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Cruikshank, George. Puss in Boots. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London & Edinburgh: Routledge, Warne, and Routledge. 40 pages; with six etching plates on steel by George Cruikshank (1792-1878) famed English caricaturist, illustrator with 'fine artistic power' [Chambers]; here, with suitably humorous and sarcastic Cruikshank caricatures throughout in black and white in the classic children's fable of the jaunty Cat, the plate pages often with more than one image; this being one of the "George Cruikshank's Fairy Library" books; original illustrated light blue paper wraps.

Passage Illustrated

All the kings and great barons lived in castles in those days ; and it so happened, upon one occasion, as Caraba was leaving the market to return home that the King and his daughter, a most beautiful young Princess, were passing that way in their open carriage, and Caraba was so struck with the beauty of the young lady that he fell in love with her, and looked after the carriage as long as it was in sight, and then turned and thoughtfully went on his way to the mill, reflecting to himself that however much he might love the Princess and desire to have her for a bride, the difference of their positions in life made it impossible that he could ever marry her; and so he went to his humble home downcast and sorrowful. Tom Puss, as usual, came out to meet his master, and as Caraba approached Tom stopped and looked at him in a way that he had never done before, and it was quite evident to Puss that something was the matter. Caraba put the ass into the stable or shed, and gave it a feed; he then gave his elder brother the money he had sold the flour for, and then went and set himself down by the side of the door and looked in the direction of the King's castle. At the same moment, Puss came purring and rubbing his side against his master's leg, as if to attract his attention, as much as to say, "Have you forgotten me, Master?" The young man turned, and heaving a deep sigh, said, "Ah! my poor Puss, I went out this morning happy and comfortable; but happy I never shall be again, for I can never forget the beautiful Princess, and I can never have her for a wife." As he said this Tom Puss stood up on his hind legs, and speaking like a human being, said, "Do not be too sure of that." Caraba started with wonder to hear the cat speak, who, however, went on to say, "Dear Master, you once did me a great service, you saved me from a horrible death; and I have always been grateful to you for that act; but the time is now come when I can repay this kindness, and all I require of you is to do whatever I tell you, to ask no questions, and leave me to manage matters in my own way; and if all goes well, the end will be happiness to you and to many others, including the dear, the good, the beautiful princess." Caraba rubbed his eyes to make sure that he was not dreaming, and kept looking at puss with great surprise, and seemed lost in thought, from which he was roused by Tom Puss exclaiming, "Now, let's to work. In the first place, Master, I must have a dress with a cap and feather, and though last, not least, a pair of Boots!" — George Cruikshank, "Puss in Boots," pages 5-7.

The Context in Perrault

There was a miller whose only inheritance to his three sons was his mill, his donkey, and his cat. The division was soon made. They hired neither a clerk nor an attorney, for they would have eaten up all the poor patrimony. The eldest took the mill, the second the donkey, and the youngest nothing but the cat.

The poor young fellow was quite comfortless for having received so little. "My brothers," said he, "may make a handsome living by joining their shares together; but, for my part, after I have eaten up my cat, and made myself a muff from his skin, I must then die of hunger."

The cat, who heard all this, but pretended otherwise, said to him with a grave and serious air, "Do not be so concerned, my good master. If you will but give me a bag, and have a pair of boots made for me, that I may scamper through the dirt and the brambles, then you shall see that you are not so poorly off with me as you imagine." — Charles Perrault, "The Master Cat or, Puss in Boots."

Commentary

Bravely Cruikshank issued his Cinderella later in 1854, though Dickens had parodied it, as if in advance, in "Frauds on the Fairies". . . . Not only did the artist refuse to compromise his editing principles, but appended a note "To the Public" in which readers who might fall into same heresies as "my friend Charles Dickens" were advised to read his "Letter" to that gentleman. But, for whatever reason, interest in Cruikshank's fairy tales seems to have diminished; for his next contribution, Puss in Boots, though probably completed in 1853 or 1854, was not published until 1864. The artist probably held Dickens responsible for the hiatus; certainly he was still smarting from the artist's reprimand. — Jane Rabb Cohen, p. 35.

In his Fairy Library, published between 1853 and 1864, George Cruikshank illustrated and rewrote "Le Petit Poucet," "Cendrillon," and "Le chat botté." Although his witty engravings remain faithful to the texts, his rewriting considerably alters them. A reformed alcoholic, he preaches temperance in "Hop O' My Thumb" and recasts the tender Cinderella as pitiless prohibitionist. He transforms all three tales to suit his moral fancies. The woodcutter becomes an alcoholic and gambling count who loses everything because of his vices, and Puss in Boots restores the wealth of the aristocratic miller, the legitimate owner of the ogre's vast estates. — Project Muse, "George Cruikshank's Graphic and Textual Reactions to Mother Goose." Judd D. Hubert, Marvels & Tales, Volume 25, Number 2, 2011 pp. 286-297.

However, even if Cruikshank did not transform Puss into a ardent advocate for temperance, he did substantially alter Perrault's tale. He found Perrault's tale, as it stood, immoral. It was 'a succession of successful falsehoods', he wrote in The Fairy Library (1870), 'a clever lesson in lying! — a system of imposture rewarded by the greatest worldly advantages!' (quoted in Carpenter and Prichard 1984: 433). His criticisms were fair. In Perrault's original, Puss wins for the poor miller's son a title, a castle and the hand in marriage of the Princess simply by tricking both the Ogre and the King. The only moral Perrault himself had been able to draw celebrated savoir faire over inherited status and wealth. Cruikshank rectified this. Sound advice on how to live a Godly life is forthcoming as early as the second page (p. 4). And Cruikshank smoothly overcomes Puss's lies to the peasantry, whom the cat orders to pretend that the land they are working belongs to the Marquis of Carabas. They were the slaves of the Ogre, the real owner of the land, Cruikshank explains, and, thinking that the talking cat was an agent of their master, they were obliged to comply with his requests (p. 14). Cruikshank's most far-reaching change, though, was to reveal at the end of the tale that the miller was really the Marquis of Carabas anyway, usurped by the Ogre. For his son to regain the title, by whatever means, was only the reimposition of the natural order, and any political impropriety in the story of a miller becoming a marquis was done away with (p. 24). The central moral — that one should be content with one's station in life (unless, apparently, one is a usurped marquis) — is rammed home by the revelation that Puss himself was formerly a man, transformed into a cat because of his dissatisfaction with his former life (pp. 23-24). In his apology for the status quo, Cruikshank even comes to the defence of the court of Chancery (p. 24n.). Could this have been a covert attack on Dickens' condemnation of the court in Bleak House which was published during the midst of their controversy in 1852-53? — The Hockliffe Project, "Fables and Fairy Tales." 0038A: George Cruikshank, Puss in Boots http://hockliffe.dmu.ac.uk/items/0038A.html

Cruikshank provides considerably more detail about the miller's son and the talking cat in his introduction to "Puss in Boots." In the 1864 frontispiece, he uses a cutaway technique suggestive of a theatrical production; the design is consistent with his frontispiece for the previous number in the Fairy Library series: Cinderella in the Chimney-Corner. Text and image interact to provide the induction to the tale, introducing the principal characters and setting the scene: Tom Puss, standing on his hind legs, addresses the miller's youngest son, Caraba, in the granary-storage barn, as suggested by the bags of grain in the background. Although the narrator sets the scene "In ancient times . . . in the country, a very long way from London" (p. 3), the windmill (upper left), clothing worn by the three human figures, thatched cottage and outbuilding all suggest a mediaeval setting, and the countryside resembles that of central Spain, although the sons' names sound more Moorish than Spanish. In the upper frame, the miller, standing beside the windmill, watches the ass carrying grain to market with his second son, Baraba, or perhaps his youngest son, who catches sight of the king's daughter on one of his trips to market in the nearby town. He becomes despondent because "the difference of their positions in life made it impossible that he could ever marry her" (6). Although Tom Puss appears in all ten panels, his co-protagonist, Caraba, appears in only four: numbers 1, 5, and 10, and 11. At the conclusion, in an after-dinner speech to the King, Princess, and Caraba, Tom Puss reveals that he was, in fact, an old servant of the Marquis of Carabas, and seems to have been the victim of a transformative spell. At the close, he becomes Thomas, the old gamekeeper, once again, having invented the Waltz.

In the traditional story of Le Chat Botté or Puss in Boots as told by Charles Perrault, Morna Daniels contends that the seventeenth-century French writer has once again the deployed

The theme of the animal helper [which] is a popular one in folklore, the beneficiary often being the youngest or poorest in a family. Despite the obvious self-centredness of cats, we enjoy two improbable stories of cat-helpers. Dick or Richard Whittington was a real Mayor of London to whom an existing folk tale became attached. Perhaps it was because he was a younger son who made a fortune that the traditional tale of an animal helping the poorest and youngest child was produced as an explanation for his riches. His coat of arms suggests he was a fifth son, but only two of his elder brothers survived their father, so perhaps he was one of three brothers who survived infancy. For Dick Whittington the cat merely does what comes naturally to bring its owner wealth. Puss in Boots, on the other hand, wins for his master, the youngest and poorest of three brothers, the crops and wealth worked for by others through his own deceit and is far more humanized. A Sicilian version of the story has a fox as the clever trickster, and the ungrateful beneficiary kills the fox. Perrault used the term Mère l'Oye to suggest that he was retelling folk stories, but no versions of Perrault's particular stories can be found in French popular literature before his time. — "The Tale of Charles Perrault and Puss in Boots," p. 1.

No more stories appeared until 1864, when the last one, 'Puss in Boots', was published by Routledge with a renewed defence of his treatment of the tales against Dickens's criticisms appended by Cruikshank. For Dickens's later caricaturing of Cruikshank as 'Mr. Monomaniacal Patriarch', see Vol. 3 of the Dent edition, p. 311. — Dickens Journals Online, "Frauds on the Fairies." http://www.djo.org.uk/indexes/articles/frauds-on-the-fairies.html

Related Materials

• "Frauds on the Fairies" (1 October 1853)
• Editor's Note on "Frauds on the Fairies"
• Defending the Imagination: Charles Dickens, Children's Literature, and the Fairy Tale Wars
• George Cruikshank and Charles Dickens
• Fairy Tales: Surviving the Evangelical Attack

Bibliography

Bentley, Nicolas; Michael Slater and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990.

British Library. "George Cruikshank's Fairy Library." Romantics and Victorians. https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/george-cruikshanks-fairy-library

Carpenter, Humphrey, and Mari Pritchard. The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature​. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1984.

Cohen, Jane Rabb. Part One, "Dickens and His Early Illustrators: 1. George Cruikshank. Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1980. Pp. 15-38.

Cruikshank, George. Puss in Boots. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. The fourth volume in George Cruikshank's Fairy Library. London: Routledge, Warne & Routledge, 1864. (Price one shilling) 11 etchings on 6 tipped-in pages, including frontispiece.

Cruikshank, George. George Cruikshank's Fairy Library: "Hop-O'-My-Thumb," "Jack and the Bean-Stalk," "Cinderella," "Puss in Boots". London: George Bell, 1865.

Daniels, Morna. "The Tale of Charles Perrault and Puss in Boots." Electronic British Library Journal. 2002. pp. 1-14. http://docplayer.net/21672800-The-tale-of-charles-perrault-and-puss-in-boots.html

Guildhall Library blog. "A Gem from Guildhall Library's Shelves: George Cruikshank's Fairy Library by George Cruikshank published by Routledge in London (c. 1870)." 8 August 2014. https://guildhalllibrarynewsletter.wordpress.com/2016/08/08/a-gem-from-guildhall-librarys-shelves-george-cruikshanks-fairy-library-by-george-cruikshank-published-by-routledge-in-london-c1870/

Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University. "George Cruikshank." http://library.tulane.edu/exhibits/exhibits/show/fairy_tales/george_cruikshank

Hubert, Judd D. "George Cruikshank's Graphic and Textual Reactions to Mother Goose." Marvels & Tales, Volume 25, Number 2, 2011 (pp. 286-297). Project Muse. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/462736/pdf

Kitton, Frederic G. "George Cruikshank." Dickens and His Illustrators. London: Chapman & Hall, 1899. Pp. 1-28.

Kotzin, Michael C. Dickens and the Fairy Tale. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1972.

Perrault, Charles. "The Master Cat or, Puss in Boots." Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts, University of Pittsburgh, 2002. From Andrew Lang's The Blue Fairy Book (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., ca. 1889), pp. 141-147. Edited by D. L. Ashliman. http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/perrault04.html

Schlicke, Paul. "Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1999. Pp. 231-232.

Stone, Harry. Dickens and the Invisible World: Fairy Tales, Fantasy, and Novel-Making. Bloomington, IN: Indiana U. P., 1979.

Vogler, Richard, The Graphic Works of George Cruikshank. New York: Dover, 1979.

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Last modified 5 July 2017