PETER PAN AND ALICE
This went much further than Rackham would have done, for he had no wish to set himself up against Tenniel. He would have been well content with the verdict of the Daily Telegraph, that it would be fortunate for Lewis Carroll’s memory if his masterpiece encountered ‘no less inspired interpreters than Mr Arthur Rackham’. When Punch published a hostile cartoon by E. T. Reed, another illustrator, H. M. Brock, told Rackham that he was ‘disgusted’.
‘It seems to me like a piece of exceedingly bad taste, to say nothing of its unfairness. … Of course, you were prepared for everyone to say that no one could ever approach Tenniel etc. – they always do in such a case – but it seems to me that if comparisons – always “odorous” – must be drawn, they might be done decently. I should like too, to say how much I personally like your drawings. I would not have missed them in spite of all that Tenniel has had to say on the subject. …”
Brock’s opinion coincided with the general verdict on Rackham’s Alice. He has certainly made the greatest impression of all Tenniel’s multitude of successors. The Rackham volume is still in print with Heinemann (1960) and the illustrations have appeared in American, French and German editions (see pages 77 and 79). The drawings were successfully shown at the Leicester Galleries. Nevertheless, Rackham was somewhat shaken and disappointed by the adverse criticism he received, and he did not proceed to illustrate Through The Looking-Glass, although Macmillan (Lewis Carroll’s original publishers) offered in 1907 to produce his illustrations of the Looking-Glass before the copyright had expired, in a uniform edition with Heinemann’s Alice – a remarkable gesture of confidence.
Rackham’s model for Alice was Doris (Jane) Dommett, who told the story of her sittings to the Evening News (14th December 1939) after Rackham’s death. ‘He chose me from a number of little girls,’74
