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ALICE from WONDERLAND
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CHAPTER ONE………………………..CHOOSING
THE WHITE RABBIT
Alice spoke to herself in the sharp tone of an impatient parent,
the voice she always used when it was to be clearly understood
that she did not intend to tolerate any tricks played upon her
by her own senses………..
“I have just seen a White Rabbit with pink eyes take a
watch from it`s waistcoat pocket, read the time and say to
itself, `Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!’
All that I have been taught of the natural world would suggest
that this encounter is impossible. It is also true that I have no
memory of rabbits in waistcoats and therefore this is not a
dream or an illusion. I really have just seen a White Rabbit
which talked, had a watch and was wearing a waistcoat.”
Alice looked around her to see if anything else had changed to
account for the rabbit and the answer was, as far as see could
see, nothing. Everything else was as she expected it to be.
She was sitting beside her elder sister, who was still reading as
if the rabbit had never happened, in the shade of the big oak
at the far end of the garden. This was all so well remembered, so real.
All the space was filled with what she knew must be there, there
was no room for a White Rabbit with a watch.
“I know that I saw the rabbit and the waistcoat and it was
real, which means, which means, what?………..
They are BOTH real, the garden without the rabbit is real to my
sister because she is reading her book and therefore could not
see the rabbit….. and the garden with the rabbit is real to me.”
Alice who was not only a truthful but also a practical child
realized immediately that she could choose, her sister`s
`garden’ and the book without pictures or conversations or her
`garden’ which contained a White Rabbit with a watch and a
waistcoat,….. for a moment she hesitated, there was the daisy
chain but like the book, one daisy only led to another and
another circle…….in a moment she was up and running across
the field and was just in time to see the rabbit disappear into a
large hole under the border hedge.
If she got down on to her knees and bent her head to almost
touch them, she could squeeze into the opening and this she
did. “But” she thought, “it is dark ahead and once inside Iwill not be able to turn around and go back.”
The tunnel went straight for a while but got a little narrower.
Alice was beginning to consider the folly of her choice.
However she moved slowly forward, finding some comfort in the
familiar ground beneath her knees, when suddenly the
familiar ground beneath her knees disappeared and she
began to fall, which, as she said later, in the circumstances
with nothing now supporting her, she expected.
At first it was still dark but she knew she was falling.
“How do I know that I am falling?” Alice asked herself.
Slowly it became lighter and Alice could see that the walls of
the well down which she was falling were lined with shelves
filled with all manner of objects.
“I am falling very slowly” she said again to herself.
Alice often spoke to herself in this manner, her reason, she once
explained to a bewildered parent is that, “it is easier than
thinking in two places at once.”
She continued, “Either I am falling very slowly or everything is
falling with me but a little slower than I am. Like trains, you
know,” as if this explained everything.
She looked down but although the shaft was well lit the bottom
was too far away and disappeared into a dot by perspective.
Down, down she fell, “ or was it up?” thought Alice. “Am I
falling up? will it feel differently when I start falling up after I
pass the centre of the earth?”
Down, down, “I am not a bit frightened, I cannot tell how
fast I am falling because things are changing very slowly or
perhaps time is passing very slowly. If I had a watch I could
time how long it has taken me to fall past the jar of Orange
Marmalade and then I could calculate how fast I was falling,
like telephone poles” said Alice as if that explained everything.
Down, down, she began to look about her, at the pictures hung
on pegs. “Hanging down” she thought, “ I am not at the centre
yet, things hang towards the centre of the earth, you know”
Alice was just beginning to enjoy the sensation when the
phrase, `all good things must come to an end’ popped into her
mind and it did, it ended. She landed gently on her right
toe did a sort of pirouette with arms extended and sank into a
graceful curtsy, her hair followed her slowly down to settle
about her shoulders.
Before her was a long passage, lit from the far end and against
the light she saw the small silhouette of the hurrying White
Rabbit. He turned a hidden corner and was gone. Alice was up
and after him, she ran very quickly but when she turned the
corner the Rabbit and the passage were gone.
The passage had opened into a paneled hall and although the
hall was very large the White Rabbit was nowhere to be seen.
The hall was indeed large and well lit to every corner, from a
row of chandeliers hanging down it`s centre. It was this light
that spilled into the passageway from which she had entered.
As Alice had expected there were several doors leading out of
the hall and she ran around to try each in turn, they were all
locked. She could not account for the White Rabbits sudden
disappearance. There was also at the very back of her mind the
question of how she was to get out again. There must be a
hidden door she thought and at the same moment spotted a
curtain in the left hand corner of the far wall and beside it,
which she had also failed to notice in her effort to find the
White Rabbit, was a small table with a glass top.
As she walked across the hall towards the table it got larger
and larger and when she reached it the top was above her
head. ‘How extraordinary to need such a large table but it was
a very large hall,’ thought Alice as she pulled aside the curtain
to reveal a door. The curtain and the door it covered were
much larger than they had appeared to be from the far end
of the hall. Alice clapped her hands. ‘I knew it, there is a
door!’ but alas it was also locked. She bent down and put her
eye to the keyhole, blackness, she could see nothing. She knew
it was not a key that block her view because through the
keyhole Alice could feel a breeze and smell roses. She
straightened, ‘I know it leads to a lovely garden.’ She returned
her eye to the hole and slowly the beautiful garden appeared.
‘There must be a key,’ thought Alice and in the same instant,
‘that is why the table is here, the key is on the table’. She walked
around under the table looking through the clear glass.
“There it is, I can see it through the glass top!” she said aloud
but again alas, the table was much too tall and although she
could get her hand over the edge of the table, she could not
reach the key. She thought of pushing the table over but that
would certainly break the glass. She did try to rock it in the
hope that the key would slide off but the table was much too
heavy, as she knew it would be by it`s size.
How was she to get out of the hall?
For the first time she looked around the room. The room was
large but she had seen larger, the doors were big but she had
seen bigger. She would try the doors again but in her heart she
knew they would be all locked as they were before. As she went
to each door she could not but marvel at their great size when
she stood before them and yet when she had surveyed the room
from her place at the glass table they looked not much larger
than the doors she was used to in her own Victorian home.
“How can this be” she thought aloud.
The voice said, “Because you are in the known world.”
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