Category Archives: British children’s books

Before Viral Animal Videos: Andrew Lang’s Animal Story Book (1896)

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Any old family vacation house by the sea should have a neglected cache of old books somewhere and I discovered one in the  second story bedroom, where  I picked out The Animal Story Book edited by Andrew Lang.  It looks exactly like one of his Colour Fairy Books because H. J. Ford, the main illustrator of the set, decorated this volume as well.  His design of a huge lion roaring at the moon on the dark blue binding is still imposing even though the gilt has faded on the shabby cloth.

I expected more  selections about animals famous in Classical literature like Alexander the Great’s horse Bucephalus or Androcles’ lion.  Instead travelers’ tall tales about blasting off the heads of gigantic pythons or the predations of blood-thirsty packs of wolves are carefully balanced by ones about animal loyalty and sagacity.  One about a friendship between man and beast, another about an unlikely bond between species, and a third about a perfidious bird and obedient dog are worth sharing.

Here is a delightful anecdote about Sadi, the Indian elephant in  the 6th Duke of Devonshire’s menagerie of exotic animals:

 This lucky captive had a roomy house of its own built expressly for it in the park, a field to walk about in, and a keeper to look after it, and to do a little light gardening besides.  This man treated the elephant (a female) with great kindness, and they soon became the best of friends.  The moment he called out she stopped and at his bidding would take a broom in her trunk and sweep the dead leaves off the grass; after which she would carefully carry after him a large pail of water for him to re-fill his watering pot—for in those days the garden-hose was not invented.  When the tidying up was all done, the elephant was given a carrot and some of the water, but very often the keeper would amuse himself with handing her a soda-water bottle tightly corked, telling her to empty it.  This she did by placing the bottle in an inclined position on the ground and holding it at the proper angle with her foot, while she twisted the cork out with her trunk.  This accomplished, she would empty all the water into her trunk without spilling a drop and then hand the battle back to her keeper.

Sadi died in 1829 and is supposed to have been buried at Chiswick, although the site of her grave has not been found.

“A Strange Tiger,” the biography of a famous tiger sent as a gift to George III in 1790 and resident of the Tower Menagerie, comes from the Rev. William Bingley’s Animal Biography in three volumes, first published in 1803 and reissued multiple times in the 1800s.

Unlike most of its tribe, the little tiger soon made itself at home on board ship, and as it was too small to do much harm, it was allowed to about loose and played with anybody who had time for a game.  It generally like to sleep with the sailors in their hammocks, and they would often pretend to use it for a pillow, as it lay at full length on the deck.  Partly out of fun, and partly because it was its nature so to do, the tiger would every now and then steal a piece of meat, if it found one handy.  One day it was caught red-handed by the carpenter, who took the beef right out of its mouth, and gave it a good beating, but instead of the man getting bitten for his pains, as he might have expected, the tiger took his punishment quite meekly, and bore the carpenter no grudge after.  One of its favourite tricks was to run out to the very end of the bowsprit, and stand there looking over the sea, and there was no place in the whole ship to which it would not climb when the fancy took it.  But on the whole, the little tiger preferred to have company in its gambols, and was especially fond of dogs, of which there were several on board.  They would chase each other and roll over together just like two puppies, and during the ten month or so that the voyage from China lasted, they had time enough to become fast friends.  When the vessel reached London, the tiger was at once taken to the Tower, which was the Zoological Gardens of those days.  The little fellow did not mind, for he was always ready to take what came and make the best of it, and all the keepers grew as fond of him as the sailors had been.

This sounds quite unbelievable, but historians of the wild animal trade during this time have established it was normal to give the animals their freedom on board ship unless circumstances warranted otherwise…

“Signora and Lori,” which Leonora Lang translated from the 10th number of Deutsche Blaetter (1867) is a variation on those fables in which one clever but unscrupulous animal takes advantage of  a more amiable one.

A German gentleman owned a handsome parrot who was a great talker and a poodle Signora Patti named after the great soprano.  He trained the dog to fetch a basket at the command, “Go to the baker.”  When she dropped it in front of him and patted the floor with her paw, he would drop money into it, which was the sign for her to run to the shop and return with cakes.   Sometimes her master sent her without any money, saying “On the tick.”  The baker would fill the order and put it on account.  Either way, the Signora was rewarded with cake.   The clever parrot quickly learned the commands and turned the situation to its advantage.

But it was not only for pastime that Lori exercised his gift; the cunning bird used it for the benefit of his greedy beak.  It began to happen often to the master to find that his private account-book, carefully kept in the smallest details, did not agree well with that of his neighbor the baker.  The Signora, declared the baker, had become most accomplished in the art of running up a long bill, and always, of course, at her master’s orders.  Only the master, when he looked over the reckoning, growled to himself: “My neighbor is a rogue; he chalks up the amount double.”

How very much was he astonished, then, and how quickly were his suspicions turned into laughter, when he beheld, through a half-open door, the following absurd scene.

It was one fine morning, and Lori sat upon the top of his cage, calling out in his shrillest tones: ”Signora, Signora!” The poodle hastened to present herself before him, wagging her tail, and Lori continued, “go to the Baker.”  The Signora fetched the little basket from the place, and put it before her tyrant, scratching her paw on the floor to ask for money.

“On tick!” was Lori’s prompt and brief remark: the Signora seized the basket, and rushed out of the door.  Before long she returned, laid the basket, full of the little cakes before the parrot, and looked with a beseeching air for the reward of her toil.

But the wicked Lori received her with a sharp, ”Get out,” putting her to” flight, and proceeded to enjoy his ill-gotten gains in solitude.

The situation surely demanded that Lori be punished.   If it is any consolation, the anecdote is  more good-humored than La Fontaine’s well-known verse fable, “The Monkey and the Cat,” because the duped animal isn’t hurt (the cat who pulls the roasting chesnuts out of the fire for the monkey is badly burned).

Lang’s avuncular introduction has not aged very well: “We now present you (in return for a coin or two) a book about the friends of children and of fairies—the beasts.The stories are all true, more or less, but it is possible that Monsieur Dumas and Monsieur Theophile Gautier rather improved upon their tales….There ought to be a moral; if so, it probably is that we should be kind to all sorts of animals, and, above all, knock trout on the head when they are caught, and don’t let the poor things jump about till they die.”  The portrayal of Indigenous peoples, South Asians, and Blacks in word and image leave something to be desired by today’s standards.  But at least Lang graciously credits contributions by others, including his indefatigable wife Leonora, who provided “all the rest.”  How the appetite for these kinds of stories about animals became so beguiling to people that they crossed media is the subject for another time.

 

 

The King of Barbary in Dick Whittington and His Cat: From Caliph to Chinese Emperor

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There’s no magic in the rags-to-riches story of  Dick Whittington, thrice Lord Mayor of London, shown at the left at the height of his fame from a chapbook ca. 1808 published by T. Sabine and son (Cotsen 154124).  The orphan owes his fortune to a cat whose special power is the ability to slaughter enormous numbers of mice and rats in short order.  The scene, which realigns the boy’s stars, is set in a faraway land with there are no felines, but many of us probably don’t remember it is somewhere in the East. The history of its illustration is interesting for a twist that seems to have gone unnoticed.

Here’s a summary of the events leading up to the scene. Dick was a scullion employed by Mr. Fitzwarren, a wealthy merchant.  His life was made miserable by the tyrannical cook and the vermin overunning his attic room. With a penny received for an errand, he purchased a cat, who eradicated them  When Fitzwarren had a ship ready to depart to foreign lands, he always invited every member of the household to invest.  As capital, Dick put in  the cat, being his only piece of property (illustrated to the left from The famous and remarkable history of Sir Richard Whittingon (1656). The master’s ship was driven ashore on a part of the Barbary Coast where no Englishmen had landed.  The resident Moors received the British graciously and the King was so pleased by the goods he was shown that the captain and the factor were invited back to the palace.  A sumptuous feast was laid out, but no one could enjoy a bite because a torrent of rats and mice befouled and devoured everything.  The king vowed it would be worth half his treasury to control the beasts, so the factor had the brilliant idea of bringing Dick’s cat to the palace.   Puss was expecting kittens very soon, but in spite of her condition, she was so efficient that a  king’s ransom was given for her and her litter in order to decimate the country’s population of rats and mice.

How has this scene showing an exchange between two cultures, religions and races been depicted over time?  Given the outline of the story, it lends itself to dramatic treatment rather than cultural commentary and that is how it was presented in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century chapbooks.  The first one comes from The famous and remarkable History of Sir Richard Whittington (1656), the second from The Children in the Wood, to which is added The History of R. Whittington (London: Sabine and Son, ca. 1810) The one on top ignores the text and does not darken the King of Barbary’s skin–it’s his headware and slippers with the pointed toes that mark him as an exotic foreigner.  In the second cut, turbans capped with crowns and skin color distinguish the King and Queen from the European visitor, but all the figures have been cut in such a rudimentary fashion that it would be difficult to see in them reflections of actual attitudes towards the other.

Although smaller than the first two examples, these blocks from an early nineteenth provincial chapbook, Whittington and his Cat (Otley, York: W. Walker, ca. 1820: Cotsen 150398)  are by two hands.  But even the less accomplished of the two represents the European as more noble and civilized than his Black Moorish hosts, whose features look as if they have been gouged into the block.  Neither the king nor queen wear the flowing robes associated with Moors and it’s hard to say if they are supposed to wearing the native dress of a particular country or if they came out of the cutter’s imagination.

The hand-colored engraved frontispiece of The History of Whittington and his Cat (London: Orlando Hodgson, 1833: Cotsen 95990) above  transformed the King of Barbary into the Emperor of Morocco, who seems to be wearing vaguely Chinese finery and forsaken a turban.   What has precipitated this change?   Perhaps that this illustration was influenced by a popular stage production. While the publisher Hodgson, is best known for his satirical political prints, he also issued toy theaters, many of whose scripts were based on the best known contemporary plays, and versions of fairy tales not taken from the originals, but from the versions that held the stage for some time.

December 26th 1815, the pantomime Harlequin Whittington premiered at  Covent Garden Theater, praised by the European Magazine for the beautiful scenery and well-staged stunts, which included a balloon ascent and a final production number punctuated by fireworks.    In the cast was the beloved clown Joey Grimaldi who delivered the showstopping number, “All the World’s in Paris.”    There was no  Emperor of Morocco listed as a character in the early playbills I could access, but it may have been better for business to emphasize the spectacular effects and Grimaldi’s hit song.

But the subsequent history of Whittington on the stage suggests that the scene where the foreign king is astounded by a cat would continue to change. The folk tale quickly became established in the nineteenth century as among the most popular subjects for pantomime productions. While the Emperor of Morocco can be found in the programs’ dramatic personae, it is clear that the character no longer owed much to the traditional chapbook. Late in the Victorian period, the role was assigned to the First Boy,  a charming young actress whose legs could be shown to advantage by the costume designer (this drawing is reproduced from the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum).  And a highly unscientific search for pictures of the Emperor in contemporary productions did not (unsurprisingly) turn up Black actors or white men in black face playing the part.