one of the guinea-pigs, while another was giving it something out of a bottle. They all made a rush at her the moment she appeared, but Alice ran her hardest, and soon found herself in a thick wood.
`LOOK here; here's all this Judy's clothes falling to pieces again.' Such were the pensive words of Mr Thomas Codlin; and they may fitly serve as a motto for a writer who has set himself the unusual task of passing in review a set of puppets that are virtually his own--the stage embodiments of his own dream- children.
Not that the play itself is in any sense mine. The arrangements, in dramatic form, of a story written without the slightest idea that it would be so adapted, was a task that demanded powers denied to me, but possessed in an eminent degree, so far as I can judge, by Mr Saville Clarke. I do not feel myself qualified to criticise his play, as a play; nor shall I venture on any criticism of the players as players.
What is it, then, I have set myself to do? And what possible claim have I to be heard? My answer must be that, as the writer of the two stories thus adapted, and the originator (as I believe, for at least I have not consciously borrowed them) of the `airy nothings' for which Mr Saville Clarke has so skilfully provided, if not a name, at least, a `local habitation', I may without boastfulness claim to have a special knowledge of what it was I meant them to be, and so a special understanding of how far that intention has been realised. And I fancied there might be some readers of The Theatre who would be interested in sharing that knowledge and that understanding.
Many a day had we rowed together on that quiet stream--the three little maidens and I--and many a fairy
tale had been extemporised for their benefit--whether it were at times when the narrator was `i' the vein',
and fancies unsought came crowding thick upon him, or at times when the jaded Muse was goaded into
action, and plodded meekly on, more because she had to say something than that she had something
to say--yet none of these many tales got written down: they lived and died, like summer midges, each in
its own golden afternoon until there came a day when, as it chanced, one of my little listeners petitioned
that the tale might be written out for her. That was many a year ago, but I distinctly remember, now
as I write, how, in a desperate attempt to strike out some new line of fairy-lore, I had sent my heroine
straight down a rabbit-hole, to begin with, without the least idea what was to happen afterwards. And
so, to please a child I loved (I don't remember any other motive), I printed in manuscript, and illustrated
with my own crude designs--designs that rebelled against every law of Anatomy or Art (for I had never
had a lesson in drawing)--the book which I have just had published in facsimile. In writing it out, I added
many fresh ideas, which seemed to grow of themselves upon the original stock; and many more added
themselves when, years afterwards, I wrote it all over again for publication: but (this may interest some
readers of `Alice' to know) every such idea and nearly every word of the dialogue, came of itself. Sometimes
an idea comes at night, when I have had to get up and strike a light to note it down--sometimes when
out on a lonely winter walk, when I have had to `stop, and with half-frozen fingers jot down a few words
which should keep the new-born idea from perishing--but whenever or however it comes, it comes of
itself. I cannot set invention going like a clock, by any voluntary winding up: nor do I believe that any
original writing (and what other writing is worth preserving?) was ever so produced. If you sit down,
unimpassioned and uninspired, and tell yourself to write for so many hours, you will merely produce
(at least I am sure I should merely produce) some of that article which fills, so far as I can judge, two-
thirds of most magazines--most easy to write most weary to read--men call it `padding', and it is to my
mind one of the most detestable things in modern literature. `Alice' and the `Looking-Glass' are made up
almost wholly of bits and scraps, single ideas which came of themselves. Poor they may have been; but
at least they were the best I had to offer: and I can desire no higher praise to be written of me than the
words of a Poet, written of a Poet,--
`He gave the people of his best:
The worst he kept, the best he gave.'