Down, down, down. She can’t really see too much, down there in the dark. She can see the hem of her dress outspread by the wind of her slow falling, and the dark earthen wall of the vertical tunnel, broken here and there by eruptions of rock. The upper view is better, but it makes Alice dizzy: raising her eyes, and bending back her head, she can see the ocher bottom of a cupboard, and higher up, on the other side of the wall, the shadowy underside of a bookshelf supported by two wooden brackets shaped like elephant heads with uplifted trunks. Still higher up she sees a dim glow passing into upper darkness; the glow is from a lamp concealed by the cupboard. When Alice looks down again, she sees the top of a new object rising into view: a strip of dark wood carved with wooden leaves and wooden bunches of grapes. Beneath the strip of carved wood a glimmering mirror appears. Alice sees, at the top of the glass, her shiny black shoes with their narrow black ankle-straps and the bottoms of her blue stockings. The large mirror in its heavy frame of carved mahogany is shaped like a shield. In the dim glass Alice sees, as she falls, the outspread hem of her yellow dress, and then the bottom of her white pinafore with its blue stripe along the bottom border, and then the two pinafore pockets, each with a blue stripe along the top: one pocket holds a white handkerchief. And as if she is standing at the side of a stairway, watching someone appear at the high landing and start to descend, Alice sees in slow succession the white cotton belt, the puffed shoulder sleeves, the outspread yellow-brown hair, the dark, worried eyes under the dark eyebrows, the tense forehead; and already the shiny black shoes and blue stockings and pinafore pockets have disappeared, the bottom of the mirror is rising higher and higher, all at once the top of her head with its thick combed-back hair vanishes from view: and looking up she sees the bottom of the mirror rising higher and higher, floating away, slowly dissolving in the dark.
If only, Alice thinks to herself suddenly, I could let myself go! If only I could fall! For she feels, in her falling, a tension, as if she is holding herself taut against her fall. But a true fall, Alice thinks to herself, is nothing like this: it’s a swoon, a release, it’s like tugging at a drawer that suddenly comes unstuck. Alice, as she falls, is tense with alertness: she holds herself in readiness, though for what she isn’t certain, she looks around eagerly, she takes in everything with sharpened awareness. Her fall is the opposite of a sleep: she has never been so awake. But if I were truly falling, Alice thinks to herself, then I would let myself go, myself go, myself go.
It occurs to Alice that she’s of course dreaming. She has simply fallen asleep on the bank with her head in her sister’s lap. Soon she will wake up, and the tunnel, the cupboards, the maps, the mirror, the jar of raspberry jam, all will vanish away, leaving only the bank of sun-patched shade, the sunny field, the distant farmyard. But suppose, Alice thinks to herself, the bank too is a dream? If the bank is a dream, then she will wake up somewhere else. But where will that be? Alice tries to think where she might wake up, if she doesn’t wake up with her head in her sister’s lap. Maybe she will wake up in Lapland, or China. But if she wakes up in Lapland, or China, will she still be Alice, or will she be someone else? Alice tries to imagine another Alice, dreaming: the other Alice has short brown hair, likes rice pudding, and has a cat called Arabella. But mightn’t this Alice also be a dream? Who then is the dreamer? Alice imagines a series of Alices, each dreaming the other, stretching back and back, farther and farther, back and back and back and back and back.
On the afternoon of July 4, 1862, a boating party of five was to be seen on the Isis, heading upriver from Oxford to Godstow. It was a cloudless blue day. Heat-haze shimmered over the meadows on both sides of the water. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, mathematical tutor at Christ Church, Oxford, and deacon of the Church of England, having changed from the black clergyman’s clothes he always wore in Oxford to white flannel trousers, black boots, and a white straw boater, sat facing the back of his friend Robinson Duckworth, who rowed stroke to Dodgson’s bow. In the stern, facing Duckworth, sat the three Liddell sisters, daughters of the Dean of Christ Church: Edith, age 8; Alice, age 10; and Lorina, age 13. The girls, seated on cushions, wore white cotton frocks, white socks, black shoes, and hats with brims. In the boat stood a kettle and a large basket full of cakes; on river expeditions Dodgson liked to stop and take tea in the shadow of a haycock. “The story was actually composed and spoken over my shoulder,” Duckworth recalled some years later, “for the benefit of Alice Liddell, who was acting as ‘cox’ of our gig. I remember turning round and saying, ‘Dodgson, is this an extempore romance of yours?’ And he replied: ‘Yes, I’m inventing as we go along.’” Twenty-five years later Dodgson recalled: “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.” He remembered the stillness of that afternoon: the cloudless blue sky, the watery mirror of the river, the tinkle of drops falling from the oars. Mrs. Hargreaves — as Dodgson always referred to Alice, after her marriage — also recalled the day sharply: the blazing summer afternoon, the heat-haze shimmering over the meadows, the shadow cast by the haycocks near Godstow.
Alice is growing thirsty, and as she falls slowly past a cupboard she opens the doors. She sees a bottle labeled GINGER BEER and grasps it as she falls, but the bottom of the bottle catches on the edge of the shelf and the bottle slips from her fingers. Alice covers her ears, widens her eyes, and opens her mouth to scream. But she sees the bottle of ginger beer falling lazily in front of her and not plunging down like a stone in a well. The bottle is tilted like the hand of a clock pointing to ten; at once Alice reaches out and seizes the bottle firmly. When she brings it close to her face she sees with disappointment that there is scarcely a swallow of ginger beer left. She wonders how long the bottle has been sitting on the shelf, for it simply won’t do to drink from an old bottle, or one that has been used by someone else. She will have to speak to the housekeeper, if she ever finds one. How neat and clean the shelves are! The housekeeper must have a fine feather duster. But it must be a very long feather duster, to reach so high. Alice feels that her thoughts are growing confused, and without another moment’s hesitation she raises the bottle to her lips and swallows the ginger beer. “Why,” Alice says to herself in surprise, “this isn’t ginger beer at all! It is nothing but soda water! I shall certainly have to speak to someone about this. Fancy if all labels meant something else, so that you never knew what you were going to eat. Please, Miss, would you care for more buttered toast? And out comes roast duck and dumplings. But that isn’t what I mean, exactly.” Alice is no longer certain what she means, exactly; when she looks up she can see the cupboard vanishing in the dark. As she falls past another cupboard, she manages to place the bottle inside. At the last moment she realizes that the label is still not right, since the bottle is now empty. But, Alice thinks to herself as the cupboard rises into the dark, it isn’t as wrong as it was before.