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The Annotated Alice

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The Annotated Alice AnnotAlice_01_REPRINT.qxd:AnnotAlice_01_REPRINT.qxd 7/2/12 3:47 PM Page 11 Chapter I Down the Rabbit- Hole 1 lice was beginning to get very tired of sit- 1. Tenniel’s pictures of Alice are not pictures of Ating by her sister on the bank, and of hav- Alice Liddell, who had dark hair cut short with straight bangs across her forehead. Carroll sent ing nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into Tenniel a photograph of Mary Hilton Badcock, the book her sister was reading, but it had no pic- another child- friend, recommending that he use her for a model, but whether Tenniel accepted tures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of this advice is a matter of dispute. That he did a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conver- not is strongly suggested by these lines from a letter Carroll wrote some time after both Alice sations?” books had been published (the letter is quoted So she was considering, in her own mind (as well by Mrs. Lennon in her book on Carroll): as she could, for the hot day made her feel very Mr. Tenniel is the only artist, who has drawn for sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making me, who has resolutely refused to use a model, and declared he no more needed one than I a daisy- chain would be worth the trouble of getting should need a multiplication table to work a up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White mathematical problem! I venture to think that he was mistaken and that for want of a model, Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her. he drew several pictures of “Alice” entirely out of There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor proportion—head decidedly too large and feet decidedly too small. did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself “Oh dear! Oh dear! I In “Alice on the Stage,” an article cited in the first note on the prefatory poem, Carroll gave shall be too late!” (when she thought it over after- the following description of his heroine’s per- wards, it occurred to her that she ought to have won- sonality: 11 AnnotAlice_01_REPRINT.qxd:AnnotAlice_01_REPRINT.qxd 7/2/12 3:47 PM Page 12 A LICE’ S A DVENTURES IN W ONDERLAND 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 en- joyment 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! I agree with correspondent Richard Ham- merud that it was Carroll’s intention to begin his fantasy with the word “Alice.” The symbol at the lower right corner, which you see on all of Tenniel’s drawings, is a mono- gram of his initials, J. T. dered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite nat- ural); but, when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat- pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat- pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and, burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit- hole under the hedge. In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again. The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so sud- denly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down what seemed to be a very deep well. Either the well was very deep, or she fell very 12 AnnotAlice_01_REPRINT.qxd:AnnotAlice_01_REPRINT.qxd 7/2/12 3:47 PM Page 13 D OWN THE R ABBIT- HOLE slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down 2. Carroll was aware, of course, that in a nor- mal state of free fall Alice could neither drop to look about her, and to wonder what was going to the jar (it would remain suspended in front of happen next. First, she tried to look down and make her) nor replace it on a shelf (her speed would out what she was coming to, but it was too dark to be too great). It is interesting to note that in his novel Sylvie and Bruno, Chapter 8, Carroll de- see anything: then she looked at the sides of the well, scribes the difficulty of having tea inside a and noticed that they were filled with cupboards and falling house, as well as in a house being pulled downward at an even faster acceleration; antic- book- shelves: here and there she saw maps and pic- ipating in some respects the famous “thought tures hung upon pegs. She took down a jar from one experiment” in which Einstein used an imagi- nary falling elevator to explain certain aspects of the shelves as she passed: it was labeled “OR- of relativity theory. ANGE MARMALADE,” but to her great disap- 3. pointment it was empty: she did not like to drop the William Empson has pointed out (in the sec- tion on Lewis Carroll in his Some Versions of jar, for fear of killing somebody underneath, so man- Pastoral) that this is the first death joke in the aged to put it into one of the cupboards as she fell Alice books. There are many more to come. 2 past it. 4. In Carroll’s day there was considerable pop- “Well!” thought Alice to herself. “After such a fall ular speculation about what would happen if one fell through a hole that went straight as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling down- through the center of the earth. Plutarch had stairs! How brave they’ll all think me at home! Why, asked the question and many famous thinkers, I wouldn’t say anything about it, even if I fell off the including Francis Bacon and Voltaire, had ar- 3 gued about it. Galileo (Dialogo dei Massimi Sis- top of the house!” (Which was very likely true.) temi, Giornata Seconda, Florence edition of Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an 1842, Vol. 1, pages 251–52), gave the correct answer: the object would fall with increasing end? “I wonder how many miles I’ve fallen by this speed but decreasing acceleration until it time?” she said aloud. “I must be getting somewhere reached the center of the earth, at which spot its acceleration would be zero. Thereafter it would near the centre of the earth. Let me see: that would slow down in speed, with increasing decelera- be four thousand miles down, I think—” (for, you tion, until it reached the opening at the other see, Alice had learnt several things of this sort in her end. Then it would fall back again. By ignoring air resistance and the coriolis force resulting lessons in the school-room, and though this was not from the earth’s rotation (unless the hole ran a very good opportunity for showing off her knowl- from pole to pole), the object would oscillate back and forth forever. Air resistance of course edge, as there was no one to listen to her, still it was would eventually bring it to rest at the earth’s good practice to say it over) “—yes, that’s about the center. The interested reader should consult “A Hole through the Earth,” by the French as- right distance—but then I wonder what Latitude or tronomer Camille Flammarion, in The Strand Longitude I’ve got to?” (Alice had not the slightest Magazine, Vol. 38 (1909), page 348, if only to idea what Latitude was, or Longitude either, but she look at the lurid illustrations. Carroll’s interest in the matter is indicated thought they were nice grand words to say.) by the fact that in Chapter 7 of his Sylvie and Presently she began again. “I wonder if I shall fall Bruno Concluded, there is described (in addi- 4 tion to a Möbius strip, a projective plane, and right through the earth! How funny it’ll seem to other whimsical scientific and mathematical de- come out among the people that walk with their vices) a remarkable method of running trains with gravity as the sole power source. The track heads downwards! The antipathies, I think—” (she runs through a perfectly straight tunnel from was rather glad there was no one listening, this time, one town to another. Since the middle of the 13 AnnotAlice_01_REPRINT.qxd:AnnotAlice_01_REPRINT.qxd 7/2/12 3:47 PM Page 14 A LICE’ S A DVENTURES IN W ONDERLAND tunnel is necessarily nearer the earth’s center as it didn’t sound at all the right word) “—but I than its ends, the train runs downhill to the cen- ter, acquiring enough momentum to carry it up shall have to ask them what the name of the country the other half of the tunnel.
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