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.

 

Gladstone v. Disraeli: The Great Victorian Rivalry

[Above: Punch cartoon of Disraeli on left, and Gladstone as two characters from an operetta by Burnand and Sullivan]

William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli ("Dizzy") both served as Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom in the late Victorian era. Gladstone held the premiership on four separate occasions, more than other PM in British history. Disraeli held the highest office twice. 

Both were men of great ability. They were also bitter rivals, who hated one another. Gladstone considered Disraeli to be devoid of any political principle beyond personal ambition. "The Tory Party," Gladstone claimed, "had principles by which it would and did stand for good and for bad, but all this Dizzy has destroyed." Disraeli, he more than implied, was a mere opportunist. To some extent, that was true. On one occasion he told a fellow Tory, "Damn your principles! Stick to your party."

Disraeli returned Gladstone's criticism with interest. Gladstone, he once said "has not a single redeeming defect." Asked to define the difference between a misfortune and a calamity, Disraeli replied, " If Mr. Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. If someone fished him out again, that would be a calamity." Gladstone, he said was an "unprincipled maniac ... [an] extraordinary mixture of envy, vindictiveness, hypocrisy, and superstition."

Personality wise, they were very different. Gladstone was moralistic and serious. He was an excellent speaker who coined many lofty and oft repeated phrases, such as 

"Justice delayed is justice denied."

"Nothing that is morally wrong can be politically right."

"National injustice is the surest road to national downfall."

"Selfishness is the greatest curse of the human race."

"We look forward to the time when the Power of Love replaces the Love of Power."

"Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear."

He was also long-winded. Some of Gladstone's contemporaries decried his long detailed speeches and apparent lack of humor  His wife once wrote him, "If you weren't such a great man, you'd be a terrible bore." Queen Victoria came to despise the cold way he addressed her: "Mr. Gladstone speaks to me as if were a lamppost," she wrote. [Below: Gladstone in 1879, portrait by John Everett Millais]

Disraeli, by contrast was witty and fun loving. On one occasion, having been reproved by the Speaker of the House of Commons for saying that half of the cabinet were asses, he replied, "Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my claim that half of the cabinet are asses -- half of the cabinet are not asses." On first becoming Prime Minister in 1867, he announced jokingly, "I have climbed to the top of the greasy pole."

Disraeli mastered something Gladstone never could: flattery. Victoria came to love Dizzy because he fawned on her, treated her as a woman and a great woman at that. He delighted her by arranging her to receive the title "Empress of India." Of their relationship, he wrote, "Everyone likes flattery; and when it comes to royals, you should lay it on with a trowel." [Below: photo of Disraeli, 1873]

The two men differed considerably on many key issues of the day. Gladstone was a reluctant imperialist, Disraeli an enthusiastic one. Gladstone was a devout Anglican but championed freedom of religion. 

Dizzy, who was of Jewish heritage but raised as an Anglican, defended stoutly the privileges of the state Church of England. It may have been out of conviction, but more likely it was for political reasons. It was an essential stance for a Victorian Tory leader. 

Gladstone championed the political rights of the masses but often turned a blind eye to their social needs. He was a fiscal conservative and an economic liberal who condemned anything he considered socialistic. Freedom, for Gladstone, meant freedom from political oppression and economic restraints. People should be provided with opportunities to compete, but not aided by government. In Victorian terms, he favored laissez-faire economics. But he also campaigned fervently for the extension of political rights to the working class. 

Once he became convinced of an injustice, Gladstone could devote himself to removing it. A case in point is Ireland. In the 1840s, at the time of the Irish Famine, he wrote,  "Ireland! That cloud in the west! That coming storm." He crafted numerous acts designed to remove glaring injustices, believing it was the only way to make the Irish loyal to the UK. 

In the end, it was not enough. In the 1880s, he declared "We are bound to lose Ireland in consequence of years of cruelty, stupidity, and misgovernment, and I would rather lose her as a friend than as a foe." He attempted. and failed, to pass a Home Rule Bill that would have given Ireland a large degree of autonomy. The effort cost him his political leadership. A large part of his own party deserted him. 

Parliament enacted Home Rule in 1914, but the outbreak of WWI delayed its implementation. When the war ended four years later, Home Rule became irrelevant. Most of Ireland opted for and fought for, independence. 

Disraeli was more pragmatic about such issues. He championed selective government intervention to improve working class housing and working conditions, to regulate the sale of food and drugs, and to enact uniform sanitary codes. He introduced the first Workmen's Compensation Act in 1875.

In his first term as PM Disraeli tried to outflank Gladstone by introducing legislation to expand the suffrage to some of the working class. The move shocked many in his own party, who had long opposed any move toward democracy. Disraeli understood that the world was changing and that the Tories had to change with it. 

The Reform Act of 1867 turned out to be more radical than his original proposal, partly because Gladstone and the Liberals proposed a number of democratic amendments. To the consternation of many Conservative MPs, Disraeli accepted most of them. He knew he would need Liberal votes to get the bill passed.

Disraeli hoped and expected to benefit from the Reform Act. He called an election, but Gladstone won a large majority. The new voters gave credit for the Act to the Liberals. In time, Disraeli was credited as the father of "Tory Democracy" who had dragged the party some way into the modern world. Gladstone later introduced a bill that gave the vote to all adult male heads of households. Despite their rivalry and their failings, they both contributed to the democratization and modernization of the UK in different ways. 

"I'm Alive!" Taphophobia: the Fear of Premature Burial

Taphophobia, or the fear of being buried alive, has a long history. Tales of people being buried prematurely have been related for centuries, and at least some are well documented. The fear of such a fate seems to have increased, in Europe and America at least, from the late 18th century. 

Louisa Wells Aikman, in a narrative she wrote in 1779, mentions the case of George Woodrop of Charleston, South Carolina, a young man in his early twenties who had died in 1770. The burial had been unusually quick. Woodrop was pronounced dead in the evening and was buried the next morning at 11:00. His uncle, Andrew Robertson, insisted on dispensing with the traditional practice of "laying out" the body in the house for a time before interment. 

Louisa's father Robert Wells had been a mourner at the funeral. He had "expressed great uneasiness, and said that the body did not appear like a dead corpse, there seemed to be a bloom on the countenance!" Wells asked the reason for the hurry in burying Woodrop. Mr. Robertson replied, "Mrs. Robertson could not bear to have the deceased in the house as she had so many young children."

About two years later, rumors spread around Charleston that Woodrop had been buried alive. During her voyage to London in 1778, the church sexton John Mills, told Louisa and other passengers that the rumors were true. Mills said that he had kept silent on the matter until that time because he had promised the Robertsons that he would not speak to anyone about the subject. But the Robertsons were now dead and he felt released form that promise. 

One night Mills was preparing a grave to bury someone the next morning, assisted by "two black boys." While they were digging, the shovel hit and broke off part of a coffin. Mills went down into the grave and discovered "the backbone of a human skeleton." 

The posture of the body seemed unusual. Aided by the boys, Mills "opened the grave, uncovered the lid of the coffin, and found the deceased lying on its side, with the cheekbone in the palm of the hand!" The coffin cover bore the words "George Woodrop died 1770." We may not be convinced by this evidence, but Louisa Aikman certainly was, and perhaps others as well.

One of them may have been another Charleston resident, Henry Laurens. He stipulated in his will that his head should be severed and his body burned after death. Laurens believed that his infant daughter Martha had narrowly escaped being buried alive. It is possible that he was aware of the Woodrop case as well because he knew the Wells family. In 1792 Laurens' body was burned on a pyre at his plantation, Mepkin. It was the first documented case of cremation in the United States. 

In an appendix to her narrative, Louisa Aiken wrote that the Woodrop case had affected her mind so much that she "never forsook the apparently dead or dying until interment." During the twenty years she lived in Jamaica (1782-1801) she reckoned that her watchfulness had prevented eighteen people from being "sent to an untimely grave." 

She mentioned in particular the case of fourteen year old James Haughton, from 1785. He seems to have been suffering from yellow fever -- Louisa mentions "a constant bleeding at the nose." For several hours "Animation was suspended." Doctors declared him dead.  His mother agreed and with a lack of emotion went off to dress for his funeral. 

Louisa persevered in trying to save him. With the help of "slaves" she applied the method recommended by the Humane Society, and he revived. When his "unnatural parent" returned, "curled and powdered" and dressed in a black silk dress, her son was sitting up "eating sago from my hands." Fifteen years later he was still alive, had married twice and had several children. [Image: Louisa Wells Aikman]

Concerns about premature burial seem to have increased during the Victorian Age. The suffragette and anti-vivisectionist Frances Power Cobbe is one of many people who feared being buried alive. It had nearly happened to her great grandmother, according to family tradition. Her ancestor was believed dead and being prepared for burial when she woke up. She went on to have twenty-two children. (Maybe it would have been better to be buried alive).

Cobbe was particularly worried about the effects of a stroke or seizure which might render her unconscious for enough time for people to think she was dead and bury her. She left behind explicit instructions about the measures she wanted performed to prevent such an outcome. In a note next to her bed she ordered a doctor to sever the arteries and windpipe on her neck, virtually cutting off her head, "to render any revival in the grave absolutely impossible." 

Interestingly, she also ordered that her burial be as natural and inexpensive as possible. She stipulated that her coffin be made of wicker that would decompose quickly, that the coffin would not be carried by six men but taken in her carriage by her coachman, who would deposit it in the grave. She also forbade attendees to wear mourning attire.

The increase in fear of premature burial during the Victorian era was due in part to the massive growth of the urban population. The crowded and unsanitary conditions rapid urbanization created fostered epidemics of cholera, typhoid and other diseases. 

The frequent epidemics helped to change the conditions but also customary burial practices. The tradition in many countries was to lay the body out for several days before burial, at which point it would normally exhibit clear visual and olfactory signs of mortality. 

During deadly epidemics, burials often took place as quickly as possible in hopes of preventing the spread of disease. Rapid burials increased fears that some people were being entombed before death. 

Art and literature also contributed to the growing sense of alarm. During a cholera epidemic in 1854, Belgian artist Antoine Wiertz painted "The Premature Burial." The painting depicts a cholera victim awakening after being placed in a coffin. 

Writers also addressed the subject, notably Edgar Allen Poe in his story of the same name. In the 19th century estimates of the number of people buried prematurely varied from occasional cases to a preposterous one-third of those buried.  

Whatever the reality regarding premature burials, fear of it was common enough to inspire Victorian entrepreneurs to devise means of prevention. They designed "safety" coffins with various escape mechanisms or means by which prematurely buried persons could signal that they were alive.

An early safety coffin, patented in the USA in 1843, contained springs and levers that would open the lid with slightest movement inside, or so the inventor claimed.

Many safety coffins featured a bell on the lid from which a rope was attached. The rope was inserted into a hole in the lid and placed in the hands of the coffin's occupant. If they revived they could pull the rope to announce the fact. The one below, patented in the 1860s, added an escape hatch and a ladder as well. Michael Crichton, in his novel The Great Train Robbery, includes a scene in which one of the robbers is placed in such a coffin to fool railway guards.

Other safety coffins were fitted with glass panes, breathing pipes, and/or flags. J. G. Krichbaum's 1882 model included a periscope-like pipe that supplied air and could be rotated or pushed by the interred person, alerting anyone nearby that they were alive.

All such contraptions, of course, relied on another person being near enough to hear or see the signal. Someone needed to keep a watch on the grave for a few days, just in case. Families sometimes hired people for this task. The watchers could also help prevent the body being carried off by "resurrection men" or body snatchers, for dissection in anatomy schools. 

The inventor of the vault below, from about 1890, found a way to solve that problem, and declared that it rendered premature burial "impossible." Each of the chambers was fitted with an escape hatch, a handwheel on the door. The vault was supplied with air and lined with felt to prevent injury. The body was removed from the coffin before being placed in the chamber.

Alas, despite the claims of inventors, there is no documented evidence that any of these safety features saved anyone from premature burial.

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Soap, Imperialism, and Racism

Soap: an innocent item of everyday life, one would think. The Victorians proclaimed "Cleanliness is next to Godliness." Soap and water were the keys to cleanliness. Today, most of the world's people are fortunate enough to have access to them. That hasn't always been the case.

During the Victorian Age, water was increasingly supplied to houses in the industrializing West, and people could buy manufactured soap. Keeping clean became easier for much of the population. Western cleanliness, however, soon became a mark of racial and imperial superiority.

During this time, western states were not only industrializing and urbanizing. They were also colonizing less developed regions of the globe. Imperialists justified their territorial acquisitions as a civilizing mission, or the "White Man's Burden," the title of Rudyard Kipling's popular poem of 1899. 

The British company that began making Pears' Soap in 1807 seems to have been the first to exploit that idea. The company promoted its product as possessing a "civilizing influence." Soap and civilization, Pears' ads declared, marched hand in hand. 

Soap lightened the White Man's Burden, by "brightening the dark corners of the earth." That translated here as cleaning up the dirty natives. The ads also complimented the advanced (white) civilizations for using soap. 

In the Pears' ad below, American Admiral Dewey, victor of the Battle of Manila Bay (1898), is pictured using the "ideal soap" while civilizers are bringing it to the people sitting in darkness.

Advertising in newspapers, magazines, and billboards boomed as never before in the late 19th century. Ads became larger and colorized, making them hard to miss. Soap companies, like many other businesses, were quick to take advantage of the latest in advertising technology and styles.

Many soap ads were innocent enough, such as this cute one:

But even apparently innocent ads often emphasized how the soap helped preserve one's "white and beautiful" complexion.

Intentionally or not, they encouraged the idea that skin that deviated from pure whiteness was inferior. 

Many soap ads were overtly racist. Besides claiming that dark skin was less desirable than white skin, they implied that it was unclean. The ads promoted the "whitening" quality of the soap by showing it being used to wash the color off black or brown skin. 

The intention of such ads was not to claim that the soap really could turn dark skin white but to highlight the pure complexion it could ensure for white folk, as in this thoroughly racist one for Cook's "Lightning" Soap. 

The ad below illustrates the same intention in another way. The immaculate white child asks the filthily dressed black girl "Why Doesn't Your Mamma Wash You With Fairy Soap?"

Below is an ad that seems at first to imply that blacks might benefit by using Pears' Soap. In fact, it ridicules black people. The key is the contrast between the testimonial of Sambo with that of Adelina Patti in the upper right corner. Patti was a famous late 19th century opera singer. Sambo was a common derogatory term for a black man.

Ads sometimes juxtaposed white and black folk in more realistic situations that emphasized the "whitening" quality of the soap. In this American ad, the speech pattern of the porter, "chocolate custard" Sam (short for "Sambo"?) reinforces the white-black gulf. The very name of the soap, "Ivory," highlights its "white purity."

The history of soap highlights how even ordinary items of daily life can take on a much broader and sometimes sinister connotation.

A Georgian Cartoonist's Christmas

According to contemporary cartoonists, Georgian Christmas celebrations were not the scenes of pious, orderly behavior and domestic bliss the Victorians liked to portray. Consider this cartoon by Thomas Rowlandson, from 1804, "Christmas Gambols".

Drunken servants party in the kitchen in less than spiritual fashion. What would their masters think? Perhaps they encouraged such conviviality! Party on ! The mistletoe hanging from the ceiling indicates that the servants are acting in accord with an old Christmas tradition -- up to a point. 

"At Home in the Nursery" by George Cruikshank, 1825, portrays a chaotic Christmas party for children at the home of Master and Mrs. Twoshoes. The children are certainly enjoying themselves! Not quite the pious scene Dickens portrayed of the Cratchit household in A Christmas Carol.

Lewis Walpole's, "A Pleasing Pastime, Christmas Quadrille Party," 1826 shows four gentlemen braving ice skating with hilarious results, probably after tippling a bit too much at the local pub.

"Drawing for a Twelfth Night Cake at St. Anne's Hill," was the work of George Cruikshank's father Isaac.  It portrays an all male celebration at the country house of Charles James Fox in 1799. The image emphasizes Fox's sympathy with revolutionary France, then at war with Britain (liberty caps). Twelfth night celebrations were often rather wild affairs. Like most Georgian celebrations, I suppose.

Placid or Chaotic, Enjoy your Holidays. God Bless Us All, Everyone!