Category: grotesque

Are there 9 or 10 Snark Hunters?

“The human understanding, once it has adopted opinions, either because they were already accepted and believed, or because it likes them, draws everything else to support and agree with them. And though it may meet a greater number and weight of contrary instances, it will, with great and harmful prejudice, ignore or exclude them by introducing some distinction, in order that the authority of those earlier assumptions may remain intact and unharmed.”

Francis Bacon (from Novum Organum, 1620)

 
Since 1876, most readers of The Hunting of the Snark assume that the Snark hunting party consists of 10 members.

However, probably for a good reason, only 9 members can be seen in Henry Holiday’s illustrations (engraved by Joseph Swain) to Lewis Carroll’s ballad. Since 1876 almost all Snark readers have accepted that there seems to be no Boots in any of Holiday’s illustrations. I think that the Snark hunting party consists of 9 members only (including the Beaver). But if you, as almost everybody else, prefer 10 Snark hunters, that’s fine too. Lewis Carroll gave us a choice – incidentally or intentionally in the 9th and the 10th line of his tragicomedy.

Let us take all the crew members in order of their introduction:

  1. The Bellman, their captain.
  2. The Boots, a maker of Bonnets and Hoods.
    (A correct non-sequential interlaced portmanteau can be built from Bonnets and Hoods.)
    The correct non-sequential interlaced portmanteau 'Boots' can be built from 'Bonnets and Hoods'. The lines 9 and 10 from Lewis Carroll's 'The Hunting of the Snark' are ambiguous: 009 The crew was complete: it included a Boots — 010 A maker of Bonnets and Hoods — Two interpretations are possible: • The usual interpretation is that this is the introduction of two crew members: The 'Boots' and the 'maker of Bonnets and Hoods'. • Alternatively, the two lines also can be interpreted as the introduction of a 'Boots', who is a 'maker of Bonnets and Hoods'. The table below shows the names N of all crew members and how some properties P of the members are positioned besides the names of the members. crew | 10 members | 9 members ---------------------------------- Bellman| PNP|PNP Boots | N | NP maker of Bonnets and Hoods | N | - Barrister | NP | NP Billiard-marker | NP | NP Broker | NP | NP Banker | NP | NP Beaver | NP | NP Baker | PNP | PNP Butcher | PNP | PNP See also: https://snrk.de/boots-bonnetmaker/#9or10 and the much larger page https://snrk.de/page_boots-bonnetmaker/
  3. The Barrister, brought to arrange their disputes, but repeatedly complained about the Beaver’s evil lace-making.
  4. The Broker, to value their goods.
  5. The Billiard-marker, whose skill was immense, might perhaps have won more than his share. From John Tufail I learned that in Henry Holiday’s illustration the Billiard-marker is preparing a cheat.
  6. The Banker, engaged at enormous expense, had the whole of their cash in his care.
  7. The Beaver, that paced on the deck or would sit making lace in the bow and had often (the Bellman said) saved them from wreck, though none of the sailors knew how.
  8. The Baker, also addressed by “Fry me!”, “Fritter my wig!”, “Candle-ends” as well as “Toasted-cheese”, and known for joking with hyenas and walking paw-in-paw with a bear.
  9. The Butcher, who only could kill Beavers, but later became best friend with the lace-making animal.

More about the cast of Lewis Carroll and Henry Holiday’s Snark tragicomedy:
⭐ 9 or 10 hunters?
⭘  Care and Hope
⭘  The Snark
⭘  The Boojum

For your comments: Bluesky

2017-11-06, updated: 2026-02-11

Failure?

https://bookbarnbbi.wordpress.com/2017/12/01/pick-of-the-darwin-room/:

[…] When [The Hunting of the Snark] was published in 1876 it was illustrated by Henry Holiday who, though a very talented artist, failed to capture the surreal nature of Carroll’s poem. The illustrations for this edition however, provided by Gormenghast author Mervyn Peake, are the perfect accompaniment. Peake’s drawings have an uneasy bubbling quality, blending with the silly and macabre feel of the words […]

Nothing against Mervyn Peake’s illustrations, but already this illustration (even without the yellow lines and dots which I added) might contain more elements of “surreal nature” than what you find in Mervyn Peake’s illustrations. I like those playful weeds (or animals?) in the lower left corner of Holiday’s illustration.

That’s not the only thing which that corner has to offer.

Another popular path (not) to understand The Hunting of the Snark has been stated more than three times: Some call Carroll’s poem “nonsense”. It isn’t.

Anyway, I don’t think that Holiday failed to convey to us graphically what Carroll meant. The price for his achievement perhaps was that Holiday’s illustrations are less eye pleasing than illustrations like Peake’s.

Holiday’s illustrations are as grotesque as Carroll’s poem.

 
2018-02-16, updated: 2020-02-01

The Broker and the Monk

In this image one of the elements has been marked (orange frame) which Henry Holiday borrowed from a 17th century painting (by an anonymous artist). This might be a bit different from the borrowing described by T. S. Eliot in 1920. In the example shown here, the borrowing of the pictorial allusion is inconspicuous. It doesn’t enrich Holiday’s illustration. It’s only purpose might be that of a signpost pointing to another work of art.

more.
 

2017-09-27, update: 2019-02-25

The Image Breakers

  • [left]: The Banker after his encounter with the Bandersnatch, depicted in Henry Holiday’s illustration (woodcut by Joseph Swain) to the chapter The Banker’s Fate in Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark.
  • [right]: a slightly horizontally compressed rendering of The Imagebreakers (1566-1568, aka Allegory of Iconoclasm), an etching by Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder.

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