Complete Alice in Wonderland - L. Carroll [131]
A Curious Pair of Beasts: Carroll’s Mock Turtle is a bizarre creature, with a porcupine-like face and a shell made out of shingles. Tenniel’s later illustration is much more accurate and revealing. Similarly, Carroll’s Gryphon is wingless, while Tenniel’s is far more classical and comprehensible.
“Salmon Come Up!”: This song, quite different from that in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, is a parody of “Sally Come Up”—a song quite popular with the Liddell children. Carroll may have changed this for publication, either because it was an American folk song (perhaps ill-suited to English children), or because some of the lyrics are racially offensive. The relevant chorus is as follows: “Sally come up! Oh, Sally go down! / Oh, Sally come twist you heel around, / Thee old man he’s gone down to town, / Oh Sally come down de middle.”
Farewell to an Ancient City: At the end of the original manuscript, Carroll makes reference to “an ancient city,” by which he means Oxford (and specifically, Christ Church College). This is omitted in the published version, which obscures the Oxfordshire nature of the personal story for a more general English audience.
PART VIII
THE NURSERY “ALICE”
Introduction
FOLLOWING THE sensational success of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll (and his publishers) perceived the need for a shorter, clearer and gentler version of the story for very young children. Late in life, Carroll took it upon himself to carefully revise the text explicitly for this purpose. Tenniel’s beautiful illustrations were enlarged and colored, contemporary fashion updates were made to Alice’s wardrobe, and the text focused on showing the details of the drawings for the benefit of a child. The text is written in such a way that the tale is clearly meant to be read aloud by a parent, nurse or governess. The beautiful book was published in 1890 for the then-exorbitant price of four shillings.
In many ways The Nursery “Alice” is an inferior copy of the original tale, since many key pieces of dialogue are missing (along with their adult wit and often morbid or dire amusements). However, since the story was rewritten by Carroll himself, there are some fascinating added instances of detail which enrich our understanding of the original. These are elaborated upon in the Reflections on The Nursery “Alice,” following the main text.
(The prefatory poem follows.)
A Nursery Darling
A Mother’s breast:
Safe refuge from her childish fears,
From childish troubles, childish tears,
Mists that enshroud her dawning years!
See how in sleep she seems to sing
A voiceless psalm—an offering
Raised, to the glory of her King,
In Love: for Love is Rest.
A Darling’s kiss:
Dearest of all the signs that fleet
From lips that lovingly repeat
Again, again, their message sweet!
Full to the brim with girlish glee,
A child, a very child is she,
Whose dream of Heaven is still to be
At Home: for Home is Bliss.
Preface
(Addressed to Any Mother.)
I HAVE reason to believe that “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” has been read by some hundreds of English Children, aged from Five to Fifteen: also by Children, aged from Fifteen to Twenty-five: yet again by Children, aged from Twenty-five to Thirty-five: and even by Children—for there are such—Children in whom no waning of health and strength, no weariness of the solemn mockery, and the gaudy glitter, and the hopeless misery, of Life has availed to parch the pure fountain of joy that wells up in all child-like hearts—Children of a “certain” age, whose tale of years must be left untold, and buried in respectful silence.
And my ambition now is (is it a vain on?) to be read by Children aged from Nought to Five. To be read? Nay, not so! Say rather to be thumbed, to be cooed over, to be dogs”-eared, to be rumpled, to be kissed, by the illiterate, ungrammatical, dimpled Darlings, that fill