Lewis Carroll, Art and Modern Music

Carroll & Alice Liddell’ a postcard by Brian Partridge

Over the decades, a number of rock songs have been identified as being inspired- more or less directly- by Lewis Carroll‘s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Amongst these- more or less remotely- are ‘Flaming’ by Pink Floyd (references to having been shrunk in size) and The Beatles‘ ‘I Am the Walrus,’ the title at least having a nominal link to the poem ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter.’ Rather more obvious a descendant is ‘White Rabbit,’ a song by Grace Slick which was included on Jefferson Airplane’s 1967 album, Surrealistic Pillow.  Slick describes taking pills, a smoking caterpillar, and swallowing “some kind of mushroom,” with the result that “logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead;” “Go ask Alice when she’s ten feet tall” we are advised. These words, in their turn, were taken as the title of a painting by Mary Heilmann in 2006, with its tell-tale chessboard squares.

Heilmann, Go Ask Alice

Here, I want to consider a seemingly unlikely contender for inclusion in this genre: ‘This Corrosion‘ by the British goth band The Sisters of Mercy, the hit single taken from their 1987 Floodland album. The lines that first caught my attention are these:

“Gimme dream child
And do you hear me call? (Gimme the ring)
On the loan and on the level
Still on the floor (gimme the ring)
Sing dream child
And do you hear at all?”

‘Dream child’ is a term used by Carroll himself in the poem, ‘All in the golden afternoon,’ that introduces Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: it is a description of the boat trip along the Thames at Oxford with the three young Liddell sisters, during which Carroll composed the story that became Alice:

“All in the golden afternoon
Full leisurely we glide;
For both our oars, with little skill,
By little arms are plied,
While little hands make vain pretence
Our wanderings to guide…

Ah, cruel Three! In such an hour,
Beneath such dreamy weather,
To beg a tale of breath too weak
To stir the tiniest feather!
Yet what can one poor voice avail
Against three tongues together?

Imperious Prima flashes forth
Her edict “to begin it”—
In gentler tones Secunda hopes
“There will be nonsense in it!”—
While Tertia interrupts the tale
Not more than once a minute.

Anon, to sudden silence won,
In fancy they pursue
The dream-child moving through a land
Of wonders wild and new,
In friendly chat with bird or beast—
And half believe it true…”

Alice Liddell is well known to have been Carroll’s favourite of the htree, for he photographed her multiple times, and she is widely believed to have been the ‘dream child’ of the verse. Aspersions have been cast about the exact nature of Carroll’s feelings towards her, which have in turn provoked a good deal of academic discussion, as well as fiction exploring similar themes. A good example of this is A N Wilson’s Dream Children (1998)- the plot of which is summarised on Amazon in a few terse lines: “The announcement of Oliver Gold’s marriage to a strange young woman causes alarm from the women he lives with. Oliver also has a secret, known only to a child, but his attempt to escape into a conventional marriage opens a Pandora’s box from which many demons from the past fly out.”

Cover by Graham Ovenden

A still from the video of This Corrosion

Returning to the song, the singer Andrew Eldritch demands:

“Gimme siren, child, and do you hear me?
Gimme siren, child, and do you hear me call?
Sing, child, of right and wrong
Gimme things that don’t last long…”

We then have the chorus: “Hey now, hey now now, sing this corrosion to me…” For me, as soon as I heard the song (and saw the video), I couldn’t help but be reminded of Carroll and Alice. It may well be (almost certainly is the case!) that this is entirely my personal interpretation, and that Eldritch was unfamiliar with the phrase ‘dream child’ and its particular literary origin, but for me the song has always unavoidably evoked an awareness of the transience of youth (and life)- subject to constant ageing and erosion- and the knowledge that it was often said of Carroll that, as his ‘girl friends’ grew up, he lost interest in them and found new friends to replace them. This is very much my reading- although, if you watch the video, you’ll see Victorian bonnets and street urchins in the rain, suggestions of London slums and Miss Haversham’s wedding dress. The ‘Alice’ theme is definitely not the only one running through the lyrics: it has several layers of loss and desertion, but I’ll always regard it as an especially notable example of the Alice inspired genre. For more information on the impact of Carroll’s books on art, music and culture, and how they in turn have reshaped our perception of the author as well as his creation, see my book Eat Me! When Alice Grew Up (2024).