Other Alice's - What Tenniel didn't sketch, and Caterpillars

I can’t help thinking that once the copyright ran out on the Alice books and they could be illustrated by other artists from 1907, being engaged to illustrate the book might well have been something of a thankless task. After all, you’re always going to be compared to Tenniel, probably unfavourably. You either do something which looks like it’s been influenced by Tenniel, or you try to do something completely different, which risks alienating those for whom Tenniel is the gold standard.

Of course, one thing you could do is to illustrate episodes from the books that Tenniel didn’t use. The first and one of the most obvious is Alice falling down the rabbit hole.

Tenniel’s frontispiece shows the courtroom with the king and queen of Hearts, the first illustration as such is the white rabbit, and then the next shows Alice peeping behind a curtain after she has finished falling. I don’t know why he didn’t illustrate her falling, but then he produced forty two illustrations as it was. Maybe it was not required by Lewis Carroll. He was actually the first person to illustrate the story. He first wrote it in longhand, complete with his own illustrations. When you see them you do understand why friends advised him to get a professional illustrator when having the book published. Quite a few of Tenniel’s illustrations do follow the episodes that Carroll illustrated, and Carroll himself did not draw Alice falling down the rabbit hole. Still, whatever the reason why Tenniel didn’t illustrate this episode, Well at least it gave later illustrators an opportunity. This is my copy of Harry Furniss’ illustration of the scene.

Harry Furniss did work with both John Tenniel and Lewis Carroll. He began working for Punch in 1880, wat which time Tenniel was the chief cartoonist. Furniss was commissioned by Carroll to illustrate his two Sylvie and Bruno books, neither of which is much read today. Tenniel reputedly said that Furniss would find it an unpleasant experience working with Carroll, and this seems to have been the case. So the story goes Furniss would pretend to be out whenever Carroll came to look at his work, and he vowed never to work with Carroll again.

Carroll passed away in 1898. Several editions appeared in America in the 1890s and early 1900s. but when the copyright expired in 1907 a huge number of editions appeared with the work of other illustrators. Harry Furniss’ illustrations appeared in 1908 in Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopaedia.

I think that if you look at my copy you might well see that Harry Furniss’ work does bear some similarities with Tenniel’s. I’m particularly thinking about the heavy shading with hatching and cross hatching. Tenniel’s illustrations do often look like beautifully posed and staged tableaux, while Furniss’ do seem to have more movement and spontaneity. Furniss’ Alice is brunette, and looks rather older than Tenniel’s.

By way of comparison I’ve copied Ralph Steadman’s illustration of Alice falling from his 1967 illustrated edition. By contrast this is quite a minimalist illustration, with a couple of bookshelves, a map, a picture and a jar doing all the work to show this is a rabbit hole. But the position Alice is in, with her ridiculously long, thin limbs perfectly captures the feeling of falling. I’ve copied several of Ralph Steadman’s illustrations before. As I have said, they’re marmite for me. I either absolutely love them, or I have a strong reaction against them.

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Another scene which Tenniel did not illustrate but many later illustrators did is Alice being called a serpent by a pigeon when her head has stretched up into the sky. Again, it is an episode with plenty of scope for visual representation. In this case Lewis Carroll did illustrate the episode. He actually made two sketches, one showing Alice with normal sized head but impossibly long, straight neck shooting out above the tree tops, the other showing her with long, curving neck being harangued by the pigeon.

Last year I copied my favourite rendition of Alice being accosted by the pigeon, which was made in 1907 by T.H. Robinson. I love the way he captures the foreshortening effect of looking down on Alice’s body from being roughly eye level with her head. Her neck is elongated, but nothing like as much as is often the case when illustrators tackle this episode. Robinson was the brother of the much more famous William Heath Robinson, and Charles Robinson who also illustrated Alice in Wonderland I 1907, several of whose illustrations I’ve copied in the past.

Compare this with my copy of Steadman’s 1967 illustration. This may sound like a strange thing to say, but this is far more similar to Lewis Carroll’s original illustration than Robinson’s is. Steadman's Alice is very different to Carroll’s dark haired Alice, but both head and bird are in similar positions, and the neck curves in similar fashion. I think that the pigeon is a real tour de force.

This next rendition is my copy of a Harry Rountree illustration. Harry Rountree was a New Zealand born illustrator and cartoonist who was successful in New Zealand before moving to London in 1901. During his career he worked for many publications, including Punch.Rountree actually illustrated Wonderland twice, first in 1908 and then 20 years later in 1928. Judging by Alice’s hairstyle I’d say that this is more likely the 1928 version. In this one Rountree opted to emphasize the serpentine nature of Alice’s neck, and he’s by no means the only illustrator to do this. Again, I think that the pigeon is very well rendered, and indeed living creatures were something of a speciality for Harry Rountree. 

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You know, I’ve always had a sneaking fondness for the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland. This mark you even though Tenniel’s illustration of the caterpillar is one of his less effective in my opinion. I mean, it’s certainly clever the way that the two top pairs of legs do actually look like a face – possibly the face of Mr. Punch – but I’d love to have seen just how he would have rendered the caterpillar’s face head on.

Last year I made a copy of Arthur Rackham’s illustration of the caterpillar, which is one of my favourites. Arthur Rackham was a leading light during what has been called the golden age of British illustration from the 1890s until the First World War. His illustrations for the book were a mixture of colour plates, like the one I’ve copied here, and black and white line drawings. Rackham shows the caterpillar’s face properly, and so what we get, a caterpillar’s body bearing a rather wizened, bespectacled and almost human head is pretty much the norm for illustrators of Alice. If you look at this, by Harry Rountree, you can probably see what I mean. 

Rountree doesn’t put Alice in the picture, which is more unusual, but he does give us a traditional hookah and mushroom.

Harry Furniss rendered it like this. He differs from Tenniel in as much as the mushroom is smaller and Alice can clearly see the caterpillar. You can also see how Furniss’ Alice is older and more mature than Tenniel’s. His caterpillar is slightly less human, having what appears to be a beak, although like Rountree he does go along with the convention of giving the caterpillar one pair of arms with very human hands on the end, and feet only at the end of his body.

One of the earlier renditions of the caterpillar is this one I copied which was by Charles Robinson. In terms of composition this is like a mirror image of Tenniel’s. With Alice peering over the mushroom on the left rather than the right, and the caterpillar on the right rather than the left. It means we don’t really see his face, which is a pity. One thing he does, which Tenniel also did but a lot of later illustrations don’t is to provide the foliage all round the scene.

T.H. Robinson also illustrated the caterpillar, and I copied this last year. Like his brother Charles, and Tenniel TH Robinson did at least illustrate the whole scene, with many mushrooms rather than just the one and this is something original. The caterpillar himself does have a very human face. The features look old and tired, which kind of matches the sleepy languid voice that Lewis Carroll gave him in the text. To be honest though this caterpillar doesn’t really look like a caterpillar at all. His only visible limbs are human arms and legs, he is fully clothed and this is topped off by a stage magician’s turban.

This is the first illustration I’ve copied by one of the best loved of Alice illustrators, Willy Pogany. He illustrated the book in 1929. Pogany was born in Austria-Hungary, and worked all over Europe in the early years of the 20^th century before finally emigrating to the USA. Many of his illustrations for Alice are deceptively simple. In this one we only get the caterpillar, and half the hookah. No mushroom, no Alice, no foliage. His caterpillar, though, is far more of a caterpillar, with distinctly non-human limbs evenly spaced along his body.

I know what you’re asking yourself. What did Ralph Steadman do with the caterpillar? Well, here’s my copy. My guess is that your first reaction when you look at this is that it’s very different from what has gone before. For one thing, the caterpillar is facing away from Alice. For another thing there’s no hookah, he is smoking a cigarette (of some kind) in a cigarette holder. Also he looks totally wired, with his wild unkempt hair and his wide, unmatching eyes. Look at it again, though. We have Alice peering over the top of the mushroom – we’ve seen that before. The caterpillar seems to have a vaguely human arm and hand, and there’s no mistaking that his two legs are very human, clad in pinstripe trousers and what look like sandals. If I’m honest this not actually one of my favourite Steadman illustrations. I just have an issue with the caterpillar looking so wired. The text describes him talking in a languid, sleepy voice.