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How This Book Came To Be
How This Book Came To Be
There were three little girls in the boat - three little girls and a
mathematical lecturer. But the three little girls were not studying fractions.
They were listening to the fascinating chronicle of a little girl called Alice
and her remarkable adventures under ground.
One of the little girls in the boat was herself an Alice - Alice
Pleasance Liddell. Beside her sat her sisters, Lorina and Edith Liddel. Their
father taught Greek - an even more formidable subject than mathematics.
Conjoined with that of still another teacher named Scott, the name of Liddell
is likely to enjoy as permanent a repute in Greek lexicography as those of
Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster will in English.
The mathematical lecturer was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. The scene was the
river Cherwell, not far from Oxford. The date was July 4, 1862. Mr. Dodgson
noted it carefully in his diary.
Mr. Dodgson, who was actually the Reverend Mr. Dodgson but did not work
at it, liked his little story so well that he later wrote it down, supplying
some crude illustrations for it - thirty-seven of them, to be exact. At the
bottom of the last page of text he pasted a photograph of Alice Liddell - a
photograph which he himself had taken, for he was one of the earliest amateurs
of the art. He gave the manuscript to Alice.
Sixty-six years later, in 1928, when Alice Liddell had become the widow
of Reginald Hargreaves and the mother of three sons of whom two had fallen in
the World War, she sold the manuscript at auction in London for 15,400 pounds.
Next morning the event was front-page news in New York, and not wholly for the
reason that the purchaser was an American, Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach of
Philadelphia. Subsequently the manuscript became the property of Eldridge R.
Johnson of Camden, New Jersey, who permitted its exhibition throughout the
United States. Millions of Americans, of all ages and conditions, gazed at it
enthralled, moved in a fashion in which a Gutenberg Bible or a Declaration of
Independence could not have moved them.
In 1935 Mrs. Hargreaves herself came to America to take part in the
centennial celebration of the birth of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. For a few
days she was the house guest of Morris L. Parrish of Pine Valley, New Jersey,
whose superb collection of the writings of Dodgson`s alter ego, Lewis Carroll,
is only one of the marvels of a home full of books out of which have come many
enduring contributions to the bibliography of nineteenth-century English
literature. Some months later I was a guest of Mr. Parrish and enjoyed the
high privilege of occupying the room that had been assigned to Mrs. Hargreaves
during her visit. The gentle little lady left the world of men before the
horror of 1939 burst upon it.
Mr. Dodgson did not dismiss his little story from his mind when he gave
the manuscript to Alice Liddell. He expanded the idea into a longer story, and
regarding the title of the expanded version he was for a time highly
uncertain. On June 6, 1864, he wrote his friend Tom Taylor (Mr. Dodgson took a
picture of him, too, and caught on his sensitized plate one of the most
dashing pair of moustachios ever photographed), and described the debate he
was having with himself. He listed an array of titles - listed them, too, in
precisely the manner in which a mathematical lecturer would list them:
Alice`s Adventures Under Ground
Alice`s Golden House
Alice Among the) Elves
) Goblins
(Hour)
Alice`s (Doings) in (Elf-Land
(Adventures) (Wonderland
"Of all these," he wrote Taylor, "I prefer `Alice`s Adventures in
Wonderland.`"
It was on Taylor`s advice that the author sought out John Tenniel for his
illustrator. Tenniel, Dodgson`s senior by fifteen years, had begun his
half-century affiliation with Punch in 1850. Knighthood and his great fame as
a cartoonist lay ahead, but already Tenniel was well known as humorist and
illustrator and had embellished a great variety of books, sometimes singly,
sometimes in collaboration with notable artists of his day whose fame has
since acquired an archaic pallor alongside Sir John`s effulgent permanence.
An agreement between Tenniel and Dodgson was consummated on April 5, 1864.
The collaboration thus effected was one of the most significant and
durable in literary history. Many hands have attempted to illustrate Alice`s
Adventures in Wonderland since the 1860`s and have produced in the main
competent, striking, and beautiful drawings - until their work has been placed
alongside Tenniel`s. Tenniel illustrated Alice once and forever, just as he
did Through the Looking-Glass six years later.
The author was a moderately exacting taskmaster. He knew what he wanted
and how he wanted it done. Moreover Tenniel had the unprofessional Under
Ground drawings to guide him. Of the forty-two illustrations which he made
for Alice, twenty translated into brilliant effectiveness the author`s
primitive conceptions as delineated in the Under Ground manuscript, which
Alice Liddell lent for the occasion.
Whether Tenniel used a model for his Alice is a question that has not
been resolved with such clarity as one might desire. The preponderance of
evidence is that he did. Certainly it was not Alice Liddell. Most authentic
claimant to the honor was little Mary Ellen Badcock. But Dodgson some years
later wrote: "Mr. Tenniel is the only artist who has drawn for me who
resolutely refused to use a model, and declared he no more needed one than I
should need a multiplication-table to work a mathematical problem."
If Tenniel said that, the less artist and less logician he. This is not
to question that he did say it, but one may well question whether he intended
it to apply to everything he did. It is certain, for instance, that he used a
model for the Duchess - a portrait by the Flemish painter Quentin Metsys,
executed a century and a half after her death, of that unlovely Duchess of
Carinthia and Tyrol (1318-1369) who became the heroine of Lion Feuchtwanger`s
The Ugly Duchess.
Alice`s Adventures in Wonderland appeared early in July, 1865 - probably
on the 4th, exactly three years after the recital on the river. The title-page
announced the work as by Lewis Carroll, a Latinized-Anglicized
transmogrification and transposition of Charles Lutwidge. From Charles to
Carolus to Carroll was sound procedure, but from Lutwidge to Ludovicus to
Louis to Lewis was at best a devious etymology. Not that it mattered, or ever
will.
The edition comprised two thousand copies, and exemplars of it would
to-day be rare enough, in all conscience, even had the edition gone out into
the world in that quantity, to be read to tatters by young people who took no
thought for to-morrow`s book auctions, or for older (though still unborn)
people like Dr. Rosenbach and Mr. Johnson and Mr. Parrish. But only
forty-eight copies of the original 1865 edition made their way into public
circulation in the form in which they were created. As many of these
forty-eight as could be traced were called back almost immediately because
author and artist were dissatisfied with the reproductions of the
illustrations.
Responsibility for this action is usually laid at Lewis Carroll`s door.
The evidence is a statement in the official biography by his nephew, Stuart
Dodgson Collingwood, who does not support it with documentary proof. It seems
more likely that Tenniel was the louder protestant. And to back this
assumption is an undated letter from Tenniel to Edward Dalziel in the Amory
Collection at Harvard in which the illustrator declares: "Mr. Dodgson`s book
came out months ago, but I protested so strongly against the disgraceful
printing that he cancelled the edition."
But all was not to be lost. The publishers, Macmillan and Co., shipped
1952 copies of the sheets plus a thousand title-pages for binding - in to the
New York house of D. Appleton and Co. Not good enough for home consumption,
but good enough for the Yankees? The question inevitably poses itself, though
it is probably unjust. Any one who to-day examines a copy of the 1865 Alice or
its American twin - a sort of Siamese twin, since the sheets are identical -
and sets it alongside a copy of the London edition of 1866 is likely to find
little to choose between them. The publishers may have decided, probably did
decide, that the overfussiness of the author and the illustrator of a child`s
book should not be allowed to stand in the way of salvaging the edition. It is
entirely likely that the situation was explained to the Appletons, and that
the copies crossed the ocean at a bargain, with the consignees knowing exactly
what they were getting and why. Whether author or illustrator was made aware
of the action taken is not known. It would seem, at this late date, as if it
would have been difficult to keep the fact from them.
The new edition was published November 14, 1865, although the title-page
was dated 1866. Edition after edition was called for, and has been called for
ever since. French and German translations were available in 1869, and an
Italian three years later. The title of the French version fell into charming
lilt of anapests: Aventures d` Alice au Pays des Merveilles. Since 1872 there
have been numerous other translations - Dutch, Russian, Hebrew, Spanish,
Swedish, Chinese, Japanese, Irish, Braille, Esperanto, and assorted varieties
of shorthand.
It seems to me wholly reasonable to picture, at any minute of any hour of
the twenty-four, on any day of any year forever and ever, a little child or
even a grown-up somewhere reading Alice`s Adventures in Wonderland.
John T. Winterich
A Poem - Alice`s Adventures In Wonderland
All in the golden afternoon
Full leisurely we glide;
For both our oars, with little skill,
By little arms are plied,
While little hands make vain pretence
Our wanderings to guide.
Ah, cruel Three! In such an hour,
Beneath such dreamy weather,
To beg a tale of breath too weak
To stir the tiniest feather!
Yet what can one poor voice avail
Against three tongues together?
Imperious Prima flashes forth
Her edict `to begin it` -
In gentler tones Secunda hopes
`There will be nonsense in it` -
While Tertia interrupts the tale
Not more than once a minute.
Anon, to sudden silence won,
In fancy they pursue,
The dream-child moving through a land
Of wonders wild and new,
In friendly chat with bird or beast -
And half believe it true.
And ever, as the story drained
The wells of fancy dry,
And faintly strove that weary one
To put the subject by,
"The rest next time - " "It is next time!"
The happy voices cry.
Thus grew the tale of Wonderland:
Thus slowly, one by one,
Its quaint events were hammered out -
And now the tale is done,
And home we steer, a merry crew,
Beneath the setting sun.
Alice! A childish story take,
And with a gentle hand
Lay it where Childhood`s dreams are twined
In Memory`s mystic band,
Like pilgrim`s withered wreath of flowers
Plucked in a far-off land.
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