Nancy Schumann

Nancy Schumann

Alice at Leicester Square

I met her in this ice-cream place at Leicester Square. Well, where else would you expect to meet Alice if not in a Häagen Daaz café? I recognized her at once, or rather she met my expectations of Alice in Wonderland. Older than in the book, obviously, but apart from that—Alice. At first, I had no intention to talk to her. I just dwelled on the thought that I had met, that is seen, the real Alice and kept watching her.

Suddenly, she approached me. Holding a cigarette, she asked me for a lighter. Who would have guessed that Alice in Wonderland does actually smoke in a London café? I had a lighter. That is the reason why we came to talk. She offered me a cigarette but I don’t smoke. So Alice thought it funny that I carry around a lighter anyway. The answer is easy: When I was about 16 it happened several times that guys asked for a lighter and, not smoking myself, I never had one. So, as that seemed to be the usual chat-up-line at that time, I put one in every handbag and never took them out again. Naturally, I was never asked again till that very day.

Then I found myself sitting at a table with Alice. After a while, I just had to ask whether she was the Alice or not. She smiled and said she was Alice in Wonderland, obviously quite flattered I had recognized her. “Guess what? I have a course on Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass this term,” I said. “We’re just through discussing the first book.”

“I wouldn’t have thought that after such a long time people still read the book,” replied Alice. “Actually, come to think of it, I’d never have thought it would make it to university either. Now, what do you discuss about the book?”

So I told her our ideas on the language, space, time, and identity. She listened to me smiling. Alice said that the height transformation in the first story is really a reflection of the changing self-definition due to the rise of the empire in Victorianism, though she hadn’t used those words at the time. On the one hand, there was the island of Britain, which is not the biggest country ever. On the other hand, the empire was massive—one tried to understand that India was British; a part of the country. Nowadays, it is hard enough for non-Brits to comprehend why Northern Ireland is part of the UK when they listen to the news.

Then we spoke about the language part. She made me see that language is utterly confusing to a child but not half as complicated as it is to a student of linguistics. Actually, when I was little, questions such as why bread is called bread, not anything else, came to me quite naturally. Now I think that question silly, don’t try to answer it anymore and, if I have to do so in lectures, tend to find these extremely hard to follow. This all looks very different in the eyes of a child. Alice told me with great enthusiasm how she had raised the questions,

choosing words according to which sounded best in the context, and how Carroll had just written that down. Well, he added some more, as he could perfectly understand a child’s mind and combine it with grown-up humor. As she told me all this, I came to think that she seemed like a child. The way she said it showed that she still had the same attitude to language that I myself had had when I was seven.

So I began to think that maybe Alice hadn’t actually grown up, but only grown to adult height. She looked at me as if she could see my thoughts. She smiled with her eyes and it was like she agreed. An hour passed and we said goodbye, both heading off. I understood that the trick to understand seemingly complicated things sometimes lies in looking through the eyes of a child. Alice had not grown up and could, therefore, still see the magic of Wonderland. It didn’t take more than a white rabbit or a simple mirror to enter it. I saw her vanishing in the crowd and suddenly asked myself whether she was like a fairy, and one could only see her if one believed in her.