Part 17 (2/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration: At Devil's Island.

THE MASTER OF THE ISLAND.--”They take away one captain from me; but look here, a whole handful of generals! Oh, after all, the arrangement is not so bad.”

_From ”l.u.s.tige Blatter” (Berlin)._]

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

THE MEN OF TO-DAY

With the Spanish-American War, the _Affaire Dreyfus_ in France, and England's long struggle for supremacy in the Transvaal, the period arbitrarily chosen as the scope of this book comes to a brilliant and dramatic close. But the cartoonist's work is never done. Nimble pencils are still busy, as in the days of Rowlandson and Gillray, in recording and in influencing the trend of history. And although, now and again during the past century, there has been some individual cartoonist whose work has stood out more boldly and prominently than the work of any one of our contemporaries in Europe or in this country stands out to-day, there has never been a time in the whole history of comic art when Caricature has held such sway and maintained such dignity, and has enlisted in her service so many workers of the first talent and rank.

Without alluding to the men of France and England, what an array it is that contemporary American caricature presents! C. G. Bush of the New York _World_, Charles Nelan of the New York _Herald_, Frederick Burr Opper and Homer Davenport of the New York _American and Journal_, Mahoney of the Was.h.i.+ngton _Star_, Bradley of the Chicago _Evening-News_, May of the Detroit _Journal_, ”Bart” of the Minneapolis _Journal_, Mayfield of the New Orleans _Times-Democrat_, Victor Gillam, carrying on the traditions of his brother--Rogers, Walker, Hedrick, Bowman, McCutcheon, Lambdin, Wallace, Leipziger, Berryman, Holme, Bartholemew, Carter, Steele, Powers, Barritt--and to name these men does not nearly exhaust the list of those artists whose clever work has amused and unconsciously influenced hundreds of thousands of thinking American men and women.

[Ill.u.s.tration: C. G. Bush of ”The World.” The Dean of Active American Cartoonists.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Willie and his Papa.

”What on earth are you doing in there, Willie?”

”Teddy put me in. He says it's the best place for me during the campaign.”]

There are interest and significance in the fact that a majority of the ablest caricaturists of to-day are devoting their talents almost exclusively to the daily press. It is an exacting sort of work, exhaustive both physically and mentally. The mere idea of producing a single daily cartoon, week in and week out,--thirty cartoons a month, three hundred and sixty-five cartoons a year, with the regularity of a machine,--is in itself appalling. And yet a steadily growing number of artists are turning to this cla.s.s of work, and one reason for this is that they realize that through the medium of the daily press their influence is more far-reaching than it possibly can be in the pages of the comic weeklies, and that at the same time the exigencies of journalism allow more scope for individuality than do the carefully planned cartoons of papers like _Puck_ or _Judge_. Speed and originality are the two prime requisites of the successful newspaper cartoon of to-day, a maximum of thought expressed in a minimum of lines, apposite, clear-cut, and incisive, like a well-written editorial. Indeed, our leading cartoonists regard their art as simply another and especially telling medium for giving expression to editorial opinion. Mr. Bush, ”the dean of American caricaturists,” may be said to have spoken for them all when he said, in a recent interview, that he looks upon a cartoon as an editorial pure and simple.

”To be a success it should point a moral. Exaggeration and a keen sense of humor are only adjuncts of the cartoonist, for he must deal with real people. He must also be a student. I am obliged not only to use my pencil, but to study hard, and read everything I can lay my hands on. The features of Roosevelt, Bryan, Hanna, and Croker may be familiar to me, but I must know what these men are doing. I must also know what the ma.s.ses behind these popular characters think and believe.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: Homer Davenport, of the ”New York American and Journal.”]

Another direct result of the influence of journalism upon caricature, in addition to that of compelling the artist to keep in closer touch than ever before with contemporary history, is the growing popularity of the series method--a method which dates back to the Macaire of Philipon and the Mayeux of Travies, and which consists in portraying day by day the same more or less grotesque types, ever undergoing some new and absurd adventure. It is a method which suits the needs of artist and public alike. To the former, his growing familiarity with every line and detail of the features and forms of his pictorial puppets minimizes his daily task, while the public, even that part of the public which is opposed to comic art in general, or is out of sympathy with the political att.i.tude of a certain series in particular, finds itself gradually becoming familiar with the series, through fugitive and unexpected glimpses, and ends by following the series with amus.e.m.e.nt and interest and a growing curiosity as to what new and absurd complications the artist will next introduce. This employment of the series idea is as successful in social as political satire. Mr. Outcault's ”Yellow Kid” and ”Buster Brown,” Mr. Opper's ”Happy Hooligan” and ”Alphonse and Gaston,” Gene Carr's ”Lady Bountiful,” and Carl Schultze's ”Foxy Grandpa” are types that have won friends throughout the breadth of the continent. In the domain of strictly political caricature, however, there is no series that has attracted more attention than Homer Davenport's familiar conception of the Trusts, symbolized as a bulky, overgrown, uncouth figure, a primordial giant from the Stone Age. And since there have been a number of apocryphal stories regarding the source of Mr. Davenport's inspiration, it will not be without interest to print the artist's own statement. ”As a matter of fact,” he says, ”I got the idea in St.

Mark's Square in Venice. Seeing a flock of pigeons flying about in that neighborhood I immediately, with my love of birds and beasts, determined by fair means or foul to purloin a pair. I watched them fly hither and thither, and in following them came across a statue of Samson throwing some man or other--I forget his name--to the ground.

The abnormal size of the muscles of the figure struck me at once, and turning round to my wife, who was with me, I said with a sudden inspired thought, 'The Trusts!'”

[Ill.u.s.tration: Davenport's Conception of the Trusts.]

Of equal importance are the various series in lighter vein through which Mr. Opper aims to lead people to the same way of thinking politically as the paper which he serves. Long years of labor and constant production do not seem to have in any way drained his power of invention, for no sooner has one series done its work, and before the public has become sated with it, than an entirely new line of cartoons is introduced. Mr. Opper, as well as Mr. Davenport, has had his fling at and drawn his figure of the Trusts, and to place the two figures side by side is to contrast the methods and work of the men.

Mr. Opper's purpose seems to be, first of all, to excite your mirth, and consequently he never fails to produce a certain effect. When you take up one of his cartoons in which the various stout, st.u.r.dy, and well-fed gentlemen typifying the different Trusts are engaged in some pleasant game the object of which is the robbing, or abusing of the pitiable, dwarfish figure representative of the Common People, your first impulse is a desire to laugh at the ludicrous contrast. It is only afterwards that you begin to think seriously how badly the abject little victim is being treated, and what a claim he has upon your sympathy and indignation. In those series which are designed entirely along party lines, such as ”Willie and his Papa,” this method is even more effective, since it begins by disarming party opposition.

Of such men, and the younger draughtsmen of to-day, much more might be written with sympathetic understanding and enthusiasm. But most of them belong rather to the century that has just begun rather than that which has lately closed, and a hundred years from now, whoever attempts to do for the twentieth century a service a.n.a.logous to that which has here been undertaken for the nineteenth, will find an infinitely ampler and richer store of material, thanks to this group of younger satirists in the full flood of their enthusiasm, who are valiantly carrying on the traditions of the men of the past--of Leech and Tenniel, of Daumier, and Philipon, and Cham and Andre Gill, of Nast and Keppler and Gillam, and who have already begun to record with trenchant pencil the events that are ushering in the dawn of the new century.

THE END

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