Yawning man by Harry Furniss. Swain, engraver. 1889. Illustration for Lewis Carroll's Sylvia and Bruno Concluded, 266. Source: Hathi Digital Library Trust version of a copy in the Pennsylvania State University Library. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Commentary
This was the first of a series of three illustrations to a modified version of the old nursery song “There was a little man who had a little gun”. The picture was there entitled “Long Ceremonious Calls”, and both the characters are heavily disguised, with allusions to the revised hunting and fishing Song: “Where the Dolphin’s at home, and the Dablet / Pays long ceremonious calls.” My edition of Sylvia and Bruno Concluded annotates this passage as follows:
“Dolphin”: from the princely attire of the man seated on a tasselled cushion, it would seem that Carroll and Furniss intended not the Dolphin sea-creature, but the ‘Dauphin’ of France. Historically, to 1830, the eldest son of a French King was known as ‘Le Dauphine’, and in England as ‘the Dauphin’ or ‘Dolphin’.
“Dablet,” “mangled” from Dab = a small coastal flatfish, here dressed as a visiting Dignitary for “long ceremonious calls;” perhaps doubling as a pun on ‘the crawfish his Wifelet had dressed for his tea’. — Ray Dyer
[You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the credit the Hathi Digital Library Trust and the University of North Carolina Library and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Carroll, Lewis. The Story of Sylvie and Bruno. London: Macmillan & Co., 1922. Hathi Digital Library Trust version of a copy in the University of North Carolina Library. Web. 20 September 2016.
Lewis Carroll’s Sylvie and Bruno with Sylvie and Bruno Concluded. Ed. Ray Dyer. Troubador/matador.co.uk, 2015; Amazon USA: 2015].
Created 10 May 2016
Last modified 1 February 2020