Down the Rabbit Hole and Beyond

We started our day yesterday at the Cartoon Museum. It's a cute, small museum, about nine years old, with a small permanent collection of (predominantly) British comics and an exhibit on satirical cartoons, which featured work from publications such as Punch, Private Eye, and Charlie Hebdo. Their current main exhibit is "Alice in Cartoonland," and it focuses on the ways in which Alice and her adventures have influenced cartoons, satire, graphic novels, and advertisements. Fun Fact, John Tenniel, who illustrated Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, was a satirical cartoonist himself; his caricatures of Victorian politicians and celebrities appeared weekly in Punch. (We weren't allowed to take pictures of any of the art, but some of it's on the internet.)

Guinness made a series of ads in the late 20s and early 30s using characters and story lines from Alice (John Gilroy did the art):

We learned that the Mad Hatter was a Batman villain, first appearing in 1948.

He was a  scientist who used mind-control devices on his victims.

 The political cartoons featuring Alice characters were mostly depicting British political issues (almost all of the artists featured at the museum are British), but occasionally they took on American politics:

"Freeman Moxy," Martin Rowson, The Guardian, 2010.
"The Republicans were about to make big gains in the 2010 US midterm elections, helped by a campaign by the ultra-conservative, tax-slashing Tea Party movement. Sarah Palin presides at the table, while the March Hares, the billionaire Koch brothers (chief funders of the movement) and the Hatter, Rupert Murdoch (proprietor of its chief mouthpiece, Fox News) dunk dormouse President Obama in the teapot. Conservative shock jock and Fox News commentator Glenn Beck is in the high chair."
Jon and I embarrassingly only made the "Tea Party" connection as I was writing this blog post.

This cartoon in the museum's permanent collection on satire was created  by Dave Brown of The Independent in 2005. He REALLY did not like Dubya. (If you're unable to make this image any bigger, it can be found here: https://niallhigh1306495year2.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/dubya.jpg)

The folks at the museum were very sweet. As soon as we entered the exhibit we were greeted by an older woman administering a survey to guests (how did you hear about us, what brought you here, etc.) I got the impression that they don't get as many visitors as they'd like, so if you're in London and want something a bit off the beaten path, visit the Cartoon Museum!

We then had a delicious lunch at the fancy Google office. After we ate we explored the building a bit. It was pretty much how I expect Google offices to be based on my experience in the NYC office--a playground crossed with an experimental furniture lab.

No office is complete without a ball pit!

All of their doors look like this.

View from the 9th floor deck.

The deck had lots of little private corners. The seats were fabric...what happens when it rains?! (Which is all the time.)

Typical Google deck furniture.

Deck landscaping.

After lunch we went to the Charles Dickens Museum, which is located in the house where he lived on Doughty Street. Another lesser-known attraction I would recommend!

Catherine Dickens's engagement ring. "It is thought that Dickens may have been referring to it when he had David present Dora with 'a pretty little toy with its blue stones' in his novel David Copperfield."

After Charles and Catherine separated, Catherine's sister Georgina decided to stay with Charles as his housekeeper (which to me raises the question, "Who employs their sister as a housekeeper?"). Catherine found this decision to be quite rude; many years after Charles died, Catherine gave this serpent ring to Georgina as a symbol of her betrayal.

Back in the day, hedgehogs were used as adorable insect hunters in kitchens! "A dirty house was seen to produce dishonest people," so keeping your Victorian kitchen clean was serious business.

We snooped through the kitchen drawers and found Dickens's priceless collection of clipboards.

This is the wash house copper, where clothes were washed. It was also used to boil Christmas puddings every year, which is gross.

Dickens was a major proponent of copyright laws. Mainly, he was upset that there weren't any. Other writers were constantly ripping off his work, sometimes going so far as to blatantly copy it. Rude!

He also worked to get state pensions for deserving writers. He personally gave money to authors in need, and organized "many private theatricals" to raise money for the descendants of writers who did not have a lot of money to leave to their families.

For dinner, we tried to go to Honest Burgers, but the wait was an hour. We walked two minutes to Gourmet Burger Kitchen, which had plenty of room and made RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME burgers.

JUST LOOK AT THAT.

Again, I was warned to be careful because the pepper on top was "very hot." I braced myself, but it was only a regular amount of spicy. The English are so silly with their "spicy" food!

After dinner we went to a screening of The Room, a popular cult movie known for being so terrible  that it's hilarious. The British audience reacted to the film pretty much the same way Americans do, except they do not sing the Full House theme song during extended shots of San Francisco scenery.

We can't believe that we only have a week left in Europe! There's still plenty more to pack in, but I have confidence we can fit it all.

xo

Hannah