I love how the Lobster is standing in ballet's first position, such attention to detail by Tenniel. The annotation points out that little girls delight in making this observation, where they can recognize something they've done in real life in the pages of a book. Maybe even twenty-six year old ladies were amused doing so...
"'Tis the voice of the Lobster; I heard him declare You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair.' As a duck with its eyelids, so he with his nose Trims his belt and his buttons, and turns out his toes. When the sands are all dry, he is as gay as a lark, And will talk in contemptuous tones of the Shark: But when the tide rises and sharks are around, His voice has a timid and tremulous sound."
Another scene of madness and merriment is when the Duchess puts too much pepper in her soup. I declare one can never have too much freshly ground pepper in one's soup! The annotation reads, "It was the custom in Victorian England to put excessive pepper in their soup to mask the taste of slightly spoiled meat and vegetables....Carrol provided these lines to be spoken in the stage production of Alice:
There's nothing like pepper says I.... Not half enough yet! Nor a quarter enough. Boil it so easily, Mix it so greasily, Stir it so sneezily, One! Two!! Three!!!"
A wonderful incantation worth remembering.
Lastly, Aldous Huxley chimes in on the meaninglessness of the Mad Hatter's question, "Why is a raven like a writing-desk?" His answer given in the notes is "Because there's a b in both and there an n in neither...Huxley defends the view that such metaphysical questions as: Does God exist? Do we have free will? are as meaningless as the Mad Hatter's question -- 'nonsensical riddles, questions not about reality but about words.'"
King: Boris
Queen: me
Malice: Alli
Hatter: Pat
Beautiful soup, that.
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