Fashioning Alice

The Career of Lewis Carroll's Icon, 1860-1901

Kiera Vaclavik

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781474290395
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

150 years after Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was first published, Lewis Carroll's eponymous heroine has become one of the most familiar figures in the cultural landscape. The enduringly iconic figure of the Victorian child, Alice has inspired countless fashion designers, illustrators and stylists. The 'Alice Look' has been embraced across the world, by young and old alike, and by both the feted and the forgotten. Fashioning Alice is the first book to chart the emergence of Alice as a style icon. Kiera Vaclavik traces the evolution of Alice's visual identity in the nineteenth century and explores the myriad ways in which she was dressed – on the page, on the stage, and in the home. The book also draws on historical sources to examine amateur performance and play not just in the UK but in the USA, Japan and Australia. Illustrated throughout, Fashioning Alice is a ground-breaking exploration of Alice's visual career that offers a compelling case study of the intersections between fashion and fiction.

1

Carroll, Dress and the ‘Original’ Tenniel Alice

‘…dreaming after a fashion’

Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Introduction

As Richard Kelly (1976: 63) observes, Carroll writes very little about Alice’s appearance within Wonderland and Looking-Glass, or indeed elsewhere. He focuses instead on his heroine’s thoughts and speech, on how she moves or reacts to her various interlocutors. At first glance, it would therefore seem that the way Alice looks is of no import to the author, but a matter merely for the illustrator. John Tenniel did unquestionably play a vital role in the creation of the visual presentation of the character: his lines trace out the shape of her skirt and puffs of her sleeves, and it was Tenniel who produced the first publicly available and still widely recognized image of Alice. As Austin Dobson’s much-quoted poem of 1907 emphasizes, it quickly became difficult to dissociate Tenniel from the Alice books: ‘Enchanting Alice! Black and white has made your deeds perennial; And nought save “Chaos and Old Night” can part you now from Tenniel.’¹ But if Tenniel’s role cannot be underestimated, Carroll’s relative silence on Alice’s external features should in no way be seen as a sign of disinterest. On the contrary, dress pervades and unites his artistic output and preoccupations.

This chapter focuses for the most part on the very earliest manifestations of Alice, up to and including the publication of Wonderland: the Alice spun out of words spoken aloud in the summer of 1862, the Alice drawn by Carroll in the ‘Under Ground’ manuscript and finally by Tenniel for the published book. As opposed to later chapters, which explore hundreds of often neglected items, the focus here is on just two sets of extremely well-known and familiar images. Due in large part to the loss of correspondence between Carroll and Tenniel, a great deal of this chapter involves a disconcerting amount of peering into gaps. At times, we shall even add to the number of imponderable questions in the belief that tentative answers can at times be beneficial – so long as they are clearly presented as such. We shall turn the microscope on the concrete images we do have and, in order to best draw out their significance, shall place them within the wider context of children’s publishing and dress of the period, and of Carroll’s attitude towards fashion and dress. This aspect of his life and work has been largely unexamined by critics to date, and to do so risks fanning the flames of controversy surrounding Carroll and his dealings with children. But even if the extent of his preoccupation with dress was not itself sufficient reason to examine this subject (and it is), considering it head on also provides a broader context within which to understand the most sensitive issues (i.e. of child nudity and allegations of paedophilia).

Carroll’s artistic interests and aesthetic sense

As has become increasingly clear over recent years, Carroll was a multifaceted man with wide-ranging interests and pursuits. His achievements as a photographer, as well as a writer, are now recognized. The extent of his interest in – indeed passion for – theatre and fine art has been explored in detail (see Lebailly 1997; Foulkes 2005). Carroll visited exhibitions and performances throughout his life, sometimes returning several times to see the same production. And he was far more than a mere onlooker. He spent money on artworks and moved comfortably within artistic circles; many of his friends were actors and artists; he regularly visited studios and was admitted backstage. He was confident enough in his aesthetic sense to make pronouncements about, and suggest improvements to, the works of his friends.² He was himself actively involved in artistic pursuits throughout his life, from the early magazines, letters and notebooks enlivened by his sketches to the figure drawing he continued even after he gave up photography. The overall ‘look’ of the Alice books, as well as the minutiae of layout and design, was, as Jaques and Giddens (2013: 16–17) have recently underlined, a major and ongoing preoccupation.

Carroll’s keen aesthetic sense and artistic sensibility explain in large part his close and sustained interest in issues of dress. This is clear from his activities within the artistic world: on his visits to artists’ studios, he regularly makes a note of the model’s outfit, such as the ‘gorgeous robes’ worn by a ‘handsome’ Egyptian girl in Thomas Heatherley’s studio in December 1881 (D7: 388). Similarly, and despite a highly disingenuous disavowal in a letter of January 1894 in which he asserts that he ‘never even noticed’ the dresses in a play being discussed and advises his correspondent to ‘ask a lady for that sort of criticism’, he frequently remarks upon theatrical costumes (L2: 1005). A production’s ‘dresses’ (usually combined with its ‘scenery’) are variously judged ‘poor’, ‘superb’ or ‘charming’ (with reference to Norma, Henry VIII and Patience respectively (D1: 102, 105; D7: 394)), and Carroll could also note a specific individual’s costume, most vividly in a letter to Helen Fielden concerning Ellen Terry in The Cup: ‘I don’t think I ever saw her look so graceful as she does in the long trailing silk robe (a light sea-green) which she wears as Camma’ (L1: 418, 12 April 1881). The importance he ascribes to costume is clear from his reactions to situations in which it is markedly absent: readings by actresses Fanny Kemble in 1855 and Mary Frances Scott-Siddons in 1868 singularly fail to impress specifically because of the absence of ‘dresses and scenery’ (D1: 62). ‘It was clever, but far below acting’, he observes, ‘if for nothing else, for the sheer impossibility of realising any dramatic illusion at all in broad daylight and without any accessories’ (D6: 36).³ Watching a performance by a child troupe from the wings in 1867, he is particularly struck by the children in their ‘muslin and spangles’ as they circulate in the wings. While pretty on stage, ‘in my opinion they are much better worth looking at when wandering about among the carpenters and scene shifters: the contrast adds wonderfully to their picturesqueness’ (L1: 101; see also D5: 202–5).⁴

It is within the context of theatrical productions that Carroll ([1885] 1974) offers his one sustained reflection on dress, written in November 1885 but never published. In ‘Theatre Dress’ he argues against the intrinsic decency or otherwise of particular articles, shifting the focus from the garments to the spectators and from material objects to emotions and psychology. Although he certainly does not reject censorship, firm rules about hem-lengths or décolletage are, he argues, futile; what matters is the management’s intention in choosing certain forms of dress, and the way they are received by impressionable young men. Any deliberate attempt to arouse should be banned. While admirable for its lack of dogmatism, it is rather dependent on mind reading and on unveiling sensations that managers and members of the audience might not readily share. Despite his appeals to common sense, implementation would have been difficult to say the least.

Carroll is attentive to dress not only within the confines of studio and stage but also in the more or less memorable experiences and encounters of daily life. On meeting Tennyson in 1857, for example, he takes care to describe what the great man is wearing: ‘He was dressed in a loosely-fitting morning coat, common grey flannel waistcoat and trousers, and a carelessly tied black silk neckerchief’ (D3: 111).⁵ In the accounts of his relatively rare travels outside of England, Carroll more than amply provides the splashes of local colour required in any travelogue worth its salt through liberal and close attention to details of dress. As for so many travellers before and since, the reality does not always live up to expectations. Travelling through Scotland in 1857, he finds the natives disappointingly familiar:

There was very little to suggest that the people were anything but English. Kilts seemed rare all the way, bare feet and red hair grew more frequent. At first the bare-footed children were also in rags, and so like ordinary English beggars, but further North I saw many clean, well-dressed, and pretty children with feet and legs bare to the knee. Some were bare-headed as well, and had their hair in nets. (D3: 93–4)

Much more exotic, pleasingly unfamiliar sights were to be seen in his European journey ten years later, most strikingly perhaps at the World’s fair – ‘a wonderful place’ where ‘we were constantly meeting strange beings, with unwholesome complexions and unheard-of costumes’ (D5: 309). Throughout the journey, Carroll is alert to modes of dress, from the Calais marketplace, ‘which was white with the caps of the women, and full of their shrill jabbering’, to the waiters in a restaurant in Nijni Novgorod, ‘all dressed in white tunics, belted at the waist, and white trousers’ (D5: 257, 308). An ordained Anglican deacon, he frequently remarks upon the variations in ecclesiastical garments observed in the services he attends: he admires (D5: 288) the ‘most splendid’ dresses of the officiating ministers in a St Petersburg church, but, at a time when religious garb was a subject of hot debate as part of ritualist reform, goes on to add that ‘the more one sees of these gorgeous services, with their many appeals to the senses, the more, I think one learns to love the plain, simple (but to my mind far more real) service of the English church’.⁶

But it is not just on his travels or lion-hunting expeditions that Carroll is on the lookout for the picturesque, and attentive to appearances in general and dress is particular. As is widely known, and as is also the case for so many Victorians, Carroll’s aesthetic ideal revolves around the figure of the girl child. As Edward Wakeling (2015: 6) points out, this was in part a matter of expediency since boys, so often sent away to boarding school, were much less available for observation, appreciation and artistic portrayal. Carroll’s diaries show his almost systematic evaluation of the appearance of the children he meets or observes, and as time goes by he often compares a new acquaintance with one of the past. He notices clothes and hairstyles, as well as build, complexion and so forth, and has no compunction in judging people on the basis of what he sees. He is as comfortable weighing up specific parts of the bodies of individuals as entire nationalities and groups: ‘After the Russian children, whose type of face is ugly as a rule, and plain as an exception’, he writes in his travel diary, ‘it is quite a relief to get back among Germans, with their large eyes and delicate features’ (D5: 353). As with these comments about Russian children, he is quite capable of blunt critique and condemnation,⁷ but for the most part, he remarks upon the faces, figures and fashions which he admires. Particular forms of dress create visually pleasing scenes: children in fancy dress at Hatfield House in 1874, or later in London, constitute ‘an exceedingly pretty’ and ‘a very pretty sight’ (D6: 375; D7: 398), while the children he sees in nightgowns are ‘very picturesque’, with that same term being used some twelve years apart (D5: 66; D7: 92).⁸ Carroll both enjoys immersion within such scenes and, as we shall see later, seeks to create further such scenes of his own, in photographs or sketches.

Because of its importance in Carroll’s life, dress inevitably made its way into his writing, where it features regularly. As in the unpublished article on stage costume, it can be approached with absolute seriousness and moral earnestness. ‘Theatre Dress’ is characterized by its frank, direct and clear exposition, utterly devoid of flights of fancy or wordplay. For the most part, however, when Carroll writes of dress, the tone is much lighter and the aim is to provoke mirth rather than serious reflecion.⁹ Real-life situations and social conventions involving dress provide the substance of numerous anecdotes and stories, often centring on absurdities, such as the brilliant account of the various attempts to retrieve an overcoat when left alone with Russian speakers in Cronstadt (D5: 342–4). Mundane observations of garments worn and sold and banal social gestures such as making and responding to invitations are enlivened by exaggeration and incongruity. In the Russian journal, for example, Carroll writes that ‘the two things most sold in Konigsberg ought to be (as they occupy about half the shops) gloves and fireworks. Nevertheless I have met many gentlemen walking about without gloves: perhaps they are only used to guard the hands when letting off fireworks’ (D5: 282).¹⁰ In a letter to Evelyn Dubourg in 1880, the requirement to wear evening dress is extensively poked and prodded:

Surely, if you go to morning parties in evening dress (which you do, you know), why not to evening parties in morning dress?

Anyhow, I have been invited to three evening parties in London this year, in each of which ‘Morning Dress’ was specified. … Many and many a time I have received invitations to evening parties wherein the actual colours of the Morning Dress expected were stated!

For instance, ‘Red Scarf: Vest Pink’. (L1: 386–7)

Throughout his life, Carroll’s correspondence frequently incorporates dress-based linguistic play involving the close enmeshing of words and garments. In an early letter to his sister ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Dedication
• Title
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Carroll, Dress and the ‘Original’ Tenniel Alice
• 2 The Evolution of Alice
• 3 Alice in Other Hands
• 4 Dressing as Alice
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright