A sculpture of Humpty Dumpty in Madison, Wisconsin, USA.
A sculpture of Humpty Dumpty in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. Humpty is a character in a nursery rhyme of uncertain origin (the theory that it refers to a great cannon thrown down at Colchester during the English Civil War is appealing, but cannot be traced back further than 1996). Carroll gave it as:
‘Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall:
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the King’s horses and all the King’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty in his place again.”
The rhyme, we notice, makes no mention of eggs. We have Carroll to thank for popularising that idea. Behind Carroll’s whimsy is a serious point: language has a public and social character, and when individuals and institutions seek to take proprietary control of language, they are seeking nothing less than to take control of society. Humpty’s question ‘Which is to be Master?’ is not just about mastery over words. It is about mastery over Alice.
Part 1 of 2
“WHAT is an un-birthday present?”
“A present given when it isn’t your birthday, of course.”
Alice considered a little. “I like birthday presents best,” she said at last.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” cried Humpty Dumpty. “There are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents — ”
“Certainly,” said Alice.
“And only one for birthday presents, you know. There’s glory for you!”
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory’,” Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously.* “Of course you don’t — till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’”
“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’,” Alice objected.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master — that’s all.”
Humpty Dumpty is a character from a children’s rhyme. Lewis Carroll gives it as follows, noting that the last line doesn’t scan:
HUMPTY Dumpty sat on a wall:
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the King’s horses and all the King’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty in his place again.
The rhyme does not mention that Humpty Dumpty has anything to do with eggs; Lewis Carroll (and his illustrator Tenniel) can claim credit for having established that connection. Nor does Carroll say that Humpty actually is an egg, only that he looked like one, and that Alice could not decide whether he was wearing a cravat around his neck or a belt around his waist, which Humpty found most provoking.
Précis
When Humpty Dumpty boasted of his ‘unbirthday present’, Alice timidly scolded him for using language unconventionally. But Humpty told her that he used words just as he wished, and that language was not a matter of convention. The only issue was whether words are to be in control of their speaker, or the speaker in control of his words. (59 / 60 words)
Part Two
Humpty Dumpty, in Puck Vol. 73 No. 1880 (1913).
A cartoon for the magazine Puck Vol. 73 No. 1880 (1913), showing Humpty Dumpty slipping from his wall. His belt or cravat (Humpty found Alice’s failure to make the distinction ‘most provoking’) reads “Excessive Protection” and the wall is labelled “Tariff wall”. The cartoonist, Udo J. Keppler (1872-1956), was warning that attempts by corporate lobbyists to get the US Government to protect them from foreign competition using high trade tariffs were on the way to irretrievable ruin. He appended an altered version of the nursery rhyme:
Humpty Dumpty slips from the wall;
Humpty’s due an awful for an awful fall.
All the Trust lobbies, with all their slick men,
Will never be able to raise him again.
Alas, Keppler was quite wrong. Protectionism is not an egg, more of a rubber ball.
ALICE was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. ‘They’ve a temper, some of them — particularly verbs, they’re the proudest — adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs — however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That’s what I say!’
‘Would you tell me, please,’ said Alice ‘what that means?’
‘Now you talk like a reasonable child,’ said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. ‘I meant by “impenetrability” that we’ve had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you’d mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don’t mean to stop here all the rest of your life.’
‘That’s a great deal to make one word mean,’ Alice said in a thoughtful tone.
‘When I make a word do a lot of work like that,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘I always pay it extra.’
Distinguished philologist Alexander Ellis (the prototype of Professor Higgins in George Bernard Shaw’s ‘Pygmalion’) said of Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty: “Humpty Dumpty is a perfect type of your philosophical-language-monger. If he does not make words himself on an individual classification, he gives new meanings to old words until he loses the social character of language entirely, and locks himself into a box as effectually as the poor bride in the ‘Mistletoe Bough!’, leaving future generations to find bare bones and wonder how they got there”. From President’s Address to the Philological Society, 1872; and see The Legend of the Mistletoe Bough (Wikipedia).
Précis
Humpty Dumpty goes on to show that words are mischievous servants that have to be kept under control, and is gratified when Alice begins to treat him more like the master of meaning he believes himself to be. He claims to be in effortless control, and that when he makes words mean more than usual he pays them a bonus. (60 / 60 words)
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