Shaking the Red Queen — Illustrations for Through the Looking Glass by John Tenniel

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Shaking the Red Queen

Sir John Tenniel

Wood-engraving by Dalziel

Illustration for the tenth chapter of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass (1871)

"She took her off the table as she spoke, and shook her backwards and forwards with all her might."

"The Red Queen made no resistance whatever: only her face grew very small, and her eyes got large and green: and still, as Alice went on shaking her, she kept on growing shorter - and fatter - and softer-and rounder-and--"

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. [See below for commentary, and mouse over the text for links.]

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Commentary by Ray Dyer

Abruptly, after a series of immensely detailed illustrations, Tenniel eschews all background detail here (for other artistic techniques that depart from the usual story-telling conventions, see Looking-glass-world Armies, and The Drums Began). With this latest one, he uses a much more economical style. As a satirical illustrator and commentator Tenniel was in fact a great exponent of detail in storytelling, and such an absence of it excites curiosity. An earlier instance can be found in Alice puts on the golden crown, as seen below, centre.

Three works by Tenniel with very little background. Left to right: (a) Alice Shaking the White King. (b) Alice puts on the golden crown (c) The Federal Phoenix in Punch, 3 December 1864.

In the many full-page political satires which Tenniel produced for Punch magazine from the late 1850s onwards, there are also a few examples of such an approach. His portrayal of "The Federal Phoenix" of 3 December 1864 comes close, in so far as it employs only featureless smoke/shading as background, whilst nevertheless still filling an entire page. Tenniel's signed self-portrait of 1889, now in the National Portrait Gallery, London, is another of these rare examples. Much detail has however gone into the portrait itself, and the particular genre all but rejects the distraction of any further and superfluous background detail or "story."

In Tenniel's previous productions for Lewis Carroll, we do find a few examples of this spare, pared-down style. In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland there is, for instance, Alice after drinking the first potion. The tall stretched figure of Alice is crafted with appropriate detail, but any and all further details of the underground corridor are missing: no previously employed furniture, no "Drink me" bottle - almost nothing added. If the intention was to focus the reader's attention fully upon Alice's amazing new condition, then it certainly succeeds. Interestingly, this first such attempt, also of about 1864, seems to be lacking the well known "JT" monogram, though it does have that of the Dalziel brothers, at the base of the picture's only other item: a thin strip of shadow to mirror the tall figure of the changed Alice. Was Tenniel so fully absorbed that he forgot to add the monogram, or might he have had doubts about this approach? All the remaining 41 drawings in the first Alice book appear to have been suitably monogrammed, by both artist and print-engraver.

A further possible motive for curtailing the detail in such illustrations may have been the pressure of work, with Carroll wanting to get his books out on schedule. Author and artist had a first meeting in May 1864 to discuss the forthcoming pictures, followed by further meetings. Nevertheless, Tenniel "proved to be slow at engaging in the task" (Wakeling, Diaries 5: 16-17 and n. 10). A Christmas deadline passed, and on 21 December Carroll "Called on Macmillan ... had a talk about the book ... my idea of publishing on the 1st of April [1865]" (5:33). Tenniel, apparently, had been having "great trouble, having just lost his mother" (33 and n. 37, citing a letter of 20 November from Carroll to Macmillan). Carroll himself had lost his mother early on, in 1851, and his sympathetic attitude to Tenniel may well have included - whether by originating or simply supporting - the idea of minimising detail in certain pictures. For whatever reason, the Tenniel-Carroll collaboration had by 1865 produced yet one more productive approach to illustrating the text effectively.

When we turn to Carroll's Through the Looking Glass we find more such illustrations, though the driving forces are by no means clear. Already in the opening chapter we find two reduced illustrations: Alice shaking the White King; and The White Knight sliding down the poker. Neither appears to have been given a Tenniel monogram. Later, as here in Chapter 10 (and the next chapter too), and with perhaps the deliberate addition of a quasi-mathematical symmetry to the book, we find Carroll accepting two more such productions by Tenniel: the present one, and its storyline sequel, Alice shaking Kitty. Unlike the earlier two, both of these later pictures have been monogrammed by Tenniel. Caution is required in assessing this, as the eventual placing of the illustrations does not necessarily correlate with the time of their production.

Tenniel was still having trouble with the schedule. By Tuesday 25 April 1871 Carroll was confiding to his private journal that the book "yet lingers on ... the text is ready, but I have only received 27 pictures [of an eventual 51] as yet"(6: 146). The author's own impatience to get the book out, first by Easter and then by Christmas, may also have encouraged Tenniel to adopt an economical approach. With Chapter 9, Carroll had finished the essential tale of his own fantasy and disguised romanticism. The remaining Chapters 10 and 11 have all the appearance of being "unwanted offspring": not only is Tenniel's part economical, but so also is Carroll's, with only a single page and very few words for each chapter. Only in the final flourish of the work - Chapter 12, proudly symmetrical with that of the first Alice book, and then with the further addition of the beautiful though melancholic frame poem - could he find solace once more with his meaningful revenants.

Links to related material

Tenniel's final illustration for the book

Bibliography

Carroll, Lewis. Lewis Carroll's Diaries. The Private Journals of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Ed. Edward Wakeling. Vol. 5. England: Lewis Carroll Society, 1999; Vol. 6, 2001.

Created 2000

Last modified 5 February 2022