While doing resaearch for my new book on the Martini Cocktail (!!!), I found a little gem, that for some reason I had forgotten.
In the interlude of the first ever (lovely) book dedicated entirely to the Martini (1976), John Doxat reports about an allegedly unpublished passage from Alice in Wonderland, in which Alice meets none other than a Martini Cocktail. Doxat claims to have received the text from a certain Hugo Montmorency Jones, who extracted it in a non-printed edition of the first version of Carrol’s novel that he found in the mansion of a “socialist millionaire”. Now, the verses are surely not original since at the time of Carroll the Martini Cocktail had not been invented, and they play specifically with this, also because “there’s no point in being in Wonderland if you can’t anticipate things”. In any case, whomever might have thought of an encounter between Alice and a soon-to-be-invented Dry Martini deserves eternal fame.
Alice noticed a sort of bottle, with a label on it reading, “Drink me”.
“Oh, not again!” she said aloud, for she was a trifle weary of random potions and their weird effects.
“Yes, again,” said the bottle.
“I was told never to drink from strange bottles,” said Alice, “though I admit I have twice done so.”
“I am not a strange bottle,” said the odd glass object, “I may be a peculiar bottle but that is quite a different matter.”
“Yes” said Alice thoughtfully, “in fact you don’t really look like a bottle at all. More as a sort of… I don’t know”
“Don’t know! Of course you don’t know, “retorted the sort of bottle. “I haven’t been invented yet.”
“Then may I ask what you are doing here?” asked Alice, haughty.
“You may”, answered the s.o.b.
“What are you doing here?” persisted Alice
“I thought you’d never ask,” said the s.o.b. “I’m waiting for someone to drink me. Are you aged eighteen or over?”
“Do I look eighteen?” demanded Alice, rather offended.
“Sometimes,” urbanely replied the s.o.b. “On Sir John Tenniel’s off days. Or it may be his engraver’s fault.”
“What has being eighteen got to do with anything?” asked Alice.
“Frankly, I’m not at all sure,” answered the s.o.b. “Not having been invented is highly inconvenient. It’s something to do with the law – but that hasn’t been passed yet. And I’m getting warmer all the time,” it added, inconsequently Alice thought.
“You are a bit of a mystery,” she said.
“I’ve been called that before – and since, I suppose,” said the s.o.b a trifle sadly.
Impetuously, Alice reached out and took the sort of bottle’s sort of a hand. It was decidedly frigid.
“You’re positively icy!” she exclaimed.
“That’s a highly personal remark,” said the s.o.b.
“I am sorry,” apologized Alice, “but it’s true”.
“I only know I am supposed to be cold – whatever I am going to be when I’m invented,” said the s.o.b. “I withdraw my request about drinking me. We had better find someone older before I melt.”
Pulling on a mitten she conveniently found in her reticule, Alice took hold of the sort of bottle’s sort of arm, and they started to walk through the wood. Quickly, they came upon a clearing.
“Oh dear!” exclaimed Alice, “that stupid tea party is still going on.”
“Perhaps we can jolly it up,” said the s.o.b. He half dragged Alice to the table.
“Ha!” shouted the Mad Hatter. “I do believe we have here something more exciting than tea. Let’s hold a cocktail party!”
“A what?” said Alice.
“That’s me, that’s me!” exclaimed the s.o.b. excitedly, as one recovering from amnesia. “I am not a sort of bottle, I am a cocktail mixing glass. Hurrah!”.
“I think you’re mad,” said Alice.
“No, I am the mad around here,” said the March Hare.
“No, you’re not; I am,” said the Hatter.
The March Hare dipped his tea-cup into the Cocktail Mixer and poured the contents over the Dormouse. “That’ll wake you up, you sinister somnolent rodent,” he cried. He helped himself and served the Mad Hatter.
Alice watched in astonishment, and then in some alarm as the Dormouse started to execute a passable sword-dance on the table, using tea-spoons in place of the conventional weapons.
“You have just drunk the first Dry Martini,” announced the Mad Hatter. “My compliments to the Mixer”. He filled his hat from the obliging C.M. who was so happy at being invented and no longer being an s.o.b. that he did not care in the least that he was almost empty and quite warm.
“What on earth is a Dry Martini?” asked Alice.
“I haven’t the foggiest idea,” replied the Mad Hatter. “That’s what’s so marvellous about it.”
Alice glanced at the happy, glass-eyed C.M.
“But you said you haven’t been invented,” she insisted, puzzled, but, as usual, appealingly logical.
“Of course, he hasn’t been invented yet,” said the Mad Hatter, “but there’s no point in being in Wonderland if you can’t anticipate things.”
They ignored Alice. As she walked on, rather thirsty as it happens, to another part of the wood, she distantly heard them singing, sadly out of tune,
“Twinkle, twinkle little drink,
How you put me in the pink –
Cold and strong, and good and dry,
nothing better ‘neath the sky.”
The Martini Hour 