PREFACE TO THE 1897 EDITION

As the chess-problem, given on the previous page, has puzzled some of my readers, it may be well to explain that it is correctly worked out, so far as the moves are concerned. The alternation of Red and White is perhaps not so strictly observed as it might be, and the “castling” of the three Queens is merely a way of saying that they entered the palace: 1 but the “check” of the White King at move 6, the capture of the Red Knight at move 7, and the final “checkmate” of the Red King, will be found, by any one who will take the trouble to set the pieces and play the moves as directed, to be strictly in accordance with the laws of the game. 2

The new words, in the poem “Jabberwocky,” have given rise to some differences of opinion as to their pronunciation: so it may be well to give instructions on that point also. Pronounce “slithy” as if it were the two words “sly, the”: make the “g” hard in “gyre” and “gimble”: and pronounce “rath” to rhyme with “bath.”

For this sixty-first 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 1871), 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

Child of the pure unclouded brow 3

And dreaming eyes of wonder!

Though time be fleet, and I and thou

Are half a life asunder,

Thy loving smile will surely hail

The love-gift of a fairy-tale.

I have not seen thy sunny face,

Nor heard thy silver laughter:

No thought of me shall find a place

In thy young life—s hereafter— 4

Enough that now thou wilt not fail

To listen to my fairy-tale.

A tale begun in other days,

When summer suns were glowing—

A simple chime, that served to time

The rhythm of our rowing—

Whose echoes live in memory yet,

Though envious years would say “forget.”

Come, hearken then, ere voice of dread,

With bitter tidings laden,

Shall summon to unwelcome bed 5

A melancholy maiden!

We are but older children, dear,

Who fret to find our bedtime near.

Without, the frost, the blinding snow,

The storm-wind’s moody madness—

Within, the firelight’s ruddy glow,

And childhood’s nest of gladness.

The magic words shall hold thee fast:

Thou shalt not heed the raving blast.

And, though the shadow of a sigh

May tremble through the story,

For “happy summer days” 6 gone by,

And vanish’d summer glory—

It shall not touch, with breath of bale, 7

The pleasance 8 of our fairy-tale.

1. There is no chess move in which queens castle. Carroll is here explaining that when the three Queens (the Red Queen, the White Queen, and Alice) have entered the “castle,” they have moved to the eighth row, where pawns become queens.

2. Carroll’s description of the chess problem, which underlies the book’s action, is accurate. One is at loss to account for the statement on page 48 of A Handbook of the Literature of the Rev. C. L. Dodgson, by Sidney Williams and Falconer Madan, that “no attempt” is made to execute a normal checkmate. The final mate is completely orthodox. It is true, however, as Carroll himself points out, that red and white do not alternate moves properly, and some of the “moves” listed by Carroll are not represented by actual movements of the pieces on the board (for example, Alice’s first, third, ninth and tenth “moves,” and the “castling” of the queens).

The most serious violation of chess rules occurs near the end of the problem, when the White King is placed in check by the Red Queen without either side taking account of the fact. “Hardly a move has a sane purpose, from the point of view of chess,” writes Mr. Madan. It is true that both sides play an exceedingly careless game, but what else could one expect from the mad creatures behind the mirror? At two points the White Queen passes up a chance to checkmate and on another occasion she flees from the Red Knight when she could have captured him. Both oversights, however, are in keeping with her absent-mindedness.

Considering the staggering difficulties involved in dovetailing a chess game with an amusing nonsense fantasy, Carroll does a remarkable job. At no time, for example, does Alice exchange words with a piece that is not then on a square alongside her own. Queens bustle about doing things while their husbands remain relatively fixed and impotent, just as in actual chess games. The White Knight’s eccentricities fit admirably the eccentric way in which Knights move; even the tendency of the Knights to fall off their horses, on one side or the other, suggests the knight’s move, which is two squares in one direction followed by one square to the right or left. In order to assist the reader in integrating the chess moves with the story, each move will be noted in the text at the precise point where it occurs.

The rows of the giant chessboard are separated from each other by brooks. The columns are divided by hedges. Throughout the problem Alice remains on the queen’s file except for her final move when (as queen) she captures the Red Queen to checkmate the dozing Red King. It is amusing to note that it is the Red Queen who persuades Alice to advance along her file to the eighth square. The Queen is protecting herself with this advice, for white has at the outset an easy, though inelegant, checkmate in three moves. The White Knight first checks at KKt.3. If the Red King moves to either Q6 or Q5, white can mate with the Queen at QB3. The only alternative is for the Red King to move to K4. The White Queen then checks on QB5, forcing the Red King to K3. The Queen then mates on Q6. This calls, of course, for an alertness of mind not possessed by either the Knight or Queen.

Attempts have been made to work out a better sequence of chess moves that would both fit the narrative and at the same time conform to all the rules of the game. The most ambitious attempt of this sort that I have come across is to be found in the British Chess Magazine (Vol. 30, May 1910, page 181). Donald M. Liddell presents an entire chess game, starting with the Bird Opening and ending with a mate by Alice when she enters the eighth square on her sixty-sixth move! The choice of opening is appropriate, for no chess expert ever had a more hilarious and eccentric style of play than the Englishman H. E. Bird. Whether Donald Liddell is related to the Liddells I have not been able to determine.

In the Middle Ages and Renaissance chess games were sometimes played with human pieces on enormous fields (see Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel, Book 5, Chapters 24 and 25), but I know of no earlier attempt than Carroll’s to base a fictional narrative on animated chess pieces. It has been done many times since, mostly by science-fiction writers. A recent example is Poul Anderson’s fine short story The Immortal Game (Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1954).

For many reasons chess pieces are singularly appropriate to the second Alice book. They complement the playing cards of the first book, permitting the return of kings and queens; the loss of knaves is more than offset by the acquisition of knights. Alice’s bewildering changes of size in the first book are replaced by equally bewildering changes of place, occasioned of course by the movements of chess pieces over the board. By a happy accident chess also ties in beautifully with the mirror-reflection motif. Not only do rooks, bishops, and knights come in pairs, but the asymmetric arrangement of one player’s pieces at the start of a game (asymmetric because of the positions of king and queen) is an exact mirror reflection of his opponent’s pieces. Finally, the mad quality of the chess game conforms to the mad logic of the looking-glass world.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

(As arranged before commencement of game.)

The above list of dramatis personae appeared in early editions of the book before Carroll replaced it with his 1896 preface. Removing it was wise because it only adds confusion to the chess game. I will cite only one instance. If the Tweedle brothers are the two white rooks, asked Denis Crutch in a lecture on the chess game (published in Jabberwocky, Summer 1972), then who is the white rook on the first row of Carroll’s diagram?

The arrangement of the words in the starting position of a chess game makes it easy to identify each piece and pawn. Observe that the bishops, never mentioned in the story, are here linked to the Sheep, Aged man, Walrus, and Crow, though for no discernible reason.

3. Proofs of the prefatory poem have survived with alterations in Carroll’s handwriting. The changes made for the first edition are listed on page 60 of The Lewis Carroll Handbook (Oxford, 1931) by Sidney Williams and Falconer Madan. In stanza 4, line 4, “A melancholy maiden” replaced “A wilful weary maiden.” In stanza 5, line 1, “Without, the frost, the blinding snow” replaced “Without, the whirling wind and snow,” and the next line, “The storm-wind’s moody madness” replaced “That lash themselves to madness.”

4. Although the majority of Carroll’s child-friends broke off contact with him (or he with them) after their adolescence, the sad presentment of these lines proved groundless. Among the finest tributes ever paid to Carroll are the recollections of him expressed by Alice in her later years.

5. “unwelcome bed”: A reference to the melancholy maiden’s death, with the Christian implication that it will be merely a bedtime slumber, and, as Freudian critics never tire of pointing out, perhaps with subconscious overtones of the marriage bed.

6. The three words in quotation marks are the last three words of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

7. “breath of bale”: breath of sorrow.

8. “pleasance”: The word was “pleasures” in proofs of the book. Carroll cleverly changed it to the archaic “pleasance” so he could introduce Alice Liddell’s middle name.