Part 1

Produced by Chris Curnow, Charlie Howard, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

Transcriber’s Note

This eBook has no Table of Contents, but all of the cartoons are listed in the Index at the end.

Copyright, 1893, by KEPPLER & SCHWARZMANN.

300 COPIES PRINTED AND BOUND IN THIS MANNER, OF WHICH THIS IS NO. 92.

J. KEPPLER

A SELECTION OF

CARTOONS FROM PUCK

BY

JOSEPH KEPPLER

WITH TEXT AND INTRODUCTION

BY

H. C. BUNNER

KEPPLER & SCHWARZMANN NEW YORK

MDCCCXCIII

INTRODUCTION.

So careless has been the popular use of the words “_cartoonist_” and “_caricaturist_,” that to many minds they no doubt seem practically interchangeable. Yet, as a matter of fact, not only do the two titles imply two different functions of pictorial satiric art, but, although there is a school of that art for almost every one of the great races of civilized men, there is but one school that positively demands the union of these two factors in the work of its pupils. That school is the German school, and it is Mr. Joseph Keppler who, as an American cartoonist and caricaturist, has not only imposed its canons and traditions upon this country, but has, in so doing, placed himself at its head, both in this country and in Europe, by virtue of a genius that has made him eminent above the generation of his masters.

The spirit of French comic art turns distinctly--and delightfully--to caricature. The French “cartoon”--the pictorial lampoon, that is--has but to exhibit in an exaggerated form the objectionable characteristics of an individual, to serve its purpose and to touch its public. It is the revelation of character, of purpose, of intellectual or moral scope which affects, apparently, the French mind, by nature rather observant than deductive. The Anglo-Saxon spirit, less quickly perceptive, more deliberately logical, asks something beyond this of the man who tries to reason with it in a picture. It must be approached by means of a fable, a parable, an allegory, something that will stand the test of argument and comparison. Caricature, or the significant exaggeration of physical characteristics, may or may not be an incident to this.

Few of the English cartoonists, for instance, have been caricaturists of any account. The greatest of them all, John Tenniel, is a cartoonist pure and simple--that is, one who draws allegories or parables. In his delightful “Alice in Wonderland” work, he shows his power of caricature; but in his cartoons he is classically faithful to nature, save for just sufficient accentuation to point his satiric intent. And in the United States, up to twenty years ago, the prime idea of the cartoonist was simply to express in drawing a figure of speech--and the more realistically the better.

If it seems a remarkable thing that the influence of one man should avail to change the taste of a nation in such a manner, it must be remembered that the breadth and force of the German school which Mr. Keppler introduced into this country were peculiarly calculated to appeal to a receptive people, delighting in vigorous expression. For the German school carries the art and mystery of cartooning far beyond any of its rivals. The German conception of the cartoon not only involves a picture parable, it demands that the actors of the fable shall be so drawn as to display their characters in their lineaments, and it asks, moreover, that the allegory shall, if possible, take a distinctive dramatic form, suggestive, at least, of action, and not merely of position.

It was not in the American nature to refuse to recognize the pregnant possibilities of such a school of satiric art. Nor did Mr. Keppler fail to grasp the vast possibilities opened to him by the freedom of American laws and American tradition--social and political.

This collection of Mr. Keppler’s cartoons is not by any means intended to summarize his work during the sixteen years in which he has drawn for PUCK--or it would be treble its present size. It simply brings together such examples of his work as may now with propriety be reprinted. This is no slight volume, yet it contains, comparatively, but a narrow choice of the hundreds of cartoons Mr. Keppler has drawn for PUCK. It is surprising to consider that this great output is to be credited to a man who has only attained the fullness of life; for Joseph Keppler is but fifty-five years old. He was born in Vienna, February 1st, 1838. His early life was a struggle with poverty; but it was a blithesome and cheerful-hearted struggle, almost romantically full of incident and adventure. He was with equal ease an actor and an artist; and at one time, with a very natural longing for Italy, he wandered through Styria and the Tyrol and, again, through Hungary, making vain attempts, balked by constant misfortune, to enter the land of art. In 1856 he settled down to serious study at the Académie des Beaux Arts of Vienna. Although his capacity as an artist was increasing year by year, he possessed a histrionic talent that made it hard for him to give up the stage, and as manager and actor he was connected with the theatre even for several years after his arrival in America in 1868. His first years in America were passed in the West; and in St. Louis he started two humorous weeklies, _Die Vehme_ and a too-early PUCK. The gods loved both of these ventures too well. It was in 1877 that Mr. Keppler, in association with Mr. Adolph Schwarzmann, first introduced to the American public the school of cartooning which has now become as much ours as Germany’s. This was through the medium of a German edition of PUCK. The English PUCK was born on March 7th, 1877.

To his colleague of sixteen years’ side-by-side working time, it is a great pleasure to claim for Joseph Keppler the masterhood in the brave art whose present form he introduced to America, and which he has used with enduring courage and growing knowledge to more good ends than need here be told.

_March 20th, 1893._

_H. C. Bunner._

A LITTLE CHANGE; OR, POLITICS MAKES STRANGE BEDFELLOWS.

_PUCK, October 4th, 1876._

These two expressive portraitures of two distinguished German-Americans, General Sigel and the Hon. Carl Schurz, appeared in the initial number of the German PUCK (New York) as interesting specimens of Mr. Keppler’s skill as a caricaturist, pure and simple. They had no timely significance in particular.

THE DEMOC-RATS CAUGHT IN THE PRESIDENTIAL TRAP.

_PUCK, February 28th, 1877._

The idea of this cartoon is not free from guilty obligation to a small pun; yet it depicts the situation of the Democratic Party in the last months of 1876 with considerable aptitude and force. It appeared at the time when the Democrats in Congress had been hoodwinked into accepting the Electoral Commission scheme, which deprived Mr. Tilden of the Presidency, and put Mr. Hayes in the chair. Under these circumstances, it was certainly truthful, even if it was trite, to say that the “Democ-Rats” were caught in the political trap.

WIE DIE DEMOK-RATTEN IN DIESEM FALLE IN DIESE FALLE GERIETHEN.]

CONSOLIDATED.

_PUCK, January 26th, 1881._

“The telegraph companies have been consolidated, which in simple language means that Mr. Jay Gould controls every wire in the United States over which a telegram can be sent,” said PUCK of January 26th, 1881, and the statement was no exaggeration.

The editorial went on to express a fear that this monopoly of telegraphic facilities might be used for stock-jobbing purposes, as it made suppression or falsification of price-quotations not only possible, but temptingly easy. This fear was far from groundless at the time, although it has since been removed by the enormous growth of the business of electrical communication, which has now become a machine too huge to be readily perverted from its proper working by any one man. It is, however, undeniable that the Western Union wires were misused for parties and purposes in the doubtful and troublous days immediately succeeding the Presidential election of 1884. At the time when this cartoon was published there was a very general feeling that the federal government ought to take charge of the whole telegraphic system. This feeling, however, changed when the people realized that a postal telegraph scheme would practically involve the enrollment of a new army of office-holders who would be, under our inadequate and ineffective civil-service reform laws, merely the hirelings and henchmen of the party in power. Although the phrase “pernicious activity” had not yet been coined to characterize the performances of unscrupulous office-holders, the people had seen quite enough of the thing itself to want no more of it; and the project of government interference became unpopular. At the same time, it can not be said that Mr. Gould, who lived until 1892, ever inspired the people with confidence or made any recognizable attempt to that end.

AN ATTACK ON OUR OUTER RAMPARTS.

_PUCK, April 22nd, 1885._

The so-called “Freedom of Worship Bill Controversy” has been carried on so many years, through so many varying phases and under such exceptional and peculiar conditions, that it has become most difficult of description and characterization. Its exciting cause is a bill introduced into the New York legislature ostensibly in the interests of what might be called sectarian fair play. On the face of it, it aims to secure to the Catholic, confined by sickness or for other reasons in a public institution, the right to enjoy the ministrations of his religion at the hands of a priest of the Roman Church. Its opponents have alleged that it is calculated to go much farther than this in practical effect, and to afford a foothold for the regular and official installment of Roman Catholic Priests in the public institutions of the state. The bill has appeared and reappeared for many years. It has assumed many forms, has provoked a vast amount of discussion, and has engaged the interest of a very large, and in some respects a very peculiar, collection of friends and enemies. Its good faith has always been questioned, and we do not think it is expressing an _ex parte_ opinion to say that it has always been open to question--in view of the breadth and comprehensiveness of our American common law as applied to the civil rights of the citizen and the equal status of all religious organizations in the commonwealth. At the time (April 22, 1885,) when this cartoon was printed, the bill had appeared in a form which gave good reason for the belief, in which the whole press of New York shared, that it was a covert attack upon non-sectarian institutions.

It is to be hoped that this cause of so much contention will some day be forgotten in the natural growth of a spirit of religious tolerance.

THE POLITICAL “ARMY OF SALVATION.”

_PUCK, March 31st, 1880._

Loyalty and lack of moderation were equally marked as characteristic of the support which Mr. Roscoe Conkling gave to any cause that enlisted his sympathies. The hot, unreasoning, fanatical vehemence of the attempt which he made in 1880 to dragoon the Republican party into nominating General Grant for a third term undoubtedly made the third term idea far more unpopular than a more judicious advocacy might have made it. Mr. Conkling treated the question of General Grant’s nomination almost as though it were a matter of divine right; and although Mr. Conkling himself had a right to be considered honest in his enthusiasm, as much could not be said for the most of his active assistants in the management of the “Boom”--among whom were Ex-Secretaries Belknap and Robeson, two officials who had reflected anything but credit upon General Grant’s cabinet, Boss Shepherd, and other members of the ring that had been formed in Washington during the Ex-President’s second administration. The artist has drawn a parallel between the methods employed by the “Salvation Army,” which had invaded this country a little while before, and those of the “halcyon and vociferous” Mr. Conkling--to quote his own immortal phrase.

THE CINDERELLA OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND HER HAUGHTY SISTERS.

_PUCK, October 13th, 1880._

During the Presidential campaign of 1880, which ended in the election of Mr. Garfield, Mr. R. B. Hayes, then the incumbent of the Presidential chair, was treated with studied neglect and coldness by the leaders of his own party. Although General Grant had failed to get the nomination at the Chicago convention, in spite of the vigorous efforts of Mr. Roscoe Conkling, the ex-President and his ally were prominent in the campaign on their own account.

“They speak at mass-meetings, they are interviewed, they write letters; they are never out of the public eye,” says PUCK of October 13th, 1880. Mr. Hayes, however, received no pressing invitation from the party managers to assist in electing their Republican ticket. Undoubtedly this deliberate slight was due to the extreme sensitiveness felt by all classes of Republicans on the question of Mr. Hayes’s title to the office which he held; and it was in its inception a creditable feeling that prompted the desire to keep him in the background. At the same time, it was a severe, almost a cruel retribution to be visited upon a man who had tried hard to atone for his capture of the Presidential chair by trick and device, by giving the country an uncommonly good, and, in some respects, decidedly courageous administration. Messrs. Grant and Conkling seemed to be solicitous to draw attention to their complete silence concerning the outgoing administration, and their enthusiasm in Mr. Garfield’s behalf. Although, to quote again from PUCK, “both these talkative gentlemen might have found their eloquence at a discount if Mr. Hayes had not kept up the score of the party through the last four years.”

“His administration will be held notable, in days to come, not merely for its positive performances, its vetos of the infamous Silver Bill and the unconstitutional Chinese Act; but for its negative excellence. He has done his duty as he saw it. If he has made himself ridiculous by carrying the contemptibly small social practices of a little Ohio town into the wider sphere of life to which Fate has introduced him, it is a pardonable fault. Let us say for him, after all, that, considering the wretched way in which he got to be President, he has done far too well with his chances to be snubbed by men in such equivocal positions as Messrs. Grant and Conkling.”

A HARMLESS EXPLOSION.

_PUCK, May 25th, 1881._

Mr. Conkling’s resignation to the Senate, in hope of re-election under circumstances which would have made such a triumph a severe rebuke to President Garfield, proved to be, as most people foresaw, the end of his political career. But, at the time, there were plenty of people to applaud his act and to liken his resignation to a “bombshell” thrown into the Senate. It was a sort of fireworks bombshell that destroyed nothing but itself, but it made a great noise for the moment. Mr. T. C. Platt chose at the same time to pop his toy balloon, and probably thought that it made part of the noise.

PUCK’S POLITICAL HUNTING GROUND.--HOW HE HAS MADE GAME OF THE POLITICIANS.

_PUCK, January 14th, 1885._

The first cartoons were doubtless chalked on dead walls, and even when the art reached a higher development, sticking to walls remained the cheapest and most convenient method of publication. It is often a test of a cartoon’s worth to-day--its suitability as a wall-decoration. It is a natural and simple impulse that moves us to pin on the wall the picture that has pleased us. Readers of PUCK who travel much in this country can not but notice how many people delight in pasting and pinning their favorite cartoons to the walls of their offices and workshops, and even of their dwelling-houses. A really popular cartoon is always sure of these humble but well-meant honors; and, curiously enough, experience has shown that next to the really telling “hit,” a playful, familiarly puzzling trifle like “PUCK’S Political Hunting-Ground,” if it is conceived with some grace and prettiness, is the most certain of this sort of popular favor. This particular picture was, no doubt, made attractive to many by the simple puzzle afforded by the faces of the animals. As, however, the passing of time must make some of these faces unfamiliar, it may be well to offer the following key--first calling attention to the fact that all the personages introduced were at the moment, in one way or another, at odds with fortune--except the late Mr. Jay Gould, who is figured as a bird of prey (in a general way, and with no over-particular ornithological accuracy) comfortably bearing off a lamb. The fact that this one figure of success is quite unconscious of the attempts of PUCK’S water-dog to catch him, may be supposed to show the usual disregard that Wealth entertains for Wit:

The fox, of course, is the ingenious Mr. James G. Blaine. The hyena, ex-speaker Kiefer, and the next animal of doubtful breed “Star Route” or “Soap” Dorsey. The paw and the head seen in the reeds behind the dog belong to Brady. The lineaments of Ben Butler may be discerned in the head of the frog, and the nature of the beast in the distention of the belly thereof. At the other end of the cartoon, General Grant’s features, without distortion or caricature, fit the head of the dead lion. Next to him “Secor” Robeson lies in the similitude of a dead boar, incapable of mischief for all his glaring eye-balls. In the foreground, Roscoe Conkling lies a dead pouter pigeon. (Caricaturists frequently showed Mr. Conkling as a pouter pigeon, but most of them carried the analogy too far and made a frail, spindle-shanked thing of him. In this picture the thickly feathered legs and stout frame of the bird do not bely its sturdy original.) The owl is the late John Kelly--and a powerful and accurate owl he was, too, in his time! The pendent monkey is T. C. Platt, who was at that time suffering from one of the temporary eclipses which flecked the pathway of the political adventurer with appropriate forecasts of oblivion.

THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH OF THE FUTURE--FROM THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS OUTLOOK.

_PUCK, January 10th, 1883._

The times change, and we change with them. When this cartoon was designed, the popular theological fad was the harmonization of science and religion, and the immediate cause of its appearance was some utterance, now forgotten, but at the time considered highly audacious, of the Reverend Heber Newton. It was, we believe, the introduction of the practice of “slumming” which changed the current of clerical taste.

POSITIVELY LAST AWAKENING OF THE DEMOCRATIC RIP VAN WINKLE.

_PUCK, October 27th, 1880._

The picture of the Democratic party as Rip Van Winkle was suggested by the fact that in 1880, when it appeared, (Oct. 27) the party had been for just twenty years wrapt in the sleep of political inactivity. The figure of the old sleeper is the one made familiar by Mr. Jefferson’s wonderful interpretation. He starts up from his twenty years’ slumber to see a spectral host flit by him, as he lies upon the mountain crag--Douglas, Greeley, McClellan, Seymour, Tilden, and Hancock the Superb, leading the doomed line of hapless Presidential candidates. The mean realities of life are represented by the two fiery-eyed owls in the tree at the old man’s back--General B. F. Butler and Mr. John Kelly of Tammany Hall, who never appeared in national politics, except as secret and mischievous birds of prey.

Down in the right-hand lower corner of the picture a pocket-flask labelled “Bourbon” may puzzle the reader who turns this page a generation hence. It is a sly reference to a jest well known and well understood at the time,--it had a much earlier origin. The Democrats were called Bourbons because it was supposed that “they never learned anything and never forgot anything.” As it happened, Bourbon County, Kentucky, had given its name to a brand of whiskey at that time in great favor. As whiskey was America’s democratic drink, in the broader sense of the word, by a natural association of ideas Bourbon whiskey was set down as the drink of the Democratic party. It was generally known as “Bourbon” and pronounced “Burbin.”

JUST THE DIFFERENCE.

_PUCK, July 28th, 1880._

This cartoon depicts so simply and clearly the position of the two great parties and their respective leaders in the early part of the campaign of 1880 that even at this date it hardly calls for any elucidation whatever.

It may, however, be proper to note that the placing of Mr. Arthur as a burden upon Mr. Garfield’s back, in the bag labeled “Credit Mobilier” and “De Golyer Contract,” is not intended to imply that Mr. Arthur himself had any connection with these scandals. Mr. Arthur himself undoubtedly was regarded as an incumbrance to Mr. Garfield’s canvass because of his very unwise choice of associates among the politicians of New York, and his singular indifference to the regard of the people with whom his birth and breeding should naturally have led him to affiliate. In this it must be admitted that Mr. Arthur did himself an injustice, for which, however, he amply atoned when Mr. Garfield’s death threw upon him the responsibilities of the Chief Executive.

A MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!

_PUCK, December 22d. 1880._

There are few more tragic or startling pages in our political history than those which record Mr. Garfield’s brief career as the national leader of his party. Nominated for President in the Chicago Convention of 1880, after the collapse of the Grant Third-Term Movement, (although it was generally supposed that he was too firmly committed to the interests of Senator Sherman to enter the lists on his own account,) he was elected in November, after a somewhat heated campaign, during which much publicity was given to his unfortunate dealings with the Crédit-Mobilier people and other objectionable speculators. His opponent was General Hancock, a soldier and a gentleman of unblemished reputation. He owed his defeat partly to certain utterances concerning the tariff question which, though just in themselves, were injudicious in view of the popular sentiment of the time; partly to the wide-spread distrust of the Democratic party that then prevailed, and partly, as Mr. S. W. Dorsey, one of Mr. Garfield’s campaign-managers, most gratuitously and indecently announced after election, to wholesale bribery in the State of Indiana. (This was the notorious “Soap” Dorsey, so called from his using “soap” as a euphemism for bribe-money.)

By a permissible pictorial license, the artist, in PUCK of December 22nd, 1880, represents the President-Elect as already quartered within the White House, distributing the spoils of office as presents from a Christmas tree. Around him are the leaders of the Republican party: General Grant, Senator John Sherman, Don Cameron, General Logan, Vice-President Chester A. Arthur, and Carl Schurz in the foreground; James G. Blaine and Marshall P. Jewell (the collector of the campaign-fund) in a corner. The shadow of Roscoe Conkling’s head and of the ambrosial curl which was supposed still to linger on his brow, is thrown upon the side of the window-casing, but from what quarter it is projected is difficult to determine. Mr. Conkling’s attitude toward the new administration was dubious and peculiar.