The white pebble, Peter, Humpty, and the key

In "The pebble key" (March 26), I discuss how Joseph Smith's seer stones and specs were described both as white pebbles and as a "key." I connect this with Johnny English's comparing his "small key" to the "pebble" with which David brought down Goliath, and I also mention Joseph Smith's identification of "the white stone mentioned in Revelation 2:17" with both a seer stone and a "key word." In "White quartz pebbles (now with added syncs!)" (March 27), I add to the mix the "tiny white pebbles" and "white polished quartz pebbles" of Wendy Berg's Gwenevere and the Round Table.

Today I started reading The Story of Alice: Lewis Carroll and the Secret History of Wonderland by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst. Once again I was greeted by white pebbles and Revelation 2:17.

In his diary, Carroll liked to celebrate notable days by marking them with 'a white stone', a mental paperweight that separated out important memories and prevented them from being lost in the general drift of past events.  For example, a day in June 1856 that he had spent photographing Alice . . . was marked 'most specially with a white stone,' and three months later he did the same to commemorate his first meeting with Tennyson. The usual explanation for this practice points out similar formulas in classical authors: Pliny, for example, describes the Thracians' habit of putting a white pebble in one urn on happy days, and a black one in a different urn on unhappy ones, which allowed them to calculate [literally!] their overall levels of satisfaction. . . .

Yet almost nothing in Carroll's life is capable of being interpreted in just a single way . . . . Even his 'white stone' is ambiguous. In addition to being a classical commonplace, the same phrase is found in the Bible, which Carroll knew with the intimacy he tended to reserve for books rather than people, where it indicates absolution from sin: 'To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written' (Revelation 2:17).

Tennyson is also a sync. In preparation for writing the next stanza in the series I have been posting here, which will be about the Agony in the Garden, I had been thinking of what Jesus says to Peter there: "the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak" (Matt. 26:41) and connecting it with a line of Tennyson's Ulysses recently quoted in "Filling Peter's shoes" (March 22): "Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will." Peter was mentioned in "The pebble key" due to his association with both stones and keys, and the same post quotes a description of Joseph Smith's seer stone as "a white, glossy pebble, resembling a human foot in shape." Since the name Peter means "rock," a human foot made of stone is precisely what would "fill Peter's shoes."

On the next page after the white stone references quoted above, Douglas-Fairhurst quotes the end of Humpty Dumpty's final poem:

a poem recited by Humpty Dumpty that manages to end simultaneously on a perfect rhyme and a narrative cliffhanger: '"And when I found the door was shut, | I tried to turn the handle, but --".'

Carroll's Humpty Dumpty has himself been associated with Peter (via Pharazon) in past syncs; and more generally, eggs are called "magic stones" in "The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet" (November 2023). I had recently been thinking of that connection again when, on March 31, I snapped this photo in a breakfast shop of white stones (sitting more-or-less "on a wall") juxtaposed with white eggs (and, I notice now, with an open door).

Given the key theme, Humpty's reference to a shut door piqued my curiosity. I googled the lines to find the context and ended up on this page. The poem does in fact reference the door being locked as well as shut:

And when I found the door was locked,

I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked.

And when I found the door was shut,

I tried to turn the handle, but --'

I had been prompted to take up a biography of Lewis Carroll by a train of thought that began with Mormon's claim, "all children are alike unto me; wherefore, I love little children with a perfect love; and they are all alike" (Moro. 8:17), on which I will be posting later on my Book of Mormon blog. I had been contemplating the contrast between Mormon's professed love for the Platonic Idea of Children with Carroll's love for a particular child. It was therefore interesting to read what Humpty says to Alice shortly after reciting the poem just quoted:

'I shouldn’t know you again if we did meet,' Humpty Dumpty replied in a discontented tone, giving her one of his fingers to shake; 'you're so exactly like other people.'

And at the bottom of the page, not far from those lines, what else but a key!

Note added: The white stone references are on pp. 25-26. On pp. 50-51, we find this:

Even an ordinary word such as 'little' could occupy a disproportionate amount of space on the page: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland alone contains more than a hundred repetitions of the word -- in one paragraph Alice finds a 'little golden key' on a 'little three-legged table' and uses it to unlock a 'little door about fifteen inches high'; Carroll deploys the word as if casting a spell.

That's almost exactly the same as The Small Golden Key, the title of Thinley Norbu's book. Douglas-Fairhurst emphasizes its smallness, or rather the author's description of it as "little," bringing us yet again to Johnny English Reborn:

Now I know what you're going to say: It's a pretty small object. Well, it's often the little things that pack the biggest punch. After all, David killed Goliath with a pebble. The mighty Vortex has been slain by my possession of this small key.

Debbie's email about they key she received also emphasizes its small size:

She also included in a separate poly bag a very small skeleton key . . . . What really got my attention however is there are 3 small rings on the top of the small brass key. . . . I also found the 3 rings on the very small key interesting as they remind me of your three pentacles post.