(Mock) Mock Turtles

 Right, so yesterday evening, after I put the watercolours away, I was watching TV and very often, when I'm watching I'll sketch with a pen at the same time. I thought to myself - what haven't I done with regards to the Alice books yet? Tenniel alone produced getting on for 100 illustrations for the two books altogether. One thing that occurred to me was that I haven't done the mock turtle yet. So I made this copy last night.

It really is the archetypal image of the Mock Turtle, and for me serves as something of a good demonstration of he imaginative genius of Tenniel. Carroll's own drawing of the Mock Turtle for 'Alice's Adventures Underground', the original handmade manuscript that he gave to Alice Liddell, it looks like a seal wearing plate armour. In the description n "Alice in Wonderland"  it says "I don't even know what a Mock Turtle is."

"It's the thing Mock Turtle Soup is made from," said the Queen." Back in the day, green turtle soup was looked on as a delicacy. Thankfully we know better now. Due to the scarcity of turtles - hardly surprising since humans kept making them into soup, mock turtle soup was made of an alternative, using ground beef and offal. Hence Tenniel's decision to give his mock turtle attributes of both cow and turtle. 

This conception of the character has proven difficult for illustrators who came after to get away from. Here's my copy of dear old Arthur Rackham's

Again, it is instantly recognisable as the Mock Turtle, because it is pretty much the same in all the essentials as Tenniel's. Coming forward in time four decades, we have my copy of Mervyn Peake's conception of the character, here dancing around Alice with the gryphon:-

Superficially it's different. Once again Peake uses the strategy of using movement, which does have the effect of making his illustrations look different from Tenniel's. Instead of giving the character 2 turtle flippers and two cow legs, he gives him  human limbs instead. I'd dare say that the head is a sheep's rather than a cow's. Even so, though, the shell and the head are still obeying the Tenniel convention of a creature combining domesticated mammal and turtle attributes.

I don't know if Ralph Steadman drew the Mock Turtle for his Alice in Wonderland, but I haven't been able to find a copy of it if he did. All of which meant that I was beginning to despair of finding an illustration of the character other than Tenniel's which metaphorically blew my socks off. Then I came to Charles Robinson again. This is my copy of his illustration:-

Can you believe that this was made in 1907? Charles Robinson's illustrations for Alice in Wonderland are well worth finding. Some of them are very simple, and look unremarkable. Others, though, are stunning demonstrations of graphic illustration decades ahead of his time. In Robinson's illustration, the mock turtle looks like a real turtle, but what an illustration it is.