Page:Complete Works of Lewis Carroll.djvu/23

Rh : Quel long nez!" dit la Fausse-Tortue d'un ton fâche; "vous êtes vraiment bien bornée!"

Then the Alice books have been employed as scenarios for controversy. A long bibliography of such satires as Alice in Kulturland or Malice in Blunderland would indicate as much. The tale of Alice's adventure down the rabbit-hole and through the looking-glass is still a very source book for withering anecdotes in the House of Commons or malignant cartoons in Punch; and even so sedate an orator as Woodrow Wilson, in speaking once of the ceaseless vigilance and aspiration required of a progressive, compared himself to the Red Queen, who, you will remember, had to run as fast as her legs would carry her if she wanted so much as to stay in the same place.

Plays have been wrought from the stuff of the Alice story. Some of these in London have been ambitious harlequinades. Irene Vanbrugh, for instance, could tell you how Lewis Carroll once watched her play the Knave of Hearts. More often, they have been sleazy, amateurish ventures, an outlet for the exhibitionism of grown-ups, who would then have the effrontery to say they were doing it to please the kiddies.

Even the symphony orchestras know Alice; for the chatter of the flowers in the looking-glass garden, the thunder of Jabberwocky, the hum of the looking-glass insects and the wistfulness of the White Knight have all been caught up in the lovely music of Deems Taylor. The artists have discovered it; and the book has even undergone the sometimes painful experience of being illustrated by Peter Newell.

Indeed, everything has befallen Alice, except the last thing—psychoanalysis. At least the new psychologists have not explored this dream book nor pawed over the gentle, shrinking celibate who wrote it. They have not