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ALICE IN BLUNDERLAND
John Tenniel (1820-1914)
30 October 1880
Full page cartoon
Punch, Vol. 78-79, facing p. 198
Below caption: "With Mr. PUNCH'S profoundest apologies to "Alice in Wonderland." See accompanying skit and commentary below.
Image capture and text transcription by Jacqueline Banerjee, with commentary by Ray Dyer.
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The cartoon is very much in the manner and spirit of Tenniel's earlier work for Lewis Carroll; the anonymous skit on the facing page also reflects a thorough familiarity with the Alice books:
The Gryphon carefully slid off its pedestal, and sat down beneath the hoarding. Then it chuckled: "What fun!" said the Gryphon, half to itself, half to ALICE.
"What is the fun?" said ALICE.
"Well, I can't exactly tell you," said the Gryphon, " for I'm only just finished, you know, and I'm fresh to it. But there is a joke somewhere — that I'm certain of; for when I'm up there I see 'em laughing on the tops of the omnibuses."
"Dear me!" said ALICE, getting quite interested. "Then it must be a very good joke indeed."
"Well, if it is, I didn't make it — there! " retorted the Gryphon, quite annoyed. Then it added, more thoughtfully, "Unless it's the sheet. But you had much better ask the Mansion House Turtle. It's more likely it's his. He's always making 'em. He knows a thing or two, he does," added the Gryphon, with a wink.
"Then, if he's a wise turtle," rejoined ALICE, " he's sure to know his own joke, isn't he ? We'll ask him."
At that moment the Mansion House Turtle emerged from Fleet Street, and joined the party. He gave a satisfied look at the unfinished Memorial, as he passed, and then took his place on an inverted wheelbarrow.
"Well!" he said, rubbing his fins together complacently, "we're a getting on very nicely, eh?"
I'm sure I'm very glad to hear it," said ALICE. "But what is it?"
"Yes, what is your joke?" added the Gryphon. "What is the fun of my sitting up there with a shield, staring at the back of St. Clement's Danes, and obstructing the omnibuses?"
"Well now, I never!" said the Mansion House Turtle. "You're a grateful one, you are! Why, you've never been on such a big 'orse in your life before. There's the Queen and the Prince on the tier below you; and the lot of you right in the middle of the road, where everybody can't help running right agin you! Obstructing omnibuses, indeed! Why, yer don't know what civic dignity means!"
"I don't think they ought to stand in the middle of the road," said ALICE, plucking up courage as she gave a glance at the cumbersome pile of scaffolding that blocked the already contracted thoroughfare, "and I should pull all that thing down now — every stone of it. I call it stupid; and it is dreadfully in the way!"
"'Stoopid!'" retorted the Mansion House Turtle, getting quite green. "Why it cost twelve thousand pound!"
"Well, that's stupid," said the Gryphon, "at all events!"
"You be quiet," continued the Mansion House Turtle, "and let me explain. You don't understand. Talk of it being 'in the way,' why, it will be a relief to the traffic."
"You mean a bas relief, I suppose?" suggested ALICE; "and I'm sure it will all look very paltry in front of those big Law Courts.""Paltry?" said the Mansion House Turtle. "Why, it's the very thing. It will scale 'em!"
"Well, BIRCH scaled me," said the Gryphon, chuckling; "and I wonder how he looks now that job's done ? It strikes me he had much better have left me a block."
"Yes," said ALICE, reflecting, "I've always heard that the block system was capital."
"Nothing to the block-head system," replied the Gryphon, giving a look at the Mansion House Turtle. "And talking of capital, that'll show you how to get through it!"
"You be quiet," said the Mansion House Turtle, angrily, "and attend to your motter."
The Gryphon chuckled to himself, and looked up at his shield.
"By the bye," said ALICE, making out the Municipal legend slowly, "that reminds me. What is Domine dirige nos?"
"What the omnibuses will say when they come tilting on to me in a fog," said the Gryphon. "'Pon my word, it won't be safe! I don't like it!"
"Then," said ALICE, with warmth, rising as she spoke, "I shall certainly write to the Times.'"
"And so shall I," said the Gryphon, " for I can tell my own tale. Come along, let's master the subject."
It offered its arm to ALICE, and they walked slowly down the Strand.
"Humph! " said the Mansion House Turtle, looking after them. "To be master of the subject is one thing, but to be master of the situation is another. Write your 'eads off if you like, you won't stop me."
And the Mansion House Turtle waddled off towards the City for a plate of his own soup.
Almost a decade after a supposedly "final" new Alice illustration — one of those fifty-two superb depictions produced for Lewis Carroll's Through The Looking Glass — John Tenniel returned to employ the famous young heroine in a highly politicised form for Punch magazine, for which he was the chief political cartoonist. Alice in Blunderland appeared in their issue of 30 October 1880.
The earlier use of "Blunderland" as a copyist title for "Wonderland" had been just one amongst "something like a dozen story-books" lamented by Lewis Carroll in the introductory remarks to his own very different late-life fairytale (1889: Preface). The path he had earlier "timidly explored" had by then become "a beaten high-road [and] all the wayside flowers have long ago been trampled into the dust."
Tenniel's new political riposte concerned the London Mansion House politicians, who had decided to erect the Temple Bar Memorial Monument in close vicinity to them. Concerns over traffic obstruction in central London's always busy thoroughfares had given rise to widespread criticism, with both Tenniel and new younger artists Harry Furniss and Linley Sambourne joining the fray in the pages of Punch.
Basing the cartoon on his own original Gryphon and Mock-Turtle, the artist arranges his three figures, including Alice herself with her back to the viewer, making the new central character the barely disguised creature now called "Griffin." This mythical creature had been placed on top of the now hotly disputed Mansion House Monument. Tenniel completes his astute visual satire with the Mansion House Turtle joking rather dubiously; the revised Gryphon remaining dismissive; and the ever courageous Alice demanding "pull that thing down now" as she adds that she certainly intends to "write to the Times" about it.
"Alice in Blunderland." Punch. Vol. 79-80 (30 October 1880): 198. Internet Archive. Contributed by the University of Michigan. Web. 19 April 2022.
Carroll, Lewis. Sylvie and Bruno. London: Macmillan, 1889.
Created 19 April 2022