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Knight Letter

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T/^^ Lewis Carroll Society of North America

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spring 2012

Volume II Issue 18

Number 88

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

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

Editorial correspondence should be sent to

the Editor in Chief at mahendra373@hotmail.com.

SUBMISSIONS

Submissions for The Rectory Umbrella and Mischmasch should be sent to

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

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

andrewogus@mindspring.com.

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

joel@thebirenbaums.net.

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

FarFlungKnight@gmail.com.

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

Ann Buki, Editor, Carrollian Notes

Cindy Watter, Editor, Of Books and Things

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

Mark Burstein, Production Editor

Andrew H. Ogus, Designer

THE LEWIS CARROLL SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA

President:
Mark Burstein, president@lewiscarroll.org

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

Secretary:
Clare Imholtz, secretary@lewiscarroll.org

www.LewisCarroll.org

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

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

Subscriptions, correspondence, and inquiries should be addressed to:

Clare Imholtz, LCSNA Secretary

11935 Beltsville Dr.

Beltsville, Maryland 20705

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

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

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Contents

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THe ReCTORY UMBRSLLA

Boston Tea Party

MAHENDRA SINGH

A Frost in Brazil: Antonio Peticov

ROSE OWENS

Carrollian Juvenilia: Parisot's
Unknown Translations

DOUGLAS PROCTOR

The Age of Alice

MARK BURSTEIN WITH GEOFFREY CHANDLER

Alice Through the Pinhole

MABLE ODESSEY

From Under Ground to Wonderland

MATT DEMAKOS

CARROLLIAN NOTGS

SesquicenTenniel Poster

MISCHMASCH

leaves from the Deanery Garden

Serendipity

Sic Sic Sic

Ravings from the Writing Desk of

MARK BURSTEIN

All Must Have Prizes

MATT CRANDALL

Alicel50: A Call for Support

JOEL BIRENBAUM

16
28

33
34

Alice into the Looking-Glass Art Exhibtiion

CLARE IMHOLTZ

Carroll's Typewriter

ROSE OWENS

Lewis &" Leonard

MARK BURSTEIN

OF BOOKS AND THINGS

38
38

The Alice Project's AAT^ 41

ANDREW OGUS

Wilfred Dodgson of Shropshire 41

AUGUST IMHOLTZ, JR.

John Vernon Lord's TTLG 43

ANDREW OGUS

The Carrollian Tale of Inspector Spectre 43

MAHENDRA SINGH

Yayoi Kusama 's AAIW 44

ANDREW OGUS

Everlasting 44

MARK BURSTEIN

Lostfish 's A Travers le mirroir 45

ANDREW OGUS

FROM OUR FAR-FLUNG
CORReSPONOeNTS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MAHENDRA SINGH

THe ReCTORY UMBReLLA

"^^S

BOSTON TEA PARTY

MAHENDRA SINGH

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

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

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

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

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

Selwyn Goodacre

Matt Demakos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark Richards

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrew Woodham's winning statue, Queen Victoria of Hearts

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

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

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

Linda Cassady

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

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

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

Christopher Morgan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alaii Tannenbaum (far left) amidst his collection

■^

A TROST IN 5RAZIL: ANTONIO PETICOV

ROSE OWENS

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^e-

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

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

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

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

KL: What led you to Lewis Carroll?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Unerringly, " by
Antonio Petkoxi

CAROLLIAN JUVENILIA:
PARISOT'S UNKNOWN TRANSLATIONS

DOUGLAS PROCTOR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LEWIS CARROLL

Poemes de Jeunesse

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

MELODIES

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

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

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

nomme bedeau.

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

II y avait une fois un jeune homme

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

Sa sceur, nommee Lucy Stevens,

Devenait de plus en plus mince;

La raison, la voici :

Elle couchait dehors sous la pluie

Et n'etait jamais invitee a aucun diner.

CHANSON DE LA FAUSSE TORTUE

Sous les eaux de la mer

Sont les homards epais comme ils peuvent

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

chceur:

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

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

Quand il parvint a la maison,

II s'arreta un instant pour souffler.

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

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

Quand il traversa le couloir,

Encore et encore je I'entendis tomber.

Quand il atteignit I'escalier,

II cria et arracha sa chevelure de corbeau.

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

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

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

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

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

Fatigue du penible devoir.

La fee tranquillement repond

Et dit : «I1 ne faut pas questionner».

Moralite : «I1 ne faut pas».

(Traduit de I'anglais par Henri Parisot.)

TkeAaeofAli

ice

MARK BURSTEIN WITH GEOFFREY CHANDLER

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"--- — --

JltJ|IMK4

Adventures in Wonderland

1991-1995

Disney

100 30-m
episodes

Elisabeth
Harnois

11-15

Alice

1965

BBC "The
Wednesday Play"
(Dennis Potter)

72 m

Deborah Wading

2009

SyFy

2 90-m episodes

Caterina

Scorsone*

Janette Bundle**

27
12?

Alice in Wonderland or Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

1903

Hepworth

May Clark

13/14

1910

Edison

10 m

Gladys Hulette

1915

Nonpareil

52 m

Viola Savoy

15/16

1931

Commonwealth

55 m

Rudi Gilbert

18/19

1933

Paramount

lhl6m

Charlotte Henry

1948

US/France

Victorine

1 h 23 m

Carol Marsh

1966

BBC

lhl5m

Anne-Marie Malik

1972

Shaftel

lh41m

Fiona Fullerton

1985

CBS

3h7m

Natalie Gregory

1985

Anglia

5 20-m episodes

Giselle Andrews

1988

Czechoslovakia

Svankmajer

lh26m

Kristyna
Kohoutova

7/8?

1999

Hallmark/NBC

2h30m

Tina Majorino

2010

Disney

lh48m

Mia Wasikowska*

Dreamchild

1985

PfH Ltd.

Ih34m

Amelia
Shankley**

Through the Looking-Glass

1966

NBC

lhl2m

Judi Rolin

1973

BBC

unknown

Sarah Sutton

1985

CBS

93 m

Natalie Gregory

1998

Channel 4

1 h 23 m

Kate Beckinsale

* as an adult
** as a child

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

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

literary scholar, the son of Thomas Arnold, headmaster

of Rugby School. He was also the younger brother

of the poet Matthew Arnold, the father of author

Mrs. Humphiy Ward, the grandfather of Julian and

Aldous Huxley, and later in life a professor of English

literature at University College, Dublin, where one of his

students was James Joyce.

Miss Beatrice Fearon was born in 1865, according to

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

htm#13249.

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

Alice's 80th birthday.

Aliec Tliroii4|li tlie Piiili4»le

MABEL ODESSEY

■^

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alice's fall

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

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

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

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

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

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

5!^

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

Alice pursues the White Rabbit
14

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Queen of Hearts

From Under Ground to Wonderland

MATT DEMAKOS

■^

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

— Lexvis Carroll, Alice's Adventures under Ground

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

UNDERGROUND

WONDERLAND

20%

40%

60%

80%

VI. Pig and Pepper

VII. A Mad Tea-Party

VIII. The Queen's Croquet-Ground

IX. The Mock Turtle's Story

X. The Lobster Quadrille

XI. Who Stole the Tarts?

XII. Alice's Evidence

26,710

[ Epilogue ] -

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

Under Ground

Wonderland

Under Ground in Wonderland

Ch.

Words

Ch.

Words

Growth

Chapter Titles

0.1%

229

0.9%

216

5.7%

[ Dedication ]

3929

30.8%

2157

8.1%

2023

134

93.8%

Down the Rabbit-Hole

3143

24.6%

2118

7.9%

1906

212

90.0%

The Pool of Tears

2528

19.8%

1700

6.4%

1299

401

76.4%

A Canciis-Race and a Long Tale

2897

22.7%

2658

10.0%

2438

220

91.7%

The Rabbit Sends in a LitUe Bill

262

2.1%

2170

8.1%

1810

360

83.4%

Advice from a Caterpillar

2605

9.8%

2605

0.0%

Pig and Pepper

2305

8.6%

124

2181

5.4%

A Mad Tea-Party

2498

9.4%

1279

1219

51.2%

The Queen's Croquet-Ground

2293

8.6%

703

1590

30.7%

The Mock Turde's Story

1966

7.4%

609

1357

31.0%

The Lobster Quadrille

1887

7.1%

100

1787

5.3%

Who Stole the Tarts?

1676

6.3%

206

1470

12.3%

Alice's Evidence

448

1.7%

262

186

58.5%

[ Epilogue ]

12772

26710

12772

13938

47.8%

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

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

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

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

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

[^fxU<)

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

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

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

-)3

z^'^hv,

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

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

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

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

/uB^r\ ^

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

TtULtK^

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Under Ground's chapter i

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

^^^^^^^^^^^mllnjljn- iZmtind fl

K Wnnd^Innd J^^^^l

The LiddeUs (¥), the Writing (*),
6?= the Pictures (♦)

The Writing (*),
(Sr" the Pictures (♦)

17 Boat trip to Nuneham with
Duckworth, "heavy rain"

JUNE

3 Boat trip canceled, rain, hears
"Sally Come Up," plays croquet

4 The Alice trip

5 Writes headings on train
8 Meets in Gallery

JULY

1 Does crest books and hears

"Beautiful Star"
6 Continues "interminable fairy-tale"

on boat trip to Godstow

AUGUST

13 Falls in with, "a rare event of late,"
begins writing Alice, hopes to finish
by Xmas

21 Crest books, parlour-Croquet in
rooms, no Ina

28 Deanery, dinner, music, parlour-
croquet

NOVEMBER

4 Spends three hours at deanery,
story-telling, games, crest books

DECEMBER

10 Finishes text before this date,
pictures "not nearly done"

16 Deanery dinner, games

17 "destined to meet... perpetually"
19, 24 Meets girls

¥♦♦

FEBRUARY

9,10, 13,20,21 Meets girls

10 Borrows a natural history book to

illustrate Alice from Deanery
13 Begins poem "in which I mean to

embody something about Alice"

MARCH

^7, 17, 21, 22, 27, 29 Sees the girls,
sometimes without a sick Alice,
visits them at grandparents, various
activities

APRIL

1, 5, 6,14, 16, 20, 25, 16 Takes two boat
trips, experiments with new croquet
game, dines at the Deanery, takes 3
walks, Liddell baby dies

MAY

9, 15-18, 23-25, 27 Takes two boat
trips, helps at the bazaar, takes to
the Circus, tea at Deanery, receives

JUNE

JULY

♦

16 Drawing on wood condemned
20 Sees Jewitt, woodcutter, will
improve

5 Sees, with mother, at theatrical in

Berner's rooms, "held aloof
17, 19 Writes to see girls, doing so two
days later, music and talk

¥♦

DECEMBER

♦

20 Writes Tom Taylor: "Do you know
Mr. Tenniel... whether he could
undertake... a dozen wood-cuts... it
has been read and liked by so many
children. ..often asked to publish...
I would send him the book..."

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

The Writing (#),
(Sf the Pictures (♦)

FEBRUARY

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

12 Pictures "not yet" done

4 MARCH

APRIL

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

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

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

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

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

i 9 'Alice's Hour in Elfland'

I 21 Asks Taylor about title (diagrams)

; 21 Sees Tenniel (after Macmillan) who

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

\ 17 Tenniel not home

JUI^

AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

4 ; 2 Sends chapter three to Combe

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

13 The "pictures in MS finished"

OCTOBER

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

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

26 "MS. Finally sent to Alice"

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

death of Tenniel's mother

DECEMBER

4 i 15 Sends Macmillan endre text

FEBRUARY
MARCH

26 Sees Tenniel [no details]

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

8 Sees Tenniel, who is doing 30th
picture

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

«♦

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

MAY

JUNE
JULY

20 Sends last portion marked Press

4 Plans for Alice to receive white
vellum copy on anniversary

: 19 Hears from Tenniel, dissatisfied
with printing of pictures

# : 28 Tenniel approves print

NOVEMBER
DECEMBER

14 Sends Alice "new impression"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Under Ground's Chapter n

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

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

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

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

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

"I only meant to say," said the Dodo in a rather
offended tone, "that I know of a house near
here, where we could get the young Lady and
the rest of the party dried, and then we could
listen comfortably to the story which I think
you were good enough to promise to tell us,"
bowing gravely to the mouse.

The mouse made no objection to this, and
the whole party moved along the river bank,
(for the pool had by this time begun to flow
out of the hall, and the edge of it was fringed
with rushes and forget-me-nots,)-' in a slow pro-
cession, the Dodo leading the way. After a time
the Dodo became impatient, and, leaving the
Duck to bring up the rest of the party, moved
on at a quicker pace with Alice, the Lory, and
the Eaglet, and soon brought them to a little
cottage, and there they sat snugly by the fire,
wrapped up in blankets, until the rest of the
party had arrived, and they were all dry again.

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

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

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

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

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

"Found what?" said the Duck.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Under Ground's CHAPTEB. hi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

to:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

' Ibid.

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

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

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

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

■' "'Alice' on the Stage": p. 180.

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

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

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

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

animal and a human, as suggested here with the White

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

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

p. 222.

Edward Wakeling, e-mail message to the author,

November 26, 2010. Florentia is not mentioned in the

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

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

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

than my little favourite Freddie: indeed she has quite

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

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

Private foumals of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, ed. Edward

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

1993), pp. 131-2.

Stuart Dodgson Collingwood, The Life and Letters of Lewis

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

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

Henry Schuman, 1951), 58.

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

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

Turde's Story").

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

mentions the deletion of the phrase "fringed with rushes

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

whole scene was deleted.

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

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

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

p. 7.

Martin Gardner, The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition

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

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

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

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

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

terminal poem, an acrostic on her full name (mentioned

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

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

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

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

Carroll, Under Ground, pp. 46-67.

See note 12.

Leaves fROo:?
t/:^6 Deanejiy Ganden

Dear Editor,

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

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

Dear Editor,

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

Dr. Femly Bowers, BA, BFA, MA,

MFA, PhD, DOS, MD, DVM,

DoD,LLD

In transit in California

-JKh

Dear LCSNA,

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

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

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

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

Sincerely,

Nicholas Leonardos

Principal

Maria L. Baldwin School

Cambridge, MA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"In Alice, the jurymen added up

the dates given in evidence and

reduced their answers to pounds,

shillings, and pence."

Smith did not smile. "That

would be before we went metric,

I take it, sir."

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

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

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

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

Stilman, Adam Adamant, Olive

Schreiner, Alfred Waterhouse,

Edward Carpenter, C. L. Dodgson.

There were some surprises.

'Gilbert?' Sir Charles asked. 'Why?

The man's as much a vampire as

you or I.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There were blatant messages
hanging opposite indecipherable
jabberwocky.

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

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

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

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

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

BANDERSNATCH

\BAN-der-snach\ , noun;

1. An imaginary wild animal of
fierce disposition.

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

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

I'Wt

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

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

H«h

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

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

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

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

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

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

^i -^i -^i

Ife: Ife: )tk

Linda Cassady

^^^^%.

Ann Mayo

Gabriela Tully

^i^^^p Jl^

Elizabeth Rice-Munro

Claymore

^^^^r

Henri Ruizenaar

Heather Cole

R^« A

Melissa Sanders

Carrie Daignault

fBi^INK

Sarah Sterling

Brittany Erdman

^SLi/^

Sally Turlington

Jeremiah Farrell

Joan Frankel

Beverly Hock

Deborah J. Lightfoot

Christopher Tyle

Ife Ife Ife:

♦fe ^t^ ♦fe *fe ♦fe ife

^ ^tlClO h ^ ^^ MARK BURSTEIN

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

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

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

Our updated meeting schedule for the next
three years:

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

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

Fall, 2013: Sculptor Karen Morti-

llaro, actor/ playwright Dan Singer,

and George and Linda Cassady will

arrange a meeting in Los Angeles.

Spring, 2014: "Somewhere in New

York," as the saying goes.

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

Spring, 2015: San E

in conjunction

opening of the Center

for the

Study of

Children's

Literature

at San

Diego State

University.

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

California

ALL MUST HAVE PRIZES

MATT CRANDALL

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

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

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

Sugar, Tea for Three, and Magic Tea. There

are no identifying marks on any of the Evan

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

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

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

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

Hagen Remaker's Alice

Shaw i White Rabbit

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

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

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

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

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

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

Regal's Tweedles salt and pepper set

AI,ICE15

CELEBRATING WONDERLAND

A Call for Support

JOEL BIRENBAUM

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

-M-

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

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

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

jWr"

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

ALICE INTO THE LOOKING GLASS
ART EXHIBITION

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

Clare Imholtz

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

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

Carrollian Notes

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

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

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

"I'm Late" by Dallas Piotrowski

CARROLL'S TYPEWRITER

Rose Oivens

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LEWIS 6^ LEONARD

Mark Burstein

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

... .^.^.MmO*^

^ ^

Above, the typewriter's case. Right, the
typewriter itself. Below, useful instruc-

tions. Note the handxvriting.

^Btoi^^alzT ''^

_,:,___ ^ ^

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

IMPORTANT.

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

ened by (?i\

inft a few bnck
If both spool

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

trally abo'

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

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

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

hoi?Tw

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Karen Mortillaro's Pool of Tears

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

The Alice Project

Dan Bergevin, editor

Published by Capitalized Living

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

(hardcover) $29.95

ISBN 13: 0-9802479-8-5

(paperback) 22.95

Andrew Ogus

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

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

o\^ ^'^^ X,

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

David Lansley

White Stone Publishing, 2011

£16

ISBN 978-0-904117-36-3

August A. Imholtz,Jr.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Through the Looking-Glass, and

What Alice Found There

With illustrations and an

afterword by John Vernon Lord

and textual corrections and

foreword by Selwyn Goodacre

Artists' Choice Editions 2011

Standard edition:

ISBN 978-0-9558343-1-8

£98

Special Edition:

ISBN 978-0-955343-5-6

£320

Andrew Ogus

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

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

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

The Carrollian Tales of

Inspector Spectre

Written and illustrated by Byron

Sewell, with contributions

by Edward Wakeling and

August A. Imholtz,Jr.

Evertype
ISBN 978-1-904808-81-7

Mahendra Singh

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

We can thank Byron Sewell for
resolving this situation with this

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

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

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

The macabre plot is furnished
with a romandc subplot involv-

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lexvis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland

With artwork by Yayoi Kusama

Penguin Classics

Penguin USA, New York

ISBN 978-0-141-19730-2

Andreiu Ogus

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

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

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

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

Indeed?

-*-

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

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

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

A Trovers le miroir

Lewis Carroll

Translated by Jacques Papy

Illustrated by Lostfish

Mc Productions/Lostfish

Soleil Productions Paris 2011

Andrew Ogus

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

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

ART 6i° ILLUSTRATION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(^i

All Far-Flung items and
their links, implicit or

explicit, are from www.
lewiscarroll.org/blog

and can be accessed by
using its search box.

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

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

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

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

ARTICLES (fb'ACADEMIA

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

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

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

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

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

E9 n
=mc-.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-m-

BOOKS (&=■ COMICS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

EVENTS, EXHIBITS, PLACES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

INTERNET (is' TECHNOLOGY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MOVIES ^f TELEVISION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MUSIC

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

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

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

-*-

PERFORMING ARTS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THINGS

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

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

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

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