The Gashlycrumb Tinies

In 1963 a man with a penchant for fur coats and chuck Taylors published a small, square book, small enough to be held by childish hand and at first glance appears to be a children’s book. The book is a timeline of disasters befallen by 26 small seemingly innocent lives, told as a rhyming alphabet, sing- song couplets describing 26 grim demises, each death captured by a pen and ink snapshot of their final fateful moment. It is called The Gashlycrumb Tinies, and I love it.

The alphabet is supposed to be a friendly incantation, the spell you learn which opens the door to knowledge, you have 26 new friends, and they all want the best for you. Gorey’s 26 representatives you feel are not paid enough, x, y and z probably conspired to dig the hole with a, b and c and the rest just went along with it because the sooner the days over the better, and who is this child anyway? The parents don’t seem to be about. Gorey’s alphabet has a shovel and a bag of quick lime. You won’t be missed.

Gorey was an anglophile, a devourer of Victorian literature with a day job as a book cover designer. Coming home from a day in the studio at a publishing house he would return home to his own drawing den to work on his own projects, his small books. Black ink on white paper, crosshatching, lines-lines-lines.

Inspiration for Gorey’s lines-lines-lines surely come from 19th century drawing and etchings, I see George Cruickshank and H.K Browne in Gorey, both illustrators who both worked for Charles dickens during their careers. The book ‘Cautionary Tales for Children’ by Hilaire Belloc published in 1907 and illustrated by Basil Temple Blackwood absolutely must be the progenitor of The Gashlycrumb Tinies. Cautionary Tales being 11 rhymes about 11 unfortunates with titles such as: ‘Matilda who told lies and was burned to death’ and ‘Rebecca who slammed doors for fun and perished miserably’. Rebecca, you brought it on yourself.

Gorey’s Gashlycrumb Tinies, alone and in danger, each panel a death trap. The concluding moments of lives cut short. ‘J is for James who took lye by mistake’, R is for Rhoda consumed by a fire’ ‘C is for Clara who wasted away’. Removed from their rhyming shroud you could be reading a mortuary list, deaths by neglect or misadventure, ages 6 to 11. Gorey’s Victorian aesthetic runs straight down the line of career, and it fits his subject matter exactly. Victorian England, with its infant mortality rates going through the roof, found novel ways to memorialise children taken too soon. ‘Comfort Books’ were small pamphlet like books with highly detailed renderings of deceased little ones with accompanying text. The children were shown in coffins, surrounded by flowers, by siblings, printed by the grieving families the dead child’s personage in death is captured by romanticised language, how beautiful, how still how peaceful. The child more perfect in death than in life. Little Rhoda, James, Clara and co, their deaths are all Gorey wanted us to know. Childhood was a Victorian invention, wonderful for those who could afford it. Maybe the Gashlycrumbs were the victims of this new, fangled childhood. They are alone, Gorey was an only child, shuttled between divorced parents and grandparents. When he was at school he was filled with fear, writing in his diary catastrophizing entries about his kittens, what if they died whilst he was at school? He memorialised previous passings of other pets. The Gashlycrumb Tinies, the fears of an abandoned child? Or a handbook on how to kill your offspring? Only child fears. My favourite Memento Mori.

 

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