EXEUNT ALICE

Kevin Sweeney

Black Rainbows Press

Copyright © 2018 Kevin Sweeney
Previously Published

ISBN-10: 1717317448
ISBN-13: 978-1717317445

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or
used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the
publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work
of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are
either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely
coincidental.

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“Such ‘narrow places,’ where one must meet God face to face, come in sorrow
—in disgrace—in temptation—in the house of death.”
C. L. Dodgson, diary entry dated 22 April, 1877
 AN ALTERNATIVE “ALICE”
Author’s Notes, Which Usually Come Afterward

I originally released Exeunt Alice under the name of Lewis

Carroll. Why? Because I called it a “metafiction”, a text in which the
boundaries between fiction and reality are blurred. A lot of people
thought the book was a deliberate hoax, and called it such. Well, on
reflection, I’ve decided to re-issue it and call it what it really is.
It’s fan-fiction.
There, I said it.
I’m a Bizarro writer. Bizarro is the genre of the weird, and
Carroll is a massive influence on it. Hell, the genre’s major award is
named the Wonderland, and the bloke known as “the godfather of
Bizarro fiction”, Carlton Mellick III, has even written his own riff on
Carroll’s classic, Adolf in Wonderland.
I love the “Alice” books, so I have a lot of different editions of
them; my favourites are the ones which are heavily annotated,
because I also love footnotes, which is my excuse for why Exeunt
has so many. So, yeah, this is fan-fiction, because like many fans
who never want their favourite franchises to end, I have taken
matters into my own hands. I’m not the only one either; not only are
endless adaptations and re-imaginings of the original books still
produced every year, but other writers before me have penned new
adventures for Carroll’s dream-child, some of which I list in a
bibliography after the actual introduction to this book (it will make
sense when you get there, keeping in mind that the metafictional
conceit Exeunt Alice is supposed to have been written by Carroll.)
I have plans for further alternative “Alice” books. I want to
write a more modern, gritty adventure for a start, featuring an up-to-
date Alice, who will probably be utterly horrible.
 Anyway, for now, here is my attempt at writing a third “Alice”
after Carroll, and whilst it can never be as good as the originals, I
hope you will forgive this fan-boy his vanity in publishing this poor
effort.
Hey, at least I didn’t do any shipping...[1]
 EXEUNT ALICE[2]
Being a TRAGICKAL COMEDY, or a COMICKAL TRAGEDY

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

ALICE
Divers MARKET TRADERS
HARLEQUIN
CLOWN
Mr PANTALOON
An ELEPHANT
The VOICE in the DARKNESS
Mr PUNCH
The BABY
JUDY
Mr SCARMOUCH
A gigantic GOOSEBERRY
A WASP in a WIG
Mr TAMBO
Mr BONES
Mr INTERLOCUTOR
Alice’s SISTER
 CHAPTER I
Enter Alice

ALICE was trying her best to be interested in what was

happening, but the words that the actors kept using were very hard
to follow, even though she knew them to be perfectly good English.
It was not so much the sounds as the sense that she was
having trouble following; one actor, dressed as a lord, would walk
about the stage talking out towards the audience without really
addressing them, his words following a pleasant rhythm much like
the ticking of a clock or the sound of train tracks under a railway
carriage. But even so, Alice was having some difficulty in following
the plot.
“And really,” she thought to herself in her theatre seat, “ought
he to be talking to himself so? Why, only the other day I was scolded
for having a conversation with myself; they told me only Bedlamite’s
speak to themselves... and then they take me to a play in which at
least half of everything said by the actors is said to themselves!”
When her sister had first told Alice she was being taken to a
play she had been very excited, imagining that the plays that adults
enjoyed would be much the same as the sorts of entertainments she
enjoyed, like a pantomime with the Harlequinade before it, or the
Negro Minstrels with their merry songs and nonsense speeches. But
unfortunately, this was not the case!
She was sat in a row of seats between people paying eager
attention to the lord talking about all the world being a stage.[3] In
Alice’s mind, however, she had been playing with thoughts of Punch
and Judy. “That takes place on a stage which is far too small to hold
all the world,” she thought, and yawned before she quite knew she
was going to.
Alice roused herself, shaking off the heavy hands of sleep that
seemed to lie on her shoulders, and turned her attention back to the
play. But it was not long before she found the rhythm of the actor’s
words began to fade into a background sound and her own voice
was uppermost in her mind.
“I wonder what a Bedlamite would think of a play?” she
wondered idly. “To see people talking to themselves instead of each
other? Would mad people think that was normal? Perhaps,” Alice
thought, “they would not even know they were watching a play! They
might well think that the actors were real people who lived up there
on the stage, and didn’t even know they were being watched!”[4]
This idea pleased her, and she let her dreamy thoughts chase
it about much like a kitten will chase about a ball of worsted.
“If they were mad then they might well believe that, and think
that the play had no beginning or end, but continued on after the
curtains closed. But what would the characters do? Would Mr Punch
have guests to supper after killing the Devil? Would Harlequin and
Clown part ways, perhaps promising to meet for a game of chess the
Tuesday after next?”
Alice found her eyes drooping, and sleepily realised it was to
do with the actor’s speech and the stuffy heat of the theatre lulling
her. “Just like a long journey by rail,” her mind suggested, “with the
clack-clack, clack-clack underneath you, and the gentle rocking of
the carriage... going to the seaside, where you could watch a tiny
play about Mr Punch, and walk on the sand...” She thought of sand
because the lord on stage was talking about sand, or at least that
was what the word sounded like.
“Sand teeth,” he seemed to say, “sand eyes, sand teeth, sand
everything...”[5]
This time her eyes did close, and they stayed closed for
perhaps two whole seconds before she remembered where she was
and opened them again with a start. Alice felt her cheeks flush red,
embarrassed, sure that everyone would be staring at her, the entire
audience turned in their seats to look at such a wicked child. But
when she looked around ready to apologise, Alice discovered that
she was quite alone!
“O!” she said aloud. “I fell asleep and the play has ended!
Everyone must have gone home, and seeing me asleep they
decided to punish me by leaving me here forever!”
Alice felt so ashamed and so suddenly lost that she began to
cry. She didn’t want to be left alone in the empty theatre forever!
“But it’s your own fault,” she scolded herself between tears,
“for falling asleep when you should have been paying proper
attention to the play! And what is this, now you’re talking to yourself
again! O Alice, you are such a wicked child, why! I ought to box your
ears, I really ought!”
And Alice began to do just that (though not too hard for fear it
may hurt.)
So, there was Alice in her seat at the theatre, the gas lamps
burning low and the curtains on the stage drawn, sobbing and softly
boxing her ears, all the while scolding herself to stop talking to
herself... and then she stopped. She stopped because, even with all
the noise she was making, she fancied she heard something else.
Perhaps she was not alone. She sat quietly in her seat, and strained
her ears.
“I do hear something,” she thought, “but not just one
something, a number of somethings. Or at least, the something I
hear is a lot of somethings all together so that they sound like just
one!”
Alice sat and listened, and named each of the different parts
of the something that she heard.
“Why, there is the sound of bells ringing! Church bells? No,
they aren’t so sweet as church bells... and now I hear a musical
instrument, a very peculiar musical instrument, like bagpipes if they
sounded like a violin! And voices! They sound like they are coming
from the stage.”
Alice was by nature a very curious girl; one could say, in fact,
that she was curiosity itself wrapped up in girl, the way a parcel by
mail comes wrapped in brown paper and string. So even though only
a few moments before she had been feeling ashamed and miserable
(and more than a little sorry for herself) now she was out of her seat
and walking down the aisle towards the stage.
“Yes,” she thought, “the sounds are definitely coming from the
stage, from behind the curtains!”
In no time at all (or at least a very small amount not reckoned
on any clock that I know of) Alice had climbed up beyond the foot
lamps and was stood in front of the long, heavy red velvet curtains.
She leant her ear against the fabric.
“It sounds like... it sounds like a street market!” she said, and
pushed in between the folds.

***[6]

Alice found herself walking through perhaps the thickest set of

curtains in the world. At any rate, it was certainly the thickest set of
curtains she had ever encountered. At first, she was reminded of
playing Hide-and-Go-Seek, and how she was always found because
her toes would poke out from underneath the curtains of the
windows at home. “Though there would be no fear of that with these
curtains,” she thought. “I must have been walking for a full two
minutes, and I still haven’t reached the other side!”
It was just as she had this thought that Alice suddenly found
herself through and on the other side of the curtain, as if the heavy
velvet had softly dissolved like mist around her. Indeed, when she
turned to look back the curtain had vanished entirely, and she found
herself in the middle of the most curious street market.
“Why, all the stall holders are animals!” Alice said to herself; it
was true, behind ever display of goods stood beasts of the field and
birds of the air. “There’s a bull selling china, and a bear with a
ragged staff! Perhaps he ought to pay them a better wage?”[7]
Now, as has been said, Alice was a very curious girl, so it
shouldn’t be taken as surprising that because she was so
overwhelmed with a need to explore her new surroundings that it
never occurred to her to wonder what a street market might be doing
on the stage of the theatre, or that its patrons were talking animals.
Rather, instead, Alice set off into the scene to see what could be
seen.
As she walked Alice listened to the cries of the stall holders,
and carefully looked at what was set on their stalls, but found the
experience very confusing.
“Eels and soles!” called a boar. “Eels and soles, freshest you’ll
find!”[8]
“But he’s selling shoes, not seafood,” Alice thought, looking
over a large and untidy heap of boots. Then she saw a stall that was
selling seafood, even though the old badger who ran the stall was
calling out “Fruit! Fruit for sale!”
Alice stopped and told him, “Really, what nonsense! You aren’t
selling fruit at all! Fruit is pineapples and such, and all I see are
shrimp and crab and mussels!”
The old badger adjusted his glasses and peered closely at
Alice.
“Have you never heard of fruits of the sea?” he asked.
“Of course not,” Alice told him. “Fruits grow on trees, and on
bushes; and under the ground,” she added, a little uncertainly,
though she had a feeling that some fruits at least grew underground.
“Then,” said the old badger, “you are a very dull girl indeed who
has not been attending during her French lessons!”[9]
This remark struck Alice as being so completely pointless (as
well as somewhat rude) that she could not think of another thing to
say, and the old badger went back to calling out his wares.
Alice went to another stall, astonished to find that, though its
stock was neatly laid out, there seemed to be neither rhyme or
reason to what was being sold.
“There’s an elephant’s foot umbrella stand,” she thought. “A
large silver snuff box, an empty white gravy boat, a pair of grey
gloves, a heavy jar of marmalade…”[10]
“If you ain’t going to buy,” snapped the budgerigar whose stall it
was, “I‘d sorely like you to move on and quit scaring away my
custom!”
 Alice was taken aback by the bird’s rough tone, but decided to
maintain her composure, and rather than stoop to rudeness herself
simply walked away from him. “After all,” she reasoned, “between
the useless wares he was offering, and his lack of good grace, I
don’t suppose he’ll sell a thing all day!”
As Alice toured the market she became aware of a strange
man, dressed all in diamonds and a black eye mask, who seemed to
be acting suspiciously. He was carrying a long stick, and seemed to
be looking for something, ducking here and there and peering
closely at the various items on the stalls, before shaking his head
and moving on. Soon Alice became as intent on finding out what he
had lost as he seemed on finding it, and decided to catch up to him
and ask, when she saw him carefully peer about, and when he was
sure he was not being watched, pocketed a pineapple!
It was a reflex for Alice, upon seeing this, to cry out, “That man
there is a thief!” but perhaps if she had known what reaction this
would have caused she may have kept quiet, for no sooner had the
word “thief” left her lips then the whole market erupted into chaos!
With cries of “Thief, thief!” every stall holder hurriedly began
collecting up their wares, even as their customers checked their
pockets and baskets to make sure their purchases were in place...
but unfortunately the stall holders all seemed to take any sign of their
customers panic as being suspicious, and immediately tried clawing
back whatever items were being secured against theft.
Animals ran hither and thither, chasing or being chased as cries
of “Thief, thief!” grew louder and louder. The confusion of fur and
feathers and outrage was too much for Alice, so she shut her eyes
tightly and clamped her hands over her ears.
Presently, when she seemed to sense the air was still again,
she opened her eyes to find the market gone, and the entire street
with it. Now she found herself stood in front of a country mansion,
and who other kept her company than the very man who she had
seen stealing the pineapple.
 CHAPTER II
The Harlequinade

“WHY, it’s Harlequin in his motley!” she thought to herself. “Is

there a pantomime to come? I do love the pantomime... but how did I
come to be here?”
This was an excellent question, and she looked about for an
answer.
The mansion was beyond a little gate that Alice and Harlequin
were stood besides, on the side of a narrow country road that lead
off into woods on either side of them. Harlequin was blinking at her,
his mouth wide open.
“You can see me boy?” he asked.
Alice nodded.
“Well of course I can see you!” she said. “Your costume is so
bright, all red and green and blue! Did you just call me a boy?”[11]
But Harlequin did not answer. Instead he lifted his black mask
up over his head.
“Can you see me now?” he asked, and Alice laughed despite
herself.
“Of course I can!” she told him.
Harlequin stopped to think the matter over, rubbing his chin, his
slapstick tucked under his arm. He kept peering at Alice as if unsure
that she was indeed there. Then he pulled his mask down again and
closed his eyes.[12]
“Can you see me now?” he asked, somewhat triumphantly.
“Well, yes,” said Alice. “Why wouldn’t I be able to see you?”
“Because I ca’n’t see you,” Harlequin wailed. “How could you
possibly see me if I ca’n’t see you?”
 Alice decided not to answer that question, because she could
think of no easy way of explaining anything so simple. “If you didn’t
understand something so easy to understand,” she reasoned, “then
there was no hope of ever explaining it. It’s not like teaching the
alphabet, or the way to tell what o’clock it is!”
Instead she asked him why he had stolen the pineapple from
the market place.
“Stole! At the market! What pineapple?” Harlequin asked.
Alice was about to tell him “The one you are holding” when she
realised he wasn’t holding one at all. It had vanished.
“Young man,” said Harlequin sternly, the face below his black
mask getting redder and redder, “I was not stealing anything at all,
but I was, instead, searching for something!”
By now the face that Alice could see was positively scarlet. “O
dear, I have offended him so!” she thought, and without any proof of
what she had seen, perhaps he had good reason to be offended. So,
in order to placate him somewhat, she asked, “I’m sorry to hear you
have lost something... perhaps if you told me what it was then I could
help you look for it?”
“Now you speak like a reasonable boy,” Harlequin said, his face
turning pale again as he smiled, “I will tell you, and take you up on
your offer of help! I have misplaced,” and here he looked about him
cautiously, as if afraid of being overheard, and leaned in close to
Alice’s ear as if to whisper a great secret. But instead he roared, “MY
SLAPSTICK!”
Alice clapped her hands to her ears.
“You should never shout directly into someone’s ears!” she told
him. “You could deafen them! Why, I say my ears will be ringing for
days now!”
“Oh, you get used to the alarums quite soon,” Harlequin said
carelessly, and laughed so hard he bent over in the middle, hands
wrapped around his stomach. As he did so, Alice had time to realise
that he was still holding his slapstick under one arm. “And in fact,”
she thought, her hands dropping from her ears, “he was carrying it in
the market all the time!”
 But when she told Harlequin this he shook his head from side
to side and clucked his tongue.
“Well of course I have it tucked under my arm!” he said in an
exasperated tone. “I found it almost as soon as the search began!”
“But why would you keep looking for something after you have
found it?” Alice asked.
“How often have you begun looking for something, and then
found it was in the last place you looked?” asked Harlequin.
“All the time,” said Alice slowly. It was one of those things
people said.
“Well, that seems like a rather laborious way of going about
finding anything lost, so I always make sure to find it in the first place
I look!” said Harlequin with triumph.
Alice thought about this.
“But then why do you keep looking?” she asked.
“Aren’t you minding me boy?” Harlequin asked with a sigh. “If I
stopped when I did find it, then that would have made it the last
place I looked!”
Alice gave this some thought, and was about to ask another
question when she saw someone approaching along the road. She
couldn’t see who it was, only a pair of legs in motley that seemed to
be supporting the most peculiar heap of different objects. But the
strangest thing was that she had no way of telling what any of the
objects were, for whenever Alice tried to focus on one of them it
always seemed to turn into something else. A doll -or at least a doll
shaped object- would turn into corkscrew -or at least, an object
which was in every way a corkscrew except for being one- and soon
the heap of not objects was stood next to Harlequin and a face
peered over the top.
“It’s Clown,” thought Alice. “Though really I should have
expected it... I wonder where Pantaloon is?”[13]
“Have you see Harlequin anywhere about here young man?”
Clown asked, and Alice realised he was talking to her. She was
confused, both by the fact that here was another person calling her a
boy and the fact that he couldn’t see that Harlequin was stood less
than a foot away from him! At which point Harlequin flipped up his
mask and said, “Here I am again!” which so startled Clown that he
dropped all the things he was holding, and at least a third of them
seemed to scuttle and run away into the woods.
Alice immediately started to pick the things up, trying to keep
hold of the ones which seemed alive even though they felt like they
were made of wood or wool (for sometimes they felt like they ended
in a “D” and sometimes an “L”, if you can understand such a notion)
passing them to Clown whilst Harlequin leaned against the gate post
and yawned.
“You know, you could help,” Alice told Harlequin.
He seemed to think about this carefully for a moment or two,
and then nodded his head as he looked straight up at a painted sky.
“You’re quite right!” he said cheerfully. “I could!” and then
showed no sign of doing so.
“That was your third that got away!” Clown said angrily,
standing up again without even thanking Alice for her help.
“Never mind that old friend,” Harlequin told him. “I found what I
was looking for!”
“Your slapstick,” Alice said, without meaning too.
But both Clown and Harlequin merely stared at her with wide
eyes and open mouths.
“How ridiculous!” said Harlequin after a time. “Who said I was
looking for that?”
“It wasn’t me,” said Clown. “And if it was I’ll still deny it!”
“But you said...” Alice began, only to be cut off rudely as
Harlequin said “...quiet lodgings!”
He indicated the gate post, which was surmounted by a carved
stone pineapple.
“A sure sign of welcome,”[14] he said, and then struck it softly
with his slapstick.[15]
“It was the strangest thing,” Alice said later, “but the moment he
struck the post with that stick, everything changed! It’s very curious
to try and explain, but one moment we were there on the country
road, and the next moment we were inside a room, as if the woods
and the mansion were all canvasses that suddenly dropped and
revealed the room on whose walls they were hung!”
Alice looked around the great room uneasily; there were a lot of
hunting trophies on the walls, and they seemed very familiar.
“Why,” she thought, “there’s a bull, a bear, a boar, and unless I
am very much mistaken, a badger and a budgerigar as well!”
There was a roaring fire in the grate and a great table at
which sat an ancient looking man wearing night clothes, a sleeping
cap on his head. His face was so incredibly wrinkled that at first Alice
thought he was asleep, eyes closed. But then he spoke.
“Back so soon? Good, good, let us divide up the spoils as is
right!” he said in an old voice, like a very loud, coarse whisper.
“Of course, sir,” Clown said, and dumped his armful of things
onto the table before carefully dividing them up. Alice was quite
curious to see how he would do this, seeing as though he had
already told Harlequin that his third was gone. But as Clown made
four different piles, Alice wondered, “Who is the master here? He
seems to be giving himself three times as many things as goes into
the other piles!”[16]
When she ventured to suggest that maybe the sharing out was
a little unfair, Pantaloon looked at Alice from under a heavy brow and
asked here in a very tired voice, “Have you never heard, boy, of the
rule ‘One for all, all for one?’”
“I may have seen it written down somewhere sir,” Alice
answered.
“Then you will see,” said the old man in his tired voice, “that is
the case here. Do you understand?”
“I ca’n’t say that I do,” Alice said uncertainly.
The old man sighed a great, long sigh.
“A lesson; here are twenty-one piles, and here are twenty-one
more piles. If we add them all together, how many piles will there
be?”[17]
Alice folded her hands together as she was wont to during her
lessons, and worked the sum in her mind.
 “Harlequin, a little entertainment whilst our guest thinks,” said
Pantaloon.
“Thank you...” Alice managed, before Harlequin cleared his
throat loudly and began to shout the following poem;

The way to cook a politician is

To boil him in pitch,
(You’ll know he’s nearly done because
His nose will start to twitch,)
Then served between two bits of bread,
A barrator sandwich![18]

The way to cook an actor is

First, break BOTH his legs,[19]
(You’ll know he’s nearly done because
How desperately he begs!)
Then serve him with an omelette;
“Ham” goes best with eggs!

The way to cook a lass is

Dressed in her Easter bonnet[20]
(You’ll know she’s nearly done because
Of all the ribbons on it)
Then serve with Gentleman’s Relish[21]
And quickly end this sonnet.

When Harlequin had finished he bowed, and Alice, unsure of

how she should react, clapped.
“My master always loved that poem,” said Harlequin with a
wide grin, showing Alice just how sharp his teeth were. “Though of
course he had grown a little bored with having the same three meals
each day... One of them began with a ‘B’…”
“Breakfast?” Alice asked absently, still working on the sum of
the piles.
 “No, not that! But close! The name was Brutus!”[22] said
Harlequin, and his grin grew ever wider.
Alice began to feel nervous, and so she was very glad when
she saw that the old gentleman Pantaloon was beckoning her to his
side. She went and stood quietly and obediently whilst Clown and
Harlequin began to argue over who would get the parson’s nose,
whatever that was.[23]
“I have a favour to ask young man,” Pantaloon said after a
while. “Would you indulge me?”
“Yes, sir,” said Alice. “What favour is that, sir?”
Pantaloon wrote something on a piece of paper, then folded a
part of it over and wrote something else, then he folded it again,
(“Almost as if he were playing consequences!”[24] Alice thought).
Then he stopped, quill poised ready to write, appearing to think for a
moment, one finger tapping his lips.
“Name a place,” he asked Alice.
“The Isle of Wight?”[25] she ventured.
“No, they won’t be there,” said Pantaloon.
“Well how should I know what address to write?” Alice thought,
a little crossly. She gave the matter some thought, but before she
could say anything Pantaloon was writing again. When he finished,
he put the message into an envelope, and handed it to Alice.
“Take this,” he said, “go directly, deliver it at once, and without a
backward glance! You’ll find the way out is over there,” he said,
waving his hand towards the far wall, which had now become a
curtain. The way he spoke with such urgency set Alice off on her
heels, and it was with one backward glance to see Harlequin and
Clown arguing that she pushed her way into the curtains.
As she moved forward into the thick velvet, she suddenly
thought, “How foolish of me! I quite forgot to ask whom I should
deliver this to!” but when she turned to go back she found she was
lost deep in the folds, and pressed forwards

***
into a different place then that she had just left.
 CHAPTER III
Riddles in an Orchard

AS Alice pushed through the folds of the curtain she felt more
and more certain that the fabric was changing subtly, become less
soft, and more grating. “As if I were pushing through leaves almost,”
she told herself. After a time, Alice finally emerged from the curtain
into an orchard and was hardly surprised, therefore, when she
looked back that the curtains she had pushed were now the low
hanging branches of an apple tree. “I was pushing through leaves!”
she said. “Oh, what a lovely orchard; it must be Autumn here
because the trees are all heavy with fruit!”
This was quite true. Wherever she looked up she saw the
branches were sagging under a heavy weight of hundreds of apples,
green and red and mixtures of the two. Alice wandered for a while,
looking up at all the fruit and trying to decide whether she should
pick one.
“After all,” she thought, “these trees must belong to someone,
perhaps even Pantaloon, and I would hate to be accused of
scrumping!” But then she reasoned. “Well, maybe one apple would
be alright, if I make sure to tell the owner when I see them that I took
it.”
So, Alice stopped under a particularly grand old tree with wild,
gnarled branches and a curious pattern on its bark much like a face,
and reached up to pluck a very juicy looking green apple that hung
within reach. But the moment her fingers were about to grasp it, the
whole branch was pulled up out of her reach!
“Now isn’t that the most curious thing!” Alice said in her
surprise, though her surprise was greater still when another voice
said, “When I knew the maharajah, we saw more curious things all
the time!”
Alice started back a little when she heard this voice, and looked
all about, but could not see to whom it could belong. So, gazing
about, she asked a little timidly, “Please do not think me rude, but I
seem to be quite alone here, so may I be so bold as to ask who just
spoke to me?”
“Ah, riddles!” said the voice. “I do love riddles! But really, you
ought to let me go first, beauty before age, as the saying goes!”[26]
Now, Alice was still not sure to whom the voice belonged, but
now she had the suspicion that whoever owned it was up the tree
from which she had tried to pick an apple. “It certainly seems to be
coming from there,” she reasoned, squinting her eyes to try and
make out who was there. “Although who ever heard of a tree with a
tongue?”[27]
“Are you quite prepared?” the voice asked. “Here is my riddle
for you; which would you rather, that a sphinx eats you, or a
crocodile?”[28]
“That’s hardly a riddle!” Alice protested, and suddenly saw
some movement in the branches. A great grey thing was wrapped
around the branch overhead, and she screamed to see it, “O, a
serpent!”[29]
“When I knew the maharajah, we used to see serpents all the
time!” said the voice, and the great grey snake shaped thing
wrapped itself tighter around the branch. “But there was no sea
serpent mentioned in the riddle! Come now, try again!”
Alice had stepped back from the tree now, even though with
every moment she was less and less sure that what she saw on the
branch was a serpent. “It hasn’t any eyes for a start,” she reasoned,
“and it doesn’t seem so threatening except in its general shape...”
She decided to address it directly. “Excuse me, sir, but please don’t
think me rude, I have to ask; what are you?”
“Foolish child!” the voice boomed at her, loud enough to shake
every leaf and rattle every apple on all the branches. “I’m an
elephant! Is there something wrong with your eyes?”
 “An elephant!” exclaimed Alice. “So that must be your trunk!”
“Yes,” said the voice. “And it’s all packed ready for a journey I’ll
never make!”
“But why would you plan a journey if you we’re not going to
make it?” Alice asked.
“I could have made it,” the elephant told her, “except that
someone put an umbrella in my foot and that made it difficult to walk,
with only three feet to support me, and now I go in circles.”[30]
“How beastly!” said Alice, for she was very fond of animals and
the idea of someone deliberately hurting one, particularly whilst it
was still alive, made her feel quite angry.[31] “But then, where are
your other feet?”
“On the ends of my legs,” the elephant told her. “You do ask
simple riddles!” and one by one it lifted its other legs to count them.
Alice had quite missed seeing the elephant’s three legs because she
had mistaken them for trees.[32]
“He must have his trunk wrapped around this tree to support
himself, like an old man with a cane,” Alice thought, and that
reminded her of the riddle the sphinx had asked, which she spoke
aloud. “What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs in the walk,
and three legs in the evening?”[33]
A great trumpet blew through the branches, and for a moment
Alice thought she saw a great, grave face peering down at her with a
look of disgust.
“You have to guess my riddle first!” said the elephant.
“O,” said Alice, remembering what the elephant had asked her.
“Well, I guess then, the crocodile!”
“How ridiculous!” said the elephant. “And quite wrong! Try
again! If you walk one mile south, one mile west, and then one mile
north to get back to the start, what colour is the bear that eats
you?”[34]
“All these questions about animals eating me is quite
uncomfortable!” thought Alice. But she asked, “Surely it’s my turn
now to ask a riddle?”
 “Quite right,” said the elephant, and slapped the branch with its
trunk. “But do be quick, I must be off on my journey soon, starboard
out, port home!”[35]
So, Alice racked her brains, and decided to try the elephant
with the old riddle of “As I was Going To St Ives” (it was the first to
come to mind, what with the elephant’s talk of travel) but as she
spoke it the words seemed to change just as they left her mouth;

As I was pacing to and fro

He asked me, “How far will you go?
If half the distance I’d begun,
Was half of that which you had run,
And half of that,” (I was appalled!)
“Was still less half of which I crawled.”
But if he never stooped to sup,
Would I ever catch him up?

“When I knew the maharajah,” said the elephant, “I never had

to catch anyone up! Why, the very idea, as if I were a common
tortoise treading on my master’s heels![36] Ask another!”
Alice was about to argue that this was not the way that the
game of riddles is played, and that changing the rules was
considerably bad form, but then she became aware that she was still
holding the envelope that Pantaloon had given her to deliver, and
before she thought about it she wondered out loud, “Now who am I
supposed to deliver this too?”
The elephant trumpeted, making all the leaves on every tree
rustle and each branch creak. Alice later said she was so alarmed at
the sudden rush of wind that it never occurred to her that this was
how elephants laughed!
“Now that is a very easy riddle!” the elephant told her. “And you
a dear child for not knowing the answer! You are supposed to deliver
it to,” and here’s its voice grew quieter, as if it were imparting a great
secret, “the recipient.”
 Alice had already checked the envelope thoroughly, and having
found there was no name marked anywhere on it was about to tell
the elephant that firstly she had not asked a riddle, and secondly it
was wrong, before the great beast began asking another riddle.
“If a red house is made from red bricks, and a yellow house is
made from yellow bricks…” it said, but Alice turned on her heel and
began to march away. Her manners had flown with her temper!
“Honestly, to think that a person has all day to answer the most
awful nonsense!” she thought to herself. It seemed as though the
elephant neither knew nor care that she was leaving, because it was
still talking loudly to itself as she made her way through the orchard;
“... and a blue house is made of blue bricks, then what is a
greenhouse made of?”[37]
“And I sha’n’t answer that,” Alice told herself. “I shall just deliver
this letter to whomever I’m supposed to, and then I’m leaving.”
With this course in mind, Alice walked further into the darkening
orchard.
 CHAPTER IV
Punch & Judy

ALICE had been walking for some distance when she noticed
that all the light in the world was dimming gradually, down to a single
point some way ahead of her. It was as if the day was darkening, as
if a storm was gathering, and she was walking towards a single, tiny
light ahead.
“As if I were in a tunnel,” Alice said to herself, “only I had not
noticed until just now, and I can see bright and glorious day at the
end! But O, it does seem to moving further away the closer that I get
to it!”
This was true; it seemed that as the darkness gathered around
her the light in turn became brighter, but as it became brighter it
became more distant.
“Why, at this rate I declare that whatever light that is will
suddenly spring up behind me,” she said, “for the earth is a sphere,
you know, and so if it keeps moving further away the closer I get
then eventually it has to catch me up coming the other way!”
Alice said this last a little doubtfully, for the moment glad there
was no-one nearby who could correct her and then scold her not
learning her lessons better.
Alice walked and walked, and she talked and talked, and never
felt even a little weary even though she must have gone for miles. It
seemed what she had guessed must come true, because as she
drew ever closer to the bright light hung in the deep darkness it drew
further away.
“Now, how long have I been walking?” she said to herself. “It’s
really quite hard to say when nothing seems to change! People
normally tell what o’clock it is by how strong the sunlight is... at least
you could be certain whether it was still the day because of the
sunlight, because if it was moonlight then that would have to make it
night time! But when you’re in nothing but darkness with a light that
isn’t the sun or the moon, why, forty days and forty nights may pass
and you would never know!”
Alice stopped talking, reminding herself that only mad people
spoke when there was no-one around to listen. She managed to stay
quiet for some time, until eventually it was no good, she simply had
to do something, even if it was to ask a question which couldn’t be
answered.
“How am I to find my way out of this darkness?” she wondered
aloud, and then checked herself with a start; she had not spoken, but
she had clearly heard a voice speaking for her!
“How am I to find my way out of this darkness?” Alice said, and
then suddenly clapped her hands over her mouth! She had not
meant to repeat the words she had heard, but her mouth had
opened and out they had marched anyway.
“It’s almost as if I’m being prompted!” said the voice, and a
moment later Alice repeated it;
“It’s almost as if I’m being prompted!”[38]
“Now really! This wo’n’t do; I say it wo’n’t do!” said the voice.
“Now really!” Alice repeated. “This wo’n’t do; I say it wo’n’t do!”
Alice had stopped walking and had snapped her mouth shut
tightly. She thought, “It’s as if I were just an echo for someone or
something else, helpless except to speak back their words, and to
never have my own again!”
Alice peered this way and that, but in all the gloom she saw
nothing except shadows and the far away light which would catch up
with her before she caught up with it.
“But if that really is another voice,” she thought, “why doesn’t it
speak for itself, and not steal my thoughts? Perhaps,” she thought,
“it’s like late at night sometimes when I cannot get to sleep, and the
strangest thoughts -sometimes quite wicked thoughts, if I am honest-
come to me, even though I know they ca’n’t be mine!”[39]
 “That’s precisely right,” said the voice (Alice had a feeling it was
somewhere down to her left) and a moment Alice spoke the same
words out. Then she had an idea, a very clever idea indeed.
“Perhaps,” she thought, “if I think about the voice explaining the
situation, it might prompt me to speak it out loud, and thus tell myself
what I need to know!”
“The light ahead of me is the ghost light,” said the voice. “It
burns all the time without a rest. It’s to frighten the peacock away.”
“The light ahead of me is the ghost light,” Alice told herself. “It
burns all the time without a rest. It’s to frighten the peacock away.”[40]
“That’s the way to do it!” said a voice directly behind her; it was
such a sudden voice, and so unexpected, that Alice span around in
alarm and as she did so she felt the brushing of fabric across her
skin, much as if she was pushing through another curtain and into a
new room.

***

Alice now found herself in a strange place. What was strange

about it was simply this, that whilst a normal room consists of four
walls, a floor, and a ceiling, this room had a ceiling and a floor but
only three walls. One wall was missing, and that side of the room
faced out onto the largest beach that Alice had ever seen in her life.
“If they had wanted a view, surely they could have just used a
window?” Alice thought.[41]
So intent was Alice upon the view of the seemingly endless
sand, and the twice as endless sea beyond it, that she did not realise
she was not alone until a man’s face leant in close to hers and
cleared its throat, making her start. It also made her quick to temper.
“It is considered very rude to sneak up on a person like that!”
she told the man.
“I didn’t sneak up on you,” he told her. “You were ignoring me,
and that is considered very rude too!”
“Well I suppose that could be another way of looking at it,” Alice
said doubtfully. The truth was that the man she was talking to was
very ugly, and he had not pulled his face away from hers. He was so
close that the hot breath snorting from his nostrils made her hair
whip about. “Much like standing on the platform when the train is
leaving” she thought.
The man had an incredibly downward hooked nose, and a chin
that hooked upwards so far that it nearly touched the tip of that nose.
He was dressed in scarlet and yellow and had a hunched back,
which was perhaps why his face was thrust so far forward. “Really, I
should have recognised him sooner,” Alice said later, “but I had
never seen him so large before, so I didn’t realise it was Mr Punch
for the longest time.”[42]
It was at this moment that Alice realised that what she thought
was a bundle of rags in Mr Punch’s arms was, in fact, a baby. She
had not seen this fact at first simply because he was holding it
upside down. “And when one sees a baby, one expects to see the
head on top,” she thought, and then with a little scream realised just
how mad a thought that was!
“No, no, no!” she cried out. “O, Mr Punch, that’s not how you
should hold a child!”
“It’s not?” he asked, puzzled, and looked down at the bundle he
held. “But I’m using my hands aren’t I? Don’t most people hold things
with their hands?”
“Please, pass the little dear to me,” Alice begged. “I have some
experience with awkward children.”[43]
Mr Punch looked at the bundle (the baby was silent, apparently
finding the idea of a rug on the ceiling mesmerising) and then with a
shrug he passed it to Alice. Alice turned the baby the right way up,
and as soon as she did it began to wail!
“Hush babe, do please hush!” Alice told it, and tried rocking the
child, but this only made the poor thing cry louder, its mouth a perfect
“O” shape and its eyes screwed down into two puckers.
“Pass that back!” roared Mr Punch. “You’ve broken it! Look! All
the water is leaking out!”
It was with some awkwardness that Alice passed the child back
to the man, but even back in Mr Punch’s arms the wailing cries did
not cease.
“A lullaby,” said Alice, hands clasped tightly together. “O please,
try singing the dear a lullaby, maybe that would help!”
Mr Punch looked hotly at Alice, but then shrugged again.
“I guess I know a sweet song, though there is something of a
sting in the tale,” he said, and in a squeaky, titling voice began to
sing to the tune of “Scarborough Fair”;[44]
Punch is a very queer fellow,
Under clothing all scarlet and yellow,
Now and then, tho’, he often gets mellow…
Cheering up when he’s killing his friends!
His money most freely he spends!
Judy says he’s a rogue and a rover,
Until he falls off the white cliff of Dover,
Dear baby falls, and it is all over…
You’ll see how this comedy ends!

And then, on the very last word, the wicked man hurled the
baby as hard and as far as he could through where the fourth wall
should have been!
Alice said nothing; the shock of what had suddenly happened
had quite taken her breath away!
Mr Punch cupped his hand to his ear as the wailing cries
became quieter and quieter, and finally, shockingly stopped.
Then he grinned broadly and shook Alice’s hand.
“It worked! It worked beautifully! My, what a deep and cunning
young man you are! You deserve a knighthood!”
He was carrying a long stick under his arm (Alice hadn’t noticed
with all the other strange things that had distracted her) and gently
tapped her on each shoulder, just as if he were royalty conferring an
honour.
“But he just murdered that little boy!” she thought, and found
her tongue; she knew exactly who to call for.
“Judy!” she cried, ducking away from Punch and his stick. “O
Judy, come quickly and see what your husband has done!”
 No sooner were the words out of Alice’s mouth then a woman
nearly as ugly as Punch himself appeared as if sprung up through a
trap door.
“What is this noise!” said Judy, peering about. “I was down
stairs attending to the giant… Punch! There you are! Where is the
child I left in your care!”
Mr Punch grinned and pointed over Judy’s shoulder at Alice.
“Why, she has him,” he said, and as soon as his wife turned her
back the terrible, wicked Punch swung his stick and knocked her out
through the missing wall!
“Murder!” cried Alice.
But Mr Punch paid her no mind. He stood staring up at nothing,
humming quietly.
Alice thought the best thing to do would be to leave as quickly
as possible. “After all,” she reasoned, “I distinctly remember that
after Judy comes Mr Scaramouch, and then Jack Ketch the
hangman, and then after he is dead there comes...”[45]
Alice decided the best thing to do was to act as if she were very
late and had an urgent appointment to keep, one which would take
her away from this place before Mr Punch could kill any more
people; and especially before Mr Punch’s last visitor were to arrive.
“Please, sir, but could you tell me the time?” Alice asked.
“Yes, I could” said Mr Punch. Alice waited politely for a while,
certain that he had something more to say, but after a short time had
passed she thought to press him a little.
“Please excuse me, sir, but I asked you to tell me the time,”
Alice said.
At this Mr Punch bristled, and wagged his head violently.
“You did not!” he screamed. “You asked if I could tell you the
time, and I told you that I could. You did not ask me to tell you the
time at all! Ah! Mr Scaramouch, always a pleasure to see you sir!”
“Good day Mr Punch!” said Mr Scaramouch who had just
walked in. “I trust that I find you well?”
“O quite well, quite well,” said Mr Punch a trifle sadly. “It’s just
that I fear that others may not be in quite so rude health as I! Like the
baby, for one.”
“And what is wrong with the poor little dear?” asked Mr
Scaramouch.
“He’s dead,” Mr Punch told him.
“Dead! An unhappy affliction indeed! And how long has he
been dead now?”
“A thousand years,” Mr Punch said, and gestured towards the
missing wall, winking at Alice secretly as he did so. “You can see for
yourself!”
“No, please don’t!” cried Alice, but it was no use; Mr
Scaramouch approached the edge and peered over and in the very
next moment Punch had shoved him out into thin air.
“I must leave,” Alice thought to herself, “before something awful
befalls me! O, but it all seems such fun when you are at the seaside
and watching it from the other side!” And having had this thought she
saw from the corner of her eye that the far wall had turned into a
curtain.
Alice decided she would have to make her escape quickly,
because after Mr Scaramouch came Jack Ketch, and after the
hangman came…
“Look young man, a tree!” said Mr Punch, pointing over Alice’s
shoulder.
Alice turned and looked, but she did not see a tree (though she
had hoped to; she half thought that she might have made her way
back to the orchard, and from there find her way back to the theatre)
but instead she saw some gallows, which had sprung up in the very
middle of the room!
“I really ought to leave now,” Alice told herself, once again
giving herself excellent advice, “but how am I to set about it?” Then
she remembered the message that she had been entrusted with.
Perhaps it was for Mr Punch? And if it was not then maybe she had
a good reason to leave!
“Excuse me, Mr Punch,” Alice said to the man, who was
walking around and around the gallows and nodding his head as if
he were very pleased with what he saw, “but I believe this message
may be for you?”
 “I shouldn’t think so,” Mr Punch said carelessly, “as I don’t recall
asking anyone to send me a message. What fruit would you find on
a tree as fine as this?”
Alice decided not to answer, but curtsied most politely and said,
“Well if the message isn’t for you, sir, then I am afraid that I really
ought to be leaving. Good day.”
But Mr Punch wasn’t paying Alice any mind, and had instead
taken to thrusting his head in and out of the noose, much as if it were
a window.
Alice had just reached the curtain when she heard Mr Punch’s
voice behind her exclaim, “Ah, good day Mr Ketch! Perhaps you
could show me what sort of fruit to expect from this curious tree?”
and then she pushed into the fabric very quickly, fearing to see what
would happen next.

***

As Alice made her way through the thick curtains she thought
to herself that the next time she went to the seaside she would make
a point of not watching the Punch & Judy show.
“For really,” she told herself, “it’s not so jolly for the poor
puppets!
 CHAPTER V
A Green Room in A Green House

WHEN Alice finally came clear of the curtains she emerged

into the most curious room yet. It took her a moment to realise just
what sort of room she was in, and another moment for her to realise
why it took her a moment to realise what sort of room it was.
“It’s a drawing room,” she thought. “And yet, how curious,
everything appears to be made from glass!”
How true! In the middle of the room there was a glass table
surrounded by glass chairs, and on the table were glass candlesticks
that held glass candles. A glass clock ticked on the glass mantel that
surrounded a glass grate, in which a glass fire of glass flames and
glass coals sparkled. The walls and wall coverings were all made of
glass as well, so it was possible to look through into the other rooms,
as it seemed the entire house was made of glass throughout!
“I’ve never been in a glass house before…[46] who would ever
create such a place? There isn’t a bit of privacy to be had anywhere,
and I should think it would be very tiresome to always be on view!”
Alice said, walking about the room, touching glass furniture here and
there. “And surely it cannot be comfortable! Glass is so hard and
cold… are the beds made of glass?” she wondered, and looked up
through the glass ceiling to see that, in fact, the beds were glass.
When Alice looked about her again she noticed for the first time
that she was not alone in the house, but that in the very next room
there was a round shouldered figure hunched over a writing desk,
busily making notes with a raven quill. Remembering once again that
she had a message to deliver, Alice ventured out of the glass
drawing room into a glass hallway, and then down a little way to the
glass door of the glass study.
“Should I knock?” Alice wondered; and here was a dilemma. A
knock at the door is only polite, to knock and wait for the command
“Enter!” But surely when the door was as transparent as a window,
the idea of knocking was somewhat pointless? But Alice had been
too well brought up to let logic get in the way of good manners, so
she knocked and she waited, watching the round shoulder figure that
was so busy at the desk.
The figure did not give any indication that it had heard, so Alice
knocked again; and then having waited a polite time she felt her
anger rising a little.
“Well,” she said, “to think, here I am respecting the privacy that
he has when he won’t do so much to turn around and see who is
knocking! But perhaps,” she thought a little kindlier, “he is hard of
hearing? I daren’t knock louder though, for fear of shattering the
door; perhaps it would be best if I just introduced myself?”
Alice let herself into the study and came up slowly to the writing
figure so as not to startle him… but it was Alice who was too be
startled, for when she came level with the figure she discovered it
was a gigantic gooseberry!
Now, Alice wasn’t so much startled by seeing a very large fruit
writing in a ledger (he seemed to be working on great sums) but was
in fact stopped by a dilemma; in all of her lessons on the correct way
to address others she had never encountered the proper form for
talking to vegetation.
“Which is really quite odd,” she told herself later, “unless that
was the point of the game where you first ask someone if they are
animal, vegetable, or mineral?[47]“ But this thought was much later;
right then and there all she could do was work the problem over in
her own mind as the gooseberry worked at the desk and paid her not
the least mind.
It was just as Alice thought of a way of breaking the ice that the
sound of bells ringing filled the air. A confusion of great church bells,
and the bells of town criers, and door bells rang out in the room,
though there were no instruments to be seen; the sound came out of
nowhere and everywhere at once! It was so loud and so sudden that
Alice jumped, and quickly clapped her hands over her ears, thinking
to herself, “O, what now?” and then just as suddenly the ringing
stopped!
Alice lowered her hands from her ears and looked about, but
she could see no churches or town criers, and no visitors stood at
the door madly pulling the cord that rang the little door bell.
“Now what was that?” Alice asked aloud, quite without thinking;
and so when she received an answer it was unexpected.
“That,” said the gooseberry at the writing desk, “was what most
would call a tintinnabulation… and some others would call a precious
go… but strictly speaking, I’d say ‘twas the divers alarums.”[48]
Alice was very pleased that a conversation was begun, and so
forgot the matter of the message for the moment to ask, “Divers
alarums? What are they?”
“Alarums to warn divers, naturally” said the gooseberry.
“Divers?” Alice asked. “What are they diving for?”
“Wisdom, naturally,”[49] said the gooseberry, who still had yet to
even look up from his work.
Alice did not understand this last remark, and decided to try
another line of questioning, hoping to keep the gooseberry talking
until their chat could come around to other matters.
“But what do they alarums warn the divers of?” she asked.
“Circling snarks, naturally,” said the gooseberry.
“Snarks?” asked Alice.
And now, finally, the gooseberry looked up from his work, his
face contorted as if in a great passion; when he spoke, his voice
shook as if he only just had his temper under control.
“No, not snarks you precious boy,” he said hotly, “sharks!
Sharks, sharks, circling sharks!”
“I’m sorry sir, I must have misheard you,” Alice said, wondering
why a simple mistake had so angered the giant fruit.
The gooseberry calmed on the instant, smiling agreeably.
 “Well, it can admit when it’s wrong,” said the gooseberry, “but
just to make sure the lesson is fully learnt I shall demonstrate how it
was wrong. Attend!”
Alice thought this was a very rude way of addressing her (“As
an it! He could ask my name!” she thought) but the gooseberry had
written a word down in his ledger and turned it towards her, so she
bit her tongue and attended.
The gooseberry had written the word “Snark.”
“Now, attend again,” it said, and wrote a second word.
The second word, next to the first, was “Shark.”
“You see, you heard the second letter as being shorter than it
is,” said the gooseberry triumphantly, “which proves it, you are short
of hearing!”
Alice puzzled this matter; it was a curious thing, but she had
the impression this was one of those things that could only be written
down, never said. At last she shook her head and said, “I’m afraid I
ca’n’t quite see it.”
“You’re hard of seeing as well,” said the gooseberry.
Alice decided to change the subject.
“Perhaps you are doing your accounts sir?” she said politely,
pointing to the columns of figures in the ledger. “I’m sure it would
make my head spin to work with such sums!”
The gooseberry looked sorrowful, and a single tear rolled down
its cheek.
“These are the wages![50]“ he said. “Everyone is taken to
account for them someday, so I have decided to do my accounting
early, what with living as I do, naturally.”
“And how do you live?” asked Alice.
“Not in a palace, but in a green room, in a greenhouse,”[51] said
the gooseberry bitterly. “So you can see why I have to be careful,
with wages such as these!”
“But that’s nonsense!” Alice told him, “The only ones who need
to be careful are the ones who can, not the ones who cannot.[52]“
But the gooseberry wouldn’t be consoled by this wise consul,
and Alice supposed that with the way things were on stage, with
everything put the wrong way about, that maybe even this was the
other way about.
“I have a message I must deliver,” she told the gooseberry,
hoping to stem its tears somewhat, “only I am not at all sure who I
am supposed to be delivering it to. Are you expecting a message?”
“I ca’n’t say that I am,” the gooseberry said between great
sobs. “Or at least I could say that I am, but it would be a lie, and that
wouldn’t help either of us. But as for who that message is for… well,
I can tell you where you can find him.”
Alice was overjoyed to hear this, as you may well imagine!
“Where is he?” she asked.
The gooseberry took a great breath.
“In the details,”[53] he told her in a reasonable voice, and then,
turning back to his ledger, began to write again. Alice wasn’t able to
get another word from him, and soon gave up the attempt, saying to
herself, “That must be the rudest fruit I have ever met! I hope
somebody makes a fool of him!”[54] and let herself out of the green
room, then out of the greenhouse.
Presently Alice found herself walking along the bank of a
beautiful river. “The season has changed again,” she thought, “for
now it is a Summers day! The sky is blue, without a cloud to be
seen, and a gentle breeze is making the rushes rustle… but I am
glad to be on this side rather than the far bank! Those woods over
there are so awfully dark! I daresay anyone lost in such a wood
should soon abandon hope of ever finding a straight path clear!”[55]
As Alice walked in the golden afternoon[56] (“At least it feels like
the afternoon,” she decided, “the time feels like dinner has been and
gone”) she kept a wary eye on the trees of the far bank, keeping
watch for beasts.
“In such a wood as that I shouldn’t wonder if there were any
number of wild things,” she thought. “Lions, certainly, and possibly
leopards, or wolves!”[57]
Alice was so intent on her watch that, without warning, she
found herself almost walking across a laid-out picnic, and was only
stopped by a hand gripping her shoulder.
 “Careful there, miss,” said an oddly buzzing voice. “You were
almost ankle deep in jam!”
“O, I do beg your pardon!” cried Alice, realising what she had
almost done, then nearly screamed when she happened to look at
the man who had stopped her, and found him to be a wasp in a wig!
[58]
The wasp paid Alice no mind, preferring to stare, as if
mesmerised, at the picnic spread on the ground. Any number of
good things were laid out, scones with clotted cream, three different
kinds of jam, ices and sorbets, rhubarb crumble, gooseberry fool,
frumenty, plum pudding, mince pies, and any number of other sweet
treats.
“You find me on the horns of a dilemma,” the wasp said slowly,
“tho’ that’s slightly better than those of a cuckold (curious beasts
both, if you get my meaning), and I think you may be able to help
me.”
“Help you?” said Alice, recovering herself a little; she decided
that the wasp was friendly, and there was no need to try the
experiment. “Certainly; in what way?”
The wasp pointed at the picnic.
“I reckon as how there is a lion in that pot of honey, but my
eyes aren’t what they were,” the wasp said. “Would you look for
me?”
Alice looked at the pot of honey, and saw what the wasp was
talking about; first, there was a hook floating in it, and attached to
this, a fisherman’s line… “A line, not a lion! But how odd! It goes into
the water!” she realised.
“Yes, sir, there is a line in the honey,” she told the wasp; and
then her tongue got away from her, and she said, “Out of the eater,
something to eat; out of the strong, something sweet.[59]“
“It be tunny fish,[60] that’s what it be,” said the wasp in a quiet
voice.
“And what is a tunny fish?” Alice asked, curiosity, as ever, her
master.
 “A tunny fish be a fish with a ferociously mild temperament,”
the wasp told her, licking its mouth as it stared at the picnic, yet not
daring to take a bite, “much given to sport…”
Here it leaned down to whisper in Alice’s ear, “In particular,
fly-fishing.”
“But you’re a wasp,” Alice ventured.
“I flies, don’t I?” the wasp asked hotly.
Alice decided that now was as good a time as any to bring up
the matter of her message.
“I’ve been charged with delivering a letter,” she told the wasp,
“only I don’t know who it is I am supposed to deliver it to. Are you
expecting any urgent messages, sir?”
The wasp shook its head, still staring at the food, or, as it were,
the “bait”.
He said no more after that, but simply stood longing for that
which would destroy him, so presently Alice left, saying, “Goodbye.”
She hadn’t walked too far, however, before she heard a loud splash
behind her, and thought, “O dear, it seems temptation got the better
of him!”
The trees on this side of the river grew thicker than before, until
soon Alice felt as if she were walking down a tunnel, or an oak
panelled corridor.
“The trunks grow so closely together,” she thought, “and the
branches arch so closely overhead, it’s almost like walking down the
throat of the vomitorium!”[61]
Indeed, such was the impression upon her that she was not
very surprised when she came upon curtains hung before her,
spread between the trees that formed a proscenium arch, and
without thinking about the matter

***

she walked through them.

 CHAPTER VI
Who the Letter Was For

ALICE found herself in a room with three men in blackface.

The men were seated at a long table, with one man seated at the
centre and the other two occupying the end chairs, one of whom
held a tambourine, and the other bone castanets. This left a chair
free on Alice’s side, and she was about to ask if she could sit down,
because she was so tired from walking, when she realised that all
three men were staring at her.
“Excuse me, sirs,” she asked cautiously, and not a little
embarrassed; how intently they stared! “But I have been walking
quite some way and I see that there is a chair empty here. Perhaps
there is nobody returning to sit there?”
The man in the centre continued to stare directly at Alice, even
as he spoke aloud, shouting, “You’re in the way!” before snapping
his mouth shut again.
“That’s right Mr Tambo,” said the man holding the bone
castanets, “she is in the way.”
Apparently, this remark was addressed to the man at the other
end of the table, the one holding a tambourine, because he nodded
and replied, “Mr Bones is correct,” in the same sharp voice, “in the
way she is.”
Now Alice was so shocked, and still a little red faced from the
way the men were staring at her, that she didn’t even think to rebuke
them on not saying “Please”, but, instead, turned to see whatever it
was she was apparently stood in the way of, wondering what they
wished to view so that they clean forgot that one little word.
When she turned, she saw that the side of the room through
which she had walked, or from which direction at least she had
walked from, was still a velvet curtain.
The truth was, Alice had half expected this. (“Although,” she
had once told herself, “how could you truly half expect a thing?
Surely it was or it was not; that would be like half locking a door.”)
When she turned back with a cross word on her lips about
good manners she found that each of the men was now smiling
broadly, great smiles of white teeth in their soot blackened faces.
Alice suddenly knew who they were.
“Why, you’re the Negro Minstrels!” she told them, and pointed
at each in turn as she named them, “You’re Mr Tambo, and you’re Mr
Bones, and you in the middle, you are Mr Interlocutor!”[62]
As Alice named each man he stood up, bowed deeply, and
then sat back down again, smiling all the while.
“And now my dear,” said Mr Interlocutor in a rolling voice, “if
you would be so good as to move just a little to the side so that we
might have an unobstructed view? Yes, there. Good!”
Alice had moved as the man had waved his hands at her,
thinking to herself, “Well at least he has stopped shouting.” But she
was still puzzled as to why the men were staring so intently at the
curtains that separated the audience from themselves. So she
asked;
“I suppose you are a-waiting curtain up?”
Mr Bones said, “Mr Tambo, she supposes we are a-waiting
curtain up!”
To which Mr Tambo replied, “We are a-waiting curtains up, as
she supposes Mr Bones.”
“Tho’ I don’t understand…” Alice said.
“Mr Tambo, she doesn’t understand!” said Mr Bones.
“I understand she doesn’t, Mr Bones,” said Mr Tambo.
“And what doesn’t she understand?” asked Mr Interlocutor,
gazing at Alice.
“What doesn’t she understand?” asked Mr Bones, rudely
jerking his thumb at Alice, and Mr Interlocutor nodded.
“What doesn’t she understand!” said Mr Tambo, and Mr
Interlocutor laughed.
 “I think they are making fun of me,” Alice thought, “but then it’s
so hard to grasp their meaning that one is never quite sure!”
Alice addressed herself to Mr Interlocutor, as it seemed he was
the only one addressing her.
“Well sir,” she began, “when I go to the theatre I do so with
good reason; I expect to sit in the audience and watch some
entertainment on the stage, whatever the hand bill told me… but why
would you gentlemen wish to be on the stage looking out at the
audience?”
As Alice spoke she saw that the faces of all three minstrels
grew longer and longer, as their eyes widened and their mouths
sagged open further and further, until she felt quite sure their eyes
and tongues were ready to fall out of their heads!
“Because your way would be extremely dull,” said Mr
Interlocutor.
“How so?” asked Alice.
Mr Interlocutor folded his hands before him and sighed.
“In the manner you describe, one should attend a theatre
knowing what one is about to see; a play, perhaps, with a week-long
run. That would become extremely dull, night after night, seeing the
same thing. Am I right?”
“You are right,” said Mr Bones.
“Right you are,” said Mr Tambo.
“But if we are on stage then we see a new audience every night
of the week, not the same play over and over! Do you see child?”
Alice opened her mouth to protest, and then shut it again.
“I know there is something wrong with his logic,” she told
herself, “but right now I ca’n’t seem to place my finger on what
exactly is wrong with it!”
Her troubling thoughts had little enough time to resolve
themselves however, as Mr Interlocutor had produced, from beneath
the table, the strangest of all objects.
He smiled his wide smile at Alice.
“My peardrum,” he told her. “An instrument peculiar to myself.”
“It certainly is peculiar,” Alice said. “Why, it’s something like a
guitar, with but two strings, and something like a box on one side.”
 “Indeed,” said Mr Interlocutor. “Perhaps you would like to hear
a piece we wrote ourselves?”
Before Alice could protest the three minstrels began to play, Mr
Bones rattling his castanets, Mr Tambo crashing his tambourine, and
Mr Interlocutor strumming his peardrum as he sang… and here was
the most curious thing of all, because even though his fingers
plucked at his instrument, and his mouth opened and closed as if
singing, neither words or notes were produced!
But even though Alice did not hear a tune or any words, she
was nevertheless convinced that a song was being sung for her, and
that it sounded like this;

.....................
.....................
.....................
.....................

Chorus
.....................
.....................
.....................
.....................

.....................
.....................
.....................
.....................

Chorus
.....................
.....................
.....................
.....................[63]
 Then the minstrels all put their instruments down and looked
expectantly at Alice. Poor Alice! For all she knew the song could
have been a dirge as easily a carol, and so she had no idea of how
she was expected to react! But what could she say that wouldn’t
offend them?
“That was…” she said, and all three of the minstrels leant
across the table to hear her better, “very well played,” she told them.
The minstrels were evidently quite pleased to hear this, as
each sat back again with a sigh.
“So, you didn’t think there were too many notes?” asked Mr
Interlocutor.
“Not that I heard,” said Alice carefully.
Mr Interlocutor nodded.
“I suppose you are wondering why you didn’t hear too many?”
he said. “It’s to do with the new notes we discovered ourselves,
between the other ones.”
“New notes?” asked Alice, her mind wandering (a new note?
There was certainly something about a note that bothered her…)
“But surely they have already all been invented?”
“Not invented…” said Mr Bones.
“…discovered,” finished Mr Tambo, nearly speaking over the
first minstrel.
“But we haven’t made these discoveries available to the public
yet,” said Mr Interlocutor. “So naturally they cannot be heard yet.”
“But how can you have a note that cannot be heard?” cried
Alice, dreadfully confused now.
“Take the word ‘knight’,” said Mr Bones.
“And having taken it, say it,” said Mr Tambo. They spoke so fast
that they seemed to overlap each other.
“Do you hear the ‘k’ when you speak it?” asked Mr Interlocutor.
Alice thought about this, and shook her head.
“But that is nonsense!” she said. “You ca’n’t just make up new
letters or new notes!”
“So where did all the letters you already know come from?”
asked Mr Interlocutor.
 “I… don’t know. I suppose people just made them up…”
“If they made them up they would be nonsense,” said Mr Bones
and Mr Tambo together. “As you just pointed out!”
“Well, it’s all the same,” said Mr Interlocutor. “The same with the
new notes as the new letters of the alphabet we have found…”
Now all three of the minstrels were talking over each other, and
it made Alice’s head spin trying to follow all they were saying.
“A ‘T’ is just a ‘P’ with a twist. But those two aren’t hiding
anymore…”
“You have heard that some notes ca’n’t be heard by some
people? Older people ca’n’t hear high notes; that’s because they
forget them…”
“For instance, we discovered that the word ‘corkscrew’ begins
with a double-I. Hidden in plain sight!”
“Which is much like a double-U -which is a ‘U’ with a double
twist- only it comes first. Of course, everyone knows about the
double-U, even if they write it to look like a double-V!”
Notes and letters, letters and notes! It was all so confusing, but
then Alice remembered that she had a note of her own to deliver. “A
letter written with letters,” she thought, “but not a note written with
notes!”
She held it up for the minstrels to see, and they all stopped
talking, all at once, which was a blessed relief to Alice, to drive those
voices out of her mind!
“The last line!” said Mr Interlocutor.
“I was due to deliver this letter to someone,” said Alice, “only I
was never told whom… do any of you gentlemen suppose it could be
for you?”
The Minstrels stared at Alice. And each in turn shook their
head.
“O dear, I fear I shall never be able to deliver it!” she cried.
The Minstrels continued to stare at her, as if she were quite
mad.
“Why do you look at me so?” Alice asked them.
“That letter,” said Mr Interlocutor, “isn’t to be delivered at all,
you know…”
 “I fear it sha’n’t at any rate,” Alice said.
“Because you are the one to whom it is addressed,” Mr
Interlocutor finished.
“You are the recipient,” said Mr Bones.
“The recipient you are,” said Mr Tambo.
Alice was about to ask them what on earth they meant, when
she happened to glance at the front of the envelope that had been
entrusted to hear, and gasped in amazement when she saw her own
name written on it!
“Now how did I manage to overlook such a plain fact as that?”
she wondered aloud, and then the curtains at her back opened

***

to reveal an audience of waiting figures, all of whom she had

met during her adventures upon the stage. The animals from the
market were all there, as were Harlequin, and Clown, and Pantaloon;
the riddle asking elephant took up a great number of seats, and in
front of him were sat the cast of Punch & Judy, unharmed and
returned to life; and all the others she had met filled out the seats
beyond the foot lamps, staring up at her on the stage with the letter
in her hands!
Alice was so surprised she merely stood there, looking out at
those watching her. Her tongue lay stupid in her mouth, and she felt
quite foolish, until she heard a small voice whisper to her;
“Read your line!”
“That voice is familiar,” Alice told herself, “but where have I
heard it before?” and in a flash, she remembered; when she had
walked through the darkness, anxious that she would never reach
the light, it was this voice that prompted her, consoled her, and told
her the way.
“Read your line!” it urged her now.
“What line!” Alice asked, her voice a shouted whisper.
“In your hands!” said the voice. “The final line is in your hands!”
Alice suddenly understood; she carried the answer herself. She
tore open the little envelope she had carried such a great distance
and unfolded the small slip of paper within. She read what was
written there, feeling the eyes of the cast upon her, but was puzzled
as to the words meaning.
“Read!” urged the voice.
“I suppose I don’t have much choice,” Alice told herself, and
read aloud;
“Alice dear, rouse yourself! Come, come, wake up! Wake up…
 CHAPTER VII
The Final Curtain

“…WAKE up Alice! The play is over!” said Alice’s sister. “I

ca’n’t believe that you slept through the final act! Mind you,” she said
a little kindlier, “it is stuffy and terribly warm in here, maybe you are
still a little young for adult entertainments!”
Alice blinked her eyes and stifled a yawn. The theatre was
emptying out and the curtains on stage were drawn.
“O, but I had such a strange dream!” Alice said. “I dreamt I was
on the stage, and that I met and walked with so many of the old
characters, as if they too have private lives when the curtains come
down, and the foot lamps are extinguished!”
And Alice told her sister of these strange wanderings, of the
Harlequinade, of Punch, of the Negro Minstrels; of the songs and
sorrows which were their lot; of her task to deliver a message which,
she discovered almost too late, was her own solution, and
understanding of all that had gone before.
Presently, when her tale was done, Alice returned home to go
to bed and deeper sleep, thinking as she went that all journeys must
end with a laying down of the head, and even that night must soon
end with the light of an eternal dawn.
 ENTER ALICE, STAGE RIGHT
An Introduction to Exeunt Alice

I. The Discovery of a New Text

“No! No! The adventures first,” said the Gryphon in an

impatient tone: “explanations take such a dreadful time.”
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

FOLLOWING the Gryphon’s lead, it was decided that the third

adventure for Carroll’s dream child Alice should be laid before the
public first... but not simply because “explanations take such a
dreadful time.” More, it was felt that with the public, now knowing the
story of how this new text came to light so well (the media having
exhaustively covered the particulars) would be quite understandably
too impatient to wade through introductory material to get to the
“matter at hand”, as it were.
Thus, why this introductory material can be found at the end,
rather than the beginning of this little book (quite a neat Looking-
Glass inversion, when one thinks about it.)
As already observed, the details of how and under what
circumstances this otherwise legendary lost manuscript came to be
rediscovered have already been covered quite well already by many
other hands, but it seems as though an interesting, if minor, element
of the story has been overlooked; that whilst it may have seemed
incredible to the world at large that a book like Exeunt Alice may
have dropped seemingly off the face of the earth for so many
decades only to suddenly reappear as if from nowhere, this is not the
first time such Carrollian material has performed the trick.
 Consider “The Wasp in the Wig”, a legendary “lost” episode of
Through the Looking-Glass which Carroll scholars only knew about
because of an extant letter from Tenniel to Carroll on a matter of
illustrations;

My dear Dodgson.
I think that when the jump occurs in the
Railway scene you might very well make Alice
lay hold of the Goat’s beard as being the object
nearest to her hand... instead of the old lady’s
hair. The jerk would naturally throw them
together.
Don’t think me brutal, but I am bound to
say that the “wasp” chapter doesn’t interest me
in the least, & I can’t see my way to a picture. If
you want to shorten the book, I can’t help
thinking -with all submission- that there is your
opportunity.
In an agony of haste
Yours sincerely
J. Tenniel
Portsdown Road.
June 1. 1870

From the July 3rd, 1973 catalogue of the London auctioneering

firm of Sotheby, Parke Bernet and Company we take the following
entry;

Dodgson (C.L.) “Lewis Carroll.” Galley proofs for

a suppressed portion of “Through the Looking-
Glass,” slip 64-67 and portions of 63 and 68,
with autograph revisions in black ink and note in
the author’s purple ink that the extensive
passage is to be omitted.
 The present portion contains an incident in
which Alice meets a bad-tempered wasp,
incorporating a poem of five stanzas, beginning
“When I was young my ringlets waved.” It was to
have appeared following “A very few steps
brought her to the edge of the brook” on page
183 of the first edition. The proofs were bought
at the sale of the author’s furniture, personal
effects, and library, Oxford, 1898, and are
apparently unrecorded and unpublished.

There is something wonderfully absurd about the understated nature

of this catalogue entry, especially when the wider cultural
significance of the “Alice” books has been taken into consideration;
Carroll is considered the most quoted English writer after
Shakespeare. TTLG was first published in 1871; the lost chapter had
been missing for just over a century before it was rediscovered to the
incredulous exclamations of Carroll scholars worldwide. The fact that
such important material had been kept in a private collection,
overlooked, perhaps scattered amongst his “personal effects”,
merely underlines once again the almost miraculous way that the
new text was brought to light. It is only to be wondered what material
could be found in the missing or suppressed portions of the man’s
diaries which comprise at least four volumes and seven pages, work
which has been deliberately quashed rather than accidentally
misplaced... To a lesser extent there is also the material unearthed at
Carroll’s childhood home in Croft during restoration work there in
1954, oddments such as crude blocks found beneath the
floorboards, inscribed in a child’s hand with poetry.
But it would be foolish to think that even these were isolated
incidents. Carroll is not the only author to have lost portions or whole
works to history, only for those works to be rediscovered later in the
most surprising manner. One that springs to mind is Dante Alighieri’s
masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, which at his death was apparently
uncompleted. His inheritors vainly searched for the missing portion
of the work, and had given up the attempt when his son had a dream
in which Dante indicated an obscure corner of his study. Upon
awakening the son went to this corner and found a window hidden
behind coverings. When opened, there on the ledge were sheets of
mouldy paper that contained the missing text of the greatest poem of
the Middle Ages. A story that in context makes the finding of EA all
the more compelling!

II. An Examination of the New Text

BEFORE beginning with an interpretation of EA it is first

necessary to briefly overview the life and work of the man who wrote
it, to place it within its proper context. Seeing as though the salient
points of Carroll’s life are probably as well known as the story of how
the new manuscript came to light, this need only be a rough sketch
to establish key points.
“Lewis Carroll” was the pen name for Charles Lutwidge
Dodgson, a complicated man, a Mathematician, Oxford don,
inventor, photographer, and author. Under the Carroll pseudonym (a
play on his Christian names; turning Lutwidge to Lewis and Charles
to Carroll is typical of his clever use of language) he was responsible
for a number of children’s stories, the most famous of which are, of
course, the two “Alice” adventures known to the world.
The popular portrait of Carroll is of a quiet, fussy man who was
more comfortable around children then people of his own age,
though later biographers have come to call this image the Carroll
Myth. But such considerations are the playthings of others; here we
are more concerned with the established facts as evidenced from his
own work (public writings and diaries) and other contemporary
accounts.
The two major facets of his life were his fondness for children
and his faith. The first is well documented; Carroll made a point of
always being prepared to meet new young girls (preferring them to
boys) by keeping supplies of tricks and toys about his person should
he encounter them in his day to day life, on holiday, or on the train.
The girls he befriended tended to stay friends even after they grew
up (a point often glossed by some commentators) and he was
especially interested in those who ended up on stage; Ellen Terry,
renowned on the London stage, was one such, a child actress when
Carroll first met her who corresponded with him well into adult fame.
His faith was of a strange sort, strong but idiosyncratic. He
never took orders, even though he was expected to, but took to
preaching in later life, and often editions of his books contained
pasted in Christmas or Easter messages. He toed the Anglican line
in such regards as new scientific developments (rejecting Darwinism,
the practice of vivisection, etc.) but broke with it when it came to
such important articles as the doctrine of eternal damnation (though
a softening on this matter was evidenced in the period, with some
prominent church members leaning towards eternal hope as an
alternative.)
Carroll was also an insomniac, and it was during long bouts of
wakefulness that he was able to dream up so much of the material
that went into the flood of writing he produced in the forms of squibs,
books, and pamphlets… though this creativity came at a price, as he
writes in the Preface to his work Pillow Problems, an aptly titled book
composed of mental exercises dreamt up late at night; “There are
sceptical thoughts which seem for the moment to uproot the firmest
faith; there are blasphemous thoughts, which dart unbidden into the
most reverent souls; there are unholy thoughts, which torture with
their hateful presence, the fancy that would fain be pure.”
He never married, but aspired to a higher position in society,
wore gloves in all weather, wrote anonymous political squibs, prayed
to be forgiven for being “vile and sinful”, and left behind some of the
most important, experimental, and beloved fiction of the 19th century
which continues to delight and inspire to this day.
So, what of Exeunt Alice, taken not merely as a new work, but
a story by Lewis Carroll? How does it compare with the other “Alice”
tales, and the rest of the man’s literary oeuvre?
A cursory examination of the text yields a few clues as to its
composition. It is at once a cruder and a more advanced work than
either of the other “Alice’s”, and it is these contradictory impressions
that we should like to examine in more detail to understand how it
eventually ended up where it did, and how that came to bear on its
rediscovery. It is shorter than either of the well-known “Alice” tales,
being comparable in length to Alice’s Adventures Underground, the
seed of the later Wonderland, written by Carroll by going back to
AAU to add a significant amount of material, including such
important scenes as the Mad Tea Party. But he did not have the
chance to do the same with EA.
When we say crude, we mean that it is not as polished as
either AAIW or TTLG, as if written in a great hurry with little chance
for the extensive revision that Carroll customarily made of his work.
The first edition of AAIW in 1865 was scrapped because the
illustrator Tenniel was unhappy with the printed quality of his
illustrations; Carroll withdrew the entire print run and had a second
edition printed the following year. In this narrow period he went back
to polish the text with something like sixty revisions made, such as
adding or deleting commas and hyphens, as well as correcting a few
misprints.
Later that same year, given the books popularity, another
3000 copies were printed... and again Carroll made many minor
revisions, adding commas and hyphens and tightening grammar; for
example, “mousehole” became “mouse-hole,” whilst “I hadn’t but just
begun” became “I hadn’t begun.” But to give a better idea of just how
much revision Carroll would make to a work, even an already in print
work, it should be noted that in this edition he changed the spelling
of “toffy” to “toffee”, and then in the 1897 edition thirty years later
changed it back once more!
Given this level of obsession it is clear to see that EA is a
good deal less refined then either of its well-known prequels. This
would tend to suggest that rather than being a story worked on over
a good deal of time, thus available for Carroll to grammatically nit-
pick to his heart’s content, it is rather a work which was written
quickly towards the end of his life, perhaps “in an agony of haste.”
The strongest physical evidence, however, that this is a work written
in the latest part of his life is that the manuscript for EA is written in
black ink; Carroll had worked in purple ink since 1871, only switching
to black in 1891. He died in 1898, giving us a seven-year time frame
within which the text could have been composed.
When we say it is a more advanced work, after allowing for
the crude nature of the text, the evidence is in the underlying themes
or concerns that surface over and over again throughout the story,
and these seem bound up with conflicts in Carroll’s own life. In the
same way that his love, perhaps obsession, with young girls is a
contrast with his nature as a reserved, sexless Oxford don, so two
other major conflicts are evident.
Carroll was supposed to have taken holy orders at Christ
Church as a condition of his residency there. He never did, though
he would later preach often in his later life, and his devotion to
Christianity is evident when one considers the Christmas and Easter
messages inserted into certain editions of his children’s books. His
diaries are full of prayers and reflections on his spiritual state (often
referring to himself as “vile”) and his views can be seen as
conservative to a fault except in two specific areas; the theatre,
which was frowned upon by Anglican leaders, and his opposition to
the doctrine of eternal damnation. He also wrote Sylvie & Bruno, a
much longer fantasy of the romantic sort first published in two parts
in 1889 and 1893, intended to convey a message of Christian love;
he wished to write a work “not wholly out of harmony with the graver
cadences of Life.”
As Carroll grew older he became more and more involved
with the stage in and around Oxford, moving from being a frequent
audience member to striking up friendships with actresses, to
becoming involved with the behind curtains running of plays, and
even writing on the subject, including the 1888 pamphlet The Stage
and the Spirit of Reverence as well as a piece for The Theatre (see
Appendix I.) During this time, he would have been accumulating
material, bits and pieces of theatrical lore, that he would later weave
into EA in the same way that the previous two Alice books had been
constructed, “made up almost wholly of bits and scraps.”
A moment to consider one point that seems to also indicate
that EA was a later work, which is the growing complexity of the
tales. AAIW was a story, or a series of tales, related one Summer
afternoon on a boat trip, later embellished with additional material
and given a summary plot towards it’s end. TTLG is also a
freewheeling text, but one much more under control of conventional
storytelling, which is to say that for all the strange characters and
situations, there is a plot based around the books central conceit of a
giant chess game; Alice was solely concerned with getting into the
garden in the first book, but in the second she had a more definite
long-term goal of becoming a queen piece and “winning” the game.
In EA, Alice is charged with the task of delivering a message, and it
is on this equally slim pretext that her new adventures are built; but
the framework they take place in is more rigidly formalised then in
either of the previous two books. Theatre conventions, no matter
what genre of entertainment she finds herself in (Harlequinade,
Punch & Judy show, Negro Minstrel performance) have “rules” that
evolved in those genres which would have been well known to their
Victorian audiences; in EA these rules are scrupulously observed.
Shibboleths are spoken (the search for “Quiet Lodgings”, Punch’s
exclamation “That’s the way to do it!”) and storylines as rigid as the
structure of haiku’s (though allowing for the same amount of
freedom; the form is fixed, not the content) are followed. We can
compare the free form nature of AAIW, in which characters plucked
from language (Cheshire cats and Mock Turtles) are given free reign,
to TTLG taking cues from nursery rhymes (the Tweedle twins argue
over a broken rattle, then fight; the Lion and the Unicorn have their
famous battle, feast, and are “drummed out of town) but allowing a
good deal of play. EA sees the logical end of this; each
entertainment follows its course, with Carroll’s invention only evident
in the connecting “skits” featuring the elephant, gooseberry, and so
on, much in the way variety acts of the day were connected by lesser
material as set and prop changes took place out of sight.
The second recurring idea in EA, almost a subtext in fact, are
the repeated references to matters concerning the afterlife, in
general, and damnation in particular; Hell and its most famous
resident turn up in many guises all the way through the story. It
makes up a sort of chorus to a line of spiritual agony that runs
through the text.
 The play Alice is attending is Shakespeare’s As You Like It,
and she falls asleep during Jacques speech in Act 2, Scene 7, in
which the Seven Ages of Man is soliloquised in rather bitter fashion.
Students of AAIW and TTLG will know how those two texts form a
set, one about Summer and youth, the other taking place during
Winter and talking about aging. In EA Carroll’s thoughts turn towards
what lies in the last part of existence, the afterlife, and it does not
make pleasant reading when the masques of theatre are removed.
Harlequin, a sanitised devil from The Inferno sings a grisly
song of cannibalism; Mr Punch, a Fury to follow the Queens from the
previous “Alice” books, if a rather psychotic one, slaughters his way
through a cast which would end with Satan himself (Alice makes a
point of leaving before this occurs); talk of sin, hopes for goodness…
there is a pseudo-serpent in an apple tree, the gooseberry
enumerates his faults for fear of his home being destroyed, the wasp
in the wig is undone by temptation. The gooseberry in particular is
interesting, placed in context with Carroll’s continual diary entries on
the nature of his own soul.
Apart from references to himself as “vile” and “sinful”,
scattered through the diaries are prayers shot through with pleas;
“Help me, oh God...”, “leave my old life and sins forever behind!”,
“Oh that I could rouse myself from my life of dead works!”, “my old
life may die out in me”, “a holier and better life”, “die in me the old
evil life”. The prayers often revolve around a subject he frequently
preached on, the theme of “Lead us not into temptation.”
Did Carroll fear death? Probably not; in a letter written to his
sister Louisa in the year of his death, he says, “I sometimes think
that what a grand thing it will be to be able to say to oneself, ‘Death
is over now; there is not that experience to be faced again.’” Still, he
did write on the subject throughout his life, including addressing the
idea directly to children (see Appendix II).
In 1894 he wrote his sister Lizzie a lengthy letter on the
concept of eternal punishment, in which he argued there were three
meanings to the phrase “I believe in the doctrine of Eternal
Punishment”. He had a copy of Reverend Frederic Farrar’s Eternal
Hope (1878) a seminal text of the day; though Dodgson himself took
the concept further, believing that a soul had eternity, “a very long
time”, in which to repent their sins... and that even the Devil was
perhaps capable of redemption!
Are we circling the reason the book seems so rushed? Was it
written in a last, mad attempt at confession, as a form of catharsis, or
as something else?

III. Conclusion

CARROLL had attempted to write a more Christian vision of

children’s fiction with his late fantasy novel Sylvie & Bruno, but this
was poorly received and is little read now. In the past, he had
attempted to address such messages to his young readers in the
form of the “Greetings” that were pasted into certain editions of his
most popular works, the two canonical “Alice” stories and his epic
nonsense poem, The Hunting of The Snark.
His diaries reveal a man of private torment who never felt as if
he were doing quite enough, was good enough, a man who suffered
from insomnia which was when dark thoughts came to him. A man
who tells us in his “Alice” On the Stage that he once read in an old
book; “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.”
Perhaps Exeunt Alice was his final attempt to… what?
Redeem himself?
Was Lewis Carroll writing to beat the Devil?
Selected Bibliography

Carroll’s “Alice” books:

The Annotated Alice, ed. Martin Gardner, Penguin Books, 2001. This
edition contains the “Wasp in A Wig” episode.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass:
The Centenary Edition, ed. Hugh Haughton, Penguin Classics, 1998.
This edition also contains Alice’s Adventures Underground.

Other sequels to the “Alice” books:

More “Alice”, Yates Wilson, T. V. Boardman & Company Limited,
1959.
Alice Through the Needle’s Eye, Gilbert Adair, Macmillan Children’s
Books, 1984.
Automated Alice, Jeff Noon, Doubleday, 1996.
Alice’s Journey Beyond the Moon, R. J. Carter, Telos Publishing Ltd,
2004.

Miscellaneous:
The Red King’s Dream or Lewis Carroll In Wonderland, Jo Elwyn
Jones & J. Francis Gladstone, Pimlico, 1996.
Jack the Ripper “Light-hearted Friend”, Richard Wallace, Gemini
Press, 1997.
 APPENDIX I
“Alice” On the Stage
The Theatre, April, 1887

“LOOK here; here’s all this Judy’s clothes falling to pieces

again.” Such were the pensive words of Mr Thomas Codlin; and they
may fitly serve as a motto for a writer who has set himself the
unusual task of passing in review a set of puppets that are virtually
his own, the stage embodiments of his own dream-children.
Not that the play itself is in any sense mine. The
arrangements, in dramatic form, of a story written without the
slightest idea that it would be so adapted, was a task that demanded
powers denied to me, but possessed in an eminent degree, so far as
I can judge, by Mr Saville Clarke. I do not feel myself qualified to
criticise his play, as a play; nor shall I venture on any criticism of the
players as players.
What is it, then, I have set myself to do? And what possible
claim have I to be heard? My answer must be that, as the writer of
the two stories thus adapted, and the originator (as I believe, for at
least I have not consciously borrowed them) of the “airy nothings” for
which Mr Saville Clarke has so skilfully provided, if not a name, at
least, a “local habitation”, I may without boastfulness claim to have a
special knowledge of what it was I meant them to be, and so a
special understanding of how far that intention has been realised.
And I fancied there might be some readers of The Theatre who
would be interested in sharing that knowledge and that
understanding.
Many a day had we rowed together on that quiet stream -the
three little maidens and I- and many a fairy tale had been
extemporised for their benefit -whether it were at times when the
narrator was “i’ the vein”‘, and fancies unsought came crowding thick
upon him, or at times when the jaded Muse was goaded into action,
and plodded meekly on, more because she had to say something
than that she had something to say- yet none of these many tales
got written down: they lived and died, like summer midges, each in
its own golden afternoon until there came a day when, as it chanced,
one of my little listeners petitioned that the tale might be written out
for her. That was many a year ago, but I distinctly remember, now as
I write, how, in a desperate attempt to strike out some new line of
fairy-lore, I had sent my heroine straight down a rabbit-hole, to begin
with, without the least idea what was to happen afterwards. And so,
to please a child I loved (I don’t remember any other motive), I
printed in manuscript, and illustrated with my own crude designs -
designs that rebelled against every law of Anatomy or Art (for I had
never had a lesson in drawing)- the book which I have just had
published in facsimile. In writing it out, I added many fresh ideas,
which seemed to grow of themselves upon the original stock; and
many more added themselves when, years afterwards, I wrote it all
over again for publication: but (this may interest some readers of
“Alice” to know) every such idea and nearly every word of the
dialogue, came of itself. Sometimes 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 which should keep the new-
born idea from perishing- but whenever or however it comes, it
comes of itself. I cannot set invention going like a clock, by any
voluntary winding up: nor do I believe that any original writing (and
what other writing is worth preserving?) was ever so produced. If you
sit down, unimpassioned and uninspired, and tell yourself to write for
so many hours, you will merely produce (at least I am sure I should
merely produce) some of that article which fills, so far as I can judge,
two-thirds of most magazines -most easy to write most weary to
read- men call it “padding”, and it is to my mind one of the most
detestable things in modern literature. “Alice” and the “Looking-
Glass” are made up almost wholly of bits and scraps, single ideas
which came of themselves. Poor they may have been; but at least
they were the best I had to offer: and I can desire no higher praise to
be written of me than the words of a Poet, written of a Poet-

“He gave the people of his best:

The worst he kept, the best he gave.”

I have wandered from my subject, I know: yet grant me

another minute to relate a little incident of my own experience. I was
walking on a hill-side, alone, one bright summer day, when suddenly
there came into my head one line of verse -one solitary line- “For the
Snark was a Boojum, you see.” I knew not what it meant, then: I
know not what it means now; but I wrote it down: and, some time
afterwards, the rest of the stanza occurred to me, that being its last
line: and so by degrees, at odd moments during the next year or two,
the rest of the poem pieced itself together, that being its last stanza.
And since then, periodically, I have received courteous letters from
strangers, begging to know whether The Hunting of the Snark is an
allegory, or contains some hidden moral, or is a political satire: and
for all such questions I have but one answer, “I don’t know!” And now
I return to my text, and will wander no more.
Stand forth, then, from the shadowy past, “Alice” the child of
my dreams. Full many a year has slipped away, since that “golden
afternoon” that gave thee birth but I can call it up almost as clearly as
if it were yesterday-the cloudless blue above, the watery mirror
below, the boat drifting idly on its way, the tinkle of the drops that fell
from the oars, as they waved so sleepily to and fro, and (the one
bright gleam of life in all the slumberous scene) the three eager
faces, hungry for news of fairy-land, and who would not be said “nay”
to: from whose lips “Tell us a story, please,” had all the stern
immutability of Fate!
What wert thou, dream-Alice, in thy foster-father’s eyes? How
shall he picture thee? Loving, first, loving and gentle: loving as a dog
(forgive the prosaic simile, but I know no earthly love so pure and
perfect), and gentle as a fawn: then courteous-courteous to all, high
or low, grand or grotesque, King or Caterpillar, even as though she
were herself a King’s daughter, and her clothing of wrought gold:
then trustful, ready to accept the wildest impossibilities with all that
utter trust that only dreamers know; and lastly, curious-wildly curious,
and with the eager enjoyment of Life that comes only in the happy
hours of childhood, when all is new and fair, and when Sin and
Sorrow are but names-empty words signifying nothing!
And the White Rabbit, what of him? Was he framed on the
“Alice” lines, or meant as a contrast? As a contrast, distinctly. For her
“youth”, “audacity”, “vigour”, and “swift directness of purpose”, read
“elderly”, “timid”, “feeble”, and “nervously shilly-shallying”, and you
will get something of what I meant him to be. I think the White Rabbit
should wear spectacles. I am sure his voice should quaver, and his
knees quiver, and his whole air suggest a total inability to say “Bo” to
a goose!
But I cannot hope to be allowed, even by the courteous Editor
of The Theatre, half the space I should need (even if my reader’s
patience would hold out) to discuss each of my puppets one by one.
Let me cull from the two books a Royal Trio-the Queen of Hearts, the
Red Queen, and the White Queen. It was certainly hard on my
Muse, to expect her to sing of three Queens, within such brief
compass, and yet to give to each her own individuality. Each, of
course, had to preserve, through all her eccentricities, a certain
queenly dignity. That was essential. And for distinguishing traits, I
pictured to myself the Queen of Hearts as a sort of embodiment of
ungovernable passion-a blind and aimless Fury. The Red Queen I
pictured as a Fury, but of another type; her passion must be cold and
calm; she must be formal and strict, yet not unkindly; pedantic to the
tenth degree, the concentrated essence of all governesses! Lastly,
the White Queen seemed, to my dreaming fancy, gentle, stupid, fat
and pale; helpless as an infant; and with a slow, maundering,
bewildered air about her just suggesting imbecility, but never quite
passing into it; that would be, I think, fatal to any comic effect she
might otherwise produce. There is a character strangely like her in
Wilkie Collins’s novel No Name: by two different converging paths
we have somehow reached the same ideal, and Mrs Wragg and the
White Queen might have been twin-sisters.
 As it is no part of my present purpose to find fault with any of
those who have striven so zealously to make this “dream-play” a
waking success, I shall but name two or three who seemed to me
especially successful in realising the characters of the story.
None, I think, was better realised than the two undertaken by
Mr Sydney Harcourt, “the Hatter” and “Tweedledum”. To see him
enact the Hatter was a weird and uncanny thing, as though some
grotesque monster, seen last night in a dream, should walk into the
room in broad daylight, and quietly say “Good morning!” I need not
try to describe what I mean the Hatter to be, since, so far as I can
now remember, it was exactly what Mr Harcourt had made him: and I
may say nearly the same of Tweedledum: but the Hatter surprised
me most-perhaps only because it came first in the play.
There were others who realised my ideas nearly as well; but I
am not attempting a complete review: I will conclude with a few
words about the two children who played “Alice” and “the
Dormouse”.
Of Miss Phoebe Carlo’s performance it would be difficult to
speak too highly. As a mere effort of memory, it was surely a
marvellous feat for so young a child, to learn no less than two
hundred and fifteen speeches-nearly three times as many as
Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. But what I admired most, as
realising most nearly my ideal heroine, was her perfect assumption
of the high spirits, and readiness to enjoy everything, of a child out
for a holiday. I doubt if any grown actress, however experienced,
could have worn this air so perfectly; we look before and after, and
sigh for what is not; a child never does this; and it is only a child that
can utter from her heart the words poor Margaret Fuller Ossoli so
longed to make her own, “I am all happy now!”
And last (I may for once omit the time-honoured addition “not
least”, for surely no tinier maiden ever yet achieved so genuine a
theatrical success?) comes our dainty Dormouse. “Dainty” is the only
epithet that seems to me exactly to suit her: with her beaming baby-
face, the delicious crispness of her speech, and the perfect realism
with which she makes herself the embodied essence of Sleep, she is
surely the daintiest Dormouse that ever yet told us “I sleep when I
breathe!” With the first words of that her opening speech, a sudden
silence falls upon the house (at least it has been so every time I
have been there), and the baby tones sound strangely clear in the
stillness. And yet I doubt if the charm is due only to the incisive
clearness of her articulation; to me there was an even greater charm
in the utter self-abandonment and conscientious thoroughness of her
acting. If Dorothy ever adopts a motto, it ought to be “thorough”. I
hope the time may soon come when she will have a better part than
“Dormouse” to play-when some enterprising manager will revive the
Midsummer Night’s Dream and do his obvious duty to the public by
securing Miss Dorothy d’Alcourt as “Puck”!
It would be well indeed for our churches if some of the clergy
could take a lesson in enunciation from this little child; and better
still, for “our noble selves”, if we would lay to heart some things that
she could teach us, and would learn by her example to realise,
rather more than we do, the spirit of a maxim I once came across in
an old book, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy
might.”
 APPENDIX II
An Easter Greeting to Every Child Who Loves “Alice”

DEAR CHILD,
Please to fancy, if you can, that you are reading a real letter,
from a real friend whom you have seen, and whose voice you can
seem to yourself to hear wishing you, as I do now with all my heart, a
happy Easter.
Do you know that delicious dreamy feeling when one first
wakes on a summer morning, with the twitter of birds in the air, and
the fresh breeze coming in at the open window--when, lying lazily
with eyes half shut, one sees as in a dream green boughs waving, or
waters rippling in a golden light? It is a pleasure very near to
sadness, bringing tears to one’s eyes like a beautiful picture or
poem. And is not that a Mother’s gentle hand that undraws your
curtains, and a Mother’s sweet voice that summons you to rise? To
rise and forget, in the bright sunlight, the ugly dreams that frightened
you so when all was dark--to rise and enjoy another happy day, first
kneeling to thank that unseen Friend, who sends you the beautiful
sun?
Are these strange words from a writer of such tales as
“Alice”? And is this a strange letter to find in a book of nonsense? It
may be so. Some perhaps may blame me for thus mixing together
things grave and gay; others may smile and think it odd that any one
should speak of solemn things at all, except in church and on a
Sunday: but I think--nay, I am sure--that some children will read this
gently and lovingly, and in the spirit in which I have written it.
For I do not believe God means us thus to divide life into two
halves--to wear a grave face on Sunday, and to think it out-of-place
to even so much as mention Him on a week-day. Do you think He
cares to see only kneeling figures, and to hear only tones of prayer--
and that He does not also love to see the lambs leaping in the
sunlight, and to hear the merry voices of the children, as they roll
among the hay? Surely their innocent laughter is as sweet in His
ears as the grandest anthem that ever rolled up from the “dim
religious light” of some solemn cathedral?
And if I have written anything to add to those stores of
innocent and healthy amusement that are laid up in books for the
children I love so well, it is surely something I may hope to look back
upon without shame and sorrow (as how much of life must then be
recalled!) when my turn comes to walk through the valley of
shadows.
This Easter sun will rise on you, dear child, feeling your “life in
every limb,” and eager to rush out into the fresh morning air--and
many an Easter-day will come and go, before it finds you feeble and
gray-headed, creeping wearily out to bask once more in the sunlight-
-but it is good, even now, to think sometimes of that great morning
when the “Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in his
wings.”
Surely your gladness need not be the less for the thought that
you will one day see a brighter dawn than this--when lovelier sights
will meet your eyes than any waving trees or rippling waters--when
angel-hands shall undraw your curtains, and sweeter tones than
ever loving Mother breathed shall wake you to a new and glorious
day--and when all the sadness, and the sin, that darkened life on this
little earth, shall be forgotten like the dreams of a night that is past!
Your affectionate friend,
LEWIS CARROLL.
EASTER, 1876.

[1]. If you don’t know what shipping means in the context of fan-fiction, please don’t look it
up, because there are some rabbit-holes nobody should ever descend…
[2]. The title of this third “Alice” story is a stage direction, keeping in line with the overall
theatre theme. Oddly, “exeunt” refers to all characters leaving the stage, rather than simply
“exit” which would mean a single character leaving. The final exit, then?
[3]. This line identifies the play Alice is watching as Shakespeare’s As You Like It;
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;”

[4]. This idea is perhaps suggested by newspaper accounts of the life of Joseph Merrick,
the so-called “Elephant Man.” It was reported that Merrick had been taken to see a play,
and had been delighted by it, but also a little confused; he truly did believe he was watching
real people, and often spoke later about them as if their lives continued behind the curtain.

[5]. A mishearing of the end of the speech, which relates the rather grim fate of man at the
end of his life;
“Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”
Perhaps Alice hears “sand” because the Sandman approaches?

[6]. As in the previous two “Alice” books major changes of scene, transitions from place to
place are common and are indicated in the text by a row of asterisks. In AAIW the
transitions were Alice’s frequent changes in size, and in TTLG a scene change occurred
whenever Alice moved forward another chess square; in this “Alice” scene changes are
made each time Alice pushes through another set of curtains.
[7]. Carroll has created a complex joke here; first and most obvious is the notion of Bull and
Bear market traders reflecting the stock market itself; then the bull is selling china, a direct
reversal of the traditional notion of a bull in a china shop; and then there is the ragged staff.
A fact unfamiliar to readers from outside of England is the fact that “The Bear & Ragged
Staff” is the name for several old public houses up and down the country; it takes Carroll’s
peculiar thinking to make the Bear stock market trader a literal bear, and replace the stave
(properly speaking) with a staff, looking ragged because he does not pay them enough!

[8]. In both previous “Alice” books there is a recurring fishy theme, and here it is again in a
pun on footwear; to Carroll’s ear the accent of a Cockney barrow boy would always be
dropping the “H” from “heels”. Jellied eels are traditional London street fare.
[9]. Once again poor Alice is taken to task on the matter of her French, as she was when
addressing the mouse in the “Pool of Tears” episode of AAIW. Fruits de mer is a traditional
French dish of mixed seafood... a companion joke to that in AAIW where Bill the lizard was
“digging fer apples”, or more properly pommes de terre, “apples of the earth”, potatoes…
which are probably the fruits that grow under the ground Alice was previously thinking of.
[10]. “Elephant’s foot umbrella stand” was a popular Victorian parlour game in which players
took turns to add to a list of imagined shopping items; the list had to be recited in whole by
each new player, and each item added had to conform to an unspoken rule which new
players were required to figure out. The rule was that each new item had to follow the next
letter in the phrase “elephant’s foot umbrella stand”; an E item, then an L item, E, P, H…
and so on. Among the items are grey gloves, which Carroll habitually wore all year round,
and a marmalade jar first seen at the start of AAIW.
[11]. Throughout the text, Alice is continually mistaken for a male. In Shakespeare’s time
ladies were not allowed to take the stage, and so all parts, male and female, were played by
men. It is also worth noting that in pantomime (to which Harlequinade’s played a sort of
slapstick prologue) the lead male role is always played by a female, and there is always an
elderly Dame character which is played by a man. This strange inversion of fact and fancy
recalls the mirror logic of TTLG. It should also be noted that at one-time Carroll proposed to
“bowdlerise Bowdler”, and write such clean version of Shakespeare’s play that they should
be suitable for young girls.

[12]. In traditional Harlequinades, the mask played an important role beyond being simple
costume. It was a visual aide for the audience, a cue; if Harlequin wore his mask flipped up
he was visible to all the characters, but if it was flipped down to cover his face he became
invisible, and thus his tricks were played. Alice, being from the audience, reacts the way she
should and not the way he expects (believing her to be another character.)
[13]. Harlequinades had several stock characters, Harlequin, Clown, Pantaloon, and
Columbine. Each has their part to play, laid down in years of tradition. Alice correctly
surmises that Pantaloon shall be along presently, but not Columbine, Harlequin’s love
interest. Did Carroll expect Alice to stand in for her?
[14]. A pineapple statue surmounting a gatepost was a Victorian symbol of welcome, as
Harlequin points out; of course, the contradiction is that it was he himself who provided it.

[15]. The slapstick served several purposes, but perhaps its most important was that by
banging parts of the canvas backdrop with it, an actor could cause rolled up scenery to
unfurl and change the scene without need for the curtain to be dropped and the stage re-
dressed.
[16]. This three to one ratio was the way Clown would divide the spoils in the play. The ratio
of three to one is interesting; this is the third “Alice” book, and plays are known for being
divided up into three parts. Carroll first spun the spell of Wonderland in youth, and then the
story of Looking-Glass House in middle age... and with the end of his life approaching he
wrote her last adventure.

[17]. There will be one pile, not forty-two.

[18]. One of the possible origins for the name of Harlequin is that of Alichino, a minor devil
in Dante’s Divine Comedy; this devil is met in canto XXI, in the fifth ditch of the eighth circle
where corrupt politicians (barrators) are trapped in burning pitch. Carroll displays his
knowledge of this in this typically cannibalistic poem (notions of eating and being eaten are
another motif of the Alice books.)

[19]. In the contradictory world of the stage, wishing someone good luck has always been
bad luck. So, contrariwise, wishing bad luck on someone is good luck, hence the traditional
admonition to “break a leg.” Theatre lore, picked up by Carroll thanks to years of being
involved with the stage, litters the text.
[20]. It was traditional at Easter time for women and young girls to wear a special hat to
church services.

[21]. Gentleman’s Relish, a type of anchovy paste, usually eaten on thin white toast with
cucumber, or mustard and cress.

[22]. Dante, in Inferno, describes Satan as being at the centre of the earth, eternally feeding
and vomiting three traitors; Judas, Cassius, and Brutus.

[23]. “Parson’s nose” was a colloquialism for the pygostyle on a chicken or a turkey, an
extremely fatty cut of meat which is more commonly discarded these days, but in Carroll’s
time was often fought over in poorer households.

[24]. “Consequences” was a popular Victorian parlour game in which a story is written part
by part by players, folding the paper by turns so that no-one sees what any other has put
down. The structure was; a man’s name, a woman’s name, a place name, etc. until a
nonsensical narrative emerges.

[25]. The Isle of Wight was a favoured seaside resort destination, where Carroll often met
new children.

[26]. Age before beauty... but we are on the stage, and beauty is a malleable as grease
paint, as contradictory as being grateful that someone has told us to break our leg.

[27]. From As You Like It;

“Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”

[28]. If Alice were to give this some thought, she would see the linguistic trap she is about to
fall into; obviously, she would much rather the sphinx ate the crocodile, rather than her. The
sphinx and the crocodile suggest Egypt, a culture as obsessed with death as the
Victorians... and a culture about which the later Victorians would become obsessed.

[29]. A serpent in the branches of an apple tree confronts Alice, an innocent. The story of
Eden aside, compare this with the scene in AAIW where Alice is accused of being a
“serpent” by the pigeon.
[30]. The elephant’s complaint is connected to a household item/curiosity, an elephant’s foot
umbrella stand, pre-figured earlier at the market.

[31]. Vivisection was a source of debate in Carroll’s day; the author himself came down
firmly on the side that it was a cruel and unnecessary practice, and wrote the 1875
pamphlet, Some Popular Fallacies About Vivisection.

[32]. The elephant tells riddles; an old Indian story talks about blind men encountering an
elephant and deciding that it must be, amongst other things, a serpent (when they touch its
trunk) or trees (when they touch its legs.) The elephant is himself a riddle.

[33]. This is the riddle told in the classic story of the sphinx. Alice thinks of it because she
thinks of the elephant as an old man with a cane, as well as the sphinx featured in the riddle
set for her. Also, note the answer to the riddle relates to the three ages of man; in youth he
crawls on all fours, in his middle age he walks on both feet, and then when he is old he
leans heavily on a stick. Alice fell asleep during a speech about the ages of man.

[34]. White; it is a polar bear. The directions the elephant give to lead back to the same
point only apply at the North Pole.

[35]. The origin of the word “posh”, meaning the upper classes, comes from steamer ship
passage to India. The more expensive seating and accommodation was the shadiest, and
the shadiest sides of the ship was Port heading Out and Starboard heading Home. The
elephant inverses this according to the rule of the stage.
[36]. The elephant’s seemingly random remark is the key to the riddle. Carroll wrote at
length on the notion of Zeno’s Paradox in a piece which was a discussion of logic between
Achilles and the Tortoise from Aesop’s fable.
[37]. Glass, of course. The text betrays that it is not a green house, two separate words to
indicate the colour of the building, as seen with the previous three, but rather a structure
used for growing plants.
[38]. The prompt corner is located to the side of the stage, where the stage manager
coordinates the performance and prompts the actors when they forget their lines.

[39]. Carroll often had insomnia, and it was at these times that he complained of “unbidden
thoughts” coming to him.
[40]. The ghost light is a light, either a candle or an electric bulb, left lit over night after a
production. Theories about its origins suggest it is to scare away ghosts left after a
performance, or that should someone break into the theatre and hurt themselves in the dark
they would be able to sue! Peacocks are long associated with bad luck in theatre lore.

[41]. The fourth wall in theatre is, of course, missing; the audience makes up this invisible
partition.
[42]. Alice is familiar with the seaside entertainment of Punch & Judy as seen in chapter
eight of TTLG, when the two knights are fighting each other;
“…and another Rule seems to be that they hold their clubs with their arms, as if
they were Punch and Judy.”
Punch may be a Fury character, like the Queen of Hearts from AAIW or the Red
Queen from TTLG. Note the colour red is essential to Punch’s costume.

[43]. Perhaps referring to the baby in the “Pig & Pepper” episode of AAW?
[44]. The tune is better known today as belonging to “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” Note
the acrostic in the poem.
[45]. In the traditional show a cast of characters would normally include, Punch, the baby,
Judy, Mr Scaramouch (and his dog Toby, who was often a real live dog), a doctor,
policemen, Jack Ketch the hang man… and finally the Devil.
[46]. Alice is wrong; she has been in a looking-glass house before.
[47]. “Twenty questions” was a popular Victorian parlour game which involved one player
thinking of something (anything) and the other asking questions which can only be
answered yes, no, maybe, and sometimes; the aim being to work out what the something is
within twenty questions.
[48]. “Divers alarums” is an archaic direction given in play scripts for a great deal of sudden,
chaotic noise and action.

[49]. Divers diving for pearls; in this case, pearls of wisdom.

[50]. From the Bible, Romans 6:23:

“For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus
Christ our Lord.”

[51]. Carroll neatly ties together three ideas; the green room is the waiting area behind the
stage in a theatre, and a greenhouse, as previously noted, is a small glass structure used
for growing plants. Turning the greenhouse into an actual house may possibly have been
inspired by the vast metal and glass structure that was built to house the Great Exhibition of
1851 known as the Crystal Palace.

[52]. From the Bible, John 8:7:

“So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them,
He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”
Compare this with the well-known saying that “people in glass houses
shouldn’t throw stones” and the twisted meaning of this passage becomes clearer,
Alice pointing out the way that the gooseberry is seemingly worried without reason.

[53]. A phrase attributed to Flaubert, “Le bon Dieu est dans le detail,” is translated as “God
is in the details”. Of course, there is the more famous use of the phrase which replaces God
with the Devil; Carroll never makes it clear to which the gooseberry is referring.

[54]. Gooseberry fool was a popular Victorian dessert.

[55]. Hints of The Divine Comedy, which starts with Dante wandering through a
metaphorical dark wood looking for the straight path. Eventually he is guided to Hell, the
gate to which carries the inscription, “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.”

[56]. The golden afternoon was how Carroll frequently referred to the day on which
Wonderland was first spun out for Alice Liddel. As Alice comes to the end of her journey,
and Carroll comes to the end of his life, he returns them both to where it started; the
opening and closing poems of EA explicitly mention the start and the end being
interchangeable.

[57]. Dante again; the three beasts are the metaphorical sins he confronts in the dark wood.
[58]. Carroll frequently recycled material; an example of this is the poem “Jabberwocky” in
TTLG, the first verse of which originally appeared in Mischmasch, a periodical Carroll wrote
for his family. As the song “Salmon Come Up!” was dropped when he re-worked AAU into
AAW and is now (in a way) included in EA in the following chapter, so a version of the wasp
in a wig character, originally cut from TTLG, appears.

[59]. This is Samson’s riddle, set for the thirty bridegrooms, the answer to which is bees
making honey in the corpse of a lion; it seems likely that what the wasp has perceived as
honey is in fact golden syrup, a food produced by Abram Lyle & Sons whose distinctive tins
featured (and to this day, still feature) a picture of a dead lion filled with bees as a reference
to the Biblical story… though the reasons why are clouded by history.
[60]. An inside joke about Prof Henry W. Acland and his anatomical specimen of a tuna fish,
about which Carroll played a notorious practical joke.
[61]. A vomitorium is a passage found either behind or below a tier of seats in an
amphitheatre, and some theatres, through which the dispersing crowd “spews” at the end of
a show. The proscenium arch mentioned next is also a major point of theatre architecture.
[62]. The Negro Minstrel’s turn up in a form in another of Carroll’s works. The illustration by
Henry Holiday of “The Bankers Fate” in Fit the Seventh of The Hunting of the Snark; depicts
the Banker as Mr Bones, black faced, seated in a chair and holding bone castanets. The
verse runs;
“He was black in the face, and they scarcely could trace
The least likeness to what he had been:
While so great was his fright that his waistcoat turned white-
A wonderful thing to be seen!”

[63]. Studying the original manuscript reveals that Carroll had originally written a parody
poem here in pencil, and then subsequently erased it. As Carroll tended to write in ink, the
decision to write this part and erase it, leaving only a vague impression of what was written
there, can only be viewed as a deliberate effect of trying to write a song without words or
music! The erased poem is called “Salmon Come Up”, a parody of the Negro Minstrel song
“Sally Come Up” by T. Ramsey and E. W. Mackney, a song Carroll heard the Liddel girls
sing at the Deanery the day before the fateful boating trip which spawned AAIW. The
parody was originally used in AAU, sung by the Mock Turtle in place of “The Lobster
Quadrille.”