Complete Works of Lewis Carroll (274 page)

And shed a bitter tear.

Then comes the sad and sober part of the tale, when the
Oysters
were tempted to stroll along the beach, in company with these wily two, who lured them far away from their snug ocean beds.

The Walrus and the Carpenter

Walked on a mile or so,

And then they rested on a rock

Conveniently low;

And all the little Oysters stood

And waited in a row.

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,

“To talk of many things;

Of shoes, and ships, and sealing-wax—

Of cabbages and kings;

And why the sea is boiling hot,

And whether pigs have wings.”

“But wait a bit,” the Oysters cried,

“Before we have our chat;

For some of us are out of breath,

And all of us are fat!”

“No hurry!”
said the Carpenter.

They thanked him much for that.

“A loaf of bread,” the Walrus said,

“Is what we chiefly need;

Pepper and vinegar besides

Are very good, indeed;

Now, if you’re ready, Oysters, dear,

We can begin to feed.”

Then the
Oysters
became terrified, as they saw all these grewsome preparations, and their fate loomed up before them.
So the two old weeping hypocrites sat on the rocks and calmly devoured their late companions.

“It seems a shame,” the Walrus said,

“To play them such a trick,

After we’ve brought them out so far,

And made them trot so quick!”

The Carpenter said nothing but,

“The butter’s spread too thick!”

“I weep for you,” the Walrus said,

“I deeply sympathize.”

With sobs and tears he sorted out

Those of the largest size,

Holding his pocket-handkerchief

Before his streaming eyes.

“O Oysters,” said the Carpenter,

“You’ve had a pleasant run!

Shall we be trotting home again?”

But answer came there none.

And this was scarcely odd, because

They’d eaten every one.

The poor dear little
Oysters
!
How any little girl, with a heart under her pinafore, could read these lines unmoved it is hard to say.
Think of those innocent young dears, standing before these dreadful ogres.

All eager for the treat;

Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,

Their shoes were clean and neat;

And this was odd, because, you know,

They hadn’t any feet.

All the same, Tenniel has made most attractive pictures of them, feet and all.
And think—oh, horror!
of
their
supplying the treat!
It was indeed an awful tragedy.
Yet behind it all there lurks some fun, though Lewis Carroll was too clever to let us
quite
into his secret.
All the young ones want is the story, but those who are old enough to love their Dickens and to look for his special characters outside of his books will certainly recognize in the
Walrus
the hypocritical
Mr.
Pecksniff
, whose tears flowed on every occasion when he was not otherwise employed in robbing his victims, and other little pleasantries.
And as for the
Carpenter
, there is something very scholarly in the set of his cap and the combing of his scant locks; possibly a caricature of some shining light of Oxford, for we know there were many in his books.
Indeed, the whole poem may be something of an allegory, representing examination; the
Oysters
, the undergraduate victims before the college faculty (the
Walrus
and the
Carpenter
) who are just ready to “eat ’em alive”—poor innocent undergraduates!

But whatever the hidden meaning,
Tweedledum
and
Tweedledee
were not the sort of people to look deep into things, and
Alice
, being a little girl and very partial to oysters, thought the
Walrus
and the
Carpenter
were
very
unpleasant characters and had no sympathy with them at all.

Dreaming by a ruddy blaze in a big armchair keeps one much busier than if one fell asleep in a rocking boat or on the river bank on a golden summer day.

The scenes and all the company changed so often in Looking-Glass Land that
Alice
had all she could do to keep pace with her adventures.
For you see all this time she was only a pawn, moving over an immense chess-board from square to square, until in the end she should be made queen.
The
White Queen
whom
Alice
met shortly was a very lopsided person, quite unlike the
Red Queen
, who was neat enough no matter how sharp her tongue.
Alice
had to fix her hair, and straighten her shawl, and set her right and tidy.

“Really, you should have a lady’s maid,” she remarked.

“I’m sure I’ll take
you
with pleasure,” the Queen said.
“Twopence a week, and jam every other day.”

Alice couldn’t help laughing as she said:

“I don’t want you to hire
me
, and I don’t care for jam.”

“It’s very good jam,” said the Queen.

“Well, I don’t want any
to-day
at any rate.”

“You couldn’t have it if you
did
want it,” the Queen said.
“The rule is—jam to-morrow and jam yesterday, but never jam
to-day
.”

“It
must
come sometimes to ‘jam to-day,’” Alice objected.

“No, it can’t,” said the Queen.
“It’s jam every other day; to-day isn’t any
other
day, you know.”

“I don’t understand you,” said Alice.
“It’s dreadfully confusing!”

“That’s the effect of living backwards,” the Queen said, kindly.
“It always makes one a little giddy at first—”

“Living backwards!”
Alice remarked in great astonishment.
“I never heard of such a thing!”

“But there’s one great advantage in it, that one’s memory works both ways.”

“I’m sure
mine
only works one way,” Alice remarked.
“I can’t remember things before they happen.”

“It’s a poor memory that only works backwards,” the Queen remarked.

“What sort of things do
you
remember best?”
Alice ventured to ask.

“Oh, the things that happened the week after next,” the Queen replied in a careless tone.
“For instance, now,” she went on, sticking a large piece of plaster on her finger as she spoke, “there’s the king’s messenger.
He’s in prison now, being punished, and the trial doesn’t begin till next Wednesday; and of course the crime comes last of all.”
Then the
Queen
for further illustration began to scream—

“Oh, oh, oh!”
shouted the Queen....
“My finger’s bleeding!
Oh, oh, oh, oh!”

Her screams were so exactly like the whistle of a steam engine that Alice had to hold both her hands over her ears.

“What
is
the matter?”
she said....
“Have you pricked your finger?”

“I haven’t pricked it yet,” the Queen said, “but I soon shall—oh, oh, oh!”

“When do you expect to do it?”
Alice asked, feeling very much inclined to laugh.

“When I fasten my shawl again,” the poor Queen groaned out, “the brooch will come undone directly.
Oh, oh!”
As she said the words the brooch flew open, and the Queen clutched wildly at it and tried to clasp it again.

“Take care!”
cried Alice, “you’re holding it all crooked!”
and she caught at the brooch; but it was too late; the pin had slipped, and the Queen had pricked her finger.

“That accounts for the bleeding, you see,” she said to Alice, with a smile.
“Now you understand the way things happen here.”

Alice’s
meeting with
Humpty-Dumpty
in the sixth square has gone down in history.
It has been played in nurseries and in private theatricals, and many ingenious Humpty-Dumptys have been fashioned by clever people.

Possibly the dear old rhyme which generations of childhood have handed about as a riddle is responsible for our great interest in
Humpty-Dumpty
.

Humpty-Dumpty sat on the wall,

Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall,

All the King’s horses and all the King’s men,

Couldn’t put Humpty-Dumpty in his place again.

This is an old version, but modern children have made a better ending, thus:

Couldn’t put Humpty-Dumpty up again.

Then there’s a mysterious pause, and some eager small boy or girl asks, “Now
what
is it?”
and before one has time to answer, someone calls out—

“It’s an egg; it’s an egg!”
and the riddle is a riddle no longer.

One clever mechanical Humpty was made of barrel hoops covered with stiff paper and muslin.
The eyes, nose, and mouth were connected with various tapes, which the inventor had in charge behind the scenes, and so well did he work them that Humpty in his hands turned out a fine imitation of the
Humpty-Dumpty
Sir John Tenniel has made us remember; the same
Humpty-Dumpty
who asked
Alice
her name and her business, and who informed her proudly that if he did tumble off the wall, “
The King has promised me with his very own mouth—to—to—
”

“To send all his horses and all his men—” Alice interrupted rather unwisely.

“Now I declare that’s too bad!”
Humpty-Dumpty cried, breaking into a sudden passion.
“You’ve been listening at doors, and behind trees, and down chimneys, or you wouldn’t have known it.”

“I haven’t, indeed!”
Alice said, very gently.
“It’s in a book.”

“Ah, well!
They may write such things in a
book
,” Humpty-Dumpty said in a calmer tone.
“That’s what you call a History of England, that is.
Now take a good look at me.
I’m one that has spoken to a King,
I
am; mayhap you’ll never see such another; and to show you I’m not proud you may shake hands with me....”

“Yes, all his horses and all his men,”
Humpty-Dumpty
went on.
“They’d pick me up in a minute,
they
would.
However, this conversation is going on a little too fast; let’s go back to the last remark but one.”

Such a nice, common old chap is
Humpty-Dumpty
, so “stuck-up” because he has spoken to a King; and argue!
Well,
Alice
never heard anything like it before, and found difficulty in keeping up a conversation that was disputed every step of the way.
She found him worse than the
Cheshire Cat
or even the
Duchess
for that matter, and not half so well-bred.

He too favored
Alice
with the following poem, which he assured her was written entirely for her amusement, and here it is, with enough of Lewis Carroll’s “nonsense” in it to let us know where it came from:

In winter, when the fields are white,

I sing this song for your delight:—

In spring, when woods are getting green,