Abstract
Under his hat, worn with a slight backward tilt, his hair had been carefully brushed into respectful sleekness. 1 Tenniel's illustration of Mad Hatter in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland supplies Conrad with model for Verloc's (and other anarchists') dandyism, though not without his consciousness of masculine fripperies in fashionable circles of London. Appropriately, Verloc later morosely ponders his failure to dynamite Greenwich Meridian Observatory in the little parlour of Cheshire (SA, 191) as Conrad's reminder that Cheshire Cat directs Alice to Mad Tea-Party. Later he also salutes Humpty-Dumpty for his inspiration in molding arbitrary word-worlds of his characters in novel. Immediately pun on sleekness, to conceal, betrays deceit of Verloc's respectability. However, Cheshire Cheese also directs attention to another facet of contemporary literary history. The name of a club in London, it headquartered Rhymer's Club, founded by William Butler Yeats to promote esthetic fantasies of Walter Pater. Verloc's dandyism, no
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