I rowed stroke and he rowed bow in the famous Long Vacation voyage to Godstow, when the three Miss Liddells were our passengers, and the story was actually composed and spoken over my shoulder for the benefit of Alice Liddell, who was acting as ‘cox’ of our gig. I remember turning round and saying, ‘Dodgson, is this an extempore romance of yours?’ And he replied, ‘Yes, I’m inventing as we go along.’ I also well remember how, when we had conducted the three children back to the Deanery, Alice said, as she bade us good-night, ‘Oh, Mr. Dodgson, I wish you would write out Alice’s adventures for me.’ He said he should try, and he afterwards told me that he sat up nearly the whole night, committing to a MS. book his recollections of the drolleries with which he had enlivened the afternoon. He added illustrations of his own, and presented the volume, which used often to be seen on the drawing-room table at the Deanery.”

In retrospect, Alice’s memories of those golden summer days may be the most important of all. Later in life, she explained the secret of her stories in this way:

“Most of Mr. Dodgson’s stories were told to us on river expeditions to Nuneham or Godstow, near Oxford. My eldest sister, now Mrs. Skene, was ‘Prima,’ [Latin, roughly translated as ‘first daughter,’ or ‘eldest’] I was ‘Secunda,’ [‘second’] and ‘Tertia’ [‘third’] was my sister Edith. I believe the beginning of Alice was told one summer afternoon when the sun was so burning that we had landed in the meadows down [sic] the river, deserting the boat to take refuge in the only bit of shade to be found, which was under a new-made hayrick. Here from all three came the old petition of ‘tell us a story,’ and so began the ever-delightful tale.

“Sometimes to tease us—and perhaps being really tired—Mr. Dodgson would stop suddenly and say, ‘And that’s all till next time.’ ‘Ah, but it is next time,’ would be the exclamation from all three; and after some persuasion the story would start afresh.

“Another day, perhaps the story would begin in the boat, and Mr. Dodgson, in the middle of telling a thrilling adventure, would pretend to go fast asleep, to our great dismay.”

Carroll, we know now, was indeed growing weary of the endless storytelling, as he wrote this aside in his diary on August 6, 1862: “... Had to go on with my interminable fairy-tale of ‘Alice’s Adventures.’” We are fortunate that he did so, and that Alice persisted in asking for more stories!

Surely, the tale would have died if Alice had not insisted on its immortality. Captain Caryl Hargreaves (Alice’s son), sharing his mother’s memoirs with the world in 1932, revealed the following additional secrets which bring us fuller understanding:

“Nearly all of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground [the first draft of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland] was told on that blazing summer afternoon with the heat haze shimmering over the meadows where the party landed to shelter for a while in the shadow cast by the haycocks near Godstow. I [Alice] think the stories he told us that afternoon must have been better than usual, because I have such a distinct recollection of the expedition, and also, on the next day I started to pester him to write down the story for me, which I had never done before. It was due to my ‘going on, going on’ and importunity that, after saying he would think about it, he eventually gave the hesitating promise which started him writing it down at all.

It was only long after Carroll and Alice became famous—indeed, timeless and unforgettable—that Carroll set forth his own full awareness of the importance of those lost summer days. It is with his most heartfelt and revelatory words that our understanding comes to its fulfillment:

“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. ... ‘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 ...”

“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!”



ALICE’S ADVENTURES

IN WONDERLAND

 

By

LEWIS CARROLL

 

With Illustrations By

JOHN TENNIEL


Preface to the Seventy-Ninth Thousand

 

AS ALICE is about to appear on the Stage, and as the lines beginning: “’tis the voice of the Lobster” were found to be too fragmentary for dramatic purposes four lines have been added to the first stanza and six to the second, while the Oyster has been developed into a Panther.

Christmas, 1886


Preface to the Eighty-Sixth Thousand

 

ENQUIRIES have been so often addressed to me, as to whether any answer to the Hatter’s Riddle can be imagined, that I may as well put on record here what seems to me to be a fairly appropriate answer, vis. “Because it can produce a few notes, though they are very flat; and it is nevar (sic, intentional by the author as “raven” written backwards) put with the wrong end in front! This, however, is merely an afterthought: the Riddle, as originally invented, had no answer at all.

For this eighty-sixth thousand, fresh electrotypes have been taken from the wood-blocks (which, never having been used for printing from, are in as good condition as when first cut in 1865), and the whole book has been set up afresh with new type. If the artistic qualities of this re-issue fall short, in any particular, of those possessed by the original issue, it will not be for want of painstaking on the part of author, publisher, or printer.

I take this opportunity of announcing that the Nursery “Alice,” hitherto priced at four shillings, net, is now to be had on the same terms as the ordinary shilling picture-books—although I feel sure that it is, in every quality (except the text itself, on which I am not qualified to pronounce), greatly superior to them. Four shillings was a perfectly reasonable price to charge, considering the very heavy initial outlay I had incurred: still, as the Public have practically said “We will not give more than a shilling for a picture-book, however artistically got-up,” I am content to reckon my outlay on the book as so much dead loss, and, rather than let the little ones, for whom it was written, go without it, I am selling it at a price which is, to me, much the same thing as giving it away.

Christmas, 1896


A Note on the Text

 

DUE TO the limitations of electronic formatting—and the difficulties caused by the framing of customizable font sizes—the poem “The Mouse’s Tale” does not appear in the shape of a tail (as it originally appeared in the book).