ARTICLE

Aoife Leahy, Ruskin and the Architectural Space of Wonderland

The celebrated critic John Ruskin is best known for his influential theories on art and architecture, although his views on social equality and access to education are also significant. Ruskin was an author of children’s stories to a limited extent, since his fable The King of the Golden River was eventually published in 1850 (dated 1851). He went on to write the much more unconventional The Ethics of the Dust (1866), a series of dialogues between a lecturer and a group of children who wish to learn about geology, the science of the natural world. Yet it seems to have been his writings on art and architecture that interested Lewis Carroll the most, maybe because Ruskin taught drawing in Alice Liddell’s home. It may also be true that any one who was interested in visual culture had to take note of Ruskin, and Carroll was a keen photographer. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Carroll’s poems “Phantasmagoria” (1869) and “Hiawatha’s Photographing” (1869) include references to the aesthetics of Ruskin in a humorous but ultimately good-spirited manner. From the evidence of Carroll’s own texts – “Hiawatha’s Photographing” actually names works by Ruskin – his interest was focused on the early and highly influential writing that the critic produced in the 1840s and 1850s

As Tim Hilton and John Batchelor have both pointed out, Alice’s father Henry Liddell was Ruskin’s tutor at one time in Christ Church, Oxford. He encouraged Ruskin’s talent and promoted his architectural drawings (Hilton 2000, 47-8 and Batchelor 2000, 37-8). It was this early connection that led to Ruskin giving drawing lessons to the Liddell children, at a time when he was becoming increasingly famous due to the success of his critical writings. Ruskin’s Ethics may provide some insights into his effectiveness as a teacher, since the lecturer responds well to questions from his students and does not demand silence from children. The subtitle of the book is Ten Lectures to Little Housewives on the Elements of Crystallisation, but it certainly seems that Ruskin believed in interactive lectures. Alice in Wonderland apparently considers the effect of Ruskin’s face-to-face lessons when put into practice, while “Phantasmagoria” and “Hiawatha’s Photographing” deal instead with the popular and perhaps misguided interpretations of Ruskin’s published writings.

In Carroll’s comic poem “Phantasmagoria”, the conversation about architecture between a friendly ghost and a human involves Ruskin. Examining the home he has arrived to haunt, the little ghost remarks on the impractical design.

“Your room’s an inconvenient size:
It’s neither snug nor spacious.
“That narrow window, I expect,
Serves but to let the dusk in-”
“But please,” said I, to recollect
‘Twas fashioned by an architect
Who pinned his faith on Ruskin! (lines 74-80, Canto III)

Ruskin advocated Gothic principles of architecture, with decorative arches and narrow windows and doors added for their visual beauty rather than their practicality. It is true that inadequately sized windows are a particular problem in Carroll’s universe, since one never knows when one might need to fit through them. In Sylvie and Bruno (1889), the children must “climb in at the window” (133) to meet the Other Professor when it transpires that there is no door to his room, only a “solid wall” (133). Although he is presumably insubstantial, the ghost of “Phantasmagoria” may resort to similar methods of entrance, slipping in like the dusk. In any case, he replies:

“Constructed by whatever law,
So poor a job I never saw.” (lines 83-84, Canto III)

While the attack on the construction seems an unflattering review of Ruskin’s architectural principles, the ghost is belligerent and unreasonable at this stage of the poem. Although he considers himself an expert since he has haunted many old and new dwellings, he is a comic figure who is not reliable and who has, in fact, arrived at the wrong house on this occasion. The human is perhaps more reverential, defending his home by linking it to a famous authority. Carroll’s own view is difficult to discern between these two biased speakers.

If “Phantasmagoria” suggests that Ruskin’s name has become known to the spirit world, “Hiawatha’s Photographing” establishes just how famous he really is in Victorian society. The poem even names his best known publications, which have all been read by the Stunning-Cantab (Cantab being an abbreviation for Cantabrigian or scholar of Cambridge), the son of the family that is to be photographed. Each member of the family, in turn, assumes a ridiculous or unflattering pose. The Son is no exception:

Next the Son, the Stunning-Cantab;
He suggested curves of beauty,
Curves pervading all his figure,
Which the eye might follow onward,
Till they centred in the breast-pin,
Centred in the golden breast-pin.
He had learnt it all from Ruskin
(Author of the ‘Stones of Venice,’
‘Seven Lamps of Architecture’
‘Modern Painters,’ and some others);
And perhaps he had not fully understood his author’s meaning;
But whatever was the reason,
All was fruitless, as the picture
Ended in an utter failure. (lines 55-69)

Because of Ruskin’s fame, the foolish young son takes inspiration from such texts as the three volumes of The Stones of Venice (1851-53) as he poses in readiness for his photograph to be taken. The joke of these lines seems to be that Ruskin generally had very little interest in the human figure. His curves of beauty relate to architectural lines rather than to people’s poses. “The Law of Curvature” in The Elements of Drawing (1857), for instance, takes a “bridge of Turner’s” (176) as the starting point for a discussion of why curves are pleasing. The absurd poses adopted by the son are almost certainly not shapes that were intended for a person, but for an architectural form, hence he has not understood Ruskin’s meaning. Naturally, the Stunning-Cantab does not look his best in the resulting photograph. There is an incompatibility, it seems, between the human body and how it conforms – or fails to conform – with beautiful architecture.

The texts that Carroll lists include The Stones of Venice and The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849), Ruskin’s famous books on architecture. The various volumes of Modern Painters (1843 and on) certainly address the art of painting, but are notable for Ruskin’s praise of Joseph Mallord William Turner’s landscapes and cityscapes. While Turner often painted in a famously hazy style, he also tended to pick out tiny architectural details in his paintings. Ruskin could not relate to Turner’s paintings of prostitutes (Hewison et al 2000, 62), however, preferring those pictures that ignored humanity’s place in the world. Even in Ruskin’s Pre-Raphaelite writings, remarkably little time is spent in discussing the human figure. When analysing and defending the early Pre-Raphaelite paintings, Ruskin tends to focus on tiny details such as highly articulated leaves or birds’ nests, the kind of subjects he included in his own watercolours. There is little that could be taken as advice on how to pose for a contemporary photograph, unless the Stunning-Cantab is applying Ruskin’s theories in an inappropriate context.

The Stunning-Cantab may be less an individual than a type, however. This is immediately suggested by “stunning,” since Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s female models were known as his stunners; the gender twist only adds to the humour. Jan Marsh has pointed out that Rossetti agreed to sit for Carroll’s portrait photography in 1863 and in exchange, Carroll took useful photographs of his drawings (Marsh 1999, 271). Early Pre-Raphaelite models were of the emaciated, Christina Rossetti variety: figures so thin that they could have squeezed through a Gothic window without any difficulty. Second generation Pre-Raphaelites, however, led by Rossetti from the original Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, gave their models curves. While this added certain sensuality to later Pre-Raphaelite paintings, the effect could also be disturbing. Rossetti’s figures often twisted their necks to one side or held themselves at strange angles, suggesting a kind of bodily contortion to some viewers.

Ruskin did not approve of the new direction that Rossetti took in his work, although ironically, he continued to be one of Rossetti’s most important influences and patrons. The first volume of Modern Painters had inspired Rossetti and his friends to form the Brotherhood that Ruskin admired, but Rossetti left his early style of painting behind him from the late 1850s on. Perhaps Carroll is suggesting that Rossetti and his followers came to misunderstand or misinterpret Ruskin over time, adapting the curves of Ruskinian architecture to the figures of their 1860s art, with ridiculous results. Jeffrey Stern has noted Carroll’s interest in Rossetti’s art and the influence that Rossetti had on Carroll’s own drawings (Stern 1976, 161-80). With guidance from Carroll, Arthur B. Frost later added an illustration of an aesthetic Stunning-Cantab in “Hiawatha’s Photographing” for Carroll’s collection Rhyme? and Reason? (1882) (see Demakos 2000, for a discussion of the illustrations). The illustration shows the Son, who in the 1880s now resembles the young Oscar Wilde, leaning his body forward in a striking but impossible pose.

In his preface to The Stones of Venice, Ruskin acknowledges that people must accommodate themselves in houses, for “men may live without buying pictures or statues, but in architecture, all must in some way commit themselves” (x-xi). Yet Ruskin’s discomfort in considering the human body means that it may be difficult for him to imagine how people will fit in those buildings on a practical level. He would prefer to consider what the creation of beauty says about the human spirit. Beautiful dwellings are pleasing to behold in Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but they are not designed to fit the human Alice. After following the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole, Alice “found herself in a long, low hall, which was lit up by a row of lamps hanging from the roof” (15). The description is quite similar to the Gothic hallways found in novels such as Charlotte Brontё’s Jane Eyre (1848). The scene is visually seductive, and Alice is keen to explore the many doorways that lead off the hall, but they are impractical and designed so that she cannot fit through them. The courtyard garden tantalises her, but she can only look. What is successful on an aesthetic level fails to accommodate a human being, at least until Alice is able to shrink herself down to a non-human size.

Alice’s experiences in the White Rabbit’s “neat little house” (38) are ones that anyone might have in a quaint rather than practical space, but to a highly exaggerated extent. The ceiling is low, so she must manoeuvre with difficulty in a confined space, for “she found her head pressing against the ceiling, and had to stoop to save her neck from being broken” (39). The house quickly forces her out of a natural human pose into one that follows the shape of the building:

[A]s a last resource, she put one arm of the window, and one foot up the chimney, and said to herself “Now I can do no more, whatever happens. What will become of me? [….] Presently the Rabbit came up to the door, and tried to open it; but as the door opened inwards, and Alice’s elbow was pressed hard against it, that attempt proved a failure. (40)

The feelings of confinement are familiar to anyone that has felt trapped in a small space. It is notable, however, that like the Stunning-Cantab of “Hiawatha’s Photographing,” Alice has followed the curves of architecture and twisted herself into a ridiculous pose. Has Ruskin been inadvertently responsible for Alice’s dilemma too? Alice is convinced that her mistake of squeezing her form into the shape of the house will mean that she will “always [….] have lessons to learn” (40) until she comforts herself that there will be no room for schoolbooks, so classes will be impossible. Alice Liddell’s drawing teacher was Ruskin, and misunderstanding his principles of drawing by transposing architectural lines onto an unsuitable form would indeed mean that she still had lessons to learn. Perhaps she was also prone to sketching people that were too big in relation to their houses, a common practice amongst children who are learning to draw. Interestingly, in his Preface to The Elements of Drawing, Ruskin claims that he has deliberately omitted human figure drawing since “I do not think figures, as chief subjects, can be drawn to any good purpose by an amateur” (18).

Martin Gardner has pointed out that the following remark by the Mock Turtle is a joke identifying the “tall and thin” (102n) John Ruskin:

The Drawling-master was an old conger-eel, that used to come once a week: he taught us Drawling, Stretching and Fainting in Coils. (102)

In other words, Ruskin taught drawing, sketching and painting in oils. Perhaps the real Alice sometimes misapplied what she had learnt. Like all children, Alice thinks about avoiding her lessons. Nevertheless, John Ruskin was an entertaining teacher and lecturer to Alice Liddell and all the children and adults he educated. He famously championed the performance lecture, bringing interesting props on stage during public talks to captivate the attention of his audience. Much academic interest has recently been shown in the Ruskin’s relationship and contribution to the performance lecture (see for instance Sharon Aronofsky Weltman, Performing the Victorian: John Ruskin and Identity in Theatre, Science and Education). Perhaps Ruskin can be compared to the Professor and the Other Professor in Sylvie and Bruno, as they plan the ultimate enhanced lecture that will follow a ball and a banquet (136-8).

Back in Wonderland, the fictional Alice has to struggle with a narrow window, now that she is wedged into the shape of the house. Her arm fills the whole window, her foot is up the chimney and no one else may be accommodated in the building. The White Rabbit attempts to climb in the window and is thrown into what sounds to Alice like a cucumber frame. Shrinking herself down again enables Alice to escape at last. Before long, she comes across the March Hare’s house and it is striking that although he is mad, he has had the sense to choose a home that is entirely built to accommodate his shape. Alice notes that “the chimneys were shaped like ears and the roof was thatched with fur” (69). In contrast, a human like Alice will contort herself in an unsuitable dwelling to “save her neck from being broken” (39). If her neck were indeed permanently “broken” Alice might come to resemble a Rossetti figure, with a head that is strangely tilted forever.

Carroll may have poked fun at Gothic or Gothic Revival architecture, as many other writers have done, yet he did not appreciate more modern substitutions. His monograph on “The New Belfry of Christ Church, Oxford” (1872) comments on the use of an inappropriate new belfry that was unimaginatively shaped like a cube (see Gardner 1992, 116-8). The practical and utilitarian belfry is less attractive than something quaint and inconvenient. On this point Carroll and Ruskin seem united since Ruskin did not approve of modern constructs. Carroll’s references to Ruskin are tinged with satire, but ultimately they feel more affectionate than critical. Perhaps this is because Ruskin, like Carroll, always tried to educate through entertainment. It is how others interpret or misinterpret Ruskin that seems to cause problems, in any case. The architect of “Phantasmagoria” “pinned his faith on Ruskin” but it was his own responsibility to design a house that was comfortable as well as attractive; the Son of “Hiawatha’s Photographing” “had not understood his author’s meaning” as he posed foolishly for his photograph; Alice anticipates that she still has lessons to learn.

It is also true that Wonderland itself could be considered quite Ruskinian in many ways. Ruskin had a great affinity with the minute details of the natural world and noticed things that few people were capable of seeing. His own watercolours pick out the kinds of small subjects that might fascinate a child – a rock, a tiny flower that no other adult would notice (see Hewison et al 2000, 245-69, for reproductions of Ruskin’s paintings). If Carroll’s novels break down the boundaries between literature that is aimed at adults and literature that is aimed at children, Ruskin’s art has the power to restore a childlike vision to the adult viewer. In Wonderland, Alice can move from curious architectural constructs to the Caterpillar’s mushroom, as if she shares Ruskin’s combined interest in quaint buildings and a minute attention to nature. Inconvenient as the spaces are in the dwellings she encounters, they are vastly entertaining and allow for adventure. Utilitarian houses that allow children to simply walk through doors might be useful in the real world, but in Wonderland, there is space for the quaint and impractical. If Carroll is the architect of Wonderland, perhaps these lines can also be applied to his fantastical land:

‘Twas fashioned by an architect
Who pinned his faith on Ruskin. (“Phantasmagoria,” lines 79-80, Canto III)

Carroll was not a true authority on architecture, so it might be fair to say that there are limits to any insights into Ruskin’s principles that can be taken from a poem like “Phantasmagoria.” Carroll knew more about posing sitters in front of his camera than about constructing buildings. Yet the idea that art and architecture have become confused as people try to twist themselves into Ruskin’s “curves of beauty” in “Hiawatha’s Photography” is a striking notion and is the most memorable explanation of the later poses favoured by the Pre-Raphaelites that I have ever come across. It is amusing to imagine the idea occurring to Carroll as he took a real photograph. Alice in Wonderland takes the imaginative possibilities faced by a girl who is forced to negotiate with odd buildings to the extreme, turning the real world difficulties of coping with small rooms and awkward corners into a surreal adventure. If Ruskin the “Stretching” (Gardner 2001, 102) Sketching Master who inspired Rossetti is blamed he is also credited, as Alice stretches and shapes herself into the fascinating architectural spaces of Wonderland.

References

Aronofsky Weltman, Sharon. 2007. Performing the Victorian: John Ruskin and Identity in Theatre, Science and Education. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
Bachelor, John. 2000. John Ruskin: No Wealth But Life. London: Chatto & Windus.
Carroll, Lewis. 2001. “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”. In The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition, ed. Martin Gardner, 3-132. London: Penguin.
———. 1911. “Hiawatha’s Photographing.” In Phantasmagoria and Other Poems, 66-77. London: Macmillan.
———. 1911. “Phantasmagoria.” In Phantasmagoria and Other Poems, 1-57. London: Macmillan.
———. 1988. Sylvie and Bruno. New York: Dover.
Demakos, Matthew. 2002. Hiawatha’s Annotating. The Carrollian: The Lewis Carroll Journal 10: 10-56.
Gardner, Martin. 2001. Annotations. In The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition, Lewis Carroll, 7-132. London: Penguin
———. 1992. “Minimal Sculpture”. In Fractal Music, Hypercards and More… Mathematical Recreations from Scientific American Magazine, Martin Gardner, 110-132. New York: Freeman.
Hewison, Robert, Warrell, Ian & Wildman, Stephen. 2000. Ruskin, Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites. London: Tate Gallery.
Hilton, Tim. 2000. Ruskin: The Early Years. New Haven: Yale UP.
Marsh, Jan. 1999. Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Painter and Poet. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson.
Ruskin, John. 1971. The Elements of Drawing. New York: Dover.
———. 1866. The Ethics of the Dust: Ten Lectures to Little Housewives on the Elements of Crystallisation. London: Smith & Elder.
———. 1851. The King of the Golden River. London: Smith & Elder.
———. 1873. Modern Painters. Vol I-V. London: Smith & Elder.
———. 1851. Preface to The Stones of Venice. Vol. 1. v-xi. 1906. London: George Allen.
———. 1851-3. The Stones of Venice. Vol. 1-3. 1906. London: George Allen.
Stern, Jeffrey. 1976. “Lewis Carroll the Pre-Raphaelite: ‘Fainting in Coils’.” In Lewis Carroll Observed: A Collection of Unpublished Photographs, Drawings, Poetry and New Essays, ed. Edward Guilano, 161-180. New York: Clarkson N. Potter.

Aoife Leahy is Associate Editor (Ireland) for The Oscholars. Dr Leahy has taught English Literature in UCD, UL and IADT. She is the President of the National Association of English Studies, which is the Southern Ireland affiliate of the European Society for the Study of English.