Courtship | - Theodore Roosevelt Center

Mr. Corti

An Italian gentleman of fashion in Paris about 1902. His name was Corti and he was a beau of Alice Green, Eleanor Butler Roosevelt’s aunt.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1902

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

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.

The Russian cross-roads

A diminutive Nicholas II, Emperor of Russia, wearing a fur robe, courts Medusa who is hiding behind the mask of a beautiful young woman. On the left, as if issuing from Medusa, storm clouds labeled “Chaos” are brewing over a Russian city. A more modestly-dressed woman stands on the right pointing toward a temple labeled “Progress” at the top of a hill.

Comments and Context

The years 1904 and 1905 were hard years in the autocratic rule of Czar Nicholas II. The ancient empire had become inefficient and corrupt. It was top-heavy with bureaucrats and sycophants in its courts, and losing the respect and command of peoples, provinces, and principalities on its borders. Internally there were healthy revolts of peasants, serfs and former serfs, and religious and ethnic minorities.

Flirtation under difficulties

Uncle Sam offers a bouquet of flowers labeled “Reciprocity” to a woman labeled “Canada.” Uncle Sam is being held back by a businessman labeled “Trusts” whose feet are planted against a rock labeled “High Protection” and is pulling on Sam’s coattails, while the woman is being held back by a military officer labeled “Toryism” pulling on her fur wrap.

Comments and Context

Canadian reciprocity — a phrase routinely invoked as more palatable than “free trade”; almost a euphemism in arguments against high protective tariffs — was a common theme of some politicians and many business through the years. A shared boundary between the United States and Canada was one logical reason, and traditional amity between two similar peoples was another.

Flirtation

William Jennings Bryan escorts an old woman labeled “Dem. Party” on his right arm. Coming up behind them is “A.B. Parker,” well-dressed, wearing a top hat and overcoat.

Comments and Context

Following up on Puck‘s center-spread cartoon of the previous week that featured a depiction of the obscure Alton Brooks Parker, this issue placed Parker on the front page. Keppler’s cartoon suggests that Parker, or rumors of his possible presidential candidacy, plagued the party’s titular leader William Jennings Bryan. Clearly there was a movement among the party’s conservative Eastern and “sound-money” wing, to boost Parker.

A midsummer day’s dream

A woman lying in a hammock daydreams of engaging in various social and sport activities with handsome young men. She imagines herself shooting, sailing, dancing, sitting on a beach, golfing, playing ping-pong and badminton, and fencing.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1902-07-30

Puck’s summer salad

At center, a man looks out a garret window, daydreaming or musing on the life of the farmer. Vignettes around him offer humorous views of summer activities, including courtship, neighborly visiting, and swimming.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1902-07-16

During the investigation

Mr. and Mrs. Newrich and their daughter consult with a man who is using “Burke’s Peerage” to trace the lineage of a prospective son-in-law. Caption: Mrs. Newrich — You say Lord Naryared’s family only goes back to Charles II. / The Heraldic Expert — Yes; to Charles II. / Papa Newrich — Great Scott! Judging from what he owes I thought he must go back to William the Conqueror!

Comments and Context

This Nankivell cartoon is on the contemporary mania of the rich, and especially the nouveau riche, to lust after, and sometimes “purchase” titles of nobility and royal lineage before marriages were arranged. A popular theme of cartoons was that phony titles were as common as the bankrupt estates of suitors.

Going through the rapids

A young man asks his girlfriend’s father for her hand in marriage. Caption: Cholly — Mr. Jones, I want your daughter; – our mutual love is as strong and tumultuous as the rapids of Niagara. / Mr. Jones — Well, have you got a “barrel” big enough for two?

Comments and Context

Nankivell’s cartoon is a big target, satirizing multiple groups and attitudes of the day. The joke about having a “big enough barrel” refers to a slang term of the day: one’s fortune is a “barrel.” The depiction of the girl’s father shows him to be a parvenu; in the era of prosperity, there were many nouveau riche families aspiring to enter high society. Finally, while almost gratuitous, the aspiring bridegroom is a diminutive effeminate boyfriend. It then was common of cartoonists to portray American girls as pretty and assertive (like the Gibson Girl), and many of their suitors as sissies or impoverished foreigners.

The latest suitor

Prince Henry offers bouquets of flowers labeled “Visit of Prince Henry,” “Christening by Miss Roosevelt,” and “Yacht built in America,” to Columbia who is holding a paper that states “British Canal Concessions.” In the background, on the left, John Bull is watching from a small, rocky island.

Comments and Context

In 1902, and especially growing from military and commercial lessons learned from the recent Spanish-American War, public sentiment grew in the United States to build a canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The two likely routes through the years were considered to be through either Nicaragua or the Panama region of Colombia. As America drew closer to playing a role in an Isthmian canal, it purchased concessions granted by each of those countries to England and France. Britain expected some courtesies in return, but as Keppler’s cartoon shows, the nascent German Empire (embodied by Kaiser Wilhelm) worked hard to seduce the United States, evidenced by the labels of the bouquets. John Bull, symbol of Great Britain, stands on his tiny home base, jealous and suspicious. In short order it was the French, and her old construction companions, unable to duplicate their previous Suez Canal success, who turned over greater concessions and rights to the Americans.

For the favored few

An attractive young woman talks to a handsome young man at the theater. They are discussing the benefits of marriage. Caption: Miss Blossom — But a married man always has some one to share his sorrows, you know! / Jack Bachelor — Not always; – every married man can’t afford to keep a valet and a butler.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1902-04-02

Puck’s summer chowder

At center, two masked men recklessly drive an automobile down a country road, frightening every man, woman, and beast, and chasing them out of the roadway. Other vignettes depict scenes of summer activities, including swimming at the beach, hunting, fishing, excursion boating, and courting.

Comments and Context

Beginning in the mid-1880s, Puck devoted one special issue, and many cartoons and short stories in other issues, to “Mid-Summer” themes. On these pages, politics took a subordinate place to humorous cartoons on social subjects, such as in this double-page spread by Ehrhart.

Good government vs. revolution; – an easy choice

A well-dressed woman, holding a fan labeled “Cuba,” accepts the arm of Uncle Sam rather than going over to a well-dressed Cuban man wearing a sash labeled “Revolution.”

Comments and Context

After decades of sporadic and bloody revolutions against their Spanish colonial overlords, and unlike the situation in Philippines, the population of Cuba generally accepted American presence and its promises of ultimate independence rather than transfer the focus of their insurrectionist activities, following the Spanish-American War.

Theodore Roosevelt in Boston: Shadows and sunshine

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1895-09-18