“It began with the tea.”
TRIAL OF THE HEART Alice’s last stop in Wonderland is in the King of Hearts’ court of justice. A trial is about to begin as the Gryphon leads Alice into the courtroom. It concerns a crime committed by the Knave of Hearts in a traditional nursery rhyme entitled “The Queen of Hearts.” This rhyme first appeared in print in the European Magazine in 1782. However, Carroll was probably most familiar with the wonderfully illustrated and annotated version published by Charles Lamb in 1805 as The King and Queen of Hearts: showing how notably the Queen made her Tarts, and how Scurvily the Knave stole them away, with other particulars belonging thereunto.
In Wonderland, the trial over this same alleged crime of stealing some tarts is held in the royal court, where “the King and Queen of Hearts were seated on their throne” and “the judge … was the King.” The royal couple’s herald, the White Rabbit, appears to be in charge of courtroom protocol and keeps a close eye on events while Alice, jurors and witnesses are brought into the courtroom.
The King and Queen of Hearts were seated on their throne when they arrived, with a great crowd assembled about them—all sorts of little birds and beasts, as well as the whole pack of cards: the Knave was standing before them, in chains, with a soldier on each side to guard him; and near the King was the White Rabbit, with a trumpet in one hand, and a scroll of parchment in the other. In the very middle of the court was a table, with a large dish of tarts upon it: they looked so good, that it made Alice quite hungry to look at them—“I wish they’d get the trial done,” she thought, “and hand round the refreshments!” But there seemed to be no chance of this, so she began looking at everything about her, to pass away the time.
In classical Greek mythology and literature, this scene is reminiscent of the tableau portrayed in Greco-Roman art of the King and Queen of Hades seated on their thrones. In this underground court of justice, the King is the judge, and he and his Queen are attended by their herald, the god Hermes (or Roman Mercury), who directs the proceedings as souls are brought before the royal couple. A similar subterranean court of justice was portrayed in Egyptian mythology and in the underworld kingdoms of many other civilizations. Alice, then, is witnessing a confusing and comical version of a trial of the soul.
Soul on trial: Hermes in the court of the King and Queen of Hades.
In Greek mythology, a number of tales record a descent into the underworld culminating in a pleading for the return of a lost soul before the throne of Hades as King and judge of the dead. The theme of love conquering death was a popular one, especially when focused on romantic love, as in the legends of Eros and Psyche, Aphrodite and Adonis, and Orpheus and Eurydice.
But Hades has also released souls for the sake of other forms of love: Dionysus won the release of his mother, Semele; Demeter won the (conditional) release of her sister-daughter, Persephone. In Wonderland’s underground court, Alice recognizes the judge “because of his great wig.” Then we are informed: “The judge, by the way, was the King, and he wore his crown over the wig … he did not look at all comfortable, and it was certainly not becoming.”
Love conquers death: Orpheus in the Underworld Reclaiming Eurydice, by Jean Restout, 1763.
The Chapter House: Where Dean Liddell was a towering presence.
The Oxford equivalent of Wonderland’s court of justice was the college’s Chapter House, where all decisions concerning Christ Church’s business were resolved. Like the King of Hearts, Dean Henry Liddell presided over the Chapter House with an air of authority that assumed the dual role of judge and king. Certainly, this was how the dean’s critics viewed his manner of running the affairs of the college. As the German philologist and Orientalist Friedrich Max Müller observed, “In the University there were those who could not bear his towering high above them as he did, not in stature only, but in character and position.”
Door to Chapter House: Recognisable in Looking-Glass.
At the same time Carroll was adding the courtroom chapters to his manuscript for Wonderland, he wrote a squib titled “The Majesty of Justice,” which concludes:
That makes the silliest men
Seem wise; the meanest men look big:
The Majesty of Justice, then,
Is seated in the WIG.
The “WIG” punningly implies that this court is unjust because the judge is a Whig (that is, Liberal), just like Dean Liddell of Christ Church.
The real-life identity of the Knave of Hearts—whose trial at the climax of Wonderland insults Alice’s natural sense of justice so badly that she violently rejects the laws of Wonderland—has always been a puzzle.
Flirtatious Knave: As drawn by Carroll himself.
It does appear that the Knave was something of a flirt. Carroll portrays his crime both as the theft of baked goods and as the stealing of the affections of a young girl: tart in Victorian times meaning sweetheart or young maiden (and not, as in later usage, a prostitute). In the original Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, a drawing by Carroll shows the Knave of Hearts kissing one of the maids. So, despite the Knave’s protestations, one must suppose he was guilty of at least one form of theft.
In the original manuscript, completed in the first months of 1863, the trial is over almost before it begins. The White Rabbit reads the offence in the form of the nursery rhyme about the Knave of Hearts stealing the tarts. Although the guilt of the Knave is assumed, the King insists on proper procedure, and an argument ensues. It ends before the bottom of the page.
In the final version, published two years later, the one page of the trial has grown to over twelve. There are the testimonies of several witnesses, an entire chapter entitled “Alice’s Evidence,” and a number of increasingly outrageous and unjust rulings before Alice shouts “Stuff and nonsense!”—and everything collapses like a house of cards.
Why such outrage? Why does Carroll have Alice involved in such a protracted trial? What injustice has really been committed? And what happened in the two years between the writing of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground in early 1863 and the publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1865?
The weighing of the heart: The scene most often depicted in Egyptian art.
The trial of the Knave of Hearts is a curious thing, for Alice appears to be the only defender of the Knave and finally causes the whole court to collapse. A mythological precursor to the Knave of Hearts would most likely be Triptolemus, the young hero who received the secret of agriculture from Persephone.
Once rescued by Persephone from the underworld, Triptolemus ascends to the world of the living as the god of sowing and planting. As the only figure in the Under Ground version of the fairy tale portrayed with even vaguely romantic intentions—kissing one of the tarts (maidens)—the Knave might best fit the role of the god of sowing and planting.
However, it is not until the real-life Oxford identity of the Knave of Hearts is revealed that the nature—and savagery—of the intended satire becomes vividly clear.
For the Knave is the author, LEWIS CARROLL himself, and the trial is based on a trial of the heart that left Carroll feeling unjustly convicted. It was a pivotal moment in Carroll’s life, and one about which he became forever embittered.
Carroll: Felt unjustly convicted.
For all his sincere intent to give Alice—and all children—(in his own words) “a gift of love” in this beautiful, intricately wrought fairy tale, the book had other agendas. One of them made it a poisoned apple offered up to a few unsuspecting adults. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is written on many levels, and the darkest of these is the waging of a vengeful feud with Alice Liddell’s parents—the real-life King and Queen of Hearts.
In every account of Charles Dodgson’s life, biographers are left to puzzle over the sudden and complete breakdown of the relationship between Dodgson and the Liddell family. From 1857 to 1863, Dodgson spent much of his free time at Christ Church, away from academic work and in the company of the Liddell children. Except for the long summer holiday break, a week seldom went by without Carroll enjoying walks, picnics or boat rides with them.
On June 25, 1863—almost a year after the boat trip that inspired the book—Dodgson and a party of ten, including the dean and Mrs. Liddell with their daughters and several others, went on a cheerful boating expedition to Nuneham. The adults returned home separately, while Dodgson, unchaperoned, returned the three girls himself by train and carriage. He marked the event in his diary as one of his most joyful days with the children. It was to prove to be the last.
Two days later, on Saturday, June 27, Dodgson begins his diary: “Wrote to Mrs. Liddell urging her either”—the word either is crossed out—“to send the children to be photographed.” The children were not sent. Instead, Dodgson was summoned to the Deanery.
The entries for the rest of that day and all of Sunday and Monday are missing: they were cut out. By the next entry, Tuesday, June 30, it was all over. Dodgson tersely reports that the Liddells had left Oxford for their summer home in Wales: “The Deanery party left for Llandudno.” Pointedly, there are no farewell notes or fond goodbyes as there had been on other occasions.
After noting the children’s movements almost daily so far, Dodgson mentions the Liddells only twice over the rest of the year. In one of those entries, on December 5, he reports seeing them at a distance: “But I held aloof from them, as I have done all this term.” Although he had finished writing Alice’s Adventures Under Ground before this incident in June, Dodgson did not complete illustrating (with his own drawings) and binding the handwritten manuscript until November, when it was sent as a gift to the Deanery.
No note of thanks or acknowledgement was forthcoming from the Deanery, neither for the single handmade copy of the story nor for the first published copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland sent two years later, for Christmas 1865. The breakdown in relations was permanent. Dodgson had been exiled. Except for occasional—and usually painful—formal encounters, Charles Dodgson was banned from the Deanery and the company of Alice and her sisters.
What is known is that Dodgson was summoned before Alice’s parents just after the June 25 outing. In that encounter with the dean and Mrs. Liddell, a decision was made that it would be inappropriate for the Oxford mathematics don to have any further sustained contact with Alice or her sisters.
Obviously, something occurred on or after the outing that provoked this sudden break—something sufficiently dramatic for one of Dodgson’s nieces to find it necessary to cut several pages from his normally emotionally reticent diaries. There have been many speculations on this issue. Although a number of theories abound, the most common hold that something inappropriate occurred during the journey home, or that at the Deanery meeting, Dodgson made a proposal of engagement to Alice that was rudely rebuffed.
Enough is known about Dodgson’s temperament to understand that—true or not—he would have reacted angrily to any suggestion of improper conduct. As demonstrated by his many feuds, Dodgson was incapable of letting any slight on his moral integrity or personal honour pass without taking grave offence.
EGYPTIAN HOUSE OF CARDS The theosophists of the fourth century AD in Alexandria were strongly influenced by the Egyptian Mysteries. These Egyptian rites were revived by the Freemasons, who wished to trace their origins to history’s first architect, Imhotep, the builder of the Step Pyramid. Consequently, Egyptian motifs—especially those relating to the gods Isis and Osiris—are to be found embedded by Carroll in Wonderland from the opening prelude poem right through to its culmination with the trial of the Knave of Hearts.
It is also noteworthy that Carroll was not only familiar with the British Museum Egyptian collection, but was a frequent visitor to the famous Egyptian Hall and Museum in Piccadilly, as were many artists and writers of the time. Besides displaying Egyptian antiquities, this establishment had exhibition halls for work by contemporary artists. It also became a meeting place for those—like Carroll—who were fascinated with the occult.
Isis, of course, is also the name of the branch of the Thames River upon which Lewis Carroll took the real-life Alice and her sisters on that fateful boating expedition. And just as Isis descends into the Egyptian underworld by way of a boat on the river Nile, so in the prelude poem Alice and her sisters descend into Wonderland by way of a boat on the River Isis.
In the Egyptian underworld, called the Duat, everything is a reverse of the living world. This matches Alice’s anticipation as she falls down her rabbit-hole: she thinks she may end up in the “Antipathies” (instead of the antipodes). She is not entirely wrong, for everything and everybody she encounters is contrary to her expectations.
Many other aspects of Wonderland would be strangely familiar to the ancient Egyptians. Wonderland’s underground hall with its many doors resembles the many doors to Egyptian underground halls where—like Alice—the wandering soul is interrogated before it may pass on toward its final trial in the Hall of Justice. The Egyptian doorkeepers with the heads of animals and the bodies of humans are eerily similar to the doorkeepers of the Duchess’s kitchen: the Frog-headed and the Fish-headed Footmen. Then, too, there is the mysterious Cheshire Cat, the riddling Sphinx of Wonderland.
Also, closer examination of the Pool of Tears episode reveals that it is more than a joke about a child drowning in her own tears. As discussed earlier, “a great girl like you” makes perfect sense if we understand that Alice has taken on the identity of the great goddess Isis, whose tears are the source of the Nile. This convincingly explains how she could be carried away in the flood of her own tears and the rather sinister rhyme about a crocodile in “the waters of the Nile.”
The Wonderland trial of the Knave of Hearts is strongly imitative of the trial of the soul and the weighing of the heart as famously portrayed in the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Pyramid Texts.
In the Wonderland underworld, the trial takes place in the court of the royal house of “the King and Queen of Hearts … seated on their throne.” In this court the judge “was the King,” and the royal herald and scribe directs proceedings and stands with “a scroll of parchment” in one hand. The trial is witnessed by a jury of animals and birds, and set before all is “a table, with a large dish of tarts upon it.”
In the Egyptian underworld, the trial took place in the court of the royal House of Hearts, where the King and Queen of the Duat were seated on their thrones. In this court the judge was King Osiris, and the royal herald and scribe directed proceedings and stood with a scroll of parchment in one hand. The trial was witnessed by a jury of animal-headed and bird-headed gods. And set before all was a table with the cakes of immortality upon it—the promised reward at the end of the trial.
The procedure of the trial is clear in this “weighing of the heart” passage taken from the Book of the Dead: “May my heart be with me in the House of Hearts. May my heart be with me, and may it rest there, or I shall not eat of the cakes of Osiris … nor shall I be able to sail down the Nile with thee.”
The Weighing of the Heart is the most famous and most commonly reproduced scene in all Egyptian art. This was where the human soul, or spirit double of the deceased person (or one’s “immaterial essence,” as Carroll phrased it), descended into the underworld to be judged. There the heart was placed on the great scales of justice, where it was weighed against the feather of truth.
Alice’s adventures culminate in the court of the house of hearts, where the judge-King of Hearts sits in judgment of the Knave of Hearts. Similarly, Isis’s adventures culminate in this court wherein the judge-king Osiris sits in judgment of the human heart. As we’ll see in the next chapter, it is significant that the judge-King of Hearts puts great stock in his all-important Rule Forty-two (which Alice rejects), because for the judge-king Osiris there were forty-two crimes that must be denied by each soul before judgment was delivered.
These forty-two so-called negative confessions are similar to the ten Hebrew and Christian Commandments. These declarations were personified by the forty-two Egyptian gods in the Duat, and were matched by the forty-two cards—Carroll carefully excluded the ten numbered spade gardeners—in Wonderland’s procession.
Three of these declarations seem to relate directly to the trial of the Knave of Hearts who stole the tarts:
“I have not stolen the cakes of the gods.
“I have not stolen the cakes of the Child.
“I have not stolen the cakes offered to the Soul.”
If the soul was innocent of all forty-two crimes, the weighed heart would be as light as the feather of truth, and the soul would be rewarded and nourished with the cakes of immortality and would be—as the theosophists claimed—“reborn to eternity.” However, if the heart was heavy with guilt for violating any of the forty-two rules, then oblivion was the person’s fate and their heart was fed to the terrible monster Ammut, the Devourer of Hearts who stood by the scales of justice. On the theosophical level, it might reasonably be argued that the judge-King of Hearts is judge-king Osiris, and the heartless Queen of Hearts is Ammut, the monster of retribution.
Meanwhile, Alice, who has been accused of growing “a mile high,” is once again that “great girl”—the goddess Isis—who stands as witness to Osiris’s judgment. But, as the great goddess, she now is capable of overruling the judge-King and defends the Knave of Hearts. And in this Egyptian tableau, the Knave of Hearts is Horus. For just as the Knave of Hearts is the son of the King of Hearts, so the young god Horus is the son of the king Osiris.
Because Alice rejects Rule Forty-two, she also forfeits her right to the cakes of immortality and will have to return to the everyday world of her ordinary life. After all, she is a dreamer passing through this underworld, not yet ready for the real test awaiting her in the afterlife.
As seen by the Knave: Alice, Lorina and Edith Liddell.
