I went and shouted in his ear — Illustrations for Through the Looking Glass by John Tenniel

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I went and shouted in his ear

Sir John Tenniel

Wood-engraving by Dalziel

Illustration for the sixth chapter of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass (1871). Click on the image to enlarge it.

For commentary, see below. [Mouse over the text for links.]

"My heart went hop, my heart
went thump;
I filled the kettle at the pump . . .
...I said it very loud and clear:
I went and shouted in his ear."

In 2000 student assistants from the University Scholars Program, National University of Singapore, scanned this image and added text under the supervision of George P. Landow.

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Commentary by Ray Dyer

Tenniel here pencils life into yet another likely condensation of Lewis Carroll's childhood memories — this time, of the metal hand-pump for household water, and the use of an especially loud voice. Carroll's repeated use of these same two literary elements some twenty years later, in his final fantasy tale for children, Sylvie and Bruno, strengthens the idea of their biographical derivation, and of Carroll's nostalgic memories of them. It also sheds light on the elusive question of why, from all the remaining incidents in his complex chapter, the author chose this final one for his illustrator to portray.

Small metal hand-pumps were standard Victorian artefacts, whether as the town or village pump, the Rectory pump or similar. When Humpty Dumpty finally forces his poem of the little fishes upon a reluctant Alice, he "told them once, [he] told them twice/ They would not listen to advice." This situation is then merged with the image of the pump, at which he fills a kettle "Fit for the deed I had to do," and then by the time a messenger arrives with bad news, Humpty Dumpty (an avatar of Lewis Carroll) is in a heightened state of emotion. Messengers are a feature of Lewis Carroll's major children's stories. They often evoke strong emotions, such as with news of the death of loved ones, but that role is diluted here for acceptable literary employment. To rectify the deteriorating situation Humpty Dumpty then deploys a stentorian voice, as depicted here by Tenniel: "I said it very loud and clear; I went and shouted in his ear."

The Victorian town-crier immediately springs to mind as a possible template for Carroll's literary creation here. The cathedral city of Ripon in Yorkshire even to the present day has a town-crier, and Ripon during Lewis Carroll's formative early adulthood continued as a place of residence for him and most of his family during the father's annual three monthly stint there as Canon, (Diaries, Vols. 1-6: see Index Vol. 10: 295, with more than 40 citations). The town-crier's flamboyant robes and official posture should be noted - "But he was very stiff and proud" (verse 15) - though here there is now clearly a seamless displacement from Humpty-the-crier to the Messenger, both of which seem to be unconscious avatars of their shared author.

Some twenty years after Through The Looking Glass. Carroll would again employ these same two creative literary elements - the pump and a very loud voice - in his Sylvia and Bruno Concuded, his final major children's fantasy book (Ch. XXIII, The Pig-Tale). This time the protagonist would be "a Pig that sat alone/ Beside a ruined Pump," and his loud moaning would draw others to witness his misery.

A certain Camel heard him shout -
A Camel with a hump.
"Oh, is it Grief, or is it Gout?
What is this bellowing about?"
That pig replied, with quivering snout,
"Because I cannot jump!" [verse 6]

We note Carroll's promotion of the noun "Pump," with a capital letter, making it a decided part of the dramatis personae of his later tale. The autobiographic element also receives further tweaks of probability, when Carroll - in the voice of his obvious avatar "The Other Professor" - declares "Rich, I say, in oysters/ Haunting shady cloisters - / That is what I am." (verse 2). The term "shady cloisters" is often used as a metaphor for university grounds and contemplative study - here a likely tilt at Christ Church, Oxford, and Carroll's lengthy residence there. Even the oysters would seem to be a tenuous link to Through The Looking Glass, Chapter 4, which was already replete with Carroll's romantic melancholy, as he wrote of the final adventures of Alice, his first literary child heroine. By the time he wrote the later fantasy work, she would be completely grown up, and all too distant.

Bibliography

Carroll, Lewis. Lewis Carroll's Diaries. The Private Journals of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Vols. 1-6, Ed. Edward Wakeling. England: Lewis Carroll Society, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2001.

_____. Sylvie and Bruno Concluded. London: Macmillan, 1893.

Last modified 23 June 2021; commentary added