Henry Furniss, caricaturist, journalist, and illustrator, ... was known affectionately as “Harry.”Henry was born 26 March 1854 in Wexford, Ireland. Henry, who signed himself “Harry” for the census-takers, was, and is, often confused with Harold Furniss, caricaturist, journalist, illustrator, and collector of criminal literature.
Our present topic, Henry Furniss born in Wexford, illustrated various Victorian books, including Lewis Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno (1889) and Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893).This strange and brilliant book set combines a fairy world, a dream world, and a plain novelistic normal romance. The topic is often Victorian concerns, and that is one reason this writing has been forgotten.
Here is an example of Furniss drawin felines, from Sylvie and Bruno Concluded:
I would venture a comparison on the evidence of this book, between Henry Darger and Lewis Carroll, despite a total divergence of education, of class, of culture, of intelligence. Darger had nothing, Carroll, an Oxford don, everything. What they have in common is a child's view of sexuality. Regardless, and I am not sure my view is defensible, Carroll is brilliant in the Sylvie and Bruno set. Sylvie is an older and wiser Alice, protective of others, her young brother, the helpless bugs and beasts of the world, and is herself accepting of the strangeness of adults. Sylvie is less flotsam and able to steer a way through life in her being as a reincarnated Alice.
Carroll was pleased with the illustrations Furniss did for his books. Sylvie and Bruno is a deeply religious book written in a time when the over-reaching of positivistic thought was not apparent. What problems could the scientific method not solve! And the genuine sentiments of kind hearts seemed to have no real currency: hence fairyland. Furniss was able to fulfill the illustrator's job, though, with attention to the Carroll text and the earlier drawings Tenniel had done.
Recall the 19 century began with agricultural workers revolting against the horrors of factory life. In a way it ended with Lewis Carroll talking about, the "office-hours which I suppose reduce most men to the mental condition of a coffee mill or a mangle [,when] time sped along much as usual: it was in the pauses of life, the desolate hours when books and newspapers palled on the sated appetite, and when, thrown back upon one's own dreary musings, one strove all in vain to people the vacant air...that the real bitterness of solitude made itself felt."
Looking ahead the solitude may or may not be remedied. One approach is to be cavalier. I think of Richard Brautigan's poem, "Ice Cream Melting on the edge of a final thought": "Oh well, call it a life."
Carroll's picture of office drudgery could end: Oh well, call it a century.
Recall the 19 century began with agricultural workers revolting against the horrors of factory life. In a way it ended with Lewis Carroll talking about, the "office-hours which I suppose reduce most men to the mental condition of a coffee mill or a mangle [,when] time sped along much as usual: it was in the pauses of life, the desolate hours when books and newspapers palled on the sated appetite, and when, thrown back upon one's own dreary musings, one strove all in vain to people the vacant air...that the real bitterness of solitude made itself felt."
Looking ahead the solitude may or may not be remedied. One approach is to be cavalier. I think of Richard Brautigan's poem, "Ice Cream Melting on the edge of a final thought": "Oh well, call it a life."
Carroll's picture of office drudgery could end: Oh well, call it a century.
1 comment:
Thanks for a most interesting post.
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