The White Rabbit

This morning I’ve been looking at various depictions of the White Rabbit. If you’ve read many of my previous posts then you’ll probably be aware of how I like to do this. So let’s start with Lewis Carroll’s own words. This is the first thing he tells us,

“suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.

There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!” (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it”.

The rabbit reappears in “Who Stole the Tarts?” – “near the King was the White Rabbit, with a trumpet in one hand, and a scroll of parchment in the other.”

By looking at Lewis Carroll’s original manuscript of “Alice’s Adventures Underground” his own illustrations sometimes give us an idea of how he viewed the character. While he didn’t illustrate the white rabbit running past Alice, he did illustrate the white rabbit encountering the huge Alice filling his house. This is my copy-

So the usual caveats apply, Carroll was not a professional illustrator and neither am I. His white rabbit is notable for the fact that it’s really not very white at all. Also, there’s no real attempt to give it the shape or proportions of a rabbit – essentially this is a human figure with a rabbit’s head. Many future illustrators do show the rabbit’s waistcoat, which is mentioned in the text, and in the manuscript the illustration is copied from. It's funny that Lewis Carroll sometimes didn't provide illustrators to episodes in the book which would attract the majority of future illustrators. Oh well. In my opinion it’s not one of Carroll’s best illustrations. Now let’s look at Tenniel:-

The White Rabbit features in other Tenniel illustrations, but it’s always in one of the two guises here. 

You can see that in comparison to Carroll’s Tenniel’s rabbit is truly a white rabbit and it’s a rabbit in human clothes. With the exception of the arms, or course which are human, with human hands. The pocket watch does recur in the work of may other illustrators. As for the herald costume, well, Carroll’s does wear a playing card costume like the Queen’s and King’s. Tenniel’s is more clearly what we’d expect, a page’s tabard.

These next few were amongst the earliest post Tenniel illustrations of Wonderland. The following are copies of the White Rabbit as drawn by Harry Furniss. 

The left hand picture shows a slightly more animated rabbit than Tenniel’s. He is wearing a more sober dark coat than the checked jacket of Tenniel’s. Other than that, though it doesn’t really get away from the master. The arms are still more human like than the rest of the rabbit – it is very difficult to show it holding a pocket watch with rabbit paws. The right hand drawing shows the rabbit going down the rabbit hole, and this gave Furniss the opportunity to make the arms far more paw like.

Another 1907 rendition worthy of consideration is Arthur Rackham’s. Before I show you my copy I should probably warn you that Rackham used some sumptuous, beautiful watercolour illustrations as well as monochrome ones. What I am going to show you is my copy of a portion of one of these colour plates showing the white rabbit. Now, please remember Rackham was a master and I am not. All this copy can do is give you an idea of the way that Rackham depicted the character.

Rackham’s rabbit is dressed in a high Victorian frock coat with bow tie and all in all he looks a little bit of a dandy. Rackham chooses to dispense with the pocketwatch beloved of many other illustrators. Like Tenniel, though, and Harry Furniss he can’t get away from human arms and hands.

Let’s move on to Harry Rountree.

The watercolour on the right is a copy of Rountree’s 1908 illustration while the drawing on the left is a copy of his 1928 illustration. Both of them are similar to Tenniel’s. It’s interesting that he decided to give the later version something that looks more like a bugle.

He gets further away from Tenniel in both of his versions of the White Rabbit in everyday clothes. They are actually pretty similar anyway. Both of them wear long tailcoats and both of them seem rather taller than most depictions of the same character. I’d also say that their bodies are just a bit more human than rabbit too. As with a lot of Rountree's 1928 work there's tremendous movement going on. This rabbit literally has jumped up, but then he isn't quite the jumped up self-important character that I ted to see in my mind's eye when I read the book.

One more golden (age) oldie then before we come forward in time. This is how Charles Robinson depicted him in his herald uniform.

I’ve commented before on Robinson’s two distinct styles used for his Wonderland illustrations. This is in a similar vein to his mock turtle, a rather stripped back, minimalist line drawing with contrasting areas of black and white. One thing to note is the way that Robinson does try to give the rabbit paws rather than hands. I’m not sure that this is a very good idea. You see, to me the use of paws rather than hands is rather undercut by the way that he still seems to have pretty human arms.

So how did my fave Alice illustrators of the second half of the 20^th century do it? Let’s start with my copy of Mervyn Peake’s White Rabbit. Here it is beneath.

I don’t know why, but the first time I saw this illustration I thought it looked more like a mouse. Now, those are clearly rabbit ears, so I don’t really know why I thought so. Compare this with Tenniel’s. He does have his pocket watch out. But typically, Peake’s is moving while Tenniel’s is standing still. Like Tenniel’s this one wears no trousers.  but unlike Tenniel’s he doesn’t have very rabbitlike legs, even though he does wear shoes which seems just a little strange, and he does have a tail. I’m interested to see him wearing a bowler hat. Did Peake have a busy commuter in mind? I’m pretty sure the next one did.

This is Ralph Steadman’s white rabbit– well, my copy of it anyway. This is one of the Steadman illustrations that I love. I’m maybe influenced by the Disney animation, but I do think that the white rabbit should be this harassed character, obsessed with the possibility of being late. Steadman, like Mervyn Peake also gives the white rabbit a bowler hat. The pocket watch has no actual hands or numbers marked on it which I’m sure is deliberate. As well as the bowler hat, Steadman also gives the rabbit a pair of pinstripe trousers. This just adds to the self-important commuter vibe and it’s something he gives to quite a few of the characters in his Alice illustrations. I do think that this and another Steadman illustration of the same character really capture the uptight nature of the character better than anyone else does.

Let’s finish with Helen Oxenbury.

While Ralph Steadman’s illustrations often seem to have exploded from his pen, Helen Oxenbury’s often seem to have just calmly been ushered onto the page. I like several things about her White rabbit. Like Tenniel she hasn’t just given him a plain jacket. The spots, like the checks that Tenniel’s wears give us just a hint of vanity. This is a more thoroughgoing rabbit than most, although the nearest arm is conspicuously human. I like the frilly cuffs and shirt too, which again show us his vanity. But it’s the posture and the expression which really sell it to me. Come on, be honest, we’ve all worked for or with someone like this, haven’t we?