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The Lewis Carroll Society of North America

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Fall 2018 Volume III Issue 1 Number 101 d de e

The Knight Letter is the official magazine of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America, a literary society whose purpose is to encourage study and appreciation of the life, work, times, and influence of Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), and which is in affiliation with the Fales Library, New York University. It is published twice a year and is distributed free to all members. Editorial correspondence should be sent to the Editor in Chief at [email protected]. submissions Submissions for The Rectory Umbrella and Mischmasch should be sent to [email protected]. Submissions and suggestions for Serendipidity and Sic, Sic, Sic should be sent to [email protected]. Submissions and suggestions for All Must Have Prizes should be sent to [email protected]. Submissions and suggestions for From Our Far-Flung Correspondents should be sent to [email protected]. © 2018 The Lewis Carroll Society of North America ISSN 0193-886X Chris Morgan, Editor in Chief Cindy Watter, Editor, Of Books and Things Mark Burstein, Editor, From Our Far-Flung Correspondents Foxxe Editorial Services, Copyeditor Mark Burstein, Production Editor Sarah Adams-Kiddy, Proofreader Andrew H. Ogus, Designer the lewis carroll society of north america President: Linda Cassady, [email protected] Vice-President: Amy Plummer, [email protected] Secretary: Sandra Lee Parker, [email protected] www.LewisCarroll.org Annual membership dues are U.S. $35 (regular), $50 (international), and $100 (sustaining). Subscriptions, correspondence, and inquiries should be addressed to: Sandra Lee Parker, LCSNA Secretary PO Box 197 Annandale, Virginia 22003 Additional contributors to this issue: Mary DeYoung, August Imholtz, Jr., and Devra Kunin

On the cover: Fantasia on 42 (unpublished notebook drawing) by John Vernon Lord. See p. 61. Note also the number of dingbats.

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The Rectory Umbrella The Mad Gardener’s Song in Classical Greek 52 g colin leach A Monster Mash at the Morgan 1 chris morgan Alchemy and the Albatross 53 adriana peliano Once I Was a Real Turtle, Part II 10 matt demakos Carrollian Notes g Disney’s 1951 Alice in Wonderland A Russian Humpty Dumpty 54 Reassessed 21 victor fet daniel rover singer “The Time Has Come, the Walrus Said, Martin on Martin, or to Talk of Many Things” 55 Annotating The Annotated 30 byron sewell molly martin Well Done, Wheeldon! 57 Alice in Japan 33 yoshiyuki momma Of Books and Things g Looking-Glass, ill. Maggie Taylor 58 mischmasch andrew ogus g Leaves from the Deanery Garden— Serendipity 35 The Snark, ill. Byron Sewell, ill. Chris Riddell 58 Ravings from the Writing Desk 39 andrew ogus stephanie lovett Alice in Moonland 59 All Must Have Prizes 40 rose owens matt crandall Oh, Lord 61 Arcane Illustrators: Max Ernst 44 Wonderland Catalog (ACMI) 61 mark burstein rose owens In Memoriam: Doug Howick 46 Evertype 62 mahendra singh From Our Far-flung Correspondents In Memoriam: Charles Blackman 47 g mark burstein Art & Illustration—Articles & Academia—Books— Reflections on Events, Exhibits, & Places—Internet & Technology— Jonathan Miller’s On Reflection 48 & christopher tyler Movies Television—Music—Performing Arts— Things 63 Alice in Plunderland 51 mark burstein The Funny Pages 67

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onsters roam our pages herein as we their first exposure to Carroll’s universe—albeit fil- cover the fall 2018 LCSNA meeting at tered through the Disney lens. Surprisingly, it lost Mthe Morgan Library in New York. The money on first release, but eventually became profit- library’s main exhibit, “Medieval Monsters: Terrors, able in the age of videocassettes and DVDs. In “All Aliens, Wonders,” featured illuminated manuscripts, Must Have Prizes,” Matt Crandall discusses the many statues, and miscellaneous objects with a monstrous recordings of music from the Disney movie. Interest- theme, all from the library’s world-class collection. ingly, the first Alice records appeared in 1944, and One statue stopped us in our tracks: that of the third- were not Disney recordings. Ginger Rogers, hoping century Saint Firmin holding his own head. A ceph- to star in a live-action/animation adaptation of Al- alophore (Greek for “head-carrier”), he was one of ice for Disney, recorded an early collection of songs many saints who suffered martyrdom by decapitation. on the Decca label. Heady stuff! In this issue, we return to a happy tradition: more More to the Carrollian point, the library created annotations for Alice. Martin Gardner wrote the first a special exhibit of monsters and other highlights edition of The Annotated Alice in 1960, and it has been from their Carroll collection, just for us. A Through the revised many times, most recently with The Annotated Looking-Glass first edition, interleaved with proofs for Alice 150th Anniversary Deluxe Edition, expanded and the illustrations, was complete with Tenniel’s notes, updated by Mark Burstein. In this issue, Molly Martin including a list of corrections to be made to the Jab- adds new information to the seemingly never-ending berwock—Carroll’s most famous monster. Speaking world of facts about the Alice books. of Tenniel, Matt Demakos concludes his two-part ar- Lastly, we salute Stephanie Lovett as she com- ticle on Tenniel’s post-production drawings and trac- pletes her term as LCSNA president, and welcome ings, examining why Tenniel created a set of twenty Linda Cassady aboard our Snark ship. Stephanie has post-production drawings, how they were sold and done great work for the Society, not the least of which resold, and the identity of the first collectors who was spearheading the movement to update our Con- owned them. stitution. We extend the fondest tip of our Hatter’s We also have a mini-Disney theme. Daniel Rover hat to her! Singer takes a fresh look at Disney’s 1951 feature- length cartoon, Alice in Wonderland. For many, it was chris morgan d de e

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A Monster Mash at the Morgan chris morgan

ur monster mash was a non–graveyard smash self. The interpreters did a wonderful job of finding in New York this fall, as visiting Carrollians ways to sign the puns in the story. Owere surrounded by scary customers at the On behalf of the LCSNA, Ellie thanked the Morgan Library. Their Medieval Monsters exhibition school’s librarian, Elliot Andreopoulos, for helping was on view, featuring illuminated manuscripts and to set up the Reading. The LCSNA has now given out other monstrous objects. There was also a display of free books to grateful children twice a year for the rare Carrollian material in the Reading Room, ar- past 21 years, more than 2,000 in total. (Could this ranged especially for our meeting, featuring some have been the 42nd Reading?) notable Carrollian monsters. On Saturday morning, we gathered at the sump- The meeting began on Friday, September 21, with tuous Morgan Library & Museum. Attendees received the first official (that is, under the new name) Maxine a beautiful keepsake from Clare and August Im- and David Schaefer Memorial Reading at PS 347: The holtz—“The Mad Gardener’s Song” from Sylvie and American Sign Language and English Lower School Bruno, printed by the Crooked Crow Press. August, in Lower Manhattan. In attendance were about 20 speaking formally in Latin, then presented outgoing LCSNA members; 55 children from the third, fourth, LCSNA president Stephanie Lovett with an elegant and fifth grades of the school; and a variety of teach- drawing of “Queen Stephanie” by Jonathan Dixon, as ers, staff, interpreters, and volunteers. a token of our appreciation for her tireless efforts on The students who attend this school are either behalf of the Society over the past four years. deaf or are hearing children of parents who are deaf, Stephanie got us in a monster mood with her ex- and some of the teachers and volunteers are deaf as tensive disquisition on the topic, noting that monsters well. After discussing the history of the Reading and are really distorted versions of something we know. the LCSNA, Ellie Schaefer-Salins began performing Illustrations in the Alice books by Tenniel, Rackham, the “Mad Tea-Party” chapter as narrator, with Griffin and many others often distort the faces and bodies Miller as Alice and the Dormouse, April Lynn James of characters; grownups in particular are caricatured. (aka Madison Hatta) as the Mad Hatter, and Stepha- This can evoke the Self we fear and repress—and hide nie Lovett as the March Hare. Since Ellie is fluent in from others and ourselves—or perhaps the fabulous American Sign Language (ASL), she signed for her- Self we haven’t claimed.

1 illustrated in the library’s exhibit by a section on the Fallen Woman/Femme Fatale, which showed sirens, Eve, and the like. We might compare Alice to Lyra in Philip Pull- man’s His Dark Materials stories. The Fall is good, and Photo by Chris Morgan necessary to be human. Alice might also be another kind of character, a woman in whom humanity has gone very right instead of very wrong. In Carroll we can sometimes see girls as representing unfallen human beings, but there is also the sense that Alice is a mature and knowing person, exactly what people ought to be. Maybe there’s something for us Carrol- lians in contemplating Lyra’s path—that you don’t fall out of your ideal self, but into it. August presents Stephanie with the drawing. Monsters can also be border-crossers, transgres- sors, truth-tellers, and tricksters. When we encounter Monsters can evoke both fear and pity. We see a monsters, wonders, and aliens, we’re dealing with be- classic example in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: or The ings who, at least from our perspective, are partway Modern Prometheus. (Coincidentally, an exhibit about between the natural and the supernatural. They’re Frankenstein is scheduled for the Morgan in late liminal, they break boundaries, and they make a mess 2018 to mark the 200th anniversary of the book.) Bar- of our rules. ry Moser’s illustrations of the monster are good evo- In his introduction to the catalogue of the Me- cations of both fear and pity, and King Kong comes dieval Monsters exhibition, fantasy-ish author China to mind as well. (King Kong is scheduled to open on Miéville (whose work has undoubtedly won many Car- Broadway in late fall.) Stephanie sees the need to rollian fans) talks about the black box of monsters— acknowledge both the horror of the abnormal and the resistance to decoding—which is something we distorted, and the tragedy of the innocent outsider all recognize and celebrate about the Alice books, the ultimately too good for this world who dies at the hands Snark, and other Carroll works. They’re not allego- of the “normal” people. ries, nor easy one-to-one parodies—nothing so simple A monster can be an unknown and peculiar being and so ultimately thin and uninteresting. who is also marvelous and enchanting, for example Carroll’s characters and his world, like these trans- the Unicorn and Gryphon from Looking-Glass. Love of gressive monsters, are nonbinary and untidy. That the wondrous might lead us towards “sacred terrors”; makes them all the more upsetting to people who it’s both wonderful and terrible that the world is full want a tidy world, and all the more delightful to those of things beyond our comprehension. Religions have who are happy that there are more things in heaven a lot to say about this. C. S. Lewis makes the point in and earth, Horatio . . . the Narnia books that Aslan is not a tame lion. So the To embrace them, you have to inquire within. monstrous—the meeting with a being who renders How important are norms to you? Can you under- our norms and preconceptions useless (including stand your own culture as turning people into mon- our ideas of “good” and “bad”)—might also remind sters as a form of social control? Can you welcome out- us of our place in the universe and the limits of our siders as bringing something you lack? Can you admit understanding. This is true whether we’re in the pres- you lack something? Can you turn over some control ence of Cthulhu, Aslan, or something as totally “oth- to the monsters? For all of Carroll’s buttoned-down er” as a real alien being whose intelligence is nothing qualities, perhaps we know he could. like our own, such as an octopus. Next, Michael Patrick Hearn spoke on “Alice and In the West (though not in all other cultures), Other ‘Fabulous Monsters’: Concerning Wonderland the dragon embodies monstrous evil—a robust and Beasts and Looking-Glass Creatures within the Con- perhaps satisfying way to externalize, and so combat text of British History and Their Own Time.” Michael and even defeat, the evil things in life. Tenniel tamed is a scholar of children’s books and their illustration, the Jabberwock by giving him a waistcoat before he and a founding member of the LCSNA. He noted a was slain by the beamish boy. Neil Gaiman notes that similarity between the hidden landscape of a child’s fairy tales are important because they tell us not that mind in Barrie’s Peter and Wendy (the novelization dragons are real, but that dragons can be slain. of his famous play) and the map of Alice’s mind de- Another “monstrous” idea—that a woman is a scribed by Carroll in Under Ground and Looking-Glass. human being in whom something has gone horribly While Barrie’s descriptive map of Neverland was ex- wrong—occurs in both Aristotle and Aquinas, and is citing and often confusing, Carroll’s map included

2 frightening that Carroll even polled thirty mothers of his child friends as to their opinion if the drawing was “too terrible a monster, and likely to harm nervous and imaginative children.” Their consensus was to

Photo by Mark Burstein keep it in the book but remove it as the frontispiece. Hearn also noted the fabulous human monsters in Alice’s dreams. Not only “weird and uncanny” but also compared to a “grotesque monster,” the Hatter is, of course, a bit mad. Tweedledum and Tweedledee resemble Tenniel’s John Bull in Punch, and even Dis- ney’s vision of the Queen of Hearts is true to Carroll’s description of her as “a sort of ungovernable passion—a blind and aimless Fury.” She is not based, as is sometimes thought, on Queen Victoria; more likely she was a take-off on Elizabeth I, just as famous for her beheadings as was her father, Henry VIII. Michael Patrick Hearn Hearn concluded his talk speaking of Alice herself as the Unicorn declared her: “a fabulous monster” from his point of view. After all, Alice had grown far more unusual creatures and monsters. Hearn to monstrous heights. And when she shrank to just pointed out that when Alice meets the Unicorn in three inches, all common creatures—mice, puppies, TTLG, each sees the other as a “fabulous monster,” caterpillars, fish, frog, and rabbits—were of mon- and then, having seen each other, they can believe strous size to her. in each other. He also noted that Alice seems com- Our next speaker was the ever effervescent Cindy pletely unflustered by the array of strange creatures Watter, erstwhile LCSNA secretary and vice presi- she meets, despite the fact that none was particularly dent, who gave us a talk entitled “‘Phantasmagoria’ nice to her. Well, they were her own inventions! Through the Looking-Glass” about Carroll’s long nar- Hearn reminded us that the Unicorn and the rative poem—discussed for the first time in our 44- Lion were symbols of Scotland and England respec- year history! In it, a little ghost appears in a man’s tively, and that the unicorn was widely represented home one night, and after consuming all his host’s in sacred art—perhaps a fact forgotten or ignored food and drink and telling his life story—which in- by Carroll who, after all, replaced the passion flower cludes a taxonomy of ghosts and the quotidiana of with the tiger lily in the Looking-Glass garden when haunting—realizes he has been in the wrong house he learned that the former referred to the Passion of all along. He decamps, leaving the deflated tenant of Christ. But the Unicorn and Lion fought not just for the house, our narrator, just a bit lonesome for the a royal title but also for a sporting title—as the White odd little creature. King remarked, they had each been down eighty-sev- Having taught Advanced Placement English Lit- en times. This might also bring to mind Tenniel’s fa- erature with brilliant success for decades in the Napa, mous Punch cartoons of the Conservative and Liberal California, public school system (some former stu- sparring of those battling British Parliamentarians dents were in the audience for her talk), Cindy began William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli. by asking volunteers to read aloud the first canto of To Hearn it is evident that Carroll depended heav- the poem, one stanza per person. She then analyzed ily on Tenniel to depict his monsters, not giving much the poem for structure, meter, and other qualities just by way of descriptions. Carroll at one point suggests as she would do with her AP students. to the reader that “If you don’t know what a Gryphon The poem is set up in seven cantos. The rhyme is, look at the picture.” And the same goes for most of scheme is a b a a b, which Carroll maintains for 150 the characters and other fabulous monsters. Hearn verses. The dominant meter is iambic tetrameter, with speculates that Carroll might not have included the its da-DA da-DA da-DA da-DA rhythm. But not all da- Gryphon if he had been aware that, being both aerial DAs are equal: there are differences in stress length. and terrestrial, it was a medieval symbol of Christ. These differences keep the cantos from sounding too Hearn noted the wonderful visual puns in the sing-song-y. “Phastasmagoria” has a very strict form, a illustrations of the Mock Turtle, the Rocking-horse- wonderful contrast to its lighthearted subject matter. fly, the Bread-and-butter-fly, and the Snap-dragon-fly. The opening stanza, which begins “One winter These must nearly have illustrated themselves. But night, at half-past nine, / Cold, tired, and cross, and the dreaded Jabberwock “with eyes of flame” was to- muddy,” reminds us of Poe. Temporal concepts are tally left to Tenniel to portray. His depiction was so mentioned four times—“One winter night,” “half-

3 lives in a one-ghost house), etiquette, the number 42, a tendency for the characters to order each other about, an alternative universe and the disorientation resulting from discovering it, and, somehow, an ac- ceptance of the genuinely weird. Cindy particularly Photo by Mark Burstein likes the host’s concern about feeding a creature who is actually translucent. Later in the poem there are mentions of Guy Fawkes, incidents of violence (throwing a bottle, as- saulting a host), allusions to literature (Hamlet), word- play (“Knight Mayor” for “nightmare”) and puns, twisted logic, an inability to do simple arithmetic, and a discussion of how to address ghostly nobility—“Your Royal Whiteness”—which is a bit unnerving (!). These tidbits will be familiar to readers of the Alice books. Cindy Watter You might think that a ghost was a strange subject for Lewis Carroll, but, according to Martin Gardner past nine,” “too late to dine,” “was waiting.” Time’s and others, Carroll was fascinated by the paranormal. winged chariot does not stand still; in fact there is He believed in psychokinesis and extrasensory per- the sense of being too late for something. Such refer- ception—but not in ghosts as revenants. He was an ences abound throughout the poem, including the early member of the Society for Psychical Research, speaker wondering if any of it happened at all, or if and after his death, the catalogue for the auction of it was simply a dream, which is a classic Carrollian his possessions lists books about the supernatural, conceit—“‘What’s this?’ I wondered. ‘Have I slept? Or fairy-tales, folk tales, ghost stories, magic and magi- can I have been drinking?’” cians (such as Baring-Gould’s Book of Were-Wolves), The first five lines actually make one long sen- and many books on dreams, including Jean Ingelow’s tence; the litany of detail—“cold, tired, and cross, and A Story of Doom and Other Poems, and many more. muddy,” “too late to dine”—implies frustration, par- What makes this ghost story unusual? Ghosts are tially assuaged by the supper waiting in the study. The supposed have returned from the dead. The light- cozy words “come home” are undercut by “too late to hearted chatterbox of “Phantasmagoria” doesn’t dine.” The repetition of “and” adds to the tone of “as have a tragic or thrilling backstory—a ghost like this if that weren’t enough!”; it acts as an intensifier. is simply something that old houses should have. His The repetition of “white and wavy” (the descrip- mother is a Fairy and his father is a Brownie. The tion of the little ghost’s appearance) in Canto One mother favors nurture over nature, and has managed ensures that the reader understands how visually to raise her various progeny as a Pixy, two Fays, a Ban- unfamiliar is the situation. Repetition is also a mne- shee, a Fetch, a Kelpie, a Poltergeist, a Ghoul, Trolls, monic device that creates expectations that can be a Double, an Elf, a Phantom (the visiting ghost), and fulfilled—or not. It has an incantatory quality. There a Leprechaun. Cindy showed slides of various ghosts. is more than visual detail—we have gustatory, audi- Just as in Victorian England, there is a class structure, tory, olfactory, and tactile as well. And we have the with Spectres at the top. They are tall and willowy, and so bizarre it can’t be described: “There was a strange- apparently you have to be born into that status. To ness in the room” just as the little ghost is introduced. Cindy, they look like eighteenth-century aristocrats Aside from sounding a lot like Emily Dickinson, this waiting to have their hair powdered. line creates suspense, curiosity, and the sense of an She next turned to bibliography: The first edi- ineffable oddness. Cindy said that, after reading it tion (1869) lacked illustrations, and was published aloud for about the forty-second time, she noticed a under the title of Phantasmagoria and Other Poems. few things that she hadn’t paid attention to before: This collection of verse, Carroll’s first, parodies such The little ghost has the ability to be in two places at nineteenth-century stalwarts as Wordsworth, Swin- once, apparently, and by the end of Canto One, he burne, and Tennyson. “Hiawatha’s Photographing,” grows “more white,” both of which are impossible— the most famous in the collection, is a send-up of which is the whole point. Longfellow. The first canto alone contains many of the pre- Carroll’s exacting nature when it came to the pro- occupations of the Alice books—a lively interest in duction and promotion of his books is well known. food and drink (including a criticism of “bad wine”), Still, it is quite funny to read Alexander Macmillan’s a creature who can appear and disappear (think plea, “I wish you would let me advertise it as by the au- Cheshire Cat), class-consciousness (the host only thor of ‘Alice.’ Won’t you?” Carroll objected to having

4 this on the title page, but he consented to any other Frost wrote back, in accord, “I agree with you that advertisement Macmillan wished. Carroll also had a the warming-pan man is a savage looking individual plan to include a satirical poem about Oxford in a and I will draw him again as you suggest.” special edition for local readers, to be distinguished The Dalziel brothers did the woodblock engraving, by an “O” on the binding. Macmillan responded in a as they had done for the Alice books, and the final pro- tone of refined exasperation, “There is no end to the duction was a felicitous junction of art and literature. perplexities your proposed scheme would cause,” and “Phantasmagoria” remains a highly enjoyable suggested Carroll have it printed separately. In the work that shows Lewis Carroll’s sense of incongruous end, there was a loose flyleaf advertisement forAlice comedy, as well as his poetic talent. The shift from tipped into Phantasmagoria, and a similar ad for Phan- the eerie to the downright silly is brilliant, and the tasmagoria tipped into Alice. Carroll finally decided to Victorian reader must have enjoyed the satirical take publish the Oxford poem in Phantasmagoria—no spe- on the popular ghost story subgenre. “Literature,” cial edition. The book sold well. According to Edward Cindy concluded, “is the best way to communicate Wakeling, Carroll had 600 copies printed for the first with the dead.” edition (January 1869), and a second edition of 1,000 After an excellent buffet lunch in the library, copies came out in the same year. the redoubtable Adam Gopnik gave a talk entitled The book’s cover, chosen by Carroll, is adorned “If I Believe in You, Will You Believe in Me?”. He an- with a “Celestial Phantasmagoria”: the Crab Nebula nounced that “What I tell you three times is true,” on the front and Donati’s Comet on the back. Mac- and pointed out that this was the third time he had millan persuaded Carroll to forego the red of Wonder- spoken before us. (We didn’t need a reminder, as he land because those “skyey objects seem so homeless has been one of our most popular guests.) without the blue.” Gopnik’s talk on monsters was “a taxonomy When Lewis Carroll approached A. B. Frost in through history.” He said there were four kinds of 1878 for what was to be a reissue of the book, now monsters. The first type is the Classical Monster. “It is to be called Rhyme? and Reason?, he was a best-selling not an evil being, but a challenging face of the divine.” author looking for an illustrator. Nevertheless, he The Odyssey features multiple alternative faces of the excused himself for taking the liberty of writing to a divine: Cyclops is the son of Poseidon; the centaur is stranger. Carroll modestly described himself as “the a hybrid monster, but also a teacher. “Monstrousness writer of a little book (Alice’s Adventures in Wonder- equals insight.” This type of monster is a composite al- land)” and asked if Frost would be able to do “a few legory of the divine—it comes from Olympus. There pictures.” With his typical precision, he added the di- is something scary “up there.” mensions and requested “about the same amount of On the other hand, the second type, the Medi- finish as Tenniel’s drawings usually have.” Frost was eval/Christian Monster, is the scary thing “out there.” at the time an up-and-coming young American illus- It is on the margins of our attention and mind, out- trator, who would go on to do Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus tales, Carroll’s A Tangled Tale, and a book Photo by Mark Burstein by Mark Twain, among many others. Cindy quoted several passages from the correspondence between author and illustrator. In January 1879, Carroll wrote: As to the “little ghost,” . . . [m]y idea of him is of a little old man, dressed in a long frock- coat, long flowered-waistcoat, silk stockings, buckles—in fact a sort of Charles I style: with an anxious frightened look (except in the latter part of the poem, when he has recovered his confidence, where he should wear an im- pudent grin) . . . Later Carroll got into deeper discussion about one specific picture, when the narrator imagines the little ghost at the correct home, bothering the host at 3 a.m., and perhaps not coming out too well from the encounter. He objected to Frost’s drawing, saying it was more suitable for a portrayal of Bill Sykes killing Nancy in Oliver Twist, and he proposed a gentler substitute. Adam Gopnik

5 side civilization. It is so far outside the common expe- As for the Modern Carrollian Monster, Gopnik rience, it is apocalyptic. It is the vehicle of the absolute said he had left out the most significant so far, the other; the word could be applied to a social outsider. Boojum. He calls it Carroll’s “most original and po- The greatest example of the third type, the Ro- tent monster.” Carroll created a monster that could mantic Monster, is, of course, Frankenstein. The true be “an avatar for an even worse monster that can- monster is the scientist, whose creation is “a reflection not even be depicted. The idea that there is another of his deepest self.” It is “the part of ourselves that we monster out there—what, where, you don’t know; the don’t want to accept.” This category includes Jekyll/ only thing you know is that it’s fatal—is the descrip- Hyde and Dracula, with their “insinuations into erotic tion of dread, a modern emotion. The Hunting of the consciousness.” These monsters are “in there.” Snark can be read in a Freudian interpretation, but it The final category, the Modern Monster, is less is more accurately trying to name a nameless dread. sharply defined. It is “terrifying, all around.” For ex- The Boojum is the embodiment of that dread.” ample, in H. P. Lovecraft, the monster is the mood, Gopnik discussed the Alice/Unicorn interaction, not a creature. Horror movies have this idea: when the referring to the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, monster is killed, it somehow has new life. (He noted who said we arrive at humanity when we look at the a similar plot device in Beowulf: When the monster Other—we look outside—and we see ourselves. All is destroyed, something worse appears—his mother!) of us live inside the prison of ourselves; everything This monster is all-pervasive, “the void as monster.” that comes from outside is monstrous/the “Other.” Gopnik discussed the paranoia of the Cold War, when The ethical injunction is to choose to see that “Other” monsters were everywhere you looked (e.g., Invasion as an outward image of our own selves. How do we of the Body Snatchers). This was also a major preoccupa- reconcile the seemingly monstrous outside ourselves tion of Philip K. Dick, who gave us the idea of reality with the “normal” within ourselves? Gopnik closed itself as the monster. We can also see this in the Matrix with, “‘If you believe in me, I’ll believe in you’ is the films. “Violence never goes away.” It is a permanent beginning of ethical awareness.” condition with the Modern Monster. In the Q&A afterward, someone asked if Alice Next, Gopnik asked, “Can we find all types of was the monster, and he answered, “Yes and no. She monsters in Carroll’s work?” The answer, of course, becomes her relative stature, literally and figuratively; is “Yes.” The Classical Monster is self-evident here, her ascendance to majesty is also literally fragmenting with the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle, which ex- her as a human being.” However, she represents the emplify the “misshapen marriage of two things.” common sense of a child. “Every man identifies with They are “fully rational creatures, incorporated Hamlet, the disinherited monarch. Every woman is into the world.” What they are not are “disrup- Alice because they are in a world filled with people tors, explicators, teachers.” Examples of Carroll’s who think they are disinherited monarchs.” Medieval Monsters include the Jabberwock and What about the Queen of Hearts? He said that the Snark. Both stories are classic quest stories, she represents the cruel nurse, the cruel guardian, although they mock the solemnity of quest tales, and is a commentary on the arbitrary use of authority. which a hundred years later return in Tolkien. Carroll implicates himself—he is more like the Look- (Gopnik quoted Philip Larkin’s take on the Lord ing-Glass people than Alice. “A middle-class monster.” of the Rings trilogy: “I don’t mind reading [them]; The Cheshire Cat is not a monster. It is mysterious. but I hate having to pretend they’re interesting.”) not disturbing. It is not a moral monstrosity like the Are they nonsense? No, “Edward Lear engages in Walrus or the Carpenter. nonsense. ‘Jabberwocky’ is not nonsense; it is ex- When asked about “Who dreamed it?” Gopnik plained to us fully.” Gopnik called it NEWsense, replied that this is a powerful conceit for people like or words and grammar we are not accustomed to. Philip K. Dick and for twentieth-century science fic- “Nonsense is meant to comment on the opacity of tion in general. “The simulated reality—a LaLa Land language.” He added that “The Mad Gardener’s / Moonlight mix-up, or the Patriots’ comeback at the Song” from Sylvie and Bruno, meant to be a surreal Super Bowl—signal this. Living in someone else’s juxtaposition, is very like Lear’s idea of nonsense. dream is a core anxiety.” He closed by saying that The Romantic Monsters of Carroll are the Wal- “The imaginative/intellectual life of Carroll’s work is rus and the Carpenter. They aren’t monstrous in the endlessly re-applicable to our lives.” sense of the Jabberwock, but they are moral monsters, Next, Matt Demakos gave a three-part presentation as one realizes as the poem develops. They are an al- on John Tenniel. The first was a summary of his two- lusion to the indignant romantic imagination, with its part article, “Once I Was a Real Turtle,” whose second allegory of capitalism. “I weep for you . . . I deeply part appears in this issue. The article offers a fascinat- sympathize,” says the Walrus, who is compared, by ing discussion of John Tenniel’s post-publication draw- Gopnik, to the “good liberal.” (This got a big laugh.) ings and tracings for the two Alice books. After briefly

6 Photo by Chris Morgan discussing the qualities of Tenniel’s post-pub drawings, Demakos gave a demonstration of how he studied the images by aligning the three main components—the drawing, the tracing, and the print—in Photoshop and repeatedly flicking them back and forth to identify differences. He thus developed his three proofs for dem- onstrating that the tracings were used to create the drawings. In essence, Figure 6 from last issue’s article (Father William and the Eel) along with Figure 6 (the Wonderland frontispiece) in this issue’s have come to life. Readers are referred to Matt’s article herein, and Part One in KL 100, for a full treatment. Part two of Matt’s presentation was a discussion of “The Mystery of the Morgan’s Framed Five.” The Morgan holds a set of five preliminary drawings given to the library by Arthur A. Houghton, Jr., in 1987. In Matt’s provenances of all the Alice preliminary drawings, the set occupied the largest gap in his research— a vast unknown. Fortunately, librarian Elizabeth Full- er at the Rosenbach library told him that Houghton’s Matt Demakos papers were kept in Corning, New York. There he examined files kept by the Corning Glass firm (once the Houghton family business). He found forty or so documents relating to the drawings, one being a “chatty” Hartley, which contains many tracings, a few letter. He noted that such discoveries are rare: One drawings, and a couple of touched (i.e., hand- is usually satisfied with an invoice, a date, a price, corrected) proofs. Matt pointed out the many and, if lucky, a previous owner’s name. In 1931, the differences between the tracing and the draw- drawings were bought by the Maggs Brothers at the ing. On the tracing, Tenniel makes the claws estate auction of Frederick Louis Lucas, but promptly hairy (as opposed to bony), lowers the boy, adds sold to the distraught underbidder, Alwin J. Scheuer, a bowtie, adds a collar, adds more buttons, and the writer of the chatty letter. Scheuer sold them to a squares out the creature’s lower jaw, making it New York collector, but a couple of years later (1933), “appear more burbling.” He also closes the fore- Scheuer was acting as the collector’s agent in the sale most claw, rounds out the tail, shortens the boy’s to Houghton. The coincidences between these draw- skirt, and arches his sword farther back. Lastly, ings and the post-publication drawings at the Berg are Tenniel seems to show the cheeks and eye socket discussed in Matt’s article in this issue. of the boy, instead of masking the face with hair, Last was a discussion of “The Jabberwock, With as on the drawing. Eyes of Flame,” examining the creation of the beast u The British Library’s Woodblock. Tenniel next drew not from Carroll’s point of view, but from Tenniel’s. on this block—the standard procedure—but Matt is currently working on a paper about Tenniel’s that image was destroyed in the cutting. The working method for drawing on the wood. His study block, or “Jabberblock,” is striking in its inky of the Jabberwock is only the beginning of his re- black and gleaming white. The word “wells” search, but it poses a good starting point, since all the was stamped on the side, the name of the firm major parts are extant. They are: that supplied the Dalziel brothers with the u The Rosenbach’s Drawing. This pencil drawing of blocks. Matt received special permission from the Jabberwock from the Rosenbach Library was Macmillan, the owner of the woodblock (housed once tipped into a book first owned by Stuart at the British Library), to have it photographed M. Samuel, but later removed for conservation and shown. reasons. It contains a startling use of china-white u The British Museum’s State Proof. Matt then com- ink. Instead of drawing the “eyes of flame” with pared what he called “the well-known print” for a pencil, Tenniel drew them with china-white ink the block. In truth, it was actually a state proof over previously drawn lines—likely on purpose, and a rarity not previously printed. The proof, knowing it would be the technique he would ap- from an album of prints purchased from Gilbert ply as well on the block. Dalziel, has shorter “eyes of flame” lines emanat- u The Vineyard’s Tracing. This tracing comes from ing from the beast’s eyes, darker lower teeth, a copy of Looking-Glass once owned by Harold and a darker trunk behind the beast’s lower

7 foot. Curiously, out of the eleven main differ- Following the talks, we adjourned to the Morgan’s ences between the drawing and the tracing, only Reading Room, where Maria Molestina-Kurlat, Head four appear on the print. If the tracing comes of Reader Services at the Morgan, and Carolyn Vega, after the drawing, as we are often told, this poses now Berg Collection Curator at NYPL, gave us a guid- a problem, because we should see a clearer devel- ed tour of some fascinating Carrollian items, many opment from one piece to the next. from the Library’s Houghton collection. Some had a monster theme. (Carolyn also had organized the Mor- u The Morgan’s Touched Proof. This proof comes gan’s Alice150 exhibition in 2015.) from an enlarged copy of Looking-Glass once Arthur A. Houghton, Jr. read Alice at school and, owned by Cecil Sebag-Montefiore. (As previ- in 1925, bought a first (1865) edition ofAlice for $225 ously noted, a touched proof is one that has (equivalent to $3,200 today). Because he lacked the been hand-corrected.) The proofs show Tenniel money, he talked his father into writing a check. He marking up the prints with china-white or china- had a remarkable professional career, serving as vice red ink and adding hand-written notations. In president of the Morgan’s board, and president of the case of the Jabberwock, Tenniel adds white the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, lines emanating from the creature’s eyes (as and Steuben Glass. He was also curator of rare books he did on the drawing), extending them, and at the Library of Congress and—last but not least— even informing the cutter to do more than he a member of the LCSNA. In the 1930s, he acquired “scratched.” He also whitens the creature’s two much significant Carroll material. In 1981 and 1982, lower teeth and a tree trunk behind his lower he placed his collection of 900 works on deposit at foot, perhaps to make the beast appear more the Morgan, and it became a formal gift to the library airborne and less grounded. after his death. Photo by Chris Morgan

Carolyn Vega points something out to an excited onlooker.

8 The Morgan had a Carroll collection prior to The exhibit explored the complex social Houghton’s donation, and continues to acquire Car- role of monsters in the Middle Ages. Medi- roll material to this day. In 2015, they obtained impor- eval Monsters had three sections: “Terrors” tant drawings and proofs by Tenniel, some of which explored how monsters enhanced the aura were on display for us in the Reading room. Some of those in power, be they rulers, knights, highlights of the special exhibit were: or saints. . . . “Aliens” demonstrated how u A Through the Looking-Glass first edition rebound marginalized groups in European societ- by a collector. Interleaved with the pages are the ies—such as Jews, Muslims, women, the poor, proofs for the illustrations with Tenniel’s notes. and the disabled—were further alienated Carolyn opened the volume to the Jabberwock by being figured as monstrous. The final illustration, with a list of corrections to be made section, “Wonders,” considered a group of to the block. strange beauties and frightful anomalies that populated the medieval world. . . . These u A true first ofWonderland , rebound in 1898, with fantastic beings were meant to inspire a Houghton’s bookplate. sense of marvel and awe in their viewers. u A remarkable letter from Carroll to Furniss regarding an illustration in Sylvie and Bruno. A sense of marvel and awe was indeed embedded Carroll insisted that Furniss draw an albatross in all who attended this fine fall meeting. turning into a postage stamp. When Furniss demurred, Carroll proved him wrong by sending Our thanks to the LCSNA members who generously con- such a drawing in a letter! See page 53. tributed to this report: August Imholtz , Jr., Clare Imholtz, u A 2015 Canadian portfolio of the Furniss illus- Stephanie Lovett, Ellie Schaefer-Salins, Robert Stek, Mark trations for Alice. Burstein, and Cindy Watter. u Tenniel’s preparatory drawings, including post- publication drawings of the Duchess and Alice going through the looking-glass. Photo by Chris Morgan u Hand-colored Nursery Alice proofs, paired with the original drawings. u A Carroll letter to the Dalziel brothers. u The Rackham Alice, with watercolors painted therein by Rackham. u A Wonderland Biscuit tin. (To Carroll’s surprise, it was sold empty) u A Wonderland postage stamp case. (Funded by Carroll, since Macmillan wouldn’t print it.) Next, we received a guided tour of the Library’s Me- dieval Monster exhibit, drawn from the library’s remarkable collection of illuminated manuscripts and related items. This major exhibition was the first of its kind in North America, and it explored the com- St. Firmin plex social role of monsters in the Middle Ages. The Holding His library’s website notes: Head, Monsters have captivated the imagina- 13th c. France tion of medieval men and women, just as they continue to fascinate us today.

9 d e “ONCE I WAS A REAL TURTLE” tenniel’s post-publication drawings and tracings in the berg collection: part ii matt demakos d e

“for to know your history” seventeen of the original Tenniel drawings—exquisite things.” 4 (Despite the wording, the drawings were or the history of the Tenniel drawings and not tipped into a book, nor do they show any signs tracings at the Berg, we must travel out of the of having once been so. In fact, several show signs of Fcity 270 miles to the north—“road trip!”—to once being framed.) St. Lawrence University, Owen D. Young’s alma ma- There is little space to delve into the Young–Spen- ter. The library, named after the man, holds about cer relationship. Suffice it to say that Young knew twenty-six boxes related to his book collecting hab- Spencer was a rascal and warned others of his charac- its. The boxes contain about 118 folders altogether, ter. Despite this, they struck up a friendship, writing with many folders holding upwards of one hundred touching letters after family tragedies. And they came pages. Once we order our findings chronologically— to an understanding on how to do business with each after three days of rummaging—we find that the first other. Once Young and Spencer accidentally found item of concern is a packing list of goods from Walter “first editions of Pope—one of them very rare—and T. Spencer, a bookseller, dated September 30, 1924, best of all, a copy of Dr. Johnson’s ‘London’... Spen- totaling £6,523–15s (about a half-million dollars to- cer and I got up and danced around the room, and day!). The items are mostly Thackeray, but with some no winners at any form of gambling were ever more Dickens, Cruikshank, De Quincy, and Carroll thrown hilarious.” 5 in, along with this telling entry: “Tenniel | 17 Draw- Young also did business with Charles J. Sawyer. An ings to Alice in Wonderland | ND. (1865) | 170.”1 This invoice contracted in September was for a copy of an not only tells us what Young paid for the drawings 1866 Alice, with an original drawing, for £95 ($7,100 (£170 is about $12,700 today, or about $750 for each today) and a case for £6–6s ($470), along with a first drawing) but also that he, and perhaps Spencer, be- edition Looking-Glass for £6–10s ($490) and a case for lieved them to be prepublication. £5 ($370). The drawing was the Berg’s non-reverse Young, the chairman of both General Electric Duchess in the Kitchen (see Part I, Figure 1). In De- and The Radio Corporation of America (which he cember, Sawyer wrote Young in New York, “I think you founded), bought the goods from Spencer when he will agree with me that Messrs. Riviere have made very was in London for a conference that resulted in the handsome cases for the ‘Carrolls,’ and as the present Dawes Plan, essentially, a revision of the Treaty of Ver- proprietor of Riviere’s, Mr. Calkin, is a nephew of Sir sailles, concerning Germany’s reparations for their John Tenniel, I thought it would be rather nice if we actions in the Great War. It was here, on this trip, and put a note from him in the case with the drawing.”6 especially in his visits to Spencer’s shop, that Young Calkin’s note, still in the box, dated November 13, turned a corner with his book collecting, as can be reads: “In my judgement this drawing of the illustra- seen by the value of the packing list.2 tion on p. 81 of the first edition of Alice in Wonder- Spencer’s shop was disorganized and dusty, a land is the genuine production of my uncle John Ten- crowded, disheveled mess3—in other words, a book niel / Arthur E. Calkin.” (Is Calkin’s use of the words lover’s paradise.Young’s wife, who accompanied him “genuine production” a calculated move to avoid dat- on his trip, wrote home about how Spencer casually ing the drawing?) pulled out a Robert Burns poem—“O Scots what hae But somehow the plans were changed, and a new with Wallace bled,” as she styled it, adding “the origi- invoice was drawn up on December 24. The drawing nal manuscript, stained and darned across the cen- was removed from the book—seemingly never even tre with zigzag stitches, but all there!” She told her being tipped in—and put into its own solander case, daughter that the bookman knew Stevenson, Tenny- and the two books were put into a double solander son, and Browning, and that the old man also “knew case, made to look like two volumes.7 The volume of Lewis Carroll well—and Tenniel who did the pic- Wonderland still has “with original drawing” written tures—and we’re bringing home a first edition with in pencil on the inside cover, despite its no longer

10 Figure 1. Owen D. Young (left), Walter T. Spencer (right), and a letter from Spencer to Young offering the eighteen tracings (detail), from the Owen D. Young Collection, St. Lawrence University Libraries, Canton, NY, except the photo of Spencer which is from his book Forty Years in My Book- shop, courtesy of St. Lawrence University Library. Spencer’s letter authenticates not only the tracings but, given the evidence presented in the first part of the article, the drawings themselves.

being there. The book (and likely the drawing) was are the ones that Sir John Tenniel actually made for once owned by the Rt. Hon. Charles George Milnes the Engraver, so that he could fix them on boxwood Gaskell; it has his bookplate, though the book itself is and cut his engraving out, and so of course destroy the inscribed “M M G / 1866.” 8 drawings. But for some unknown reason the engraver In early January 1925, Young thanked Sawyer for has not done that.” the Calkin letter, adding, “I now have quite a large These were, of course, not drawings but tracings, number of drawings and I intend to put them in the and Spencer itemized each one with the page number. case with yours.” 9 This, of course, did not happen. He also referred to them in a letter: “You will notice Perhaps Young didn’t at first know the case had on that I have sent you a very wonderful lot of Tenniel the spine, and in caps: “Original / Drawing / By / Drawings to ‘Alice in Wonderland’, that I have just John Tenniel / Page 81.” been able to purchase direct from the Family those In February, Young wrote Spencer, “On the whole that he made for the Engraver to place on the Box- my interest in Lewis Carroll has increased rather than wood so that he could make the Engraving more ac- diminished, and association items of his would also curately, you will notice for some unknown reason the please me.” 10 Sure enough, a long list of goods with Engraver has never used [them], you will see they are prices was sent, dated March 2, and it included three very beautiful” (Figure 1).11 more drawings (Father William Balancing an Eel on Ignorance was a boon to Spencer’s purse. He His Nose [see Part I, Figure 6], the Two Frog Foot- obviously had a lucrative idea of the process of wood men, and the reversed Duchess in the Kitchen). engraving and quite advantageously believed that trac- Added to the previous seventeen, these make up the ings were, by the very nature of the process, ruined twenty drawings now in the Berg. But below these after use. Hence, being considered prepublication, the three, Spencer added: “The 18 following drawings routine tracings were priced the same as the “exquisite

11 Figure 2. The Cole Reading Room, St. Lawrence University, from Catalogue of an Exhibition of Original Manuscripts, 1925. The building housed Owen D. Young’s exhibition, which included the Tenniel drawings now at the Berg.

things.” Young bit, and the tracings (post-publication phon and the Mock Turtle” (Part I, Figure 1 shows tracings), along with the drawings, were invoiced the frontispiece). It was invoiced six days after the three days later as “21 | Drawings by Sir John Tenniel letter—in other words, our man bit again—and was | 1864 | 210” (or about $16,000 today). combined with a special edition of Dickens’s Our At this time in our chronology, Young, quite Mutual Friend, the two selling for a total of $2,100 pleased with his new obsession, organized a show of ($28,800).14 (Dooman had the book for less than two the myriad goods he collected, along with contribu- years. It was in an Ernest Dressel North catalogue in tions from others. It took place in the old Cole Read- December 1923, priced $750.)15 ing Room in Herring Library at St. Lawrence Univer- Oddly enough, the post-publication drawing of sity, and ran for three months in the summer of 1925 Alice Dancing the Lobster Quadrille with the Mock (Figure 2). The show included many Carroll first edi- Turtle and the Gryphon is a reverse image (like the tions, and letters, such as the one to May Parrish in box of twenty) on thin paper (like the box of twenty) which he says, “For the qualities I like best in children and with wide margins (like the box of twenty). It are (1) pride (2) ill temper (3) laziness + deceitful- seems to be a long-lost runaway son. No other post- ness.” And of course, Young showed off his Tenniel publication drawings, whether in a library, museum, creations, described in the catalogue as: “Original or private collection, seem to have these three quali- pencil sketches for ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ signed ties. But Owen D. Young ended up, in three separate with monogram; together with tracings made by the purchases, from two different sellers, with all twenty- artist for the engraver.”12 Young—regrettably—was one such drawings. schooled at Spencer Elementary. It is not the scope of this project to delve into In December, Brentano’s sent Young a letter how, in 1929, Owen D. Young secured that most cov- stating that they had bought an item from the re- eted of prizes: an 1865 Alice; how the crash of that cent Rev. Isaac Dooman sale, an 1866 version of Won- year hampered his collecting; how he lent the draw- derland with two original drawings. An auction cata- ings (and many other goods) to the 1932 Lewis Car- logue in the Berg, with penciled annotations, shows roll Exhibition at Columbia University;16 how in 1941, that Brentano’s paid $510 for the item ($7,000). to settle his debts, he sold a half-share of his collec- The entry itself shows that it was bound by Riviere tion to Alan Berg, who donated the entirety to The and that it was “A superb copy, enhanced by the in- New York Public Library; or how, in 2015, two draw- sertion of two of the Original Drawings by Tenniel, ings went missing after being returned by the Morgan one being the Frontispiece,13 and the other the Gry- Library for their Alice150 show.

12 Figure 3. New Entrance Vestibule and Gallery for The Fine Figure 4. Louis Samuel Montagu, courtesy of the Montagu family. Art Society, Thomas Raffles Davison, engraving, The British The photograph is thought to have been taken about the time of Architect, December 16, 1881, courtesy of the Fine Art Society. his marriage, February 9, 1898. Montagu’s purchase of fifteen Curiously, the society, located at 148 New Bond Street since Tenniel drawings for Wonderland at the Fine Art Society in 1871, had to move out only this year! 1895 was only the beginning of his interest in the artist.

It is the scope of this paper, however, to turn our from the 1860s. The show was about the new. Third, eyes further into the past and discuss the prehistory one newspaper, writing about the show, singled out of these drawings, especially the twenty drawings and one of the Wonderland drawings, Father William Bal- eighteen tracings that hide away in their fragile red ancing the Eel on his Nose,18 and it is indeed part of morocco solander home, once a worry for no one. the Young twenty. Fourth, the description of the draw- What is the origin of these forgotten drawings before ings in The Illustrated London News suggests that the Young got his innocent hands and Spencer his oily drawings had a fineness, not a sketchiness, about them: hands upon them? “while in the sketches for ‘Alice in Wonderland’ he In 1895 John Tenniel had a show at The Fine Art shows not only a complete mastery of childish grace Society (Figure 3). Frankie Morris says that it, along and simplicity, but an insight into child life which with his show there in 1900, was “doubtless for the his colleague ‘Dicky’ Doyle might envy.” The phrase purpose of augmenting his retirement funds.” Rod- “complete mastery” does not apply well to Tenniel’s ney Engen writes that it was “not to earn needed mon- preliminary drawings: one does not envy a sketchy ey,” but “Following a year after his knighthood, it was preliminary.19 And last, not only do the numbers add hoped they [his drawings] would help to explain why up, but it simply feels right. Tenniel does not seem to he had achieved this singular honour.” Nonetheless, have been in the habit of doing such a large quantity the show’s 177 lots consisted mostly of Punch or Punch of post-publication drawings for one collector. But Almanack drawings. But there were a few lots from here he had a reason to do so—he had a show. book illustrations, such as lots 23, 67, 160, and 168, It should also be pointed out that though Mar- all of which had the same short description: “Five ion Speilmann describes Tenniel as completing old Sketches for ‘Alice in Wonderland.’”17 If you have sketches as commissions,20 it is E. J. Milliken, in his done your math homework, you know that adds up to preface to the 1895 catalogue, who informs us that exactly twenty drawings. Tenniel also recreated illustrations wholly from Several arguments support the conclusion that scratch. “The earlier drawings, as has been explained, these 1895 drawings (unnamed in the catalogue) do not exist,” Milliken wrote, referring to the draw- are one and the same as the Young drawings. First, if ings on wood, “save in cases where the artist, from his Engen is correct, prepublication sketches—some of original sketches and artistic memoranda, with the which look rather lame, in all honesty—would hardly aid of the wood-cut as printed in the pages of Punch, justify his knighthood. Second, eighty percent of the has reproduced approximately the original pencil other lots were from the 1890s and only one percent drawings. This Sir John Tenniel has done in a consid-

13 erable number of instances, illustrations of which will tinued his interest in Tenniel, buying ten preliminary be found on these walls.”21 It is doubtful that Tenniel drawings to Wonderland in 1899, and buying twenty- needed to refer to his “original sketches” or his “artis- two preliminary drawings for Looking-Glass in 1899 as tic memoranda” (whatever that may mean). It is also well, though the book itself was rebound three years amusing that Milliken avoided mentioning Tenniel’s earlier and dated 1896. He bound them into an 1865 habit of tracing, perhaps seen, as it has in the history Alice, which he purchased unbound, and an 1872 of art, as a lowly practice. But most importantly for Looking-Glass, which he kept in its original binding.26 us, if Tenniel created wholly new drawings of his Punch (His cousin Stuart Montagu Samuel purchased five illustrations for this show, as Milliken indicates, why preliminary drawings to Wonderland in 1899, tipping couldn’t he have done the same for the Wonderland them into his own 1865 edition. He also owned a first drawings in the same show? edition of Looking-Glass with five preliminary draw- It should not trouble us that some newspapers ings that were likely purchased in 1899 as well, tipped printed some contrary evidence. For example, one into an edition he had rebound in 1896.) newspaper mentioned that one should not lose the The firstWonderland lot was bought by Frederick opportunity of seeing, “the very earliest idea of Bill Louis Lucas (1860–1930) for £26–5, or five guineas the Lizard, the Mock Turtle, the Queen of Hearts, each. He almost certainly knew Montagu, both having and the Hatter and the March Hare.”22 It is true that relations to the well-known Goldsmid family. He was Bill the Lizard is not in our twenty drawings. But it a barrister, Cambridge alumnus, Trinity College, and is also true that the article reads as if it were simply was described in 1886 as being “largely engaged in reviewing the catalogue, which happened to be pub- education and other labours among the working class- lished the same day as the article and indeed the day es.”27 Upon his death, he owned five preliminary draw- before the official opening. The reviewer simply listed ings for Wonderland and four Tenniel drawings for The characters from the story that came to mind and as- Ingoldsby Legends, along with many collectable books, sumed (perhaps reasonably) that “sketches for” including Carroll’s copy of Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cit- meant preliminary drawings. ies, a copy of Wonderland with Tenniel’s and Carroll’s At least two other newspapers referred to the signatures (the latter in purple), a copy of Adventures Wonderland drawings as “original” or “originals.”23 Al- d’Alice au pays des merveilles with only the artist’s signa- though the reporters seem to have visited the show, ture, and many non-Carroll-related rarities, including they likewise should not trouble us. These drawings books, watercolors and letters. His Tenniel drawings have confused collectors and serious scholars for were kept in his billiard room, the ones for Alice in a years, as we have already indicated above and will see single oak frame.28 But, like Montagu, he died without in the next section. To give just one example for now: his post-publication drawings. In fact, Owen D. Young In the Berg copy of the Bronson Winthrop auction purchased them before both men died. catalogue, there appears a note written by a curator Readers may have noticed some coincidences in preparation for the sale, outlining a bidding strat- concerning the twenty post-publication drawings egy. It reads: “The Winthrop Tenniels are probably from 1895 and the twenty-five preliminary drawings not the original drawing for the 1st ed. for the follow- from 1899. We know they are two different sets owing reasons … 3) They are retouched in color where ing to existing ledger books that show their separate the orig ones in the Collection are in pencil without purchases. Yet both sets do contain twenty drawings color leading to the suspicion that these drawings of for Wonderland, and both sets were divided into units Winthrop were copies of the originals made by Ten- of five. Note how Montagu originally bought fifteen niel.”24 The Berg curator erroneously believed the Wonderland post-publication drawings but ended up Young twenty were from 1864–65. (if we include his cousin’s five) withonly and exactly fif- To figure out who bought the drawings, we must teen preliminaries. Note as well that Lucas originally take a side trip to the Fine Art Society in England— bought five post-publication drawings that were likely a long swim, but doable—who still have their “Sales in a single frame (as Montagu’s were stated as being) Book” for 1895.25 As it turns out, the four lots of Won- but had only and exactly five preliminaries in a single derland drawings were bought by two men related to frame when he died. Marion Spielmann, the man who interviewed Tenniel The following scenario may justify these arithme- for his History of “Punch.” The last three Wonderland tic congruities. First, suppose the two men believed lots were bought by Louis Samuel Montagu (1869– that they were buying preliminary drawings in the 1927) in “3 frames of drawings” for £63, or four guin- 1895 Fine Art Society sale. After all, the drawings eas each (Figure 4). He was the son of Sir Samuel had a reverse orientation, many with study-like doo- Montagu, the future First Baron Swaythling, a highly dles; they were surrounded by some true prelimi- successful Jewish banker, who himself bought one nary drawings; and they were not helpfully detailed Punch drawing, “A Stiff Job,” for £15–15s. Louis con- in the catalogue. Then, after finding out their true

14 perhaps after Tenniel’s death, they were sold as one set to Spencer, who, being a bit of a rascal, obscured their origin—not by lying outright, but by simply giving the tracings’ origins and keeping mum about the drawings’ origins, allowing Young to assume two different provenances. Although Spencer became friendly with Young, they were not quite dancing part- ners at this stage of their relationship. “i’m not myself, you see” In April 1912, Harcourt Amory wrote that Calkin “had no doubt about the genuineness of the 2 Bris- tol Board drawings of the Fish + Frog and Alice + Fla- mingo as their appearance indicates: besides T. always had bristol [sic] board sheets about, and mounted drawings upon them. Finished drawings (like the two I have) can be more nicely made on the hard surface of the board.”30 The letter is found in some uncatalogued folders at Harvard—for we have taken another, but still not our last, trip out of the city to Figure 5. Sir Claude Phillips endeavouring, under the aus- the north. The collection will help us show the con- pices of Mr Ernest Brown, not to think my caricatures are fusion experienced by collectors, librarians, curators, in the worst possible taste, Sir Max Beerbohm (1872-1956), and cataloguers, regarding the true nature of Tenn- pencil, ink, and watercolor, n.d., reproduced from a photograph iel’s post-publication drawings. Amory, whose family in the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, University of Delaware donated his collection to Harvard, was interested in Library. © Estate of Max Beerbohm. Brown ran the 1895 Ten- collecting Carroll to the exclusion of anything else, niel show, and may have been the man who persuaded Tenniel unlike the more comprehensive Owen D. Young. to create the Alice drawings in the Berg’s solander case. No That Amory brought a couple of his post-publication photographs were found of the man, but not for lack of trying. drawings to Calkin shows that he had some concern There is promise that he may appear in one, however, in a future article. about the drawings. Calkin may even have divulged that they were replicas. This is illustrated in a letter the collector wrote to the dealer E. D. North three years origin, the men returned them. This may have been later. “Can you tell me whether these are the originals done on friendly terms. In 1898, Montagu bought a used by the Dalziels,” he asked, “or perhaps re-drawn Christmas gift for a man named “Brown,” who may by Tenniel at the request of some one?”31 Note that, have been Ernest Brown (Figure 5), the man who like Spencer, he believed, incorrectly, that engravers ran the 1895 show. Next, the men purchased the in the 1860s usually had a paper copy besides the one true preliminary drawings, each obtaining the same on the wood. number, except that Montagu allowed his cousin to Despite Amory’s possible knowledge that Tenn- take five from his allotted fifteen. Indeed, Montagu’s iel created post-publication work, Flora V. Livingston, account book shows him buying what is likely the who itemized Harcourt Amory’s collection for Har- drawings a few weeks after Brown’s Christmas gift. vard in 1932, evidently came across no document that Lastly, Montagu bound his new drawings into an properly demarcated the preliminary sketches and unbound copy of Wonderland he had purchased the the post-publication drawings. Her catalog of the col- previous July,29 and Lucas framed his into a single lection simply lists them as “Pencil Drawings On Bris- frame, perhaps the same one that held his old post- tol Board,”32 a noncommittal stance that most readers publication drawings. likely interpreted as meaning they were pre-publi- This also explains away the portlier coincidence cation. Privately, she did suppose some to be post- that the post-publication drawings and tracings end- publication, as a letter from Arthur A. Houghton, Jr. ed up in the same box. Young had no idea that the implies. He wrote back to Livingston stating that her tracings were used to create the drawings, that there “explanation strengthens what I had suspected, that was a strong link between them, yet they ended up many of these were done at a later date by Tenniel for housed in the same box—a grand reunion, but one his friends,”33 showing confusion for some time on his unknown to the organizer. Hence, it is likely that the part as well. post-publication drawings went back to Tenniel, who With these letters available and likely seen, Elea- combined them with the tracings. At some later date, nor M. Garvey and W. H. Bond, in their in 1978 book

15 on Tenniel’s illustrations in the Harcourt Amory Col- These all-too-convenient elements lead to one lection, surprisingly take, again, the noncommittal uncomfortable question: Was Tenniel complaisant stance, referring to each drawing as a “finished pencil in this deceit? Did he willingly give his drawings for drawing” or, as in the introduction, a “finished study.”34 the 1895 exhibition an ambiguous look? If so, know- The latter smacks of being pre-publication. Justin G. ing the artist’s generosity, he probably saw it as doing Schiller took them to task and wrote quite adamantly the dealer a favor. In other words, he may have been in his review of the book and in his “Census” that all of playing the game for a hoot, rather than for an extra the finished drawings were createdafter publication.35 buck. Then again, he did not usually sketch in reverse, Sixteen years later, Frankie Morris threw her support as must have been shown by the other drawings in to Garvey and Bond, claiming that the Harvard draw- the exhibition, and the doodles are simply too pro- ings on board were used as guides for drawing on the grammed, too perfect, and too regular—everything is wood.36 Treacherous waters these! And we will soon too regular—for these drawings to be passed off as pre- sail deeper into those troughs. publication, drawings created over months. He also Were dealers the cause of the confusion? It’s an dated several post-publication drawings. interesting question. In the 1912 letter, Amory said To finish out our trip to Harvard, we should dis- that Calkin described the dealer Ernest Brown as “al- cuss their many “post-pub” tracings—to use the hip ways very secretive + an auctioneer.”37 Note how the campus shorthand. They have four on grayish tan coded word secretive (read duplicitous) smears book- paper which are debatable, a topic for another time. sellers and how the conjunction and even smears auc- They have thirteen on ribbed brown paper that are tioneers. Brown, as stated above, was a manager at the dubious. Many are rendered with either cross-hatch- Fine Art Society when Tenniel had his 1895 exhibi- ing or dark shaded areas, not Tenniel’s usual habit, tion, one that may have had post-publication draw- and one has an old plug, which fell out many years ings displayed as if preliminary—drawings that were later, traced40—a smoking gun, if there ever was one. perhaps returned (if the theory above is correct) by But the one tracing they have on smooth white trac- two confused men. But what of Calkin himself? He ing paper, of the Frog Footmen, is genuine and was authenticated post-publication drawings without ac- used to create Harvard’s own post-pub drawing of knowledging their true origin. His use of the term the same. They also have four tracings on flat brown “genuine production” when authenticating Young’s paper, like the Berg’s, and they too seem legitimate. non-reverse Duchess drawing (quoted in the previous The one of Alice holding back the curtain was used section) is suspicious. to create their post-pub of the same. The other two, Documents at Harvard show Spencer to be “se- of Alice in the armchair and the first drawing of her cretive” as well. When asked whether a drawing (cur- going through the mirror (both for Looking-Glass), rent whereabouts unknown) was post-publication or could have been used to create the post-pubs in the not—one containing elements of both Wonderland collection; it remains unclear at this time. But it is be- and Looking-Glass—he still argued, and tortuously, yond a doubt that the tracing of the second of the that the drawing was created before the first book. The three walrus drawings is genuine. It was not used for receiver of this drivel noted in the margins that Look- anything at Harvard, though; it was used to create the ing-Glass “was not thought of until Alice had become Berg’s own Walrus post-pub! As we will soon see, this popular.”38 is not the only cross-collection tracing–drawing link And one wonders how innocent Tenniel himself we can make. was. Earlier we imagined the first collectors (now known to be Montagu and Lucas) being innocently “once i was a real turtle” amused with the reverse orientation of the drawings I met Justin Schiller one bright September day in 2017 and with the faux doodles. Curiously, both of these in Kingston, New York—yet another road trip to the characteristics are too convenient for dealers to pass north, and proof, along with Boston, New York, Phila- the drawings off as anything but post-publication. delphia, and even St. Lawrence, that the best place to These qualities make them appear more sketch-like, study John Tenniel is here on the East Coast of the preliminary, more developmental. Schiller wrote that United States. We spoke of all things Tenniel, first in buyers expected drawings to be in reverse; for ex- Justin’s home and then in a French bistro, the lovely ample, John Leech, a Dickens illustrator, often drew Le Canard Enchaine. He recommended the onion in reverse. Spencer even used the reverse orientation soup, and rightfully so. Justin runs Battledore Ltd. of some Phiz drawings for two of Dickens’s books as with his partner, Dennis M. V. David, who joined us “proof positive” that the drawings were pre-publica- for lunch. The company specializes in Maurice Sen- tion, “used by the Engraver, who naturally reverses dak, children’s books in general, and (hopefully unre- them in the Engraving of them.” 39 lated) political propaganda, especially of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. If you want a poster of Mao or

16 Figure 6. Frontispiece (detail), John Tenniel, Tracing, pencil on tracing paper, 134 3 92 mm, from The Morgan Library. The Morgan’s online catalogue, at the time of writing, calls this tracing a “Forgery after the original frontispiece” by “The British School.” Perhaps a modification is in order. The tracing appears to be on the same paper as the Berg’s tracings, though darker owing to some maltreat- ment in its past. Despite this obstacle, it can still be shown that it was the tracing Tenniel used to create the Berg’s post-publication frontispiece. To the left of (a) there appears a missing inverted v-figure, which is also missing on the drawing (omission). There are fewer wrinkle lines emanating from the heart above (b) than in the print, and there are fewer in the drawing (omission). These lines are also shorter on the tracing than in the print, and indeed appear shorter on the drawing (deviation). The heart above (c) has fewer and shorter lines as well, though it also has an inverted y-shape to the left, not on the print but which appears on the drawing (deviation). The rising sprig in the Knave’s sash (d) is missing from the tracing, yet appears on the drawing with different curves (omission). Lastly, and most tellingly, the tacks in the cloth were not traced in the strip below (e) and (g) and were placed differently in the drawing, the latter having nine tacks in the print but seven in the drawing (omission), but they were traced below (f) and (h) and appear nearly exact on the drawing. The exactness of the traced tacks acts as a control group to the untraced tacks, making the connection between the tracing and the drawing undeniable.

Max, you now know whom to call. Justin is not only keen observation and one that is actually quoted from a dealer but a collector as well. In fact, his personal his book published five years later. Justin simply cre- collection once included an 1865 Alice with ten origi- ated a false dichotomy: the drawings are either for the nal drawings and an 1872 Looking-Glass with thirty-five block or they are forgeries. There was, I explained to tracings, three drawings, and two corrected proofs. him, at least one other alternative. I had a list of topics to discuss with Justin, but Before we met I planned to shock him with an- chief among them was something I found in the other grand revelation. In 1990 Justin donated a trac- Berg’s book-box with the twenty drawings and eigh- ing of Wonderland’s frontispiece to the Morgan Li- teen tracings—something I purposely failed to men- brary, stating quite openly that it was a forgery. Since tion in the first part of this paper. In truth, this very the library had the original preliminary of the illustra- writing is an argument for its removal. To wit: it is tion, he thought it would be a good chance for schol- a letter from Justin to William L. Joyce of The New ars to educate themselves about Tenniel forgeries. I York Public Library, written on December 31, 1984, knew that the tracing was actually genuine, though; it stating that the eighteen tracings in the box “are was used to create the post-pub currently in the Berg. forgeries.” The match is even stronger than the match described At the time, Justin did not believe that Tenniel earlier for Father William. There were many omissions drew on the wood for Wonderland, and he deduced— and many strong deviations. and correctly so—that the tracings were “in direct “Do you remember,” I asked, “donating the trac- conflict with the finished preliminaries.”41 This is a ing of the frontispiece to the Morgan?”

17 “No.” la Rookh, I have seen the sketch copy at the Morgan, I could not jog his memory, and there went my and it does not contain finished drawings. As Tenniel grand revelation. Although in the end Justin seemed notes, in what Morris actually quotes in her article, to have accepted my arguments about the tracing, the “Finished drawings” are on the woodblocks, and and all the tracings in general, I allowed him the time the “original designs” are the “sketches” in the book.45 needed to absorb this new concept by moving on to The three most important aspects of this paper were other topics. my ability (1) to see the drawings and tracings in per- There is little need to present Justin’s arguments son, (2) to photograph them, and (3) to eventually in full, as he never made a direct statement against place those photographs along with the final illustra- the true nature of the tracings. But I would be remiss tions into Photoshop for analysis. Flicking the images if I did not mention that he was working in a different back and forth was an informative experience. If Mor- era and that he was a pioneer on the subject, boldly ris had been able to do the same, I doubt she would confessing that he had the “inability to grasp the tech- have made some of her claims. Once you hold the nical processes involved of transferring these draw- board depicting the Dormouse in the teapot and the ings onto wood,” a plucky statement to make in his White Rabbit as a herald (Part I, Figure 8) in your essay’s first paragraph. Unlike scholars today, he did own hands, its essence as a creation for another, as a not have JSTOR, a searchable database of scholarly gift or commission, is obvious. articles; an iPhone camera, an invaluable tool now al- In conclusion, I am quite disappointed that I have lowed in most research libraries; Photoshop; email; found no indisputable link between the Fine Art Soci- or library catalogues online. And Schiller himself, no ety drawings and the Berg’s drawings. There is plenty doubt, anticipated articles such as this one when he of corroborative evidence, yes, but still, that one weak wrote the closing lines of that first paragraph, where link between the two first buyers (Montagu and Lu- he wished to “leave the more formal discussions to cas) and the dealer Spencer allows a modicum of future scholarship.” doubt to creep through my being. My failure to find But there is another scholar who has raised the a definitive link will quell my ego for a long while yet. subject of authenticity, and not about the tracings ei- But as to their authenticity, I have no doubt that these ther, but about the drawings themselves. To be fair, twenty drawings and eighteen tracings, wrapped in she does not make a direct statement about any of silk-covered chemises, couched in a red moiré silk lin- the Berg’s post-pubs, but she does make statements ing, housed in a red morocco solander case, and se- that indirectly challenge their authenticity. She is none creted away in some shadowy corner of the New York other than the highly respected and aforementioned Public Library, are—breathe a deep sigh—real turtles! Frankie Morris, a Tenniel biographer and a diligent, knowledgeable researcher, to say the least. Endnotes Morris questions why Tenniel would “vary from 1 Packing List, September 30, 1924, Owen D. Young the direction [draw in reverse] in which his Alice cuts Papers, 1874–1962 MSS. COLL. NO. 087 (hereafter were known to the public,” and concludes that Ten- Young Papers), Box 257, Folder 455, The Owen D. Young Library, St. Lawrence University, pp. 2 and 9. The niel’s finished drawings were done “as guides for his document shows a column for dutiable goods and non- drawing on the block,” supporting this with the claim dutiable goods. Evidently, Young had to pay duty for that Tenniel “had made a set of finished designs [fin- work he ordered Spencer to do, such as binding and the ished drawings] in his sketch copy of his 1861 Lalla creation of cases. These drawings were brought in loose, Rookh.”42 the book-box by the New York firm Stikeman and Co. being made at some later date. The Stikeman invoice was As already mentioned here, Tenniel may have not found, but others from the company do survive in created the images in reverse to demonstrate what he other folders. drew on the block or to make them more curious, 2 Josephine Young Case and Everett Needham Case, Owen more amusing—in short, to make them more collect- D. Young and American Enterprise: A Biography (Boston: ible. And as also already shown, two of Harvard’s ten David R. Godine, 1982), pp. 190, 247, 301, 372, and Wonderland drawings (which Morris believes genuine 403. See also, Lola L. Szladits, Owen D. Young: Book 43 Collector, with introduction by Josephine Young Case and therefore guides for the block) have brown pa- (New York: The New York Public Library, 1974), pp. per tracings associated with them, and Tenniel did 11–12. Josephine was Young’s daughter and Everett her not seem to use this type of paper (brown) even sev- husband. eral years later when he was working on Looking-Glass. 3 Josephine Young Case, introduction to Szladits, Owen D. Also, if Tenniel could do such a finefinished drawing Young, p. 13. on a piece of paper—complete with cross-hatching, 4 Josephine Edmonds Young to Josephine Young, clean and sharp—why wouldn’t he simply do it on October 4, 1924, in Case and Case, Owen D. Young and American Enterprise, p. 407. She also recounted that they the block of wood in the first place? And why would are bringing home Spencer’s book (Forty Years in My 44 he do this needless task ten times over? As for Lal- Bookshop) which does give a seemingly accurate account

18 of Carroll exploring his shelves. The word “exquisite,” Alice watching the White Rabbit scurry away, which does which I used in the first half of this article KL( 100: 27b) contain a certain amount of “childhood grace.” to describe the drawings before finding this quotation, 20 Spielmann, The History of “Punch” (London: Cassell, stands as an example of their effect on those who see the 1895), p. 464. It has never been pointed out before, originals. but Ernest Brown, who was a manager at The Fine 5 Young to W. A. White, July 20, 1926, Young Papers, Box Art Society at this time and who may have been the 257, folder 455B; Young to Tice & Lynch (Law Firm), principal organizer of Tenniel’s exhibition, may just be December 21, 1928, ibid., Box 256, Folder 455E; and the “enthusiastic admirer” the artist mentions in the Young to Howard C. Levis, August 3 and 6, 1927, in Case oft-quoted paragraph. The word “enthusiastic” better and Case, Owen D. Young, p. 408. describes a business partner, and a co-seller than a mere 6 Chas. J. Sawyer, Ltd. invoice, December 9, 1924, Young buyer. Papers, Box 254, Folder 451; Sawyer to Young, December 21 Milliken, 1895 Catalogue [Fine Art Society], p. 7. One 9, 1924, ibid. newspaper put it more succinctly: “Indeed, some of 7 Chas. J. Sawyer, Ltd., invoice, December 24, 192[4], ibid. the exhibits are really replicas of the original designs.” (The invoice page is dated December 24, but the item is See “The Fine Art Society’s Galleries,” The Morning Post sub-dated November 14, 1924.) (London), April 3, 1895, p. 6. 8 See the Berg’s copy 4 of C. L. Dodgson, Alice’s Adventures 22 London Correspondence, Birmingham Daily Post, March in Wonderland (London: Macmillan, 1866). 30, 1895. 9 Young to Sawyer, January 9, 1925, ibid. 23 “A Tenniel Exhibition,” The Bristol Mercury and Daily Post, 1 0 Young to Spencer, February 17, 1925, Young Papers, Box April 1, 1895; and “Sir John Tenniel’s Drawings,” The 257, Folder 455C. Graphic (London), April 6, 1895. 24 11 Spencer to Young, Hand-Written Price List, Young Handwritten note, in the Berg Collection, New York Papers, Box 257, Folder 455, p. 6; Spencer to Young, Public Library’s Rare English & French Literature, Aldine March 5, 1925, ibid. Press Publications, Classics, Incunabula, A Renowned 12 Collection of Drawings by Tenniel… Collected by the Late Catalogue of an Exhibition of Original Manuscripts and Bronson Winthrop, March 12–3, 1945, Parke-Bernet Printed Books at St Lawrence University, Canton, New York, Galleries. From 6 June to 31 August, 1925 (Mount Vernon, NY: 25 William Edwin Rudge, 1925), p. 18. The Carroll letter is “Sir John Tenniel Exhibition, April–May 95” in Sales dated February 18, 1879, and is quoted from a version Book, 1892–1895, Fine Art Society, London. Thanks to typed up for the exhibition (Box 999). Helena Anderson, a former employee, who went beyond 13 the call of duty with her assistance. A Delightful Collection of Rare Books, Autographs & 26 Manuscripts Formed by the Rev. Isaac Dooman, Sale 1990, Louis Samuel Montagu’s Account book, 1898–1900, MS November 9, 1925 ([New York?]: The Anderson 383 A4000 5/7, University of Southampton, Highfield, Galleries, 1925), p. 9. England, pp. 9 and 29. Thanks to Lara Nelson, the 14 archivist, and Catherine Richards who graciously Brentano’s Invoice, December 22, 1925, Young Papers, volunteered to rummage through the archives on Box 235, Folder 418. my behalf. It’s a comfort to know that they have been 15 Ernest Dressel North, Catalogue of Famous First Editions, thoroughly and thoughtfully explored. Rare and Standard Books, December 1923, Vol. 67. 27 The Times [London], “Biographies of Candidates,” July 8, 16 The catalogue entry read “eighteen pencil drawings” 1886, p. 10. with no mention of tracings. But there is a document 28 15, Westbourne Terrace…, auction catalogue, June 8–10, that shows that Young sent “18 pencil drawings and 19 1931, A. Martin French. The Tenniel drawings for tracings” (Young Papers, Box 243, folder 439L), despite Wonderland were lot 418. For the oak frame, see Alwin J. the fact that he only had eighteen tracings! Perhaps Scheuer to Arthur A. Houghton, Jr., November 25, 1932, he sent only the matching sets (with the “19” being a Arthur Amory Houghton, Jr., Papers, Box 3, Folder 18, typo). The confusion may be explained in a letter J. Corning Incorporated, Corning, New York. The drawings Enrique Zanetti, who ran the exhibition, wrote to A. S. were once owned by Houghton, who gifted them to the W. Rosenbach on October 22, 1931: “The first hitch has Morgan Library. occurred in our plans. Mr. Owen Young is unable, owing 29 to the pressure of business engagements and the fact On July 14, 1898, Montagu bought the unbound 1865 that he no longer has a librarian, to let us have the items Wonderland for £30: “Tregaskis (Alice in Wonderland) of his collection in time for our catalog.” See Zanetti, | 30.” On January 11, 1899, he likely bought the ten J. Enrique Correspondence, 1931, I:186:28, Rosenbach drawings: “Fine Art Society | 30 | 13 | 10.” Helena Museum & Library. Anderson informs me that the sales books for the current 17 show at the Fine Art Society do not show Montagu Frankie Morris, Artist of Wonderland: The Life, Political purchasing anything from the current exhibition. Cartoons, and Illustrations of Tenniel (Charlottesville, Va: Hence, it is very likely that this entry refers to the Tenniel University of Virginia Press, 2005), n20, p. 360; Rodney drawings. And finally, on February 23, 1899, Montagu Engen, Sir John Tenniel: Alice’s White Knight (Aldershot, paid for the binding of his 1865 Alice with ten drawings: England: Scolar Press, 1991), p. 147; Catalogue of a “Riviere (binding of Alice) | 3 | 6 | 6.” Collection of Drawings for Punch Cartoons &c by Sir John 30 Tenniel, with a Prefatory Note by E. J. Milliken, Exhibition Harcourt Amory to his brother? (Frederick?), April 25, 132 (London: Fine Art Society, 1895), pp. 16, 67, 32–33. 1912, in MS Eng 718.15 (16), folder 1, The Harcourt 18 Amory Collection, Harvard. To see the two images, “Three Exhibitions,” The Standard (London), April 2, see Eleanor M. Garvey and W. H. Bond, Tenniel’s 1895, p. 3. Alice: Drawings by Sir John Tenniel for Alice’s Adventures 19 Art Notes, The Illustrated London News, April 6, 1895, p. in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass 428. The writer was likely referring to the drawing of

19 (Cambridge: Department of Printing and Graphic Arts, 40 At first, Tenniel forgot to take the bite out of the Hatter’s Harvard College Library, 1978), pp. 29 and 35. The two teacup in the drawing of him standing (p. 170). It was images have about the same presentation as Figure 8 in fixed with a plug—a hole drilled, a dowel inserted, and a Part I. drawing completed and engraved. But over the years the 31 Amory to E. D. North, October 12, 1915, in MS Eng dowel began to slip out, and this can be seen on several 718.15 (16), The Harcourt Amory Collection. The later impressions. Even the last two Annotated Alice books comment may show that Calkin educated him about the reprint the drawing with the plug missing. drawings. By “original” he may be referring to legitimate 41 Schiller, “Census,” p. 66. sketches or may naively be suggesting that some finished 42 Frankie Morris, “The Alice Drawings”: p. 12b; 13b; n3, drawings were created by Tenniel for the Dalziels as a 14b–15a. Morris’s reverse comment is made directly guide. about post-publication drawings that appear as 32 Flora Virginia Livingston, The Harcourt Amory Collection inscriptions in books. But the reverse nature of some of of Lewis Carroll in the Harvard College Library (Cambridge: Harvard’s Looking-Glass drawings seems to give her pause Privately Printed, 1932), pp. 15 and 32. as well (see n3). 33 Arthur A. Houghton, Jr. to Flora Virginia Livingston, 43 Ibid., n3, p. 14b–15a. December 5, 1932, MS Am 2264.10, Flora Virginia 44 In defense of Morris, in several cases the Garvey and Milner correspondence concerning the catalogue of the Bond book splits a pair of drawings that appear on the Harcourt Amory Lewis Carroll collection, Harvard. same side of a single board (as in Figure 8, Part I) into 34 Garvey and Bond, Tenniel’s Alice, pp. 9, 14–60 passim. two separate images, even placing them pages apart. 35 Justin G. Schiller, “Census: Sir John Tenniel’s Original Holding these presentations in your hand and seeing Drawings to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through that one is complete and the other is intentionally left the Looking-Glass” (hereafter “Census”) in Wonderland, incomplete gives one the sense that they were done as An 1865 Printing Re-described and Newly Identified as the gifts, not as a part of some process (see Part I, Figure 8, Publisher’s “File Copy” with a Revised and Expanded Census of for an example). The book also prints the drawings too the Suppressed 1865 “Alice” Compiled by Selwyn H. Goodacre, heavy, giving Tenniel’s pencil an inky feel. to Which Is Added, a Short-Title Index Identifying and Locating 45 Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh: An Oriental Romance, the Original Preliminary Drawings by John Tenniel for Alice illustrated by John Tenniel [sketch copy] (London: and Looking-Glass Catalogued by Justin G. Schiller (1990: Longman, Geen, Longman, and Roberts, 1861). Morris The Jabberwock, Kingston, New York), p. 61. Schiller’s may have seen a catalogue for the “Sketch Copy” which first remonstrance against Garvey and Bond appeared in misleadingly used the word “finished,” describing the his review of their book. See Justin Schiller, Jabberwocky 9, drawings as “69 beautifully finished original pencil no. 4 (Autumn), 1980, pp. 104–7. drawings.” But they resemble Tenniel’s value studies 36 Frankie Morris, “The Alice Drawings: Copies, Forgeries, for the Alice books, having sketchy shading (not clean and Tenniel’s Originals,” Knight Letter, vol. II, Issue 7, No. cross-hatching), china-white ink, and broad differences 77 (Fall 2006): pp. 12b and 14b n. 3. between them and the final image. In short, they show 37 Amory to his brother? (Frederick?), April 25, 1912. development—a quality absent from his true finished drawings. See 38 Illustrated Catalogue of Autograph Letters, Walter T. Spencer to Mr. Chase, April 21, 1911, MS Literary Mss., Presentation Books, and Sir John Tenniel’s Eng 718.15 (13), The Harcourt Amory Collection. The Original Drawings to Lalla Rookh (London, Henry memorandum was addressed to “Mr. Chase” and sent to Sotheran, 1902), lot 503, p. 87. Bartlett & Co. 39 Spencer to Young, February 9, 1925, Young Papers.

20 d e Disney’s 1951 Alice in Wonderland Reassessed daniel rover singer d e

uch has been published about the mer- into cartoonish musicals, but no one could argue with its and flaws of Walt Disney’s animated the success of Snow White at the box office. Mfeature Alice in Wonderland (hereafter Lewis Carroll’s stories, however, weren’t sketchy referred to as AiW), released in 1951. The story had folk-tales. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through been a favorite of Disney’s since he was a child, and the Looking-Glass (hereafter referred to as Wonderland early in his career as a producer of animated films, and Looking-Glass) are elaborate novellas in which he was convinced that animation was the ideal me- Alice’s escapades are specifically described from one dium to tell the story in a way that simply hadn’t been moment to the next. Everything that Alice and her captured in theatrical plays and live-action films.1 new friends do or say is fully documented in narrative He imagined the “magic” of the story, with its hallu- and dialogue. The qualities of the books, however, cinations, wondrous settings, and wacky characters did not translate easily to the stage or to film. Disney brought to life with a vivacity and richness that only and his artists knew they couldn’t repeat the mistakes animation could offer.2 of “faithful” stage or film translations; those simply Early development of AiW churned along at the weren’t satisfying. Walt stated at story meetings at Disney Studio for years. Illustrator David Hall had the Studio that his writers couldn’t veer very far away created a veritable truckload of bold sketches that from the original stories’ narrative essence and spirit, had been made into a test reel, but the treatment was or the public would reject the film; and yet, their ad- deemed too ugly (an approach Disney did not want aptation would have to include the typical hallmarks to repeat after Paramount’s gloomy and grotesque of a Disney cartoon: action, color, music, and humor. 1933 adaptation).3 Aldous Huxley was hired to write Disney’s goal was essentially to reinvent the story a screen treatment in which he mixed an animated without changing it too much: to shake off the dusty Alice with a rather serious, live-action story about Victorian puns and archaic jokes, fill the production Lewis Carroll in Oxford.4 Various Disney “story men” with songs as if it were a Broadway musical, lavishly tackled the challenge of changing the episodic me- depict Wonderland with deep colors and artsy styl- anderings of Alice through a dreamscape by trying ization, and subtly modernize the heroine without to create a more emotional plot structure. Alice, they making her seem too modern. This approach was feared, wasn’t a very interesting main character if all extraordinarily risky. It relied on expanding Wonder- she did was meet a bunch of weirdoes, get frustrated, land’s visual potential as well as the story’s fantasti- and then wake up. cal physical possibilities—while ditching almost all Here then was the dilemma of how to move for- of the books’ uber-famous dialogue and traditional ward. The “story” of Alice’s adventures wasn’t just quaintness. This, Disney hoped, would create a film a sketchy fairy tale or fable, like those Disney had that people would recognize as “the” AiW . . . and pos- adapted into Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs (1937) sibly acknowledge as an improvement on a book that and Cinderella (1950)—adaptations in which Disney might seem creakily old-fashioned in the middle of greatly expanded the storytelling with far more de- the twentieth century. veloped characters, original dialogue, operetta-style The film was not a success—initially. Disney fa- songs, extended sequences of physical humor, dra- mously regretted the project after its failure to find matic mood-establishing shots, and so on. These favor with audiences and critics. The film was not re- trademarks famously hallmarked the Disney style: rereleased to theaters again during Disney’s lifetime. inventing simple old tales with huge enhancements, He allowed it to be shown on television—and short- bringing a familiar classic to detailed life on a grand ened—a clear demotion of the picture to a low sta- scale never imagined by such folk-tale scribes as the tus among Disney features. Following Walt Disney’s Brothers Grimm. Critics were not unanimous in prais- death in 1966, the unusually psychedelic film became ing Disney’s reinvention of these popular folk-tales a wildly popular 16mm rental with a growing reputa-

21 we’ve entered a fantasy. If one is unfamiliar with the story, one would naturally assume that Alice has fallen asleep, and we are now watching her dream. We know that dreams are irrational and frustrating but can also be funny. For the next hour we will (hopefully) be amused by silly characters, situations, and musical numbers, until Alice finally wakes up (Figure 1). Again, this is a staggeringly risky framework on which to hang a movie. No wonder other adaptations make Alice a young adult so that there can be romance, conflict, sympathy, challenge, and triumph. But if a filmmaker wants to truly capture the spirit of the original story, Alice must be a child, and there must be neither plot nor a moral to the story. Let’s break the adaptation down by sequence, and look at its strengths and flaws more specifically. The opening credits appear on cards that depict all of Wonderland’s iconic characters. But why is that? No other Disney film ever did something as seemingly unnecessary as show the audience what the characters look like before the movie begins. There was a powerful reason for this. The audience, for the most part, knew the characters from the books, and they knew Figure 1. A “fan card” mailed to fans who wrote to the studio what they looked like, largely as a result of the fame of requesting artwork from Alice in Wonderland. John Tenniel’s illustrations. Disney had boldly redesigned all the characters, and he knew that the audience might find the new character designs shocking. tion as a cultish art-house film perfect for recreational These opening-credit images deliberately depict the drug users. redesigned characters drawn in the style of John Tenn- Acknowledging the film’s new audience, the Dis- iel, with lots of thin black lines creating cross-hatched ney Studio finally rereleased the film to theaters in shading reminiscent of nineteenth-century wood- 1974 and 1982, and then onto home video, whose au- block engravings (Figure 2). This hybrid was meant to diences showed no disdain for the once-demoted Dis- introduce the new look of the old characters without ney cartoon feature. For years, AiW topped the charts causing heart attacks. The audience is gently tricked in sales and rentals in the home-video market. into thinking that the characters have always looked So, ultimately, Disney’s adaptation was successful, this way—and thus we are better prepared to welcome insofar as popularity with its audience was concerned. their later appearance onscreen. It may have been ahead of its time—a typical issue with many great works of art. But how does it endure as an adaptation of Wonderland, in a world where new generations create fresh interpretations of Carroll’s tales every year? The essential question is, how well does Disney’s version capture the spirit of Wonderland? Compared to other adaptations, the 1951 effort does so remarkably well, considering how little of Carroll’s dialogue survived into the final screenplay. The story follows the original tale, roughly but with surprising faithfulness. A bored little girl follows a nervous rabbit down a rabbit-hole. She falls a great distance, but floats comfort- ably though the air, entering a gently surreal realm that’s a drastic change from the markedly realistic opening scenes. The sudden shift in style—the appearance of a clothed, talking rabbit and the fact that the little girl isn’t falling, screaming, to her demise down an abandoned well—signals the audience that Figure 2. Mad Hatter and March Hare, Disney à la Tenniel.

22 The song “Alice in Wonderland” plays under the and react to everything Alice says. Apparently they opening credits, and it’s probably the one aspect of can already communicate perfectly well, so why does the film that feels dated to the 1950s. It’s a pleasant Alice desire more? By far the coolest thing in this se- but humdrum song, sung by a large vocal ensemble quence happens when Alice lies down in a field of in a lethargic manner popular at the time. The lyrics daisies: The daisies ripple in long rows as if being are cringe-worthy and uninspired, getting the film off blown by the wind—a fabulously elaborate detail. to a hesitant start. At this point, only a few minutes in, our attention The opening shot of a lovely riverbank with but- may already be wandering. The presentation is bright terflies and buzzing bees is surprisingly flat. Disney’s and tuneful but it’s a bit tedious, as some may find a famed multiplane camera, specifically designed for little girl daydreaming with her cat a subject devoid of such important establishing shots, had been moth- general interest. Perhaps the writers wanted the audi- balled by the studio as an expensive non-necessity. ence to feel a bit bored, to empathize with Alice. At Instead, the various layers of artwork (foreground, any rate, the pace and writing seem to be misfiring. middle ground, background) are simply pressed to- Enter the White Rabbit, dressed in a waistcoat gether and slid past the camera at varying speeds. Ev- and jacket and whistling merrily as he waddles down erything’s in focus and the effect is ordinary. Nothing the path. This is not the dignified, albeit nervous, impressive here to win over the audience in the first creature depicted by John Tenniel, but an adorably all-important seconds of the film. squat little cartoon, appealing in a Disney way, but We float along until we see a young woman in not at all what traditionalists would expect. The back- formal Victorian dress and bonnet, reading beneath a ground music surges forward; the Rabbit croaks out large oak tree. The colors are vivid, and it’s important (rather than actually singing) a little rhyme about be- to note that audiences accustomed to typical screen ing late “for a very important date.” He ignores Alice entertainment in 1951 were probably dazzled by the and pops down a rabbit-hole. Curious Alice follows, intensity of the bright colors onscreen in the cartoon. amusingly bidding goodbye to Dinah as she slips and It’s almost blinding, and meant to be. We assume this plunges rather calmly down a deep, dark hole in the woman is Alice’s mother or governess, but later, the earth. end credits confirm that it’s Alice’s sister. She is cer- Alice’s fall is slowed by her skirt inflating like a tainly older and more stern than we’d expect a sis- parachute, a cute way to explain the gentleness of her ter to be, but she’s within the realm of plausibility. descent. Some of her monologue is familiar, but the She reads a dry bit of English history aloud—a quote fall is mostly depicted visually. The surreal architec- familiar to fans of Wonderland. Instantly we’re aware ture of the rabbit-hole looks like a melting painting that the dialogue of this film is different from the by Salvador Dalí.5 Items float around with their own book’s—things have been altered, and we should ex- unique gravity or lack thereof. The iconic plunge into pect more of the same. Wonderland is dreamy, mysterious, and effective. Al- Alice appears, sitting above her sister on the ice lands not on a pile of dry leaves, but upside-down, branch of the giant oak and playing with her cat, Di- on her head—a perfectly appropriate, topsy-turvy nah. (This makes a radical statement: No proper Vic- touch. (Young Kathryn Beaumont, who provided Al- torian girl would be allowed to climb a tree.) While ice’s voice, was also a live-action model for the anima- Dinah isn’t present at the beginning of Wonderland, tors to study [Figure 3].) Next she’s confronted by a Alice does talk to her cats at the opening of Looking- series of closed doors, each within the other—a detail Glass, so Dinah is a welcome addition here. Alice is stolen from the Paramount film. bored by her sister’s history lesson, so she decides to Finally Alice is in the Long Hall, only now it’s tell Dinah how she’d prefer to live in a world where a boxy chamber with only one tiny door. The scene everything is nonsensical. This kind of pre-dreaming that follows is very faithful to the book, except that is completely unnecessary—the book needed no such Alice now has a talking Doorknob to converse with. set-up to entice Alice to follow her curiosity. But the This new character feels completely appropriate, and monologue introduces a song: “In a World of My his conversation with Alice sounds surprisingly Car- Own.” Alice sings to Dinah that she’d like animals to rollian. The writers are scoring big points here: As wear clothes and live in little houses, and flowers to originally written, the scene in the Long Hall goes on talk to her. This flimsy song blatantly tries to capture and on, but here Alice’s predicaments are swift and the longing expressed by Dorothy when she sings funny. Before you know it, she’s swimming in a pool “Over the Rainbow” at the beginning of The Wizard of her own tears. The “pool” is more like a raging of Oz. But “World of My Own” is clunky lyrically and river or ocean; its strong current actually pulls tiny unimpressive musically. Alice, who is clinging for her life inside the Drink Me Alice’s desire to converse with her cat is under- bottle, right through the Doorknob’s keyhole mouth mined by the fact that Dinah seems to understand (Figure 4).

23 a dull history lesson and confuses Alice with his long “tale,” until Alice finally frightens everyone away by mentioning how skilled Dinah is at capturing birds and mice. All that dialogue—that long, droll, mostly static scene—has been disposed of in favor of a brisk musical number. Now we’re catching on to the style of Disney’s adaptation. Focus on action, music, pretty art, and visual jokes, and keep the pace moving briskly. Cut long conversations and dull characters. This is not your grandmother’s Wonderland. Alice next encounters Tweedledum and Twee- dledee—one of several moments when this screenplay alters the structure of the books. Here a chapter from Looking-Glass has been inserted into the narrative of Wonderland. (One might suddenly wonder: If the chapters of Wonderland were rearranged into any variety of random orders, how much difference would it make?) The twin brothers are not introduced by the nursery rhyme that explains their existence, so we have no idea who they are; nor does it seem important. As they introduce themselves to Alice, they break out of their static poses and begin to dance about as if they were a pair of rubbery, water-filled balloons, squeaking and honking every time their round bodies bounce or squish. It’s fun and silly, but a bit shocking to those used to the more sedentary nature of Alice’s original adventures. (This is vital preparation for the unex- pectedly wild action coming up later in the movie.) Disney’s animators were clearly doing everything in their powers to utilize the broad, unlimited scope of the art of animation to visually interpret the craziness of Wonderland. The twins begin to recite “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” and the scene whisks us to a seaside, where the sun is shining in the middle of the night, and the titular characters stroll along the beach in search of Oysters to devour. Not only does the famous poem’s narrative take a back seat to the many visual jokes on display, but the poem has been com- Figure 3. Kathryn Beaumont lands on her head at the bottom of pletely rewritten, to better fit the meter of the music. the rabbit-hole. The young actress provided Alice’s voice and was Again, the viewer must question the point of all this: also a live-action model for the animators to study. The thrust of Alice’s journey has been completely in- Figure 4. Kathryn Beaumont floats on the Pool of Tears in the enormous Drink Me bottle. terrupted by a meaningless recitation of nonsense— the essence of which has been translated into an amusing cartoon, while the words of the renowned So far so good. The directors are clearly taking poem (which the public had been reciting by heart advantage of the elements of Alice’s strange dream for eighty years) have been casually altered, as if no to push the action along with a lot of gusto, which one would notice. Disney and his team must have is fun. We meet the Dodo, floating merrily and sing- had tremendous faith in the conceptual ideas intrin- ing a hornpipe, and before you can say “Bob’s your sic to Carroll’s nonsense to so brazenly reinterpret it, uncle,” a bunch of random fish and birds are running in hopes that their new version would be as enjoyable around in a big circle, singing a jolly “Caucus Race” as the original (Figure 5). song. However, fans of the book may miss a long scene At the end of the segment, there’s a blackout— in which an oversensitive Mouse bores the locals with the lights literally fade to black, as they might on-

24 Figure 5. Oysters with shoes but no feet. Disney artists retained this whimsical idea, but omitted that particular bit of poetry from the song lyrics, probably mystifying audiences unfamiliar with the poem.

Figure 6. A background depicting the White Rabbit’s cottage, here stage—again suggesting that the various segments of seen without Alice’s arms (which were painted onto clear sheets of celluloid laid on top of this painting). It’s quite obvious how the movie could conceivably be rearranged if desired. the artists designed the thatched roof to imitate Alice’s blond hair. Next Alice re-encounters the White Rabbit, who mistakes her for his housemaid Mary Ann and sends her to fetch a pair of gloves from his cottage. In a scene remarkably faithful to the book, Alice heedless- ly eats something in hopes of returning to her normal size, then grows enormous while inside the Rabbit’s house, thus destroying it. Animation serves this scene remarkably well, especially when one notices how cleverly the thatched roof imitates Alice’s blond hair when she looks out the upstairs window (Figures 6 and 7). Bill the Lizard makes a winning cameo before being shot out the chimney, and Pat the Gardener has been wisely changed out for the Dodo, a funny, already established character who brings much hu- morous bumbling to the action. There’s even a song (“We’ll Smoke the Blighter Out”) since Disney’s mandate was to insert a musical number into each sequence in the tradition of a Broadway show. It’s all breathlessly fast and fun. Alice escapes by becoming tinier than ever, and as she wanders away from the cottage, she becomes Figure 7. Kathryn Beaumont shown trapped inside a rig built to lost in a forest of grass where the flowers talk to her, represent the confinement of the White Rabbit’s tiny cottage. and, of course, perform a musical number, “All in the Golden Afternoon” (no thematic relation to Carroll’s poem). Here, an interpolated scene from Looking- to create a scene that genuinely improves upon the Glass has been much improved upon—not only with source material. an impressive array of colorful and clever visual gags, Alice’s next encounter, with a haughty, hookah- but with amusing dialogue that quite outshines Lewis smoking Caterpillar, not only remains surprisingly Carroll’s original puns. This scene is dazzlingly beau- authentic to Carroll’s dialogue, but is brilliantly en- tiful and marvelously fun to watch—easily one of the hanced by the clever animation of colorful smoke highlights of the picture—and a perfect example of rings that form meaningful shapes (Figure 8). The how Disney’s artists were inspired by Carroll’s ideas Caterpillar’s many arms and legs also provide some

25 Figure 8. A rare look at a “final” storyboard, used by animators to determine the final script of an animated film.

hilarity, as does an ideal vocal performance by entertaining—he’s one of the film’s most memorable Richard Hayden. Along with the scene that immedi- creations. ately follows, where Alice frightens a mother bird in Alice is directed to seek the Rabbit at the home the treetops, this section of the movie comes closest of the Mad Hatter. What she finds, instead, is a wildly to Carroll’s own voice, and I’m sure he’d have been surreal tea-party set in a garden lit with festive Chi- much amused. nese lanterns. At a mammoth, curving table covered Next Alice meets the Cheshire Cat, which means with hundreds of eccentrically shaped teapots, the that book-lovers will notice the absence of the Duch- Mad Hatter and his friends—a shrieking March Hare ess, the Cook, and the Pig-Baby. Disney felt those and a sleepy Dormouse—are celebrating an Un-birth- characters were too grotesque and superfluous, so day party, as they do every day (cleverly exploiting an into the dustbin they went. Alice finds herself in a idea from the Humpty Dumpty chapter of Looking- highly stylized forest (the visionary work of concept Glass). They explain this to Alice (with a song, and artist Mary Blair is one of this movie’s singular attrac- minimal dialogue by Carroll) while behaving with tions), surrounded by confusing signposts, and still relentless rudeness. They run crazily about the table, hoping to find the White Rabbit. The cocky, smart- smashing the crockery, offering Alice tea but never al- aleck, tree-dwelling Cat that comes to her aid doesn’t lowing her to drink, and creating an exhausting num- just disappear at the end of the scene; it continually ber of visual gags. Finally the White Rabbit enters the vanishes and reappears, gyrates and assembles and scene, but before Alice can ask him why he’s perpetu- disassembles itself in impossible ways, and gives Alice ally late, the Mad Hatter seizes the Rabbit’s watch and advice that is clearly intended to annoy and frustrate promptly destroys it—all while the madness of the ac- her. This Cheshire Cat goes far beyond the droll, tion intensifies into an astonishing degree of chaos. Zen-like mischief of the sedate original to become If you thought the original Mad Tea Party was chaotic a brightly colored trickster whose goal is to hinder because the Hatter made personal remarks and the rather than help. Only a little of Carroll’s dialogue March Hare upset the milk jug, you’d better fasten is used, and the Cat’s forgettable song uses the first your seat belt for this one. verse of Looking-Glass’s “Jabberwocky” as its lyric As Alice leaves, she complains (as she does in source. But his design and his antics are thoroughly the book), “That was the stupidest tea-party I’ve ever

26 Figure 9. Concept sketches of a crazy but not very frightening Jabberwock, later discarded.

been to in all my life.” The line gets a big laugh in Good Advice,” after which the Cheshire Cat pretends theaters because it’s such an absurd understatement; to help by showing her the way out of the forest. This if Alice were the Mad Hatter’s neighbor, rather than a segment may want us to feel sorry for Alice’s self- little girl having a bad dream, she’d probably be call- inflicted predicament, but the scene is so suddenly ing the police. dark and quiet and slow that we can’t help reflecting, At this point in the original story, Alice finds her- “What is this whole movie about, anyway?” self back in the Long Hall, where she’s able to finally It’s no secret that Alice is asleep on a riverbank, gain access to the beautiful garden she’d been hop- having a bad dream, being watched over by her sister, ing to find. But Disney changed Alice’s motivation; and not in a predicament at all. It’s not like watching instead of seeking the cool fountains and pretty flow- The Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy feels that she’s really ers of a lush garden, this Alice is only interested in the been transported to a genuinely terrifying place, and White Rabbit’s destination. Now, thanks to the inten- that she might die if she doesn’t find real solutions sity of Wonderland’s relentless confusion—and even to her problems. While it’s true that we may be terri- though “a world of nonsense” is precisely what she’d fied by the seeming realness of our own nightmares, always hoped to live in—Alice is annoyed and frus- Alice’s remorse for having wished herself into an an- trated, and she’s ready to go home. She finds herself noying dreamscape does not naturally generate any lost in another dark forest, this time surrounded by sympathy. This movie’s glaring lack of character devel- lots of odd, unhelpful creatures. Unable to find a way opment makes this scene profoundly awkward; Alice home, Alice sadly chastises herself for misbehaving, has been consistently opaque thus far, and steadfastly, and has a good cry. absurdly non-reactive to the outrageous lunatics she This is a strange change of pace for a movie that encounters. So why should we feel any sympathy for thus far has maintained a nonstop stream of color, Alice? It’s her own fault that she craved to live in a music, action, and whimsy. Rather than have Alice world of nonsense. She knew she was wrong to follow frightened by a mysterious Jabberwock—yet another that rabbit, because “curiosity often leads to trouble.” silly monster who, like Wonderland’s other denizens, Rather than sympathy, the audience is more likely to was to be more frustrating than threatening (Figure feel Alice is getting what she deserves. And all the re- 9)—Disney decided that what his Alice needed in- lentless madness she’s been subjected to has not only stead was a moment to make her more sympathetic. frustrated Alice, but the audience as well. We’ve been Alice blubbers her way through a song called “Very positively barraged with nonstop gags.

27 Figure 10. An early series of concept sketches, showing how the Mock Turtle and Gryphon might have appeared at the Caucus Race. Later, these ideas were discarded.

This is the moment when we understand why Cat, proving himself to be genuinely evil, trips up the Walt Disney realized he might have made a mistake Queen and deliberately implicates Alice. She’s sent to by making this film. The original story has a gentle a Kafka-esque nightmare of a courtroom for sentenc- whimsy that makes us laugh, but we know not to take ing, when suddenly— it seriously. Disney, in updating it with dazzling ani- Hey, what happened to the Gryphon and the mation, fresh jokes, lilting tunes, and loud, gyrating Mock Turtle?? Sorry, folks, apparently they were too characters, blew Alice’s little dream way out of pro- boring for this movie. Dustbin (Figure 10). portion. The film carries itself along with tremendous Rather than allow Alice to wake up from her ter- pace and cleverness, but at this point, we realize that rible nightmare too quickly, Disney decided to force the lack of a real plot and sympathetic characters has Alice to retrace her steps through a much scarier, rendered this charming story into what one critic weirder Wonderland in order to get home. This un- called “a loud-mouthed Vaudeville show.” necessary final burst of creativity is the film’s last But at least it’s a good one! chance to impress us with the animators’ unique tal- The animators jump quickly back in the saddle, ents. All proportions and colors are tweaked and dis- having Alice help a crew of singing/dancing playing- turbing and Dalí-esque, with poor Alice running from card gardeners paint some roses red. Gallons of paint her assailants, gasping for air, and pounding on the splash wildly in all directions, until the whole pack little door, praying for an escape from the terrifying of cards marches out and performs a dazzling, sur- hell she’s created (Figure 11).5 real dance—the kind of show Disney artists perfected Then, finally, it all spins into a blur. Alice, sleep- in similarly hallucinatory scenes in Dumbo and The ing benignly in the shade of the oak tree, awakens Three Caballeros. Then the villain of the show finally from her little nap. There’s no reflection on the bi- appears: the insanely furious Queen of Hearts, per- zarre visions she’s endured; unlike Dorothy Gale, she formed at top roaring volume by the versatile Verna isn’t all the wiser and full of homely homilies. Alice Felton (who’d voiced Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother merely picks up her cat and follows her sister home the year before). Alice bravely holds her own during for tea. As if her adventures in Wonderland weren’t a brilliantly directed croquet game. But the Cheshire frustrating enough for the audience, now we’re

28 This was the almost unanimous voice of critics around the world in 1951. But in the decades since the film’s disastrous first release, audiences have decided that Disney’s radical reinvention of Wonderland is satisfying in a way in which Lewis Carroll himself might have approved. It’s entertaining in a light, funny, charming way. Carroll did that with words, and Disney did it with colorful art, whimsical songs, and characters that are very, very mad indeed. Regardless of the film’s shortcomings (especially if one imagines it as a unique creation not related to previously existing books, plays, movies, etc.), it managed ultimately to resonate with audiences. It inspired and continues to inspire Disney merchandise, theme-park attractions, and spin-offs of every form. Despite what Disney thought about its disappoint- Figure 11: The Mad Hatter and March Hare insist that Alice join ing initial reception, he was right about one thing: them “in a cup of tea,” as Alice’s dream escalates into a fully Carroll’s story contains an essence that transcends its surreal nightmare original format. It can be reinvented, reinterpreted, and reimagined in an infinite number of ways. Not all ways will be appealing to all audiences, but Alice, and even more frustrated, because there’s no concluding Wonderland, are robust, and will continue to be with thought that helps us to understand why this story was us forever, in an endless variety of shapes. important. Did Alice learn her lesson? Is she more Walt Disney gets the ultimate credit for proving enlightened now, more prepared to transition from this to be true. Prior to 1951, Alice’s adventures in childhood to adolescence? Did her dream contain print, onstage, and on film had never been as pro- any sort of meaning? Or was Disney just hoping to foundly reinvented—no one had been bold enough. distract us from the workaday world with an hour-and- The critical shockwaves were discouraging but tem- a-quarter of meaningless whimsy, capitalizing on the porary; within a few decades, Wonderland was being fame of Carroll’s book to sell enough tickets to cover adapted far more freely into musicals, television spe- production costs? cials, ballets, and videogames, thanks to ballsy pio- You decide: Is this cartoon a fun reinterpretation neer Walt Disney, who had paved the way for other that sticks closely enough to the book, or is it a rude artists to feel comfortable shaking off the shackles of travesty that replaces revered moments in the classic strictly faithful adaptation. with bright colors and shiny tunes? It calls into question: What does one like about Wonderland? Is it the Endnotes wild dream-adventures of a little girl, or is it the way 1 There were six Wonderland feature films made before in which the story is told, with its wry, witty narrator 1949, all live action with the exception of Lou Bunin’s commenting on Alice’s confusion? Many would argue marionette version (with a live Alice). 2 that it’s the latter that makes the stories wonderful, Disney did make a Mickey Mouse cartoon called Through the Mirror in 1936, in which Mickey falls asleep, has and that an adaptation that dispenses with the witty a dream, dances like Fred Astaire, and tangles with narration in favor of action and music is failing to un- assorted Carroll characters. derstand the value of Lewis Carroll’s story. 3 Hall’s illustrations can be seen in a Wonderland published On the other hand, Disney’s faithful-on-its-own- by Methuen and Little Simon (Simon and Schuster) terms version does a surprisingly good job of making in 1986. the other aspects of the adventure entertaining in a 4 KLs 49:6, 68:3, 77:26, 94:39. wholly different way. The film is, in fact, a completely 5 Dalí himself was in the Disney Studio at this time, revolutionary retelling—one that dares to tell you working on Destino. See the Introduction to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: The 150th Anniversary Deluxe that the things you thought you liked about Wonderland Edition Illustrated by Salvador Dalí (Princeton University aren’t all that important—and Disney is clearly hop- Press, 2015) for further details. ing that you like his movie better than that dusty old book. It’s outrageous. How dare Disney?! Shocking!

29 d e Martin on Martin, or Annotating The Annotated molly martin

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f all of my favorite literature and reference gerated for effect, but most solids do expand when works, only the Annotated Alice itself fits the heated and contract when they are cooled. Obill for both. But today, how much more use- ful would it be if it were online and had web links?! chapter vi Back in May of 2012, James Welsch inaugurated the p. 69: Leaping through the centuries come our be- G.A.H.! (Gardner’s Annotations Hyperlinked) project on loved footmen: “It is in the courte as in all ryvers, the Society’s blog, and completed a few enticing an- some fish some frogges.” – John Lyly (1579); “Where- notations before moving on to other things. Yet great as it is in Courts, as in a pond, Some fish, some frogs.” ideas will linger, as has his plan to “employ the mighty – John Wolcot (1792). power of the Internet to illuminate, investigate, and of course provide links for the footnotes from The An- p. 78: “It would have made a dreadfully ugly child: but it notated Alice.” Such a format is, of course, one pos- makes a rather handsome pig, I think.” sible avenue. An ideal alternative, although it would This is a brilliant example of Shakespeare’s “[T]here require permission from the Gardner Estate and the is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes publisher, would be to post the book to a website, link it so.” Alice specifies, “I think,” though that is often all the current annotations therein, and eventually al- implied as a given. Here, Carroll makes a point of in- low other (juried) links. cluding it as if to flag it “opinion.” Carroll took a great In the meantime, I have compiled a few thoughts interest in Shakespeare for children, not just impart- and done some fun research to ante up several further ing the words but the wisdom of them, the meaning, suggestions. As Mark Burstein put it in his Preface to the lesson, the logic behind everything. And because the 150th Anniversary Deluxe Edition, “Avant la lettre, the scene itself appeared with the Macmillan edition, [Gardner] was a great believer in crowd-sourcing and rather than on the picnic itself or the first time ’round was generous in crediting his many correspondents in Under Ground, CLD also did have the time to in- when they gave him insights, facts, or interesting clude whatever he himself really valued or thought theories to explore.” I first wrote to Gardner back in every child might need, to navigate Life. In addition, 1993, and he took the time to respond, writing that we have a sweet name connection! As the Duchess’s he was “intrigued” and “delighted” by my findings earlier reference to her “little boy” parallels the di- (what a sweetie!) and hoped to include some of them minutive suffix (morpheme) “-let,”—i.e., “boy-let,” as in a future AA. But the mother lode of source mate- in “piglet” or “booklet”—it seems entirely à propos that rial still overflows with rich veins. And while nothing the guiding principle for Alice’s pig baby remark ap- can ever replace our favorite hardcopy editions, that pears in Act II Scene ii of Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. “mighty power of the Internet” simply awaits being harnessed to purpose! chapter vii p. 85: “It was the best butter,” as though that were enough [We assume all Carrollians have at hand a copy of the recommendation to suit every purpose—making the 150th Anniversary Deluxe Edition, so it is that to which the reply funny enough on its own! But besides having page numbers in this article refer. Molly’s prior notes appear the dreaded crumbs in, it may have grown mad itself. on pp. 226, 247, and 301. – Ed.]. In a 1625 satire by Ben Jonson, Staple of News II.i., we read “So butter answer my expectation, and be not Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland mad butter;—if it be, It shall both July and December see.” “Mad butter” is explained in John Ray’s A Collec- chapter ii tion of English Proverbs (1678): “Butter is said to be mad p. 27, note 6 mentions the expanding-universe theory, twice a year; once in summer . . . when it is too thin but it could be much simpler. A fan makes one cooler, and fluid; and once in winter . . . when it is too hard while gloves make one warmer. Carroll of course exag- and difficult to spread.”

30 pp. 86–88, note 5: “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?” chapter iv Answer 1. Because rooks and letters and books should be black and white and red/read all over. p. 220: “And this was odd, because, you know, / They The “rook” as a bird was given the binomial Latin hadn’t any feet.” name Corvus frugilegus (meaning a raven of the “fruit- The underside of the bodies of mollusks (such as oys- gathering” kind) by Carl Linnaeus in 1758, but in the ters) are themselves considered by scientists a single game of chess (with sets customarily either white-and- “foot.” black or white-and-red), the corner piece or castle “Why the sea is boiling hot”: “. . . foams . . . as in the salt tower also carries the “rook” nomenclature. sea the waters boil with the mastering might of the Answer 2. Because why also gives cause. winds.” – Lucretius, De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), Book III, line 490; “He [Leviathan] ma- pp. 92–93, note 13: “They were learning to draw . . . all keth the deep to boil like a pot.” – Job 41:31 (KJV). manner of things—everything that begins with an M, such as mouse-traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness. p. 228: “Let’s fight till six, and then have dinner.” . . .” Others have perhaps noted the (anachronistic) Not only treacle from the well, but the list of things Christmas Truce of 1914, but it stems from a long- drawn includes many manners of things, including time tradition. “Truce of Gods” in Brewer’s Dictionary of manner itself, deriving from “of the hand.” And draw- Phrase and Fable is defined as: “In the Middle Ages, a ing (upon or from) memory. The draw of gravity itself suspension of private warfare decreed by the Church holds the “moon” in its orbit, and an old Pagan ritual on certain days or for certain seasons, such as Advent was to “draw down the moon.” A mouse-trap gener- and Lent. In 1027, hostilities between Saturday night ally draws mice, attracted by bait, and then it draws and Monday morning were forbidden, and the Truce shut. And when a dormouse tells of it, it draws our of God was reaffirmed and extended by various Coun- attention as well. cils including the Lateran Council of 1179. It was only While “much of a muchness” has been drawn partly effective and was eventually superseded by the from the past (crediting the phrase’s origin to a King’s Peace.” 1727 play by Sir John Vanbrugh and Colley Cibber, The Provok’d Husband), it describes a close similarity, chapter v hence, becoming a tie—or a draw! p. 234: For the White Queen: “I cry not before I am pricked” – Reliq. Antiquae (1548); “There is nothing chapter x so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. p. 115, note 17: “French, music, and washing—extra.” What madness it is in your expecting evil before it ar- To children, not only would the idea of paying extra rives!” [alternate translation:] “He suffers more than for washing itself be a cause of great mirth—paying is necessary, who suffers before it is necessary.” – Sen- extra for bubbles of air, extra for such an annoyance, eca the Younger, Epistolae ad Lucilium, XCVIII; “. . . as extra to make something else disappear, never mind if it were not time enough to suffer evil when it shall the idea of washing under the sea—but between 1712 come, he must anticipate it by fancy and run to meet and 1862 (the date all our wondrous Adventures be- it.” – Montaigne, “Apology for Raimond de Sebonde,” gan), England taxed soap with the declaration that Essays II. it was a frivolous luxury of the aristocracy, so washing would have been indeed extra costly before then, not chapter vi just as a service, but also the soap itself. p. 245: “Some people have no more sense than a baby!” See Timelines of History (http://timelines.ws/coun- This is indeed off-the-wall (pun unavoidable) when tries/GB_C.HTML), for 1798. said by an egg—which is itself but a baby!

Through the Looking-Glass p. 247, note 8: Though the King James Bible (1611) changed Proverbs 16:18 to: “Pride goeth before de- chapter iii struction, and an haughty spirit before a fall,” the old- pp. 201–202: “His time is worth a thousand pounds a min- er Coverdale Bible (1535) has: “After a proude stomake ute!” . . . “Language is worth a thousand pounds a word!” there foloweth a fall.” Stomach here means temper “There is the same difference between their tongues or disposition (as in, “I don’t have the stomach for as between the hour and the minute hand; one goes this”), but Lewis Carroll applied the proud stomach ten times as fast, and the other signifies ten times as literally in Humpty Dumpty’s case as well, for proud much.” – Sydney Smith (1771–1845). also means slightly protruding or projecting.

31 p. 251: “The question is . . . whether you can make words View and Survey of the Dangerous and Pernicious Errors mean so many different things.” to Church and State, in Mr. Hobbes’s Book, Entitled Le- viathan (1676); “Words are so to be understood, that “[I]n the English language, with educated adults us- they worke somewhat, and be not idle and frivolous.” ing about 2,000 words in daily conversation . . . the — Sir Francis Bacon, The Elements of Common Lawes 500 most frequently used words [have] some 14,000 (1596). dictionary meanings.” – Wallace V. Schmidt, et al., Communicating Globally: Intercultural Communication chapter ix and International Business (Sage, 2007). p. 307: “I wo’n’t be introduced to the pudding, please.” “I know him not though I should meet him in my “The question is . . . which is to be master — that’s all.” dish.” – William Walker, Paræmiologia Anglo-Latina “To wrest and torture words to comply with his ex- (1672); “We will have hog’s cheek, and a dish of tripes, travagant Wit.” – Edward Hyde Clarendon, A Brief and a society of puddings. . . . a society of puddings? Did you mark that well-used metaphor?” – Robert Greene, The Tragical Reign of Selimus (1594).

p. 309: “. . . every poem was about fishes in some way. Do you know why they’re so fond of fishes, all about here?” “Soup and fish explain half the emotions of human life.” – Sydney Smith.

Liana Finck, The New Yorker, August 6&13, 2018

32 d e Alice in Japan yoshiyuki momma, lcs japan d e

hen Knight Letter 100 arrived, I enjoyed shown in Japan in 1934. Gary Cooper (the White reading the report of the panel discus- Knight) and Cary Grant (the Mock Turtle) were fea- Wsion “On Translating Whimsy and Non- tured, and those actors are still very popular here in sense in East Asian Languages and Cultures” featuring Japan. The movie, taken up in many media, also had Rebecca Corbet, Satoko Shimizu, and Kerim Yasar. I an impact on the Japanese public. For example, Char- am very glad that members of the LCSNA know that lotte Henry (Alice) was featured on the cover of Star, in Japan Alice is very popular, that quite a lot of edi- a Japanese movie magazine that March. tions of the Alice books have been published in Japan, In 1910, Lewis Carroll by Belle Moses was pub- and how much we Japanese like the Alice stories and lished (D. Appleton and Company). She wrote, Lewis Carroll himself. “Whether the Chinese or the Japanese have discov- In the special Alice150 Knight ered this funny little dream-child Letter is a report on the panel “Alice we cannot tell, but perhaps in in Japanese Popular Culture” by Asu- time she may journey there and ka Toritamari and Shinichi Kinoshi- amuse the little maids with the ta (KL 95:22). In their presentation, jet-black hair. . . . Perhaps she they said that the Disney animation may even stir them to laughter.” came out in Japan in 1953 in a sub- Belle Moses would have been titled version, and did not do well. surprised at the fact that Japan Its re-release in 1973 in a dubbed has since those days produced a version triggered the Alice boom, es- great many “editions, issues, and tablishing her once and for all with reprints” of the Alice books, the the name “Alice” (or Arisu), a pin- most in any language according afore, blonde hair, and a headband. to Alice in a World of Wonderlands! I would like to add some more in- As Mark Burstein pointed formation relating to Alice in Japan, out (KL 100:8), “Hello Kitty” was particularly in the early days. named for Alice’s cat in Through The play Alice in Wonderland was the Looking-Glass in 1974. So all performed in Japan while Carroll you completist collectors out was still alive. According to the pref- there will now have to buy the ace of Alice in Wonderland: A Play by vast range of merchandise associ- Emily Prime Delafield (Dodd, Mead ated with this brand! & Company, 1898), it “was per- During the Second Interna- formed by English children in Japan Charlotte Henry (Alice) on the cover of Star, tional Lewis Carroll Conference in 1890.” March 1934. in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Alice Liddell herself collected many foreign edi- in 1994, four Japanese delegates announced that they tions of the Alice books during her life, including four would be founding the Lewis Carroll Society of Japan. Wonderlands in Japanese. (The Sotheby’s catalogue Today, we have an annual convention (in late fall), Lewis Carroll’s Alice [London, 6 June 2001], says five, regular meetings (in January, March, May, and Sep- but one of them is a Chinese edition.) Three of them tember in Tokyo), a summer party in July in Tokyo, are signed “Alice Pleasance Hargreaves,” but one of and a Christmas party in Tokyo. The Society main- them went missing on its way to Tokyo from London, tains a website (http://lcsj.sakura.ne.jp/index-e.html so now only two signed copies survive. is the English version) and produces a quarterly news- The Alice in Wonderland produced by Paramount letter called The Looking-Glass Letter and an annual Pictures in 1933 and featuring an all-star cast was journal written in Japanese and English, Mischmasch.

33 As Anne Clark Amor, one of the delegates at that References original conference, wrote a dozen years later in “A Tale Begun” (Mischmasch no.8, 2006): Alice in a World of Wonderlands: The Translations of Lewis Carroll’s Masterpiece, Jon Lindseth, general editor, and We can be certain that he [Dodgson] would Alan Tannenbaum, technical editor (Oak Knoll/LC- have derived great satisfaction if he could SNA 2015). As with other languages, there are essays, back-translations, and a bibliography. Adriana Peliano, have known that one day his books would be in her essay “Alice: Illustrated by a World of Artists” translated into Japanese, and that Japanese has chosen 42 artists, among whom four are Japanese: children of all ages from one to a hundred Takako Hirai, Kuniyoshi Kaneko, Yayoi Kusama, and would love Alice as much as English children. Mari Shimizu. Surely it would have delighted him to Pictures and Conversations: Lewis Carroll in the Comics – An Annotated International Bibliography (Ivory Door, 2003; know that the Lewis Carroll Society of Japan second edition, 2005), edited and compiled by Byron has flourished since 1994, and that people Sewell, Mark Burstein, and Alan Tannenbaum, lists from around the world unite with Japanese many Japanese Alice comics and manga. scholars to read and contribute in Mis- Proceedings of the Second International Lewis Carroll Conference, chmasch, their journal dedicated to the life edited by Charlie Lovett (LCSNA, 1994), includes “Why Is Alice Popular in Japan?” by Yoshiyuki Momma. and works of Lewis Carroll. Jabberwocky, The Journal of the Lewis Carroll Society (UK), Sum- mer / Autumn 1991, International Conference Issue No.2, includes “Look Eastward” by Yoshiyuki Momma.

Bruce Eric Kaplan in The New Yorker, January 22, 2018

He only likes me when it’s through the looking glass.

# # # # # d d d d d

Alexander Aprahamian Molly Martin Roo Bookaroo Maria Jose Montero Elizabeth Burch-Hudson James Nelson Jan Burstein May Yoneyama Obrien Whitney J. Carroll Clare Potter Anahita Dalmia James Rathlesberger Filipe Ferreira Nicole Rodriguez Joseph Ferrerosa Justice Shellan Lindsay Fulcher Susanna Johnston Xinlu Shentong Karl Gottschalk Franziska Kohlt Mellina Silver Yesenia Hunter Markus Lang Sarah Van Sicklen Rebecca L. Jackson Tyler Wilson

34 d de e

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Leaves from the Deanery Garden

I enjoyed Mark Burstein’s de- although they were thinking of the neer.” Various Internet sites can molishment of the popular (but hookah, not a possible Amanita supply the melody and words, but groundless) supposition that the muscaria mushroom. I didn’t find a site with any infor- Caterpillar’s mushroom could When I bought the 2010 “2- mation on the song’s background. be an Amanita muscaria (“Of the Disc Special Edition” DVD of I asked Cantor Barry Abelson of Mushroom,” KL 100:19). I would Disney’s 1951 Alice in Wonderland, Temple Israel in Minneapolis, disagree, though, with the sugges- I was surprised to find that a sec- who told me that the song became tion that it might be Marasmius tion among the “extras,” on songs popular among Jewish settlers in oreades (the fairy ring mushroom), composed for the movie but not Palestine in the 1920s, but its com- in spite of the delightful appro- used in it, included a song called poser and date of composition are priateness of its English name. “Dream Caravan” (“My dream unknown. The stem and the cap in both caravan has a thousand beautiful I suppose that David/Livings- Carroll’s and Tenniel’s depic- dreams,” etc.). It was intended to ton/Hoffman were asked to come tions look to me too thick for the be sung by the Caterpillar, and on up with something Middle Eastern thin-bodied Marasmius oreades. the DVD was sung by the compos- for the Caterpillar, on the theory The photograph accompanying ers, Mack David, Jerry Livingston, that someone who smokes a hoo- the article shows the typical fairy and Al Hoffman, in a demonstra- kah must be Middle Eastern— but ring skinniness well. (While I’m tion tape they made in July 1948— that ought to be Middle Eastern not a mushroom expert, I have except that what they composed in the sense of, say, Egyptian or a long acquaintance with the was only the arrangement and Turkish, not in the sense of Israeli. commoner edible mushrooms, the verse lyrics. The melody and I don’t know if the tune of “Zum and over the years have gathered the chorus/ostinato are a Jewish Gali Gali” could have been influ- and eaten many fairy rings.) folksong, “Zum Gali Gali.” The enced at all by Arabian music. To It’s curious to note that at one chorus/ostinato is the nonsense me it sounds entirely Jewish, and point the songwriters for Disney’s syllables of the title (pronounced not at all Arabian/Middle Eastern, 1951 Alice in Wonderland were “zoom golly golly”), and the tradi- unlike the song that the Caterpil- thinking in terms of hallucino- tional words to it are (in Hebrew) lar wound up with in the movie genic traits for the Caterpillar, “The pioneer was made for work eventually, “A-E-I-O-U” (by Oliver / and work was made for the pio-

35 Wallace and Ted Sears), which So wherever on earth could Marti- u Belle-lettrist Walter de la does sound to me like (Arab) nez (or his translator, Sonia Soto) Mare uses this title repeat- Middle Eastern music. have gotten the idea that “Alice edly in his essay “Lewis Car- I would think that the combina- Through the Looking Glass” is roll” in The Eighteen-Eighties: tion of “dreams” and smoking an acceptable rendering of the Essays by Fellows of the Royal a hookah would have sounded sacred title? To check, I searched Society of Literature (1930). too much like drug addiction for the HathiTrust Digital Library u Maurice Hutton, who trans- the composers to have seriously (hathitrust.org). Ignoring any- lated “The Walrus and the intended “Dream Caravan” for thing after 1960, I found 5,037 hits Carpenter” and other Carroll inclusion in the movie, at least, for “Alice Through the Looking poems into Greek, in The not once they’d stopped to think Glass.” I examined a sample of Sisters Jest and Earnest (1930). about it. I wonder if the com- the books and articles found in u Lillian H. Smith, well- posers were indulging in a little the search, selecting only those known children’s librarian, pro-Israeli fervor in their “Dream occurrences that actually referred in The Unreluctant Years: Caravan, considering that Israel’s to the title of Carroll’s book, and A Critical Approach to Chil- independence was declared in not, for example, to adaptations. dren’s Literature (1953). May 1948, and all three com- Well, it seems he might have got- They are all deceased, and it is too posers were Jewish. David and ten the idea from R. L. Green, late to rap their knuckles. Livingston, ne Levinson, are so who, in his 1954 edition of Car- Clare Imholtz identified in Wikipedia entries on roll’s diaries, transcribes the entry them; Hoffman is not specifically on November 1, 1871, as “Alice g so identified, but the Wikipedia Through the Looking-glass is print- A follow-up to my comments entry says he was born in Minsk, ing off rapidly.” Edward Wakeling [KLs 86:25, 87:33] about Mark and a German name in Russia informs me that Carroll actually Burstein’s article “Am I Blue?” generally meant a Jewish family. wrote “Alice” and beneath that on the color of Alice’s dress [KL The trio composed “The Un- “Looking glass,” but how was 85:27]: it just occurred to me birthday Song” for Alice, and Martinez to know? (Regardless, that she is wearing a red dress on other songs for Disney, receiving Carroll was never fussy as to titles the covers of both Wonderland an Academy Award nomination in his letters and journals.) and Looking-Glass of the Macmil- for “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” in So Martinez is in good com- lan People’s Editions of 1887! Cinderella. Together, in collabora- pany. But I can name several other Yoshiyuki Momma tion with others, or individually, well-known writers, Carrollians, LCS Japan they wrote music or lyrics for even presidents who misremem- many songs. Mack David is prob- bered the title. More or less in g ably best known for writing the chronological order, they include: I recently realized that the poem English-language lyrics to Edith u Isa Bowman, one of Car- “Lines Written by a Bear of Very Piaf’s “La Vie en Rose,” and Hoff- roll’s closest child/actress Little Brain” from Chapter Seven man and Livingston, in collabora- friends, in her The Story of Winnie-the-Pooh has a number tion with Milton Drake, for the of Lewis Carroll (1899). of striking similarities to Humpty “novelty” (sounds-like-nonsense- u Lord Alfred Douglas, friend Dumpty’s poem about the fish: but-isn’t) song “Mairzy Doats.” and lover of Oscar Wilde, On Monday, when the sun is hot Ruth Berman in The Pongo Papers: And the I wonder to myself a lot: Duke of Berwick (1907). Now is it true, or is it not, g u Biographer Belle Moses That what is which and which is The “Sic, Sic, Sic” column (KL uses this title throughout what? 100:43), takes Guillermo Martinez, her Lewis Carroll in Wonder- On Tuesday, when it hails and author of the award-winning and land and at Home (1910). snows enjoyable mystery The Oxford Mur- u Theodore Roosevelt in “A Zo- The feeling on me grows and ders, to task for allowing one of his ological Trip through Africa,” grows characters to refer to Carroll’s sec- a lecture he gave in 1911. That hardly anybody knows ond Alice book as “Alice Through u Woodrow Wilson, in a If those are these or these are the Looking Glass.” I thought speech at the National those. that a bit harsh, as the variant title Press Club in 1914. On Wednesday, when the sky is (I believe) has long been used u Langford Reed, anthologist, in blue, widely in colloquial parlance. A Book of Nonsense Verse (1926).

36 And I have nothing else to do, Pooh is here interrupted by contains similarities to the “Evi- I sometimes wonder if it’s true Kanga. The similarities include the dence” poem from the trial scene That who is what and what is who. identical meter, and four stanzas in Alice’s Adventures, having some On Thursday, when it starts to in Milne’s (cf. the first four cou- very cryptic and mysterious lines freeze plets in Carroll’s) constructed by that bring to mind Carroll’s po- And hoar-frost twinkles on the mentioning a time, what the envi- em’s many confusing pronouns. trees, ronment is like, then proceeding We know Milne knew of Carroll’s How very readily one sees to discuss an activity. They also work, so the question is whether That these are whose—but whose both end abruptly in the middle of the similarities were deliberate or are these? a sentence, although for different unconscious. On Friday— reasons. The Pooh poem also Fred Scher

g Years later, as an adult, I realized interviewer: You have called that what my little sister had con- Lewis Carroll a surrealist, fided to me in a quiet voice in that and his name suggests the wind cave was indeed true. Alice kind of jabberwocky which really does exist in the world. The you use occasionally . . . March Hare, the Mad Hatter, the henry miller: Yes, yes, of course Cheshire Cat—they all really exist. g Lewis Carroll is a writer I love. I Haruki Mirakami, “The Wind “The Grin Without the Cat: would give my right arm to have Cave,” The New Yorker, Bacon and Freud in the 1960s” written his books, or to be able to September 3, 2018, excerpted from Martin Gayford, chapter title in come anywhere near doing what Killing Commendatore: A Modernists & Mavericks: Bacon, he did. When I finish my project, Novel, Knopf, New York, 2018 Freud, Hockney & the London if I continue writing, I would love Painters, Thames & Hudson, to write sheer nonsense. g London, 2018 Henry Miller, “The Art of Who, for instance, would have Fiction,” Interview by George thought that [Pooh illustrator Er- g Wickes in The Paris Review 28, nest Shepard] would have cared We are reminded that the term Summer-Fall 1962 for Tenniel, whose hard outline “mad as a hatter” has its basis in was so very different from his own the mental and physical health g “lost and found” line? But Tenniel problems caused by mercuric appealed because of his relentless nitrate used in the felting process It was awful—like Alice and the imagination, which made gro- of hat-making in the eighteenth pool of tears, many of them mine. tesque fancies as solid as realities. and nineteenth centuries. Indeed, Robert Gottlieb, Avid Reader, A Rawle Knox, The Work of E. H. the 1873 beaver fur hat made by Life, Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, Shepard, Methuen Children’s the London hatters Lincoln Ben- New York, 2016 Books, London, 1979 nett & Co included in the exhibition is contained in a sealed bag, as it is still too toxic to handle. Rebecca Arnold, “Fashion Victims,” The Times Literary Supplement, June 8, 2018

37 g g g Initially, she used Bible excerpts, “It’s a beautiful day for plogging.” I store books in my head with but Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Neither James Joyce nor Lewis Car- half-visualised mnemonics. The came to seem more congenial. roll said that. Alex Bourney did, in Alice books sit apart as a kind of Judith Thurman, “Maltese for a thick French accent, on a recent cubic cat’s-cradle of brightly co- Beginners,” The New Yorker, Sunday morning at the entrance loured threads red, white, black, September 3, 2018 to Prospect Park in Brooklyn. grass-green. I now also think of the [“Plogging” is a form of exercise.] impossible buildings and worlds g Do-Gooders Dept., “One Man’s in the drawings of M. C. Escher. In general, the book is full of Trash,” The New Yorker, August A. S. Byatt, “There’s Something Humpty-Dumptyesque pro- 20, 2018 about Alice,” The Guardian, Feb. nouncements on what words 26, 2010 mean, or unsupported general- g izations about particular texts [Penelope Fitzgerald’s] grandfa- g or genres, or sly digs at “the ther at Corpus enjoyed hearing Amanda Craig [. . .] has sat on modern academic world.” the jokes made by the author of several literary prize committees Judith Jesch, reviewing Laughing Alice in Wonderland: “He knows [. . .]. If all must have prizes she Shall I Die by Tom Shippey, Times a man whose feet are so large is happy to hand them out. . . . Literary Supplement online, that he has to put his trou- (What makes her noteworthy is August 21, 2018 sers on over his head.” . . . that in three decades of writing Perdita . . . thought of Penelope and serving on prize committees, g as a kind of White Queen in a car- she has never received one.) Lewis Carroll’s satires of the ab- digan, “gentle and faintly wooly.” From the Times Literary Supple- surdity of Victorian rules and Hermione Lee, Penelope ment, NB column, by D.H. authorities were an important Fitzgerald: A Life, Alfred A. inspiration for [Pogo cartoon- Knopf, New York, 2014 g ist Walt] Kelly’s ridicule of Apparently you follow the rabbit McCarthyism in the 1950s. g through a hole and you emerge Thomas Andrae, introduction to When I was little my first fa- in a wonderland where suddenly Walt Kelly’s The Adventures vorite book was Alice in Won- countries throughout the world of Peter Wheat, Volume One, derland, and the main attractor are queuing up to give us trading Hermes Press, Wilmington, was Sir John Tenniel’s cross- advantages and access to their Pennsylvania, 2017 hatched illustrations, and I markets. . . . No doubt some- wanted to be able to do that. where there is a Hatter holding g Cartoonist/painter/set designer a tea party with a dormouse. The proportions of her house Gary Panter (Jimbo, Pee-wee’s Ken Clarke, M.P., in a speech in were so preposterous that I felt Playhouse), interviewed in The the House of Commons on Prime I had shrunk to a hundredth of New York Times, July 23, 2007 Minister Theresa May’s Brexit my size, like Alice after she drank strategy the potion in Wonderland. g Vanessa Grigoriadis, “The It was at this age [nine] that I Empowerment Cult,” The New began giving puppet shows for York Times, June 3, 2018 other kids in the neighborhood, devoured books on ventrilo- quism, went around proclaim- ing—to no one in particular— “Off with their heads!” Alexander Theroux, The Grammar of Rock, Fantagraphics, Seattle, 2013

38 of stephanie lovett

s outgoing president, I want to extend Moin, and Alan Tannenbaum. Also serving will be my deepest personal gratitude, and the Mark Burstein as publications chairman (Knight Let- Agratitude of the LCSNA, to the 2016–2018 ter and books) and Heather Simmons as communica- Board of Directors. Thanks to their support, wisdom, tions director (administrator/manager of our social dedication, and hard work over the past two years, media presence—website, blog, Facebook, Twitter, we’ve held wonderful gatherings in San Francisco, Instagram). Chris Morgan will continue as Knight Let- Delaware, Los Angeles, and New York; celebrated ter editor, and Edward Guiliano is spearheading a re- the 100th Knight Letter; published Carroll’s uncol- design and updating of our website. Our future looks lected verse; reached the verge of glorious! completing the decades-long pam- Speaking of which, our phlets project; revised the constitu- Spring 2019 meeting (March 8 and tion and furthered our governance; 9) is shaping up nicely and will take and spent time with and given place in gorgeous San Diego, Cali- books to scores of children. Most of fornia, at the Central branch of the these directors in fact were also the San Diego Public Library on Friday, 2014–2016 Board, and so were also and the next day in the National responsible for meetings in Austin Center for the Study of Children’s and Maryland, and the gala week of exhibitions and Literature (NCSCL) at San Diego State University events for Alice150 in New York! (SDSU). Ninety-times-nine thanks go out to Linda Cas- Our host at SDSU will be Dr. Joseph Thomas, sady, vice president; Sandra Lee Parker, secretary; director of the NCSCL. There will be exhibits on Ken Salins, treasurer; previous officers Mark Burst- Edward Gorey and Carrolliana, and talks by award- ein, Andrew Sellon, Cindy Watter, Clare Imholtz, and winning children’s author Kathleen Krull (One Fun Fran Abeles; elected directors Matt Crandall, Matt Day with Lewis Carroll, etc.), Dr. Thomas on Shel Sil- Demakos, Griffin Miller, and Ellie Schaefer-Salins; verstein and his poem “Alice,” Dr. Edward Guiliano and appointed directors Wendy Crandall and Alan on “For All Those ‘Curiouser and Curiouser’ about a Tannenbaum. We are also grateful to our Advisory Man and His Alices,” and Dr. Philip Ser- Board: Joel Birenbaum, Angelica Carpenter, Edward rato on “It’s Not Easy Being a Girl in Guiliano, August Imholtz, and Charlie Lovett. Heteropatriarchy: On Female Coali- The LCSNA is greatly indebted to you all! tion and Mentorship (or the At our board meeting in New York, a new Con- Lack Thereof) stitution was adopted, which you can read by click- in Alice’s Adven- ing “Constitution” under the “About Us” tab on our tures in Wonder- website. Under the new structure, officers—who were land.” subsequently approved at the general meeting for a San Diego two-year period—are automatically to serve also on is such a beauti- Next Meeting the board of directors. They are Linda Cassady, presi- ful, sunny lo- dent; Amy Plummer, vice president; Ken Salins, trea- cation, just 20 miles March 8 - 9, 2019 surer (incumbent); and Sandra Lee Parker, secretary from Mexico, San Diego, CA (incumbent). Six directors were afterwards elected to that you might the board by the officers: Edward Guiliano, Arnold consider staying a Hirshon, Clare Imholtz, April James, Linda Gray- couple of extra days!

39 d de e ALL MUST HAVE PRIZES Domestic Records Part I matt crandall d e

he history of Disney Alice records be- Disney did not have their own record label at gins long before Disney’s filmAlice in the time (and wouldn’t until the late 1950s), TWonderland was released in 1951, and Disney released records on pretty much every in fact the first records are not even Disney record- label there was. From children’s records to pop ings! In 1944 Ginger Rogers was looking to star in a songs, their vast catalogue of material was spread far combo live-action and animation adaptation of Alice and wide across the record industry. for Disney, and recorded a collection of songs on the Most of the children’s records were released on Decca label to further that objective (Figure 1). I’m the RCA label, because Walt Disney released his films sure many (if not all) of you have seen this large set through that studio during this time period. And of 78 RPM records featuring Ginger Rogers, unaware here begins a series of firsts that theAlice records hold that it was part of a not-so-subtle campaign to get that in the world of Disney records. First number 1: Alice film made. Disney even provided the cover art for the was the first film to issue its official storyteller record album, as can be seen at the base of the mushroom. simultaneously in all three popular formats (78, 45, The set exists in several formats and designs, be- and 33 ). First number 2: Alice was the first (and ginning with the large 78 RPM set with the familiar only) Disney storyteller to use a new large book for- purple-ish blue cover (complete with companion mat rather⅓ than the familiar album format. First num- booklet and full-sized songbook), which was issued ber 3: Alice was the first film to issue the storyteller in 1944. The set was reissued in 1949 as a 78 RPM records in a complete format and multipart formats. set with an unusual orange-ish cover with a small in- More firsts to come later, but let’s look at these RCA set picture of the image from the large set (Figure storyteller records in detail. 2). This same weird orange cover was used on a 33 The large complete storyteller record, called RPM LP also issued in 1949, as well as a 45 RPM set is- the “Little Nipper Giant Storybook Record Album” sued in 1950. One presumes that these reissues came⅓ (could they not come up with a shorter name?), is about to capitalize on the soon-to-be released Disney shown in Figure 3. It was issued in 78, 45, and 33 film and all the publicity it was garnering at the time. RPM formats. The records were located on the inside As that film was never made, our next stop is covers in special paper sleeves that were pasted to the⅓ 1951, when the Disney Alice film was released. Since covers. The 78 version almost always has significant

Figure 1. Decca Ginger Rogers Large 78 Set Figure 2. Decca Ginger Rogers small 78 set (1949)

40 damage to these sleeves because the records are so would go to the expense of re-recording dialogue . . . heavy. The 45 version records are much smaller and something I’m sure they would never do now, unless lighter, so these sleeves are almost always intact. The they used an alternate cast. Some of the alternate cast 33 version has a single record that is about the same on this recording are . . . interesting. I must say that size and weight as a 78, so the single sleeve on the in- I find the Doorknob particularly annoying . . . but I side⅓ front cover is almost always quite distressed too. love the name of the vocal quartet: Three Beaus and So the moral is: If you are looking for a very nice copy, a Peep! Quintessentially 1950s! go for a 45 set. As you can tell, RCA Victor (along with every As I mentioned previously, RCA released the Al- other licensee) was going all out for the Alice release, ice storyteller as a multipart issue, too—three parts to creating an entirely new format for its storytellers and be exact, in both 78 RPM and 45 RPM formats. The issuing it in multiple speeds simultaneously. They three parts are: “Alice and the White Rabbit,” “Alice even created a special mini catalogue exclusively to and the Mad Tea Party,” and “Alice and the Trial” promote the Alice release. During this period, they (Figure 4). The 45 RPM records in these sets (and would print small catalogues that were sent to the re- the complete record, above) are a very cool translu- cord shops to be given away to customers, to advertise cent yellow vinyl (I love colored vinyl). All of these current and upcoming releases. This Alice catalogue singles have a gatefold sleeve that opens up to some (Figure 5) has a gatefold cover, with gatefolds on both pretty nice art illustrating the story segments as told front and back covers, the back cover featuring the on the single. Queen of Hearts holding an RCA herald. The front Interestingly, all the RCA storyteller records gatefold advertises the large storyteller record in have some of the original cast from the film recreat- all three speeds, and the inside cover advertises the ing their roles, but with all new recordings, not snippets three storyteller singles in two speeds (78 RPM and of the actual soundtrack. Hard to imagine that they 45 RPM). The first page has some art and photos of

Figure 3. Little Nipper Giant Storybook Record Album Sets

Figure 4. RCA Storyteller Singles

Figure 5. RCA Victor Alice Catalogue

41 the original cast members on the records. The rest of Alice items from the original release, S&S went all out the interior pages feature other RCA titles available at on this set, and produced eight records for the series the time. These special catalogues are not commonly (the most for any Disney film), each with full-color found. cover art. As we continue with our journey into children’s Over the years it has become clear that some of records, we must talk about the various titles released these records are much scarcer than others. In my ex- under the Golden imprint (Figure 6). Little Golden perience, RD22 (“All in a Golden Afternoon”) is the Records were made for many years by Simon & Schus- hardest to find of the set, followed closely by RD23 ter—before and after Alice—the vast majority being (“Alice in Wonderland Meets the Caterpillar and the non-Disney titles. In fact, the firstAlice LGR was only Cheshire Cat”). My assumption is that these titles just the eighteenth Disney title in the LGR series. Shortly weren’t as popular with kids and they got thrown out before the film was released, the Alice series of Little more frequently than the others. All of the titles are Golden Records was introduced on yellow vinyl (plas- difficult to find with their paper sleeves in any kind of tic really, these things are almost indestructible) in decent condition; these were kids’ records, after all, 78 RPM but in a smaller size, which sometimes leads and while the records themselves were designed to people to believe they are 45 RPM. As with most other suffer a great deal of abuse, the sleeves are just paper.

Figure 6. Full Set of Eight Little Golden Records

42 Which brings us to the final First for theAlice re- Golden Record DBR-2 “Six Songs from Alice in Won- cords, First number 4: Alice was the first title to launch derland, Part 2.” The recordings themselves (Figure a new format of Golden records—Big Golden Re- 8) are nothing special, just a rehash of the same titles cords. These records are possibly the rarest of all the on the Little Golden Records, but the format is dif- Alice records, and for years no one believed that they ferent. The size of a standard 78 RPM record, with il- even existed because I had no physical evidence, only lustrated labels, and not too interesting sleeves, these a single reference in a single printed ad. Years later must have been short lived indeed, for though there I discovered a Simon & Schuster Golden Book cata- are literally hundreds of LGRs, there are only a tiny logue from Fall 1951 (Figure 7) that actually pictured number of titles in the BGR series. these elusive recordings, and years after that I finally And that does it for Part 1 of the domestic Dis- found them. They are Big Golden Record DBR-1, ney Alice records. Part 2 will look at pop recordings of “Six Songs from Alice in Wonderland, Part 1” and Big Alice songs and a few oddities as well. Till next time!

Figure 7. Golden Book Catalogue Pages from Fall 1951

Figure 8. Big Golden Records

43 d e Arcane Illustrators: Max Ernst mark burstein d e

lthough Max Ernst (1891–1976) is certainly lived in New York in the Forties, he embarked on ex- a name quite well-known in the art world, periments with splashing paint through a hole in the Ahe is the subject of this issue’s column be- bottom of a can suspended by strings above a hori- cause I have come to realize that the word “arcane” zontal canvas, which undoubtedly inspired Jackson in the title “means just what I choose it to mean.” Pollock’s drip paintings. The surrealist’s surrealist, his For the purposes of this column it means: “his or her relation with the others in that group was often rocky, books are not that easy to find, even with the power of with his being expelled from the movement at least the Internet.” (A fortuitous exception occurred last twice, the second time for the unforgivable crime of issue, when a publisher reprinted—in English yet!— winning the Grand Prize at the 1954 Venice Biennale. the work of the subject of an already written column shortly before we went to press.) g It is not within the province of this article to The L’Âge d’Or [Golden Age] Snark,4 a small gem is- provide a disquisition on the well-known influence sued in a numbered edition of 750, translated into of Carroll on the surrealists; that has been done of- French and published by Henri Parisot, is illustrated ten enough elsewhere.1 Nor will it be a definitive bi- with eight black-and-white etchings; a deluxe limited ography of Herr Ernst, but rather it will emphasize edition of 25 also has one color etching of the Bell- his Carrollian book illustration, which consists of La man, signed and numbered. Some of these have a chase au Snark (L’Âge d’Or / Aux Éditions Premières, pressure test etching colored in blue and gray-brown; 1950), Logique sans peine ([Symbolic Logic, Volume I], my “H.C.” (hors commerce) copy has what appears to Hermann, 1966), and two fine-press, oversize editions be a page that is “a perfect and absolute blank,” but a by Manus Presse: the Snark (1968, 130 copies) and closer inspection in the right light reveals it to be an a macédoine called Lewis Carrolls [sic] Wunderhorn uncolored version of the etching, that is, an uncol- (1970, 1000 copies). ored pressure test. They are delightful, cartoony com- Ernst also created oil paintings (e.g., Alice in positions, inhabiting the space somewhere between 1939; Alice in 1941; Pour les amis d’Alice, 1957; and Alice the figurative and the abstract. envoie un message aux poisons, 1964) and lithographs Of all the works of Dodgson/Carroll for a surre- on Carrollian themes, which one can find listed on alist to choose to illustrate, one would think Symbolic Mark Richards’s fine surrealism site.2 (By the by, did Logic, Volume I, would be near the bottom of the list. you know for whose work the term “surrealism” was But surrealists are full of surprises, and it is a tribute coined? None other than Pablo Picasso!)3 to Carroll that he used such imaginative examples in Max Ernst was born in Germany, but lived at one his syllogisms and lessons that they could be so play- time or another in France, Southeast Asia, New York, fully pictured in a sober book about logic. Jean Gatté- and Arizona. Calling him, as Wiki does, “a painter, gno’s preface resolves the irony well. The illustrations sculptor, graphic artist, and poet, a primary pioneer themselves tend to depict human characters rather of the Dada movement and surrealism” doesn’t begin primitively, with collaged-in geometric or scientific to describe his contribution to the arts. His experi- drawings floating about. ments in collage, frottage (taking a rubbing from an The Manus Press Snark, a fine exemplar of the uneven surface), décalcomanie (using a glass sheet or bookmaker’s art, contains nineteen original litho- paper to flatten still-wet paint on the canvas),grat - graphs in colors. Some of the figures were taken from tage (scraping off layers of paint on canvases placed Ernst’s earlier Snark, but reworked and repurposed. on various textured surfaces), and objects applied to The color illustrations from the first part of the book paintings are considered breakthroughs. He could (in English) are repeated—but as black-and-white paint marvelously in a (sur)realistic or a completely negatives!—in the second part, a German transla- abstract style, and anything in between. A close friend tion by Klaus Reichert. The text is offset-printed on of Hans Arp, Paul Klee, and André Breton, when he fine Arches paper, with ragged edges, and unbound

44 in loose quires inside a blue cloth portfolio, with a Endnotes slipcase. 1 E.g. (chronologically), Jeffrey Stern’s “Lewis Carroll the Wunderhorn is in English and German, with trans- Surrealist” in Lewis Carroll: A Celebration (Clarkson N. lations by Max Ernst, Christian Enzensberer, and Potter, 1981); Renée Riese Hubert’s Surrealism and the Book (University of California Press, 1988); Christoph Klaus Reichert. The sections are: Kinderstube, some Benjamin Schulz’s “Down the Rabbit Hole and into the of Carroll’s juvenilia, i.e., early poems and letters; Museum: Alice and the Visual Arts” in Alice in Wonderland Fröhliche [Happy] Logik, the introduction, selections, Through the Visual Arts (Tate Publishing, 2011); and syllogisms from Symbolic Logic; Aberwitz und Fünf- “Surrealism’s Curiosity: Lewis Carroll and the Femme- Uhr-Tee [Lunacy and Five O’Clock Tea], the Tea-Party Enfant” by Catriona McAra, Papers of Surrealism, Issue 9 (Summer 2011); Mark Richards’s talk at our spring 2013 chapter of Wonderland; “What the Tortoise Said to meeting; and my introduction to Alice’s Adventures in Achilles,” an 1895 article by Carroll for the journal Wonderland: 150th Anniversary Edition Illustrated by Salvador Mind; and a Nachwort [Afterword] by Werner Spies. Dalí (Princeton University Press, 2015). The 36 lithographs Ernst provides are mostly single 2 Lewiscarrollresources.net/surrealism. colors, with a few multiple, again sometimes based on 3 The first appearance of the termsurrealisme in print was his earlier drawings for these titles, and often includ- in Apollinaire’s program notes for the Satie/Cocteau ing geometric figures. The book itself came out as a piece Parade for the Ballets Russes, with set design and costumes by Picasso. Although he never formally aligned slipcased hardcover, and also in a deluxe edition with himself with Breton’s group, he painted in that style from a separate portfolio of the illustrations. 1917 to 1935, and had many works displayed in surrealist Some of Ernst’s drawings for these titles can also exhibitions. be found as cover art to various Flammarion editions 4 It is possible that the publisher’s imprint name refers to of Carroll’s works in French. the famed 1930 surrealist film of the same name by Luis His last name may mean “serious,” but Max was Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, in which Ernst made a cameo appearance. anything but that in his quirky, droll take on Car- roll’s texts. Ernst only ever illustrated one chapter of Wonderland, and one can only fantasize about what he would have produced had he taken on the entire novel. As those ’70’s Coca-Cola ads might say, “It’s surreal thing!”

Max Ernst drawing from The Snark, from the English section and its negative from the German section. 45 In Memoriam MN

oug Howick, a genial Charles Douglas Howick He was a member of and erudite figure in April 9, 1935 — June 1, 2018 the LCSNA and contributed Dinternational Snark- Remembered by several “snarticles” (his pro- hunting circles, passed away Mahendra Singh prietary portmanteau) to the June 1, 2018, in Melbourne, Knight Letter: an essay on the Australia. Born in Twicken- Tichborne Claimant (“The ham, London, on April 9, Hunting of the Butcher,” 1935, and raised near Guild- KL 82:18), a fine survey of

ford in the English country- the Bellman’s Blank Map side, he emigrated to Austra- (“Beware of Greeks Bearing lia in 1957 to pursue a career Snarks?”, KL 87:44), a history in entomology, specializing of the Carrollian-themed in the control of termites in Guinness beer advertising Australian forestry. He be- campaigns of the last century came a major figure in the (“My Goodness—My Snark,” industry, not only in Austra- KL 91:8), deceptive online lia but also Asia and Oceania, authoring over practices (“That eBay Snark May Be a Boojum,” 60 scientific papers and helming various trade KL 91:13), and several reviews of various Snark magazines and associations. editions (KL 89:34 and 98:43). His Snark hunt proper began in 1972 when Doug also maintained a lively and highly he joined the Concatenated Order of Hoo- entertaining correspondence on all things Hoo, a fraternal order of lumber and forestry Snarkish with fellow Snark hunters all over the professionals, founded in Arkansas in 1892 and world. His encyclopedic knowledge and genial now active in most English-speaking countries. wit made his Snarkish observations particularly Doug was intrigued by the odd nomenclature memorable; this author in particular will be of the various Hoo-Hoo executive officers, forever indebted to Doug for the unstinting including Snark, Bojum (sic), and Jabberwock. advice and support he so generously gave to his One of the Order’s founding members, William own Snark hunt several years ago. E. Barns, was a devotee of the poem, and soon Doug made several visits to North America, Doug was himself infatuated with Snark hunting, during one of which he visited Mark Burstein, focusing in particular on Snark illustrations. who recalls, “I met Doug in the fall of 2014, Over the years Doug amassed a fine when we spent a delightful afternoon poring collection of illustrated Snarks (84 editions as of over the Snarks in my collection. His enthusiasm 2009) and all manner of Snark adaptations and for discovering the few he had not seen before ephemera. Until poor health intervened, he was quite enchanting.” curated a partial catalogue of illustrated Snarks Doug is survived by his wife, Sigrid, his son, on the Internet (still online as of this time, Charles, and three grandchildren. He was a true http://photobucket.com/snarkillustration) scholar of the Snark and a fineconnoisseur of to share some of his collection with fellow the Carrollian spirit of humor. He will be sorely enthusiasts. missed by his fellow Snark hunters.

46 In Memoriam MN

he Australian artist Charles Blackman, OBE in 2006 (KL 77:42), and the Charles Blackman August 12, 1928 — August 20, 2018 four-foot-wide Mad Hatter’s Tdied just days after Remembered by Tea Party realized au$1.5 mil- his ninetieth birthday. He was Mark Burstein lion last year. In 2007, The most renowned for the 46 National Gallery of Victoria paintings in his 1956 Alice in put on a gala fiftieth-anniver- Wonderland series. sary traveling exhibition of the Blackman left school at works, accompanied by a fine thirteen and worked as an il- catalogue written by curator lustrator on the Sydney Sun. Geoffrey Smith and Felicity He attended a few night class- Moore. Then in 1988, Black- es at East Sydney Technical man illustrated Nadine Ama- College, but was largely self- dio’s Alice in RainforestLand taught. In 1951, he married (Watermark Press), a pro-con- the writer Barbara Patterson. servation pastiche, with black- A few years later, as her eye- and-white drawings. sight began to deteriorate, they would listen to As Smith put it (quoting the artist as well): a “talking book” of Alice in Wonderland read by “In these eccentric compositions—with their BBC announcer Robin Holmes, which became bold colours and highly imaginative use of the inspiration for the series, which was done iconic motifs from Lewis Carroll’s fantastic jour- in tempera, oil, and enamel paint on Swedish ney into the imagination—Blackman produces hardboard, during days while he was working at challenging images that are simultaneously night in an East Melbourne café. amusing and psychologically disturbing. ‘What The paintings were later used to illustrate Alice releases in us is anything can happen! She an edition of Wonderland published by A. H. & allowed me to paint in a totally different style. A.W. Reed of New South Wales in 1982. That anything is allowable.’” Blackman was part of a radical set of artists Blackman lived mainly in Sydney and Mel- in postwar Melbourne calling themselves Antip- bourne, with stints in London and Paris. He was odeans. They were influential in the Australian also a set designer for ballet, and a founder of a art scene through the 1950s and 60s, largely school for young artists. In 1977, he was award- through their rejection of the growing trend in ed the Order of the British Empire for services abstraction and expressionism in art, and their to art and culture. advocating of the figurative model. He had six children—most of them artists The centerpiece of the Wonderland series, and musicians—one of whom, Auguste, contin- a nine-foot-wide work called Alice’s Journey, sold ues producing his own interpretations of Won- for au$1.02 million (us $750,000) at Sotheby’s derland to this day.

Alice’s Journey, 1957

47 d e Reflections on Jonathan Miller’s “On Reflection” christopher tyler d e

n his lapidary book On Reflection, surveying the ing how observant Lewis Carroll allows her multifold history of reflections in paintings, Jona- to be about all the other contents of the Ithan Miller engages with the puzzle of Lewis Car- looking-glass room, it is decidedly odd that roll’s description of Alice entering the Looking-Glass she fails to notice the fact that it is occupied world through the mantelpiece mirror, as follows: by someone who looks and acts just like her. . . . If the reflected room is sufficiently actual “. . . it is impossible to get . . . close to a to allow the real Alice to visit it, she has no mirror without meeting yourself com- reason to believe that its reflected occupant ing in the opposite direction. is any less actual. But if both Alices are ac- It is this encounter that Lewis Carroll tual, how are we meant to visualize their (1871) leaves so artfully undescribed when collision? It is all very well to pretend that he smuggles his drowsy heroine from her the glass which separates them can soften, bedroom into its reflected counterpart on but that won’t do when it comes to getting the other side of the mirror. Alice, you will through each other because, if one Alice remember, amuses herself by entertaining the politely softens in deference to her twin, the improbable . . . idea that the reflected room courtesy will be symmetrically reciprocated, is an actual one and that, by pretending that leaving no Alices at all. End of story.” [!]1 the glass has softened to let her through, she can visit the looking-glass house. So far so Though Miller’s conclusion is definitively stated as good. What the author conveniently forgets “End of story,” much more can be said in defense of to mention is the perplexing and indeed Carroll’s whimsy.2 Soft mirrors are not entirely a fic- indescribable shemozzle that would have tional concept, but exist in the form of the surface occurred when Alice met herself coming of reflective liquids, such as water or even the mer- in the opposite direction. In fact, consider- cury that is used for the reflective backing of mirrors.

Figure 1. “Alice passing through the looking-glass” by John Tenniel

48 Thus, rather than envisaging the softening of the mir- image of herself. If it were not reversed, she would see ror as its disappearance into the mist, we can imagine her back in the mirror (in the manner of Magritte’s Alice sliding through a (vertical) watery surface into a painting La reproduction interdite (of a man viewing his world as foreign as the deep ocean is to land-dwellers. own back in a mirror). This title is usually translated We can even imagine that, if she slid through side- “Not to be reproduced”; not only is this literally incor- ways, there would be a point where the outside half rect, but viewed in the present context it is clear that matched the reflected half, giving the impression of a much better translation would be: “The forbidden a whole Alice from the combination of the real and reproduction (or copy).” In other words, this is the reflected halves. Thus, rather than having a collision form of copy that is forbidden by the laws of reflec- with herself, as in Miller’s conception, the two half-Al- tion. If it were allowed—if there were no front/back ices would merge into a single self before reappearing reversal—the orange would remain in the “same” fully in the Looking-Glass world. In this way, the literal- hand of the reflection as of the original. ist could resolve the puzzle of Alice meeting herself However, when the image is front-back reversed, in the middle of the mirror, and envisage a smooth Alice Raikes is performing the mental rotation of transition from one world to the other. It is perhaps aligning her imagined self-image with the three- notable that, although Tenniel’s illustration shows Al- dimensional mirror image. To do so, she is literally ice facing herself as she first views the Looking-Glass required to invert her self-image front/back, which world, he has her emerging into it in a three-quarter could in principle be done by folding herself inside pose that could be viewed as approximating the requi- out (like pushing a glove through its own entry-hole). site sideways plunge into the mirror pool. If actual front/back inversion had been the manipu- Not only does Miller not end the story at the end lation of her body image that she envisaged, the right of the above quote (instead dilating on a conjecture hand could have been said to remain the right hand about her awareness of the “other Alice” during her of the inside-out “self.” This is therefore not the form mirror adventures), he also takes on the issue of mir- of transformation she envisaged. ror reversal that Carroll discussed with another Alice Another way to achieve the front-back reversal (his distant cousin Alice Raikes) while writing the would be to rotate herself vertically so that the head book. Her account of the encounter with Lewis Car- of the reflection lined up opposite her feet, and vice roll (in her house at 95 Onslow Square) concludes as versa (assuming that she is standing vertically), which follows: would again keep the right hand of the reflection opposite her right hand, and the left, left. Although this ‘Now,’ he said, giving me an orange, ‘first tell me head-to-foot alignment would obviously not form a which hand you have got that in.’ ‘The right,’ I usable match, it is instructive as to the underlying im- said. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘go and stand before that plications of Tenniel’s actual solution for her, which glass, and tell me which hand the little girl you was for her to rotate herself horizontally through the see there has got it in.’ After some perplexed mirror so that the right hand lined up opposite her contemplation, I said, ‘The left hand.’ ‘Exactly,’ left hand, and vice versa. Given the symmetry of the he said, ‘and how do you ex- human body, such a horizontal ro- plain that?’ I couldn’t explain tation produces an apparent match it, but seeing that some solution that few of us question, matching was expected, I ventured, ‘If head to head, hand to hand, foot to I was on the other side of the foot. However, placing the orange glass, wouldn’t the orange still in one hand makes it evident that be in my right hand? ‘I remem- the horizontal rotation is formally ber his laugh. ‘Well done, little just as much of a mismatch as the Alice,’ he said. ‘The best answer vertical rotation, since the hand I’ve had yet.’3 holding the orange is Alice’s right hand but the completely opposite What was so good about her an- hand of the reflection. It is only swer? It is that the problem involves the symmetry of the body that al- the concept of mental rotation of her lows the match of all three aspects body image into the mirror to align through rotation: front/back and with the mirror image. As Miller up/down and hand/hand, though correctly points out, what is actually with the left/right reversal that reversed in the mirror is the front- seems so puzzling. back dimension (as she faces the Figure 2. La Reproduction Interdite As Miller puts it, “The mirror mirror) of the three-dimensional by Rene Magritte (1937) image of ourselves is identical to

49 world, you imagine yourself inside the turned world and you see that the left and right sides have been exchanged.” He is, however, somewhat ambivalent (!) about the ultimate explanation, concluding unsatisfy- ingly: “Because we ourselves are bilaterally symmetric, we find it convenient to call it a left-right reversal. It is just a manner of speaking, a convention in the use of words.” In this statement, Gardner seems to pull back from fully endorsing the mental rotation explanation argued here, which is that, although no match is possible for the mirror image of a fully asymmetric body, the presence of a (left-right) axis of symmetry allows us to use mental rotation to find an effective match between the original and the reflection. Making such a match necessarily implies a reversal along that symmetry axis, which is a left-right reversal in the case of the human body, regardless of its orientation relative Figure 3. Reflection of an English 10p coin in a mirror (with faint to the mirror. front-surface ghost), photo: C. W. Tyler, 2018 As the Butcher said of the Jubjub bird in The Hunting of the Snark, the reflection of one’s body image in a mirror could perhaps be said to have the our actual appearance with one obvious exception: property of: it’s facing the opposite direction . . . If we could—but Still keeping one principal object in view— obviously we can’t—get in back of our own reflection, To preserve its symmetrical shape. our right hand would be behind the reflection’s left. And that’s all there is to it.”4 But by stating it so baldly, References he is missing the point that we can only attempt this match-up after having performed the mental rotation Carroll, Lewis, and Gardner, Martin, The Annotated Alice: of the 3D body image into the position of best match 150th Anniversary Deluxe Edition, Burstein, Mark (ed). Norton: New York, 2015. in the first place. If we were shaped like a coin, for Gardner, Martin, The Ambidextrous Universe. Basic Books: New example, performing the same notional rotation into York, 1964. a position behind the mirror would make it obvious Miller, Jonathan, On Reflection. National Gallery Publications: that the head was not matching, because it was fac- London, 1998. ing the wrong direction, since typical coins have no axis of mirror symmetry, as illustrated. (It is not clear Endnotes what is making the Queen so glum in this particular 1 pp. 119–120 portrait, however.) 2 Much was said about related mirror and handedness Much of this ground is covered in Martin Gard- issues by Martin Gardner in his venerable The Annotated ner’s excellent The Ambidextrous Universe, in which he Alice, but he did not address the mirror image anomalies clearly emphasizes the fact that the geometry of the discussed by Miller. plane mirror is front to back, and espouses a men- 3 Carroll/Gardner, p. 166 tal projection view of its perception as a left-right re- 4 p. 91 versal, stating: “No matter how the mirror turns your 5 p. 31

50 d e Alice in Plunderland mark burstein d e

This article is about a panel cartoon that ran in Hearst He published many of his own books, but also newspapers in the early part of the twentieth century. It is illustrated books by others, including Mark Twain not about books with the identical title, such as those by (Sketches, New and Old, 1899). He also worked for Puck “Loris Carllew” (Eveleigh Nash, 1910), Bernard Ben- for eighteen years. (A March 7, 1894, Puck cartoon of son (Minstrel Publishing Company, 1978), or the recent his satirizing the rise of sensationalism in journalism louche, ageusiatic retelling of the tale by Steve McCaffery included the term “fake news”!) (BookThug, 2015). Opper drew significant political cartoons supporting Hearst’s campaign against the “trusts,” most hioan Frederick Burr Opper (1857–1937) notably the series Alice in Plunderland, featuring a girl was one of the great pioneers of American with the label “The Common People” on her dress Onewspaper comic strips, best known for Hap- and, occasionally, a ribbon saying “Alice” in her pig- py Hooligan and Alphonse and Gaston. His characters in- tail, witnessing the peculiar goings-on of American filtrated magazine gag cartoons and covers, political and international politics. The first cartoon of Op- cartoons, and comic strips for over sixty years. Happy per’s with this title I could find online was from 1903, Hooligan, featuring a tramp with a little tin can hat, the last 1922. Many references were drawn from Car- appeared in William Randolph Hearst’s New York Jour- roll’s works: the Jabberwock, the Snark, pigs with nal from 1900 until 1932. It was collected into books wings, the Red and White Knights, parodies of “’Tis and adapted into six live-action shorts (1900–03) and the Voice of the Lobster,” “Jabberwocky,” and the like. more than fifty animated cartoons (1915 onwards). Other cartoonists then took over, producing strips or As an indicator of its popularity, on Happy’s thirtieth panels that appeared sporadically in Hearst papers “birthday,” Opper threw a party whose guests includ- through 1931. ed President Hoover and former President Coolidge, among other notables. Thanks to Michael Everson for starting this quest and to Michael Patrick Hearn for supplying many examples.

51 d e “The Mad Gardener’s Song” in Classical Greek colin leach d e

The Mad Gardener verses, running like a Greek chorus Gaisford Prizes for Greek Prose and Greek Verse; and the throughout Sylvie and Bruno and into Sylvie and Chancellor’s Prize for Latin Verse. He has composed Latin Bruno Concluded, represent the final flowering of the and Greek verses from the age of 14. poetic genius that was Lewis Carroll. In Knight Letter 81, (The classicist and headmaster of Shrewsbury Ben- we published Latin versions of some of those verses in a jamin Hall Kennedy [1804–1889] did more than any translation by Dr. Judith Hallett, and now in this issue, other headmaster to further Greek verse composition in the thanks to Professor Colin Leach, we have brilliant Classical British public schools. One wag quipped that the dust in Greek versions of all nine stanzas of “The Mad Gardener’s the Sixth Form [twelfth grade] of Shrewsbury School, when Song.” analyzed, was found to consist entirely of Greek particles. Professor Leach, born in 1933, was educated at The distinguished classical scholar and socialist John Wil- Shrewsbury School and Brasenose College, Oxford, of which liam Mackail once said, “Latin and Greek are not dead he was a Fellow for two years. After a period in the City of languages; they have merely ceased to be mortal,” and what London, he returned to Oxford as a Fellow of Pembroke Col- wonderful immortality they still enjoy.) lege and, later, a lecturer in Classics at University College, Oxford. As an undergraduate he won the Ireland, Craven, August A. Imholtz, Jr. de Paravicini, and Passmore Edwards scholarships; the

52 d e Alchemy & the Albatross adriana peliano d e

became very intrigued with my first glance at the poetic novel The Songs of Maldoror to surrealistic poet- curious image in Carroll’s letter to Harry Furniss ry and collage. Max Ernst appropriated the image as I about Sylvie and Bruno’s imaginary imaginative a creative concept of a chance meeting of two distant adventure (below), which was on exhibit at the Mor- realities on an unfamiliar plane. What about a stamp, gan. What I see in Carroll’s drawing is a compromise, an albatross, and a lamp? Their blending gives Car- seeking to illustrate the impossible, following a “cer- roll’s picture the aura of travels into alternative reali- tain zest in trying impossibilities,” as he himself puts it ties (“psychical states,” as Carroll called them in the (the full text of the letter can be read in Lewis Carroll Preface to Sylvie & Bruno Concluded) and surrealistic & His Illustrators, p. 169). states of consciousness. Comparing Carroll’s and Furniss’s pictures is I also couldn’t avoid daydreaming a similarity understandable; the endnote by the editors says that with alchemical iconography, full of deep symbolism, “Furniss must have thought beyond his means.” Car- turning Carroll’s lamp into a magical vessel where roll’s drawing achieves the metamorphosis between transmutations occur as the albatross turns into the the bird and the stamp, at the same time simultane- birds that mediate the journey of souls between the ous and successive. The vibrant lines around the draw- earthly realm and the heavenly world. Queen Victo- ing can suggest both the light of the magic lamp and ria in the stamp points to the Royal Marriage, an al- the mysterious state of the hybrid creature. Furniss, in chemical archetype marked by the union of the Spirit his drawing, depicts all the elements as separate; the (male, Sun) and Matter (female, Moon). And here albatross seems to be carrying the postage like a post- I must stop, facing the dizziness of the unconscious, man, losing the dream quality of Carroll’s draft. This inexhaustible work of condensations and displace- unsuspected encounter resembles the famous chance ments, following the zest for impossibilities that dives meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine into the universe of dreams and other dimensions, and an umbrella that emigrated from Lautréamont’s where everything is potentially something curiouser and curiouser, even curiouser.

Alchemical drawing As published in Sylvie and Bruno

Carroll’s letter to Furniss (page 2 of 3)

53 g a russian humpty dumpty possibly affected by a Turkic-influ- Victor Fet enced Russian dialect of the North The name Shaltay-Boltay was first Caucasus (Ekaterinodar, Kuban), applied to Humpty Dumpty by the where Marshak lived in the early famous Russian children’s poet Carrollian Notes 1920s. Samuil Marshak (1887–1964) in A very curious Shaltay-Boltay– 1923, in his Russian translation of related story exists, once quoted the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme. by Marshak himself, possibly the This poem was a part of Marshak’s only instance where this nursery first published book, a collection rhyme character is connected to of translations, Dom, kotoryi postroil Marxism. Dzhek (A House That Jack Built), In 1958, a Russian reader asked Marshak how to explain to with wonderful illustrations by referring to a special slang dia- a four-year old goddaughter what Vladimir Konashevich, which lect used by the Kuban Cossacks Shaltay-Boltay means. In his reply is still being reprinted today. to communicate with the Adygs (published first inVoprosy literatury, Marshak’s Shaltay-Boltay trans- (non-Russian natives of the North 1966, 9), Marshak recalled a let- lation was incorporated by Nina Caucasus). In the North Cauca- ter “from Friedrich Engels to Karl Demurova in both versions of her sus, the expression came to mean Marx” that mentions a Humptian translation of Looking-Glass (1967, “foreign speech.” In Siberian and motif of a fallen monarchy, imply- 1978), which has enjoyed multiple Orenburg dialects, according ing that the original poem had reprintings since. Marshak himself to the Dahl dictionary, it means revolutionary connotations and never published translations of “babble, empty talk.” It was used might have had something to do Lewis Carroll’s prose (although with this meaning in some Russian with the French revolution. (In- a manuscript translation of the classical literature before 1923, terestingly, although it is often first two pages ofWonderland ex- for example in stories by Anton claimed that the nursery rhyme ists in his archive); however, he Chekhov and Maxim Gorky (in has earlier origins, starting from translated some of Carroll’s verse, the latter, it is used by a non-Rus- the fall of Richard III, the earli- including “Father William” and sian Muslim ethnic character). In est recorded version was indeed “Lobster Quadrille,” which Demu- Velimir Khlebnikov’s long poem published only in 1797, in Samuel rova incorporated in her Wonder- Tiran bez T (1922), the expression Arnold’s Juvenile Amusements.) land. shaltay-boltay is used by a Persian Marshak was, however, mis- “Shaltay-Boltay,” as Marshak character, also with the meaning taken in that Engels’ letter (dated called Humpty Dumpty in 1923, is “empty talk.” This type of paired, 4 December 1893) was addressed an old Russian expression for “an rhyming words was specifically not to Marx but to the known empty talk, useless chattering,” a noted by the famous linguist socialist Karl Kautsky. Discussing definition found in modern Rus- Roman Jacobson; in his 1921 ar- reforms in the Austro-Hungarian sian dictionaries since the nine- ticle about Khlebnikov, the form Empire, Engels predicts the even- teenth century (Vladimir Dahl shaltay-baltay is listed among other tual, Humpty-Dumptian “great dictionary). The second part of such expressions (Raboty po poetike, fall” of Franz Joseph’s monarchy. this expression coincides with a Moscow; Progress, 1987, p. 315). Engels quoted the four-line ditty second-person (boltay) form of the Turkic languages have similar in English, but for some reason Russian verb boltat9, which has two expressions, sometimes also mean- he felt that it was also necessary to meanings: “to babble, to chatter” ing “empty talk.” The Russian lan- render the Mother Goose ditty for and “to shake.” (Both come to- guage, over centuries of contact Kautsky into Latin, a puerile exer- gether in an idiomatic expression with various Turkic tribes, adopted cise of which several versions are boltat9 yazykom, “to waggle one’s thousands of Turkic lexical ele- documented (it is unclear whether tongue.” Boltay also can reflect the ments; see, for example, Slovar9 the translation belongs to Engels egg nature of the character, since tyurkizmov v russkom yazyke (A Dic- himself or he recalls it from his a derived word boltun9ya means tionary of Turkisms in the Russian school days). The letter, translated “an omelette.” Shaltay has no Rus- Language) by E. N. Shapova, 1976. from the German, says: sian translation. (Interestingly, The name Shaltay-Boltay includes Shaltay-Boltay is also the name of a a potent rhyme and reduplication . . . the fact that Franz Joseph modern Russian hacktivist group.) common to the Turkisms in Rus- has given his blessing to this par- The expression shaltay-boltay sian. The choice of the name was ticular piece of electoral reform (or shaltay-baltay) first appeared which he has, indeed, declared in literature in 1856, originally to be his very own work, rules out

54 g once and for all the possibility Yakhnin (1992) used a Zheltok-Bel- “the time has come, the of Austria continuing as before. tok (“Eggyolk-Eggwhite”), slightly walrus said, to talk of Now it’s deforming the correct form, belok many things” (“eggwhite”), to provide better Byron Sewell Humptius in muro sedebat, Dump- phonetics. tius alto, I recently purchased a copy of Dmitri Yermolovich (2017) Humptius de muro Dumptius, heu! Susan Orlean’s fascinating book used Shalyai-Valyai (“sloppy, inac- cecidit The Orchid Thief (NY: Random curate”), another Turkism some- Nec equites regis, nee agmina cuncta House, 1998) at a West Virginia times listed as synonymous to tyranni public library book sale for 50¢. As shaltay-boltay; compare to Turkish Humpti te Dumpti restituere queunt. an avid book collector, I was en- şöyle böyle (“mediocre”). This ex- ticed by the beautiful dust jacket or: pression, however, is more directly (by Robbin Schiff and Lisa Charles Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall connected to a Van’ka-Vstan’ka toy, Watson) and the fact that it was a Humpty Dumpty had a great fall through the idiom valyat’ duraka first edition in unread condition. All the King’s horses and all the (“to be idle, to do nothing im- At first I was amazed that people King’s men portant,” literally, to “pull down a could actually be so obsessed Cannot put Humpty together fool”), another name for this toy with collecting delicate plants again. being Nevalyashka (“Can’t-Pull-Me- that they were willing to wait This letter was first published Down”). seven years to see the first bloom in German in the book Aus der Finally, an odd Russian Looking- emerge from a seed that they had Frühzeit des Marxismus: Engels Brief- Glass was recently published, planted. As I was reading I came wechsel mit Kautsky (Prague, 1935). together with Wonderland (Mos- across a paragraph that reminded When it was later translated into cow: Eksmo, February 2016). me of myself (on pp. 53–54): Russian in the collection of Marx’s The anonymous editor heavily Collecting can be a sort of and Engels’ works, the English changed Azov’s 1924 text, includ- love sickness. If you collect liv- lines were given in Marshak’s ing many character names; some ing things, you are pursuing translation, but without acknowl- were changed quite ingeniously. something imperfectable [sic], edgement of the translator. In- In this version, Humpty Dumpty because if you manage to find cidentally, in Mikhail Bulgakov’s became a Bolvanchik (“a little and possess the living things you famous The Heart of a Dog (1925), idol, a figurine,” from bolvan, want, there is no guarantee they a satirical novel banned under the “an idol, a statue,”) which has a won’t die or change. A few years Soviet regime, “the Engels-Kautsky more common modern deroga- ago, thirty thousand orchids be- correspondence” is a political tory meaning of “a dumb-head, an longing to a man in Palm Beach book read by a dog-turned-man, idiot.” Buddha statues or pagan all died. He blamed methane the Wellsian character Sharikov. idols were called bolvans; and fumes from a nearby sewage sta- There are other Russian when Russians were baptized in tion. . . . Beauty can be painfully Looking-Glass translations, which the tenth century, they burned tantalizing, but orchids are not used different names for Humpty wooden bolvans of their pagan simply beautiful. Many of them Dumpty. In the very first Russian gods. This strange name partially are strange looking or bizarre, Looking-Glass, by V. Azov (Vladimir works with Humpty’s potential to and all of them are ugly when Ashkenazi) (1924; verse trans- be broken—not as an egg, but as they aren’t flowering. . . . The lation by Tatiana Shchepkina- a fragile porcelain doll. A kitaiskiy botanical complexity of orchids Kupernik), Humpty Dumpty is a [Chinese] bolvanchik in Russian and their mutability makes them Russian nursery’s “roly-poly toy,” is a porcelain figurine with a perhaps the most compelling Van9ka-Vstan9ka (“Jonny-Get-Up”), nodding head. The 2016 editor and maddening of all collectible an egg-shaped doll with a weight surely knew that a very similar living things. There are thou- in the bottom. A modern roly-poly invented word, Bolvanshchik, was sands and thousands of orchid won’t easily break, but traditional used by Demurova (1967, 1978) species. New orchids are being dolls were crafted from a blown for the Hatter in her Wonderland created in laboratories or being egg. Other, more recent transla- translations. She justified it by discovered every day, and others tors chose identifiably egg-themed making the Hatter “a blockhead” are nearly unfindable because names. Alexander Shcherbakov (obolvanilsya) as he was working they exist in tiny numbers in re- (1969) invented a Pustik-Dutik with wooden hat blocks (bolvanki). mote places. In a sense, then, the (“Empty-Blown”), while Leonid number of orchid species on the

55 planet is uncountable because it tional Bibliography, it is now badly to have been stolen from a Rus- is constantly changing. To desire outdated, in part because of Zene- sian library by an “An Alician orchids is to have a desire that scope’s dizzying production of Al- Thief.” Beauty can be painfully will never be, can never be, fully ice-inspired comics with multitudes tantalizing (think of the plethora requited. A collector who wants of variant covers of scantily clad of stunningly illustrated French one of every orchid species on and buxom Alices, and the like. and Russian translations of Alice), earth will certainly die before As many of you may know, I but Carrollian books are not even coming close. am a relentless parodist, so let me simply beautiful. Many of them pretend that Orlean’s paragraph are strange looking or bizarre, That sounds a lot like collecting dealt with Carrollian books instead and many of them are ugly or Lewis Carroll books. To recognize of orchids: even pornographic. If you were a that, consider Jon Lindseth’s re- completist you would need them Collecting Carrollian books can cent monumental effort of produc- anyway. The linguistic and artistic be a sort of love sickness (a sub- ing Alice in a World of Wonderlands. complexity of Carrollian books species of bibliomania); it can be He and his large staff of contribu- and their mutability (parody- addictive and even contagious. If tors gave it a magnificent try, but ing, editing, etc.) makes them you are silly enough to try to be there is no doubt that they missed perhaps the most compelling an Alice completist, you are pur- many of them, and new ones are and maddening of all collectible suing “the impossible dream,” published every day (or perhaps things. There are thousands and no matter how wealthy you may every week; for example, Michael thousands of Carrollian books be, because there are simply too Everson of Evertype and Victor Fet and ephemera. Edward Wakel- many Alician or other Carrollian keep cranking out another transla- ing’s personal collection recently books (to say nothing of Ali- tion in yet another obscure Sibe- went past 25,000, and that num- cian ephemera). In some cases rian dialect). I found the same dif- ber is probably low, because he there are only one or two known ficulty in my own ten-year effort to catalogues some things (such surviving copies, and those are simply list the American editions of as letters) as a single group, not often unreachable, since they are Alice published up to 1960 in Much individually. New Carrollian permanently institutionalized. of a Muchness. I have no doubt that editions are being created, il- Only a very wealthy collector can this will be true of Lindseth’s cur- lustrated, and translated almost even hope to own an 1865 Alice, rent monumental effort to expand daily around the world (to say because they appear on the mar- Muchness’s minor effort by listing nothing of “printings” and re- ket only rarely. It might be hun- all of the Alices in the English lan- vised editions of the same book). dreds of years before another guage worldwide. Even The Lewis Like orchids, many Alician books is discovered somewhere in a Carroll Handbook needs updating. are in a sense hybrids (any time bank vault or a jungle. There are Despite the efforts of Mark Burst- a new translation uses Tenniel only two known surviving cop- ein, Alan Tannenbaum, and myself illustrations instead depicting ies of the first Russian edition to list all of the comic books with characters in local costumes, it of Alice (a third copy is assumed Alice or Carrollian content in Pic- is in a sense a hybrid). Print-on- tures and Conversations: Lewis Carroll demand now makes it possible in the Comics, An Annotated Interna- for almost anyone to create his

56 or her own editions (something Alician (much less Carrollian) Carrollians are cautioned not to my brother Nathan and I do with book on earth will certainly die miss it: delightfully tuneful music, some regularity for the fun of before even coming close. colorful costumes, exhilarating it). Many early translations are classical choreography, truly magi- nearly unfindable, because they cal effects and video projections, g exist in tiny numbers in remote and the more you know about well done, wheeldon places (how many editions in CLD and LC’s tale, the more nu- Choreographer Christopher the major languages of India do ances and references you’ll get, Wheeldon’s exuberant 2011 set- you have in your collection?). particularly in the frame story set ting of Alice for the Royal Ballet was In a sense, then, the number of in Oxford. Spoiler alert: it’s quite filmed at the Royal Opera House Alice and other Carrollian works faithful to his life and works, save and has now become available on is uncountable, because it is con- for the addition of a romanza be- Blu-ray (truly gorgeous sound and stantly changing and expanding tween Alice (portrayed by Lauren picture) from Opus Arte; it has (like a benign, but aggressive, Cuthbertson, then in her late been previously released on regu- bibliographical tumor). To desire twenties) and a young lad who lar DVD. The ballet has garnered a collection of every Alice book becomes the Knave of Hearts, well-deserved very positive reviews (or even Snarks, etc.) is to have a which is actually not as disturb- as it traveled around the globe desire that will probably never be ing as it sounds. The production (including the Dorothy Chandler fully requited. You might think also gets a tad dark and scary at Pavilion in Los Angeles in Octo- that it should be possible for times, perhaps not suitable for the ber 2012; the Kennedy Center, Snarks, but I must warn you that youngest viewers. Nonetheless, Washington, D.C., in January, over the decades I have created our highest recommendation! 2013; and last year in Australia). various Snarks in very limited editions for private distribution. A collector who wants one of every

57 Through the Looking-Glass g Illustrated by Maggie Taylor The Hunting of the Snark Moth House Press Illustrated by Byron Sewell Limited Edition ISBN Cheshire Cat Press 978-0-9995325-1-5 Limited edition. 42 copies Trade Edition ISBN 978-0-9995325-0-8 The Hunting of the Snark Illustrated by Chris Riddell Andrew Ogus could be an album of her travels. MacMillan Children’s Books Looking at either of Mag- But why is the mutable Alice hold- ISBN 978-I-5098-1433-6 gie Taylor’s Alice books is like ing the white kitten when Dinah going to a museum. It’s wise to is washing it? Who cares? The Andrew Ogus examine one picture in detail, delightful checkerboard pattern of A book’s initial illustrator may perhaps take a cursory glance at Alice’s chair outweighs pedantry. be instrumental in its creation, many to which one will return The weight of its high-quality working closely with its writer on another visit, then leave, paper and its large format do to enlarge its story. The new il- one’s head filled with ideas. require a flat surface for enjoying lustrator of a classic text with At first sight, one would almost this edition. Fortunately, it is well- classic pictures is in a different think these digital collages are rebound and opens easily. Despite a position. Now there is a require- markable paintings: there is little few fussy details and a misstep or ment for a fresh vision, hopefully of the hard-edged, mechanical two (the silver type is pretty but uninfluenced by those that came look of so much computer art- hard to read, and the black type before, and unlikely to supersede work. A brief discussion of Taylor’s on a silver background is a bit them, but satisfying nonetheless. technique by Thomas W. Southall, much), the design is elegant over- The contemporary contributor including all too few of her origi- all. Two strong rectangles of type, to the canon must at least equal nal sources, follows the text. in a clean, smallish sans-serif face, the beloved images readers have Tenniel created a straightfor- make a welcome contrast to the returned to again and again. It is ward world. Taylor’s is deceptively sumptuous full-bleed images—to a testament to Carroll’s three clas- serene, so profoundly quiet that which the words almost become sics that so many artists continue its surrealistic elements seem al- captions. Listening to a recorded to make the attempt. Here are two most ordinary. Here the pictures text while slowly turning the pages wildly different, equally success- do more than simply illustrate the might be a good approach to this ful Snarks that demonstrate the familiar incidents in this particular version of Looking-Glass, perhaps breadth of Carrollian inspiration. artist’s particular style. Her im- more satisfying to contemplate Byron Sewell first approached ages are filled with subtle detail: than read. the Snark in 1974, in a stunning The White Knight’s precautions limited edition from Catalpa Press were wiser than we thought. The that included a 16-foot panorama watery reflections of an elegantly centerfold and an introduction dressed duck and a flower- by Martin Gardner. This time, he crowned white sheep, drifting in has focused just on the charac- a boat, are Alice and the White ters themselves. His meticulous, Queen. Did Humpty Dumpty use eloquent, and faintly deranged a chair to climb on the wall? A portraits of various creatures and peculiar animal in the Lion and the intrepid crew are based on the Unicorn chapter may be a Victorian photographs, perfectly false note, or it might be a tribute capturing the still, taut look of to Sendak’s Wild Things. Because people who were caught by the our heroine’s features are based long exposures then required. on a variety of Victorian photos, The Bandersnatch, the Jubjub she not only changes from image bird, and the Beaver are females to image, but (as do other char- of their species, Grandville-like acters) often seems to be turning in lavish dresses. The Snark itself aside for a moment from the ac- does not appear. tion to gaze at the reader, perhaps This sturdy volume is a prime to have a photographic portrait example of a book in which each taken. After all, Alice was a “tour- element has been carefully con- ist” in Looking-Glass Land; this sidered, and each works to make

58 g Alice in Moonland: The Critique of No Reason Written and illustrated by Miqhael M. Khesapeake Kindle Rose Owens Of late, I have been enjoying the dulcet and relaxing stylings of The Great British Bake-Off (so-called in the U.K.). In the U.S., it’s The Great British Baking Show. It’s an incredibly kind, comforting, and delicious reality television series wherein a dozen or so amateur bakers from around the country compete for the title of best baker. Why reference a BBC television Two Bakers: Byron Sewell’s, left & Chris Riddell’s, right show that at first glance does not seem to apply to the great works a handsome whole. Text and pic- imaginatus?) is almost Seuss-like. of Lewis Carroll? Dear reader, it is tures are printed in a dark sepia. All three are blue. (Is the Snarks’ due to this show that I felt I could A creamy yellow background sets blue a nod to the “B” that begins properly review Alice in Moon- off each image from the thick the names of the hunters?) The land, the book in question. Via off-white paper. Sewell has not terrifying Jubjub bird is clearly de- many viewings of TGBBO, I have squared off the bottoms of the scended from Tyrannosaurus rex learned from the judges (Paul drawings, adding a touch of liveli- via the dodo, while the brownish- Hollywood and Mary Berry) how ness to the whole. The typography, orange “strange, creepy creatures” best to let someone down easy which incorporates a suitable or- that fill a spread and the red and when their finished product just nament on the chapter openers, yellow crocodile-like Bandersnatch isn’t quite . . . “scrummy” enough. suggests the original period of the are significantly not blue. Moonland leads by telling us Snark without being weighty. The Exuberant color and the simple that it is years in the making, since book is enclosed in a maroon slip line drawings that fill the pages or 2012 or thereabouts. As our bak- case, with a print elegantly placed margins are well paced and well ing judges have said before (and in its front. Sewell’s note gives a placed. Even in a jostling crowd, will undoubtedly say again), one fascinating glimpse into his pro- every well-characterized figure is has to wonder, “What did you do cess, and Edward Wakeling con- easy to find. The small, comfort- during all that time?” It is not that tributes an informative foreword. able format makes the book a the work is piddling, as it clocks in Basing his images on what is pleasure to hold. Its italic typeface at 1,246 pages. But there appears known of Wonderland and Look- gives the text surprising urgency to be a lack of cohesion, suggesting-Glass creatures, Chris Riddell rather than being irritating. The ing that the author’s years of work (who also wrote introductions edges are cheerfully gilded, and consisted of collecting scraps to the Puffin Classic editions of there is a pretty red ribbon to and continually folding them their 2008 Wonderland and 2010 mark one’s place. into others, like so many layers Looking-Glass), boldly drew three Riddell’s bright palette, per- of croissant. The text jumps from species of Snark in his Snark for vaded with Snark blue, is subtly reference to reference, frenetically all ages, published in 2016. The augmented with rich blacks, and attempting to suggest an affin- lugubrious, beaked and feath- does not diminish the sense of a ity with our own Lewis Carroll. It ered, presumably common Snark slowly looming threat. And the diz- reads, however, as both overdone (Snarkus vulgaris?)—which also zying, delightful twist in the very and underdone. The narrative fills the endpapers—and the wor- last picture fits perfectly, opening voice doesn’t seem to know who its ried, furred, and toothed Boojum up the story in a way even Carroll audience is, telling a story one mo- variety (Snarkus boojumus?) share might never have imagined. ment, then snatching at the claim the moplike shape and bird feet of of being “the real third volume to the Borogove. The dynamic Snark the Alice books.” Quite a boastful of the Barrister’s dream (Snarkus

59 lem, don’t read them.” One thing bad, as they are vibrant and edgy, I never felt with Carroll: He didn’t and bring new and appreciated find it necessary to provoke his flavors to the experience, almost audience into reading his work. conjuring the original spirit of the With this type of invitation, you’re works in their dynamism. Perhaps losing your audience and not ex- this layout would work better in actly inspiring repeat customers. a physical book, but as we are in One doesn’t sense that an editor e-book land, it feels jolting and was present when this book was unmoored, and the fine art is an sent off to be e-published, and it’s afterthought once you’ve pushed a shame, as that would have con- back from the table. I’d recom- tributed to a more balanced and mend cutting back on the frills, fulfilling “bake.” and going for a more dependable All of this, dear reader, is be- bake—that is, presenting the origi- fore we even get to the “plot.” nal art with minimal and concise What this really boils down to is text underneath. Cut the fat, keep that it’s hard to discern a plot of the craft, and follow the lead of any type other than a gargantuan the original text: center your art preamble to a sticky-sweet and with appropriate verbiage! erratic “third novella.” Say what Though this review refers to you will about Carroll’s sense of the thousand-plus-page beast whimsy and bending of the rules, that is Alice in Moonland, there is but he still held dear the impor- in fact an option to purchase it tance of getting to the point. chapter by chapter (although at claim, and one that leads us into By the time we get to the actual this writing only the first chap- our next layer of critique. “Alice tale,” we’re so exhausted by ter is available). Be forewarned, Sometimes a baker—or au- the preamble that the story feels there are still prefaces attached to thor—can get too big for his or cloying. It’s the same rambling this admittedly shorter text (100 her britches. This can come to and argumentative voice, but with pages for the first chapter and its light via too many ingredients or Alice thrown in here and there, outer garments), but you do get to an excess of tricks or finery. Unfor- with a “who, li’l ol’ me?” I honestly the filling far sooner than in the tunately, within this text, not only can’t divine much of what occurs megabook that this reader makes do we have delusions of grandeur in it, despite multiple readings mincemeat of. At least you’re regarding the book’s place in that only left me feeling more lost getting to the promised “delight” history, we are constantly running each time. Alice appears to be without all the exhausting pre- into rapidly changing fonts and traveling to the moon, and be- ambles! text sizes, lackluster stock images, yond that . . . to my mind, Carroll Over all, one can tell that there and a general vibe of chaos. It’s would find himself hard-pressed is a great deal of heart and passion bewildering to begin with, and to see any flattering mimicry. within this prolix work. However, rapidly becomes tiring, like a Imagine a celebrity impersonator heart and passion do not always a cake with too many tiers. There’s who drank too much before per- tasty treat make; a recipe (which a need for calm and quiet, for a forming, becoming loud and cha- was needed here) will provide a breath to occur before taking the otic—someone that you’d rather blueprint, a backdrop to set the next bite. But even after hundreds just left the room. I wish that this stage with, so that your audience of pages in (no, we’re not even at author had taken the time to doesn’t become turned off or walk Alice’s new adventures yet!), the reread or taste his own creation; away hungry. Though this book author is simultaneously making perhaps then we would have been may not have been a “showstopper excuses for his (somehow both) granted a semblance of a story. bake,” one must admire the desire rambunctious and “too picky” There is a diamond in the and gumption with which a tome word choices and quibbling with rough that must be noted. The of this heft is made. No small feat, readers, saying that if they don’t author’s self-made illustrations and that is to be commended. To like the words, “That’s your prob- bring to mind those of Ralph the moon, Alice! Steadman, but they are left out of the main body of the work, left to bookend the pages like forgotten macarons. It truly is too

60 g oh, lord! John Vernon Lord (1939–) is a in Finnegans Wake” in Lewis Caroll “Alicious, twinstreams twines- prize-winning illustrator, author, Observed (Clarkson N. Potter, traines, through alluring glass or and educator, among whose other 1982), and Lord discusses his FW alas in jumboland?” works are illustrations to The Non- pictures and process in exquisite Finnegans Wake, Book 3, sense Verse of Edward Lear (Jonathan detail in “The Pixilated Doodler” Chapter 3 Cape, 1984) and his own very in the Journal of Illustration 3, no. 1 “. . . as a taste for a storik’s forty- popular children’s book The Giant (2016). tooth, that is to stay, to listen out, Jam Sandwich, which has been in Lord says, “I think the Alice ony twenny minnies moe . . . print since 1972. He was the head books were rather appropriate Finnegans Wake, Book 1, of the School of Design and is now preludes to working on Finnegans Chapter 7 professor emeritus of illustration Wake, since they are both dreams at the University of Brighton, and and are also littered with puns, This issue’s cover, a fantasia on erstwhile chair of the Graphic portmanteau words, and invented the number 42, is the work of the Design Board of the Council for words.” inimitable John Vernon Lord. National Academic Awards. We Carrollians have been trebly Some of Lord’s illustrations to g blessed in having his witty and su- Finnegans Wake feature Alice and/ Wonderland: Catalog perbly rendered illustrations to The or Humpty Dumpty, both of whom of the Exhibition Snark (2006; KL 77:37), Wonderland figure prominently in Joyce’s opus The Australian Centre for (2009; KL 83:39), and Looking-Glass (Humpty particularly so). You the Moving Image (2011; KL 88:43), all published by can read more, er, Joyce-Carroll Artists’ Choice Editions. We Joy- Rose Owens notes (my apologies to the novel- ceans have also been exhilarated I am, as many of you likely are, a ist) in Ann Buki’s “Lewis Carroll by his illustrations to Finnegans big ol’ museum fan. I love going Wake (2014) and Ulysses (2018), to a big or small, short or tall both printed in fine press editions building that houses works of by The Folio Society of the UK. art, cinema, and all manner of

One of John Vernon Lord’s illustrations to Finnegans Wake. Note Humpty and Alice!

61 treasures. There’s nothing quite “All Mimsy Were the Borogoves” bition catalogue is a pretty darn like dipping inside and basking by Samm Deighan, portrays Alice good substitute. If only all muse- in the glory of a well-executed as a giallo (Italian thriller or hor- ums took such care and pride in museum exhibition. So many ror film or literature) heroine. But their shows and associated cata- museums, so little time, however, of course! Deighan reveals Alice’s logues . . . (See p. 64.) and it is sad but true that, more influence on that genre, a unique often than not, one has to live viewpoint for those of us who g vicariously through others’ ex- have only seen the “dark side of evertype periences, walking through gal- Wonderland” via British and U.S. Since our last issue, four titles have leries in someone else’s shoes. adaptations. Now we just need a been released by Evertype press: But, dear reader, fear not! For Francesco Barilli film festival! Алисакöд Шемöсмуын лоöмторъяс though it is now well past October “Dream Logic,” by Sarah Tut- (Аlіsаkӧd Šemӧsmuyn loӧmtorʺjas), 7, 2018, and the Wonderland exhibi- ton, is an interview with Jan Wonderland translated into Komi- tion at The Australian Centre for Švankmajer, director of Něco z Zyrian by Evgenii Tsypanov (text) the Moving Image (ACMI) has Alenky (Alice). I found the content and Elena Eltsova (verse), ISBN since closed, you are in luck! For- only fairly interesting, but I kept 978-1-78201-207-8. Komi-Zyrian is tunately, the good people behind reading because of Švankmajer’s a dialect of Komi, spoken in the this show of Alice and her many crotchety refusal to directly answer Komi Republic and other parts film reincarnations have blessed us the questions put to him by Tut- of Russia. In 1994, Komi-Zyrian with a truly gorgeous and enjoyable ton. The director comes off as an had about 285,000 speakers. exhibition catalogue that made this ornery and bizarre character from reader feel as though she was at- Wonderland himself, and it’s a Приключения Алисы в Стране (Prikliucheniia Alisy v Strane tending the show in the flesh. zany joy to read. Чудес Chudes), Wonderland translated into The book is beautifully The only off-key note for me in Russian by Yury Nesterenko (ISBN designed, with excellent full- this delightful tome was the essay 978-1-78201-209-2). Yury Nest- color illustrations, madcap Saul by director and visual effects pio- erenko (b. 1972) lives in Florida, Bass–esque intertitle pages, and neer Douglas Trumbull, entitled and writes poetry and science perfectly selected film stills. Cun- “Perception and Illusion.” In this fiction. ningly, the page numbers travel in essay, he lists all of Dodgson’s descending order, truly taking you physical and mental ailments, and De Aventure Alisu in Mirvizilànd, down the rabbit hole as you go. suggests how those would have Wonderland translated into Uropi On top of all this, it is also chock- affected the writings of Lewis by Bertrand Carette and Joël Lan- a-block with an almost perfect Carroll. Despite its interesting dais (ISBN 978-1-78201-221-4). selection of essays. We are treated thesis, the essay swiftly devolves Uropi is a constructed language to wise words on the filmography into Trumbull’s name-dropping created in 1986 and regulated by of Alice, as well as the cultural- of Stanley Kubrick and tooting Joël Landais, based on Indo-Euro- societal impact these depictions his own special-effects horn, while pean roots and aimed at being had on the public at large. It’s lambasting Tenniel’s illustrations used as an international auxiliary truly a wonderful read, and one for being too “limiting” in com- language. that kept me shouting aloud to my parison to Trumbull’s own imagi- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: An boyfriend, “Oh wow, that essay was nation. He ends by saying that if Edition Printed in QR Codes (ISBN so good!” Dodgson had only lived in our 978-1782012221). QR (Quick Some standout essays for me: time, he would have been a great Response) Codes are those omni- “Alice: Adrenaline-Junkie, Justice- “movie writer, producer, director, present two-dimensional (aka Freak,” by Joanna Murray-Smith. cinematographer, and visual ef- matrix) bar codes consisting of This sumptuous personal essay fects wizard,” and that Trumbull black squares arranged in a square inspires and enlightens. Murray- wishes he could have met him. grid on a white background, which Smith positions Alice as a badass Sappy “meeting your heroes” can be read by your smartphone. feminist warrior. We see how this aside, the essay felt like a puff The text of Wonderland has been character was a highly influential piece for Trumbull’s genius, and broken up into 113 QR Codes, figure for women in the mid-to- not a very convincing one at that. bringing up sites where you can late twentieth century, and con- Over all, this is a beautiful book read the book. tinues to be one today. I felt ready that truly enthralled me. I am to climb a mountain after reading envious of the glorious experience this one. that the Crandalls had when at the ACMI (KL 100:57), but this exhi-

62 art & illustration sity of St. Andrews was on Mahendra Singh, erstwhile Dodgson’s photography, editor of this very jour- back when she was known nal, is a world-renowned as Kate Middleton. illustrator whose Carrol- Dmitry Yermolovich, Pro- lian work can be seen in fessor of Translation at the color frontispiece to Moscow State Linguistic The Annotated Alice: 150th University and a fine illus- Anniversary Deluxe Edi- trator as well, has previ- tion and in his superbly ously published Wonder- rendered, surreal, and land, Looking-Glass, and The wildly witty graphic novel Snark in bilingual editions, of The Hunting of the Snark which he discussed in “As (Melville Press, 2010), enthusias- You Translate, So Shall You Draw” tically reviewed by Stephanie in “How Arthur Rackham’s 1907 Drawings for Alice in Wonderland (KL 97:11–22), and “Drawing the KL 85:47. Examples of his Snark Looking-Glass Country” (KL work can be found in KL 81 (the Revolutionized the Carroll Classic, the Technology of Book Art, and 99:11–15). A new hardcover col- cover; p. 4, wherein is given an lection, Все шедевры (All the Mas- account of the work, then in prog- the Economics of Illustration” by Maria Popova was posted to Brain terpieces), contains those three ress; and p. 36). We’d like you books, 32 of his color plates, to know that the original art for Pickings on February 1, 2016, but just came to our attention. “Phantasmagoria” (in a new trans- Snark pages is available and quite lation), “The Three Voices,” “The reasonably priced. Contact him Lang Coortin’,” “Hiawatha’s Pho- at [email protected]. g tographing,” “The Mad Garden- books er’s Song,” and Carroll’s limericks, g Victorian Giants: The Birth of Art all annotated. The book is entirely articles & academia Photography by Phillip Prodger in Russian. You can order directly The Dickens Studies Annual, Vol. (National Portrait Gallery, 2018) from the publisher on eBay. 49, No. 2 (2018) published Ed- explores the work of Oscar Rej- He Thought He Saw, written and ward Guiliano’s “‘They Sought lander, Julia Margaret Cameron, illustrated by Byron Sewell It with Thimbles, They Sought It Lady Clementina Hawarden, and (Boojum Run Press, 2018) with a with Care’: Lewis Carroll Stud- Lewis Carroll. As we all know, preface by August A. Imholtz, Jr., ies, 2004–2017,” which “discusses “Lewis Carroll” never took a pho- incorporates two novellas, the the sweep of Lewis Carroll schol- tograph in his life; he left that up eponymous one and a second, arship” during those years, a to the Rev. C. L. Dodgson, but I “Darkling Light, Starless Night,” follow-up to Carolyn Sigler’s as- understand marketing and won’t both “riffs” on the Sylvie and Bruno sessment of 1983 through 2003 quibble too much with the title. It diptych. In the first, a somewhat in DSA 34 (2004), which itself might have been noted by HRH mentally unbalanced Dodgson is succeeded Guiliano’s extended The Duchess of Cambridge, who befuddled by verses of the “Mad review in DSA 10 (1982) in which wrote the introduction, as her Gardner’s Song” becoming liter- he looked at Carroll scholarship undergraduate thesis at Univer- ally true before his eyes; in the from its inception through the second, a Southern book collector sesquicentennial of Carroll’s birth. runs into Sylvie and Bruno, now Available online through JSTOR. called Alison and Zeus, the latter a On July 10, 2018, in a session on 400-pound elf in overalls, after “The History of Logic Revisited” at going through a portal into an- the annual History of the Philoso- other dimension that leads to a phy of Science Conference, held strip club in South Charleston. this year in Groningen, The Neth- Dodgson makes a cameo in the erlands, Francine Abeles gave a AllAllAll Far-FlungFar-Flung URLs (links) itemsitems first chapter, and Byron himself talk entitled “Proof Transforma- andandin “Far-Flung,” theirtheir links,links, implicit implicitexplicit appears as a character. tions in the Work of Charles L. ororor implicit, explicit,explicit, are areare clickable fromfrom Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Dodgson and Christine Ladd- www.lewiscarroll.org/www.lewiscarroll.org/at www.delicious.com/ retold by Mandy Archer, art by Franklin.” blogblog andandlcsna/kl86. cancan bebe accessedaccessed Annabel Tempest (Gibbs Smith, byby usingusing itsits searchsearch box.box. 2018) is the latest in their “Baby-

63 g Lit” series for the three-to-five- events, exhibits, & places Two companion exhibits will take year-old set, joining Moby-Dick, Jane The phenomenal “Wonderland” place at the Osborne Collection of Eyre, and other classics improbably exhibition on various aspects of Early Children’s Books in the reduced to a thousand or so Alice’s adventures in films at Toronto Public Library. “Alice words. Not to be confused with ACMI (Australian Centre for the Opens the Door” runs Nov. 17 to their Alice in Wonderland: A Colors Moving Image) was reported on Jan. 27, and “Alice Adjacent: Lewis Primer, which came out in 2012, by Matt Crandall in our last issue Carroll and His Victorian World” aimed at even younger children. (KL 100:57). What we neglected runs Dec. 8 to Mar. 2. They Drew as They Pleased Vol. 4: The to mention was how fantastic their A superb retrospective of original Hidden Art of Disney’s Mid-century catalog is. Published by Thames & art, the latest stop on The Ralph Era by Didier Ghez (Chronicle Hudson as an oversize hardcover, Steadman America Tour that origi- Books, 2018) explores creators it is sumptuously illustrated, su- nated at The Cartoon Museum, such as Mary Blair in her work on perbly designed, and contains London, opened at the Haight the 1951 Alice film. many enlightening essays. The Street Art Center in San Francisco fine price of au$65 is somewhat (CA) on Nov. 6, and runs through Alice in Brexitland (Ebury Press, dampened by the shipping Jan. 20. Ralph participated in an 2017) by Leavis Carroll (Lucien (au$88), a total of us$111. Most illustrated “gallery conversation” Young) is a satirical take, wherein highly recommended! And you with the curator, Anita O’Brien, at Alice meets such characters as get a free tote bag. See review the opening reception. The origi- Humpty Trumpty, perched on a on p. 61. nal drawings for several Alice and wall he wants the Mexicans to pay one Snark picture were on display. for, and the terrifying Queen of Ok, it’s taken us a while to notice Heartlessness, who’ll take off your it, but in the summer of 2014, a head if you dare question her plan project by the National Literacy g for Brexit. Trust (UK) scattered fifty book- internet & technology shaped benches across London As reported by USAToday on The Formal Center in Literature: Ex- for the summer, each dedicated to August 23, thanks to the New plorations from Poe to the Present by an iconic London-related author York Public Library’s InstaNovels Richard Kopley (University of or character (although that crite- project, Alice’s Adventures in Won- Rochester Press/Camden House, rion is rather loosely interpreted, derland “went viral on Instagram 2018) “concerns the framed cen- as it includes such ringers as Dr. this week, spruced up for the ter in selected literary works of the Seuss). Through the Looking-Glass digital age as a colorful, animated 19th to 21st centuries. Such a was drawn by Ralph Steadman. Instagram Story that leads into center involves a critical passage The benches were auctioned off the complete text of the 1865 bracketed by two halves of a text that October. novel. The #InstaNovels project that feature language and/or plot is an attempt to remind younger that mirror each other.” As we all The Caroline County (Maryland) Internet users about libraries and know, the main narratives of both Public Library asked the LCSNA to plug its free e-book program AAiW and TtLG are contained to participate in their annual Lit- and popular podcasts. Some within frame stories. This aca- erary Evening on Saturday, Oct. 39,673 people opened up Alice demic treatise contains the chap- 20, all about Lewis Carroll, with and stayed with it to the end.” ter “The Mythological Centers of readings and performances and th Lewis Carroll’s Alice Books,” which, an Alice quilt contest by child and Unintentionally marking the 156 among other things, discusses the adult participants. Clare and Au- anniversary of the boat trip, on Ouroboros, and attempts to an- gust Imholtz represented us and July 4, 2018, the Times Literary swer Martin Gardner’s query, spoke about collecting Alice. Supplement online published “Lewis Carroll’s Adventures in Rus- “Why did Alice think Humpty A “Magic, Mystery & Math: Alice sia” by Mark Davies, and two days Dumpty was Dinah?” (AA150 p. in the Garden” puzzle party took later followed up with “The TLS 318, note 2) along the way. place in the Botanical Gardens of Map of Writers’ Homes” by Roder- Clemson University in South Caro- ick Nieuwenhuis, listing Dodgson’s lina, October 21, 2018, in association with the international Cel- ebration of Mind events in or near Martin Gardner’s birthday.

64 g birthplace in Daresbury; the rec- when he made the news by acci- music tory in Croft; and The Chestnuts, dentally inhaling Alice as he was Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, Guildford, but, oddly enough, not making his Tea-Party. The table founders of the band Steely Dan, Christ Church, Oxford, where he and all its guests fit within the eye set the Mock Turtle’s Song to a spent most of his life. of a small needle. rock beat as one of a number of demo songs recorded before they Clé de Peau Beauté, a global skin- Face Off is an American reality tele- formed the band in 1972. It’s never care product line, has made a vision game show on the Syfy cable appeared on a Steely Dan studio sweet commercial featuring the network in which groups of album, but they have performed White Rabbit for the holiday sea- makeup artists compete against it live and it can be found on a son, with the tag line “Turn the key each other to create prostheses number of compilations of outtake to a world of fantastical discovery. such as are found in science fiction and demos by the duo, including Unlock Wonderland.” If you view it and horror films. The grand finale Found Studio Tracks, released in on smartphone through a VR of the thirteenth (and final) sea- 2007, and, of course, on YouTube. viewer, you have the option of son, called Face Off: Battle Royale, Wiki tells us that the poem has seeing it in 3D! has something of interest. As one also been set to music by the punk viewer put it, “Episodes 9 and 10 An e-blast from Brewster Kahle and rock band Feederz on their 1986 (originally aired July 31 and Au- the Internet Archive began “‘It’s album Teachers in Space, The Four gust 7) were called ‘Through the the oldest rule in the book’: Do Postmen on their 1997 album Look- Looking Glass’ Parts I and II. The you ever wonder who said it first ing for Grandpa, and, of course, by challenge was for three teams to and who has quoted it since? The contemporary classical composer create makeup and costuming for answers to these questions are now György Ligeti in his Nonsense new characters from ‘lost’ chapters at your fingertips with Open Li- Madrigals (1988/93; KL 78:32). of Through the Looking-Glass. Scripts brary’s new Full Text Search fea- were provided, and a short movie On September 22, 2017, Australian ture.” As the answer, their algo- was then filmed using the contes- electronic dance music DJ, pro- rithm brings up Emily Prime tants’ character designs. Whoever ducer, and singer Alison Wonder- Delafield’sAlice in Wonderland: A came up with the new characters land (née Alexandra Sholler, 1986) Play (1898), but still … https:// seems to have been channeling Oz, was named New Artist of the Year openlibrary.org. not Wonderland. There was a per- at the inaugural EM [Electronic son of porcelain, a person of tin, a Music] Awards livestreamed from g lollipop girl, a ginger general—all Los Angeles in 360 on Twitter. I am movies & television that was missing was a cowardly not sure what the Rev. C. L. Dodg- Humboldt County, part of Cali- lion.” son would have made of the previ- fornia’s “Emerald Triangle,” so ous sentence. In Michael Crichton’s novels Juras- called as it’s the largest (legal!) sic Park and Lost World—but only in cannabis-producing region in the first of Spielberg’s Jurassic g the U.S., has adopted Our Girl in films—Dr. Lewis Dodgson (played performing arts a series of posters and TV com- by Cameron Thor) is one of the Chilean-born global citizen Max mercials boosting tourism under villains. His one and only scene Sir is an artist, painter, playwright, the rubric of “Follow the Magic.” with sub-villian Dennis Nedry has theater director, actor, writer, and Well, it involves a blonde (prob- become a popular Internet meme, photographer who has exhibited ably in her twenties) in a blue particularly the line, “Dodgson! in New York, Moscow, Berlin, Costa dress inveigling us to “Follow Dodgson! We’ve got Dodgson Rica, Washington DC, London, me!”; possible references (“Have here!” According to Elizabeth Athens, Paris, and Prague, among a cookie!”); and sometimes a styl- Trembley’s Michael Crichton: A Criti- other cities. The world of Alice is ized White Rabbit in the print ads. cal Companion (Greenwood Press, a crucial part of his oeuvre. His On July 7, a segment of The Misad- 1996), the character’s name was Alicia comprises a theatrical piece, ventures of Romesh Ranganathan, a intentionally derived from Our a series of 144 paintings, fine art British television show hosted by Man’s. prints, and a forthcoming graphic the eponymous comedian/actor, novel, art book, and clothing line. featured the work of micro-minia- The play was conceived, directed, turist sculptor Willard Wigan, who and co-written (with partner Nata- first came to our attention in 2016 lia Miranda Guzman) by Sir, and

65 had its world premiere in 2017 at available on CD and Audible and drawings on every card, in- Teatro Espressivo in Costa Rica. (BBC Worldwide), although they cluding the 9 of Diamonds, “Alice The paintings (in various configu- are not at all unabridged, as the in Blunterland” (a “blunt” is a rations) can currently be seen in advertising makes it seem. hollowed-out cigar filled with London at Chilean Embassy and weed). Erotica retailer Doc Johnson, of the Parallax Art Fair, after touring the WonderLand™ Mini Massag- Ludo, a strategy board game, Europe (Berlin, Prague, Athens, ers and Plugs fame (KL 90:50) has now comes in an Alice theme as Paris, and London). Some of added “Kinky Kat” and “Heavenly “The Wonderful Tea-Party Ludo them were shown at Comic Con Heart” C-Rings to this collection. Pachisi” (Parcheesi) made by Ukraine in Kiev in September. But the bigger question is: how House of Marbles, featuring a did he manage to get a trademark colored Tenniel cover and draw- g on “WonderLand”? ings on the board itself. Ages four things and up. British comedienne, actress, and Jan Padover’s Prospero Art novelist (The English American, (prospero-art.com) has Alician Talking Tables’ “Truly Alice” line Simon & Schuster, 2008) Alison products galore: decks of playing includes a Mad Hatter Party Pho- Larkin reads the two unabridged cards with quotes (KL 81:50); an tobooth Prop Kit, Party Cups, Alice books and excerpts from embossed collector tin box, a Napkins, Plates, and Scene Setter The Life and Letters of Lewis Car- poster, and a jigsaw puzzle (KL Signs. Also check out ASVP Shop’s roll on a British Classic Audio 85:58); not to mention many Alice in Wonderland Party Vintage / BMA audiobook, download- other fine products heralding Style Arrow Signs, Mad Hatter’s able from Audible and playable everything from Shakespearean Tea Party Props Pack, Playing on Fire, Kindle, smartphones, insults to chickens. They have just Cards, and Bunting. All at tablets, and computers. released a deck of “Toker” playing Amazon. cards for stoners, with witty sayings Or if you prefer, Alan Bennett Reads The Vermont Country Store’ latest Childhood Classics: The Wind in the catalog lists women’s pajamas with Willows; Alice in Wonderland; b&w Tenniel drawings on a toile Through the Looking Glass; Winnie- print for $130. the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner is

Lars Kenseth, The New Yorker, May 21, 2018

66 d e

The Funny Pages d e

Baldo by Hector D. Cantu and Carlos Castellanos, September 16, 2018

BC by Mason Mastroianni, July 6, 2018 Lio by Mark Tatulli, July 5, 2018

Mutts by Patrick O’Donnell, September 30, 2018

The first panel is a play on the cover of Alice (red with gold imprints).

Rhymes with Orange by Hilary B. Price, Rhymes with Orange by Hilary B. Price, August 10, 2018 October 4, 2018 68