rich curling hair, who, we found out, or thought we found out (we have
no idea now, and probably had none then, on what grounds, but it was
confidentially revealed from mouth to mouth), was the son of a Viscount
who had deserted his lovely mother. It was understood that if he had
his rights he would be worth twenty thousand a year. And that if his
mother ever met his father she would shoot him with a silver pistol,
which she carried, always loaded to the muzzle, for that purpose. He
was a very suggestive topic. So was a young mulatto, who was always
believed (though very amiable) to have a dagger about him somewhere.
But we think they were both outshone, upon the whole, by another boy
who claimed to have been born on the twenty-ninth of February, and to
have only one birthday in five years. We suspect this to have been a
fiction--but he lived upon it all the time he was at Our School.
The principal currency of Our School was slate pencil. It had some
inexplicable value, that was never ascertained, never reduced to a
standard. To have a great hoard of it, was somehow to be rich. We
used to bestow it in charity, and confer it as a precious boon upon
our chosen friends. When the holidays were coming, contributions were
solicited for certain boys whose relatives were in India, and who were
appealed for under the generic name of “Holiday-stoppers,”--appropriate
marks of remembrance that should enliven and cheer them in their
homeless state. Personally, we always contributed these tokens of
sympathy in the form of slate pencil, and always felt that it would be
a comfort and a treasure to them.
Our School was remarkable for white mice. Red-polls, linnets, and even
canaries, were kept in desks, drawers, hat-boxes, and other strange
refuges for birds, but white mice were the favorite stock. The boys
trained the mice, much better than the masters trained the boys. We
recall one white mouse, who lived in the cover of a Latin dictionary,
who ran up ladders, drew Roman chariots, shouldered muskets, turned
wheels, and even made a very creditable appearance on the stage as
the Dog of Montargis. He might have achieved greater things, but for
having the misfortune to mistake his way in a triumphal procession to
the Capitol, when he fell into a deep inkstand, and was dyed black and
drowned. The mice were the occasion of some most ingenious engineering,
in the construction of their houses and instruments of performance.
The famous one belonged to a company of proprietors, some of whom have
since made railroads, engines, and telegraphs; the chairman has erected
mills and bridges in New Zealand.
The usher at Our School, who was considered to know everything as
opposed to the Chief, who was considered to know nothing, was a bony,
gentle-faced, clerical-looking young man in rusty black. It was
whispered that he was sweet upon one of Maxby’s sisters (Maxby lived
closed by, and was a day pupil), and further that he “favored Maxby.”
As we remember, he taught Italian to Maxby’s sisters on half-holidays.
He once went to the play with them, and wore a white waistcoat and a
rose: which was considered among us equivalent to a declaration. We
were of opinion on that occasion, that to the last moment he expected
Maxby’s father to ask him to dinner at five o’clock, and therefore
neglected his own dinner at half-past one, and finally got none.
We exaggerated in our imaginations the extent to which he punished
Maxby’s father’s cold meat at supper; and we agreed to believe that he
was elevated with wine and water when he came home. But we all liked
him; for he had a good knowledge of boys, and would have made it a
much better school if he had had more power. He was writing master,
mathematical master, English master, made out the bills, mended the
pens, and did all sorts of things. He divided the little boys with the
Latin master (they were smuggled through their rudimentary books, at
odd times when there was nothing else to do), and he always called at
parents’ houses to inquire after sick boys, because he had gentlemanly
manners. He was rather musical, and on some remote quarter-day had
bought an old trombone; but a bit of it was lost, and it made the
most extraordinary sounds when he sometimes tried to play it of an
evening. His holidays never began (on account of the bills) until long
after ours; but, in the summer vacations he used to take pedestrian
excursions with a knapsack; and at Christmas time, he went to see his
father at Chipping Norton, who we all said (on no authority) was a
dairy-fed pork-butcher. Poor fellow! He was very low all day on Maxby’s
sister’s wedding-day, and afterward was thought to favor Maxby more
than ever, though he had been expected to spite him. He has been dead
these twenty years. Poor fellow!
Our remembrance of Our School presents the Latin master as a
colorless, doubled-up, near-sighted man with a crutch, who was always
cold, and always putting onions into his ears for deafness, and always
disclosing ends of flannel under all his garments, and almost always
applying a ball of pocket-handkerchief to some part of his face with a
screwing action round and round. He was a very good scholar, and took
great pains where he saw intelligence and a desire to learn: otherwise,
perhaps not. Our memory presents him (unless teased into a passion)
with as little energy as color--as having been worried and tormented
into monotonous feebleness--as having had the best part of his life
ground out of him in a mill of boys. We remember with terror how he
fell asleep one sultry afternoon with the little smuggled class before
him, and awoke not when the footstep of the Chief fell heavy on the
floor; how the Chief aroused him, in the midst of a dread silence, and
said: “Mr. Blinkins, are you ill, sir?”; how he blushingly replied:
“Sir, rather so”; how the Chief retorted with severity: “Mr. Blinkins,
this is no place to be ill in” (which was very, very true), and walked
back solemn as the ghost in Hamlet, until, catching a wandering eye,
he caned that boy for inattention, and happily expressed his feelings
toward the Latin master through the medium of a substitute.
There was a fat little dancing-master who used to come in a gig, and
taught the more advanced among us hornpipes (as an accomplishment in
great social demand in after life); and there was a brisk little French
master who used to come in the sunniest weather, with a handleless
umbrella, and to whom the Chief was always polite, because (as we
believed), if the Chief offended him, he would instantly address the
Chief in French, and forever confound him before the boys with his
inability to understand or reply.
There was, besides, a serving man, whose name was Phil. Our
retrospective glance presents Phil as a shipwrecked carpenter, cast
away upon the desert island of a school, and carrying into practice an
ingenious inkling of many trades. He mended whatever was broken, and
made whatever was wanted. He was general glazier, among other things,
and mended all the broken windows--at the prime cost (as was darkly
rumored among us) of ninepence, for every square charged three-and-six
to parents. We had a high opinion of his mechanical genius, and
generally held that the Chief “knew something bad of him,” and on
pain of divulgence enforced Phil to be his bondsman. We particularly
remember that Phil had a sovereign contempt for learning; which
engenders in us a respect for his sagacity, as it implies his accurate
observation of the relative positions of the Chief and the ushers.
He was an impenetrable man, who waited at table between whiles, and
throughout “the half” kept the boxes in severe custody. He was morose,
even to the Chief, and never smiled, except at breaking-up, when, in
acknowledgment of the toast, “Success to Phil! Hooray!” he would slowly
carve a grin out of his wooden face, where it would remain until we
were all gone. Nevertheless, one time when we had the scarlet fever in
the school, Phil nursed all the sick boys of his own accord, and was
like a mother to them.
There was another school not far off, and of course Our School could
have nothing to say to that school. It is mostly the way with schools,
whether of boys or men. Well! the railway has swallowed up ours, and
the locomotives now run smoothly over its ashes.
“So fades and languishes, grows dim and dies,
All that this world is proud of.”
--and is not proud of, too. It had little reason to be proud of Our
School, and has done much better since in that way, and will do far
better yet.
ALICIA IN WONDERLAND
XXII
ALICIA IN WONDERLAND
WE all know Lewis Carroll’s _Alice in Wonderland_. Dickens had
an Alice too who was worth knowing. Her wonderland was a plain little
house in London. Her father, Mr. Watkins, was a poorly paid government
clerk who found it hard to support his large family. Her mother found
life too much for her nerves. So Alice had to take the responsibility
for the family happiness. While other people were worrying, she tried
to make things pleasant.
But fortunately Alice had such a fortunate disposition that she could
live in London and in Wonderland at the same time. In Wonderland, her
father, Mr. Watkins, was king, and Mrs. Watkins was queen, and Mr.
Pickles the fish-dealer was a great merchant of untold wealth. Alice
had a doll who was a duchess, to whom she told her troubles, and with
whom she consulted about the fashions. The duchess was a very proud and
sympathetic person indeed.
So it was very natural that Alice should have a visit from her fairy
godmother. The unusual thing was that she took the advice that was
given her, and so got out of trouble instead of getting into it through
heedlessness, as most people do in the fairy-stories. Alice was a
very wise little girl; in my judgment she was almost as wise as her
godmother. Indeed, it sometimes requires more wisdom to take good
advice than to give it.
* * * * *
There was once a king, and he had a queen; and he was the manliest
of his sex, and she was the loveliest of hers. The king was, in his
private profession, under government. The queen’s father had been a
medical man out of town.
They had nineteen children, and were always having more. Seventeen of
these children took care of the baby; and Alicia, the eldest, took care
of them all. Their ages varied from seven years to seven months.
Let us now resume our story.
One day the king was going to the office, when he stopped at the
fishmonger’s to buy a pound and a half of salmon, not too near the
tail, which the queen (who was a careful house-keeper) had requested
him to send home. Mr. Pickles, the fishmonger, said, “Certainly, sir,
is there any other article? Good morning.”
The king went on toward the office in a melancholy mood; for
quarter-day was such a long way off, and several of the dear children
were growing out of their clothes. He had not proceeded far, when Mr.
Pickles’s errand-boy came running after him, and said, “Sir, you didn’t
notice the old lady in our shop.”
“What old lady?” inquired the king. “I saw none.”
Now, the king had not seen any old lady, because this old lady had been
invisible to him, though visible to Mr. Pickles’s boy. Probably because
he messed and splashed the water about to that degree, and flapped the
pairs of soles down in that violent manner, that, if she had not been
visible to him, he would have spoiled her clothes.
Just then the old lady came trotting up. She was dressed in shot silk
of the richest quality, smelling of dried lavender.
“King Watkins the First, I believe?” said the old lady.
“Watkins,” replied the king, “is my name.”
“Papa, if I am not mistaken, of the beautiful Princess Alicia?” said
the old lady.
“And of eighteen other darlings,” replied the king.
“Listen. You are going to the office,” said the old lady.
It instantly flashed upon the king that she must be a fairy, or how
could she know that?
“You are right,” said the old lady, answering his thoughts. “I am
the good Fairy Grandmarina. Attend! When you return home to dinner,
politely invite the Princess Alicia to have some of the salmon you
bought just now.”
“It may disagree with her,” said the king.
The old lady became so very angry at this absurd idea, that the king
was quite alarmed, and humbly begged her pardon.
“We hear a great deal too much about this thing disagreeing, and that
thing disagreeing,” said the old lady, with the greatest contempt it
was possible to express. “Don’t be greedy. I think you want it all
yourself.”
The king hung his head under this reproof, and said he wouldn’t talk
about things disagreeing any more.
“Be good, then,” said the Fairy Grandmarina, “and don’t! When the
beautiful Princess Alicia consents to partake of the salmon--as I think
she will--you will find she will leave a fish-bone on her plate. Tell
her to dry it, and to rub it, and to polish it till it shines like
mother-of-pearl, and to take care of it as a present from me.”
“Is that all?” asked the king.
“Don’t be impatient, sir,” returned the Fairy Grandmarina, scolding him
severely. “Don’t catch people short before they have done speaking.
Just the way with you grown-up persons. You are always doing it.”
The king again hung his head, and said he wouldn’t do so any more.
“Be good, then,” said the Fairy Grandmarina, “and don’t! Tell the
Princess Alicia, with my love, that the fish-bone is a magic present
which can only be used once; but that it will bring her, that once,
whatever she wishes for, PROVIDED SHE WISHES FOR IT AT THE RIGHT
TIME. That is the message. Take care of it.”
The king was beginning, “Might I ask the reason?” when the fairy became
absolutely furious.
“_Will_ you be good, sir?” she exclaimed, stamping her foot on the
ground. “The reason for this, and the reason for that, indeed! You are
always wanting the reason. No reason. There! Hoity toity me! I am sick
of your grown-up reasons.”
The king was extremely frightened by the old lady’s flying into such
a passion, and said he was very sorry to have offended her, and he
wouldn’t ask for reasons any more.
“Be good, then,” said the old lady, “and don’t!”
With those words Grandmarina vanished, and the king went on and on
and on, till he came to the office. There he wrote and wrote and
wrote, till it was time to go home again. Then he politely invited
the Princess Alicia, as the fairy had directed him, to partake of the
salmon. And when she had enjoyed it very much, he saw the fish-bone on
her plate, as the fairy had told him he would, and he delivered the
fairy’s message, and the Princess Alicia took care to dry the bone, and
to rub it, and to polish it till it shone like mother-of-pearl.
And so, when the queen was going to get up in the morning, she said,
“Oh, dear me, dear me; my head, my head!” and then she fainted away.
The Princess Alicia, who happened to be looking in at the chamber-door
asking about breakfast, was very much alarmed when she saw her royal
mamma in this state, and she rang the bell for Peggy, which was the
name of the lord chamberlain. But remembering where the smelling-bottle
was, she climbed on the chair and got it; and after that she climbed
on another chair by the bedside, and held the smelling-bottle to the
queen’s nose; and after that she jumped down and got some water; and
after that she jumped up again and wetted the queen’s forehead; and
in short, when the lord chamberlain came in, that dear old woman said
to the little princess, “What a trot you are! I couldn’t have done it
better myself!”
But that was not the worst of the good queen’s illness. Oh, no! She was
very ill indeed for a long time. The Princess Alicia kept the seventeen
young princes and princesses quiet, and dressed and undressed and
danced the baby, and made the kettle boil, and heated the soup, and
swept the hearth, and poured out the medicine, and nursed the queen,
and did all that ever she could, and was as busy, busy, busy as busy
could be; for there were not many servants at that place for three
reasons: because the king was short of money, because a rise in his
office never seemed to come, and because quarter-day was so far off
that it looked almost as far off and as little as one of the stars.
But on the morning when the queen fainted away, where was the magic
fish-bone? Why, there it was in the Princess Alicia’s pocket! She had
almost taken it out to bring the queen to life again, when she put it
back, and looked for the smelling-bottle.
After the queen had come out of her swoon that morning and was dozing,
the Princess Alicia hurried up-stairs to tell a most particular secret
to a most particular confidential friend of hers, who was a duchess.
People did suppose her to be a doll, but she was really a duchess,
though nobody knew it except the princess.
This most particular secret was the secret about the magic fish-bone,
the history of which was well known to the duchess, because the
princess told her everything. The princess kneeled down by the bed on
which the duchess was lying, full-dressed and wide awake, and whispered
the secret to her. The duchess smiled and nodded. People might have
supposed that she never smiled and nodded; but she often did, though
nobody knew it except the princess.
Then the Princess Alicia hurried down-stairs again, to keep watch in
the queen’s room. She often kept watch by herself in the queen’s room;
but every evening, while the illness lasted, she sat there watching
with the king. And every evening the king sat looking at her with a
cross look, wondering why she never brought out the magic fish-bone.
As often as she noticed this, she ran up-stairs, whispered the secret
to the duchess over again, and said to the duchess, “They think we
children never have a reason or a meaning!” And the duchess, though the
most fashionable duchess that ever was heard of, winked her eye.
“Alicia,” said the king, one evening when she wished him good night.
“Yes, papa.”
“What is become of your magic fish-bone?”
“In my pocket, papa!”
“I thought you had lost it?”
“Oh no, papa.”
“Or forgotten it?”
“No, indeed, papa.”
And so another time the dreadful little snapping pug-dog, next door,
made a rush at one of the young princes as he stood on the steps coming
home from school, and terrified him out of his wits; and he put his
hand through a pane of glass, and bled, bled, bled. When the seventeen
other young princes and princesses saw him bleed, bleed, bleed, they
were terrified out of their wits too, and screamed themselves black
in their seventeen faces all at once. But the Princess Alicia put
her hands over all their seventeen mouths, one after another, and
persuaded them to be quiet because of the sick queen. And then she put
the wounded prince’s hand in a basin of fresh cold water, while they
stared with their twice seventeen are thirty-four, put down four and
carry three, eyes, and then she looked in the hand for bits of glass,
and there were fortunately no bits of glass there. And then she said
to two chubby-legged princes, who were sturdy though small, “Bring me
in the royal rag-bag: I must snip and stitch and cut and contrive.”
So these two young princes tugged at the royal rag-bag, and lugged it
in; and the Princess Alicia sat down on the floor, with a large pair
of scissors and a needle and thread, and snipped and stitched and
cut and contrived, and made a bandage, and put it on, and it fitted
beautifully; and so when it was all done, she saw the king her papa
looking on by the door.
“Alicia.”
“Yes, papa.”
“What have you been doing?”
“Snipping, stitching, cutting, and contriving, papa.”
“Where is the magic fish-bone?”
“In my pocket, papa.”
“I thought you had lost it?”
“Oh no, papa!”
“Or forgotten it?”
“No, indeed, papa.”
After that, she ran up-stairs to the duchess, and told her what had
passed, and told her the secret over again: and the duchess shook her
flaxen curls, and laughed with her rosy lips.
Well! and so another time the baby fell under the grate. The seventeen
young princes and princesses were used to it; for they were almost
always falling under the grate or down the stairs; but the baby was not
used to it yet, and it gave him a swelled face and a black eye. The
way the poor little darling came to tumble was, that he was out of the
Princess Alicia’s lap just as she was sitting, in a great coarse apron
that quite smothered her, in front of the kitchen fire, beginning to
peel the turnips for the broth for dinner; and the way she came to be
doing that was, that the king’s cook had run away that morning with
her own true love, who was a very tall but very tipsy soldier. Then
the seventeen young princes and princesses, who cried at every thing
that happened, cried and roared. But the Princess Alicia (who couldn’t
help crying a little herself) quietly called to them to be still, on
account of not throwing back the queen up-stairs, who was fast getting
well, and said: “Hold your tongues, you wicked little monkeys, every
one of you, while I examine baby!” Then she examined baby, and found
that he hadn’t broken anything; and she held cold iron to his poor dear
eye, and smoothed his poor dear face, and he presently fell asleep in
her arms. Then she said to the seventeen princes and princesses: “I am
afraid to let him down yet, lest he should wake and feel pain; be good,
and you shall all be cooks.” They jumped for joy when they heard that,
and began making themselves cooks’ caps out of old newspapers. So to
one she gave the salt-box, and to one she gave the barley, and to one
she gave the herbs, and to one she gave the turnips, and to one she
gave the carrots, and to one she gave the onions, and to one she gave
the spice-box, till they were all cooks, and all running about at work,
she sitting in the middle, smothered in the great coarse apron, nursing
baby. By and by the broth was done; and the baby woke up, smiling
like an angel, and was trusted to the sedatest princess to hold,
while the other princes and princesses were squeezed into a far-off
corner to look at the Princess Alicia turning out the saucepanful
of broth, for fear (as they were always getting into trouble) they
should get splashed and scalded. When the broth came tumbling out,
steaming beautifully, and smelling like a nosegay good to eat, they
clapped their hands. That made the baby clap his hands; and that, and
his looking as if he had a comic toothache, made all the princes and
princesses laugh. So the Princess Alicia said: “Laugh and be good;
and after dinner we will make him a nest on the floor in a corner,
and he shall sit in his nest and see a dance of eighteen cooks.” That
delighted the young princes and princesses, and they ate up all the
broth, and washed up all the plates and dishes, and cleared away, and
pushed the table into a corner; and then they in their cooks’ caps, and
the Princess Alicia in the smothering coarse apron that belonged to the
cook that had run away with her own true love that was the very tall
but very tipsy soldier, danced a dance of eighteen cooks before the
angelic baby, who forgot his swelled face and his black eye, and crowed
with joy.
And so then, once more the Princess Alicia saw King Watkins the First,
her father, standing in the doorway looking on, and he said, “What have
you been doing, Alicia?”
“Cooking and contriving, papa.”
“What else have you been doing, Alicia?”
“Keeping the children light-hearted, papa.”
“Where is the magic fish-bone, Alicia?”
“In my pocket, papa.”
“I thought you had lost it?”
“Oh no, papa.”
“Or forgotten it?”
“No, indeed, papa.”
The king then sighed so heavily, and seemed so low-spirited, and sat
down so miserably, leaning his head upon his hand, and his elbow upon
the kitchen-table pushed away in the corner, that the seventeen princes
and princesses crept softly out of the kitchen, and left him alone with
the Princess Alicia and the angelic baby.
“What is the matter, papa?”
“I am dreadfully poor, my child.”
“Have you no money at all, papa?”
“None, my child.”
“Is there no way of getting any, papa?”
“No way,” said the king. “I have tried very hard, and I have tried all
ways.”
When she heard these last words, the Princess Alicia began to put her
hand into the pocket where she kept the magic fish-bone.
“Papa,” said she, “when we have tried very hard, and tried all ways, we
must have done our very, very best?”
“No doubt, Alicia.”
“When we have done our very, very best, papa, and that is not enough,
then I think the right time must have come for asking help of others.”
This was the very secret connected with the magic fish-bone, which she
had found out for herself from the good Fairy Grandmarina’s words,
and which she had so often whispered to her beautiful and fashionable
friend, the duchess.