Part 22 (1/2)
CHAPTER XIII.
”ALICE” ON THE STAGE AND OFF.
When the question of dramatizing the ”Alice” books was placed before the author, by Mr. Savile Clarke, who was to undertake the work, he consented gladly enough. It was to be an operetta of two acts; the libretto, or story part, by Mr. Clarke himself, the music by Mr. Walter Slaughter, and the only condition Lewis Carroll made was that nothing should be written or acted which should in any way be unsuitable for children.
Of course, everything was done under his eye, and he wrote an extra song for the ghosts of the _Oysters_, who had been eaten by the _Walrus_ and the _Carpenter_; he also finished that poetic gem, ”'Tis the Voice of the Lobster.”
”'Tis the voice of the Lobster,” I heard him declare, ”You 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 b.u.t.tons, and turns out his toes.
When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a lark And talks with the utmost contempt of a shark; But when the tide rises and sharks are around, His words have a timid and tremulous sound.
I pa.s.sed by his garden, and marked with one eye How the Owl and the Panther were sharing a pie: The Panther took pie, crust and gravy and meat, While the Owl had the dish, for his share of the treat.
When the pie was all finished, the Owl--as a boon Was kindly permitted to pocket the spoon; While the Panther received knife and fork with a growl, And concluded the banquet----
That is how the poem originally ended, but musically that would never do, so the last two lines were altered in this fas.h.i.+on:
”But the Panther obtained both the fork and the knife, So when _he_ lost his temper, the Owl lost his life,”
and a rousing little song it made.
The play was produced at the Prince of Wales' Theater, during Christmas week of 1886, where it was a great success. Lewis Carroll himself specially praises the Wonderland act, notably the Mad Tea Party. The _Hatter_ was finely done by Mr. Sidney Harcourt, the _Dormouse_ by little Dorothy d'Alcourt, aged six-and-a-half, and Phoebe Carlo, he tells us, was a ”splendid _Alice_.”
He went many times to see his ”dream child” on the stage, and was always very kind to the little actresses, whose dainty work made _his_ work such a success. Phoebe Carlo became a very privileged young person and enjoyed many treats of his giving, to say nothing of a personal gift of a copy of ”Alice” from the delighted author.
After the London season, the play was taken through the English provinces and was much appreciated wherever it went. On one occasion a company gave a week's performance at Brighton, and Lewis Carroll happening to be there one afternoon, came across three of the small actresses down on the beach and spent several hours with them. ”Happy, healthy little girls” he called them, and no doubt that beautiful afternoon they had the time of their lives.
These children, he found--and he had made the subject quite a study--had been acting every day in the week, and twice on the day before he met them, and yet were energetic enough to get up each morning at seven for a sea bath, to run races on the pier, and to be quite ready for another performance that night.
On December 26, 1888, there was an elaborate revival of ”Alice” at the Royal Globe Theater. In the _London Times_ the next morning appeared this notice:
”'Alice in Wonderland,' having failed to exhaust its popularity at the Prince of Wales' Theater, has been revived at the Globe for a series of matines during the holiday season. Many members of the old cast remain in the bill, but a new 'Alice' is presented in Miss Isa Bowman, who is not only a wonderful actress for her years, but also a nimble dancer.
”In its new surroundings the fantastic scenes of the story--so cleverly transferred from the book to the stage by Mr. Savile Clarke--lose nothing of their original brightness and humor. 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Gla.s.s' have the rare charm of freshness for children and for their elders, and the many strange personages concerned--the White Rabbit, the Caterpillar, the Ches.h.i.+re Cat, the Hatter, the Dormouse, the Gryphon, the Mock Turtle, the Red and White Kings and Queens, the Walrus, Humpty-Dumpty, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and all the rest of them--being seen at home, so to speak, and not on parade as in an ordinary pantomime.
Even the dreaded Jabberwock pays an unconventional visit to the company from the 'flies,' and his appearance will not be readily forgotten. As before, Mr. Walter Slaughter's music is an agreeable element to the performance....”
The programme of this performance certainly spreads a feast before the children's eyes. First of all, think of a forest in autumn! (They had to change the season a little to get the bright colors of red and yellow.) Here it is that _Alice_ falls asleep and the Elves sing to her. Then there is the awakening in Wonderland--such a Wonderland as few children dreamed of. And then all our favorites appear and do just the things we always thought they would do if they had the chance. The _Ches.h.i.+re Cat_ grins and vanishes, and then the grin appears without the cat, and then the cat grows behind the grin, and everything is so impossible and wonderful that one s.h.i.+vers with delight. There is a good old fairy tale that every child knows; it is called ”Oh! if I could but s.h.i.+ver!” and everyone who really enjoys a fairy tale understands the feeling--the delight of s.h.i.+vering--to see the Jabberwock pa.s.s before you in all his terrifying, delicious ugliness, flapping his huge wings, rolling his bulging eyes, and opening and shutting those dreadful jaws of his; and yet to know he isn't ”_really, real_” any more than Sir John Tenniel's picture of him in the dear old ”Alice” book at home, that you can actually go with _Alice_ straight into Wonderland and back again, safe and sound, and really see what happened just as she did, and actually squeeze through into Looking-Gla.s.s Land, all made so delightfully possible by clever scenery and acting.
A more charming, dainty little ”Alice” never danced herself into the heart of anyone as Isa Bowman did into the heart of Lewis Carroll. She came into his life when all of his best-beloved children had pa.s.sed forever beyond the portals of childhood, never to return; loved more in these later days for the memory of what they had been. But here was a child who aroused all the a.s.sociations of earlier years, who had made ”Alice” real again, whose clever acting gave just that dreamlike, elfin touch which the real Alice of Long Ago had suggested; a sweet-natured, lovable, most attractive child, the child perhaps who won his deepest affections because she came to him when the others had vanished, and clung to him in the twilight.
There must have been several little Bowmans. We know of four little sisters--Isa, Emsie, Nellie, and Maggie, and Master Charles Bowman was the _Ches.h.i.+re Cat_ in the revival of ”Alice in Wonderland,” and to all of these--we are considering the girls of course, the boy never counted--Lewis Carroll showed his sweetest, most lovable side. They called him ”Uncle,” and a more devoted uncle they could not possibly have found.
As for Isa herself, there was a special niche all her own; she was, as he often told her, ”_his_ little girl,” and in a loving memoir of him she has given to the world of children a beautiful picture of what he really was.
There was something in the grip of his firm white hands, in his glance so deeply sympathetic, so tender and kind, that always stirred the little girl just as her sharp eyes noted a certain peculiarity in his walk. His stammer also impressed her, for it generally came when he least expected it, and though he tried all his life to cure it, he never succeeded.
His shyness, too, was very noticeable, not so much with children, except just at first until he knew them well, but with grown people he was, as she put it, ”almost old-maidishly prim in his manner.” This shyness was shown in many ways, particularly in a morbid horror of having his picture taken. As fond as he was of taking other people, he dreaded seeing his own photograph among strangers, and once when Isa herself made a caricature of him, he suddenly got up from his seat, took the drawing out of her hands, tore it in small pieces and threw it into the fire without a word; then he caught the frightened little girl in his strong arms and kissed her pa.s.sionately, his face, at first so flushed and angry, softening with a tender light.
Many and many a happy time she spent with him at Oxford. He found rooms for her just outside the college gates, and a nice comfortable dame to take charge of her. The long happy days were spent in his rooms, and every night at nine she was taken over to the little house in St. Aldates (”St.
Olds”) and put to bed by the landlady.