Fictitious characters

Vignettes show panels from comic strips featuring Foxy Grandpa, Alphonse and Gaston, Happy Hooligan and the donkey Maud, Buster Brown, and the Katzenjammer Kids, around a central panel with William Randolph Hearst, a candidate in the election for governor of New York, sitting on Maud, with clones of the “comic people” behind him.

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It might seem a cold day when a cartoonist contemplates the gubernatorial election of the godfather of the comic strip and foresees a dystopia, but that is how L. M. Glackens portrayed the campaign parade of William Randolph Hearst on election eve, 1906. That issue’s cover cartoon depicted publisher (and congressman) Hearst as a virtual murderer, but in the center spread’s glory, a grand parade of Hearst and, presumably, his most loyal or sole supporters, the stars of his Sunday comic supplements, march with him.

A large mean-looking man labeled “Coal Trust,” patterned after Charles Dickens’ character “Bill Sikes” from the novel Oliver Twist, holds a club labeled “Control of Rail Roads” in his right hand and looks down at a cowering man/dog figure labeled “Independent Mine Owner.” On a table on the left is a bottle labeled “Rebates.”

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Students of history, studying this cartoon by Udo J. Keppler in Puck, might guess that it was drawn in 1902, because these symbolic characters and the issues addressed were burning matters at the center of the Anthracite Coal strike whose solution was mediated by President Roosevelt. 

A man described as “America’s greatest Pecksniff,” an allusion to Dickens’ character Seth Pecksniff in the novel Martin Chuzzlewit, stands, full-length, facing slightly right, holding a paper that states “The Widow & Orphan Pump” which shows a pump spewing money into a trough. Likenesses of Pecksniff appear in the background as a bust statue, a painting, and a silhouette. Caption: “There is no deception, ladies and gentlemen; all is peace; a holy calm pervades me.”

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The beatific expression on the face of New York Senator Chauncey M. Depew, and the quotation from Charles Dickens’ humorous novel Martin Chuzzlewit — spoken by the hypocrite Seth Pecksniff — mask the irony of Depew’s situation, and the venom in cartoonist Keppler’s drawing.

A jolly Santa Claus sits in a large chair at center with toys at his feet. A family with two little girls, possibly twins, and several children and servants approach him, smiling, on the right. Many nursery rhyme characters approach on the left, looking sad and distressed.

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In Samuel Ehrhart’s center-spread cartoon in Puck‘s 1904 Christmas issue, the familiar characters of generations children’s stories seem upset that modern children are more taken with shiny toys and dolls. Santa Claus seem complicit, and doting parents encourage the new over the old.

William Randolph Hearst hosts a dinner for a gathering of cartoon characters at the White House. On the left, a dinosaur is eating a portrait of President Roosevelt. Caption: The inaugural dinner at the White House.

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William Randolph Hearst is a fascinating American figure who dominated many fields he pursued and influenced various areas of American life. His father was George Hearst, a miner whose discoveries of silver and gold made him fabulously wealthy. A term as United States senator from California was one of his toys, as was the purchase of newspapers — one of which, the San Francisco Examiner, he gifted to his son after the latter was expelled from Harvard for lassitude and pranks.

President Roosevelt agrees with Kermit Roosevelt about the book Martin Chuzzlewit, and criticizes Charles Dickens’s character and inability to see the positive traits of America and Americans, which led to such great men as Abraham Lincoln. He concedes, however, that some of the negative characteristics that Dickens’s characters portray do persist in some Americans, including Senator Benjamin R. Tillman, William Randolph Hearst, and John D. Rockefeller. Roosevelt enjoyed a recent visit from Kermit’s older brother, Theodore Roosevelt.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1908-02-29

Postcard showing the Cent Shop in The House of the Seven Gables in Salem, Massachusetts. The room is decorated to resemble Hepzibah’s Shop in The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and sells gingerbread elephants and “Jim Crows.”

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In Charles C. Myers’s own words, “This house is well preserved and is somewhat of a curiosity shop to visitors. 25¢ admission is charged and this fund goes toward keeping and maintaining the place. This is the first little room when you enter the place, and many souvenirs and cards are kept here for sale as well as the book, ‘The House Of Seven Gables.'”

Collection

Charles C. Myers Collection

President Roosevelt leads a group on horseback, brandishing a whip and charging. Following him are several figures from history and legend including a Roman warrior, the drunken Tam O’Shanter, Paul Revere, Don Quixote, and Sancho Panza. Also following the charge, in silhouette, are Ichabod Crane from Washington Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow, a member of the Pony Express, and Lady Godiva. All the riders except Roosevelt are weary or exhausted.

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The context of this illustration of a poem in Puck Magazine was the famous horseback ride of President Roosevelt in the last months of his presidency. Convinced that the leadership ranks of the United States Army were too “soft,” he demonstrated the sort of mettle he considered a minimum requirement for men in uniform. On the night of January 13, 1909, the 50-year-old president and three aides — his Military Aide Captain Archibald Butt; Naval Surgeon General Presley M Rixey; and Dr. Cary Grayson, Naval Surgeon —  rode on horseback to and from Warrenton, Farquier County, Virgina. They made the trip in record time, through storms of sleet and ice, much of the ride in the dark. They stopped for 10-minute “rests” and change of horses, except in Warrenton where they stopped for a full meal. Roosevelt made his point — a Rough Ride, certainly — and arrived at the White House about 4:00 the next morning, alone, covered in ice, and ready for a full breakfast and a day of work.

Benjamin F. Butler, as Topsy from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, stands in front of an old woman labeled “Dem.” who is holding a switch labeled “Discipline” behind her back. In the background, on the floor, are broken dishes labeled “Corruption, Spoils System, The Machine, [and] Old Notions,” also a framed portrait of Andrew Jackson labeled “Jacksonian Principles,” and over a dresser is a cracked mirror labeled “Old Reflections on B.B.” The bottom of one of Topsy’s shoes is labeled “Independence.” Caption: Topsy “I ‘spect you can’t do nuffin’ with me, Miss – I’se used to whippin’. Golly! I’se so wicked!!”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1883-05-23

A large group of Puck stock cartoon figures labeled “The Common People” stand in a wooded area, gathered around a statue of Abraham Lincoln. Caption: Lincoln — Are these the Common People I said God must have loved because He made so many of them?

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1910-01-05

Fagin from the Charles Dickens novel Oliver Twist, labeled “Corporation Lawyer,” watches as his protégé, Oliver Twist, labeled “Public Service Corporation,” picks the pocket of Uncle Sam on a city sidewalk. Caption: Instructor in the art of stealing and getting away with it.

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Public Service Commissions sprang up through the United States in 1907, the result of enabling and supportive measures included in reform legislation passed by Congress in 1906; and successful programs in states like Wisconsin.

A woman labeled “Wall Street,” appearing as Little Bo Peep, has pulled all the petals, labeled “Tight Money” and “Easy Money,” off a paper flower. The center of the flower, on the ground among the petals, shows a medallion that states “In Cortelyou We Trust.” Her bodice is labeled “Stock Exchange.” George B. Cortelyou, dressed as an Elizabethan suitor, is standing behind her. They are embracing as he holds aloft a diamond ring labeled “Treasury Aid.”

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There had been little doubt (except, evidently, in Puck‘s editorial eyes) that President Roosevelt’s nominee for Secretary of the Treasury, George B. Cortelyou, would follow, completely unbroken, the policies of his predecessor Leslie M. Shaw. In politics, anything can change; and at least in Wall Street’s view Roosevelt was wildly unpredictable. However, Shaw’s stewardship of the economy oversaw unprecedented prosperity, so there seemed little reason to rock the boat.

John D. Rockefeller appears as Uriah Heep from the Dickens novel David Copperfield. Two logbooks on the floor at his feet are titled “Competitor Business” and “Rebate Schedules,” and hanging on the wall is a paper that states “The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth.” Caption: “Men, I want to tell you that systematic saving and self-denial, with a good deal of hard work, form the foundation for every large fortune. That has been my experience.”–John D. Rockefeller

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Contemporary Americans, those who have not read Charles Dickens’s classic novel David Copperfield, might not be familiar with the name or character of Uriah Heep. Some people might know of the epithet, a harsh denigration of someone as “a” Uriah Heep. Almost certainly, everyone has encountered someone with the personality traits and deficiencies of Dickens’s memorable character.

A woman labeled “Wall Street” appears as a nursery rhyme figure, possibly Little Bo Peep, pulling petals off a paper flower that are labeled “Tight Money” and “Easy Money” as she says “He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not.” The center of the flower shows a medallion that states “In Shaw We Trust,” but with a line drawn through “Shaw.” The woman’s bodice is labeled “Stock Exchange.” George B. Cortelyou, dressed as an Elizabethan suitor, is looking over her shoulder.

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George B. Cortelyou was an unsung hero — or at least, a little-referenced figure — in both administrations of President Roosevelt. He is one of those assistants who served in several offices, undertaking many challenges, and of enormous assistance to presidents — including, prior to Roosevelt, Grover Cleveland and William McKinley — behind the scenes.

The ghostly figure of a manic-looking man, labeled “Judge Lynch” and carrying a book labeled “Lynch Law” and a lighted torch, hovers over a procession of people. The procession is led by three solid citizens followed by farmers, unruly elements, and finally a long line of regular citizens including women, who look back at a small column of smoke in the distance – presumably a lynching. One of the unruly men shoots at a dog. (“Judge Lynch” was the personification of the practice, frequently found in the South, of executing African Americans suspected of crimes without the benefit of trial. In the second decade of the Twentieth Century, Progressives advocated various reforms designed to circumvent the state governments viewed as the tools of entrenched interests. The Recall was intended to allow the citizenry to directly vote officials out of office. The cartoonist suggests that this first be used to abolish the practice of lynching.)

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1912-02-21