Peter Newell, A Christmas Story

Posted on May 12, 2009 by Marco Graziosi

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Why Bobby didn’t get his rocking-horse.
(Click on image for full story.)

Peter Newell from Harper’s Round Table, vol. XVI, no. 789, 11 December 1894, 112.

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A Quick Cure (Newell)

Posted on May 9, 2009 by Marco Graziosi

newell_quick_cure

A QUICK CURE

MOTHER. “Don’t you feel able to sit up today?”
BOY. “No, mama, I am so weak.”
MAMMA. “Well, let me see. I guess you will be able to go to school Monday. To-day is Saturday, and –”
BOY (Jumping out of bed). “Saturday! I thought it was Friday!”

Peter Newell from Harper’s Round Table, vol. XVI, no. 804, 26 March 1895, 368.

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An April Fool (Newell)

Posted on May 2, 2009 by Marco Graziosi

newell_april_fool

An April Fool

“Well, I’m a bigger fool, my friends, than I had ever thought on;
I’ve gone an’ married me a wife, and find she’s stuffed with cotton!”

Peter Newell from Harper’s Round Table, vol. XVI, no. 805, 2 April 1895, 384.

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Pussy and the Fool's-Cap (Newell)

Posted on April 30, 2009 by Marco Graziosi

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Peter Newell, “Pussy and the Fool’s-Cap,” Harper’s Round Table, vol. XVI, no. 807, 16 April 1895, 416.

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Two of a Kind (Newell)

Posted on April 28, 2009 by Marco Graziosi

newell_2_of_a_kind

Peter Newell from Harper’s Round Table, vol. XVI, no. 820, 16 July 1895, 736.

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The Obliging Bear

Posted on April 25, 2009 by Marco Graziosi

newell_obliging_bear

A HONEY-LOVING grizzly-bear,
In a great bee-tree made his lair;
“There is a law,” he told the bees,
“That honey sha’n’t be kept in trees.

“I’ll take it out for you,” said he.
“Nay, nay, sir,” cries the old queen bee,
“Take yourself off!” and then and there
The stinging bees fell on the bear.

Peter Newell from Harper’s Round Table, vol XVI, no. 827, 3 September 1895, 904.

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The Merry Owlets

Posted on April 23, 2009 by Marco Graziosi

newell_merry_owlets

There were three little owl that had slept all day
In their downy nest in a dead tree’s hollow;
Said the first: “It’s time to go out and play,
I hear the good-night of the chimney-swallow!”
“Oh no,” said the second; “the sun is high,
Who wants to be blind as a bat? — not I!”
But the third said: “Rats! we have slept enough!”
Let’s go, anyhow, and play blindman’s buff!”

Peter Newell from Harper’s Round Table, vol. XVI, no. 825, 20 August 1895, 856.

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The Grasshopper and the Cider Piggin

Posted on April 21, 2009 by Marco Graziosi

newell_grasshopper

A HOPPERGRASS, one sunny day,
Turning hand-springs amid the hay,
O’erleaped himself, and fell into
A piggin of good apple brew.

“Shame on you, thirsty little one,”
Cried the haymakers in the sun;
The hopper took one draught, and then,
Ere he flew off, addressed the men:

“Good sirs,” quoth he, “although one swallow
Does not make summer, it would follow
That several swallows were at fault
If you had made that summersault.”

Peter Newell from Harper’s Round Table, vol. XVI, no. 823, 6 August 1895, 808.

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Here Comes the Rockefellerphant

Posted on April 18, 2009 by Marco Graziosi

In a previous post I noted a rare instance of contemporary reference in Gustave Verbeek’s Terrors of the Tiny Tads. Here is another from the strip for 19 May 1907, a few weeks after the appearance of the “Cowboisterous Kangaroosevelt Bear:”

Here comes the Rockefellerphant, so wealthy and so bold,
His stomach like a money bag, all full of shining gold.

He eats the Cinnamoney tree that grows upon the plains.
The Tiny Tads they see him, and they envy him his gains.

They tempt him with Subpoeanuts, but he turns away with fright,
And after following him for miles, they lose him in the night.

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Click on the image for the full strip which — as is often the case with the Terrors of the Tiny Tads — ends with the Tads feasting on one of the “jumbled beasts” that live in their land.

Meanwhile, in his indispensable Stripper’s Guide blog, Allan Holtz has a post on the 1909 rerun of a series Verbeek had published in Judge in 1900-03, not 1901-02 as Holtz states. Three examples of the original pages can be seen on the Ohio State University’s Treasury of Fine Art:

(Make sure you read them in Full Screen XXL mode.)

Verbeek had been producing such wordless strips for several years since — according to Andy Konkykru — a very similar one, “The Hunter’s Strategy,” appeared in Harper’s Round Table‘s Annual for 1897.

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Before Little Nemo

Posted on April 14, 2009 by Marco Graziosi

“Wicked Willie’s Dream” by Walter M. Dunk appeared in Harper’s Round Table, vol. XVI, no. 821, 23 July 1895, 760 (click for full story):

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It clearly anticipates Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland, in particular for Willie’s position after his fall, but the idea of explaining an uncanny series of events as a dream at the very end of the story had been floating around for a long time. Sigmund Freud included a cartoon which might be taken from McCay’s Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend in his Interpretation of Dreams (1900):

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Clicking on the image you will get an image of the page annotated by Sàndor Ferenczi from the Library of Congress Freud collection.

Edward Lear’s early picture story, “The Adventures of Daniel O’Rourke” (from Lear in the Original (New York: H.P. Kraus, 1975, 185-98, see earlier post) — adapted from “Daniel O’Rourke,” in Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland (London: John Murray, 1834,  134-44) — ends in the same way, with the metamorphosis of a whale into Daniel’s wife Judy, who wakes him from his alcoholic nightmare:

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Note the caption with its pun on interrupts / interprets.

Dunk’s strip seems to belong to a tradition in which the bad dream prompts the reformation of the “wicked” dreamer, which will reappear in newspaper comics, for example in William Steiningns’s The Bad Dream that Made Bill a Better Boy, which ran in the New York World from 13 August 1905 to 16 April 1911:

bills_dream_d

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