Thursday 26 November 2015

More pages from unpublished parts of Alice in Wonderland

Another sheaf of notes has been found under the floorboards of Lewis Carroll's room in Oxford.

Alice heard some singing and chanting. She turned to the Blue Queen and said that she wanted to find out more about it.
'Excellent,' said the Gibblet, 'excellent'.
The Blue Queen took Alice to a darkened room and showed her some magic lantern slides. Alice looked at them with amazement. She saw people standing with their eyes shut, she saw people kneeling. Sometimes it was just men, sometimes it was men and women together.
'That's very interesting,' said Alice.,' and are there people who don't do any of this sort of thing?'


The Blue Queen and the Gibblet went very quiet.

'Are there?' said Alice.

'Children like you,' said the Blue Queen, 'need to prepare for life. That's why we showed you lantern slides of different kinds of people.'
'Yes, I know,' said Alice, 'but are there even more different kinds of people who don't do any of this sort of thing? If I knew about them, wouldn't that help me prepare for life too?'
'Don't answer her,' screamed the Gibblet, 'she doesn't need to know. I'm not even sure it is knowledge, anyway.'

The Gibblet opened a huge book called 'The Big Book of Knowledge'.
'No, it's not in here,' he said exultantly, and closed the book very quickly. 'If it's not in the 'Big Book of Knowledge', it's not knowledge,' he added.
'Who wrote this 'Big Book of Knowledge'? asked Alice.
'The Borogove,' said the Blue Queen, her voice trembling with emotion. She shut her eyes.
'The Borogove, the Borogove,' sang the Gibblet in a high pitched lyrical voice as he kneeled down on the floor.
'Have you got the Borogove on one of these lantern slides?' asked Alice.
'One day...one day...' said the Blue Queen in a mysterious way.

Alice walked on.