The Man Who Drew Alice: Sir John Tenniel

Sir John Tenniel (1820-1914) was one of the most popular British cartoonists of the 19th century. Victorians regularly viewed and loved his illustrations. For decades he was the chief political cartoonist for the most successful satirical magazine of the day, Punch. 

Tenniel also illustrated two of the most popular and enduring books of the 19th century: Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (1871). 

Tenniel created 42 images in the Alice books, fixing them forever in our minds. Here are just a few. In order: The Cheshire Cat, The Caterpillar, The Mad Hatter's Tea Party, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Humpty Dumpty. 

Tenniel and Carroll did not get along, and Tenniel never agreed to work for Carroll again. Both were perfectionists with different ideas of perfection. But working together, they created works of endless fascination. 

Tenniel joined Punch in 1850 as joint cartoonist with John Leech, and became principal cartoonist after Leech died in 1864. Tenniel produced more than 2000 cartoons for the magazine. They often reflected public opinion, which in that day was generally liberal and reformist at home but tended towards imperialism and racism abroad. How far they reflected Tenniel's views is moot, but they certainly matched the outlook of his editors at Punch.

Tenniel often attacked Irish nationalists, who sometimes resorted to terrorist tactics, including bombings and assassinations.  His cartoons of Irish Fenians depicted them as knuckle-dragging ape-like creatures or monsters. Two examples:

In 1893, Queen Victoria knighted Tenniel. He was the first cartoonist to be so honoured. In 1878, another famous caricaturist, "Spy" drew the image of Tenniel below for the magazine Vanity Fair. He died aged 96 in 1914, just before the First World War. 

One wonders what he would made of that.

 

Punch Goes to War: The End of Appeasement

As fears of another World War approached in the late 1930s, the British satirical magazine Punch published cartoons that depict the shift in Britain against the policy of appeasement of the fascist dictators, particularly of Hitler. A few of the cartoons are included here.

In "Still Hope" below, the artist depicts British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain as an angel of peace flying to Germany at the time of the Munich Crisis in September 1938. Hitler was demanding that Czechoslovakia cede the Sudetenland, an area bordering Germany inhabited by a largely German population. 

The demand followed hard on the heels of the German occupation of Austria in May 1938. Hitler had justified that annexation on the grounds that the Austrians were Germans. Hitler himself had been born in Austria. The Western Allies, France and Britain, did nothing, as they had done nothing when Hitler broke several sections of the Versailles Treaty that had ended World War I.

"Still Hope" reflects the view that appeasement of Hitler might yet work. Appeasement flowed from the belief that Germany had legitimate grievances stemming from the peace settlement after the Great War of 1914-18. A few concessions to Hitler, appeasers argued, could satisfy him and preserve European peace. 

British public opinion generally favored appeasement at this point. Few people wanted another Great War, and many believed Germany had been treated too harshly after the First World War. At Munich, Chamberlain and the French Premier Edouard Daladier agreed to Hitler's demands. Chamberlain returned to Britain claiming he had secured "peace for our time."

That time proved short. Within a few months, Germany occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia and began making territorial demands on Poland. The British and French governments finally stiffened, announcing they would defend Poland against German attack. 

The shift is reflected in "An Old Story Retold" from the Spring of 1939. Hitler assures his skeptical ally Mussolini that the British, represented by the dog guarding the gate, are all bark and no bite. The artist is Bernard Partridge, who had done many cartoons for Punch during World War I.

In "-- -- and the Seven Dwarves" the same artist, Bernard Partridge, presents Hitler in the guise of Snow White, the title character of Disney's popular animated film of 1938. "Adolf White" already has "Czechy" in hand and is beckoning to the other six dwarves to follow him. Each of the dwarves represents one of the states of Eastern Europe.

The next cartoon, "Popular Misconceptions (in Germany) -- the English," is also from April 1939. The artist is reacting to German accusations that the English are trigger happy warmongers. 

Another cartoon from early 1939 "Germany Shall Never Be Encircled" portrays Hitler as a megalomaniac intent on world conquest. Hitler was ready for war over Poland but his generals insisted he avoid the First World War scenario: a two-front war with France and Britain in the west and Russia (now the Soviet Union) in the east. 

Hitler often ignored his generals' advice but in this case, he sent a delegation to Moscow, headed by Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop. The British and French were already wooing Stalin to help defend Poland. "The Calculating Bear" (Russia) is considering the offers made by both sides.

In the end, Stalin accepted Hitler's offer: stay out of the war and help yourself to eastern Poland. The Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939 was quickly followed by the German invasion of Poland on September 1. Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. It did nothing to help the Poles, whose armies were overwhelmed swiftly by the German Blitzkrieg, then by Soviet invasion from the east

In the Spring of 1940, German armies overran much of Western Europe, including France. Britain now faced Germany alone, as well as its ally Italy, which entered the war once France's defeat was certain. 

During the battle for France, Winston Churchill, who had long opposed appeasement, had replaced Chamberlain as Prime Minister. In the summer and autumn of 1940, Britain narrowly survived the air war known as the Battle of Britain and avoided invasion. 

As the new year 1941 dawned, Punch published the rather optimistic cartoon, "The Dragon-Slayer," with Churchill as the title character. One would almost think the war was near its finish, but it had more than four horrific years to run. Churchill himself said of the British victory in the Battle of Britain, that it was "not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning." So it proved.

As it happened, 1941 was to prove a turning point for Britain, as it acquired powerful allies. In June Hitler broke his pact with Stalin and invaded Russia. In December German's ally Japan attacked the United States base at Pearl Harbor. Hitler declared war on the USA.

For an interesting, blackly comic take on the events leading to World War II, I recommend: Eric Vuillard, The Order of the Day (2017). 

A Victorian Cartoonist's Christmas

Victorian Christmas cartoons tended to lack the rough, sometimes raunchy humor and social satire of their Georgian predecessors. Victorian images of Christmas were more often sentimental, nostalgic, pious, and domestic. They focused primarily on the comfortably well off, and the holiday as a time of merry family celebration. Well behaved children were an important part of the scene. There were exceptions, as we shall see.

An example of the sentimental family scene is this Punch cartoon by John Leech (1817-1864), "A Family Group, Baby Stirring the Pudding." The large-headed Mr. Punch is at the center, helping "Baby," surrounded by admiring adults and children.

The 1840s saw several important developments in the creation of today's Christmas traditions. That decade saw the introduction of the first Christmas cards, by Henry Cole, a British civil servant. This one below, said to be the very first, shows a prosperous and respectable family enjoying a holiday meal. 

The publication of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens in 1843 helped reinforce the sentimental trend. John Leech's illustration of Mr. Fezziwig's Christmas party conveys a nostalgic view of the time when Ebenezer Scrooge was his young employee. The jolly, humane Fezziwig dances under the mistletoe in a room full of happy revelers. Dickens implies that this is how Christmas could be, or rather, should be. 

Fezziwig's party stands in sharp contrast to the Christmas day meal of the Cratchit family. The occasion is pious, sentimental, loving, but meager -- meager at least until the reformed Scrooge shows up with presents, a big turkey, trimmings, and a raise for Bob Cratchit. Now enlightened, Scrooge makes Christmas what it should be.

The decorated Christmas tree began to take front and center in portrayals of the holiday during the Victorian Age. The Hanoverian monarchs had introduced the Christmas tree from Germany in the 18th century. 

But few of the British adopted the custom begore the reign of Queen Victoria. Beginning in the 1840s, her German husband Prince Albert helped to popularize the Christmas Tree. The image below shows the royal family admiring Das Tannenbaum.

The Royals' Christmas dos did not always receive such positive portrayals. The 1840s was not only a time of the emergence of some modern Christmas traditions, but also of the Hungry Forties, great political and social unrest, the democratic movement known as Chartism, and the Irish Famine. 

The cartoon below, from a radical newspaper, pictures the royals and company gorging themselves on a giant Christmas pudding, or "Blom Buddin" as Prince Albert calls it. Albert is presented as a freeloader helping himself the "good tings of Angland." 

Victoria hands a plate of plum stones to John Bull, the "cook" of the pudding, and says he can lick the dish and suck the stones when the family have finished. Bull represents the people who have created the country's wealth but live on crumbs.

Victorian Christmas images, such as the one below by John Tenniel from Punch in 1883, occasionally focused on those for whom the holiday was just another day of deprivation and poverty. Here, Father Christmas confronts a poorly dressed child who lives in a cellar and knows nothing about him. "This must be altered," he says, presumably meaning such dire poverty as well as ignorance of the Great Present Giver.

Some Christmas Cartoons could be positively frightening, in a humorous way, at least. An example is George Du Maurier's Christmas cartoon in Punch, 1865. The caption refers to a naturalist who says that children should not read fables and fairy tales but read natural history instead. "Here is the result [of reading natural history] on the youthful mind" Du Maurier comments tongue-in-cheek. 

Punch Goes to War: World War I

The British humorous and satirical magazine Punch began its long and influential run of publication in 1841. Among other things Punch helped give the word "cartoon" its modern meaning as a humorous picture. Cartoons were a mainstay of Punch as it commented on the events of the day. Some may not seem funny today. Some were racist or xenophobic. But the cartoons were generally designed to raise laughter among the magazine's readers.

As Europe moved towards what would become a world war just before and during 1914, however, its cartoons became increasingly serious in tone and message. As the war unfolded, Punch would become an important tool of British propaganda. 

The cartoon below, "The Boiling Point," appeared in Punch in October 1912.  It was reacting to the dangerous situation created by the first of two Balkan Wars in 1912-13. The wars were related to the long decline of Ottoman Turkish power in the region. Several countries, including Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Greece, had won their independence from the Ottoman Empire during the 19th century. They were intent on expanding their new states at the expense of the Ottomans, and then each other.

The cartoon reflects fears, correct as it turned out, that the Balkan conflict might spill over and ignite a wider war. In the foreground, left to right, Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary strive to keep the lid on the boiling pot. Behind them, Britain and France look on anxiously. 

Within less than two years these fears had materialized. As is well known, the spark that ignited what became The Great War was the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Franz -Ferdinand, in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, on August 28, 1914. The assassin, Gavrilo Princip, was a Bosnian Serb with links to an extremist Serbian nationalist organization. 

Serbian nationalists had long sought to unite the South Slavs or Yugoslavs into a Greater Serbia. The territory they craved included Bosnia-Herzogovina, Slovenia, and Croatia, all currently part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 

Austrian leaders sought to use the assassination as a pretext to destroy the Serbian nationalist movement. They issued an ultimatum to Serbia that led to war at the end of July, a war that quickly engulfed all the great European powers. The cartoon below, "The Power Behind" shows the Austrian double-headed eagle about to pounce on the defiant Serbian cock, while the Russian bear emerges from behind a rock. 

Russian determination to protect Serbia brought Germany into the war on behalf of its Austrian ally. Germany also declared war on Russia's ally France, a move dictated by the war plan of the German High Command, the Schlieffen Plan. Meanwhile, Germany virtually assured Britain's entry into the war by invading France through neutral Belgium on August 4. 

The German government had asked Belgium permission to cross their country. Belgium refused. The German Army, committed to its war plan, marched into Belgium. Britain demanded an immediate withdrawal, then declared war on Germany when the demand was ignored. 

Punch applauded Belgium for its defiance in the cartoon, "Bravo Belgium," published on August 12. The farm boy represents "Little Belgium" protecting his farm from the German brigand, identified by the sausages hanging from his pocket.

In order to whip up British support for the war, the British government and media reported many instances of German "atrocities" in Belgium. Some were real; others invented. 

Punch contributed numerous cartoons to the patriotic effort, including the two below. In the first, from August 23, 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm II stands over Belgian civilians he has just shot, holding the German Imperial flag. His revolver is still smoking. The illustrator, Bernard Partridge, had long produced unflattering images of the Kaiser and that would continue throughout the war.

The second cartoon portrays Germany as a barbaric ogre who has torn Belgian neutrality to shreds, protesting he had to attack Belgium in self-defense. The sign behind him says: "World Power or Decline," reflecting the view of Germany's leaders that they were encircled by enemies intent on their destruction. Both cartoons feature burning and destroyed buildings in the background. 

Though the Belgians put up stiff resistance, the German Army overwhelmed them. Within days, the small British Expeditionary Force had arrived to aid the Belgians and French. They fought their first engagement at Mons in Belgium on August 23. During the next two weeks, they and their French allies were 

pushed back by superior German numbers to the outskirts of Paris. 

Reinforced by additional French troops, the allies counterattacked along the River Marne on September 6. Over the next week they pushed the German Army back about 40 miles (65km). The Battle of the Marne was a major victory for the Allies, but the Germans reformed their lines along the River Aisne and began to dig trenches. The Allies followed suit. The line of battle would soon stretch from the Belgian coast to the Alps and would not shift significantly for the next four years. A war of movement became a war of stalemate and attrition, with millions of casualties.  

Punch seemingly made light of the horrors of the war in "The Incorrigibles," by Frederick Henry Townshend. A new soldier arrving at the British trench line is greeted by an "Old Hand" in a waterlogged trench, who assures him that he will have a jolly good time at the front. 

This cartoon (and others) show Punch retained some of its old sense of humor. But the humor was becoming darker. Was Townshend simply trying to boost morale in a dire situation? Or was he cynically poking fun at the British stiff upper lip syndrome? Despite the soldiers' words and smiles, it seems hard to believe anyone would consider their situation enjoyable. As the realities of trench warfare sank in over the next four years, the soldiers themselves would produce much dark and cynical humor of their own. 

Darwin and Darwinism in Victorian Cartoon and Caricature

The publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871) provided plentiful material for the cartoonists and caricaturists. One of my favorites is this one, published in Punch in the year of Darwin's death, 1882. It plays on the fact that Darwin had also written the definitive work on earthworms. A worm emerging from CHAOS is evolving into a variety of questionable primate forms before emerging as a proper Victorian gentleman tipping his hat to Darwin, portrayed as a Greek philosopher. Scientific it isn't, but it is a worthy tribute to the great scientist.    

Many of the caricatures of Darwin highlighted the then frightening notion that man was descended from an ape or monkey, although Darwin stressed that humans were not descended from any existing primate species but from earlier, extinct forms. 

Punch published the two below in 1861, one of an ape arriving for a Victorian formal affair, the other of an ape asking about his relationship to homo sapiens. 

Intentionally or not, "Monkeyana" had definite racist overtones. In the 1780's Darwin's grandfather, Josiah Wedgwood, had produced a medallion for anti-slavery organizations in England in which an enslaved African in chains asked the same question. 

Darwin himself was sometimes presented as an ape-like man, or apes were portrayed as resembling him. The four below are from the 1870's, after the publication of the Descent of Man.

The last of these four, from Punch, was inspired by Darwin's book on climbing plants, reissued in 1875.

But Darwin was not the only famous person to be associated with apes, as this 20th century poster shows.