England in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

[iad58]

Forms of address:

1. [I] Please, Ma'am, is this New Zealand or Australia?
   
2. [II] If you please, sir—
   
3. [V] I hardly know, sir
   
4. [V] I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, sir
   
5. [V] I'm afraid I am, sir
   
6. [V] — Well, I should like to be a little larger, sir, if you wouldn't mind, — said Alice:
   
7. [IX] Thank you, sir, for your interesting story
   
8. [IV] Miss Alice! Come here directly
   
9. [VIII] Why the fact is, you see, Miss
   
10. [VIII] So you see, Miss
    

Measures:

1. [I] However, on the second time round, she came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before, and behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high:
   
2. [I] And so it was indeed: she was now only ten inches high, and her face brightened up at the thought that she was now the right size for going though the little door into that lovely garden.
   
3. [II] until there was a large pool all round her, about four inches deep and reaching half down the hall.
   
4. [V] — three inches is such a wretched height to be.
   
5. [V] So she began nibbling at the righthand bit again, and did not venture to go near the house till she had brought herself down to nine inches high.
   
6. [II] Just then her head struck against the roof of the hall: in fact she was now more than nine feet high
   
7. [II] She got up and went to the table to measure herself by it, and found that, as nearly as she could guess, she was now about two feet high
   
8. [II] However, she soon made out that she was in the pool of tears which she had wept when she was nine feet high.
   
9. [V] As she said this, she came suddenly upon an open place, with a little house in it about four feet high.
   
10. [VI] It was so large a house, that she did not like to go nearer till she had nibbled some more of the lefthand bit of mushroom, and raised herself to about two feet high:
    
11. [VII] Then she set to work nibbling at the mushroom (she had kept a piece of it in her pocked) till she was about a foot high: then she walked down the little passage:
    
12. [VI] And she began thinking over other children she knew, […] when she was a little startled by seeing the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of a tree a few yards off.
    
13. [I] — I wonder how many miles I've fallen by this time? — she said aloud.
    
14. [I] — I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth. Let me see: that would be four thousand miles down, I think
    
15. [XII] — Rule Forty-two. All persons more than a mile high to leave the court.
    
16. [II] But she went on all the same, shedding gallons of tears,
    

Money:

1. [II] And it'll fetch things when you throw them, and it'll sit up and beg for its dinner, and all sorts of things — I can't remember half of them — and it belongs to a farmer, you know, and he says it's so useful, it's worth a hundred pounds!
   
2. [V] By the use of this ointment — one shilling the box
   
3. [XI] — Write that down, — the King said to the jury, and the jury eagerly wrote down all three dates on their slates, and then added them up, and reduced the answer to shillings and pence.
   
4. [XII] — If any one of them can explain it, — said Alice, (she had grown so large in the last few minutes that she wasn't a bit afraid of interrupting him,) — I'll give him sixpence.

Language:

1. [II] — cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English);
   
2. [II] — Perhaps it doesn't understand English, — thought Alice;
   
3. [III] — Speak English! — said the Eaglet.
   
4. [VII] Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. The Hatter's remark seemed to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English.
   

Miscellanea:

1. [II] (Alice had been to the seaside once in her life, and had come to the general conclusion, that wherever you go to on the English coast you find a number of bathing machines in the sea, some children digging in the sand with wooden spades, then a row of lodging houses, and behind them a railway station.)
   
2. [II] — I daresay it's a French mouse, come over with William the Conqueror.
   
3. [III] the position in which you usually see Shakespeare, in the pictures of him
   
4. [X] The further off from England the nearer is to France

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

"I'm afraid" must be bold.
very British one:)

[iad.livejournal.com]

Yes, and also ‘you know’ every time it appears.

[tar-ba-gan.livejournal.com]

There is a lot of "Frenchness" in this tale, I believe one of the most popular mascots of it, "the Dodo", also a known nickname for Rev. Dodgeson, might come from a line in a French lullaby which supposedly was widely known in the UK at that time!

Since Dodgeson left the UK only once in his life it is not surprising to note his geography of "foreign world" is limited to France. Or am I mistaken here?

[iad.livejournal.com]

Shouldn't one expect his foreign geography to be limited to Russia then? Granted that in the same year (1867) he was learning French in the hope of visiting the Paris exhibition, but it isn't known how far he got (see Roger Lancelyn Green's notes).

On the other hand, look at the place that France occupies both in geography and in the history of England. Where else could one begin getting acquainted with the foreign world? Even in this century French is much more widely known in the UK than German (D48T here; I'd expected this to have been reversed long ago).

As for ‘Dodo’, that is ‘Do-do-Dodgson’, isn't it?

[omia.livejournal.com]

Интересно, что в рукописном варианте "Алисы", хранящемся в British Library, маленькая дверь за шторой имеет высоту 18, а не 15 инчей! :)
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/alice/accessible/images/page6full.jpg

[iad.livejournal.com]

Да, действительно. В логику повествования, правда, оба размера вписываются одинаково хорошо.