Hennry Holiday, the Bonnetmaker and a Bonnet

Watch those fingers: The photo has been "photoshopped" (by Henry Holiday or Juseph Swain?) before I worked on it using GIMP.

The image shows Henry Holiday and segments of one of Henry Holiday's illustrations (cut by Joseph Swain) to Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark. The Segments show the Bonnetmaker and a bonnet.

Perhaps the photo is a portrait by Joseph Swain or a self portrait by Henry Holiday, made quite a few years after the Snark was published. Watch Holiday's tinkering (a "Victorian craze"?) with the little finger and the thumb of his left hand.


About the Bonnetmaker:
I've never heard this suggested, but I have always wondered if Carroll was using "Boots" as a portmanteau of "Bonnets and Hoods," and if he using "Boots" to MEAN the Maker of Bonnets and Hoods. You will note that no Boots ever appears in any picture, but the maker of Bonnets does. Also, "Maker of Bonnets" doesn't really begin with B. Carlo 20:17, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

The Wikipedia author Carlo Fortunato (Cfortunato) reckoned that Boots also could be a portmanteau for the maker of Bonnets and Hoods. There may be hints in Carroll's poem too:

[...] The Bellman, who was almost morbidly sensitive about appearances, used to have the bowsprit unshipped once or twice a week to be revarnished, and it more than once happened, when the time came for replacing it, that no one on board could remember which end of the ship it belonged to. [...] The helmsman (This office was usually undertaken by the Boots, who found in it a refuge from the Baker’s constant complaints about the insufficient blacking of his three pairs of boots) used to stand by with tears in his eyes; he knew it was all wrong, but alas! Rule 42 of the Code, “No one shall speak to the Man at the Helm,” had been completed by the Bellman himself with the words “and the Man at the Helm shall speak to no one.“ [...]

The helmsman usually was the Boots. To me, the relation between the Boots and the Bellman looks like how the work relation between Carroll and Holiday could have looked like, self-mockingly described by Carroll. Moreover, Holiday's depiction of the maker of Bonnets and Hoods, who could be the Boots als well, could be a selfportrait.

009 · · The crew was complete: it included a Boots—
010 · · · · A maker of Bonnets and Hoods—
011 · · A Barrister, brought to arrange their disputes—
012 · · · · And a Broker, to value their goods.

281 · · The maker of Bonnets ferociously planned
282 · · · · A novel arrangement of bows:
283 · · While the Billiard-marker with quivering hand
284 · · · · Was chalking the tip of his nose.

It is common understanding that among the Snark hunting crew, only the Boots has not been depicted in Henry Holiday's illustrations. However, if "Boots" is a shortname for "maker of Bonnets and Hoods", then all crew menbers are in the picture.