Puck’s valentines

At center a valentine card features President Roosevelt as Cupid. Around the outside are other valentines featuring two European leaders, American industrial and political figures, a Russian admiral, a writer identified only as “Tom,” and a Wall Street con artist.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Whether it was a cartoonist’s creative crutch every year, or readers’ happy expectations, the easy formula of imaginary Valentine’s Day cards for political figures was a frequent feature in Puck and other satirical weeklies of the day. Frederick Burr Opper drew many of these over his years at Puck in the 1880s and ’90s.

In 1905 cartoonist J. S. Pughe took a turn, and notable is his use of personal characteristics — height, professions, perhaps a recent headline — more than a person’s political stance or an alleged indiscretion.

Some figures might be obscure to modern eyes:

• John Alexander (“Elijah”) Dowie was a prominent Christian faith healer;
• “Tom” at the typewriter is Thomas W Lawson, whose “Frenzied Finance” articles were best-selling exposes of Wall Street corruption;
• Andrew Carnegie (born in Scotland, hence the attire) was at the time of this cartoon involved in the revelation that a Cassie Chadwick, con artist supreme, had been posing as his illegitimate daughter to secure bank loans;
• “Alton” is Judge Alton Brooks Parker, who stepped down from the bench to run a posing campaign for presidency several months previously;
• “Johndy” is John D. Rockefeller, bald-headed and with trademark skull cap, enraged over Lawson’s “Frenzied Finance” articles in Everybody’s Magazine;
• Chauncey Depew was a veteran Republican politician since the founding of the party in 1854; onetime president of the New York Central Railroad; and had just been elected to his second term as New York Senator. He had made the nominating speech of Theodore Roosevelt for governor in 1898;
• Vice Admiral Zinovy Petrovich Rozhestvensky had lost the Battle of Tsushima to Admiral Togo in the Russo-Japanese War.

The ambitions and preoccupations are respectively depicted in caricatures:

• Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and his cousin Czar Nicholas II of Russia;
• Senator Charles W. Fairbanks of Indiana, who would be inaugurated as Vice-President under Theodore Roosevelt within a month, was famously tall and wiry;
• J. P. Morgan in 1905 was as involved in banks and finance as ever — two years later his personal intervention largely is seen as saving the United States from a major depression — but new interests included art, gems, and yachting. He was also a longtime benefactor of New York’s St. George Episcopal Church, and increasingly became active in religious concerns of Anglicans and Episcopalians.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1905-02-08

Creator(s)

Pughe, J. S. (John S.), 1870-1909

Period

U.S. President – 1st Term (September 1901-February 1905)

Repository

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Page Count

1

Record Type

Image

Resource Type

Cartoon

Rights

These images are presented through a cooperative effort between the Library of Congress and Dickinson State University. No known restrictions on publication.

Citation