“‘Yes, but some crumbs must have got in as well,’ the Hatter grumbled; ‘you shouldn’t have put it in with the bread knife.’
“The March Hare took the watch and looked at it gloomily; then he dipped it into his cup of tea and looked at it again; but he could think of nothing better to say than his first remark, ‘It was the best butter you know.’”
Surely nothing could be more amusing that this party of mad ones, and the sleepy Dormouse, who sat between the March Hare and the Hatter, contributed his share to the fun, while the Hatter’s songs, which he sang at the concert given by the Queen of Hearts, was certainly very familiar to Alice. It began:
Twinkle, twinkle, little bat—
How I wonder what you’re at!
Up above the world you fly,
Like a tea tray in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle.
Who but Lewis Carroll could invent such a scene? Who could better plan the little sparkling sentences which gave the nonsense just the glitter which children found so fascinating and so laughable. Yet what did they laugh at after all? What do we laugh at even to-day in glancing over the familiar pages? What is it in the mysterious depths of childhood which Lewis Carroll has caught in his golden web? Perhaps, it is not all mere childhood; we are ourselves but “children of a larger growth,” and deep down within us at some time or other fancy runs riot and imagination does the rest. So it was with Lewis Carroll, only his fancy soared into genius, carrying with it, as someone has said, “a suggestion of clear and yet soft laughing sunshine. He never made us laugh at anything, but always with him and his knights and queens and heroes of the nursery rhymes.”
Behind much of the world’s laughter tears may be hiding, but not so in the case of Lewis Carroll; all is pure mirth that flows from him to us, and above all he possesses that indescribable thing called charm. It lurks in the quaint conversations, in the fluent measure of the songs, in the fantastic scenes so full of ideas that seem to vanish before we quite grasp them—like the Cheshire Cat—leaving only the smile behind.
To those of us—the world in short—who were denied the privilege of hearing Lewis Carroll tell his own story, the Tenniel pictures bring Wonderland very close. Our natural history alone would not help us in the least when it came to classifying the many strange animals Alice met on her journey. The Mock Turtle, the Gryphon, the Lory, the Dodo, the Cheshire Cat, the Fish and Frog footmen—how could we imagine them without the Tenniel “guidebook”? The numberless transformations of Alice could hardly be understood without photographs of her in the various stages. And certainly at the croquet party, given by the Queen of Hearts, how could anyone imagine a game played with bent-over soldiers for wickets, hedgehogs for croquet balls, and flamingoes for mallets, unless there were accompanying illustrations?
One specially interesting picture shows the Gryphon in the foreground; he and Alice paid a visit to the Mock Turtle, who, by way of entertaining his guests, gave the following description of the Lobster Quadrille. With tears running down his cheeks he began:
“‘You have never lived much under the sea’ (‘I haven’t,’ said Alice) ‘and perhaps you were never introduced to a lobster—’ (Alice began to say ‘I once tasted—’ but she checked herself hastily, and said, ‘No, never’), ‘so you can have no idea what a delightful thing a Lobster Quadrille is!’
“‘No, indeed,’ said Alice. ‘What sort of a dance is it?’