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KNIGHT LETTER
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The Lewis Carroll Society of North America
Winter 2010
Volume II Issue 15
Number 85
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.
Submissions and suggestions for Serendipity and Sic Sic Sic
should be sent to andrewogus@mindspring.com.
Submissions and suggestions for From OurFar-Flung Correspondents
should be sent to FarFlungKnight@gmail.com.
© 2010 The Lewis Carroll Society of North America
ISSN 0193-886X
Sarah Adams-Kiddy, Editor in Chief
Mahendra Singh, Editor, The Rectory Umbrella
Sarah Adams-Kiddy ^ Ray Kiddy, Editors, Mischmasch
James Welsch 6^ Rachel Eley, Editors, From Our Far-Rung Correspondents
Mark Burstein, Production Editor
Andrew H. Ogus, Designer
THE LEWIS CARROLL SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA
President:
Mark Burstein, wrabbit@worldpassage.net
Vice-President:
Cindy Watte r, hedgehogccw@sbcglobal.net
Secretary:
Clare Imholtz, imholtz99@adantech.net
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
Barbara Adams, Ruth Berman, Angelica Carpenter, Bonnie Hagerman,
Alan Tannenbaum, Cindy Watter
On the cover: Secret Garden, digital collage by Adriana Peliano. Seepage 21.
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CONTENTS
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THe ReCTORY UMBRSLLA
Live from Lincoln Center
MARK BURSTEIN
Meeting Mr. Dodgson
ANDREW SELLON
Contemporary Sylvie and Bruno Reviews:
A Further Concatenation
CLARE IMHOLTZ
Alice Under Skies
CHRIS MATHESON
A Carrollian in Brazil: Adraina Peliano, Part One
ANDREW SELLON & MAHENDRA SINGH
Am L Blue?
MARK BURSTEIN
11
17
21
27
OF BOOKS AND THINGS
m
Evermore Everson 's Every type! 45
MARK BURSTEIN
Keith Shepard's Wonderland Revisited,
and the Games Alice Played There 46
SARAH ADAMS- KIDDY
J. T. Holden 's Alice in Verse:
The Lost Rhymes of Wonderland 46
HAYLEY RUSHING
Mahendra Singh's The Hunting of the Snark 47
STEPHANIE LOVETT
C. M. Rubin 's The Real Alice in Wonderland 48
RAY KIDDY
Nancy Wiley 's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland 48
RAY KIDDY
MISCHMASCH
««
Leaves from the Deanery Garden — Sic, Sic, Sic
Serendipity — Ravings from the Writing Desk 31
What 's a Snark ? 35
MARKJARMON
Lewis Carroll Tests Outfabberwocky 3®
JENN THORSON
CARROLLIAN NOTGS
m
The Antipathies, I Think —
LESTER R. DICKEY
Alice Speaks
DAVID SCHAEFER
38
38
Guildford: A Lewis Carroll Society Study Weekend 40
AUGUST A. IMHOLTZ, JR.
The Oxford Experience:
Edward Wakeling at Christ Church 43
ANN BUKI
Katherine Neville's "En Passant" 49
AUGUST IMHOLTZ, JR.
Jan Susina 's The Place of Lewis Carroll
in Children's Literature 49
CLARE IMHOLTZ
Maxim Mitrofanov 's Alisa v Zazerkale 5 1
AUGUSTA. IMHOLTZ, JR.
Gavin O 'Keefe 's Through the Looking-Glass 5 1
ANDREW OGUS
11th Hour Ensemble 's Alice 5 *
JAMES WELSCH
FROM OUR FAR-FLUNG
CORReSPONDSNTS
M
Art & Illustration — Articles (sf Academia
Books — Cyberspace — Events, Exhibits, (sf Places
Movies 6f Television — Performing Arts — Things
53
ediTOKial
•1^:::^
» "* r\^f^J>^ ^^-^
^^-
1
e
''his issue takes us all over the world . . . from
Brazil, where we interview Adriana Peliano,
artist and president of the Sociedade Lewis
Carroll do Brasil, to England, where Ann Buki de-
scribes Edward Wakeling's class and August Imholtz,
Jr., reports on LCS (UK) activities in Guildford, to
Russia for a review of a new version of Through the
Looking-Glass illustrated by Maxim Mitrofanov and,
finally, Lester Dickey's article takes us to the Antipa-
thies!
Next, Andrew Sellon expands the talk he gave
at the fall meeting to explain how he grew up with
Lewis Carroll, rediscovered him in acting school, and
ultimately became the president of the LCSNA. This
is the first in what we hope will be an ongoing series
of articles written by members about how they first
discovered or were introduced to the works of Lewis
Carroll. Do you have a story you'd like to share?
We also have for you "Alice Under Skies," Chris
Matheson's thoughts on Looking-Glass, a companion
to his article on Wonderland, "Lewis Carroll: The King
of Comedy," in our previous issue. Two short fiction
pieces, "What's a Snark?" and "Lewis Carroll Tests Out
'Jabberwocky'" come to us from Mark Jarmon and
Jenn Thorson, respectively. Clare Imholtz provides
us with further Sylvie and Bruno reviews, and David
Schaefer adds to our knowledge of Alice filmography
with "Alice Speaks."
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this is-
sue is that for the first time we have color pictures!
New LCSNA president Mark Burstein's article "Am I
Blue?" discusses the changing colors of Alice's dress
in various early editions of Wonderland. While we did
consider sending each member a box of crayons with
which to fill in the colors (but only after we'd realized
that the Knight L^ff^- staff just didn't have time to wa-
tercolor every issue, sorry!), we finally settled on hav-
ing our printer include a small color section. Please
do let us know if you like it!
On a personal note, having taken on the editor-
in-chief position last issue, I must temporarily hand it
off again. As some of you already know, Ray and I are
expecting Tweedles, I mean twins, in February. Fortu-
nately, the capable hands of Mahendra Singh, editor
of the Rectory Umbrella section and Snark illustrator
extraordinaire, are available, and our excellent staff
of Andrew Ogus, Mark Burstein, James Welch, and
Rachel Eley, as well as our miscellany of reviewers and
Far-Flung contributors, are there to back him up. But
this team can always use a little extra help, if you'd
like to volunteer.
Like the Cheshire Cat, I will return when you
least expect it, but for now, I disappear, leaving only
a grin.
SARAH ADAMS- KIDDY
IV
THe ReCTORY UMBRBLLA
Our fabulous Fall 2010 meeting in New York
City began in the traditional manner. Here
is that story, in the words of Mary Schaefer:
"The Maxine Schaefer Memorial Children's
Reading was held Friday morning, November 5, at
the Earth School on Manhattan's Lower East Side.
Twenty-five fourth- and fifth-grade students and their
teachers were present, as were several LCSNA mem-
bers who were not direcdy involved in the reading,
but whose presence and participation are always a big
plus. Patt Griffin did the reading (the tea party). The
kids loved it — and they loved Patt's rendition! All of
them were familiar with Alice in movie or book form,
and a couple of them brought along copies that had
belonged to their grandparents or parents. A ques-
tion-and-answer period followed the reading, and the
questions were many and varied. (So Alice was a real
person? That was interesting news! And how about
Mr. Dodgson, who had two names! When did this take
place?) It was a fun reading for all of us."
For the main meeting on Saturday, Dr. Edward
Guiliano, a former president of our Society who is
now the president and CEO of the New York Insti-
tute of Technology, kindly provided us with the per-
fect meeting space, located within their Lincoln Cen-
ter campus. The technology, as one might expect,
was first-rate, with a number of wall-mounted video
flatscreens in flawless synch with the main one for our
presentations.
After being introduced by our president, An-
drew Sellon, Edward first welcomed the audience of
around 70, which included eight former or current
LCSNA presidents, Morton Cohen, and other lumi-
naries. The NYIT has about 15,000 students, repre-
senting 106 countries, with about half grad and half
undergrads. It is a "global university," with other cam-
puses in Canada, China, and the Middle East.
Edward's talk was entitled "Greetings, and a Few
Wise Words about Martin Gardner." Dr. Guiliano feels
that there were three pivotal events that accounted
for our presence there — a certain boat ride on July 4,
1862; the publication of The Annotated Alice in 1960,
which garnered academic acceptance of Carroll stud-
ies; and the founding of the LCSNA in 1974. Martin
Gardner was fully or partially responsible for two of
the three.
Edward is a renowned expert on Victorian litera-
ture, and he first regaled us with tales of what was read
back in those days, such as the bestselling, voluminous
The Last of the Mortimers by Mrs. Oliphant or Mary Eliz-
abeth Braddon's sensationalistic Lady Audley's Secret.
Both are now forgotten, but they were long consid-
ered suitable subjects for academic study, an honor
not accorded Mr. Carroll's works until 1964 (!) — and
only then thanks to the work of Martin Gardner. Ed-
ward described meeting Martin at the first LCSNA
gathering in 1974 and several other meetings over the
next five years, working with him a bit on Lewis Car-
roll Observed, and working together more substantively
on The Wasp in a Wig. Guiliano's tale of the discovery
of the manuscript and its purchase from Sotheby's by
Norman Armour was fascinating. Armour bought it as
an investment and didn't want to see it published — as
he thought that would diminish its value! Edward's
account of the negotiations between Clark(son) Pot-
ter and the Dodgson estate, in the person of Philip
Dodgson Jaques, over copyright issues, made it clear
that only by Martin's intervention and support (and
his eventual Introduction
to the volume) were things
resolved to everyone's satis-
faction.
Edward's talk will be the
basis for his contribution to
^^j^^BPP*' A Bouquet for the Gardner, a
^^^^ ^x^^^ Festschrift and collection of
^^^^■ffC^^^^ reminiscences that is slated
^^^^Hj^^ ^^^^ to be published by the LCS-
^^^HI^flH J^ NA and the LCS(U.K.) next
Edward Guiliano ygar. Its editor, the present
writer, then said a few more
words on that subject.
Our second speaker was the enormously talent-
ed, Toronto-based artist Oleg Lipchenko. His spec-
tacular illustrations to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
won the coveted Elizabeth Mrazik-Cleaver Award last
year, and he spoke about his current project in a talk
entided "Butcher in the Ruff: Rendering the Snark (A
Work in Progress)." He said that for hired illustrators,
"ignorance of the text" is one of the familiar publish-
ing customs. However, contrary to that philosophy,
he actually first read the Snark in the equivalent of
a plain text version, one with illustrations that had
"nothing to do with the text." Lipchenko feels that "a
dream is still a dream even if retold with a scientific
tongue." The poem's meaning is, of course, obscure,
with many possible interpre-
tations, none particularly
more truthful than the oth-
ers: "the game of Could Be."
Oleg thought of the Bell-
man as God, moving in mys-
terious ways, his intentions
inscrutable (and hence he
was given Dali's mustache).
His Banker is a bewhiskered
nineteenth-century capital-
• . .1 T> • * • J Olee Lipchencko
ist; the Barnster is gowned * ^
and bewigged, drawn from
life; the Broker a "young man in spats"; Boots a mys-
terious Wild West villain. He speculated that the po-
em's line "the ominous words 'It's a Boo — '" could
also be completed as "It's a Boo . . . ts" or "It's a Boo
. . . tcher." We very much look forward to seeing his
completed rendition in print. He has kindly given us
a preview; see inside back cover.
Adam Gopnik, the famed New Kwife^writer and es-
sayist {Paris to the Moon) last honored us with his witty
presence in 2006, when he discussed his introduc-
tion to Martin Gardner's new edition of The Annotated
Snark. Here he gave us "Looking-Glass and Broken
Mirror: Honoring the Spirit of Lewis Carroll." His far-
reaching mind took in a spectacularly wide variety of
topics, to say the least: nineteenth-century polar expe-
ditions (the Snark of discovering the North Pole, the
Boojum of the Great White Winter) ; his discovery as a
child of S. W. Erdnase's 1902 close-up magic "bible,"
The Expert at the Card Table, and the revelation in a pulp
magazine in 1949 of its (purported) true author in an
article by . . . Martin Gardner; how The Annotated Alice
grew "viral" and "infected other literature," including
the Beatles' "Cry Baby Cry" and "Lucy in the Sky with
Diamonds"; Nabokov's use of a chess puzzle in Speak,
Memory. Calling Disney's 1951 film "the work of the
devil, which should be quarantined from humankind"
due to its "saccharine betrayal," Gopnik also decried
the recent "surrealist/sentimental, bad reading" film
by Tim Burton with its "sublimation of sex."
Carroll, he said, must be seen as a comic writer, a
post-Renaissance poet of a realm that Gopnik calls "a
marvelous that knows itself as myth," the formal inves-
tigation of a "rule-bound imaginary world" that is cel-
ebrated in two domains: children's literature and the
usually dystopian science-fiction. "Comic" does not
mean just funny; it is the "vernacular of rationality."
Gopnik uses the term "comic" in an academic, struc-
tural sense: initially one finds the realm in order, it is
disrupted by an outside force ("common sense sent
dancing"), and in the end they are reconciled, a con-
struction that appears in everything from A Midsum-
mer Night's Dream to episodes of Seinfeld. Citing works
as seemingly diverse as Babar, From the Mixed-Up Files of
Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, The Wind in the Willows, and
Mary Poppins, he called the Alice books their "tonic
note, basis, genesis, and exodus."
Citing the work of his sister, Alison Gopnik, an
expert in cognitive and language development and
the author of The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learn-
ing Tells Us About the Mind and "The Real Reason Chil-
dren Love Fantasy" on Slate.com, he noted that what
Alice tested in Wonderland was "not normal order,
but consciousness." Her courage and common sense
were on trial, and she ended up with a new appre-
ciation for her own talents. "We genuinely have more
consciousness, curiosity, and are more aware as chil-
dren than we are ever again."
Speaking of the limits of pure reason, Gopnik
noted that in the course of Dodgson 's stay at Oxford,
the intellectual life of the university was changed
more profoundly than ever before or since. Begin-
ning as a finishing school for clergymen, Oxford
during these years saw an infusion of German philo-
Adam Gopnik
sophical idealism and the
need for pure research
that led to an enormous
turnabout in priorities.
Alice poked fun at the
follies of the "wise," meet-
ing characters who were
"dysfunctional intellectu-
als" spouting chains of
abstract reasoning, let-
ting the mind go as it will.
Gopnik concluded with a
reading from his new novel.
The Steps Across the Water, in which a young girl, Rose,
finds herself in a topsy-turvy, looking-glass world
called U Nork.
A break and feeding frenzy followed, with Alice
films showing on the flat screen televisions in the
main hall, while just outside it Messrs. Gopnik and
Lipchenko signed their books: Adam his The Steps
Across the Water (which he kindly arranged to have
available for sale and signing two weeks prior to the
book's release!) and Oleg his Wonderland ^.nd his new
Humpty Dumpty and Friends. A total of five books by
four of our speakers were available to attendees at a
discount, and all book sales were experdy handled
by NYIT's internal Barnes & Noble bookseller Shawn
Wiggans, and his amiable staff.
Next up was Jenny Woolf, author of Lewis Car-
roll in His Own Account: The Complete Bank Account of
the Reu. C. L. Dodgson (2005) and a recent biography,
The Mystery of Lewis Carroll: Discovering the Whimsical,
Thoughtful, and Sometimes Lonely Man Who Created Al-
ice in Wonderland, who gave a talk entitled "Viewing
Lewis Carroll as a Real Person." She said her main
ambition in writing it was to give a picture of Charles
Dodgson as a person in the context of his time and, to
a lesser degree, to counter the "unsatisfactory biog-
raphies in which ideas were presented as fact" — for
example, did Alice Liddell really have a "gentle na-
ture"? Could Dodgson be thought of as a foster fa-
ther? (she already had a perfectly good one). Woolf
believes that many of these books were "pictures of
biographers' agendas, but not of Dodgson the human
being"; there was no need for them to fill in gaps with
pure conjecture.
Ms. Woolf gave a fine example of cultural con-
text: Suppose a nineteenth-century gendeman were
to walk into this very meeting; he would be scandal-
ized! Free fraternizing among men and women who
had not been properly introduced, the women wear-
ing skirts showing their legs, some above the knees:
clearly these were prostitutes gearing up for an orgy!
Similarly, we can be shocked by something they took
for granted, such as the artistic depletion of naked
children. It's all relative.
She described Dodgson as a "complex personage
with a tendency to joke about difficult things and who
loved to 'perform' for children and intimates." There
are certainly dark and disturbing moments in the Al-
tc^ books; his genius was in transforming feelings such
as these into entertainment. She spoke of the time
around the composition of the Snark, when he was
nursing his nephew and godson.Charlie Wilcox, who
was suffering from tuberculosis. Jenny speculated
that a "crew of eight" (Dodgson, his six sisters, and
his nephew) in search of the ineffable may have been
the inspiration for the poem, pointing out that TB
creates agony, and comes in fits and starts, leaving its
victim to softiy and suddenly vanish away.
Woolf then discussed the time around the com-
position of Looking-Glass. It was written in a colder,
more isolated time, when a warm audience of chil-
dren existed only in his imagination. It was a sad time
for Carroll: he had lost contact with the Liddells, and
his beloved father had died in 1868. The family had
to leave Croft-on-Tees, and Dodgson was now respon-
sible for his ten siblings.
She discussed other aspects of his personality:
For instance, was he a control freak or laid-back? She
said there was an "element of caricature in his fussi-
ness," and called him "a bit of a blonde." From her
breakthrough studies of his bank accounts, she noted
both carelessness and meticulousness, with lots of red
ink. He was uninsured, not the "reliable old codger"
we sometimes assume him to be but a "careless, emo-
tional man who kept himself in order by rules and
regulations." Jenny then read excerpts from his let-
ter to Mrs. Liddell on
the occasion of the
dean's retirement,
suggesting that it had
a "tongue-in-cheek
quality" that is often
overlooked.
She reminded E^^^^^^^H ^^i
us that Dodgson was
"realistic, raised on a
farm, had a practical
medical library, and y^„„^ Woolf
never shrank away
from the physical." As a child, he was "clever to the
point of being devious," but was offered moral guid-
ance by his family. His sense of personal identity was
very much tied in to his family, especially his father's
deUght in his children (unusual for the time). In con-
clusion, Woolf felt Dodgson was "complex, individual-
istic, with a need to entertain, to be involved. He was
lucky in life, free of tribulation, a happy and success-
ful human being; boxing him into his conventional,
dreary role is a disservice."
Next, "The Real Alice Liddell: A Conversation
with Pictures" took the form of an interview, with An-
drew Sellon taking the moderator's stance and the
delightful Cathy Rubin, author of The Real Alice in
Wonderland: A Role Model far the Ages, as the subject.
Describing herself as a "distant relative," she first
talked about her youthful tea parties with her great-
aunt Phil, a child of Lionel, Alice Liddell's brother, as
well as with Mary-Jean St. Clair (Alice's granddaugh-
ter) and Mary-Jean's daughter, Vanessa St. Clair, all of
whom were "part of the fabric of her [Cathy's] life."
Inspired in part by the 2001 Sotheby's auction {KL
66:16), she and her daughter Gabriella traveled to
Oxford, where they were given a personal tour by the
Dean of Christ Church. Cathy treated us to a slide
show of these events, and of July 4th "Alice Day"s in
both Oxford and Lyndhurst.
Mrs. Rubin
e -^^^■^■i noted that, contrary
to popular myth,
.§ ^^^^H^^ * Mrs. Hargreaves cel-
ebrated having been
the original Alice.
She owned a total
of 370 copies of the
book, half of which
were sent to her by
Dodgson, and many
Cathy Rubin of which she signed
"Alice in Wonder-
land." Alice Hargreaves was a humanitarian, a muse,
and, primarily, an artist, a visual thinker: hence Cathy
and Gabriella's highly illustrated book, which Cathy
called "documentary storytelling," incorporating the
taste and look of Victorian England. Her many stories
about its composition — including how Annie Leibo-
vitz was inspired by Dodgson 's being a photographer,
how she and Gabriella found a period designer to re-
create the dress Alice wore to her wedding at West-
minster Abbey, and the curse of the Cuffnells fire-
place— ^were all warmly and generously spliced with
anecdotes about the artists, auctioneers, and collec-
tors she met along the way.
Our second feeding frenzy featured book signings
by Mmes. Rubin and Woolf, as well as by Mahendra
Singh, signing his delightful, just published Snark {see
review on page 47) .
The chairman of the nominating committee,
August A. Imholtz, Jr., next ascended the podium to
present the slate for officers for the next two years
(incumbents are asterisked):
President: Mark Burstein
Vice-President: Cindy Watter*
Secretary: Clare Imholtz*
Treasurer: Fran Abeles*
Elected Directors: Matt Demakos,* Ellie Schaefer-
Salins,* Germaine Weaver, James Welsch
(Anyone curious about the difference between
the governing board, the advisory board, and the di-
rectors is referred to our Constitution, which is under
"About Us" on our website and was most recentiy pub-
lished in XL 52:6.)
The slate was elected by acclamation. The new
president took the stand to say a few words, thank-
ing Andrew for his outstanding service, and manag-
ing to slip in a reference to his beloved San Francisco
Giants, who had just won the World Series earlier in
the week. He reintroduced August, who presented
Andrew with a lovely fountain pen and a botde of ink
(purple, of course) as tokens of our gratitude.
"Meeting Mr. Dodgson: One CarroUian's Jour-
ney," which followed, was Andrew Sellon's warm, very
witty, and occasionally poignant account of his life as
an actor and how he came to be a Carrollian. Fortu-
nately for us, his talk immediately follows this article,
so is not recapped here.
A fine dinner at the nearby Josephina restaurant
was followed by a convivial after-party at Janet Jurist's.
The next day many of us found ourselves on strange,
convoluted journeys trying to reach airports despite
the New York City Marathon, which effectively shut
down the East Side of Manhattan — as if New York (or
were we actually in U Nork?) needed any further cha-
os. Happily, we had new books and heads full of new
ideas to pass the time.
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ANDREW SELLON
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^-
"W 'While I've been a member of this Society
\ #% # for many years now, it occurs to me that
Ji^C Jfc^very few of you know much of anything
about me. In this age of social networking and business
transparency, I feel it my duty to point out that, for all
you know, for the last four years you
left the Society in the hands of a smil-
ing avatar that masks a raving lunatic.
While you were all cheerfully read-
ing your issues of the Knight Letter,
I might have been quietly draining
the coffers and taking private jets to
clandestine tea parties at the Binsey
Well. Well in, indeed! Now, many of
you do know that I'm a professional
actor. You all have some idea of the
romance of being an actor, I suppose.
It's very exciting. Just a few days be-
fore our fall meeting, I was one of
many middle-aged actors called in to
audition for the role of a nerdy ac-
countant whose life is transformed by
drinking a certain brand of orange
juice. Each of us auditioning was told
to show up in mismatched clothing,
and when we arrived, we were cov-
ered with plastic kisses and asked to
make faces shamelessly for the cam-
era. I'm so glad I invested in an MFA.
Anyway, with true looking-glass logic,
it occurs to me that now that my pres-
idency is over, it's time we met prop-
erly. There are too many of you out
there for me to travel around the globe to say "How
d'ye do," and shake hands in person, but we'll con-
sider that done. And please do keep in mind: Once
we've been formally introduced, you can't eat me.
So first of all, what ^af^I been doing the past four
years? I've done a lot of the Maxine Schaefer read-
ings. I've done Q&A talkbacks after performances of
Carroll-themed plays, and I recently gave the keynote
lecture for a CarroUian symposium at Saint Peter's
College English Club. I've negotiated and rewritten
hotel contracts, lobbied for meeting spaces (aided by
Janet Jurist and the gang), charmed potential speak-
Andrew Sellon as Lewis Carroll in Through
the Looking-Glass Darkly
ers with smiles and soap, and haggled with restau-
rants about what we want to eat, what we don't want
to eat, and what we're willing to pay. I've arranged
for book signings, and membership and meeting me-
mentos, and other things that begin with an "m." I've
answered lots of questions
on a mind-boggling array
of Carroll-related topics,
some of them really out
there. I'm still puzzling
over the request for us
to file an amicus brief on
behalf of an artist in Cali-
fornia who makes art in-
stallations out of junked
cars, because, according
to the requestor, "Lewis
Carroll also wasn't appre-
ciated until much later."
Thanks for writing, and
good luck with those
wrecks. I mean artworks.
I also provided an expert
answer on the origin of
the word "snark" (guess
who) to the good folks
at Who Wants to Be a Mil-
lionaire, but I don't know
if they ever stumped any-
one with the answer. And
of course, I've done count-
less interviews over the
past four years, including
a bumper crop leading up to the Tim Burton film.
I've been quoted, paraphrased, and in that greatjour-
nalistic tradition, misquoted.
One question has come up time after time (aside
from the relentless bleat of the great unread: "Was
Lewis Carroll really a drug-addled pedophile?"). Sim-
ply put: How did I get here? How did I fall down the figu-
rative rabbit-hole and end up a Lewis Carroll fan, and
president of this organization? Reporters evidently
felt my personal experience would be a "way in" for
their readers. Or perhaps they were hoping I'd pro-
duce a scandalous back story that would blow their
readers away and make them overnight rock stars. No
such luck. But it occurs to me that sharing my story
may prompt you all to look back on, and perhaps in
future share, your own stories, possibly for the Knight
Letter and our website (more on this soon). I urge you
to share your story, most especially with the genera-
tions that follow us, since they're the ones who will
need to carry the banner for Mr. Dodgson and for
literacy after we've all softly and suddenly vanished
away. So yes, I'm freely confessing an ulterior motive
here. As you'll learn, my association with the Carroll
Society has been fraught with ulterior motives, a mas-
sive conspiracy, and a truly insidious cover-up. Now,
at long last, I will unmask the
people behind it all.
"Begin at the beginning
. . ." Hmmm. Do you remem- I
ber your first exposure to the
Alice books? I have no idea. I
remember having the litde Dis-
ney Golden Books in hardcover,
well-thumbed by my three older i
siblings. I also recall having an
old vinyl LP of performers read-
ing segments of Wonderland to
classical music themes. I did
a quick search on our global
cultural archive (also known as
eBay) , and of course pulled up
a copy of the Talespinners LP,
which I promptly bought in a fit
of sheer nostalgia. I remember
thinking as a child that the cov-
er was very adult and trippy. I
would listen to that LP over and
over with the volume turned
up, mouthing the words, and feel-
ing as though I a;a5 Alice. Gender has never really been
a bother for me. I was unquestionably m Wonderland,
because the sound of it was all around me. So my first
sense of being in Wonderland actually may have been
an auditory one. But as to when I first sat down and
read (or had read to me) the two original books, I draw
a perfect and absolute blank.
That part of my background hardly qualified me
for the presidency of the LCSNA. I'm just another
one of the millions for whom the Alice books and
characters seem to have always been present, as if we
were all born with a deluxe two-volume slipcased edi-
tion beside our bassinets. As a side note: I also don't
remember when I first encountered The Hunting of the
Snark, I just remember it was love at first reading. To
this day I remain puzzled as to it isn't as widely known
and loved as the Alices. Must be that less-than-happy
ending. I imagine that if Disney and/or Tim Bur-
ton made a film of it, the landscape would change.
In this existentially inclined age, perhaps the Snark 's
Andrew Sellon as Humpty-Dumpty in Looking-Glass
hour has come 'round at last, and even as I speak,
it's slouching toward Hollywood, a star waiting to be
born. Oleg Lipchenko and Mahendra Singh are cer-
tainly doing their part to promote it.
So, what was it about the man himself? Why did
I go looking for him, and how did that lead to my
becoming president? My parents were good about
teaching me the importance of reeling and writhing,
and respect for authors, so I was aware early on that
some magician named Lewis Carroll wrote my favorite
books. (I was also aware that the Disney studio couldn't
spell very well.) Anyway, I knew that Lewis Carroll had
been at Oxford, and that it was a pen name, and all
the other basic
information and/
or misinformation
and myth that we
all first absorb
about Mr. Dodg-
son without even
trying.
But maybe it's
appropriate that
acting is what led
me to meet the
man himself and
to be writing this
now. I've been on
stage regularly
since the age of
fourteen, when I
played the role of
Malvolio in our
high school's pro-
duction of Twelfth
Night. I'm not
counting my actu-
al stage debut: a single performance of an original play
in my sister's friend's basement when I was about 9; I
appeared for one scene as a litde girl suspected of her
father's murder. My sister and her friend couldn't find
anyone to play the role, and I campaigned mightily for
it, saying I didn't care about wearing the dress, I just
wanted to be onstage. I haven't changed. Over 30-plus
years, I've been onstage in and out of some very bizarre
costumes, including that of a three-headed mouse
prince, a unicorn, and a certain irritable egg — both
of the latter in member Rick Lake's musical Looking-
Glass! 2Lt Harvard (with music by Michael Levine). But
at some point in my career, after I'd graduated from
Harvard and had been landing some non-union act-
ing work around the country, I realized I needed some
formal training. So at the rather late age of 30, 1 audi-
tioned for graduate acting programs, never suspecting
that I was, in fact, actually going down the rabbit-hole.
At most of the grad school auditions I attended,
I was viewed as something of an anomaly, or to be
more blunt, a fossil; I remember waiting at Juilliard
beside another hopeful, a fresh-faced 17-year-old who
had come directly from her cheerleading practice.
I landed in a demanding three-year master's degree
program down at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill, a place where they thought being out in
the world a few years was actually a good credential for
graduate studies. Imagine. At the end of my second
year, just before summer break, we were assigned our
"senior project" for the coming year. We had to write,
direct, design, and perform a one-person show on
our choice of topic. A couple of my classmates went
into complete panic mode. I was actually excited; I
had written a number of plays and musicals over the
years, including a Hasty Pudding show at Harvard.
And although I hadn't read the Alice books in some
time, I knew immediately that I wanted to spend my
summer vacation with the man behind the name
"Lewis Carroll."
I discovered that the UNC libraries had a frab-
jous selection of scholarly Carroll books. I walked
into my favorite used bookstore on Chapel Hill's
Franklin Street, and found a copy of Morton Co-
hen's two-volume Letters of Lewis Carroll, a copy of
Stuart Dodgson Collingwood's biography (I mean,
what were the chances?), and the Dover paperback
of Helmut Gernsheim's Lewis Carroll, Photographer.
Photography is my hobby, too, so I was blown away
to discover this additional connection between myself
and Mr. Dodgson. It just seemed like fate. I contacted
the Ackland Art Museum on campus and learned
that they had coincidentally just acquired their first
Dodgson photograph, an image titled "Xie Kitchen
Seated in a Turner's Chair." To my astonishment, the
kind curator invited me over to see the photograph,
even though it was not yet officially on display. When
I arrived for my appointment, she conducted me to a
conference room. She noted that I shouldn't touch
the image, but invited me to take as long as I wanted
viewing it, and said she thought I might want to have
time with it alone. I walked into the old room with
its elegant moldings and endless white bookshelves.
At the other end of a long, polished mahogany ta-
ble was a single photograph placed on a small easel.
It wasn't under glass or anything. It was just sitting
there. And I was alone with it. If the windows in that
room had been the kind you could open, this might
have been a crime story. As it was, I contented my-
self with viewing the image. It was remarkable: crisp,
specific, intriguing — and smelly. To my astonishment,
as I leaned in for a closer look, I recognized the un-
mistakable aroma of darkroom chemicals! If you've
ever printed photographs by hand, you know that
smell. I think I stopped breathing for a moment. It
was as if the image had just come from the darkroom,
as if the photographer himself might be just on the
other side of the door working on another print and
might come through, shirtsleeves rolled up to the el-
bows, brandishing another still-damp print with a pair
of wooden tongs. I don't remember how long I was
there; I know I was immensely grateful, reluctant to
leave, and somehow converted in some way. I felt that
I had come very close to meeting the man himself
That summer, the more I read about Mr. Dodg-
son, the more fascinated I became. Especially by the
contradictions! Those were theatrical gold. A complex
portrait of a man was beginning to appear before me,
a man about whom it seemed many nonsensical things
had been said and written, at least given the facts avail-
able. Then one day I was in the hallway between grad
school classes, and a big, black crow flew overhead: A
couple of the students a year behind me asked whom
I'd chosen as the subject of my play. I told them that
I was having a wonderful time exploring the life of
Lewis Carroll. One of them, whom I will call Barbara
(because that's her name), was an outspoken feminist
with a hair-trigger sense of moral outrage. She imme-
diately said, "How could you write a play about him?
You know what he was, what he did? How could you
write a play about that pervert??" I said to her: "I'm
writing this play in part because I think he deserves a
fair hearing. How much do you know about his life,
really?" She admitted she knew nothing. "Then how
can you be so sure of what he did or didn't do?" She's
a very bright woman; I had her there. I said: "Wait and
see my play. Then you can decide."
In the course of my questing, I came across an
organization called the Lewis Carroll Society of North
America. This was back in 1992, so somehow I found
out about the group without the aid of the now-ubiq-
uitous Internet. It must have involved pieces of paper
and stamps, or telephones, or something else terribly
antiquated. I also learned that the Society's then-pres-
ident, Charlie Lovett, lived in nearby Winston-Salem.
Again, it seemed like fate. But one of the incongruities
of my being an actor is that I had a very traditional,
Harold Pinter-esque New England upbringing, and
I'm actually a very private person. I have simply never
been good about getting out there and networking.
But I was sure that this Charlie Lovett person must
have some crucial guidance to offer, must know it all.
So, I summoned up all my nerve and wrote a letter to
explain my project and ask what resources I should be
consulting. I received a charming, chatty, handwritten
note back from Stephanie Lovett, decorated with Car-
rollian rubber stamp images. I collect rubber stamps.
Again, fate was whispering in my ear. It seemed that
they actually had a massive world-class collection in
their hom£. Stephanie said I should just plan to come
and have a look. In fact, she added, there was so much
to look at that I'd probably better plan to come visit
them on a weekend and spend the night.
I'm from Boston; I simply wasn't prepared for
this. My first thought was: How do they know I'm not
an axe murderer? My second thought was: Maybe
they're axe murderers. I mean, maybe this "society"
of theirs was a cover for some kind of poetry-spouting
sacrificial cult or something! My mind really does
work that way — ask my long-suffering partner, Tim
Sheahan. But in her reply, Stephanie had mentioned
having herbal tea together. I collect rubber stamps.
I drink herbal tea. I decided to risk it, even if their
cups might say "Drink Me." I descended on Winston-
Salem. I have no idea what they must have thought of
me, and I hope they won't tell me or anyone else now!
But to say that I was bowled over by their generosity
and kindness would be to grossly understate the mat-
ter. Charlie showed me so many books, so many won-
derful objects, including a camera just like the one
Mr. Dodgson used. I had herbal tea with Stephanie,
and we compared rubber stamp collections. I was in
some new kind of Wonderland, with adults every bit
as odd as me, eager to discuss and delight in the world
of Lewis Carroll over a cup of chamomile tea. These
people were fans, like me. I left there feeling as if I'd
just had a crash course in Charles Dodgson, and that
I'd made two new friends. And not for a minute did I
suspect their ulterior motive, their utterly subversive
agenda. Or that they were not working alone.
Back at school, I wrote and rewrote my little one-
act play, piecing together Mr. Dodgson 's own words
from all the various sources to tell the story of the
extraordinary relationship between a young Oxford
don and his even younger muse, and of the social con-
straints that shaped it. That winter, when the five of us
in my graduate class presented our solo shows at the
old PlayMakers theatre, Charlie and Stephanie were
in the audience. The play was very well received, and
Charlie and Stephanie couldn't have been more sup-
portive and encouraging. That meant a lot, because
I figured they knew. My fellow grad student Barbara
was there, too, of course. She came up to me after the
performance and said simply: 'You were right. I'm
sorry; I didn't know anything." I felt as if somehow
Mr. Dodgson and I had both been vindicated in the
face of a young, latter-day Mrs. Grundy. I also felt that
maybe my play had a positive impact on the people
who saw it.
After grad school, I moved back to New York City,
and stayed in touch with Charlie and Stephanie. I was
invited to attend LCSNA meetings, and I did so when
they were held in Manhattan. Again, I never for a mo-
ment heard the secret cogs and wheels churning un-
der the surface the whole time, never felt the invisible
net that was slowly and inexorably tightening around
me. Naive fellow that I was, I was content to meet cool
people like Morton Cohen, Hugues Lebailly, Nina
Demurova, Linda Sunshine, and Robert Sabuda, and
just enjoy the ride. In 1995, 1 performed a slightly al-
tered version of my play for the Society in a school-
room at Columbia University. To this day, I regret that
I was not able to stay and talk about it with members
afterward. I really wanted to hear feedback from the
experts, but fate in that case was not kind. My child-
hood best friend, Walter Hughes, had just died of
AIDS at the age of 34, and I had to take a cab from
that performance direcdy down to his memorial ser-
vice in midtown. I had so looked forward to giving
that play for a room full of Carrollians, but when the
day came, I had a very hard time getting through the
performance. In 2003, with help from Tim and my
friend Elizabeth London, and with your collective in-
dulgence, I presented a full-length, three-actor script
on the same theme, but with a lot more content than
the original one-act, trying to give equal weight to the
after-Alice years. But while we're all glad Dodgson had
a nice time at the beach, it seems it's the Alice years
and the Alice connection that still hold the magic for
audiences. That's where the drama is. I'm still tinker-
ing in my head, and after doing a production of the
play I Am My Own Wife, in which I played 35 different
characters of both sexes from all over the world in
two hours, I've decided to go back and write a full-
length solo version of my Carroll play, maybe in time
for 2012 or 2015.
In 1998, 1 went to the Carroll Centenary week at
Oxford, and found myself meeting amazing people
like Edward Wakeling, Selwyn Goodacre, Mark and
Catherine Richards, Anne Clarke Amor, Alan White,
artist Adriana Peliano, and, well, the list is almost end-
less. That week-long conference was incredible. We
all learned a lot. We stayed in Oxford rooms. We ate
in the Great Hall every day, long before Harry Potter
did. I also made a visit out to the nearby town of Bla-
don to visit artist Graham Piggott and his wife Corri.
I had loved the bust of Mr. Dodgson that the Soci-
ety commissioned Graham to make for presentation
to Morton Cohen (trivia fans may remember that I
appeared as Lewis Carroll to honor Morton at that
meeting) . I had written ahead and asked Graham to
make one for me. Of course, despite the fragility of his
porcelain works, I ended up going home with more
than one sculpture. And on a later trip, I went back
for more. So before I knew it, I was not only a scholar
in training, I was becoming a collector as well. Like a
cheerful Mephistopheles, Charlie Lovett reappeared
around that time, and sold me a first edition Looking-
Glass and Snark. The net was tightening again, and
I was now officially ensnared — or is that ensnarked?
I went to more Society meetings and found the
members to be helpful, clear-eyed, opinionated, and
fun. August and Clare Imholtz were always there, ready
with good ideas. Janet Jurist always had a few wise and
supportive words for me — and still does. Patt Griffin
Miller always got me smiling, and between us we've
ended up doing most of the readings for the Max-
ine Schaefer Memorial Outreach program. I can't say
enough about that program. If you haven't yet come
8
with us to one of the classrooms, seen and heard Car-
roll's words work their magic all over again for a new
generation, and listened to the children's remarkable
questions and comments afterward, then you owe it
to yourself to go to the next one you possibly can. It
will do your heart good. Not to put too fine a point
on it, the pundits who say, "The Alice books weren't
really written for children" have their heads up their
well-read posteriors. My favorite child question so far
came from our Aurora, IL visit, when an eight-year-
old boy wondered aloud: "But if the Cheshire Cat
can make himself invisible, how do we know he's not
watching Alice the whole time?" Doctoral students,
start your engines.
Somewhere along
the way, I was invited
to join the Society's
Board. I guess in those
days I was still consid-
ered "young blood."
I had never been on
a board of anything;
I imagined people
in dark suits at a very
long table with a well-
sharpened pencil and
small white Dixie cup
in front of each seat —
sort of a corporate
mad tea party. But I
agreed, and dutifully
went to the board
meetings. I've said I'm
a private person, but if
you ask me to give my
opinion it's like invit- Andrew Sellon as the Unicom in Lookin
ing a vampire into your
home. For better or worse, I will always say exactly what
I think. So I spoke up if I had ideas, agreed or dis-
agreed, and no one laughed at me or booted me off
the Board. Again, I thought: Maybe I'm being help-
ful; I'll keep doing this for a bit.
And then it happened. A day came that seemed
like any other day until I received a phone call that
evening from August. He told me that he and Janet
were the nominating committee for officers, and that
they both felt I would make a good candidate to put
forth for president at the upcoming meeting. Char-
lie and Stephanie's wildly ingenious and utterly dia-
bolical plan suddenly unfurled itself in all its wicked
splendor. Or . . . wait. Perhaps, I realized too late, they
were merely the agents, and it was really August and
Clare all along. Charlie and Stephanie had delivered
me right into their waiting hands. I know, it really is al-
ways the innocent-looking ones. Anyway, I sure hadn't
seen it coming. But then I realized that most of the
people on the Board had already been president. So
I began to feel that it was perhaps my responsibility to
take a tour of duty for two years.
Almost immediately after the election, Mark
Burstein, who had partnered with the talented An-
drew Ogus to turn our newsletter into a beautiful
magazine, alerted me that, due to the recent birth
of his son, he needed to step down from his post as
editor in chief of the Knight Letter immediately. We
simply couldn't find anyone who both had the proper
credentials and was willing to shoulder the consid-
erable workload, so I ended up taking on that post,
too, and did that for three years. Now, Charlie Lovett
might say, "Oh, that's nothing, I did both when /was
president!" But he would
do it with tongue in cheek,
because he knows that the
Knight Letter is no longer a
few pages cut-and-pasted
together. It's now a 50-plus-
page, soul-consuming le-
viathan. Twice a year, like
clockwork, Tim would
begin circling around my
computer asking, "Is that
thing done yet?"
As we were approach-
ing the end of my two-year
term, I told August I hoped
he was lining up a suitable
replacement. He looked at
me with that quiet, genteel
horror of his, and said, "But
traditionally, our presidents
always serve two terms!"
They hadn't mentioned
that. But my respect for Au-
gust and Clare is so great, and
my Bostonian desire to be polite so strong, that I al-
lowed myself to be put forth again. I thought Tim was
going to kill me. But his love of Henry Irving and El-
len Terry, and me, and the fact that his father used
to quote Lewis Carroll regularly, all helped him sur-
vive my second term with his customary good humor.
Thank you for four years of patience, Tim!
Last fall, it became clear that we could no lon-
ger put off overhauling our wonderful old website,
created and maintained faithfully for many years by
Joel Birenbaum. Many members had wanted h to hap-
pen, but it hadn't. So, I stepped down as editor of
the Knight Letter and became leader of the website
project. I ended up becoming the main developer as
well. Volunteering can be difficult and time-consum-
ing, as many of you know. Ask Mark Richards over in
England. And of course, volunteering isn't ]ust about
doing the bits you like, it's about doing what you're
asked to do, and what needs to be done, when it needs
to be done. Happily, the vast majority of our volun-
g-Glass!
teers came through in a big way. Sometimes it was
people I've never met, and may never meet. That's
what I love about this Society. I was so impressed by
the generosity of effort, and I was grateful, too. The
new website, complete with our updated blog, is truly
a collaborative project, just as it should be. I'm proud
that in addition to classic illustrations, our new site
displays beautiful Alice-themed artworks by our own
members. Their art is so gorgeous that I wish I could
afford to buy it all and create a gallery in my house!
But in a way, our site is that gallery, and this way we're
sharing it with the world, and I'm not broke.
So in closing, here's the crucial thing you need to
understand about the effect Mr. Dodgson has had on
my life: I'm not by nature a selfless person. I'm also
no one special; I'm just someone who used to sit in
the very seats you sit in when you come to one of our
meetings. Yet for the last four years, I have had before
me a larger goal: to do right by all of you, and most
importantly to do right by Mr. Dodgson. I genuinely
appreciate all the opportunities for learning that I've
had over the last four years. Looking back, I could
point to the frustrations and challenges, but I would
prefer to point to the triumphs, and most of all to the
fact that, as a group, we made it past many challenges
to arrive at where we are today. I feel that by working
together over the past four years, we've all come a few
steps closer to meeting Mr. Dodgson. And in a mor-
dant way, he would no doubt agree! But then, I also
don't kid myself; one way or another, most of it would
probably have happened without me, because you're
a good bunch. So I will just say that while I've been
president, we've gotten somewhere. As the Cheshire
Cat says, "you're sure to do that, if you only walk long
enough."
I can also share something with you now that I
could not share with all the good folks who were able
to attend our fall meeting. In the weeks leading up
to the meeting, my beloved 88-year-old father was in
failing health. By the day of the meeting, I was await-
ing news from my sister that would simply go one way
or the other. He passed away peacefully in his sleep
two days after the meeting. But I realized that his last
illness may have been one of the reasons I chose to
share my story with you all, just as Charlie Wilcox's ill-
ness so affected Mr. Dodgson that he had to put pen
to paper and acknowledge the possible existence of
Boojums. My father was the man who gave me that
Talespinners LP. He was the man who used to quote
Lewis Carroll freely to us children with a twinkle in
his eye. Who was always putting a good book in my
path, under the correct assumption that I would de-
vour it. Who loved a good story as much as anyone
I've ever known. What message did he leave behind?
Don't just sit in the chair. Participate, volunteer, share
your own stories, and mentor the next generation in
the love of great writing. Don't assume that someone
else will. Do it today.
The King of Hearts gave even more helpful ad-
vice than the Cheshire Cat, of course: "go on till you
come to the end: then stop." For, whatever this four-
year dream has meant, I've walked long enough, and
it's my time to stop. Mr. Dodgson once wrote that
"There is a sadness at coming to the end of anything
in life." I would add that there is also peace. And grati-
tude. Thank you all. I wouldn't have missed it for all
the tea in Wonderland.
Rhymes With Orange Hilary B. Price
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^
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^
Contemporary Sylvie and Bruno Reviews:
A FURTHER CONCATENATION
CLARE IMHOLTZ
^^■^V,
^^^
■^^^
^
Continuing a series begun in KL 62, present-
ed here are nine contemporary reviews of
Sylvie and Bruno (SB), ten of SB Concluded,
two of both books, two of the People's edition (1898),
and five of The Story of Sylvie and Bruno (1904), an
abridged version prepared by Carroll's brother Wil-
fred. The reviews are lively, for the most part, and the
writers' comments show a vast divide, from ecstatic to
withering. It is interesting that the characters of Sylvie
and Bruno, particularly Bruno, are appreciated, even
when the books as a whole are not.
publishers' circular (U.K.) DECEMBER 31, 1889,
p. 58
SB is listed under New Works, with a sort of mini-re-
view: Odd ideas and fragments of dialogue made into
a kind of story, the scene oscillating between fairy-
land and this world of ours, upon the many weak-
nesses and conceits of which the author is somewhat
severe. [What a fascinating little review this is: it focuses
on oddity and morals and doesn't even attempt to describe
the book's narrative ("a kind of story"), characters, intended
audience, poems, humor, etc.]
JOURNAL OF EDUCATION (U.K.) JANUARY 1, 189O,
P. 30
"I do not know if 'Alice in Wonderland' was an original
story — I was, at least, no conscious imitator in writing
it — but I do know that, since it came out, something
like a dozen storybooks have appeared on identically
the same pattern. The path I timidly explored — be-
lieving myself to be 'the first that ever burst into that
silent sea' — is now a beaten high-road: all the wayside
flowers have long ago been trampled into the dust:
and it would be courting disaster for me to attempt
that style again."
"Stokes hints blue, straight he turde eats:
"Nokes prints blue, champagne crowns his feasts"
"Flower in the crannied wall."
Tennyson, Browning, Lewis Carroll,* one queru-
lously high, one deeply, sadly low, all echo the same
complaint. It is a world of imitators, copyists, plagia-
rists. But if we may borrow a CarroUian turn, because
another has borrowed your skin, it is none the easier
for that to leap out of your own skin. Our author has
tried to doff the sock and don the buskin; but except
in the Preface, which seems modelled on A.K.H.B.,**
and treats, among other things, of expurgated edi-
tions of Shakespeare, the morality of field sports, in-
spiration and dreams, and the ancient ideas of the
afterworld, he has fortunately failed, and Sylvie and
Bruno move in the same mad world, the world of top-
sy-turvydom governed by the logic of Dreamland, as
"Alice." Who but the author of "Alice," or a plagiarist,
would have written? —
"He thought he saw an elephant.
That practiced on a fife ;
He looked again and found it was
A letter from his wife ;
At length I realize, he said.
The bitterness of life."
Even in "Alice" there was an undertone of mel-
ancholy, and "Sylvie and Bruno" is composed almost
wholly in the minor key; but there are flashes of the
same delightful humour — "'Remember,' says Sylvie,
'it's the early bird that picks up the worm.' 'It may, if it
likes!' Bruno said, with a slight yawn; 'I don't like eat-
ing worms one bit. I always stop in bed until the early
bird has picked them up!'" Mr. Tenniel's mantle has
fallen on Mr. Furniss, and the illustrations are not the
least charming part of the book.
* The quotations are from (1) Carroll, Preface to SB; (2)
Browning, "Popularity" (except that the last half of the last
line should read "claret crowns his cup"); (3) Tennyson,
from his poem tlius titled.
** A reference to Arthur Kennedy Hutchison Boyd, a Scottish
cleric and author oi Recreations of a Country Parson (1862), a
book filled with serious and moralistic reflections, which
he contributed serially to Eraser's Magazine •m\h his initials
attached.
PUNCH (U.K.) JANUARY 4, 189O, VOL. 98, P. lO
Once upon a time Mr. Lewis Carroll wrote a mar-
velously grotesque, fantastic, and humorous book
called Alice in Wonderland, and on another occasion
he wrote Through the Looking-Glass, in which Alice reap-
peared, and then the spring of Mr. Lewis Carroll's
fanciful humour apparendy dried up, for he has
done nothing since worth mentioning in the same
breath with his first two works; and if his writings
11
have been by comparison watery; unlike water, they
have never risen by inherent quality to their original
level. Of his latest book, called Sylvie and Bruno, I can
make neither head nor tale. It seems a muddle of all
sorts, including a little bit of Bible thrown in. It will be
bought, because Lewis Carroll's name is to it, and
it will be enjoyed for the sake of Mr. Furniss's excel-
lent illustrations, but for no other reason that I can
see. I feel inclined to carol to Carroll, "O don't you
remember sweet Alice?" and, if so, please be good
enough to wake her up again, if you can.
THE INDEPENDENT (U.S.) FEBRUARY 20, 189O,
VOL. 42, NO. 2151, P. 21
Whether or not this book will delight children is de-
pendent on the fashion with children when it comes
to their hands; for we all know how amusement runs
in epidemics among the bright little ones; but it
seems to us that there must be a sort of perennial and
universal fascination in pages so filled with admiring
oddities, mirth-provoking incidents and engaging
drollery. Lewis Carroll is a name beloved of children,
and grown-up folks as well, and this hotch-potch en-
tided Sylvie and Bruno is not the least amusing of his
works. Nor is it merely amusing; the receptive young
mind will take many valuable impressions from its pag-
es and catch vivid glimpses of things worth knowing,
along with kaleidoscopic combinations of the most
brilliant absurdities of humor. The book is beautifully
printed, attractively bound, and contains forty-six il-
lustrations by Harry Furniss; but no beauty of print
or of binding or of pictures can leave so deliciously
pure and lasting an impression as comes with reading
such a sketch as that where Sylvie chooses between
the jewel hearts offered her by the old King.
THE BOOK BUYER (U.S.) MARCH 189O, VOL. 7, NO. 2,
P. 65. [Includes illustration, "The Professor's Explanation"
(from p. 24)] .
Lewis Carroll, the author of the famous "Alice in Won-
derland," gives us in Sylvie and Bruno another book
that will delight the young folks. Mr. Carroll has made
a new departure in his story writing, feeling that so
many books have appeared on the same pattern as
"Alice in Wonderland," that it would be courting disas-
ter to attempt that style again. There are some droll
characters in the book, a musical gardener among
them, who supplies funny verses. The little girl and
boy, Sylvie and Bruno, have some strange adventures
while on their way to Fairyland. They met the King of
Dogland — an enormous New-Foundland — surround-
ed by his entire court. What a grand dog-show that
must be! The book will never have it so. The illustra-
tions by Harry Furniss are humorous and entertain-
ing. (Macmillan, 12mo, $L50).
MONTHLY PACKET (U.K.) MARCH 1, 189O, NO. Ill,
P. 266
Spider Isn't it delightful? Here's another of the Lewis
Caroll [sic] books, Sylvie and Bruno.
Arachne. Is it as quaintly droll as the rest? I suppose we
have yet to prove whether there are comicalities
that stick in one's memory like 'The Mock Turtle,'
or the Jabberwock on the Conventional signs in
the Map.
S. There is a gardener given to singing rhymes that
give one a vehement inclination to parody, as for
instance — [The reviewer quotes the "He thought he
saw a banker's clerk " stanza.]
And the picture, by Harry Furniss, is such a
delightful mixture of banker's clerk and hippo —
The story is an odd mixture, the wild, droll, fairy
part coming as a dream before a more matter-
of-fact set of scenes with a young doctor, who is
hopelessly in love with a Lady Muriel, bringing in
some graver thoughts. There is a preface in which
some other thoughts and wishes are brought in,
one for a Children's Shakespeare, which is all
very well, but another for a Children's Bible, leav-
ing out all the Judgments, such as the Flood. You
don't think that's right, do you?
A. Certainly not! A child will not love God the more
truly or nobly for not knowing the fear of Him.
It is not the parent who never punishes who is
most respected or loved, and even for a child the
outlook is very imperfect that does not include
the doom and guilt of sin. Indeed, without that,
where would be the need of any redemption. I
am sorry that should be in the book which is sure
to be everywhere read and loved.
MILWAUKEE SENTINEL (U.S.) MARCH lO, 189O, P. 4
"Here's richness," indeed, for the little folk, and big
folk too, for that matter Sylvie and Bruno are the most
delightful child-fairies or fairy children that ever were
seen and are bound to be loved as, perhaps, never
were fairies loved before. As in "Alice in Wonderland,"
Mr Carroll strikes a new vein in this story, which is a
trifle puzzling at the first plunge into its absurdities,
but the author's fancy once caught, the charm of the
idea increases with every page, till one is ready to wish
that the droll conceits and flights of pure unadulter-
ated nonsense might, like Tennyson's brook, "go on
forever." That there is much more of the same sort in
that fertile brain of Lewis Carroll, we cannot doubt,
and we hope that he will not long keep us out of the
enjoyment of it. It is hard work to write books, we are
told, but we find it difficult to believe this of anything
that flows as easily, as gracefully, and so infectiously as
these felicitous phantasies seem to flow from Mr. Car-
roll's pen, and we may consequently be excused for
teasing for "more" as soon as we have fairly devoured
the one before us. A true child always loves fairies.
12
and these particular fairies are, as we have said, such
unique specimens, so perfectly adorable, that every
child will be moved to sympathize with them and to
desire to emulate them in their little experiences and
Sylvie's sweet example will no doubt give courage to
many a wayward heart.
THE BOOKMAN (U.K.) FEBRUARY 1893, VOL. 3, NO. 17,
PP. 151-153
"Recollections of Lewis Carroll." [An overview ofDodg-
son (there is no attempt to shield his identify) apparently
written by someone personally familiar with him and even
more so with the Liddells; it includes thoughts on the Alices,
Snark, and SB; and on Dodgson 's relationships with chil-
dren. Here are the comments on SB.]
'Sylvie and Bruno' has been illustrated with Harry
Furniss's usual grace and charm. In this last work,
which has proceeded within recent years from Mr.
Dodgson's pen, the humour of his earUer writings is
rather wanting. A certain amount of refreshing non-
sense is still to be found, but distinctly inferior to what
he has given us before
"He thought he saw a Buffalo
Upon the chimney-piece ;
He looked again, and saw it was
His sister's husband's niece," etc.,
with the variations upon the same refrain which
run through the story, are scarcely to be compared to
any four lines out of the 'Snark,' or to any of the dit-
ties in either of the books of 'Alice.'
From a literary point of view, moreover, it is to be
questioned whether a story which combines a fairy
tale with a quite grown-up romance as well as more
serious matter can ever be a complete success, since it
must always remain doubtful whether it was intended
for little ones or their elders. The fairy-land portion
of 'Sylvie and Bruno,' woven in in the form of dreams,
is as charming as anything that the author has yet writ-
ten, but none the less this latest story is never likely to
be as popular with the children, at any rate, as 'Alice.'
At the same time, it must be remembered that 'Sylvie
and Bruno' is a more serious undertaking, and writ-
ten with a deeper purpose than anything which Mr.
Dodgson has before attempted. The real interest of
the book, indeed, lies in the fact that it is the work
of his later years, and gives us some idea of the man
of whom so litde is now known. In the long preface,
he gives us his views upon many things in life, and
upon the possible nearness of death, and the story is
throughout largely influenced by the deep religious
feeling which has always been one of Mr. Dodgson's
strongest characteristics. . .
NEW YORK TRIBUNE (U.S.) OCTOBER 9, 1893, P. 8
[prepublication notice]
The author of "Alice's Adventures" has written a new
book, but we can hardly hope for a repetition of his
early success. The forthcoming volume is a sequel or
second part to "Sylvie and Bruno" — a story which had
its merits, but which was not to be compared in any
way with that of the charming Alice.
LUDGATE ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE (U.K.)
NOVEMBER 1893, NO. 6, P. 554
Fortunately, a few books stand out from the flood of
commonplace. Lewis Carroll, for example, has given
us "Sylvie and Bruno, Concluded," a delightful med-
ley of nonsense and wisdom. The first is perhaps less
conspicuous than in former books from the same
pen, and the last rather more. There is nothing in
the new volume quite equal in ridiculousness to "The
Walrus and the Carpenter," but it contains much that
will make people of all ages laugh; and a hearty laugh
in this age of grim seriousness is a thing for which all
sane folks will be genuinely grateful. — John A. Steuart
NEW YORK TRIBUNE (u.S.) DECEMBER 17, 1893, P. I9
Another new story by Lewis Carroll, being part sec-
ond of "Sylvie and Bruno," has been published by
Macmillan & Co. It is a charming book, with many
illustrations. It is a work intended for children, but it
can be read with equal pleasure by older people.
LITERARY ERA ( U.S.) JANUARY 1894, VOL. 1, NO. 1,
P-49
[ This review is reprinted from the Literary World (Lon-
don). A review from the Literary World (Boston) was re-
published in KL 78.]
It is difficult to decide whether most to be delighted
that Lewis Carroll — as the author of "Alice in Won-
derland" chooses to be called — has given us another
book, or to regret that he has loaded it with so much
that harmonizes not at all with clever nonsense and
the pretty story of the two little fairies. There was a
story about Lewis Carroll, some time ago, which may
or may not be entirely apocryphal, that when com-
manded by the Queen to send a copy of his next
book, as "Alice in Wonderland" was so delightful, he
complied, and sent a mathematical treatise! That is
what he does to us throughout the Sylvie and Bruno
volumes. Those who remember the first volume will
know what to expect. All the old characters re-appear
with their charming oddities, the Professor, the Other
Professor, the disagreeable Uggug, and all the others.
The gardener gives us only one more of his "second
sights." [The reviewer quotes the "Argument" stanza of
"The Gardener's Song. "]
But the Other Professor recites a most amusing
"Pig-tale" — a ballad of the death of a pig who imitates
the jump of a frog, and the "Introductory Verses,"
which come at the end, have something like the clev-
er touch which has made the Snark so famous. [ The
reviewer quotes three stanzas of "Pig-Tale. "\
But we miss the former brilliance of these jingles,
the longest piece in the book is distinctly a failure,
13
and it is a pity that Lewis Carroll should have taken
the old timeworn mother-in-law joke for his subject.
The Professor's lecture is very amusing, though we
doubt if children will quite appreciate all the humor,
which is often, as in the theory of ever-running trains,
somewhat mathematical and scholastic. But our fault
with the book is that it is compounded of so many
elements.
publishers' circular (U.K.) JANUARY I3, 1894,
pp. 54—55 [Includes illustration "Her Imperial Highness
is Surprised, "p. 326.]
Those readers who were children when 'Alice in Won-
derland' and 'Through the Looking-Glass' first came
out look with peculiar interest for later work from the
pen of Mr. Lewis Carroll. They have recollections of
such hours of unalloyed delight that even the chance
of renewed pleasure of the same sort stirs up eager
anticipations.
It is therefore with lively anticipations that the
handsome volume which has just been issued by
Messrs. Macmillan under the title of 'Sylvie and Bru-
no Concluded,' will be taken up. Before commencing
to read it we turn over the leaves wondering if we shall
light upon any verses half as good as 'The Walrus and
the Carpenter.' Almost at once we open at page 14,
where there is a delicious song in Mr. Carroll's best
vein — 'a very peculiar song: seeing the chorus to each
verse comes in the middle, instead of at the end.'
It tells how
'King Fisher courted Lady Bird —
Sing Beans, sing Bones, sing Butterflies,'
and how he draws attention to his 'noble head,'
his 'beard as white as curd,' his 'expressive eyes.' She
then replies in three verses that have perhaps a wee
bit too much point in them. Let us quote one verse: —
'"Oysters have beards," said Lady Bird —
Sing Flies, sing Frogs, sing Fiddle-strings!
"I love them, for I know
They never chatter so:
They would not say one single word —
Not if you crowned them kings!"'
Further on in the book we find a 'Pig-Tale' in
rhyme with, characteristically enough, 'introductory
verses' at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end.
Having thus tasted casually, as it were, we settle
down to the quiet enjoyment of the book. And let us
say at once that on the whole the reading of it has de-
lighted us, though in a fairy story we could dispense
with discussions on ethics, on charity, on 'fate, free-
will, foreknowledge absolute,' and similar topics.
Mr. Carroll's earlier books, it is probable, owe
their very great success to the fact that they are real
children's books. In his later work he is perhaps a
trifle too deep and satirical for childish understand-
ings; yet the didactic and ironical parts are so mixed
14
up with bits of pure fun that when we would protest
we find ourselves unexpectedly in a burst of laugh-
ter. The present volume resumes the story of 'Sylvie
and Bruno,' where the first volume, published four
or five years' ago, left it off. The author, wandering in
Kensington Gardens, passes into the 'eerie' state and
meets with Sylvie and Bruno, and the first chapter is
devoted to talks with them. Bruno with his comical,
yet sharp and shrewd remarks, is a fascinating litde
fellow. His 'lessons' may be quoted as serving to show
what he is like.
'There's only three lessons to do,' said Syl-
vie, 'Spelling and Geography, and Singing.'
'Not Arithmetic?' I said.
'No, he hasn't a head for Arithmetic '
'Course I haven't,' said Bruno. 'Mine
head's for hair I haven't got a lot of heads!'
' and he can't learn his Multiplication-
table — "I like History ever so much better,'
Bruno remarked.
'Oo has to repeat the Muddlecome table — '
'Well, and you have to repeat '
'No, 00 hasn't!' Bruno interrupted. 'His-
tory repeats itself, the Professor said so!'
Sylvie was arranging some letters on a
board — E-V-I-L. 'Now, Bruno,' she said, 'what
does that speW}'
Bruno looked at it, in solemn silence, for
a minute. 'I knows what it doosn't spell!' he
said at last.
'That's no good,' said Sylvie. 'What does it
spell?'
Bruno took another look at the mysteri-
ous letters. 'Why, it's "LIVE" backwards!' he
exclaimed. (I thought it was, indeed.)
'How didyou manage to see thaL^' said Sylvie.
'I just twiddled my eyes,' said Bruno, 'and
then I saw directly. Now may I sing "The King-
Fisher's Song"?'
'Geography next,' said Sylvie, 'Don't you
know the Rules?'
'I thinks that there oughtn't to be such a
lot of Rules, Sylvie. I thinks '
Then comes the song which we quoted at the
beginning of this notice, and the chapter ends with
the statement that 'human life seems on the whole to
contain more of sorrow than of joy.' This reflection
might on the whole have been omitted. Proceeding,
we follow for a time the fortunes of the Lady Muri-
el and her lover, the argumentative doctor. Most of
the chapters are, however, lightened and made truly
enjoyable by the introduction of the fairy children,
Sylvie and Bruno. 'Mein Herr,' too, is an extremely
pleasant old fellow despite the satirical observations
on men and things which Mr. Carroll has put into his
mouth. 'Bruno's Picnic' is an extremely taking piece
of writing; the tale of the three foxes that eat one an-
other until there is only a mouth left, out of which
Bruno draws the three foxes again, is told in Mr. Car-
roll's pleasantest fashion — that is to say, in the true
vein of 'faery.' The cat that disappeared in one of the
earlier stories until nothing was left but its grin has a
parallel in this book, where a dog is made invisible all
but his tail. That in itself is sufficient to indicate the
charm of 'Sylvie and Bruno Concluded.' Sequels are
notoriously wr^successful, but perhaps that is as much
the fault of the readers as of the writers. If the reader
be inclined to resent the long discussions on human
conduct in the present volume, it is only because he
or she is anxious to hear more from Mr. Carroll about
fairyland, more about Sylvie and Bruno, to have more
of those nonsense verses like 'The Kingfisher's Song'
and the 'Pig-Tale.' With one stanza from the latter we
must close. [The reviewer quotes the stanza "Little birds
are feeding / Justices with jam. "\
Mr. Harry Furniss's illustrations are truly delight-
ful, those around the 'Pig-Tale' being indeed, as the
author calls them, 'Triumphs of artistic ingenuity."
BOSTON DAILY ADVERTISER (u.S.) FEBRUARY 1, 1894,
We happen to know quite a company of little folk and
they are only representative of a great many larger
companies who will not welcome the last word of the
above caption [i.e., "Concluded"]. Sylvie and Bruno
have become household words, veritable realities
in thousands of homes. The little people have been
waiting eagerly for what wzis coming, and they have
in the present volume by Lewis Carroll a rare treat,
but it is a treat coupled with a disappointment which
is expressed in this one word "concluded." Mr. Car-
roll, we take it, has by no means written himself out,
but Mr. Carroll is an artist, and he has now finished
the picture which was in his mind when, 20 years ago,
he published, under the title, "Bruno's Revenge," a
little story for "Aunt Judy's Magazine." The picture,
with the delightful volume now brought out by the
Macmillans, is complete, and we can give it no high-
er praise, than to say it is, in every sense, a finished
one. Perhaps some philosopher can tell us why chil-
dren love fairy stories. The single word imagination
does not quite answer the question. Are we indeed of
— "Such stuff as dreams are made of?"
RICHMOND DISPATCH (U.S.) FEBRUARY l8, 1894,
P. 1 1 [Some of the quotations are not quite right; strangest
is: "the human mind is a sausage, and all we ask is, how
much indigestible stuff can be crammed into death!" This
should read "crammed into it!"]
Lewis Carroll is an artist in appreciation and an art-
ist in style, a student of nature, a student of char-
acter, and an incisive critic. The fairies Sylvie and
Bruno, and Mein Herr, and the Professor serve the
author in giving play to the most whimsical fancies
and grotesque suggestions, which, however, always
point a moral, and are the framework of some gem
of thought, and are frequently brought into contrast
with pathos and sharp realism. We fall in love imme-
diately with Sylvie and Bruno. They are real children
to us. The one fascinates by her sweetness and the
other captivates by his child wisdom and philosophy.
Mr. Carroll says that some of the phrases he has put
into the mouths of Sylvie and Bruno were caught
from children, and we can well believe him.
The manner in which Sylvie and Bruno, unseen,
save by the author, bring Muriel and Arthur together
is a most happy conceit, and nothing could be more
touching than their reformation of Willie. Mein Herr
says for us things we have often thought and felt but
could not put into words, and satirizes in an inimita-
ble way some of the "fads," foibles, and humbuggery
of the age.
The theory on which the story is constructed is
very interesting, and, as given in the preface, is an
index to the range of fancy indulged. Mr. Carroll says,
"the story is an attempt to show what might possibly
happen, supposing that fairies really existed and that
they were sometimes visible to us and we to them,
and that they were sometimes able to assume human
form, and supposing also that human beings some-
times become conscious of what goes on in the fairy
15
world — by actual transference of their immaterial es-
sence such as we meet with in Esoteric Buddhism.
"I have supposed a human being capable of
various psychical states, with varying degrees of con-
sciousness, as follows: (a) the ordinary state, with
no consciousness of the presence of fairies; (b) the
"eerie" state, in which, while conscious of actual sur-
roundings, he is also conscious of the presence of fair-
ies; (c) a form of trance, in which, while unconscious
of actual surroundings, and apparently asleep, his
immaterial essence migrates to other scenes, in the
actual world, or in fairyland, and is conscious of the
presence of fairies.
"I have also supposed a fairy to be capable of mi-
grating from fairyland into the actual world, and of
assuming, at pleasure, a human form; and also to be
capable of various psychical states — viz: (a) the ordi-
nary state, with no consciousness of the presence of
Human beings; (b) a sort of "eerie" state, in which he
is conscious, if in the actual world, of the presence of
actual human beings; if in fairyland, of the presence
of the immaterial essences of human beings.
"I believe that there is life everywhere — not mate-
rial only, not merely what is palpable to our senses —
but immaterial and invisible as well. We believe in
our own immaterial essence — call it soul, or spirit, or
what you will. Why should not other similar essences
exist around us, not linked on to a visible and mate-
rial body? Did not God make this swarm of happy in-
sects, to dance in this sunbeam for one hour of bliss,
for no other object, that we can imagine, than to swell
the sum of conscious happiness? And where shall we
dare to draw the line, and say 'He has made all these
and no more?'"
The difference between perfect mechanical cor-
rectness in a musical rendition and the soul of music
is brought out to its fullest in the chapter in which the
performance of the brilliant society player is followed
by that of Sylvie.
Here is a characteristic outburst from Mein Herr:
"Mein Herr threw up his hands wildly. 'What, again?'
he cried. 'I thought it was dead, fifty years ago! Oh
this Upas tree of Competitive Examinations! Beneath
whose deadly shade all the original genius, all the ex-
haustive research, all the untiring life-long diligence
by which our fore-fathers have so advanced human
knowledge, must slowly but surely wither away, and
give place to a system of cookery, in which the human
mind is a sausage, and all we ask is, how much indi-
gestible stuff can be crammed into death!'"
This and much more Mein Herr says about "cram-
ming" and kindred evils connected with the conduct
of institutions of learning might be studied to advan-
tage by college authorities.
Bits of the book here and there may be read to
children with the assurance that they will give the lit-
de ones the greatest delight, and at the same time the
reader, assuming he is one of mature years, will find
food for reflection in every phrase. The illustrations
are as fantastic, but as suggestive as the text, and with-
al as artistic as is Mr. Carroll's literary workmanship.
BOOK NEWS (U.S.) MARCH 1894, NO. I39, P. 288
"Apres I'Agesilas, Helas! Mais apres I'Attila, Hola!"*
This epigram befits the "Sylvie and Bruno" and, now,
the "Sylvie and Bruno Concluded" of Lewis Carroll,
madder and madder of the productions of the author
of "Alice in Wonderland." The decline in humor is
positively melancholy, and to read either of these vol-
umes is nothing short of a penance. They are really
sermons, or speculations about life and conduct and
the hereafter, aimed at grown folks, and are most un-
fit reading for children. The nonsense verse in the
concluding part is, with scarcely an exception, in-
capable of exciting a smile. Mr. Furniss, though his
task as an illustrator was harder, has fallen far short
of Tenniel in the immortal Alices. In this final volume
of "Sylvie and Bruno" many questions of the day are
discussed, and those who are curious to know what
views Mr. Carroll takes of them may consult it for
themselves. They will probably agree that in his hands
the thing does not become a trumpet.
In quoting Boileau's epigram upon Corneille's late plays,
the reviewer suggests that Carroll's powers are failing as
Corneille's supposedly had.
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD (AUSTRALIA) MARCH 3,
1894
It is for many young people and some children of
older growth a happy day which brings forth a new
book by Lewis Carroll. Sylvie and Bruno Concluded is
the second part of a work projected by Mr. Carroll
in 1873, and the first installment published in 1889,
the concluding part being that now to hand. It is
a charmingly-presented volume of more than 400
pages, illustrated out of Mr. Harry Furniss 's wealth of
quaint laughter-making draughtsmanship. But still
it is not the Carroll that we knew, not the creator of
Alice. There are things in the book delightful, and
some of the nonsense verses are as good as of old —
"The Pig and the Pump," "What Tottles Meant," "The
Little Man that had a Little Gun," a capital parody of
Swinburne, and a final verse of the gardener's song.
But Mr. Lewis Carroll has now taken himself very
seriously indeed. He is convinced that Mr. Ruskin's
mantle is on the point of falling upon him, so that
Sylvie and Bruno become priggish and the voice of
the preacher is heard, as much apropos as it would
be in an interlude of Punch and Judy. The preface is
amazing and amusing, both unintended.
16
^
^
eJ2^^i?^ C^9^l€i^e^ ^S/j^^d^ti^
CHRIS MATHESON
i^yl-
T=*^
^
hrough the Looking-Glass begins with pain.
There is an aching quality to Lewis Carroll's
prologue:
Though time be fleet, and I and thou
Are half a life asunder,
Thy loving smile will surely hail
The love-gift of a fairy tale.
I have not seen thy sunny face,
Nor heard thy silver laughter.
No thought of me shall find a place
In thy young life's hereafter —
Carroll misses Alice desperately. He knew that
this would happen. But still ... it hurts. And so he
does the only thing he can do; he returns to the "Tale
begun in other days, /When summer suns were glow-
ing— " But this second book will be steeped in melan-
choly and profound loneliness.
The story begins with Alice's cat, Dinah, who has
had kittens now. Clearly time has passed, yet Alice
herself does not seem to have aged. Alice rambles on
to Dinah and her kittens for a while, but the impa-
tient, sharp-tongued litde girl we knew so well in Won-
derland is gone, replaced by a tender, chatty little dear.
It's evident that Carroll does not actually know Alice
anymore; he is writing a gauzy, sentimental memory
of her.
It's not a promising start. You find yourself won-
dering: Is this even a good idea?
Then Alice enters Looking-Glass world, climb-
ing right through the mirror, and the book suddenly
erupts to life as she reads "Jabberwocky." The poem
is violent, playful, ridiculous. In a split second, we are
back in the joyful presence of Lewis Carroll. It's un-
canny, thrilling, deeply moving — even the language
itself is transformed. What had been cautious and tep-
id instandy becomes wild, mad, and beautiful. Alice
starts to talk to the flowers, who are extremely rude.
"I wish you could talk," Alice says. "We can talk," says a
Tiger-lily, "when there's anybody worth talking to."
It's starding — it happens so fast. (I wonder
whether it startied Carroll himself.) Even Alice is sur-
Chris Matheson is a film writer and director whose credits
include the Bill ijf Ted movies. This is a companion to his article
in KL 84.
prised: "It quite seemed to take her breath away." But
it doesn't take long; a few more completely gratuitous
insults from the flowers, and Alice's back starts to go
up. All of the sticky sweetness she's been coated with
up to this point suddenly burns off, and she's right
back to being that steely, unsentimental little girl we
loved so much in the first book. Within seconds, Alice
is threatening to kill the flowers. The insults fly for a
while more and it's hugely funny, a little girl and a
bunch of flowers insulting each other. In truth, Alice
is more polite to these flowers than they deserve.
Alice then notices that Looking-Glass world is es-
sentially a giant chessboard interspersed with trees,
hedges, and brooks, a perfect blend of the mathemat-
ical and the organic — of Dodgson and Carroll, you
might say. The rest of the book will revolve around
the chess match that is occurring and Alice's some-
what surprising announcement that she wishes to be
a Queen.
The announcement feels odd at first, but then
you think, well, of course that's what Alice wants.
Haven't all her experiences in both books on some
level been leading to this? Hasn't this desire to be a
Queen been implicit from the very start of Wonder-
land^ Why did Alice go down the rabbit-hole, if not to
discover something about herself? Why did she enter
Looking-Glass world if not to keep searching? Hasn't
this wish been the subtext of everything we've read so
far? From this point on, the drama of the book will be
clear: Alice wants to grow up, and the book essentially
tries to talk her out of it. Don't do it, one character
after another will say to her. But it won't work; Alice
will not be deterred.
At certain moments, Looking-Glass is far more
surreal than Wonderland. Here, for instance, with no
explanation — and I mean none — the Red Queen is
suddenly gone and Alice is on a train. A little voice
starts speaking in Alice's ear, and now, suddenly, we
are under a tree, speaking to the Gnat. Carroll writes
these startling transitions with a loose, easy certainty.
The tentative quality of the first 25 pages is long gone.
Carroll is rolling now, a virtuoso of dark, absurd po-
etry; the great explorer is back in the land that he
discovered, seeking out new regions.
17
The Gnat is generally friendly but, like almost ev-
eryone else in Carroll-land, is also prickly, defensive,
and borderline rude. It works every time: cute, whim-
sical characters who don't act cute or whimsical at all,
who act, in fact, like vaguely unpleasant relatives or
coworkers. Almost every single conversation Alice
has in the two books is essentially a failure. People
talk past each other, exchange insults, threaten each
other, and it's comedy gold every damn time.
In Tenniel's drawing, Tweedledee and Tweedle-
dum look surly, suspicious, worried, like two odd little
boys — ^which is what they are, I think. Alice has pro-
claimed a desire to grow up; now it's time that she
meets, essentially, a couple of "boys her own age."
All the male characters she's met so far have been
"adults": the Hatter, the Caterpillar, the Cheshire
Cat, even the White Rabbit. Dum and Dee hug, then
shake Alice's hands, and, in a second, they are all
dancing around in a circle. Suddenly there's music
being played by a nearby tree, and they're all singing,
"Here we go round the mulberry bush."
It's a glorious, intoxicating moment, Alice and
these two fat boys spinning in a circle together, sing-
ing. The carefree joys of childhood are apparently
still available to Alice. Dum and Dee get out of breath
and, as quickly as they started dancing, they stop and
just stand there looking at each other. This is another
of Carroll's signature comedic moves: focus on the
weird, stilted pauses that occur when none of the
characters knows what to say.
Having danced together, the three children have
warmed up to each other and decide next to recite
poetry. This is another classic Carroll move: stop the
story and have the characters recite a poem or sing a
song. The poem the boys recite, "The Walrus and the
Carpenter," is one of Carroll's greatest. It seems, at
first, to be inspired nonsense: "The sun was shining
on the sea . . . And this was odd, because it was/The
middle of the night." But like all the greatest non-
sense (and there isn't much, by the way: Un Chien An-
dalou, Duck Soup, etc.), it's not, of course, nonsense
at all.
The Walrus and the Carpenter pretend to be
kindly and sympathetic figures but are, in truth, insa-
tiable gluttons who kill and eat children. To call this
poem the strongest warning to Alice so far — beware of
adult men, go back! — would be an understatement.
"The Walrus and the Carpenter" is startling — dark
and brutal and utterly unsentimental. Alice's reaction
to it is equally fascinating. She seems not to have got-
ten the point. If she did, then she is an unusual girl,
because her sympathies, amazingly, lie not with the
poor little oyster children, but rather with the Walrus
and Carpenter. "I like the Walrus best," is her immedi-
ate response, followed shortly by "I like the Carpenter
best." (Never "I like the oysters best.")
As the monstrous crow frightens off the Tweedles,
the White Queen arrives, chasing her shawl. A mov-
ing moment occurs when Alice, feeling lonely, starts
to cry, and the Queen is genuinely concerned. "Oh,
don't go on like that! . . . Consider what a great girl
you are. Consider what a long way you've come to-
day." Clearly, Carroll would love for Alice not to grow
up, to stay a child, his Alice. But he knows that's not
possible. He knows that this child must, like all chil-
dren, grow up. Isn't this what the White Queen is tell-
ing Alice? You can't go back, it doesn't work. You're
a wonderful girl, you're doing great, keep going. It
must have been hard for Carroll to write this; that he
did so speaks to the genuine love he felt for Alice and
the true inner grace he possessed.
The surreal transformations in Looking-Glass
continue, even more effortless and poetic than the
ones in Wonderland. Maybe the difference is this: Won-
derland, for all its astounding beauty and laugh-out-
loud humor, did not have the same thematic drive
that Looking-Glass has. Looking-Glass, from the start, is
built around the struggle between two competing im-
pulses: "don't grow up, stay as you are" versus "I know
you have to grow up, and you will do so beautifully,
my dear." It's this thematic grounding, this absolute
clarity of purpose, that allows Carroll to make creative
leaps the likes of which no one had ever made be-
fore— or has made since, when you think of it. Only
a great genius could make these strange bounds for-
ward without any trace of the arbitrary or random,
but rather with a sort of mysterious inexorability.
Humpty Dumpty is yet another dazzling come-
dic creation. He is pompous, rude, smug, suspicious,
foolish. Carroll has the recipe down now; mix bom-
bastic ego with pathetic weakness, and you get come-
dy. You'd think these blustery buffoons would get old,
but they never do.
Right off the bat, Dumpty brisdes at being called
an egg. He finds it "very provoking" (which is much
funnier to me than "provocative," though I can't hon-
estly say why) . Alice tries to be nice to him, but Dumpty
is dismissive. We get another one of those wonderfully
awkward pauses and then, as happens periodically, Al-
ice's acid tongue returns (she is a tad bit nicer than
she was in Wonderland, but not much). She whispers
to herself the famous poem, "Humpty Dumpty sat on
a wall:/Humpty Dumpty had a great fall."
This gets Dumpty's attention. He demands to
know Alice's name, then tells her it's a "stupid name."
He then brags about his own name and "handsome
shape." This is wonderful. Here we have a fat, obnox-
ious egg-man sitting fecklessly on a high wall (that he
will soon fall off!) and, for no apparent reason, insult-
ing Alice. This, I find myself thinking, is what's actu-
ally, truly, deeply funny.
Alice is concerned for Dumpty, sitting up there
on that narrow wall. Is the subtext here that Alice
is starting to act like a mother with this belligerent,
bragging little boy, just as she did with Dum and Dee?
Dumpty, always full of himself, ignores her anxious,
"Don't you think you'd be safer on the ground?" "Of
course I don't think so! Why, if ever I did fall off —
which there's no chance of — but ifl did — " he brags,
the King has promised to help him.
There have been many wonderful/ terrible con-
versations in the two books, but this is perhaps the
greatest, most ridiculously bad of them all.
Humpty Dumpty launches into a poem that he
tells Alice was "written entirely for your amusement."
Alice tries to get away, but Dumpty is insistent. His
poem is strange, enigmatic, but with a clearly ominous
undertone. It is, I think, yet another warning to Alice.
I sent a message to the fish:
I told them "This is what I wish."
Who exactly is the "I" here? Remember, Dumpty
said only that the poem was written for Alice's amuse-
ment, not that he had written it. Beyond that, what is
it that this "I" wishes for from the little fish that can-
not even be spoken of? It's quite obvious that Carroll
was in love with Alice — both books revolve around
that fact — but this poem clearly suggests that that
love had an "unspeakable" aspect to it as well.
I sent to them again to say
"It will be better to obey."
But the fish "would not listen to advice."
I took a kettle large and new,
Fit for the deed I had to do.
We are back with the Walrus and the Carpenter,
but this time, the homicidal impulses are more na-
ked; they are not whimsical in the least.
My heart went hop, my heart went thump:
I filled the kettle at the pump.
Then some one came to me and said
"The little fishes are in bed."
Can there be any doubt what "I" is thinking of? Is
he going to kill the little sleeping fishes and eat them?
Or does he have something else in mind?
For a moment, the poem's "narrator" seems to
reconsider. "Wake the fishes up!" the poem shouts.
Humpty Dumpty literally screams this line at Alice.
He obviously wants her to hear this. But she doesn't.
As usual, Alice misses the warning — or chooses to
miss the warning — completely.
I took a corkscrew from the shelf:
I went to wake them up myself.
And when I found the door was locked,
I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked.
And when I found the door was shut,
I tried to turn the handle, but —
Here's another comment on how these books,
specifically the comedy within them, have been read.
A great deal of energy has gone into discussing the
logic and wordplay and historical references the
books are so full of. And certainly, this is one perfectly
legitimate way to read the Alice books. The problem
is that focusing so much on these cerebral aspects ig-
nores almost completely the overpowering emotional
intensity of the books. It's true, Humpty Dumpty 's
song is not funny or playful or clever; it is, however,
stunningly dramatic. The veil drops for a moment,
and we get a glimpse — opaque for sure, but discern-
ible— of the true stakes of the story. Dumpty's poem
is disturbing, yet also quite moving. Carroll is not, in
any way, trying to "seduce" Alice here. He is, rather,
telling her to stay away from him.
Carroll has made various veiled appearances in
the two books: As the White Rabbit, the unnamed
letter writer at the Knave's trial, the unnamed older
sister, the gentleman dressed in white paper, the un-
named "I" in Humpty Dumpty's poem. But some of
those were perhaps unintentional. Carroll knew he
was writing himself as the White Knight. It's his self-
portrait. The scene, therefore, is highly significant:
Alice and her creator together on the page at last.
But it's a strange scene. It feels like something
the book has been building up to for a long time, but
now that it's happening — nothing really happens. Al-
ice and the White Knight walk along, chatting about
his inventions, with him falling off his horse, and her
helping him back on, and this goes on for several pag-
es, until they are just about to part. "And here I must
leave you," the White Knight says.
And you think: Why did Carroll even bother?
But then, just before they part, the White Knight
decides to sing Alice a song because "you are sad." Al-
ice doesn't really want to hear it. (She almost never
does; it's another one of the great jokes of the books —
characters are constantly reciting poems or singing
songs to Alice that she doesn't even want to hear.)
The song is "very, very beautiful," according to
the White Knight. It's called — among other things —
"The Aged Aged Man," and when the White Knight
begins to sing, Alice is struck by it. In fact, Carroll
tells us, this scene is the most memorable thing Al-
ice experiences on her entire journey, the thing that
she will never forget. She stands there, "Ustening, in a
half-dream, to the melancholy music."
The White Knight sings about meeting an old
man, much older than himself, and asking him, "How
is it you live?" The old man's answer:
"... I look for butterflies
That sleep among the wheat:
I make them into mutton-pies,
And sell them in the street."
19
The White Knight is not satisfied. "Come, tell me
how you live!" he says and thumps the old man on the
head. The old man tries to explain once again:
". . . when I find a mountain-rill,
I set it in a blaze;"
The White Knight shakes the old man until his
face is blue.
"Come, tell me how you live," I cried,
"And what it is you do!"
The old man's response:
He said "I hunt for haddock's eyes
Among the heather bright,
And work them into waistcoat-buttons
In the silent night."
And suddenly the White Knight understands
what's being said to him. The old man, of course, is
the White Knight himself. In Tenniel's drawing, he is
faceless, slumped over, but look at the hair. Carroll
has been talking to himself:
How will I live?
You will make nonsense.
No, but how will I live?
You will present that nonsense to the world.
In the end, the White Knight is doing absurd, vio-
lent things to himself. The old man, he now under-
stands, was in agony, rocking his body back and forth
in misery. Carroll has seen his own future, and it is
lonely and full of anguish.
The story is effectively over; the book could end
at this moment and be completely satisfying. There
are a few intriguing moments remaining, however.
First, there's the odd revelation of Humpty Dumpty
appearing "with a corkscrew in his hand." Does this
suggest that the "I" in Dumpty's song was himself? ("I
took a corkscrew from the shelf:/I went to wake them
up myself") Alice seems to think so. "I know what
he came for," she says; "he wanted to punish the fish
because — "
It would be fascinating if Carroll had allowed her
to finish her sentence. What would she have said? For
not giving him what he wanted? For not obeying? For
locking him out?
Not long after that, Alice tells the banquet table
that she finds it very strange that all the poems she's
heard today have "been about fishes in some way." In
truth, the only one that was about fish was Humpty
Dumpty's, so we may infer that Alice is still thinking
about that one — especially given her recent remark.
I think Alice is on to Carroll now; I think she's fig-
ured out what's going on. Suddenly the banquet starts
to descend into chaos. There is drinking, screaming;
dishes and bottles are knocked over. Alice needs to
take charge. The White Queen grabs Alice's hair.
"Something's going to happen!" she screams.
Phallic imagery abounds. The candles suddenly
grow hugely tall, the bottles turn into birds — and
strangest of all, the White Queen's place is taken by a
piece of meat that hoarsely laughs at Alice.
"I can't stand this any longer!" Alice cries. She
grabs the now doll-sized Red Queen and shakes her
violently back and forth "with all her might." She is
clearly enraged at this woman — but why? Has Alice,
in growing up, become a woman like the Duchess,
shaking her baby until it became a pig?
It's a strange and disturbing exit from Looking-
Glass world — ^violent, angry, and seemingly irrational.
Alice has grown up and become a queen, but what
she has become in order to do so is unsettling.
As Alice wakes up, she is shaking a kitten. (What
if she didn't wake up? Would she shake the kitten to
death?)
The fascinating thing about the final moments of
the book: Alice, acting as a sort of "mother cat" to the
two kittens, clearly identifies with them, and not with
the fishes she heard so much poetry about. Tomor-
row, she tells the kittens, she'll recite "The Walrus and
the Carpenter" to them while they eat — and they can
pretend they're eating oysters.
In the end, then, it wasn't Alice who was an oys-
ter being led to its demise. It was Carroll himself.
The book ends in agony. Carroll can't stop thinking
of Alice.
Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
The greatest comedy book ever written ends in
heartbreak and anguish (which is perhaps as good a
lesson in true comedy as there is). No one has come
close to topping Carroll's achievement in nearly a
century and a half since. His uncanny mixture of bril-
liant, imaginative play, deep silliness, and profound
longing and pain has never been equaled.
20
■^
^
A CARROLLIAN IN BRAZIL: ADRIANA PGLIANO
ANDREW SELLON 6= MAHENDRA SINGH
^£1.
^fS
^J?',,^^
Part I
^
'he last decade has seen a growing Brazilian
influence in academia, business, geopolitics,
and now it seems, the world of Lewis Car-
roll. Brazil's heterogeneous and youthful culture may
prove a positive influence upon CarroUian studies
and art globally — and one young Brazilian in partic-
ular, Adriana Peliano, seems to be the driving force
behind this. Not only has she produced a staggering
abundance of wonderful CarroUian art, she has also
founded the Sociedade Lewis Carroll do Brasil (Lewis
Carroll Society of Brazil), a critical step for Brazil and
South America in general.
We have already published some of Adriana 's
writings and artwork {KL 83, "Alice's Ad-
ventures on the Woodpecker Ranch"),
and recently Andrew Sellon, president of
the LCSNA, and Mahendra Singh, editor
of the Rectory Umbrella, conducted the
following two-part interview with her, to
be concluded in the next issue.
kl: Could you give us a brief account of your
background, your stay in the U.K., and
your current professional activities ?
ap: I was born in Brasilia in 1974. I stud-
ied architecture and graduated in
communication with postgraduate
studies in design and the visual arts.
I first went to England in 1998 for
the centenary year of Lewis Carroll's
death in Oxford. After that I studied
design in London for a month and
lived in Kent for a year while I did an
MA in new media arts.
I'm a designer, illustrator, visual
artist, and art teacher. I mainly work
kl: What first interested you in Lewis Carroll?
ap: My interest in Carroll began when I was a little
child and watched Hanna-Barbera's animated
version of Alice hundreds of times. When I was
nine, I received Wonderland as a gift, with beau-
tiful illustrations that had a big impact on my
imagination. This Alice of Nicolas Gilbert was
similar to a real, brunette girl, while the other
characters were more like cartoons. It made me
feel closer to Alice and her adventures. When
I was 12, I went to Disney World and bought a
Cheshire Cat, still my mascot and my first Alice
collectible. At the age of 14, I received a trans-
lated adult edition with a seri-
ous preface that opened my
mind to the huge possibilities
of understanding the book in
unsuspected ways. After that,
Alice grew inside me; I began
to read more and more about
CarroUian topics and other
works of Carroll such as Sylvie
and Bruno and the Snark, and
I collected memorabilia and
different Alice editions and
movies. I must not forget to
mention my love for Carroll's
photographs of little girls;
Alice Liddell and Xie Kitchin
are my favorites.
kl: You have done so many
Carroll-related things, several ver-
sions of the Alice books, the music
An unnamed image from Adriana 's first col- with your husband, the exhibition
lage series, entitled Metamorphosis. She was collage art — could you give us a
brief resume?
promoting dialogues between arts such 15 at the time and had just read an "adult"
as literature, the visual arts, music, and edition of Alice that provided som^phihsophi-
theater, creating covers, posters, books, cat and psychoanalytical analyses of Carroll's
and other graphic stuff. I work as a
work, ideas which interacted powerfully with
,. . , . , . her simultaneous discovery of the works of
freelancer, usmg digital manipulation,
photography, collage, and assemblage,
mixing different techniques to create hybrid
characters, puzzles, visual games, and labyrinths
ap: In my graduate course I did
my first photographic study rep-
resenting Alice in her search
for identity and her attendant
inner crisis. I manipulated
the images in the laboratory — this was before
learning Photoshop! Then I began an enor-
of dreams such as my Alice illustrations.
mous research process, both theoretical and
iconographic, to produce my own illustrations.
21
I created the characters as assemblages, with a
plethora of symbolic objects, and then digitally
manipulated these illustrations.
During that time I also made an Alician
sound collage with my husband, the composer
and sound designer Paulo Beto (it was around
1996, 1 think). I illustrated a book based on
Carroll's life and the Alicehooks in 2010, and
I have just finished another project I began
ten years ago, to translate the original Alice's
Adventures under Ground manuscript and then rec-
reate it in Portuguese, using Carroll's digitized
handwriting, drawings, and even the same page
design. It will be published at the
end of this year by Scipione.
I have also written three tales
inspired by Alice, in which I
mixed her into the literary uni-
verse of different authors, such
as the Dadaist Kurt Schwitters
(the tale "Dreamchild"), and the
amazing Brazilian writer Clarice
Lispector (the tale "ClaHce").
One of these tales became a
multimedia performance with
reading, music, and projections.
I wouldn't call these stories
parodies but literary montages,
intertextual sewing. They are not
published yet.
I also presented an art installa-
tion in a recent collective exhibi-
tion inspired by Alice, Alicidades
(a portmanteau corresponding
in English to Alicities) , where I
created a large montage titled
Butterfly Tears in which Alice is
inside an anatomical illustration
of a human head (a hollow skull
representing the rabbit hole),
crying butterflies which drift
through space to land upon a
blue cocoon. I imagined it as a
process about inner transformations.
Recently I finished a series of collages using a
rare vintage Alice from the 1930s illustrated by
the first Brazilian y4/2V^ illustrator, John Fahrion.
Some of these collages were sent to the interna-
tional members of our Society.
I maintain two Carrollian blogs and also
conduct workshops where people can create
subjective metamorphic and kaleidoscopic Alices
through collages, and surrealist games like
the Exquisite Corpse — all of this to answer the
question: Who is Alice for you? You can see the
results online.
(jTapituIo 1
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tit. ttctr lorut jtUrlantla it. ■m.^r^orUae vaJl-ria o esj-orft
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au.yiu. o coelha ^a/a-tu^o sax^nAo * Ac,ai.,ai. f (jOTna tstbu.
atretHaJo ' fpt-nsAndo Tto case mauk lra.rtLt, A lit*. ptr~
ctln.lL. jai. tUvtriA ttr St tspaLtitaxU, $o' auJL naujajtit
marr\Vitb tajla iht paxictu. iruuto JUtturalj^ma^ gujLn'
da o caeuia iriraa. am. rtZaaca do Iralso ale toUtt,, odtaaL a.%
karat t. sa-ia. ttt nova tm. iisp*rat(a, ALta se itu. conht.
The first chapter ofAdriana 's Portuguese
version of the Under Ground manuscript.
Carroll's handwriting had been recreated in a digi
tal typeface. Adriana began this project in 1998
and it should be finished and available
to the public shortly.
That's the most important. Wow, it's too much,
isn't it? Right now I'm planning a big exhibition
connecting Carroll and Edward Lear. It will be a
cabinet of wonders!
kl: In your earlier article for the Knight Letter, you
explained the works ofMonteiro Lobato and how
he introduced Lewis Carroll to Brazil. How popular
is Lewis Carroll and his style of nonsense in Brazil
today ?
ap: Monteiro Lobato was the first translator of Alice
into Brazilian Portuguese. He noted in his intro-
duction that it was very hard to translate this
book, since it had been written for the English
mind. Lobato created an impor-
tant literary adventure series
for Brazilian children, 17 books
where the children had adven-
tures with many characters of
the cinema, mythology, folklore,
and literature. So he translated
Carroll's book and also invited
Alice to visit Brazil in his own
books.
Some translators have recre-
ated Carroll's puns, parodies,
and word games into Portuguese.
They didn't try to make literal
translations but used, for exam-
ple, popular Brazilian children's
songs. They thought it would be
closer to Carroll's playfulness
if people could understand the
game. I think these translations
bring the spirit of the book
closer to children, but of course
adults usually prefer more fidel-
ity, which sometimes loses the
humor and the complexity of
the text. For example, last week,
while observing Maggie Taylor's
illustration of the three sisters
who lived in the well, I found
the drawings on the wall rather
strange. Then I realized that the word "draw"
had a double meaning, but in Portuguese that
disappears.
But we have some important Brazilian Alice
translators, and their works are very significant.
"Jabberwocky" has had some creative and auda-
cious translations that are very exciting. Since
the seventies we have had some more sophis-
ticated translations, and some years ago the
Annotated Alice vr2LS published here. We also have
some free adaptations that adapt Alice's refer-
ences to our popular culture, as I noted before.
Alice is the biggest Carrollian reference here;
his photographs are also famous. We had one
22
good Sylvie and Bruno translation and one of the
Snark, which is rare and almost impossible to
find. At our blog people can find more Brazilian
editions of Carroll.
The Brazilian public reception is a complex
answer. I will base it upon my own experiences
talking to people and giving workshops about
the subject. For many people Alice is still a crazy,
sometimes scary, sometimes funny Disney movie.
Many went recently to see the Tim Burton
movie; some went more for Tim Burton than for
Alice. Others just ask me if Carroll used drugs
and are suspicious of his love for girls. But some
publishers have presented
gorgeous and serious editions
that help people to love the
book in a less superficial way.
I receive many e-mails from
students preparing scholarly
works inspired by Alice, look-
ing for a deeper understand-
ing. Tim Burton stimulated
this market and the interest in
the book. We don't know yet
to what extent it is a transitory
fever or if it vnW last. Alice is
also a cult among people with
an open mind and literary
background, but unfortunately
Brazilian people are not very
literate in general.
At the same time I have no
doubt that the interest in the
subject here is very different
from England. Alice is mostly a
general notion of a nonsensical
and psychedelic universe that
stimulates the imagination, the
humor, and the surreal. The
Annotated Alice made a good
impression; people now usually
mention aspects of that. But I
still know very few people who
are interested in discussing spe-
cific passages of the texts or different analytical
approaches.
kl: How do Brazilians react to your Carrollian art, espe-
cially the surrealist element? Do they prefer a more
literal approach (like North American visual culture
and mass media), or is your culture more open to such
intuitive visual/linguistic thinking?
ap: My Alice illustrations for both books were never
published. When I did them 12 years ago the
publishers told me they were amazing but they
weren't commercial. Now the situation has
changed. We have more experimental illustra-
tions published here, thanks in great extent to
Salvador Dalis mouth serves as a surrealist's hookah, demanding
Alice's identity and asking us to explain its own nature. An im-
age from the 5m^5 Alicinations, 1996-1998. More images from
this series are available on-line in Adriana's Alicinations blog.
one publishing house in special, Cosac & Naify,
that has recently published a very artistic and
metalinguistic Alice illustrated by Luiz Zerbini.
I have done some exhibitions with my work
in galleries, museums, and the Internet. Many
people who saw the photographs of my char-
acters created by assemblages (I didn't exhibit
the illustrations) find them very intriguing and
exciting but don't know enough of the book to
understand the linguistic aspects and the refer-
ences to the text; they have just my explanations
as a guide. The people who know Alice better
or who are more intimately familiar with art
usually love them,
since they propose
games of language
and labyrinths of
possibilities and do
not permit a passive
understanding.
kl: You have several
strong motifs in your
Carrollian work; we'll
start with the feminine
motif. It's common
amongst Carrollian
artists to use Alice as
a symbol of feminine
independence and
growth, but when you
use this motif you
ofien incorporate cer-
tain sexual tensions
within it, although
with great taste
and skill. Is this a
Brazilian reaction or
an Adriana reaction?
ap: I think it is
more an Adriana
reaction. Alice's sexu-
ality is rarely explored
here, since it's con-
sidered more a book
for children. I need to mention one important
artist that explores the sexuality in Alice, Arlindo
Daibert, but his work is very radical, and is still
almost unknovm.
In my case I was always intrigued by the
corporal feelings of Alice, her metamorphic
identity, her bodily transformations. If we think
of a growing girl becoming a woman, her grow-
ing consciousness of her own body is significant.
I imagine that at some level it has to do with
Carroll's anxieties about women's bodies and his
own body. I didn't study any deeply sexual analy-
ses of the book; I followed my intuition. Since
23
Alice moves me in her sensuous way of dealing
with foods and drink, doors and keys. I'm deeply
interested in her metamorphic body and iden-
tity. I think Alice's identity cannot be fixed; is a
constant becoming, she flows in her own tears,
mixes with mushrooms and animals, is mistaken
for flowers and snakes, faces vertigo, and is then
threatened with decapitation. Despite all the dif-
ficulties, she conquers with her inner strength;
she is my heroine.
It is not just an intellectual
connection, it involves the whole
being. Maybe her sexuality is
close to children's sexuality,
inhabiting her whole body, and
like a child, she fears and cannot
understand it. I love the Alice
of Jan Svankmajer since it deals
with Alice's "basements" and
"attics," her unconscious, facing
fear, sexuality, and rites of pas-
sage.
There are many symbols in
the books that point to sexual
suggestions. I'm attracted to
the unreachable garden; it's an
image of desire and its dissatis-
faction. In Freudian terms, it also
suggests a conflict between the
principles of reality and pleasure.
Alice is close to a phallic symbol,
in a flux between potency and
impotency.
For me Alice's sexuality has
more to do with a jump into
the inner caves of the body,
beyond fixed identities, than
with specific psychoanalytic argu-
ments. I avoid making the image
an example of the theory that
may be schematic. I want to be
psychologically touched by the
symbols more than by intellectual
ideas; I'm an artist more than a theorist. But of
course I'm familiar with psychology and psycho-
analysis. I've read more Jung than Freud, mainly
in connection with art and fairy tales.
KL: Is such an open feminism important to your vision
of Alice? Is the sexual aspect important? What do you
think of other popular Alices, such as the Disney film,
which avoid such issues or make them trivial? Does it
matter?
ap: I'm interested in feminist and sexual explora-
tions when they are not obvious or those of a
pamphleteer. I've recently read a beautiful and
sensitive feminist andjungian analysis of Tim
Burton's Alice. The arguments were gorgeous but
I didn't connect it to the movie. Many critics try
to fit art in their schemas; I have an open dia-
logue with theories to avoid that.
Disney's Alice is herself too conservative and
superficial, to my taste; I like the movie more for
the other characters, and also some of the visual
solutions like the Cheshire Cat disappearing, the
caterpillar smoking, and the hybrid and nonsen-
sical characters that live in the woods, like the
bread and butterfly which I love. But the movie
is more Disney
than Carroll; we
shouldn't compare
them too much
or ask for fidelity.
The worst aspect of
Disney's Alice is that
people confuse it
with the book. In
fact I like every-
thing connected
to Alice, including
what I don't like
(laughs).
I believe the
sexual aspects are
important because
they go deeper into
Alice's corporal
conflicts and her
frustrated desires.
Her body is in con-
tinuous metamor-
phoses and fluxes
that sometimes fit,
sometimes don't,
which is sexual in
a broader way. I
identify with these
aspects in particu-
lar.
The idea of the
rite of passage is
also very intriguing in a more feminist approach.
In a way Alice faces her identity and the obsta-
cles of society to become closer to her inner
strength. This point of view interests me, of
course. Alice stimulates us to defy power, to defy
the nonsense of social constraints. She opens
new possibilities for children and woman as well.
In this way it is a political book, showing that lit-
erature is not made to domesticate with morals,
but to stimulate the independence of thought.
KL: / would also say that a certain Freudian language of
images is in your work, similar to Hans Bellmer. Is
this deliberate?
ap: I love Hans Bellmer. I believe he had a deep
From the 2010 series, Clalice, collages for a tale Adriana is writing
in which she mixes Alice with the texts of the wonderful Brazilian
writer Clarice Lispector. The collages include pictures based on Car-
roll's photographs, fulia Margaret Cameron 's photographs and Rene
Bour's drawings for a vintage French Alice edition.
24
impact on my work, as did other artists and
many surrealists and also Dadaists like Raoul
Hausmann and Hannah Hoch. I'm also
very influenced by contemporary artists like
Svankmajer and the Brothers Quay. As I told you
I'm open to psychoanalytic analyses, but I don't
go further into Freudian theories. I just read
Freud's own texts after my Alice project and
became engaged in particular with the idea of
the uncanny, which also connects me to Bellmer.
I have affinities with his dismembered dolls and
reassembled bodies that
point to an anguish
related to the crisis of
the body image and the
identity as an integrated
whole. I also identify
with his conception of
the body as an anagram
that can be rewritten.
Psychoanalytic con-
cepts were not the main
point during my creative
process, but I'm sure
that what I read influ-
enced me, as did my
analytical personal pro-
cess, which drew upon
the influence of my own
unconscious mind. I was
also influenced by psy-
choanalysis through the
surrealist movement.
kl: Surrealist and even proto-
surrealist influences seem so
important in your work, but
is this fair to Lewis Carroll?
We know that he and his
contemporaries visualized
his work in a very literal,
charming manner. The
surrealist philosophy would
probably have horrified him.
Can we excuse ourselves
from this "translator's betrayal"? Do you think that
surrealism is within Lewis Carroll or have we imposed
it, looking back from the twenty-first and twentieth
centuries ?
ap: These are all big questions. I'm interested in
what Carroll inspired after him as much as in
what he proposed in his own time. I don't think
he really was a surrealist but surrealism had an
open mind to all manifestations that broke with
a strict rational mind, opening it to other states
of consciousness and a broader understanding
of reality and language. I think Carroll's works
fits in this universe. So he is in fact a very fertile
surrealist inspiration.
Humpty Dumpty says Bosch to all that. One ofAdriana 's illustra-
tions/or the book: Lewis Carroll era victoriana by Kdtia Canton
(2010). The book explores the Mice books along with Carroll's life
and the historical context of the Victorian age. These are digital
collages mixing Tenniel's illustrations with various famoiis paint-
ings of art history, in this instance, Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of
Earthly Delights.
I give lectures about the Alice transformations
in the story of visual arts, the evolution of her
visual representations in art and illustration. I
love how she can change and become incorpo-
rated in the transformations of culture and the
imaginary. I like to emphasize her plasticity, the
way she grows, twists and turns, and is always
becoming, from surrealism, psychedelic, gothic,
steampunk, etc. I don't think it is a betrayal; it
shows how deep her presence is in our culture
and collective unconscious. In this way, I think
that her doubts about her-
self after several transfor-
mations continue during
history. I don't know any
literary character that has
been represented in so
many radically different
ways.
As a collage artist, in-
spired by surrealism but not
a surrealist, what interests
me is the possibility to cre-
ate new connections, pro-
pose displacements, freely
appropriate. I intend to
open new ways to see Car-
roll's works instead of be-
coming fixed in Victorian
references. Whoever works
with collage is always look-
ing for new possibilities to
play with the same images;
it is like a semiotic game,
a machine to re-signify. I
learned to admire Tenniel's
Alice, but I've spent a long
time being disappointed
by how many illustrators
were fixated on his example
instead of liberating the
imagination. Alice liberates
my imagination, that's why I
still follow the white rabbit.
I love to subvert Tenniel, and I will dare to recon-
figure him as much as I can.
Carroll knew that his works had a broader
meaning, bigger than his own understanding. I
think his illustrations are more intriguing than
he himself understood. I'm publishing his manu-
script of Alice's Adventures under Ground and have
written a text about his illustrations. I believe
that in a way they are opposite to Tenniel's. I
think Tenniel's were adequate to the common
Victorian taste, more conventional, formal,
and rigid; Carroll's drawings are an invitation
to strangeness, the unknown, and the under-
25
ground. That's why I feel they have connections
with Hieronymus Bosch and the surrealist besti-
aries, creating monstrous, hybrid creatures like
the gryphon and the mock turtle. Their illustra-
tions are my favorites among all.
kl: You seem interested in various literary/philosophical
theories and systems. How is theory useful for a work-
ing artist such as you, when so many other artists
(and readers) happily ignore
it?
ap: I look for ideas that pro-
pose new understandings
of language, culture, and
art. When I'm engaged in
a work of illustration or
art, I can read all kinds
of texts that stimulate me
to present the literary
text in a more disturbing,
provocative, and unusual
way. I'm interested in
everything that opens
news doors in my imagina-
tion and way of thinking.
What I read influences
me a lot, but many times
when I create I forget the
theory, although it may
still be working in the
background.
For my Wonderland and
Looking-Glass illustrations
I read many articles and
theories, then I chose two
main references. One
was the approach of the
Annotated Alice (which
wasn't known in Brazil at
that time) to show that
the book was not a silly
Messrs. Carroll and Dodgson subsumed by the Brothers Dum!
Another illustration Jrom Kdtia Canton's book, in this case utili
zing Giuseppe Arcimboldo's painting. The Librarian.
party, as Disney suggested. I wanted to demon-
strate how it was grounded in the reality of its
time, the author's life, mathematics, logic, and
scientific references, etc. It gave multiple levels
to my work since I was always mixing my char-
acters and the linguistic inventions with photo-
graphs of Carroll, Alice, and other references.
It presented a possibility to operate inside and
outside the story, to sew in
references, play with real-
ity and imagination, etc.
I also became fascinated
by Gilles Deleuze and his
The Logic of Sense. This is
a very complex work but
also very powerful, decon-
structing the whole system
of occidental logic and
recreating our understand-
ing of language, sense, and
reality. When I did the
Wonderland characters and
illustrations I was thinking
of Deleuze 's concepts of
the division of bodies and
"surface events," of the bod-
ies in their deep, logical
attributes and the surface
events that flow on the sur-
face of the sense. It's diffi-
cult to explain even in my
own language, so I won't
go further in English, to
avoid misunderstandings.
The point is that Carroll,
for Deleuze, proposes a
series of paradoxes ques-
tioning both good sense
and common sense. I also
followed this path.
^OCJElDcyfi:iE
The logo of the Lewis Carroll Society of Brazil, a key that opens doors
into other dimensions, designed by Adriana Peliano. (2009)
26
i^fL
T*^
-^0^
^
Am I Blue?
MARK BURSTEIN
^i^gl
:»^
-^
Msk anyone what color Alice's dress is and
they'll undoubtedly reply, "Why, blue, of
course." Unless you happen to be talking to
a CarroUian who knows that the only authorized color
edition, The Nursery Alice in 1890, which was colored
by Tenniel and featured a cover by E. Gertrude Thom-
son, depicts her wearing a corn yellow frock through-
out, though the apron is trimmed with blue and sports
a large blue bow. The equally authorized Wonderland
Postage-stamp Case (1889) and De La Rue card game
(1894) also show her in a yellow dress. End of story.
^ Find the *Rabbit runnina away*
and
The' Fan'.
Postage-Stamp Case
.ICE TELESCOPING.
Above, left: The Nursery Alice,
1890
Above, right: De La Rue card game,
1894
Left: The Wonderland Postage-
Stamp Case, 1889
27
Top left: McKay, 1912
Tap right: Crowell, 1893 (Wonderland)
Below right: Crowell, 1893 (Looking-Glass)
\ '^'
MWi'k'
Not quite. American publisher Thomas Crowell
published a fine edition in 1893 with one color fron-
tispiece, depicting her in a blue frock, in each of the
two books. Randomly looking through editions, au-
thorized or un-, that appeared around that time and
feature at least one color plate, I notice, for example,
a McLoughlin Brothers edition of Wonderland from
1903 in which her dress is red on the cover yet char-
treuse in the frontispiece. Many other pictorial covers
from that period have her in red, and frontispieces
or interior illustrations dress her in either red, dark
orange, or yellow (I am just looking at the Tenniels
and Tenniel knock-offs, not those by other artists such
as Rackham).
28
Above, left: Macmillan Little Folks, 1903
Above, right: Macmillan Little Folks, 1907
Left: Hurst, 1904
Below: Donohue, c. 1901
In 1903, Macmillan issued "The Little Folks' Edi-
tion" of Wonderland and Looking-Glass "adapted for
very little folks from the original story," in which the
32 Tenniel illustrations in them had been simplified,
redrawn, and then colored. Alice wears a blue dress
throughout, which is likely to have been the origin
of this particular canard. However, fascinatingly, in
the second Litde Folks' Edition (1907), her dress is
consistently red! The illustrations had reverted to the
original Tenniels, but now were colored. Was it a mar-
keter's decision? A printer's? Mrs. Hargreaves's?
29
Then, in 1911, Macmillan released a combined
Wonderland/Looking-Glass "with sixteen new colour
plates" (Harry Theaker did the honors) — and there
her dress is, once again, blue. Despite an American
release of the "Little Folks" red-dress edition as "Wee
Books for Wee Folks" by Altemus in 1926, blue was
pretty much ingrained. Certainly the 1946 Random
House boxed set with the Fritz Kredel coloring and a
few years later, Mary Blair's characteristic hue for her
dress in Disney's 1951 film sealed the deal, at least as
far as popular culture goes.
Curiouser and curiouser.
Disney, 1951
I am indebted to Selwyn Goodacre, Frankie Morris,
Brian Sibley, Gary Sternick, and Edward Wake-
ling for assistance. Goodacre's article "So What
Should Alice Wear?" (Dodo News No. 12, August
1992, from the Daresbury Dodo Glubfor children)
informs this as well.
Random House, 1 946
-^
Zits by Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman
30
^
^
^
^
leaves fKoo)
The Deaneny Ganden
What is the current copyright state
of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonder-
land, Through the Looking-Glass, and
The Hunting of the Snark books?
More-or-less trustworthy sources
on the Internet (Project Guten-
berg and Wikipedia), indicate
that these books are in the public
domain. I'm asking this because I
am trying to create a comic where
Alice is a character and Won-
derland and the Looking-Glass
world are part of the settings. I
have been told that as long as my
sources are the books, I can quote
Carroll's work with no fear. How-
ever, I have also been told that
Disney is apparendy the current
"owner" of Alice in Wonderland in
North America. I find that hard to
believe, especially since ABC just
released a mini-series about Alice
as well.
So, are the books truly in the
public domain? Are there adapta-
tion rights that belong to some-
one? Or does Disney only have
rights on their "version" of the
story? My project only references
the original books. Should there
be problems?
Thank you so much for shed-
ding light on this litde shadow in
my mind.
Isabelle Melangon
LCSNA President Andrew Sellon re-
sponds:
You are correct that all three of
Charles Dodgson's (Lewis Carroll's)
greatest literary works are now in the
public domain. In fact, they have been
for many years now. You are also cor-
rect that Disney can only copyright
their own original content. By the way,
a few years ago Disney actually part-
nered with Slave Labor Graphics to
produce a Tommy Kovac/Sonny Liew
comic series called Wonderland (origi-
nally in six issues, now in a single
hardcover volume as well), which in
part pokes fun at the visual style of
their animated Alice from 1 93 L You
might want to have a look at that; it 's
quite good. You might also want to
browse our website a bit more, as it has
a lot of information that might provide
you with additional ideas for your own
project.
While the works are in public do-
main, it would of course be only ap-
propriate for you to cite that your own
work is "inspired by the works of Lewis
Carroll, " or something like that, to give
Lewis Carroll his fair due. Send us the
link when you post your work, and we
can note it on our blog, in our Face-
book group, etc., to help generate some
more interest in your work. Good luck
with your project!
A follow-up to letters in KL 84:
Mr. Sellon,
Thank you so much for your time.
I like your idea about reliable
sources and research.
I have just shared your letter
with my 11th grade students. They
listened intentiy. What happened
next was that one student said,
"We should read the book," and
another said, "Why don't we have
a party and wear costumes?" so
we decided that we will be having
31
an end-of-the-year "Wonderland
Costume Party." I'm thinking that
they can recite some of their own
poems and some of Carroll's. "Bril-
lig" idea!
Of course, all the computers in
the classroom will be showing your
website.
Monie Rude-Scrivner
Stockton, CA
LCSNA's website is dynamic
and friendly and conveys unrelent-
ing enthusiasm for all things
CarroUian.
Liz Ainley ofStorypods Audio-
books
Oxford, England
m
I have a simple question . . . well,
one that would seem simple but
has exhausted me the past few
days trying to answer. I remember
a line from the 1951 Disney's Alice
in Wonderland. The line is Alice
saying, "If I had a world of my
own, everything would be non-
sense. Nothing would be what it
is because everything would be
what it isn't. And contrary-wise;
what it is it wouldn't be, and
what it wouldn't be, it would. You
see?" However, I have recently
purchased a new version of Al-
ice's Adventures in Wonderland
with illustrations by Camille Rose
Garcia, and upon re-reading the
childhood classic I realized that
quote from Alice was nowhere to
be found. I took further steps to
try to find the quote in Carroll's
literature but have been unsuc-
cessful in every attempt, yet all
over the Internet it is cited as a
Lewis Carroll quote. Am I missing
a reading, or is this just a Disney-
added quote which Carroll is now
credited with? Thank you so much
if you're able to shed any light on
this for me.
Jarrod Medlen
LCSNA President Andrew Sellon re-
sponds:
Trust your eyes. If it's not in the books,
Carroll didn 't unite it. The lines you
cite were created by Disney 's scriptwrit-
ers. While occasionally you might
see a stage or TV/film adaptation of
the Alice books that tries to use large
chunks of Carroll's own words, it's
typical in adaptations for the produc-
ers/writers to attempt to go their own
way with dialogue. Some attempts
evoke the spirit of Carroll more success-
fully than others, but frankly none of
the adaptations can hold a candle to
Carroll's own witty wordplay. You may
have missed that in the opening credits
of the 1951 Disney film, they actually
misspell "Carroll"! So that gives you
some warning that their focus in that
charming film was not primarily on
accuracy.
It's also not unusual to find mis-
information about Lewis Carroll and
his works (and just about any other
subject under the sun) on the Internet.
You had the good instincts to go to the
original source material. That's always
the best way to find out the truth of the
matter. Our website and that of our
sister organization in the U.K. contain
a wealth of information and commen-
tary on Carroll's life and works, so you
might want to browse both a bit more,
as well as check out our site's blogfor a
more pop culture angle. If you enjoyed
reading the original book, I encourage
you to pick up an unexpurgated copy
o/Through the Looking-Glass and
What Alice Found There, as well
as the brilliantThe Hunting of the
Snark. The writing in both books is
remarkable, and both offer some fasci-
nating authorial colors not shown in
the first Mice book.
"She watched with curiosity as I
picked up a battered old Alice in
Wonderland. With shaking hands
I groped for a synchronicity in
the pages and as I greedily read
through the passage I had chosen,
she asked me what it said. Sur-
prised and embarrassed, I read it
out to her:
'She was getting a little giddy
with so much floating in the air
and was rather glad to find herself
walking again in the natural way.'"
From The First Verse by
Barry McCrea, Carroll &' Graf
Publishers, New York, 2005.
MK
"Mr. Patel . . . concluded that Mr.
Creme was 'a sweet, pleasant old
man' who ultimately 'was like the
Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland
who said she could believe
six impossible things before
breakfast.'"
From "Meeting the Man Who
Made Him the (Mistaken)
Messiah" by Scott fames. New
York Times, August 20, 2010,
about the meeting between author
and economist Raj Patel and
mystic Benjamin Creme of Share
International, who had identified
Patel as the messiah.
32
"Tess the chambermaid had been
left behind in the bedchamber,
curled up with Alice in Wonderland,
murmuring 'BHmey!' each time an
amazing thing happened, which
was every other paragraph."
From The Birthday Ball by Lois
Lowry, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publishing, New York, 2010.
"Somewhere near the top in the
fantasy section [of the list of
recently published books for
children] comes Alice in Orchestra
Land (cobenden-sanderson,
3/6) , a partial parody which sets
out to let small people know about
odd things such as tubas and
double-bassoons, and does this
very entertainingly. I say 'partial'
because Mr. ernest la prade has
borrowed Carroll's framework
without trying to imitate his magic
lunacy which mitigates the heresy
of his act."
From an anonymous review,
Punch, December 12, 1934.
While visiting Bohemia, the author
comments, "Bohemia had been a
Protestant country at the outset of
the Thirty Years' War. It was Catho-
lic once more at its close and as
free of heresy as . . . the sea-shore
of oyster-response at the end of
'The Walrus and the Carpenter.'"
Later, while visiting Slovakia, he
finds a cache of his host's daugh-
ters' childhood books. The Alice
books are there; he begins to read
them, and that launches a discus-
sion about his habit of thinking
backwards — imagining words as
they would be spelled in reverse
order — and reciting poetry to him-
self with all the words backwards.
From A Time of Gifts by Patrick
Leigh Fermor, John Murray Ltd,
1977; reprinted by New York Review
of Books Classics, 2005.
'He had a pile of English books,
some from the British Council
Library, some with USIS stickers.
I remember a thin one, Shane,
about an American village much
like Punjab, and Alice in Wonder-
land, which gave me nightmares."
ircwi Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee,
Grove Weidenfield, 1 989; reprinted
by Fawcett (pb), 1991.
"A fortunate arrival, Bea thought,
as Jane and Al hugged Shimmer
and introduced Coral. Now they
could talk of something else. Ships
or shoes or sealing wax. Anything."
From In the Family Way by Lynne
Sharon Schwartz, William Morrow
and Company, Inc., New York,
1999.
"The only solo child in any such
adventure that ever showed up in
these old books was stolid aproned
Alice, who wandered through
Wonderland more or less alone,
with only her own hydroencepha-
litic head to keep her company.
That is: Alice slowly going mad.
Who could blame her?"
From "Puz_le" by Gregory Maguire,
a short story collected in The
Dragon Book, Jack Dann and
Gardner Dozois, editors. Ace Books,
New York, 2009.
After encountering a young
woman crying a "rolling flood of
gummy tears," the main character
notes that, "Lower down the steps,
a mouse was swimming to safety."
The book also includes a chapter
titled "The Duchess and the Cook."
From I Shall Wear Midnight by
Terry Pratchett, HarperColliins,
New York, 2010.
While browsing the book sellers at
the Edinburgh Book Fair, restora-
tion expert Brooklyn Wainwright
"spied an illustrated Alice In Wonder-
land and rushed over to examine
it. It was a 1927 edition in spring
green leather, mint condition,
with heavy gilding around the
edges and on the spine. Ornate
dentelles decorated the inside
front and back covers. There was a
wonderful gilt-tooled White Rab-
bit on the center of the front cover,
checking his pocket watch, and a
scolding Queen of Hearts on the
back. It was delightful. Expensive,
but worth it." There is only one
other reference to the book after
its purchase — "that it isn't really a
children's story!"
From If Books Could Kill: A
Bibliophile Mystery by Kate
Carlisle, Signet, 2010.
33
WRiTinq Desk
OF MARK BURSTEIN
'Oh, how glad I am to get here! And what is this on my head!' she exclaimed in a tone of dismay,
as she put her hands up to something very heavy, that fitted tight all round her head. "
I suppose I'll now just have to get used to the pri-
vate jet, the luxury yacht, the bodyguards, and all
the other perks that come with being an LCSNA
president. Oh, right. Reality. In all seriousness, I am
pleased with, humbled by, and a bit terrified of as-
suming the mantle of Society president. As the first
(but undoubtedly not the last) president whose par-
ent also served in this vaunted office (Sandor having
done so from 1983-84) — a dynasty I'd rather asso-
ciate with John and John Quincy than George and
George W — and also as the former Warden of Out-
land, a title bestowed upon me by Peter Heath when
I functioned in a similar capacity for the West Coast
Chapter of the LCSNA (1979-87), I hope that I may
live up to the amazing precedents (pun unavoidable)
that our eleven former presidents have set in a leader-
ship tradition going back to Stan Marx.
I cannot say enough, nor ever fully express our
thanks to Andrew Sellon for his stalwart and exempla-
ry guidance over these last four years, in which he has
produced excellent meetings, helped to design and
manifest a wonderful new incarnation of the website,
and even run the Knight Letter for five issues, but let
me try: thank you very much, Andrew.
Enormous thanks are also due to Edward Guilia-
no, who kindly arranged for superb facilities for our
New York meeting, and to him and the other speakers
who made it so memorable.
Some big shout-outs are due to our Knight Let-
ter staff. Our fearless leader for the past two and
this present issue, Sarah Adams-Kiddy, is expecting
twins in February! Hence she is resigning from most
editorial duties until her time is once again, more or
less, her own. The dashing Mahendra Singh, who has
edited the Rectory Umbrella for that same period, is
taking over as editor in chief, beginning next issue.
And we also very much want to acknowledge former
president Alan Tannenbaum, who has been supplying
our magazine with the photographs of speakers at
our meetings for many a year.
34
Our next meeting will be in Everybody's Favorite
City, San Francisco, at the headquarters of Archive,
org, whose mission is to digitize the world. Their facili-
ties include a lovely desanctified church, where we will
hold the meeting, and one of their digitizing centers
(worldwide, they average a thousand books a day, not
to mention making an accessible backup of the entire
Internet every two weeks!). The next day will feature
an open house at my ranch in Petaluma, a town once
known for its chicken farms run by Yiddish-speaking
farmers (poultry was replaced by dairy a half-century
ago), and famed as the birthplace of Snoopy. It is in
scenic Sonoma County, the heart of California's wine
country, and a 45-minute drive from San Francisco.
The Burstein Collection is housed in a three-story
tower, and selected highlights will be on display. As
we go to press, not much else, even the exact date, is
known, but I promise you an unforgettable inaugural
meeting.
What's a Snark?
MARKJARMON
^
^
for Lewis Carroll
"What's a Snark?" I must ask you
Please answer me this if you can.
Or should I ask you, who?
Is it bird, or fish, or man?
"What's a Snark?" I have asked it twice
That alone should perk up your ears.
"What's a Snark?" I have asked it thrice
This puzzle has had me for years.
I've been planning a quest for months now
On the back of an old railway stub
But I can't seem to find any answers
And, aye, isn't that just the rub!
I've checked Cook's maps from his journeys
I've read Cousteau's logs from his dives
A sea hag munched "hurlyburly"
I avoided a Mariner's eye.
I then had the notion to travel the ocean
(for that's where Snarks live, you see)
But I hadn't a boat, nor nothing to float
So I never did push out to sea.
So back to the books for a couple of looks
To see where this Snark may keep rest
But King James and Webster and Britannica too
Were also dead ends in my quest.
You can see of this quest I was somewhat obsessed
And the time it had gotten away here
I started at quarter to five in October
And now it was going on New Year.
I needed some rest, (oh I needed some rest!)
So I rested my eyes for a minute
Then wouldn't you know, down a hole I did go
With cupboards of marmalade in it.
I was falling so long, I was falling so slow
But the bottom it finally came
And there stood a man with a bell in his hand
And a book of celestial names.
He said with a grin, "Hello Mr. Jim.
I can show you that thing which you seek."
So he opened his book and gave me a look
Saying "Careful-nowjim-just-one-peek!"
"A Snark" (it read) "is a creature that lives
In the dreams of little ones' heads,
But as you grow older and sights get much colder
The poor Snark goes belly up dead!"
So keep a young soul, whenever you go
For a stroll through the midsummer park
'Cause you never will know, oh the places you'll go!
When you'll get to be, so to speak, snarked.
Mr farmon is a high-school English teacher in Newfersey.
His poem was originally published in the Canadian chil-
dren 's magazine Crow Toes Quarterly, Vol. 3, Issue 1,
No. 9, fanuary 2009.
35
H^^
^s
-^^^
urns Carroll Tests Out ]ahkrwoc\y
^i^
>*v
JENN THORSON
^
^
'he woman was packed into her black Victori-
an dress, her hair piled high, bearing plumes
that bobbed like an exotic bird looking to at-
tract another exotic bird for an afternoon of passion
and seed.
As the audience before her clapped, she an-
nounced, ". . . And next, we will have a reading from
Rev. Charles Dodgson, who plans
quite a treat for us. He says he's been
writing a bit in his spare time, and to-
day will recite a poem of his very own
creation. I haven't heard it yet myself,
so we'll all be surprised and delighted
together. Welcome, Rev. Dodgson. I
expect your poetry to enlighten and
inspire us all."
Young Charles Lutwidge Dodg-
son stepped to the podium, and felt
the sweat bead up around his starched
collar. He hadn't shared this with any-
one yet, and he knew it was a little risky.
Normally, at these sorts of functions, he just stood
up and read Tennyson's Lady of Shalott and was
done with it. But there had already been three Lady
of Shalotts today. The lady could only die so many
times in one afternoon. The moment begged variety.
And variety he would give them.
"Um, thank . . . thank you," he said. "It's a pleasure
to be with you all today. I ... I've been working on
something new. Er, different, I think. And I . . . Um, , .
I'm not sure how . . . Well, you see, this piece was . . . was
. . . Well, maybe it's just best I begin."
The room grew quiet. He cleared his throat.
"Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves.
And the mome raths outgrabe."
He paused for effect, but could
hear the murmurs in the crowd. "What
language is that?" whispered one.
"Native Australian. They've boro-
goves in the Outback," responded an-
other, more informed gentleman.
"I had slithy toves in my garden
once," mumbled someone near the
back. "Dreadful pests. Had to use lime
on them."
"What part of the Bible is this?"
murmured a lady in gray flannel, flip-
ping unsettled through her pocket Bible. "Book of
Isaiah?"
The Bird of Paradise at the front of the room
flushed, looking like the pressure building up might
shoot her clear from corset and all. "Shhh, everyone.
Please. . . Oh, I am sorry, Rev. Dodgson, please do
go on."
Deborah Brody
Jerome Bump
Don Charney
Jim Domiano
Michael Dupler
Cary Elza
David C.Jones
*^ Tk^ J*-^ *^
Robert Kass
Jane Masterson
Robert Mitchell
Amy Plummer
Cathy Rubin
Thomas Schrack
Valerie Taricco
Ricardo Jaramillo Sarah Jardine-Willoughby
^ \\//^
-^A^ *—
John Tyo
*^ Jl-^ *^ *^
m.
i^n^
36
Charles Dodgson gave her a tight smile and cleared
his throat again.
"Beware thejabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the jubjub bird and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
In the crowd eyebrows were raised. Cheeks were
pale. Eyes were wide. He caught a vague, "What did
he say?"
"Gloomius band of snatch, I think."
"Well, that hardly sounds appropriate for mixed
company! And from a clergyman, too."
An old lady who'd only heard half of it, shouted,
"Is this not The Lady of Shalott, then?"
Dodgson tugged at his collar, which was damp
and wilting now, but he determined to proceed on.
Perhaps the problem was he just needed to give it a
bit more energy for it to really grip:
"He took his vorpal sword in
hand:
Long time the manxome foe he
sought —
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought."
"Who's the fellow with the purple
sword again?" hissed a lady in the
front row to her sister.
"I don't know. But he's fighting
someone who speaks Manx."
Dodgson decided that maybe
louder was the way to go, now, and
upped the volume.
"But, as in uffish thought he stood,
Thejabberwock with eyes of flame
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood
And burbled as it came!"
"Isn't Tulgey somewhere near Cheshire?"
"Devon, I think. Is this fellow quite all right?"
"Always heard he was a bit strange."
Desperate to get through the poem with any de-
gree of success, Dodgson grabbed up a nearby lady's
parasol and swept it aloft like a mighty broadsword.
He knew he should have brought some props, but
this would just have to do.
"One, two! One, two! And through and through,
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!"
"He's having a fit!" a woman cried, standing up in
her concern.
"Someone help the poor man!"
The lady with all the plumes had gone complete-
ly crimson now, and rushed to his side — just as the
parasol accidentally popped open, sending a second
potential assistant backwards into the front row
The Bird of Paradise took his arm
and made soothing sounds, patting
him. "There, there. Rev. Dodgson."
She was leading him from the podium
now, while someone picked up Mr. Ev-
ans from row one.
"I'm fine, honestly," the young
clergyman insisted. "It . . . It's just a bit
of nonsense, really, I — "
"Alice, dear, fetch Rev. Dodgson a
Glass of water, would you? . . . There's
a good girl."
"It's for children, you know," he
persisted. "There were just so terribly
many Shalotts and — "
"Mad as a hatter, that one," someone whispered.
"Mad as a March hare," agreed someone else sadly.
"Completely off of his head."
IN MBMORIAM
It is with great sadness that we report the passing of
Deborah Epstein. A member of the society for over 20 years,
she attended and contributed to many meetings.
37
"THE ANTIPATHIES,
I THINK — "
Lester R. Dickey
On page 28 of Martin Gardner's
The Annotated Alice, Alice is falling
down the rabbit-hole, and as the
trip is taking so long, she begins
to speculate as to how far she has
fallen. Of special interest to her is
whether she will "'fall right through
the earth! How funny it'll seem to
come out among the people that
walk with their heads downwards!
The Antipathies, I think — ' (she
was rather glad that there was no
one listening, this time, as it didn't
sound at all like the right word)
' — but I shall have to ask them
what the name of the country is,
you know. Please, Ma'am, is this
New Zealand or Australia?'" Gard-
ner lets this stand without annota-
tion in both The Annotated Alice
and More Annotated Alice.
Obviously, "antipathies" is
not "at all the right word." She
meant "Antipodes." The Oxford
Companion to the English Language
(Oxford University Press, 1992)
gives the etymology as "through
Latin from Greek antipodes plural
of antipous/antipodos having the
foot opposite. ... A term first
applied in English to the people
of Ethiopia, once thought to live
on the opposite side of the globe;
by the 16c, applied to places di-
Carrollian Notes
rectly opposite one another on
the surface of the earth and to
that place directly 'under' one's
own location. A group of islands
opposite Greenwich in England to
the south-east of New Zealand was
named the Antipodes in 1800. From
the 1830s, British travelers to Aus-
tralia and New Zealand (but espe-
cially Australia) were encouraged
by the reversal of the seasons and
the unusualness of the flora and
fauna to see an antipodean 'world
turned upside down', in which
'everything goes by contraries'."
Alice is extremely accurate,
given the knowledge and custom
of the time, in her definition of
"antipodes." Even the unattributed
quotes in the Oxford Companion,
"world turned upside down" and
"everything goes by contraries"
seem particularly appropriate to
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
In retrospect, Alice's use of the
word "antipathies" seems strangely
well chosen: "Contrariety of feeling,
disposition or nature (between per-
sons or things); natural contrariety
or incompatibility," according to
the Oxford English Dictionary. There
is certainly enough "contrariety of
feeling, disposition or nature" in
Wonderland to justify her use of the
word.
The Antipodes are an uninhab-
ited group of islands, part of New
Zealand, encompassing 24 square
miles. Since the Lory, mentioned
in Wonderland, is a parrot native to
Australia and surrounding areas,
possibly it is also a denizen of the
Antipodes.
"World turned upside down" is
from Robert Burton's Anatomy of
Melancholy (1621). It also is found
in the King James Bible, Acts 17:6.
I was not able to find an contem-
porary attribution for "everything
goes by contraries" except for a
similar phrase in David Copperfield,
Chapter 3, "everythink goes con-
trairy with me." Incidentally, Acts
17:7, the verse following the "world
turned upside down," uses the
word "contrary." "Contrariwise,"
the favorite word of Tweedledee
in Through the Looking-Glass, ap-
pears three times in the King fames
Bible. 2 Corinthians 2:7, Galatians
2:7, and 1 Peter 3:9. Since Car-
roll (Dodgson) was a minister, he,
consciously or otherwise, may have
picked up some of the unusual
words and phrases in Wonderland
from the Bible.
ALICE SPEAKS
David Schaefer
Alice has always been a challenge
for motion picture producers.
Whenever an advance in film
techniques has occurred, an Alice
sporting these improvements has
appeared. Even though many of
the productions have not been
considered outstanding examples
of film art, they have provided a
powerful stimulus to continued
interest in the Alice stories.
In 1931, Alice entered the
sound motion picture era with,
as the ads at the time stated, "the
first articulated Alice." For many
years this film version of Wonder-
land, the "Bud Pollard Alice," was
considered "lost," even though
there were some copies around,
including one in my own Alice film
closet. It shed its lost distinction
at the October 17, 2009, LCSNA
meeting (KL 83:5) at the Fort
Lee, New Jersey, Historical Center,
where it was screened mere blocks
away from where it had been pro-
duced 78 years earlier. Included
in the audience were the daughter
and the grandchildren of Ruth
38
Gilbert, the film's star. They had
never before seen the film.
A direct result of the meeting is
that today the film is widely men-
tioned on the Internet, including
a clip from the film along with
individual frames on YouTube.
My 16mm copy of the film was
purchased around 1970, after my
wife had found an Alice in Wonder-
landMsted (without annotation) in
a magazine called The Big Reel. We
took a chance that the advertised
film might be an Alice that we did
not already have in our Lewis Car-
roll film collection, and ordered it.
What arrived in the mail was this
primitive sound film — the "lost"
Alicel
Unlike other Alice productions,
this version is basically true to the
book — except for the love interest
between the White Rabbit and the
Duchess! Evidently the producers
felt that even for a child's movie,
there had to be some romance
and decided on this most unlikely
combination.
The opening and closing cred-
its of the film are accompanied
by a full-orchestra rendition of
Irving Berlin's "Come Along with
Alice," a song written for the 1916
Broadway musical Century Girl.
There is no indication that Irving
Berlin gave permission for use of
his song, and there is no identifi-
cation of the orchestra or of the
male vocalist.
This Alice -wzs filmed at the Met-
ropolitan Studios in Fort Lee, New
Jersey, with Bud Pollard directing.
Pollard worked with marginal
groups at the fringes of the mo-
tion picture industry, producing
and directing B-minus motion pic-
tures. Many times he simply added
the new technology of sound to
silent films in the public domain.
His films were aimed at niche
audiences, audiences that Holly-
wood ignored. He produced films
in Italian and Yiddish, and "race
films" for the black population. In
1931, Pollard felt he had found
another niche audience with his
Alice — children.
Ruth Gilbert's employment as
Alice must have been her first job
after graduation from the Ameri-
can Academy of Dramatic Arts in
1930. Subsequently, she worked in
live theater, up to 1952, when she
became a regular on The Milton
Berle Show. She later taught at the
Lee Strasberg acting school in
New York.
The supporting cast had varied
backgrounds. The Duchess and
Mock Turtle had silent careers
starting in 1911, and the Cook,
King of Hearts, and Hatter had
live stage experience. The Gry-
phon and Caterpillar continued
to work in sound films (they were
both munchkins in The Wizard
ofOz), while the White Rabbit's
career included silent, sound, and
stage productions.
The first published mention of
the film is a news item from the
June 21, 1931, edition of the New
York Times reporting that ''Alice in
Wonderland is the first production
in a series of four talking pictures
planned especially for child audi-
ences by an independent cinema
group known as Unique-Cosmos
Pictures with offices in the Film
Centre Building in this city. The
features are to be produced at the
Metropolitan Studios in Fort Lee,
N.J., where Alice in Wonderland is,
now before the cameras."
The initial review of the film
(well before its release) in the
trade magazine Film Daily was not
complimentary. It considered the
film to be a "mildly entertaining
adaptation of a fairy tale good
only for kids and non-theatrical
trade." Later on it opined that
"even the kiddies may be consider-
ably bored due to lack of action or
interesting talk." Ninety percent
of the uninteresting talk was Lewis
Carroll's own words.
The first theatrical showing was
a "special children's performance"
at the Roxy Theater in Manhattan
on the morning of Saturday, De-
cember 5, 1931. In its notice about
this presentation, Film Daily iden-
tified the film only as "recently
made here (in an eastern studio)
with Charles Levine as chief cam-
eraman."
The film had its official pre-
miere at the Warner Theater, the
same theater where The Jazz Singer
had premiered four years earlier.
Billed as "The First Children's
Talkie to reach the screen," Alice
started its run at 9:30 a.m. on
Christmas day of 1931. During
its stay at the Warner there were
"FREE toys for the Children" on
the 25th, 26th, and 27th. On the
28th, 29th, and 30th, this was
reduced to "FREE candy." New
Year's Day saw Alice replaced by
Safe in Hell. There is some specula-
tion as to how the film ever got
booked into such a prestigious
venue as the Warner in the first
place.
New York Times critic Mordaunt
Hall reviewed the film on Decem-
ber 28, and was kinder than the
Film Daily review mentioned ear-
lier, noting that "There is an ear-
nestness about the direction and
the acting that elicits sympathy, for
poor litde Alice had to go through
the ordeal of coming to shadow
life in an old studio in Fort Lee,
N.J., instead of enjoying the mani-
fold advantages of her rich cousins
who hop from printed pages to
the screen amid the comforts of a
well-equipped Hollywood studio
. . . although it will probably meet
with favor from youngsters who go
to see an articulate Alice on the
screen."
Aside from the New York show-
ings, only six other presentations
in U.S. theatres can be docu-
mented. Five of these occurred
during the Christmas season of
1931. In 1934, there was a showing
in Atianta.
But what about showings in
locations other than theaters? In
August of 1931, Film Daily had the
news that the Alice film would be
"reduced to a 16mm film for re-
lease simultaneously with the regu-
lar theatrical release." The move,
39
they claimed, was made necessary
"by the demand for the series by
non-theatrical users throughout
the country." Educational Screen \^zs>
more specific, stating that the film
would be "available in 35mm film
with sound and in 16mm versions
either sound or silent."
In what format were the 16mm
films to be issued? The sound was
probably on a phonograph record.
It was not until 1933 that the Amer-
ican Standards Association adopted
a standard for 16mm sound on
film production. The film shown
at the Fort Lee meeting was pro-
duced from my film (16mm sound
on film on DuPont-manufactured
film base). DuPont data indicates
that this film stock was produced
sometime before 1940.
Showings of the film in schools
or churches would have provided
the greatest impact on continuing
interest in Alice's Adventures in Won-
derland. 16mm sound films could
be shown in schools, churches,
factories, and other non-theatrical
locations. During and after World
War II, 16mm sound projectors
became very popular. Whether par-
tial 16mm versions of the film were
ever produced is not known, but
if they were, they would have been
very suitable for classroom use.
On December 22, 1933, Para-
mount released their expensive
Hollywood version of Alice that
starred Charlotte Henry and in-
cluded practically every one of
their big stars.
On May 19, 1933 Motion Picture
Daily gave a tongue-in-cheek "Tip
to Paramount." The tip: "Competi-
tion looms on Alice in Wonderland.
The independent who made the
same story in Jersey three years
ago and didn't get much of a play
at the time is figuring on a reis-
sue, 25 prints strong." Perhaps the
print shown in Atlanta was one of
these 25.
In any case, Mop Head Alice (as
my family referred to the film,
because of Alice's unbecoming
wig) may have had its troubles, but
Alice did speak, and in October
of 2009, the northern New Jersey
press proudly proclaimed that
"Alice was originally a Jersey girl!"
Thanks to August Imholtzfor aid
in locating theater showings, and to
Richard Koszarski, Tom Myers, and
Nelson Page for their assistance in
setting up the Fort Lee meeting, and
providing valuable information.
^
GUILDFORD:
A LEWIS CARROLL SOCIETY
STUDY WEEKEND,
JULY 15-18, 2010
August A. Imholtz, fr.
After Archdeacon Charles Dodg-
son's death on June 21, 1868, his
oldest son, Charles Lutwidge
Dodgson, was responsible for his
seven unmarried sisters and three
younger brothers. One of the
pressing tasks he confronted was
moving out of the rural rectory of
Croft, where they had lived for al-
most 25 years, so it could be made
ready for the next incumbent.
After some deliberation, the family
settled on the town of Guildford
in Surrey, and in October of 1868
they let at £73 per annum the
very first house they looked at,
the Chestnuts — a Victorian villa
adjacent to the grounds and ruins
of Guildford Castle, whose origins
are said to go back to the eleventh
century.
And so we found ourselves in
Guildford and its environs this
past July for a splendid long week-
end of lectures, tours, and dinners,
all brilliantly organized by Mark
and Catherine Richards and ably
assisted by Matthew and Margaret
Heaton. Our first two days of lec-
tures were held at the University
of Surrey's School of Management.
The delegates to the weekend
meeting came from America, Fin-
land, France, Japan, and of course
Britain.
But why did Dodgson choose
Guildford? Why not Oxford,
or London, or elsewhere in or
beyond Surrey? That was the
question to which Roger Allen
provided some very convincing, if
in the end unavoidably specula-
tive, answers in the introductory
lecture of the weekend program,
"The Dodgson Family at Guildford."
The Dodgson's family's presence
in Oxford could have made more
demands on his time than he
could in conscience satisfy, and
although Roger did not say it, one
might suspect they could have felt
slightly out of place there, aca-
demically and socially. Why not
London? Their presence might
well have restricted Dodgson's
social life, and London certainly
would have been more expensive
than rural Guildford. Still, why
Guildford? In addition to the
attractiveness of the town and the
charm of the Surrey Downs, Guild-
ford was easily accessible by train
from London as well as from Ox-
ford. Also, Dodgson had several
friends in the neighboring villages,
such as George Portal, vicar of Al-
bury, and he later made acquain-
tances of people of his social class
and varied interests.
We visited the Guildford Mu-
seum, which had on display varied
materials ranging from such rari-
ties as Alice's own copy of Through
the Looking-Glass, to Dodgson's
surplice with its oversized sleeves,
to Victorian toys and Wonderland
artifacts. The ebullient Maijorie
Williams then led us on a walk-
ing tour of the town, including a
descent into a crypt, now below
office flats, where King Henry Ill's
men may have stored their beer
while the King stayed at Guild-
ford Casde; the White Hart Inn,
where Dodgson sometimes stayed
when the Chestnuts became too
crowded; Archbishop Abbot's Hos-
pital of the Blessed Trinity; and
the splendid Guildhall — its bar
looking like the illustration of the
courtroom bar in the Wonderland
trial chapter.
Back at the university, I gave
a brief after-dinner talk on the
true identity of Lewis Carroll as
revealed in nineteenth-century
American newspaper accounts
40
[KL 84: 8] . I also answered some
questions on how access to mas-
sive full-text databases is changing
research techniques.
If Roger Allen had provided
the beginning of the Dodgson-
Guildford story, Charlie Lovett
discussed its end. Friday morn-
ing began with his excellent il-
lustrated lecture entitled "Thy
Will Be Done: Charles Dodgson,
Death, and Afterlife." He placed
Dodgson 's attitude toward death
in its Victorian context, discuss-
ing both the religious and social
aspects, which are not always
easy to distinguish at this remove.
Charlie quoted Michael Wheeler's
Death and the Future Life in Vic-
torian Literature and Theology on
the typical Victorian protocol of
death. Dodgson used faith, logic,
and scholarship to approach his
death, yet death seemed to remain
for him the final bending toward
divine will. Charlie supported his
thesis with quotations from Dodg-
son's letters and even from Sylvie
and Bruno. By the late nineteenth
century, a cult of pastoral, in the
bucolic sense, burial developed.
Dodgson had insisted that his
funeral be simple, with no pomp
or circumstance. Dodgson 's grave
in Guildford's Mount Cemetery
is marked by a simple white cross
atop three steps, signifying that he
was a churchman.
Charlie generously provided
a booklet he had put together to
each delegate, "The Funeral and
Burial of Charles Lutwidge Dodg-
son: A Reconstruction Based on
Contemporary Sources," which
included a CD-ROM of the music
from Dodgson 's funeral, sung by
Janice Lovett. Our conference
packets already included a marvel-
ous assortment of things: copies
of the 1871 and 1881 Census
pages listing the inhabitants of
the Chestnuts, a version of the
"Guildford Gazette Extraordinary"
(a very rare Dodgson piece) faith-
fully recreated by Mark Richards,
a postcard of an 1868 view of the
Chestnuts, and more.
Next, Selwyn Goodacre, in
"The Incomplete Works of Charles
Dodgson," discussed what Dodg-
son was working on before he
died, and what we might have
been given had he lived longer.
These included a proposed geom-
etry-for-boys book, a collection of
theological essays (mentioned in
a June 1885 letter to Macmillan),
various Bible collections for the
young, including selections to be
memorized (surely not from Le-
viticus!), letters to an unidentified
agnostic, a "family Shakespeare,"
possible further merchandizing
of themes and things based on
the Alicehooks, more items like
his "Guildford Gazette Extraordi-
nary," which Selwyn saw as a good
example of Dodgson's proto-Saki
adult humor, additional puzzles
like those published in Vanity Fair,
and something called "transcen-
dental logic."
Mark Richards spoke briefly
about "Drummond, Percy, Portal,
and Albury." Henry Drummond
(1786-1860) was a very successful
banker (King George III was his
mzyor client), with a profound
interest in religion, especially
Christ's Second Coming. After
Drummond's purchase of Albury
Estate, the small village of Albury
became, under his influence, "an
incubator of radical thought" — not
how one thinks of bankers today.
Henry Drummond's daughter
married Algernon George Percy,
sixth Duke of Northumberland,
and settled at Albury Hall. Their
son, Henry George Percy, was at
Christ Church and knew Dodgson.
The Rev. George Raymond Portal,
vicar of nearby Albury, had been
at Rugby, though a bit earher than
Dodgson. Portal, like many of the
Albury citizens, interested himself
in social welfare. He founded the
National Deposit Society — a kind
of credit union prototype. Portal,
like Dr. Munsell — rector of St.
Mary's — became part of Dodgson's
not-at-all-small circle of friends in
the Guildford area.
In the afternoon, we journeyed
over the Surrey Downs, seeing
some of the beautiful country-
side, including Newland's Corner,
where Dodgson took so many
walks. We stopped at the Silent
Pool, and wandered from its
quiet, extremely clear water to the
nearby Church of the Apostles,
the headquarters of the curi-
ous Catholic Apostolic Church
founded by Henry Drummond
and a small coterie of other men
attracted to the millennialist mes-
sage of Edward Irving. A short
ride brought us to Albury village,
where we enjoyed tea at St. Peter
and Paul Church and heard a talk
by a local historian on the history
of the church, which Drummond
built for the villagers to use as a
substitute for the ancient Saxon
church on the grounds of his
estate. We drove to Drummond's
country mansion (now being
refurbished into luxury flats)
and the old Saxon church with
its nineteenth-century Augustus
Pugin crypt — a fascinating juxta-
position of artistic styles — ^where
Drummond's remains reside.
On Friday evening, we gathered
again at the School of Manage-
ment, where Edward Wakeling
spoke on "The Personal Effects of
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1898
and Onwards." Dodgson died
at 2:30 in the afternoon of Janu-
ary 14, 1898. When his brother
Wilfred, his executor, went to the
rooms at Christ Church, he was
appalled by the mass of material
he found: a personal library of
2,050 titles arranged by subject,
photograph albums, diaries, letter
register, lecture notes, texts and
working papers, paintings, chil-
dren's toys, and much else. Many
of these effects were sold at auc-
tion over the following months,
much was burned, and of course
much was retained by members
of the Dodgson family. Wilfred
kept the diaries, but sometime
later four of the thirteen volumes
disappeared, and some pages were
removed from surviving volumes.
41
Most of the current descendants,
however distant, have some of
Dodgson's materials. In 1965,
Phihp Dodgson Jaques, "the custo-
dian of Lewis Carroll papers and
relics in their possession," in the
words of the old Guildford Muni-
ment catalogue, offered to donate
the materials to the Guildford
Muniment Room. The first part of
the materials arrived in October
of 1965, and over the years other
members of the family have added
to the original deposit. This is
known as "The Dodgson Family
Collection of Letters, Papers and
Other Materials." The family, how-
ever, still holds materials that, in
the aggregate, might be called the
Dodgson family deutero collection.
On Saturday, we traveled to
the Surrey History Centre in Wok-
ing, which contains the holdings
of the old Guildford Muniment
Room. A catalog, produced almost
twenty years ago by Shirley Corke,
listed their Carroll holdings up
to that time, and is now available
online. The Surrey History Centre
is truly a state-of-the-art facility, as
was demonstrated by its learned
archivists Julian Pooley and Mike
Page. After a tour of the Centre,
we examined an exhibition of
its impressive Dodgson holdings,
augmented by materials from the
Dodgson Family Collection. We
saw the famous letter from Dr.
Tait, headmaster of Richmond
School, to the Rev. Charles Dodg-
son expressing his high opinion
of the genius of young Charles,
drafts of Dodgson's letter to an
agnostic, the infamous note on
the removed pages from the diary,
and the standard reply to writers
addressing letters to Lewis Carroll
at Christ Church.
The afternoon was devoted to
public lectures on the legacy of
Lewis Carroll. Mark Richards wel-
comed the guests, offered some
general reflections on the depth
and extent of Carroll's legacy, and
introduced Selwyn Goodacre, who
gave a very brief biography of
Carroll as background to the after-
noon's talks.
Clare Imholtz delivered a talk
on Carroll's nonsense and word-
play, tided "Did You Say PIG or
FIG?" Carroll's words display his
sense of humor, and his neolo-
gisms had a great influence on
James Joyce, whom Clare quoted
briefly, and on the surrealists.
Many of his "Jabberwocky" non-
sense words are still in use. "Chor-
de" entered the Oxford English Dic-
tionary in the 1890s. Kipling used
four words from "Jabberwocky"
in his story "Stalky & Co." Denis
Crutch, writing \n Jabberwocky,
offered some brilliant possible
definitions for "vorpal," "tulgey,"
and "frabjous," viewing them as
sort of super portmanteaus. To
him, "vorpal" suggested voracious,
formidable, awful, mortal, fateful;
"tulgey": turgid, bulgey, bosky, ugly
(Clare thinks he borrowed some
of this from Eric Partridge); and
"frabjous": frantic, fabulous, raptur-
ous, joyous, and juicy. Agreeing
with Crutch, Elizabeth Sewell
stated in The Field of Nonsense that
the words of "Jabberwocky" often
function by reminding us of other
words. However, Sewell felt some
of the words that Carroll made
up — one can hardly pronounce
them — such as "mhruxian" and
"grurmstipth" from A Tangled Tale
and "hjckrrh" from the Mock
Turtle's story, "do not interest the
mind." She said that the mind
"can enjoy itself with words like
"tove," which look strangely famil-
iar. Clare agreed.
Selwyn then spoke on the many
parodies of the Alice books. Avoid-
ing an overly strict construction
of the term "parody," he showed a
cavalcade of slides of the covers of
numerous parodies and pastiches
(political, advertising, religious,
and other), all drawn from his
own collection, accompanied by
a delightful running commentary.
Some of the fascinating items he
showed were: Clara in Blunderland
(many Carroll collectors have a
copy of this, but how many collec-
tors have all ten reprints?), Alice in
Motorland, Through a Peer Glass (a
Winston Churchill parody) , Alice
in Holidayland, the Guinness Al-
ices of course, Alice's Adventures in
Railwayland, and Wilson in Wonder-
land (about former Prime Minister
Harold Wilson).
After a short tea break that
included a surrealistic slide show
to the strains of Grace Slick's
"White Rabbit," I gave a brief talk
on unpublished Alice plays, an-
other aspect of Carroll's legacy.
Concentrating on plays from the
copyright deposit collection of
the Library of Congress, plays not
listed in Charlie Lovett's excellent
monograph Alice on Stage, I read
brief excerpts from two of them:
a short passage from Deborah
Mitchell's 1976 NAACP play Alice
in Ghetto-Land, in which a "Top
Cat" substitutes for the Cheshire
Cat, and the delightful prologue
from Thomas Patrick McNamara's
1976 Alice — a Modern Adaptation.
Jenny Woolf followed me with
an interesting talk on Dodgson's
physical appearance. She com-
mented on his stiff posture, his
slightly asymmetrical left eye with
its drooping eyelid, his dreamy
grey eyes, and his firm belief in
mens sana in corpore sano, demon-
strated by his ability to walk eigh-
teen miles in four and three-quar-
ters hours! She wondered how
much of Dodgson himself there
might be in his story "Wilhelm von
Schimdt":
The younger, in whom the
sagacious reader already
recognizes the hero of my
tale, possessed a form which,
once seen, could scarcely
be forgotten: a slight ten-
dency to obesity proved but
a trifling drawback to the
manly grace of its contour,
and though the strict laws
of beauty might perhaps
have required a somewhat
longer pair of legs to make
up the proportion of his
figure, and that his eyes
42
should match rather more
exactly than they chanced
to do, yet to those critics
who are untrammeled with
any laws of taste, and there
are many such, to those
who could close their eyes
to the faults in his shape,
and single out its beau-
ties, though few were ever
found capable of the task,
to those above all who knew
and esteemed his personal
character, and believed that
the powers of his mind tran-
scended those of the age he
lived in, though alas! None
such has yet turned up — to
those he was an Apollo. . .
Jenny noted that the young
Dodgson looked quite dapper in
an early photograph, but unfortu-
nately no photograph of him after
the age of forty apparently exists.
He was sensitive about his appear-
ance, as Isa Bowman's story of
her attempt to sketch him makes
frightfully, almost unsettlingly,
clear. Here is Isa's account, how-
ever believable it may be, of this
particular torn page episode:
I had an idle trick of draw-
ing caricatures when I was
a child, and one day when
he was writing some letters,
I began to make a picture
of him on the back of an
envelope . . . but suddenly
he turned around and saw
what I was doing. He got up
from his seat and turned
very red, frightening me
very much. Then he took
my poor little drawing, and
tearing it into small pieces,
threw it into the fire with-
out a word.
And speaking of pages being
torn out and perhaps up, Edward
Wakeling concluded the afternoon
lectures with a talk on the missing
pages from Carroll's diary. With a
brilliantly worked out and surely
Agatha Christie-inspired talk (for
she vanished from her nearby
Surrey Downs home in 1926 only
to appear eleven days later — quite
unlike the cut diary pages, at
least so far), Edward sketched the
scene, presented the characters,
reviewed motives, eliminated the
innocent suspects, and announced
that, with the aid of his "little grey
cells," he has identified the culprit,
whose identity he will reveal in a
fully demonstrated argument in
published form.
A "Pistrinum Dinner" on Satur-
day evening was held at Gomshall
Mill. Roger Allen led us in the tra-
ditional LCS Latin grace, chosen
for the dinners by the late Canon
Ivor Davies, though I had a passel
of Cambridge College graces at
the ready, ranging from two words
to too many words, just in case
one was needed. Maybe next time.
Sunday morning began with a
visit to Millfield Park beside the
quiet River Wey to see Edwin Rus-
sell's bronze statues of the rabbit
heading for his rabbit hole while
Alice sits beside her sister, who
is reading, in a most proleptic
manner, Alice's Adventures in Won-
derland] After a peaceful few min-
utes there with photographs duly
digitally shot, we walked up to St.
Mary's church for a special Matins
service. Mary Alexander spoke to
us about Dodgson 's preaching at
St. Mary's. Selwyn Goodacre de-
livered a brief sermon honoring
his father, the late Rev. Norman
W. Goodacre, whose views he
intertwined with Carroll's "Easter
Greeting," commenting on how
both clergymen saw religion in
children's lives. After the service,
we were offered sherry and crisps
as we viewed photographs Maijo-
rie Williams had brought of the
Dodgson family graves, before and
after their restoration — ^which had
been organized and supported
by Prof. Katsuko Kasai of Japan, a
member of the Guildford Study
Weekend group.
On the way to lunch, Marjorie
Williams pointed out Mrs. Carter's
house on Quarry Street across
from St. Mary's church, where
Dodgson stayed while in Guildford
to help nurse his dying nephew
Charlie Wilcox. It was July 18,
1874, that the famous final Une of
The Hunting of the Snark suddenly
occurred to Dodgson as he took a
solitary walk on the Surrey Downs.
After lunch, we were fortunate
to be able to visit the Chestnuts
itself, courtesy of Mr. and Mrs.
Baker, who now own the property.
A number of us toured the base-
ment where their daughter now
lives in what had been in Dodg-
son's day the servants' quarters.
The upper stories were undergo-
ing careful renovation so that the
original structures could later be
revealed if necessary.
The bronze and glass statue of
Alice passing through the looking-
glass, a Palladian glass without
frame, in the little park to the side
of the hill just a few hundred feet
above the rear of the house was
delightful to see.
Unfortunately, our coach was
not able to go up the steep hill to
the Mount Cemetery to see the
Dodgson graves. An express train
brought us swiftly back to London,
a little faster surely than Dodg-
son's trip had been, but no less
enjoyable.
THE OXFORD EXPERIENCE:
EDWARD WAKELING
AT CHRIST CHURCH
Ann Buki
"And in a very short time
the room was full of Alice:
just in the same way as a
jar is full of jam! There
was Alice all the way up to
the ceiling: and Alice in
every corner of the room!"
— The Nursery Alice
The time I spent in Edward Wakel-
ing's Alice course at the Oxford
Experience (a residential summer
program of one-week courses
for nonspecialists, July 25-30)
was worth a thousand pounds a
minute. En tided Alice's Adventures
in Oxford: The Origin of Lewis Car-
43
roll's Immortal Story, the class was
international and enthusiastic, the
atmosphere friendly and collegial,
and our tutor brilliant, generous,
and humorous. There was much
of a muchness in the course; it
provided prizes to all Carrollians,
from novices to the well versed. It
would not surprise me if everyone
in the class has joined the LCSNA
and/or the LCS.
Each day began with Mr. Wakel-
ing's presentation. Some of the
topics covered in detail included
the lives of Lewis Carroll and Alice
Liddell, Carroll's (and Dodgson's)
photographic and mathemati-
cal careers, and a few of the un-
founded assumptions made about
Carroll. After hearing some of
these misconceptions, it occurred
to me that Carroll's life and works
have at times been, as was said of
Shakespeare's in Ulysses, a "happy
hunting ground of . . . minds that
have lost their balance."
We had homework assignments,
but our tutor provided us with ev-
erything we needed to succeed in
our subsequent class presentations.
It was fun to work with a partner, a
different one for each of the two
assignments. Some worked very
diligently on the homework, but
I was a bit of a slouch. The same
was true of the croquet match
that a few of us played on a free
afternoon in the gorgeous Masters'
Garden — I finished last.
In the afternoons Mr. Wakeling
took us on excursions to Alice and
Carroll-related sites, guided tours
of Christ Church, museums, and
areas of interest in Oxford. We
also visited the places where the
boat trip that gave birth to the
A/zc^ stories took place.
On most evenings we were
invited back to the classroom to
watch Alice films and programs.
One night we gathered to read
The Hunting of the Snark, and by
evening's end were transformed
from baffled beginners into sanc-
tioned snarkophiles. On another
evening, Mr. Wakeling gave a pre-
sentation on Dodgson's puzzles
and games that was open to all Ox-
ford Experience attendees. Judg-
ing by the large crowd's enthusi-
asm (and the number of people
who bought his books afterwards),
all were dazzled.
Mr. Wakeling was generous in
sharing his remarkably extensive
knowledge and precious collec-
tion of resources. He brought with
him, among other treasures, the
copy of Alice that was presented to
Alice Hargreaves during her visit
to the U.S. It was a thrill to touch
the page in the book that bore her
signature. And he did not have to
tell us three times that we would
graciously be allowed to handle
any of his books.
The week was filled with math-
ematical, musical, and magical
moments that brought the spirit of
Lewis Carroll alive. From the pub
visit on the evening before our
class began to the farewell dinner
where we received our certificates,
I did not skip a single event. Both
the course and the entire Oxford
Experience week gave me (and my
classmates, I'm sure) more knowl-
edge and enjoyment than a year
of unbirthday presents. I mark
each of the days spent there with a
white stone.
The cost of the course include
accommodations in comfortable
student housing, three meals
(with vegetarian, gluten-free,
and vegan choices), and a daily
break for tea and biscuits in mid-
morning. Each student had the
opportunity to sit at the high table
for an evening meal. For more
information on registering for
future courses, see The Oxford
Experience website.
r_'__6jSA;;..J
44
EVERMORE EVERSON'S EVERTYPE!
Mark Burstein
Borges and others have spoken
of a universal Hbrary; for our
purposes, let us imagine an enor-
mous set of the two canonical
Alicehooks., all with matching
covers and identically formatted,
with the Tenniel illustrations, and
each in one of the ninety or more
languages into which they have
been translated. Michael Everson,
under his Evertype imprint, is, in
fact, moving in that direction, with
matching editions of Wonderland
in English as well as Eachtrai Eiltse i
dTir na niontas (Irish) , Alys in Pow
an Anethow (Cornish) , La Aventuroj
de Alicio en Mirlando (Esperanto),
Alice's Abenteuer im Wunderland
(German), Contoyrtyssyn Ealish
ayns Qheerny Yindyssyn (Manx),
Les aventures d' Alice au pays des
merveilles (French), Anturiaethau
Alys yng Ngwlad Hud (Welsh) ; Al-
ices Aventyr i Sagolandet (Swedish)
and Looking-Glass in English and
Lastall den Scdthdn agus a bhFuair
Eilis Ann Roimpi (Irish). He is cur-
rently working on Italian, Danish,
Low German, and Scots. New
translations into the constructed
languages Volapiik, Lojban, and
Neo have begun, and Clive Car-
ruthers' classical Latin translations
will be reset and republished in
20n. In addition to commission-
ing brand-new translations (Irish,
Cornish, Low German, Scots, and
Volapiik), Everson is creating new
editions of the texts in European
languages (he is fluent in six) that
are taken from the first editions,
but Romanized (in the case of the
German Fraktur) and modernized
in terms of spelling and, occa-
sionally, vocabulary, in
order to provide thor-
oughly readable texts
for today's readers.
Born and raised
in America, Everson
moved to Ireland at
the age of twenty-six,
receiving a Fulbright
scholarship soon after.
Sometimes called "al-
0^ ^'^cJ
phabetician to the world," he is
a linguist, typographer, and font
designer; was one of the principal
editors and authors of Unicode
(a computer character-encoding
system presently incorporating
96,000 letters and symbols and 54
writing systems, from Mongolian
to Thai to Gothic to Cyrillic); and
is presently the Irish National
Representative to the ISO com-
mittee responsible for the Uni-
versal Character Set. He is active
in supporting minority-language
communities, including the Celtic
and Finnish language families,
Balinese, and N'Ko (West Africa) .
Simply put, his love of languages
has put him in the forefront of
a scholarly movement to encode
the writing systems of every single
language ever spoken into com-
puter form.
One can understand his fasci-
nation for Carroll, likewise a lover
of language who was fascinated by
machines and once even devised
his own alphabet (the "Square
Alphabet" for his Nyctograph,
KL 75.8-9). Beginning with his
publication of new translations of
them into the Irish tongue — the
first since Padraig O Cadhla's
in 1922 — Michael became "en-
amored" of the Alice books, and
soon published standard English
versions to match. All the cover
designs are identical (save for the
text, of course), and their interior
design was inspired by The Anno-
tated Alice: The Definitive Edition, in
terms of the text fonts (DeVinne),
display fonts (Mona Lisa, Engrav-
ers Roman), Victorian flower
ornaments, and drop caps. He ran
into all the usual problems with
translations, but noted that in Irish
the Mouse's Tale/Tail pun worked
perfectly {parabal: parable, tale;
earball: tail). Even Tenniel's illus-
trations have been modified, so
that, for example, the label on the
bottle reads "OLTAR ME" instead
of "DRINK ME."
Everson 's friend and col-
league Nicholas Williams (Profes-
sor of Irish at University College
Dublin), the translator into Irish,
then gave the world a new Cornish
Wonderland (the first since Ray
Edwards's Alysy'n Vro a Varthsusyon
in 1994), and the dam was burst,
soon resulting in a reset Esperanto
edition in the 1910 Elfric Leofwine
Kearney translation, and an Alice's
Adventures under Ground, the first
typeset version with the Carroll
illustrations. Everson set himself a
challenge of laying out an entire
book in one day, and succeeded
with The Hunting of the Snark. A
Nursery Alice followed (in color) ,
and he recently began work on a
new omnibus edition of Sylvie and
Bruno (a difficult book in many
ways, he says) .
He has since branched out
into the world of Alice imitations,
parodies, and spinoffs, releasing
Wonderland Revisited and the Games
Alice Played There (2009: Keith
Sheppard, ill. Cynthia Brownell,
reviewed on p. 46), A New Alice in
the Old Wonderland (orig.
1895: Anna Matlack Rich-
ards, ill. by the author's
daughter Anna Richards
Brewster) , Alice in Wonder-
land in Words of One Syllable
(orig. 1905: retold by Mrs.
J. C. Gorham), Clara in
Blunderland (orig. 1902:
"Caroline Lewis" [Edward
H. Begbie], ill. J. Stafford
45
Ransome), Lost in Blunderland
(orig. 1903: dxlio) , John Bull's
Adventures in the Fiscal Wonderland
(orig. 1904: Charles Geake and
Francis Carruthers Gould, ill. F.
C. Gould), Alice in Blunderland: An
Iridescent Dream (orig. 1907: John
Kendrick Bangs, ill. Albert Lever-
ing), The Westminster Alice (orig.
1922: "Saki" [H. H. Munro], ill. F
C. Gould) , New Adventures of Alice
(orig. 1917: John Rae, ill. by the
author) , Rollo in Emblemland (orig.
1902: John Kendrick Bangs and
Charles Raymond Macauley, ill. C.
R. Macauley) , and a single volume
containing both Gladys in Gram-
marland (orig. c. 1897: Audrey
Mayhew Allen, ill. "Claudine") and
Alice in Grammarland (orig. 1923:
Louise Franklin Bache, ill. Henry
Clarence Pitz) .
In preparation are Eileen 's
Adventures in Wordland (orig. 1920:
Zillah K, Macdonald, ill. Stuart
Hay), Davy and the Goblin (orig.
1884: Charles E. Carryl, ill. E. B.
Bensell), Alice in Plunderland (orig.
1910: "Loris Carllew," ill. Linton
Jehne), and some portmanteaux
of shorter pieces written between
1878 and today
And more translations. And
more. At the rate Evertype is
going, perhaps we can look for-
ward to the Universal Carroll Li-
brary being completed in a decade
or two!
When asked what he thinks
about his progress so far, Michael
replied, in Irish, "7w5 maith, leath na
hoibre" ("Well begun is half done").
Wonderland Revisited, and the
Games Alice Played There
Keith Sheppard, illustrated
by Cynthia Brownell
Evertype, 2009
ISBN 978-194808343
Reviewd by Sarah Adams-Kiddy
One night after going to bed,
Alice wakes up to find her bed has
turned into a small boat, bobbing
along a river on a warm summer's
day. The dog rowing the bed/
boat is only the first of the many
characters she meets that speak
nonsense to her in true Wonder-
land fashion. When she asks if
she might ask what he is doing in
her bed, he, after some quibbling
about whether she may or may not
ask, responds by asking what she is
doing in his boat! These conversa-
tions are amusing, but the reader
does feel that Sheppard is trying
a bit too hard with the CarroUian-
style twists of logic and grammar.
(To his credit, I've never encoun-
tered a CarroUian pastiche that
didn't.)
Instead of joining a deck of
cards to play croquet with hedge-
hogs and flamingoes, or becoming
a pawn on a massive chessboard,
in Wonderland Revisited Alice and
the characters she encounters act
as the pieces of various games, in-
cluding bridge, euchre, darts, fox
and geese, mah^ong, and snakes
and ladders. The Red Queen ap-
pears several times to play croquet
and draughts, a group of morris
dancers plays nine men's mor-
ris, and Alice caddies for the Red
King. New characters include a
talking tree, the Jack of Diamonds,
a gameskeeper who keeps track
of the games but then turns into
a goat, and aggressive geese that
want to eat Alice, dragons that
don't, and a snake that does. And
of course, none of the paths leads
to where Alice wants to go!
Many of the games mentioned
in the book, such as bridge and
mah-jong, may be unfamiliar to a
child reader, and many use names
and terms unfamiliar to Ameri-
can readers, such as draughts
(checkers) and snakes and ladders
(chutes and ladders). But Shep-
pard's introduction kindly in-
cludes a paragraph on most of the
games, giving enough of an over-
view of each to allow the reader to
understand what is happening in
the action and "get" any jokes that
might otherwise be missed.
Speaking of jokes, Sheppard
plays with words, grammar, logic,
and numbers, as did Carroll. Ana-
grammatic poems appear, and sev-
eral characters insist on referring
to Alice as "Celia." In addition,
Sheppard makes some fun refer-
ences to the original Alice books,
academia (You knew that the capi-
tal of France is "F," didn't you?),
and also to twentieth-century cul-
ture. Sometimes these are spelled
out for the reader, and sometimes
not — surely the pelican with a bill
full of ink is a reference to Pelikan
fountain pens?
Despite the many clever and
interesting ideas in this book, it
unfortunately did not hold my
interest for much more than a
chapter at a time. Brownell's line
illustrations are a bit clunky, as
well. I suspect that, true to the au-
thor's stated intention, this book
would be much more amusing to
read aloud to a child.
Alice in Verse: The Lost
Rhymes of Wonderland
J. T. Holden, illustrated
by Andrew Johnson
Candleshoe Books, 2009
ISBN 978-0982508992
Reviewed by Hayley Rushing
Don't let the tide fool you. Alice in
Verse: The Lost Rhymes of Wonderland,
by J. T Holden, is not a volume
of Carroll's forgotten poetry.
Rather it is Holden's experiment
in exploring his own childhood
imagination, sparked by the tales
his grandfather once told him of
mythical, lost poetry that shed light
on the mysteries of Wonderland.
Holden's Lost Rhymes, illustrated
by Chicago-based artist Andrew
Johnson, is a volume of nineteen
CarroUian-style poems that are
actually a quite convincing pas-
tiche, befitting the misleading title.
The poems are more akin to fan
fiction than traditional pastiche as
they follow Alice's journey through
Wonderland and Looking-Glass
Land, because they fill in blanks
rather than create new adventures
for her As if taking cues from
the many movie adaptations that
combine the two books, the poems
travel through both Wonderland
46
and Looking-Glass, starting (as
always) with the rabbit-hole and
ending with the trial over the tarts,
with smatterings of tea parties,
caterpillars, Tweedles, and live
flowers mixed in. Indeed, unlike
other modern retellings, Holden's
Lost Rhymes must follow the origi-
nal story, for while the rhymes are
clever and the meter is fun to read
(especially aloud), they're not
much for autonomous storytelling;
they don't carry the story on their
own, but merely remind us of what
we already know.
In terms of imitative style, the
clever rhymes are very CarroUian,
my current favorite being "elocu-
tion" and "execution" during the
trial scene, where Holden writes.
Whilst Hare and Hatter plied
the Mouse
With soothing elocution.
There rose a voice in bold dissent
To halt the execution...
Also, the incorporation of what
Martin Gardner called a "figured"
poem, recited here at the tea-
party, is an excellent nod to the
Mouse's Tale, though without the
pun. The meter varies by poem,
creating an individual tone for
every piece, which was a surprise
for me. I'd expected solely the
iambic quatrains that are typical of
Carroll's poems (mosdy parodies
of popular poetry of the time);
instead, though the tone remains
distincdy CarroUian, each poem
has a unique vitality that helps cre-
ate a dynamic whole.
Johnson's spooky illustrations
are striking and oddly morose in
smudged blacks and grays. More
scary than odd, the art seems typi-
cal of the "Alice is the new black"
trend of the modern, Goth-fashion
Alice. Rather than curiously pon-
dering as she leisurely descends
the rabbit-hole, Alice looks genu-
inely terrified as she falls with what
appears to be a speed that would
likely impede introverted thought
(as when Alice wildly hurtles down
the rabbit-hole in the Burton
film). In terms of imaginative style,
I particularly love the Hatter's
bulging, tumorous, turban-like hat
and the White Rabbit's long, gaunt
face and haunted eyes, for who
hasn't felt haunted by lateness?
With such grim artwork, it's
fitting that the author's upcom-
ing book is O the Dark Things You 'II
See!, again illustrated by Johnson,
which is an ominous parody of Dr.
Seuss's Oh The Places You 'II Go!, set
to hit the shelves in March, ac-
cording to Holden's page on Ama-
zon, though Candleshoe Books'
site says it'll be May. Holden has
also reported in interviews that he
has more rhyming poetry books in
the works, Bedtime Tales for Naughty
Children and Gothic Tales for the
Wicked Soul, though their release
dates are yet to be determined.
The Hunting of the Snark:
An Agony in Eight Fits
Lewis Carroll, illustrated
by Mahendra Singh
Melville House, 2010
ISBN 978-1935554240
Reviewed by Stephanie Lovett
If you would like to know what
you are getting before you order
a copy of Mahendra Singh's new
The Hunting of The Snark, imagine
the results if Edward Gorey were
to draw a dream Rene Magritte
had about Hieronymus Bosch.
Entertaining and provocative,
Singh's deadpan pen-and-ink
"engravings" — a style that pays
homage to Tenniel and Holiday —
conjure a variety of sources, not
so much to illustrate the text as to
create a parallel text, a visual Snark
joining the verbal Snark.
Winning at "spot the reference"
is always gratifying, and readers
will hugely enjoy the walk-ons
by Alice characters, allusions to
Dodgson's photography and mi-
lieu, joyful plunderings of surreal-
ism's vast iconography, and a myr-
iad of jokes that ring the bells of
your knowledge of, inter alia, his-
torical personages, Victorian Eng-
land, and things Indian (though
I must say I got that last one via
Kipling). Rather than spoil your
fun by enumerating these finds, I
will instead reassure you that, far
from being a superficial show of
cleverness, these visual jokes serve
the artist's larger purpose of tak-
ing us deeper into the world of the
Snark. This great depth (perhaps
so great as to be a chasm . . . and
so can we say that these illustra-
tions are abysmal, in a good way?)
results from the fact that these
images and ideas bring along with
them the entirety of the worlds
they come from, and from the
necessity of active participation by
the reader. You are creating depth
by being there yourself.
Of the many devices at work in
these illustrations, one that re-
ally drives their functioning is the
constant play between realism and
staginess. Scenes dissolve back and
forth between a theater setdng and
a (strange and dreamy) realism.
Characters are sometimes them-
selves and sometimes performing;
they are figures in a theater, in a
shadowbox, in an 11-circuit laby-
rinth, in a picture within a picture.
This play-fulness emphasizes the
storytelling process and invites us
to see the characters as more than
themselves — as exemplars, meta-
phors, personae for the ages.
Like the Beaver and the
Butcher, the story of the Snark and
these illustrations walk hand in
hand, each filling our heads with
ideas through its own particular
means. Your attention to Mahen-
dra Singh's work will be amply
repaid; you will learn more about
a book you thought you knew, and
you may even weep with delight.
47
^
The Real Alice in Wonderland:
A Role Model for the Ages
C. M. Rubin with Gabriella Rubin
AuthorHouse, 2010
ISBN 978-1449081317
Reviewed by Ray Kiddy
I was prepared to be unimpressed
with The Real Alice in Wonderland,
but I was pleasantly surprised. Not
impressed, mind you, but I found
that it does have a bit to say. The
completist will want to own this, of
course, but most Carrollians may
want to read through the book
before buying it. It could be an
approachable book for the rela-
tive of a collector, someone who
vaguely wonders what all the fuss
is about and does not need to be
very rigorous about getting an
answer. Plus, I have a soft spot for
my relatives who scrapbook. And
if this book seems very much like
a scrapbook, its origins, indeed,
are a project the author's daugh-
ter Gabriella did in high school.
Just as a scrapbook can record the
details of a day, perhaps a child's
first day at school, and make it
interesting, so this book records
an "incredible journey" described
on the book flap as encompass-
ing London, Oxford, Lyndhurst,
Guildford, and Llandudno. This
is a small geographical span for
an "incredible journey," but of
course, one does not have to go to
the ends of the earth to find some-
thing exotic or interesting, and
the British Isles do pack rather a
lot into a small space. If you enjoy
a lighthearted visual presentation,
something perhaps akin to a web-
log in book form, and if you can
overlook text being overwritten by
ornate clusters of roses that oc-
cupy a rather large space in each
corner of many pages, or the use
of public-domain clip art, you will
enjoy the visual effect that this
book achieves.
A Carrollian who wants to take
this book seriously will probably
be frustrated. This is the not the
first book to claim to present new
information, and then provide
absolutely no specifics, citations,
or provenance for any of it, or to
claim that Lewis Carroll was less
than wholly responsible for his
book. The author makes the claim
here that, after Dodgson stopped
spending time with the Liddells,
he and Alice Liddell corresponded
in secret, and that Alice's advocacy
was necessary for the publication
oi Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
I am not sure how one would go
about providing corroboration for
these goings-on. The author does
not even attempt it, so where does
one go with this?
This book does speak about the
middle part of Alice Liddell 's life,
which is often overlooked. Alice
usually shows up in our conscious-
ness either as the young girl on
the river Thames, or as the older
woman who had to sell her manu-
script and who later came to New
York to be honored at Columbia
University. The middle of her life
as Alice Hargreaves is much less
familiar to most people, and it is
good to see a picture of her as she
was for much of her life, a wife,
mother, and, even an artist. What
one does mostly see is a picture,
and another picture, and a mirror
image of the picture to fit on the
facing page. . . . But most of Alice's
story has been better documented,
just as we have other books (such
as Linda Sunshine's) that collect
art about Lewis Carroll and Alice
from many sources. There may be
new information here, but if that
is so, it will have to be republished
with citations and sources to be
credible.
Yet again Alice is presented as
the true source of the creativity or
the stories in Lewis Carroll's most
famous work. Of course, at first
glance we see this puckish young
girl, fetchingly posed, an artist in
her own right, and then we see
Reverend Dodgson, a church-
man and, even worse, a teacher
of mathematics. Which of these
figures seems lighthearted, which
creative, which clever? The au-
thor even suggests here that, after
their estrangement, "who knows
going forward what other creative
projects Alice might have inspired
him to create?" And yet collectors
have entire rooms filled with his
later works. Why is it so difficult to
credit Lewis Carroll with creativ-
ity? A poem may be inspired by a
flower, but we don't suggest that
the flower lobbied for the poem
to be published and sent letters to
the editor about it.
This book could have been
better, and more informative. It
is good for what it is and as far as
it goes, but more diligence and
effort might have made it a more
important one.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll, illustrated
by Nancy Wiley
Wiley O'Brien
Workspace, Inc., 2009
ISBN 978-0615294926
Reviewed by Ray Kiddy
Nancy Wiley has done an admi-
rable job illustrating Alice's Adven-
tures in Wonderland with dolls, dolls
that she rightly calls "sculptural."
Obviously, certain tableaux are
going to be more fun to do, but
she executes different sculptures
for almost all of the "Tenniel 42"
and adds many extras. These in-
clude Dodgson reading in a chair,
the boat ride on the Thames, the
raven and the writing desk, many
versions of Father William, and
more than a few Crustacea and
other sea creatures. Of course, cats
and pigs and grins and teacups
abound. I cannot decide which is
my favorite figure. There is some-
thing to appeal to every Carrol-
lian, whether it be the frustrated
expressions of the card soldiers,
the three-masted-ship hat of the
Duchess at the Queen's party, the
sleeping Gryphon, the dancing
lobsters, or all of the different at-
titudes on display at the trial.
Reinterpretations of Alice often
try to shock, but Wiley's figures
do not stoop to that. Neither are
they twee. They are childlike, with
48
some fluffiness evident in most of
the creatures portrayed. But they
are also complex. Some of the
scenes might have become self-car-
icatures, but Wiley's faces are ex-
pressive, and her use of cloth, hair,
and body positioning makes them
amusing in a straightforward way,
while also layered with suggested
meanings. For exmaple, the house
of the White Rabbit looks like a
traditional dollhouse, with its side
wall cut away. It seems an obvi-
ous effect when you are working
with dolls, but I cannot remember
a drawing that sliced the house
open in this way. The use of the
dollhouse almost seems to show
Wiley laughing at herself. Yes, it
is a doll's house, but it also works
to illustrate the story very well,
and she is not afraid to use it. The
Queen is, of course, shouting, but
being a card, she has an upside-
down face on the front of her
dress. Again, a simple effect, but
the differing expressions make it
more than just a simple trick.
When I spoke with Nancy Wiley
at the Philadelphia meeting this
past spring, she did not seem to
be ready to attempt Through the
Looking-Glass, but I hope she con-
siders it. Some of the darker ele-
ments of that story will be a chal-
lenge, but that is why I hope she
will do it. Her dolls are complex
enough to model the ambiguities
and darkness in that story, and
the characters would not be flat
cutouts. I very much look forward
to her vision of the Jabberwock in
particular.
jW
"En Passant"
Katherine Neville, in
Masters of Technique, edited
by Howard Goldowsky,
Boston: Mongoose Press, 2010
286 pp., ISBN 978-0970148262
Reviewed by August A. Imholtz, Jr.
Chess fiction, a genre that of
course has its own Library of Con-
gress subject heading, is not an
area in which Charles Lutwidge
Dodgson has figured too promi-
nently, in spite of his own chess
creation. Through the Looking-Glass.
Is he featured in mystery stories?
Yes indeed — ^you only have to think
of works by Peter Lovesey, John
Dickson Carr, Donald Thomas,
and many others. Science fiction?
Of course; think of Jose Farmer
and the rest. But chess stories?
Strangely less so. Yes, there are a
few; perhaps one could mention
Massimo Bontempelli's The Chess Set
in the Mirror, but Katherine Neville
has changed the chess landscape
with her engaging, multilevel short
story "En Passant." The tide refers
to a move in chess, a sort of penalty
or compensatory maneuver on the
part of a pawn, which — ^when it has
advanced to the second rank — can
be captured, in a peculiar way, by
a pawn on the fifth rank. Here is
a more technical definition drawn
from the Wikipedia entry:
En passant (from the French:
in passing) ... is a special form of
capture made immediately after a
player moves a pawn two squares
forward from its starting position,
and an opposing pawn could have
captured it as if it had moved
only one square forward. In this
situation, the opposing pawn may
capture the pawn as if taking it "as
it passes" through the first square.
The resulting position is the same
as if the pawn had only moved one
square forward and the opposing
pawn had captured normally. The
en passant capture must be done
on the very next turn, or the right
to do so is lost. Such a move is the
only occasion in chess in which a
piece captures but does not move
to the square of the captured piece.
The latter exception is not
unimportant to the way the mean-
ing of "en passant" plays out in
the story. Without completely
giving away the whole plot and
conclusion, one can say that
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, John
Ruskin, Prince Leopold, Dean
Henry George Liddell, and of
course Alice Pleasance Liddell
are all ensnared in a situation — a
chess match, actually — at Alice's
contrivance, in the garden of the
deanery of Christ Church. Each
character is represented by a chess
figure: Dodgson a knight, Liddell
a bishop, Ruskin a rook ("What
else?" one might ask), and Alice,
of course, a pawn and then a
queen. This Alice is not the little
girl of Wonderland but a young
woman of twenty-one, who simply
wishes to "live an ordinary, simple
life, as others did, a life of sched-
ules and rules and plans, a life
with a husband and children." At
the end of the chess match, Alice
is freed from a captured state,
captured en passant, in which she
was almost imprisoned forever. Or
was she? Corpus Christi College,
perhaps by poetic license or for
some other reason, has become
Corpus Christie; otherwise, Kath-
erine Neville proves herself here a
master of technique.
HSi
The Place of Lewis Carroll
in Children 's Literature
Jan Susina
Roudedge, 2010
ISBN 978-0415936293
Reviewed by Clare Imholtz
Jan Susina explores the central-
ity of Lewis Carroll to children's
literature from many angles, chap-
ter by chapter unveiling multiple
Alices: inter alia, a book for adults,
a book for children, a book for
49
upper-middle-class children, and
a book that has found its way
(with Carroll's blessing during his
lifetime) into every niche market,
from biscuit tins to multimedia
games. He also examines Carroll's
letters, photography, and late
novel, Sylvie and Bruno.
Susina, a professor of literature
at Illinois State University, has
read widely and deeply on Lewis
Carroll, children's literature in
general, and Victorian mores. He
guides us like a sensible, though
never stodgy, uncle through the
pitfalls of Alice scholarship, but
also presents lively new insights
and throws welcome light into the
comers, all in lucid and accessible
prose. He makes no bones about
one issue: Some recent scholar-
ship is "surprisingly ugly." Susina
defends Carroll as "a proper Vic-
torian," and the victim of a double
standard when compared to certain
of his contemporaries (e.g., Hawar-
den and Cameron) whose photos
of children are every bit as open
to sexual interpretation. He also
addresses other common misper-
ceptions. For example, he does
not totally accept the theory, now a
truism, that Carroll revolutionized
children's literature, though he
grants that Wonderland did move
the genre away from didacticism
and toward entertainment.
At times, Susina may be too
accepting of time-honored views
of Carroll. He mentions, but
does not challenge, Carroll's dis-
sembling claim in the Preface to
Sylvie and Bruno Concluded that he
did not read reviews, despite the
ample evidence in his letters that
Carroll — like virtually every other
author in history — ^was very inter-
ested in reviews of his books. Su-
sina also repeats the chestnut that
Carroll was painfully shy, the Alice
books being a way to transform
himself from Dodgson to Carroll.
The first, wonderful chapter
discusses Carroll's often over-
looked juvenilia and highlights
some little known aspects of it,
relating the author's youthful
writing practices to his adult work.
Readers will enjoy the samples
Susina provides. Chapter Two
demonstrates that Wonderland
was a part of the already flourish-
ing tradition of the literary fairy
tale. Here Susina examines and
responds to the arguments of
critics such as Ruth Berman and
John Goldthwaite. Chapter Three
considers Carroll's obsession with
letters, arguing that it is in letters
that the two seemingly distinctive
personalities of Carroll and Dodg-
son are trulyjoined. Susina pres-
ents his own solution to the raven
and writing-desk riddle, a solution
based on Carroll's letter writing.
He also suggests, incorrectly I
believe (given what we know about
the 1863 break with the Liddells,
which he never mentions in this
very nonbiographical tome), that
the handwritten manuscript of
Under Ground can be viewed as a
"love letter" to Alice Liddell.
Chapter Four covers the "Alice
industry" and the rise of chil-
dren's consumer culture, which
are, in fact, major themes of this
book. Carroll's interest in Alice
repackagings was notable, but is
perhaps slightly overstated here.
For example, I don't believe that
Carroll was actively involved with,
beyond giving permission for, E.
Stanley Leathes's Alice in Wonder-
land Birthday Book (1884). Nor
should he be credited or blamed
for the Looking-Glass Biscuit Tin
nor those ivory-carved Wonderland
and Looking-Glass figure parasol
handles.
Chapter Five presents an inci-
sive analysis of Carroll's interest in
his imitators, and his own anxiety
lest he himself be accused of hav-
ing imitated other authors. Susina
also notes that in some cases imi-
tations of Carroll appear to have
influenced his own later work. A
long analysis of Carroll's attacks
on Edward Salmon establishes
indubitably that Carroll cared very
much about his public image.
Chapter Six, a detailed look
at The Nursery Alice, is particularly
rewarding, and is a good example
of Susina's ability throughout this
book to thoroughly examine and
synthesize not only the critical
evidence but the textual and para-
textual evidence, and to see fresh
connections between different
facets of Carroll's writing. Chapter
Seven examines the photograph
of Alice Liddell as The Beggar-Maid,
setting it firmly within both the so-
cial context of the period and the
development of art photography,
such as O. G. Rej lander's work,
which Carroll much admired.
Chapter Eight focuses on class
issues, contrasting Carroll's lack of
novelistic concern about poor chil-
dren with other popular writers of
the time, such as Charles Kingsley
and the now virtually unknown
Hesba Stretton, \^hose Jessica's First
Prayer sold vastly more copies in its
day than did Wonderland.
Chapter Nine discusses Sylvie
and Bruno both as a self-revelatory
text and an example of Carroll's
desire to write for both children
and adults. In Chapter Ten we
are back to marketing, and in
particular the role of book jackets
and other paratextual materials.
Susina deconstructs the design of
fourteen Alice paperback covers
and dust jackets, but unfortu-
nately, illustrations of them are
not included. (The handsome,
restrained cover of Susina's own
book, we can note here, authorita-
tively conveys that this is a serious
book about a fun and imagina-
tive topic.) Continuing the same
theme. Chapter Eleven moves us
along to explore how Wonderland
has been transformed by technol-
ogy. It is one of the most trans-
lated texts into hypertext (perhaps
because it jumps from place to
place itself) .
50
In the final chapter, Jon Sci-
eszka's "well-intentioned" but
"wrong-headed" and "exceed-
ingly strange" book — Walt Dis-
ney's Alice in Wonderland (Disney
Press, 2008) — comes in for heavy
criticism because, Susina says, it is
based on the wrong pictures (Mary
Blair's rather than Tenniel's) and
omits the conversations.
Because the chapters of Su-
sina's book originally appeared
separately ("have accumulated
over time"), they are sometimes
repetitive; the book would have
benefited from more editing. This,
as well as the inadequate index —
which has huge gaps and does not
follow standard practices — may
reflect publishing economics (as
does the sky-high price of this vol-
ume, enough to pick up a couple
of nice Alices). The meager index
is a true shame in a book so rich
in detail and broad in thought.
There also are a few small errors
of fact. For example, Blackburn
and White used Wilfred Dodgson's
abridgment of Sylvie, not one of
their own devising, in Logical Non-
sense, and Wonderland went out of
copyright in 1907, not 1911. But
these are of minor concern in this
most informative, enlightening,
and highly recommended book,
an important addition to the
literature for general Carrollian
readers as well as academics.
Alisa V Zazerkale
Lewis Carroll, translated by
Nina M. Demurova, illustrated
by Maxim Mitrofanov
Moscow: Rosman, 2010
ISBN 978-5-353-04505-2
Reviewed by August A. Imholtz, Jr.
This is a beautifully printed new
Russian edition of Through the
Looking-Glass illustrated by Maxim
Mitrofanov and translated by
Nina Demurova, who adds an
afterword on the problems of
translating Alice into Russian.
And how delightfully different
this book — like Mitrofanov's ear-
lier Alisa V Stranye Chudes (ISBN:
978-5-353-0388-7), published last
year by the same press — is from
so many of the Russian books,
including Alice translations, of the
Soviet years of the 1950s and later.
The paper is good, and the type
clear, well spaced, and very read-
able. The illustrations, of which
there are some 96 (42 of them
full-page illustrations) are all in
color — again a marked departure
from the Alices of the Soviet era.
Not as simplistic as Greg Hildeb-
randt's or as threateningly adult
as Barry Moser's, the illustrations
are gently playful, of the sort that
would appeal to young readers,
who were of course the main au-
dience for Lewis Carroll's Alice
books from the very beginning.
Especially charming are the il-
lustrations of the Red Queen with
her chess figure accoutrements,
including a scepter consisting of a
fireplace poker with a chess king
fixed at the tip like a finial (p. 29);
the contrasting pair of a dapper
Walrus in a red coat and striped
morning trousers, surely from
beyond the North Sea, and a very
Russian-looking but unusually thin
Carpenter (pp. 56-57); and the
crow from Chapter Four making
off with the White Queen's shawl
in his long beak at the begin-
ning of Chapter Five (pp. 66-67).
Humpty Dumpy is portrayed
with a most bemused grin and a
face suggestive of one of the late
Roman emperors, as he perches
on a folded chessboard (of the
sort in which the pieces are stored
when not in play), instead of being
shown balanced on his usual dull
wall (p. 80). Mitrofanov sometimes
follows Tenniel, with modification,
but more often departs from him
with some charming results. The
concluding acrostic poem, nicely
worked out in its Russian text (no
mean feat) , is framed with little
figures from the story, chess pieces
included, and the half-visible head
of Dinah at the bottom of the page
looking up to see what she started.
Through the Looking —Glass
and What Alice Found There
Lewis Carroll, illustrated
by Gavin L. O'Keefe
Ramble House
ISBN 978-1-60543-432-2
ISBN 978-1-65043-432-9
Reviewed by Andrew Ogus
It must be difficult to resist the
urge to outdo Lewis Carroll's
imagination when illustrating his
books. In this simple edition of
Looking-Glass, the wasp-waisted
Red Queen literally, though merci-
fully briefly, makes Alice an actual
Pawn. Unlike the other White
Pawns that appear in the back-
ground of another illustration,
she has retained her human head.
Some charming ideas: like Mer-
cury, the elephants have winged
feet, and the Rocking-horse-fly's
hind legs become his own rockers.
The curling ribbons and chains
that recur throughout are a pleas-
ant touch, but the skeletons and
skulls are not, nor is the literal
interpretation of Humpty Dump-
ty's suggestions for Alice's face.
The bewildering array of sizes and
shapes in the illustrations makes
for an inconsistent layout. A para-
graph of type brilliantly reversing
to white out of the black crow is
sadly marred by not bleeding off
the page. One wishes for a similar
use of imagination and greater
skill throughout.
^
Alice
11th Hour Ensemble,
Theatre of Yugen
San Francisco, September 9-19
Reviewed by James Welsch
A new theater piece called Alice
at the Theatre of Yugen in San
Francisco ran from September 9
through 19, directed and "imag-
ined" by Allison Combs. As a work
of "movement theatre," it's about
60% interpretive dance and 40%
dialogue, easily juggling different
genres of theater with different
types of music (from techno to
51
folk rock) , and varying levels of
seriousness and silliness.
Alice, in her traditional blue
outfit but played by a leggy adult
actor/ dancer (Megan Trout), is al-
ready exhausted on the stage when
the audience is let in the theater.
("Is that Alice?" asks a young girl
behind me, Alice having already
silendy begun her opening num-
ber while an usher noisily hobbles
past her to turn off a loud fan,
and the audience settles in.) This
Alice starts out with grown-up
anxieties, obsessive-compulsively
counting numbers, and reassur-
ing herself repeatedly, "okay, okay,
okay." In contrast to the wildness
she's about to encounter, we real-
ize that her troubled state of mind
at the beginning is her supposed
normalcy.
Then, instead of a white rabbit,
she is shaken from her routine by
a single playing card falling from
the sky. A tribe of five strange
savages in rags starts to tease her
and mess with her mind, taking
her through the mind-and-body-
changing adventures of Wonder-
land, loosely inspired by Carroll's
book. (While Alice is exploring
the corridor, before it really gets
going, the child behind me de-
clares "This is upsetting because
it's boring.") Growing, shrinking,
falling, mushrooms, being stuck in
a house, scary forests, and all man-
ner of psychedelic abstractions
are created by the weird tribe with
their flexible interlocking limbs,
in extremely creative ways. Only
using their bodies, they show us a
caterpillar sitting on a mushroom,
and when he sucks on his hookah
(one of their fingers) , the whole
mushroom inhales and exhales.
It's most fun during the wild
dance numbers with their very
cool choreography; it drags a little
during the dialogue, which, as in
so many Wonderland adaptations,
is always a lot less clever than Car-
roll's original. For some reason,
their amazing Cheshire Cat, very
feline and Kabuki-ish, sticks closer
to Carroll's words, and is conse-
quently much more powerful.
After Alice has gone native,
becoming one of the weird savages
herself, a new square peg (named
Lewis) also finds himself lost in
Wonderland. Lewis's unhappy
anal-lretentiveness makes us real-
ize what Wonderland is to these
folks: everything "other" in Ameri-
can society. Their Wonderland
is part hippie, part hipster, part
Burning Man, part mushroom
trip, totally gay, multicultural, and
sexy. It has games with no rules,
self-examination, community,
humor, and, of course, lots of
dancing and singing. It's also dirty.
Uptight Lewis rejects it outright,
and even Alice eventually wakes
up. But she's definitely dirtier than
before her trip to Wonderland.
("Is she dripping sweat?" asks the
child behind me.)
52
ARTS (Sr" ILLUSTRATION
www.delicious.com/lcsna/klSS+art
It was inevitable that a connection
between the Tea Party moveme^
and the Mad Tea Party (both
which were all over the zeitgei
2010) would be utilized in poHt'
cartoons, and a few high-profile
ones should be mentioned. Dr
Friedman's illustration in the April
12 issue of the Nation (for Richard
Kim's article "The Mad Tea Party")
chose Sarah Palin as the Hare,
Glenn Beck as the Hatter, and
Rush Limbaugh in the distance as
the Cheshire Cat. Edward Sorel's
stylish illustration in the May 2010
Vanity Fair (for Richard Linge-
man's article "The Maddest of
Mad Tea Parties") went with Lim-
baugh as Humpty Dumpty, Palin as
a pink-frocked Alice, Bill O'Riley
as the Hare, and again Beck as
the Hatter with a Fox News label
on his hat. And is that supposed
to be John McCain as the jowly
and consternated Caterpillar? The
Economist put theirs on their cover:
Palin now as a Kalashnikov-wield-
ing Alice, Limbaugh as the Hare,
and a weeping Beck's hat tag now
reading "Nonsense 24/7." Garry
Trudeau also made the joke in
his April 1, 2010, Doonesbury strip,
when Zonker tells a teabagger,
"I thought I saw a Mad Hatter,"
and gets the reply, "Different tea
party. That's Uncle Sam." Alice was
elsewhere politicized in a cartoon
by Tom Meyer in the San Francisco
Chronicle on July 25, with a canna-
bis-smoking caterpillar discussing
California's Prop 19 with an obese
Alice.
This year the Silver Eye Center
for Photography in Pittsburgh,
PA, exhibited two digital photo
artists inspired by Alice. "These
Strange Adventures: The Art of
Maggie Taylor" ran from May 14
to August 21 and included digital
images that illustrate the hard-to-
find Modernbook Editions' AATW
(2008). Photo montages based
on Tenniel's AA/W illustrations by
t> on*esh on a en /,^
Abelardo Morell were shown from
May 7 to June 25.
The Tinman Gallery in Spokane,
WA, hosted an "Alice in Wonder-
land Invitational" from July 30 to
August 21, 2010. Over thirty local
artists provided original pieces
based on AAFW.
Under the web page heading
"Tributes and Parodies," artist Jus-
tin Hillgrove presents an array of
original cartoon-gothic paintings
of tea parties, Cheshire Cats, and
Jabberwocks. The acrylic paintings
are also available as prints, t-shirts,
and jigsaws from linked websites.
Kit Carson, jeweler to the stars and
creator of a popular and almost
affordable line of Alice pendants,
appeared at an exhibition of his
work held at the Craft in America
Study Center in Los Angeles on
June 19, 2010. Carson discussed
his artistic inspirations, which
include cowboys, art nouveau,
desert animals, dragonflies, and,
of course, Lewis Carroll.
The British Library
owns the archive of
Mervyn Peake's Alice W-
lustrations, which were
on display at the West-
ern Bank Library in
London from June 30
to September 29, 2010.
The British Guardian
(April 4, 2010) ran
an article by Vanessa
Thorpe about Peake's
surreal Alice art and
some "previously un-
seen private letters," called "How
the devastation caused by war
came to inspire an artist's dark im-
ages of Alice."
Also in London, Wonderland
Gallery's "Alice Underground Art
Collection," a preview collection
by artists Paul Skellett and Pokey
Pola, was on display October 20
and 21. As the London Evening
Standard reported, "The collection
includes 12 brand new and never
seen before mixed media images,
mounted in hand made, hand
painted baroque frames, a signa-
ture of both artists."
ARTICLES 6r'ACADEMIA
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+articles-academia
The New Kwifea' contained many
curious references to our man and
his work during this Carrollian
bonanza year. Anthony Gottlieb's
article "Win or Lose: No voting
system is flawless. But some are
less democratic than others" (July
26, 2010) gave Dodgson praise for
considering voting systems that
are more fair than, for instance,
the U.S.'s current winner-take-all
method, and even brought the
Liddell family into the discussion.
Rebecca Mead's article about the
play Gatz (September 27, 2010)
included a nice quip from one of
the director's colleagues in r*? Alice
adaptations: "Every experimental
director has to go through an Alice
in Wonderland thing, and John was
very lucky to have gotten his out
very early." Over in the classical
53
music department in the August 9
issue, Alex Ross used the word "ga-
lumphs" to describe pianist Lang
Lang's Chopin interpretation. Even
one of their famously ambiguous
cartoons had Tweedledum saying
to Alice, "If it's all right, I prefer
the name Dave." After some e-mails
to the blog discussing what the joke
meant, Clare Imholtz posed the
classic question, "But is it funny?"
An ad for whiskey in Harper's
Magazine (May 2010, pp. 42-43)
featured an excerpt from Lewis
Carroll's rare text "Feeding the
Mind," first published in the same
magazine in May 1906.
In conjunction with the release of
her biography The Mystery of Lewis
Carroll (St Martin's Press, 2010),
Jenny Woolf also published a great
article in the April 2010 Smithson-
ian, "Lewis Carroll's Shifting Repu-
tation: Why has popular opinion
of the author of Alice's Adventures
in Wonderland undergone such a
dramatic reversal?" We enjoyed
the letter to the editor published
later from a lawyer in California:
"As an attorney, I think [the ar-
ticle] did a good job of document-
ing the modern-day habit of judg-
ing or casting spurious allegations
based on hearsay and innuendoes.
[. . .] Dodgson, unfortunately, can-
not defend himself, and to smear
his reputation in such a manner is
unpardonable' (emphasis added).
On May 30, 2010, LCSNA member
Dr. Francine Abeles gave a paper
on the early development of quasi-
determinants at Concordia Uni-
versity. Although not specifically
on Dodgson, the paper included
a discussion of his condensation
method as an algorithm for com-
puting them.
Niraj Chokshi, writing for the
Atlantic online (July 31, 2010) used
TTLG to demonstrate the inadver-
tently poetic capacities of Micro-
soft Word's autosummarize fea-
ture. ("Alice asked. Alice laughed.
Alice laughed. Alice pleaded. Alice
explained.") He was inspired by
new media artist Jason Huff, who
has autosummarized the 100 most
downloaded copyright-free books.
Ten years ago we did the same
with AAm^ (XL 63:20).
Issue 48 (Fall 2010) of Bitch Maga-
zine, "The Make-Believe Issue,"
included "Alice in Adaptation-
Land — How wanderer Alice be-
came warrior Alice, and why." In
the well-written article, Kristina
Aikens made the interesting point
that Carroll's curious Alice is more
of a feminist icon than Burton's
Alice, who puts on armor, kills the
Jabberwock, and seeks to colonize
China.
The April 2010 edition of The
Lion and the Unicorn (Volume 34,
Number 2) contained two book
reviews that mentioned Lewis Car-
roll. Anne Lundin reviewed Marah
Gubar's Artful Dodgers: Reconceiving
the Golden Age of Children's Literature
(Oxford University Press, 2009),
and Dorothy Clark reviewed Jan
Susina's The Place of Lewis Carroll
in Children's Literature (Routledge,
2010). Clark described the latter
book as "a rich analysis that inte-
grates a prodigious understand-
ing of Carrollian scholarship and
cultural history." See our review
on p. 49.
Both poems in the September
2010 edition oi Asimov's Science
Fiction used AA/W themes as their
central metaphors. "The Now We
Almost Inhabit" by Roger Dutcher
and Robert Frazier used the
Cheshire Cat and Alice's changing
size "as images of changeable reali-
ties," and LCSNA member Ruth
Berman's poem "Egg Protection"
(mistakenly called "Egg Produc-
tion" in the table of contents)
used "the pigeon's opinion of
long-necked Alice as a predatory
serpent as the opinion of birds in
general regarding humans."
Sen Wong's unpublished manu-
script, "Hijacking Alice: Under-
ground Logic and Mirror-Image
Language," described as "a chap-
ter-by-chapter interpretation of
the logico-philosophical ideas" in
the Alice books, is now available
online. The manuscript contains
the depressing disclaimer that it
was rejected by publishers in the
U.S. and U.K. in 2003, and that
a book containing research very
similar to his was later released
by one of those publishers. He is
making the manuscript available
online to "protect the authorship
of [his] ideas."
Leigh Van Valen, whom the New
York Times called an "Evolutionary
Revolutionary" in their obituary
on October 30, died on October
16 this year at age 76. His most
famous hypothesis, which explains
why some organisms develop two
sexes, was named after the Red
Queen from TTLG. See "The Red
Queen Principle" in AL 55:11.
Speaking of Looking-Glass, Book
and Magazine Collector for Decem-
ber 2010 has named it one of
the Top 50 Funniest Books of All
Time, listed chronologically at #6
between The Life of Samuel Johnson
and Three Men in a Boat. This must
mean TTLG is at least fifty spots
ahead of AAIW'in the official rank-
ings of funniest books. Perhaps
the comedinati are still puzzling
over the Hatter's riddle?
■ir
BOOKS
www.delicious.com/lcsna/klSS+books
A few copies of Burton in Under-
land: Carrollian Reviews, collected
and edited by Clare Imholtz and
Byron Sewell (Force 5 Press: Hur-
ricane, WV), a 28-page booklet
published in an edition of 42
copies, are available from Byron
Sewell, P.O. Box 425, Hurricane
WV 25526, for $5.00 each post-
paid. This privately published
booklet includes reviews of and
reflections on Tim Burton's Alice
in Wonderland by thirty members
of the LCSNA.
For those who like their cook-
books macabre and strikingly
illustrated. Recipe for Murder: Fright-
fully Good Food Inspired by Fiction
by Esterelle Payany (Flammarion,
ISBN 978-2080301642) will be
54
perfect. Thirty-two literary villains,
including the Queen of Hearts,
inspire sinister recipes. Three little
pigs in a blanket accompanied by
Brutus 's Caesar salad? Yum.
One of the fanciest computer-
animated trailers for a book we've
ever seen is for French illustra-
tor Benjamin Lacombe's pop-up
children's stories (including A/e'c^)
called R etait unefois. It's available
from French publisher Seuil, and
is also being published in Italian as
Cera Una Volta.
Campfire Graphic Novels, a pub-
lishing house out of New Delhi,
India, released an AA/Was part of
their large and expanding series of
comic versions of classics, myths,
biographies, and originals. The
adaptation ($9.99, 72 pages, full
color) is by Lewis Helfand, with
art by Rajesh Nagulakonda (who
has previously illustrated their
Joan of Arc, The Time Machine, and
Oliver Twist). Campfire 's mission
statement: "It is night-time in the
forest. A campfire is crackling, and
the storytelling has begun. In the
warm, cheerful radiance of the
campfire, the storyteller's audi-
ence is captivated. Inspired by this
enduring relationship between a
campfire and gripping storytell-
ing, we bring you four series of
Campfire Graphic Novels. . ." A
noble cause, but isn't reading
comic books by firelight a bit hard
on the eyes?
The Folio Society has published
a facsimile of the original manu-
script oi Alice's Adventures under
Ground. The print run will be
limited to 3,750 hand-numbered
copies, each clad in goatskin and
gold and priced at $179.95.
Safely confined in Arkham Asy-
lum, the Joker has plenty of time
to recount scurrilous stories of Bat-
man's greatest enemies. That's the
premise of DC Qormc\ Joker's Asy-
lum, a series of month-long weekly
"one-shots," which in August
featured the Mad Hatter, a creepy,
buck-toothed weirdo obsessed with
hats, tea, 2ir\d Alxct. Joker's Asylum
II: Mad Hatter #1 was written by
Landry Quinn Walker and drawn
by Keith Giffen. The consolidated
Joker's Asylum: Volume II (ISBN 978-
1401229801) will be published in
January 2011.
Volume 1 of a new zine from
Oakland and Berkeley writers. The
Benevolent Otherhood, contains a
nonsense poem by S. Sandrigon
mentioning Tweedledee and Twee-
dledum. The poem, "Sacred Mas-
sacre," took some inspiration from
Jon A. Lindseth's article \n_KL 83,
"A Tale of Two Tweedles."
The opening of AA/Wwas featured
in magazine ads for "100 Classic
Books" for Nintendo DS. That's
right, you can now read Lewis Car-
roll's classic book on your small
portable gaming device.
Inevitably, a graphic novelization
of Burton's Alice in Wonderland was
released this summer by Disney
and Boom Studios, with stylish art
by the suavely monikered Massi-
miliano Narcisco.
Los Angeles author Mel Gilden re-
leased his middle-grade children's
book The Jabberwock Came Whiffling
directly as an e-book for the Ama-
zon Kindle ($3.99). In the story,
Albert finds himself in the Tulgey
Wood amongst borogoves, snarks,
Alice, et al., on a quest to slay the
title's monster.
Another new self-published novel
found in the endless catalogues of
Amazon.com has the amusing title
Straight out of Lewis Carroll's Trash
Can: A Jonathan Tollhausler Adven-
ture, by Michael J. Rumpf (ISBN
978-0615398082, $15.99).
Our spies have found several Lewis
Carroll references in Barbara Clev-
erly's 2008 mystery novel Folly du
Jour (ISBN 978-1569475133). Mr.
Dodgson, a cafe named LeLapin
Blanc, the Red Queen, Alice, and
a hole into Wonderland all make
cameos.
CYBERSPACE
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kl85+articles-acadeinia
An impressive 66 "Celebration of
Mind" parties were organized by
Gathering4Gardner, to honor the
CarroUian giant Martin Gardner
(October 21, 1914-May 22, 2010)
on what would have been his 96th
birthday this year. The website
g4g-com.org used Google maps
to help people find the celebra-
tion nearest them, from Buenos
Aires to Aurangabad, India. And
@g4g-com was always a-twitter with
updates on the preparations.
What would Dickens blog? There
have been rumors that serializa-
tion, which flourished in the Victo-
rian era, will be burbling back into
the mainstream because of the way
people digest media in the post-
blogging age. In the vanguard, a
graphic novel called Namesake is
being serialized on the Web every
Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
Its creator, Isabelle Melan^on,
promises that Alice and other
Lewis Carroll characters will fea-
ture prominently. "" Namesake is the
story of Emma Crewe, a woman
who discovers she can visit other
worlds. She finds out that these
are places she already knows — fan-
tasy and fairy lands made famous
through the spoken word, litera-
ture, and cinema."
At the other end of the webcomics
spectrum is a series called Here We
Come A-Carrollinghy Doctor Ran-
domness at Webcomics Nation. It
seems inspired by David Rees's style
of cut-and-paste Web strips {My New
Fighting Technique Is Unstoppable and
Get Your War On) , except that it uses
Tenniel's illustrations as the stock
images to which irreverent text
bubbles are added.
Geoff Martin from the UK Lewis
Carroll Society has a new website
called Lewis Carroll 1st Editions. It
contains many pictures and ex-
panding encyclopedic information
on the subject.
NewsBiscuit, an online Onion-
esque gazette with the motto
"the news before it happens. . ."
published an article titled "Mad
Hatter, Dormouse Elected to Con-
55
gress in Tea Party Landslide" on
November 3. Taking the joke to
the nth degree before it gets old,
the article quoted the Red Queen
and Mock Turtle, and referenced
the Lobster Quadrille. Illustrating
the article was a picture of Johnny
Depp's Hatter with new Republi-
can House Majority Leader John
Boehner's orange face photo-
shopped beneath the famous hat.
EVENTS, EXHIBITS, & PLACES
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kl85+events-exhibits-places
Please Ma 'am, is this New Zealand ?
If Alice really had fallen right
through the earth, the owners of
Larnach Castle, New Zealand's
only casde, like to think she
might just have ended up in their
garden. Since the 1930s, an in-
creasing number of Wonderland
touches have been added to the
35-acre grounds, which are open
daily to the public.
Oxford Storypods, creators of an
AA/Waudiobook, held a com-
petition for nonsense poetry in
the CarroUian vein. The winning
poems, "Wishful Thinking" by
Ruth Smith and "The Ffrig of
Frogimar" by Hugh Timothy, have
been professionally recorded by
former LCSNA president Andrew
Sellon and are available as a free
download from the Oxford Story-
pods website.
Kathryn Beaumont, voice of both
Disney's Alice and Wendy from
Peter Pan, appeared at the Walt
Disney Family Museum in San
Francisco on May 22, 2010, to
share her memories as a voice-over
artist. The actress, who turned 72
this year, was recently heard in
the video game "Kingdom Hearts
Birth by Sleep" as the voice of
"Kairi's Grandma." She will also
be introducing the special feature
"Through the Keyhole: A Com-
panion's Guide to Wonderland" in
the digital remastering of the 1951
film to be re-re-re-released in Feb-
ruary 2011..
If you like to talk about cabbages
and kings with your meal before
you eat it, you might investigate
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Oyster Bar in Seattle. According
to the website, the new restaurant
is "located at the South end of
Seattle's Historic Ballard Avenue
in the newly renovated Kolstrand
building," which "will be the
perfect home for this rustic, light-
filled, oyster haven." We hope
every dining experience will also
include ruminations on innocence
and death.
There was an exhibit at the Veluws
Museum Nairac in Barneveld,
Netherlands, from June 12
through October 30. It celebrated
the many looks of Alice, featuring
illustrations from Tenniel through
Camille Rose Garcia. They also
claimed to have had "een bijzon-
dere Aboriginal uitgave" (an Ab-
original special edition?) . In addition
to the art, visitors were invited to
make "a journey through Wonder-
land, where a number of themes
and life-size figures are depicted.
See yourself in the strange mir-
rors, sliding into the perpetual tea
party celebration with the Mad
Hatter and the March Hare and
take a look at the animal room"
(translated from the Dutch using
Google Translate).
The Mayor of Aliso Viejo in Or-
ange County, CA, is happy to be
accused of living in an "Alice in
Wonderland" world. In his State
of the City address on October
13, he declared, "Aliso w Won-
derland" before holding a staged
conversation with a dubbed video
of Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter.
City dignitaries then posed for pic-
tures with Wonderland characters
hired for the occasion.
From June 5 through July 23,
there was an exhibition at Lon-
don's East Central Gallery called
"Memoria Technica," with some
thematic connection to the
memory device Carroll helped to
develop. The show featured art by
David Adika, Zadok Ben-David,
Clarissa Cestari, Carlos Garaicoa,
and Vivienne Koorland.
A la Bibliotheque Frontenac in
Montreal, as part of Festival litteraire
international de Montreal Metropolis
bleu, there was an exhibit called
''Alices et merveilles'' from April 21
through 25. The ''festival dans le
festivaV featured many children's
activities in addition to the library's
collection of some of Carroll's
letters. The 27th Annual Montreal
Antiquarian Book Fair, held at
Concordia University on Septem-
ber 25 and 26, also had a Lewis
Carroll theme. Noted Carroll col-
lector Luc Gauvreau opened the
event and displayed items from his
extensive collection.
LCSNA member Sue Welsch dis-
played highlights from her Lewis
Carroll collection at the Incline
Village Public Library in Incline
Village, Nevada, on Lake Tahoe,
from November 3 until December
30. Welsch, who used to teach
a class at Sierra Nevada College
called "The Logic and Literature
of Lewis Carroll," also delivered a
talk at the library on December 18.
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's
Rally to Restore Sanity and/or
Fear in Washington, DC, on Oc-
tober 30, attracted a crowd about
250,000 strong, with many of the
postmodern protesters wielding
witty, apolitical, and/or absurd
signage. Riffling through the
archives, we found a few Carroll-
related ones, including "Humpty
Dumpty Was Pushed!"; "We're All
MAD Here" beneath a picture of
Disney's 1951 Cheshire Cat; "Dodo
Never Feared Anything (Now
Extinct)"; "The Mad Hatter Wants
His Tea Party Back!" and "Don't
Believe Everything You Think!"
On November 15, the Leonard
Joel Auction House in Sydney, Aus-
tralia, attempted to sell a facsimile
of Under Ground, along with what
was described as "part of a poem
about bats," written on a single
sheet of paper in Carroll's unmis-
takable scrawl. The sale was not
successful, but LCSNA-member
56
efforts to decipher the poem were.
Visit our blog Far-Flung Knight to
read the poem.
MOVIES 8c TELEVISION
www.delicious.com/lcsna/
kl85+niovies-tv
Could this be the last time the
Knight Letter reports on goth
rocker Marilyn Manson's long-
dreaded naughty Charles Dodgson
project? With necessary hesitation,
perhaps yes? Phantasmagoria: The
Visions of Lewis Carroll was to star
ginger-haired 22-year-old model
Lily Cole as the often-naked Alice
Liddell, alongside Tilda Swinton.
Manson was also psyched to an-
nounce that he was using "pos-
sibly illegal" editing techniques
to flash graphic images into the
audience's subconscious. Now the
studio claims to have permanendy
shelved the project after a leaked
R-rated trailer repulsed YouTube
viewers, and it is widely believed
that this tantalizing movie will
never see the light of day (unless,
as we think is possible, repressing
it is all part of the plan) .
Speaking of pornography, this
was definitely a cash-cow year for
Alice in the adult film industry,
with at least three major hardcore
Wonderlands. One of the more
creative ones to date appeared to
be Cal Vista's Alice starring Sunny
Lane, set in a nightclub called
"The Hole."
The DVD of Tim Burton's Alice in
Wonderland W2LS released on June 1,
2010. And if you hadn't heard, Dis-
ney did quite well from this flick,
now their third biggest hit, behind
only that other Johnny Depp ve-
hicle Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead
Man 's Chest and Toy Story 3. It cur-
rently is the sixth highest-grossing
film of all time worldwide {Avatar,
Titanic, and The Lord of the Rings:
The Return of the King complete
places one to five), and has earned
more than a billion dollars.
The magazine Cinefex, "the fine-
qualityjournal documenting
cinematic special effects" (not to
be confused with Sinefex, which is
about the videogame version of
Dante's Inferno) had a thirty-page
spread about the special effects in
Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland.
The article, "Down the Rabbit
Hole" by Joe Fordham, featured
33 color photographs, "many
showing how scenes were staged
and visually processed."
The Hunting of the Snark, 2l new film
directed by Michael McNeff and
narrated by the great Christopher
Lee, is in post-production and set
to be released in 2011 by Vorpal
Pictures. It's billed as an "adapta-
tion of Lewis Carol's (sic) The
Hunting of the Snark [using] cutting
edge technology to successfully
capture the story's enchanting
world on the big screen." So far,
information about this movie and
the mysterious McNeff himself has
been about as difficult to research
as, well, a you-know-what.
It may interest you to know that
there are many things called "Mal-
ice in Wonderland," including a
1985 Elizabeth Taylor movie, a
2009 Snoop Dogg hip-hop album
(technically Malice N Wonderland),
and a "Malice in Wonderland
Adult Dark Goth" Halloween cos-
tume. One Malice in Wonderland
that seems to have fallen through
the cracks, though, is a 2009 film
with Maggie Grace (from Lost) and
Danny Dyer, directed by Simon
Fellows and released May 2010
on DVD. In this "Modern Twist
on a Classic Tale," Grace's Alice
is an heiress living in London,
the White Rabbit becomes Dyer's
Cockney cab driver named Whitey,
and the tarts are prostitutes.
In the July 4, 2010, New York Times,
there was an article on the History
Channel television program "Pawn
Stars," which is about a Las Vegas
pawn shop. The article featured
the following titillating anecdote:
"Shelby Tashlin of Las Vegas
walked to the counter clutching a
boxed edition of Alice in Wonder-
land containing an etching and 12
lithographs by Salvador Dali. Ms.
Tashlin 's opening thrust: the Dali
prints were limited in number. Mr.
Harrison's parry: 'He's pretty well
known for fudging numbers.' . . .
Ms. Tashlin wanted $10,000. Mr.
Harrison asked if she had taken a
httle blue pill, and offered $5,000.
She politely declined and walked
away still clutching Alice in Wonder-
land. 'I was hoping it would go the
other way, but I'm not surprised,'
she would tell a reporter later." We
recommend Ms. Tashlin pursue
other avenues to sell her Dali Alice.
PERFORMING ARTS
www.delicious.com/lcsna/
klSS+performing-arts
In Chicago, a "crew of motley ec-
centrics (including Alice)" hunted
the Snark in the United States pre-
miere of a play called Boojum! Non-
sense, Truth, and Lewis Carroll. (We
understand the "Nonsense" and
the "Lewis Carroll," but will with-
hold judgment on the "Truth.")
Described as "part existential
musical theater and part fantasy
adventure story," it was created by
Australian play-writing and com-
posing team Martin Wesley-Smith
and Peter Wesley-Smith (whose
identical last names are either
an extraordinary coincidence,
or else not a coincidence at all).
Co-presented by Caffeine Theatre
and Chicago Opera Vanguard,
the show ran from November 18
through December 19, 2010, at the
Chicago Department of Cultural
Affairs Storefront Theater. In con-
junction with the show, Caffeine
Theatre hosted"01d Father Wil-
liam's Frabjous and Curious Poetry
Contest"; the winning poems were
performed at the Lewis Carroll
Coffeehouse in the Storefront
Theater on November 29.
Snarks were also hunted in New
York at the Manhattan Repertory
Theater's Fall Fest, September 16
through 19, in an adaptation by
Katie Dickinson. That production
of The Hunting of the Snark prom-
ised "all the zaniness one can an-
ticipate from Carroll's world."
Atmos Theatre, a volunteer-run
theater company in San Francisco,
57
CA, adapted AAIW for its ninth
season of "Theatre in the Woods."
The show was performed as part of
a guided hike through a redwood
forest and ran every Saturday and
Sunday in August and through
September 19 in Woodside (a few
cities south of San Francisco). The
adaptation was written by Brian
Markley and directed by Amy
Clare Tasker.
An update on Wonderland: The
Musical, from Jekyll df Hyde com-
poser Frank Wildhorn: It's coming
to Broadway! After another run in
Tampa Bay in January 201 1, it will
move to New York City, and start
previews on March 21 at the Mar-
quis Theatre. The "heartwarming
and spectacular" (heartwacular?)
new musical is about an adult
modern-day Alice who journeys
"to Wonderland and the Looking-
Glass World where she must find
her daughter, defeat the Queen
and learn to follow her heart. . ."
The Yale Dramatic Association
(Dramat) staged underclassman
Oren Stevens's new play Phantom-
wise, which weaves together the life
of Alice Liddell with her fictional
adventures. It ran October 7-9 at
the Yale Repertory Theatre. Appar-
endy, it is only the second time in
modem memory that Dramat has
produced a student-written work,
so, congratulations Mr. Stevens!
The first American production of
Ron Nicol's Beware the Jabberwock
was at the Playhouse Children's
Theater Company in Belfast, ME,
in April, and the work was subse-
quently staged at the Wean Per-
forming Arts Center in Danbury,
CT, in May. The nonsensically fun
and whole-family-friendly play has
been published by Baker's Plays, a
subsidiary of Samuel French, Inc.
THINGS
www.delicious.com/lcsna/kl85+things
Bloomsbury Auctions generated
a considerable amount of hype
around their sale of "the long-lost
Wasp in the Wig letter" on May
27 this year, and it paid off hand-
somely: The letter sold for £51,240
(around $81,800)— the world re-
cord for a Tenniel letter and well
over double the £20,000 estimate.
But who bought it?
If you weren't the lucky bidder,
you could craft your own more
affordable CarroUian correspon-
dence with Graphic 45 's "Hallow-
een in Wonderland" paper collec-
tion. The paper designs feature
"spooky" modifications of Tenn-
iel's illustrations, including becob-
webbed mushrooms and Tweedle
twins jack-o'-lanterns.
Prospero Art's AA/Wembossed
collector's tin is possibly the first
tin ever to have its own promo-
tional YouTube video. The limited
edition tin is sold as a package ei-
ther with two decks of Alice playing
cards, a jigsaw puzzle, or both.
A husband-and-wife artistic duo,
collectively known as Cart Before
the Horse, creates "fine folk art" in
the form of quirky hand-painted
posable figurines. "Cirque du
Wonderland," a cool commission
featured on their website, includes
a Mad Hatter strongman lifting
teapot dumbbells and a Cheshire
Cat acrobat standing on its head
(literally) .
The Victorian Trading Company
sells a variety of AA/Wthemed
Victoriana, including garden
statues and jewelry. To this range
they have added theater-quality
costumes, including an elaborate
Queen of Hearts gown, complete
with hoop and tulle petticoat,
and, for around $250, "Alice's
Blue Dress," a detailed replica of a
Victorian girl's dress, available in
three adult sizes.
The Black Apple 's Paper Doll Primer
by Emily Martin is a paperback
book filled with paper dolls, paper
clothes, and creative cut-and-play
projects, including a paper the-
ater. Alice is there too. (Potter
Craft, ISBN 978-0307586568)
Toy maker Funko has added
Alice, the Mad Hatter, the
Cheshire Cat, and the White
Rabbit to its range of Wacky Wob-
bler bobble-heads. Remember to
brake smoothly, or it really will
be "off with their heads. . ." They
also have a line of "Plush" soft
toys, now including a button-eyed
Alice, Mad Hatter, Cheshire Cat,
and White Rabbit. All look accept-
ably cuddly and just a little creepy.
Between $9 and $15 from
Amazon.com.
Dollmasters is an online treasury
of artist-made toys for collectors
and very, very good children.
Recent additions to their catalog
include two finely dressed Alice
dolls, an "Alice and the Pink Fla-
mingo" hanging ornament, and
mechanical music boxes in which
Tweedledum and Tweedledee
dance to "Tea for Two" when
wound with a little key.
Classico San Francisco has created
a range of magnets, postcards,
and mugs using Angel Domin-
guez's watercolor illustrations for
the 1996 Artisan edition of AAIW
(available only through resellers).
Finally: Were you looking for a
place to buy life-sized cardboard
cutouts of Tim Burton's Alice, Hat-
ter, Red Queen, and the Tweedles?
Try Advanced Graphics, "The
Home of Cardboard People."
Checkmate Chess Sets sell five
AAIW-xhemed chess sets. The
crushed marble and resin pieces
are made in England but can be
purchased in dollars online. $157
and up.
Gump's of San Francisco went
all-out on Alice-related gifts in
this year's winter catalog. Two full
pages of merchandise include
Glass ornaments, puzzles, and sofa
cushions.
58
3i;iii^{UliUH1>Ji^lilfii»i}|)uM!liiU!HivN:;i:!t;-';;:;);;l
"The method employed I would gl&dly explain,
While I have it so clear m my head,
If I had but the time and you had but the brain -
but much yet remains to be said.
"In one moment I've sttn what has hitherto been
Enveloped In absolute mystery,
And without extra charge I will give you at large
A Lesson In Natural History."
Two extraordinary, and quite differ-
ent, interpretations of "The Hunting
of the Snark. "Above: Thanks go to
Oleg Lipchenkofor a preview of his
not yet published interpretation; some
o/" Aw Wonderland illustrations can
be seen in KL 80 (cover, article on pp.
16-19). Left: A sampling ofMahen-
dra Singh 's illustrations can also
be seen in KL 81 (cover, pp. 4, 37),
and his recent book is the subject of a
review on p. 47.
\#