Clothing and dress

William Randolph Hearst wears the clothing of past presidents as he embarks on a campaign for the presidential election in 1908. He is wearing Washington’s shoes, Lincoln’s pants and whiskers, Jefferson’s coat and wig, and Jackson’s hat. Next to him are boxes and trunks labeled “Old Hickory’s Hat Box,” “Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution,” and “T. Jefferson.” Standing in the background is Hearst’s right-hand man, Arthur Brisbane — editorial writer for the Hearst newspaper chain, and editor of several of its newspapers. Caption: “We will succeed if we walk straightly along the path where Washington and Jefferson and Jackson and Lincoln have walked before us.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

Williams Jennings Bryan had recently made official his intention to secure the Democrat presidential nomination in 1908, at a speech in Madison Square Garden. But newspaper publishing titan and New York congressman William Randolph Hearst kept his own ambitions warm.

Theodore Roosevelt updates his sister Anna on where he is at in his travels with his brother Elliott. He reminds his sister of a list of things he needs sent to him in his travel bag. Roosevelt also describes his view of Chicago and going shooting.

Collection

Harvard College Library

Creation Date

1880-09-02

A court jester entertains a young woman wearing a crown on her head, sitting on a large stone bench.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Carl Hassmann, whose work at Puck virtually consisted of two themes — dark and brooding disasters that threatened domestic or international peace; or poster-like decorative or frivolous designs. Puck‘s 1906 Easter cover was assigned to Hassmann, the Viennese immigrant, and he produced a variant on Puck‘s traditional Lenten themes of suppressed social abandonment, or Easter’s notice that social strictures were loosed (never a religious subtext).

A domestic servant carries a large platter with a roast turkey raised above her shoulders to keep it away from a dog anxious for a taste.

comments and context

Comments and Context

The relative newcomer on Puck‘s artistic staff in 1905 was Carl Hassmann, who by this date, Thanksgiving of 1905, had established himself as a cartooning Grim Reaper, usually drawing realistic portrayals of dirty corruption or impending disasters. So this holiday cover — a placement lately reserved for Rose O’Neill, Frank Nankivell, or Louis M. Glackens — proved his versatility. As with many magazines of the day, an Art Nouveau “poster look” addressed readers; a pleasant design (of course non -political at holidays) and featuring the era’s inevitable version of a Gibson Girl.

A large elderly man labeled “Life Insurance” holds a cornucopia filled with documents labeled “For the Beneficiaries.” Next to him sits a large dog with collar labeled “Supt. Insurance,” and in front is a group of diminutive figures, a woman in mourning, an elderly man holding the hand of a young child, and a nurse holding an infant. In the background are a group of businessmen labeled “Corruption.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

The indiscretions and reports of corruption common to most large American businesses in 1905, in the midst of the Muckraking Era, reached the insurance industry as well. Public concern was accelerated by the well-publicized orgiastic ball thrown by the heir to the Equitable Life Insurance fortune, the putative next director, James Hazen Hyde. In addition to the public’s reaction to conspicuous consumption and loose moral atmosphere at the ball were rumors that its extravagant expense was charged to the Equitable.

Theodore Roosevelt writes his sister Anna that he is going westward and will not be able to write for a while. Upon his return, he will visit Chestnut Hill and he will also need his sister to send some of his clothing to him.

Collection

Harvard College Library

Creation Date

1880-08-29

A large crowd of men and women, all wearing formal evening clothes, and the women draped with stunningly sparkling jewels, are at a ball given by “Mrs. Gaster.” Caption: Central office at Mrs. Gaster’s Ball.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Puck magazine and others, especially as the Muckraking Era dawned, criticized the excesses of the wealthy society denizens of the Conspicuous Consumption class. In fact the Gilded Age — the term having been applied by the eponymous, scathing novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in 1873 — was dying. Its gaudy death throes were exemplified in ostentatious events like the ball depicted by cartoonist Albert Levering. The “400,” the exclusionary term coined by the social arbiter of the wealthy in the 1880s in his Social Register, was more commonly seen by the public as the Idle Rich, and worse, instead of model citizens.

A fashionably dressed young woman is being escorted by a rabbit and a young child dressed in a red suit. The woman looks back over her shoulder at three unhappy monks standing outside a stone church or monastery.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Puck scarcely took second place to any of its contemporary weekly or monthly rival magazines when holiday themes and seasonal issues took prominence. In Puck‘s early and purely political years, comments on Lent, Easter, and Christmas were highlighted less, frequently relegated to back pages. But during the Belle Epoque, and when Art Nouveau, Impressionism, Japonisme, and the “poster style” of advertisements and covers predominated, Puck was a player.

A beautiful young woman emerges from a church on Easter. A cluster of well-dressed men, all eager for her hand, are waiting. Two of the men turn away a devil figure dressed in red. Caption: Who hath not owned, with rapture smitten frame, / The power of grace.–Campbell.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Once again at Eastertide, Puck turns its attention not to the Passion or Resurrection of Christ but — as most magazines and newspapers did for thematic material between Lent and after Easter — to social freedom before Lent, restrained socializing during Lent and Holy Week, and a return to courtship and the social whirl after Easter. It was the common thematic preoccupations of cartoons, poems, short fiction, and even editorials in the time.

During an intermission or after a “Comic Opera at Mrs. Van Varick-Shadd’s,” a large crowd of men and women wearing formal evening clothes look with chagrin at three women wearing short red dresses, who have secured the attentions of several young men. A painted scene in the background shows nude women cavorting at the seaside.

comments and context

Comments and Context

One of Puck‘s social crusades, increasingly in the new century, was skewering the upper class — not for its excesses nor frivolity nor shallowness, but for its malignities: divorce, corruption, and scandal. Other publications like the cartoon weekly Life made similar criticism, but not as scathing, largely in Life‘s case because its editors and cartoonist Charles Dana Gibson (creator of the Gibson Girl and society drawings) were members of high society.

The illustration shows veiled June brides. The caption reads “Juneflowers.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

With this cover cartoon Rose Cecil O”Neill Latham Wilson, the future creator of the Kewpies returned to Puck after an absence of several years. During that absence she had married the former editor of Puck, Harry Leon Wilson, and written and illustrated several novels.

William II, Emperor of Germany, exchanges his coat and helmet for a hat and coat in the style of Napoleon I, Emperor of the French. Bernhard von Bülow stands next to him, also dressed in the style of an early 19th century French aristocrat, holding a cape draped over his right arm. Caption: Valet Von Buelow–Sapristi, Herr Wilhelm! They become you most beautifully!

comments and context

Comments and Context

Bernhard Heinrich Karl Martin, Furst von Bulow, was German Chancellor in 1905. Regarded as a suave diplomatic and bold strategist, he was also widely regarded as a dunderhead and lickspittle, offering Kaiser Wilhelm II as much subservience as wise advice.

At center, fashionably dressed women admire a statue of a horse. Surrounding vignettes show women’s fashions, contrasting an automobile to a horse, the latest in horse fashions, and a horse-owner’s nightmare about failing to win a ribbon. Caption: Fashion’s shrine – horse show week.

comments and context

Comments and Context

In the manner of many nominal sporting events before (like America’s Cup competitions) and since, New York’s annual horse show by 1904 had became a place to see and be seen. High-society luminaries — the “400” — communed, competed for attention, and attracted the press and the curious.

A young woman with a shotgun over her left shoulder carries a dead turkey.

comments and context

Comments and Context

By 1904, the cartoonist L. M. Glackens (brother of prominent American Impressionist painter Louis Glackens, one of “the Eight”) executed many of the magazine’s holiday and seasonal covers in the era’s best poster-like traditions.

Santa Claus reviews his list, his bag of gifts next to him, while sitting in an automobile that is being driven by two women standing on the back, dressed like chauffeurs.

comments and context

Comments and Context

As with Puck‘s Thanksgiving Number cover a few weeks previous, the magazine used a holiday-themed special issue to be pictorial rather than political on newsstands. This had been the trend in the weekly’s design for at least a decade, but students can note the nature of the decorative covers.

A fashionably-dressed young woman ice skates on a pond in a park. She is being admired by several men and boys standing on the left, while on the right four women, a golfer, an automobile driver, a party-goer, and a hunter, trudge through the snow to await the arrival of summer. Old Man Winter blows a frigid blast over the scene from the top.

comments and context

Comments and Context

The girl of the hour in Ehrhart’s cover cartoon would seem to have the emphasis on the word “hour” — that winter sports, and ice skating assisted by Old Man Winter, is enjoying its portion of the social and sporting calendar.

An elderly woman labeled “Tariff Revision” angrily shakes her umbrella after being left standing on the railroad station platform as the “Republican Special” departs in a cloud of dust. Two men standing on the back of the last car are laughing at her.

comments and context

Comments and Context

This Puck cover cartoon by Joseph Keppler Junior was drawn at the time the Republican National Convention met in 1904 and nominated President Roosevelt for reelection. It addresses several matters in the news, or several aspects of one issue: tariff reform.

A fashionably dressed young woman sits on the edge of a pool, fishing.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1904-08-17

A young woman plays a lute as a group of rabbit cavaliers dance around her. In the background, two monks whisper to each other at the entrance to a monastery.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Louis M. Glackens continued his role as Puck‘s artist for holiday, seasonal, and specialty theme issues, with cartoons such as this. Decorative illustrations, social cartoons, and holiday artwork, more than occasionally gracing Puck covers as the century progressed, doubtlessly attracted additional readers; or, as the magazine’s business office might have noted, stopped the disinclination of partisan readers to buy a week’s issue, if they disagreed with the political message on most covers.

In a dining room, a man sits at a table eating, a woman has opened a door, and three men stand in the doorway, singing Christmas carols.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Puck‘s Louis M Glackens, increasingly its assigned cartoonist specializing in holiday covers and poster-like illustrations, manages a little subtle humor in this otherwise ubiquitous festive scene. The Christmas carolers are thin and at least one of them casts a hungry eye on the Christmas dinner. In the warm house, a portly man sits by a glowing fireplace about to dine, alone, and the setting sun in the background indicates that dinner time approaches… perhaps not for the carolers.