White Rabbits

 

I did make a copy of this Tenniel illustration of the white rabbit looking at his pocket watch a few years ago. If I ever posted it online, though, I can’t find it, and so I was out with the ink pen again.

In the process, I found the original of this slightly later version of the white rabbit. This was drawn by Harry Furniss. Harry Furniss was an Irish born illustrator, whose career overlapped with Tenniel’s. Furness, like Tenniel, made his living through political and humourous cartoons, and began working for Punch in 1880. He actually left Punch before Tenniel did. In 1894 the owners of the magazine found that he had sold one of his Punch drawings to Pears soap, and that was the end of that.

As well as working for the same magazine as Tenniel, Furniss was also the illustrator of Lewis Carroll’s later “Sylvie and Bruno” novels. He worked closely with Carroll – probably too closely for his liking, and the story goes that it got to the point that he would pretend to be out when Carroll called round. After this Furniss vowed he would never work with Carroll again. It’s not surprising. After working with Carroll on “Looking Glass”, Tenniel told him that he had completely lost the facility of illustrating novels. Maybe that was true, but then it may just well be that he didn’t fancy ever working with Carroll again.

Harry Furniss began his own humourous magazine after leaving Punch. This failed, and he left to go and work in America, at one time working in the fledgling film industry.

Harry Furniss was 11 years old when the book was first published, and so the story goes he was bitterly disappointed that he was too young to illustrate it. One of the reasons why he would never work with Carroll again after Sylvie and Bruno might well have been because the books were nothing like the Alice books. The copyright for Alice in Wonderland ran out in 19o7, and Harry Furniss produced 20 illustrations for an edition.

If you look at Furniss’ white rabbit on the left, and compare it with Tenniel’s on the right, maybe you’ll have the same thought that I did occur to you – the same but different. Some of Furniss’ illustrations – for example Alice staring at the Cheshire Cat do have a similarity to Tenniel’s – although not all of them. His Queen of Hearts, for example, is a little more animated, but less disproportionately grotesque than Tenniel’s. The illustration of Alice falling down the rabbit hole is remarkably different as well.

I just find it interesting to see what a contemporary of Tenniel made of the story. I don’t know if Tenniel ever expressed an opinion about what Furniss did with the story – I’d be interested to read it if he did.