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The Travels and Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1785)

I recently read several very favorable reviews of the new novel, Death and Mr. Pickwick, by Stephen Jarvis. Before I read it, I thought it would be useful to finally finish The Pickwick Papers, which I'd always found too episodic to get through. I enjoyed the original novel and commenced reading Mr. Jarvis's riff. Therein he makes the case that Charles Dickens's Pickwick stories were merely written to go with illustrations by the artist Robert Seymour, rather than vice versa, and that it was the artist who created the character.

But before he ever even introduces Dickens into the story, he's given us a rousing account of the illustrators of the day, whose work sold papers, journals and novels. Besides Seymour, one of the most popular caricaturists was George Cruikshank, a friend and illustrator of Dickens, of whom I'd likewise never heard. But, as is the way of such things, once you know the names they start popping up all over. So, we were watching Michael Portillo's Great Railway Journeys and he happened to be in Germany, doing a stand up about The Brothers Grimm. He revealed that the stories did not become best-sellers until Cruikshank illustrated them. Then I was in a thrift store and found this edition of Munchausen, which just happens to include Cruikshank's original artwork. One felt obligated to buy it.

The Adventures itself is sort of a one trick pony, though a pretty funny pony at that. Karl Friedrich Hieronymous von Munchausen, the historical Baron, was fond of telling tall tales about his life and his experience fighting with the Russians against the Turks. Rudolf Erich Raspe was a jewel thief and general scamp who decided to cash in on the colorful Baron by embellishing his tales even further and borrowed liberally from the style of Gulliver's Travels to do so.

The stories make no pretense of being plausible, including catching canon balls, flying to the moon, etc. And, at their best, they're quite amusing. But they are also inherently visual, as Roger Ebert relates here, concerning maybe the most famous/infamous tale:

The real von Munchausen apparently did not complain about this book that made free with his reputation, even though it included such tall stories as the time the baron tethered his horse to a "small twig" in a snowstorm, and discovered when the snow melted that the twig was actually a church steeple.

I remember the illustration that appeared with that story when I read it as a child: The baron on the ground, looking up in perplexity at his horse, which was still hanging from the steeple. I remember asking my father how the horse was going to get down, and my father speculating that he would have to wait until it snowed again, which seemed like a bleak prospect for the horse. And so I asked if the baron could feed his horse in the meantime by climbing up the steeple with hay. The mind of a child is wonderfully literal.

As told by Raspe, the Baron actually shoots the reins to free the horse, as pictured here by Cruikshank. But note that Mr. Ebert's memory of the story is of the picture. As Mr. Jarvis has Seymour say in his novel : "Pictures do sell words."

The Baron's adventures are still worth a read, but be sure to get yourself an illustrated version. And don't forget the wonderful Terry Gilliam film adaptation.

(Reviewed:21-Feb-16)

Grade: (B+)

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The Travels and Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1785)

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