Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (Penguin) - Lewis Carroll [160]
7 Lass, with care. As breakable parcels would be labelled ‘Glass, with care’. It is characteristic of Carroll to find the lass in glass – through the looking-glass in fact.
8 she must go by post, as she’s got a head on her. A reference to the queen’s head on Victorian stamps. Alice of course wants to be a queen herself.
9 which happened to be the Goat’s beard. In an earlier version this happened to be an old lady’s hair and it was Tenniel (in a letter of 1 June 1870, which discusses this illustration in detail) who suggested that Carroll ‘might make Alice lay hold of the Goat’s beard as the nearest thing to her hand’ (Collingwood, Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll, pp. 14–9).
Since Tenniel’s suggestion was made in a letter also alluding to the omitted ‘Wasp in a Wig’ chapter, it used to be assumed that that missing chapter followed on here (e.g. Oxford’s World Classics Alice, ed. R. L. Green, Oxford, 1971, and the Annotated Alice, ed. Martin Gardner, Harmondsworth, 1970). When what were apparently the galley proofs of the original cancelled text were sold at Sotheby’s in 1974 and then published as The Wasp in a Wig, ed. Martin Gardner, in 1977, the new evidence suggested that ‘The Wasp in a Wig’ episode actually formed part of chapter 8 ‘It’s All My Own Invention’, rather than this chapter (see chapter 8, note 17). This remains a matter of conjecture; ‘The Wasp in a Wig’ may be someone else’s invention.
10 What’s the use of their having names. The Gnat on names evinces the nit picking precisionism of Carroll the logician and philosopher. In Symbolic Logic Carroll calls ‘classification’ an ‘entirely Mental’ process and in chapter 4, ‘On Names’, writes as follows:
The word ‘Thing’, which conveys the idea of a Thing, without any idea of an Adjunct, represents any single Thing. Any other word (or phrase), which conveys the idea of a Thing, with the idea of an Adjunct represents any Thing which possesses that Adjunct; i.e., it represents any Member of the Class to which that Adjunct is peculiar.
Such a word (or phrase) is called a Name; and, if there be an existing Thing which it represents, it is said to be a Name of that Thing… Just as a Class is said to be Real, or Unreal, according as there is, or is not, an existing Thing in it, so also a Name is said to be Real, or Unreal, according as there is, or is not, an existing Thing represented by it… Every Name is either a Substantive only, or else a phrase consisting of a Substantive and one or more Adjectives (or phrases used as Adjectives) (Lewis Carroll’s Symbolic Logic, ed. William Warren Bartley, III, Brighton, 1977, pp. 63–4).
This chapter, ‘Looking-Glass Insects’, might as well be named ‘On Names’ too. It sets real and unreal names side by side, and creates imaginary insects by adding a second adjective or substantive to a name that is already compounded of a substantive and an adjective (or substantive). Carroll’s prose is always studded with hyphenated compounds, but here they come into their own to create new species. Nonsense etymology and nonsense entomology meet. Compare the nonsense flora and fauna of Edward Lear.
11 a Snap-dragon-fly. ‘Snap-dragon’ was ‘a game or amusement (usually held at Christmas) consisting of snatching raisins out of a bowl or dish of burning brandy or other spirit and eating them whilst alight’ (OED).
12 Frumenty and mince-pie.‘Frumenty’ is ‘a dish made of hulled wheat boiled in milk, and seasoned with cinnamon, sugar etc’ (OED). Like the references to plum-puddings and snap-dragon, mince-pies are in keeping with the wintry tonality of the book as a whole.