Alice in London

December 13, 2021 a good book a-roving eating well the eye of the beholder

This is the first of two posts recounting my encounters with
Alice in Wonderland during a ten-day visit to the UK in October.
(A link to the second post may be found at the bottom of this page.)

When you hear the name “Alice,” you immediately know whom we’re talking about, right? Lewis Carroll’s fictional seven-year-old has so embedded herself in our cultural consciousness that her name instantly conjures visions of a young girl in a pinafore dress and a hairband (now known as an Alice band), along with a white rabbit in a waistcoat anxiously consulting his pocket watch, a haughty caterpillar sitting atop a mushroom and smoking a hookah, a crazy tea party with nonsensical conversation, a disappearing cat, a croquet game with hedgehogs and flamingos, and the Queen of Hearts shouting, “Off with her head!”

Alice was certainly an integral part of the literary world of my childhood. What I remember most is a story-record based on Disney’s animated Alice in Wonderland, which my sisters and I listened to over and over when we were growing up. I don’t think we ever actually saw the movie, but the record included all its songs along with just enough narration to keep the story going. I heard it so often that I still remember the words to some of the songs — which I now realize were not faithful settings of Carroll’s texts but Disney-fied adaptations.

When we got older, my sisters and I were given — probably by our Aunt Nancy — a multi-record audio recording of the entire book, narrated by Cyril Ritchard. Alice asks, “What is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?” And my childhood self would have added, “And what use is a recorded book with no songs in it?” Disappointingly, this non-Disney version included no music; even so, I know I listened to the whole story more than once.

All this to say that I, like so many other young people since the first Alice book was published in 1864, grew up in the company of this earnest child and the fantastical creatures she met. So when I learned that London’s Victoria and Albert Museum would be offering a special exhibition about Alice in Wonderland during my visit in October, I immediately bought a ticket. I expected to enjoy the show and learn a bit about Lewis Carroll and his most famous books — which I did. What I didn’t expect was that Alice and her friends would continue to haunt me through the rest of my trip. It all began in London…

Down the rabbit hole

To engage the interest of children, the curators included a series of activities throughout the exhibit. One game was to locate the white rabbit painted on the wall of each room.

The V&A show was called “Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser.” It begins by introducing us to Charles Dodgson — a.k.a. Lewis Carroll — and explaining how Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1864) and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (1871) came to be. You learn about Dodgson’s friendship with the Liddell family — with young Alice as well as her elder sisters — and various experiences that inspired elements of the book, including cats, rabbits, and dodos, tea parties, games of chess and cards.

After laying this foundation, the curators walk us through the many ways in which these stories, full of fantastical nonsense, have been adapted and reinvented, inspiring musicians and artists and filmmakers and choreographers and fashion designers over the century and a half since the books came out. We see clips from film adaptations, hear Alice-inspired songs, and see illustrations in ever-changing styles that reflect evolving perspectives on Lewis Carroll’s creation. Here, for example, are three takes on the White Rabbit from the 1960s — all photographed at the V&A.

Left: Joseph McHugh (psychedelic poster published by East Totem West, San Francisco, 1968). Right: Salvador Dalí (1969, illustration for a limited edition of Alice in Wonderland)    
White Rabbit by British cartoonist Ralph Steadman (1967)

The exhibit also included a couple of video creations, which I especially enjoyed. Here’s one of the grinning Cheshire Cat.

‘I wish you wouldn’t keep appearing and vanishing so suddenly: you make one quite giddy,’ [said Alice].

‘All right,’ said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.

‘Well! I’ve often seen a cat without a grin,’ thought Alice; ‘but a grin without a cat! It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!’

There was lots more in the same vein: example after example of the ways that Lewis Carroll’s masterpieces had made their way into popular culture. The breadth of their influence was breathtaking,  and the show well worth a visit.

LEFT: a Mad Hatter-inspired design from Thom Browne’s 2011 menswear collection. RIGHT: Katrina Lindsay’s “Alice” costume design for the 2015 musical wonder.land.

Time for tea!

After several happy hours of wandering through the exhibit’s many rooms, it was time for “a little smackerel of something,” as Pooh would say. Happily, I had planned ahead. A tea party seemed to me the perfect follow-up to my visit with Alice and her friends, so I had booked a table for the Berkeley Hotel’s “Prêt-à-Portea.” The Berkeley being only a short walk from the museum, I soon found myself entering the elegant Collins Room, where tea is served every afternoon on their signature jonquil and lavender china.

You may recall that the custom of afternoon tea originated with the Duchess of Bedford in the 1830s, who also wished for a little smackerel of something to tide her over during the long wait till dinner, which was served at the fashionable hour of eight. The Duchess formed the habit of ordering a tray of tea to be brought to her rooms at four o’clock, accompanied by bread, butter, and cake. Eventually, she began inviting friends to partake with her, and so the practice spread.

By the 1880s, afternoon tea was a fashionable event where society women would gather in the drawing room to enjoy tea, dainty sandwiches, scones with clotted cream and preserves, pastries and cakes (and lively gossip, too, I would imagine). Long gowns, hats, and gloves were de rigueur at tea parties, as were rigid and sometimes bewildering rules of etiquette. Lewis Carroll parodied these social gatherings in his memorable chapter, “A Mad Tea-Party.”

Mary Blair’s concept art for the tea-party scene in Disney’s animated Alice in Wonderland (photographed at “Alice: Curiouser & Curiouser,” at the V&A)

I loved this piece — a video sculpture? — of the endless table set for tea, with tablecloth and chairs climbing the walls. Over the course of about three minutes, the table is transformed by projected video from grays to blues, to bright colors and patterns, and back to grayscale again. The tablecloth blooms with ripples of color, a mouse (not a dormouse, mind you) scampers across the table, and clocks appear on the plates and spin through the hours.

The overall effect is mesmerizing and effectively evocative of the nonsensical conversation that takes place at the Mad Hatter’s tea party. Here’s a snippet:

“What day of the month is it?” [the Hatter] said, turning to Alice: he had taken his watch out of his pocket, and was looking at it uneasily, shaking it every now and then, and holding it to his ear.

Alice considered a little, and then said “The fourth.”

“Two days wrong!” sighed the Hatter. “I told you butter wouldn’t suit the works!” he added, looking angrily at the March Hare.

“It was the best butter,” the March Hare meekly replied.

A madly-delicious tea-party

Back to the Berkeley: This was my second Prêt-à-Portea and, happily, my experience was quite different from Alice’s! The meal was as scrumptious and imaginative as I remembered. The savories are my favorite part of afternoon tea, and here were finger sandwiches with delectable fillings of cucumber (of course), poached salmon, duck egg, pastrami, chicken, and the like. Plus, the chef had included other savory tidbits — in this case, a smoked-duck profiterole and a tiny salad of cherry tomatoes and melon with elderflower jus. Yum. Oh, and my “tea” began with champagne!

However, it’s the sweets course that gives the Prêt-à-Portea its name. Each season, The Berkeley’s Head Pastry Chef, Mourad Khiat, creates an array of eye-catching pastries inspired by the latest fashion collections. Here are the seven sweets included in my Spring/Summer 2021 Prêt-à-Portea.

Top row, left to right:

  • The chef emphasized the purple tones of Isabel Marant’s collection in this matching cake, which featured lavender glaze and a purple chocolate bow.
  • Jeremy Scott (Moschino) showed his collection using both live models and 30-inch marionettes. Some of the illustrious audience members were also represented by puppets, and this iced biscuit is made to resemble the puppet version of Vogue‘s Anna Wintour.
  • The green-glazed cake topped with a sugar lily pays homage to Valentino’s show, which featured oversized flowers and plants (example at right). Very beautiful and very delicious — as, indeed, were all the pastries in this collection!

Middle row, left to right:

  • Inspired by Versace’s Atlantis theme, the chef created a coconut and mango confection, topped with a molded sugar starfish.
  • Tod’s distinctively-shaped bag was featured throughout his collection, and this neon-green version was especially eye-catching.
  • This last dainty pastry was inspired by LoveShackFancy’s striped pants printed with strawberries and features a glazed strawberry atop colorful layers of sponge.


Bottom row:  Finally came this fabulous “showstopper” cake — definitely my favorite of the lot! For his show, Michael Halpern dressed eight “heroines of the pandemic” in bespoke designs. The chef then turned this outfit upside down and made a financier (a buttery coconut cake) filled with tart cherries and topped with a praline-studded chocolate dome. Notice the black biscuit legs — with high-heeled shoes — kicking out of the top of the cake. Simply fabulous!

In truth, I was so full of sandwiches and scones by the time the pastries arrived that I could eat only one piece. But the tearoom staff are used to this, and they willingly packed up all my pastries to go in their signature purple hexagonal boxes. I toted them safely back to my AirBnB, where they made for a decadent breakfast the next morning.

I thought this was the end of my Alice-inspired adventures, but when I traveled on to Oxford, I met Alice and her friends at every turn. But that, as they say, is a tale for another day!

What magic is it that makes the books we encounter as children
so impress themselves on our hearts that we carry them with us forever?
Here’s to the conjurors — authors, librarians, booksellers, teachers, and parents —
whose gifts of literature help children love and understand the world
throughout their lives. 

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