installments in his Won- derland universe, beginning with Return to Wonderland (2007) and followed by various "Tales from ..." and "Escapes from . . ." The original Return to Wonderland followed Alice Liddell's granddaughter Calie, but according to Comic Book Re- sources, "the fate of Wonderland's original protagonist has remained untold, until now." So the prequel, called Alice in Wonderland, will star an Alice Liddell bustier and blonder than you've ever seen her. Zenescope will release the hard- cover on July 31, 2012.

Jennifer Adams and Alison Oliver believe that it is never too early to start children on the classics of West- em literature. Following on adapta- tions oijane Eyre and Pride and Preju- dice aimed at the under-3s, comes Alice in Wonderland: A Colors Primer (Gibbs Smith, 2012). The sturdy board book teaches colors with the aid of a white rabbit, a green fi"Og, a blue caterpillar, and others.

If you were wondering what to listen to in your car as you travel between Cut Bank, Montana, and McNab, Alberta (about a 105-min- ute drive, depending on traffic at the border), how about download- ing Dodgson's mathematics book The Game of Logic, read as an audio- book and free on iTunes? The work is a part of the Lit2Go collec- tion, a collaboration between the Florida Department of Education and the University of South Florida College of Education. They also

have a complete audiobook of Symbolic Logic, if you're planning a longer drive.

Not tired of comparisons between the political Tea Party and the Mad Tea Party? Try mAlice in Wonderland: A Tea Party Fable (TBTM Media, 2011). Michael Stinson and Julie Sigwart of TakeBackTheMedia.com have adapted Carroll's book and recast most of Wonderland as cur- rent GOP politicians. Karl Rove is the White "SuperPAC" Rabbit, John Boehner is the Mock Turtie, Rush Limbaugh is the Gryphon . . . you get the picture. Why are compari- sons to Wonderland always used as insults in political analogies?

Batman follows the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole to battle none other than our favorite arch villain. Mad Hatter, in a new 112- page full-color hardcover graphic novel Batman: Through the Looking Glass, written by Bruce Jones and Sam Keith, released by Titan Books in January 2012. With a new big- budget Batman movie every year or so, how long before we see DC Comics' Mad Hatter battle the Dark Knight in a summer block- buster?

Witches, vrizards, and Wonderland mix in the new Waterspell {ant2Lsy trilogy by Deborah J. Lightfoot. Lightfoot tells us that her books are "strongly connected" to Through the Looking Glass and "The Jabberwocky": " Waterspell is about a homeless teenager who conjures the Jabberwock as her weapon against two wizards. One of them is her kidnapper; the other is her rescuer — unless he kills her first." The trilogy is published by Seven Rivers Publishing and is available to order online.

Perfect for teatime, Mad Hatter Crosswords (St. Martin's Griffin, 2011) reproduces 75 New York Times crosswords published be- tween January 2009 and April 2010. The Mad Hatter connection wouldn't seem to go beyond the

title and cover illustration, though it is possible that once you open the book you may wish that your watch had stopped at 5:55 too.

EVENTS, EXHIBITS, PLACES

Each winter, Jon Rowley of Taylor Shellfish Farms leads guests up and down the moonlit sands of the Washington coast on nighttime oyster picnics, inspired by the Wal- rus and the Carpenter. The most recent outings were January and February this year, the midst of icy winter, but Rowley, based in Shel- ton, WA, makes them sound rather appealing: "Lantern light, freez- ing weather, plump, sweet oysters just rousted from their beds and opened on the spot, award-winning 'oyster wines' drunk out of Reidel stemware, a bonfire — just the right mix of magic and madness." Con- tact Rowley at (206) 963-5959 for further details.

A plaintive headline caught our eye on December 1 1 last year: "Lonely walrus seeks companion." The article, in the Sunderland Echo, was announcing the launch of a fund-raising campaign to create a carpenter for a large bronze walrus that sits in a public park in the north of England. In 2000, a grant from the national lottery funded the $54,000 walrus, but no carpen- ter to keep him company. "We thought it was right to do this," said Sylvia, chairman of the Friends of Mowbray Park. "The poem is 'The Walrus and the Car- penter,' but all we have is the wal- rus. It could be any old walrus vrithout its carpenter."

Library nerds and other biblio- philes have pounced on an online database called "What Middletown read," the complete records of the Muncie Public Library between 1891 and 1902, and the labor of Ball State University English profes- sor Frank Felsenstein. "Could you see how many times a particular book had been taken out? Could you find out when? And by whom?

48

Yes, yes, and yes," writes David Plotz at Slate.com. Curiously, Av4?W doesn't seem to have been ac- quired until 1900, but after that it was checked out a little more than once a month until the records cut off in 1902.

"Springing to Life: Movable Books 8c Mechanical Devices," at the University of Rochester Rush Rhees Library, is an exhibit of over 50 examples of "interactive" books with nary an iPad in sight. Robert Sabuda's Alice pop-up is there, as is work by Voitech Kubasta, though not his 1960 pop-up Alice. The exhibition will run from January 23 to August 17, 2012. Call (585) 275-4477 for hours.

The secretive Swallowtail Supper Club created a "Down the Rabbit Hole" dining experience for gas- tronomes in the know in Vancou- ver, Canada. The fine dining club presented a Wonderland-themed five-course meal in a pop-up res- taurant in a secret location be- tween November 24 and December 17 last year.

The ILLOIHA Fitness Club, lo- cated deep underground in Tokyo, has a climbing wall that looks curi- ously like the rabbit hole that Alice tumbled down. In designing the wall, the architecture firm Nendo chose to embrace the urban, inte- rior setting: handholds are pro- vided, not by naturalistic clifflike features, but by randomly arranged picture frames, bookcases, and flower vases. Just don't expect to land as softly as Alice did if you happen to fall off.

President Obama's 2009 Hallow- een party, with such guests as Johnny Depp and Mia Wasikowska in their costumes from Tim Bur- ton's film, was not especially re- marked upon in 2009. In 2012, however, after it was mentioned in Jodi Kantor's book The Obamas, it became a mini-scandal, with right- wing pundits claiming it was secret and extravagant, and the White House firing back that it was prop-

erly publicized and for military families. Rush Limbaugh called it a "Hollywood-esque-type Henry VIII bash." Stephen Colbert used heavy doses of CarroUian puns while covering "Alicegate," such as "this malice in blunderland continues to Depp-en." We recommend the January 10 episode of The Colbert Report for his epic rant on the sub- ject, which ends with a slightly sloppy rendition of "Jabberwocky."

Speaking of Halloween, don't Alice and Steampunk seem like good ingredients to make a per- fect haunted house? Third Rail Projects created a spooky Steam- punk Haunted House at Abron's Art Center in Lower Manhattan last October. Through the Looking Glass "borrowed from author Lewis Carroll's dark side." It was so scaiy children under 8 were not allowed in!

HT

INTERNET (is' TECHNOLOGY

Batman: Arkham City, a sequel to the award-winning videogame Bat- man: Arkham Asylum, was released at the end of last year. In the game, the Mad Hatter, voiced by Peter MacNicol, has joined the ever- growing roster of villains the caped crusader must defeat. The game is based on DC Comics' Batman series, in which Jervis Tetch, aka Mad Hatter, is a crazed scientist who conceals sinister mind-control devices in his oversized top hat.

If you went to Google.com on October 21, 2011, you probably noticed a girl in an Alice-blue dress doodling on their logo. That day's "Google doodle" honored classic Disney artist Mary Blair on her 100th birthday. Blair did the origi- nal conceptual sketches for Dis- ney's 1951 Alice in Wonderland.

Typographer Stefan Huebsch says that his new typeface "Lith" is in- spired by Alice in Wonderland and the Brothers Grimm fairy tales, though we also detect a touch of

Tim Burton in the mix. The whimsical and eldritch typeface comes with alternate letters, liga- tures, and icons, and can be downloaded for $22 from www. myfonts.com.

A new WordPress website theme also claims Alice as inspiration. "Alice" designed by Raygun (sin- gle site license, $25), offers a clean and tidy layout, though it appears more minimalist than Victorian. The theme is also de- scribed as "flexible-width" and "responsive." Perhaps that's where Alice comes in?

Since January this year, players of the Sims Social, a version of the popular Sims videogame adapted for Facebook, have been able to purchase Alice in Wonderland- themed items with which to deco- rate their imaginary world, as well as undertake themed "quests" in the company of other virtual Sim characters.

On wonderlandbooks.blogspot. com, Caterina Morelli is carefully cataloging her large collection of illustrated editions of AAiW. She described the blog as an updated card catalog: "every post is an index card for a book." The blog is currently in Italian, but Morelli has ambitions to create an English version. If you are interested in helping her with this project, drop us a line and we'll put you in touch.

Digital collage artist Kenneth Rougeau, whom we mentioned here in KL 84, continues to cre- ate AylzWand 7TLG inspired art and merchandise at his website. He has also released a free digital book/computer program of Alice (although the software is unfortu- nately very 1990s).

According to American paleon- tologist Leon Claessens, we know less about the dodo than we do about dinosaurs that have been extinct for millions of years. Yet dodo studies took a significant

49

step forward in January, when Claes- sens and his team at Massachusetts College of the Holy Cross used advanced scanning technology to digitally capture a rare complete dodo skeleton. The fully manipu- lable 3D images are now available to the world online at aves3d.org, where it is hoped that researchers (and, in our thinking, illustrators) will be able to make good use of them.

MOVIES ^f TELEVISION

Controversial British director Ken Russell, known for The Who's Tommy and many other classic films, passed away on November 27, 20 11. The crew who were work- ing on his final film are expected to finish it with a new director, and guess what the project was? A "raunchy musical version oi Alice in Wonderland,'' according the UK Guardian. That's right, his unfin- ished symphony was based on the 1976 film starring Kristine DeBell, the original X-Rated Musical Com- edy (which somehow triply failed at music, comedy, and pornogra- phy). Composer Simon Boswell said, "It was in many ways a perfect Ken Russell film — raunchy and funny. Alice in Wonderland is almost his perfect vehicle, with sexual freakery and religious aspects."

If you want to hear a great actor read a great poem, John Hurt was on Charlie Rose's show on PBS on December 13, 2011. He recited "Jabberwocky" from memory, ex- plaining that he had memorized it at age nine. The full episode can be watched at charlierose.com; the poem comes about two-thirds of the way in.

American Pickers, The History Chan- nel's reality show about antique hunters, had an episode airing December 19, 2011, called "The Mad Catter," which featured the original papier-mache and clay

model for Dinah on the Central Park Alice statue. (The show streams on Netflix, so as soon as Season 3 is released, it should be rentable there and elsewhere.)

An episode of CS/ which aired on March 21 might well have been called "When Wonderland-themed weddings go wrong." In the epi- sode (boringly called "Malice in Wonderland"), the team are called to the scene of an "Alice in Won- derland" wedding in Las Vegas, which has been tragically inter- rupted by a white rabbit and a Cheshire cat wielding assault rifles.

ABC's fantasy drama Once Upon a Time also took a Wonderland theme for an episode called "Hat Trick" on March 25. Lead character Emma, who is able to pass between fairy tale New England and the more familiar version, is given drugged tea and abducted by a man in a top hat, and in the course of her imprisonment learns just what it was that drove him mad.

In George R. R. Martin's classic 1996 fantasy novel A Game of Thrones, "grumpkins and snarks" are mentioned as make-believe monsters used to frighten children. Although it's a minor detail, it's no doubt a nice nod from Martin to Carroll. Since the book was adapted into a beloved HBO series last year, now available on DVD, you can now hear the word enunciated with satisfying condescension by the excellent actor Peter Dinklage: "Ah, ah, yes, yes, [protect the realm] against grumpkins and snarks and all the other monsters your wet nurse warned you about."

MUSIC

The world wished a happy 75th un-Unbirthday to composer David Del Tredici on March 16. The composer has used Carrollian influences heavily throughout his career, and several institutions celebrated his milestone with performances. Leonard Slatkin

(conducting) and Hila Plitman (soprano) reprised their rendition oi Final Alice (1976) on March 1 with the Detroit Symphony Orches- tra. Opera on Tap and American Opera Projects offered up two delicious nights of Alice-themed music on March 25 and 26 at the Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn, including the composer himself playing piano in his White Knight- flavored piece "Haddocks' Eyes" (1986), starring Amy van Roekel. Also on the program was a cirque/ burlesque performance by Rita MenWeep, excerpts from Manly Romero's opera Dreaming of Won- derland, and parts of Susan Botti's opera Wond^rglass.

So many Afe operas! And here's another one: Opera Theatre of Saint Louis presented the "much- anticipated" American premiere of Unsik Chin's opera Alic£ in Wonder- land, with a libretto by playwright David Henry Hwang. The European debut in 2011 was called "the world premiere of the year" by Opemwelt. Ashley Emerson will star as Alice, and Michael Christie conducted six performances between June 13 and 23, 2012.

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PERFORMING ARTS

Alice did not hesitate to join the dance in three recent ballet pro- ductions. The San Diego Ballet's Alice: Wonderland was performed at the Lyceum Theatre, San Diego, CA, on October 15 and 16. Di- rector and choreographer Javier Velasco incorporated hip hop dancers as a modern take on char- acter dances, not unlike the ma- zurkas and waltzes that are woven "into Swan Lake. At almost the same place and time, the California Ballet returned to an Alice in Won- derland choreographed by Charles Bennett, elder statesman of the American Ballet Theatre and New York City Ballet. First performed by the company in 1995, this pro- duction took place at the Poway Center for the Performing Arts

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in Poway, CA, also on October 15 and 16. Six months later and 2,500 miles away, the Washington Ballet performed the world premiere of their own artistic director Septime Webre's Alice (in Wonderland) at the Eisenhower Theatre in Wash- ington, D.C. The performance, which ran from April 11 to 15, was notable for Webre's choreography, for original music by composer Matthew Pierce, and for flamboy- ant costumes designed by Liz Van- dal, previously a designer for the Cirque du Soleil.

One the most famous actors in Australian cinema, Jack Thompson, has recorded a CD of Lewis Car- roll's poems. When interviewed on a Brisbane radio station last Novem- ber, Thompson traced the origins of his love for Carroll's verse to a happy encounter with 'You Are Old, Father William" at the age of six. A CD of the recordings can be purchased from www.finepoets.com for around $20.

A performance of "Jabberwocky" in American Sign Language, by Gabby Humlicek, wowed judges at the Iowa School for the Deaf and won her a place at the Poetry Out Loud state finals in Des Moines, lA. Humlicek readily admitted that it was "a really challenging poem" to turn into ASL but said that it helped that she was "a gregarious signer." Humlicek went on to com- pete with hearing students at the State final, which was won by Gwen Morrison from Marshal town with renditions of "Insomnia" by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and "The Black- stone Rangers" by Gwendolyn Brooks.

Snark in the Park was promised by Skin Horse Theater last March. The small theater company's adap>-

tation of The Hunting of the Snark was performed in the sculpture garden at the New Orleans Mu- seum of Art on March 10 and March 17. Evening performances {Snark in the Park after Dark!) took place at the Backyard Ballroom, also in New Orleans.

Last November in Wichita Falls, Texas, Midwestern State Univer- sity's McCoy School of Engineering collaborated with the school's theater department to present a new high-tech theater piece called Bandersnatch. The show used shadow puppets, mechanical cos- tumes, and other modern pup- petry techniques to tell a comedic story based on "Jabberwocky." It was written by Brandon Smith and Josh Blann, who wondered what became of the boy after "Jabber- wocky" ends, imagining him to have further monster-slaying ad- ventures.

The Manhattan Project, under the direction of Andre Gregory, cre- ated their classic avant-garde pro- duction of Alice in Wonderland in 1970. There was a new perfor- mance at the Greenbelt Arts Cen- ter in Greenbelt, Maryland, on November 27, 2011.

The acrobatic dance troupe Galumpha will be touring all over New York state this spring and sum- mer. The troupe was founded in 2002 and, though there is nothing whatsoever Carrollian in their performances, we have to admire their name.

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THINGS

Oh, how the flow of new Alice mer- chandise diminishes to a trickle only a few short years after a per- tinent Hollywood blockbuster! There are a couple of small items to be mentioned this issue, but in lieu of past bounty, we would like to take the opportunity to remind you of the existence of www.etsy. com. Etsy is an online market dedicated to independent artists and artisans. A search for "Alice in Wonderland" on the home-page yields, at last count, over 21,000 handmade gifts, for the most part attractive, unique, and reasonably priced. A sampling of yi&^inspired works on offer would include leath- erbound journals, button badges, sculpted soaps, and birthday party accessories. While handmade jew- elry and clothing abound, there are surprises too, such as an Alice in Wonderland embellished toilet seat. All in all, it's a great place to look for one-of-a-kind gifts for yourself, your loved ones, and the smallest room in your house.

Shabby Apple is an online clothing boutique with a youthfully vintage vibe. Their new Mad Hatter collec- tion includes Victorian-leaning lace dresses and full-length skirts with names like Frabjous Day (a bold print tea-dress) and Jabber- wocky (a black, pleated, floor- sweeping skirt).

The soft toy industry has moved on a long way since Roosevelt's name- sake bear. The Toy Vault Company is now making a Jabberwock plush doll, for sale on Amazon.com. The Jabberwock is artfully rendered with adorable snatchingjaws and posable limbs all ready to whiffle into a nursery near you.

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