BARTON IS SUCH SWEET SORROW

The Candle That Burns Twice As Bright

Burns Half As Long

by Rick Marschall

Ralph Barton and his friend Charlie Chaplin

A few words about Ralph Barton (1891-1931), one America's great cartoonists, caricaturists, writers, and wits. In his day he was prolific to an almost superhuman degree. Beginning in his early 20s he sprang like a desert flower, his cartoons appearing in major publications. He was tapped to illustrate many books, including some of the decade's best sellers; and he wrote several books of his own. As a wit, he was sought out as an intimate companion by some of the greatest talents of the day. As a caricaturist he ranks with the best of American artists, in apparent effortlessness "capturing" the likenesses of hundreds of notable celebrities.

Ralph Barton's collected work would fill proverbial volumes -- there ought to be a catalogue raisonné of his work -- and is, in fact, a challenge to track because of the many and varied outlets for which he drew. I have many of the magazines he drew for, and most of the books he wrote and illustrated. I also have original art -- "more than I need but not all that I want" -- as well as photographs and correspondence with his many friends. 

Actors populated his world as much as cartoonists did. Charlie Chaplin was a friend, as was the actor Roland Young (who was himself an excellent, published caricaturist; the Barton-Young correspondence of which I have many pages, and the actor's drawings, will be a feature in the upcoming revival of NEMO Magazine); and of his four wives, two were in the arts -- the actress Carlotta Monterey and the jazz composer (Les Six) Germaine Tailleferre.

Barton in his early 20s became a prominent contributor to Puck Magazine after it had been sold to the Straus family which sought to transform it into an American version of the iconoclastic German and French cartoon magazines. In the early days of the Great War Puck sent the young Barton to Paris as its European correspondent. In those days his drawing style resembled the linear and avant-garde hallmarks of Lawrence Felloes and the Russian-French fashion designer Erté, at that time being introduced to American in the pages of Harper's Bazar (a young John Held Jr was similarly influenced at this time). 

Puck cover, 1916

After Puck Barton worked for Judge, Photoplay, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker. In fact Harold Ross named Barton a Contributing Editor of The New Yorker from its first issue, an honor in company with Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, and Marc Connolly despite the fact that no contributions were required and no compensation exchanged. As with the others he did soon contribute many clever and memorable pieces -- in his case, caricatures, theatrical criticism, and full-page cartoons.

 

                

An example of caricatures -- spot on! -- that Ralph Barton frequently created. He executed these for magazines and newspapers; for ads and theatre programs; even for fabrics and huge theater curtains. 

The books Barton illustrated are testaments to his eclectic vision. He drew full-page cartoons for a deluxe edition of Balzac's Droll Stories; wrote his own humorous books including God's Country and Science In Rhyme Without Reason. The great editor H L Mencken suggested to the movie scenarist and humorist Anita Loos an idea for a series of stories that were collected in one of the 1920s' greatest books, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Her friend Ralph Barton illustrated it and its sequel and a spate of similar humor books. His work with Loos inspired many spinoffs in print, stage, and movies, down unto Marilyn Monroe and Carol Channing's theatrical versions. 

Illustration from Anita Loos' s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

The world was, as the saying goes, his oyster. Barton, as the 1930s dawned, had more assignments than he could handle... yet he did. His output was amazing. He continued to write as well as draw, and he even had dabbled in the movies himself, with the assistance of Charlie Chaplin. He generously introduced another great caricaturist, Miguel Covarrubias, to the American public. However, living half his life in France, his letters to Roland Young reflect a man experiencing severe mood swings about his art, his real-estate searches, and his love life.

His love life, or lack of one, became an obsession after his third wife, Carlotta Monterey, left him. She soon married the playwright Eugene O'Neill, and that loss sent Barton into -- so to speak -- a long day's journey into nightmares. (Note: this is a cheap attempt at a literary pun; there was no relation between the play and Barton. It is ironic, however, that Oona, daughter of O'Neill, eventually married Barton's friend Charlie Chaplin.)

A caricature of  Marion Davies (I believe) (if any reader can identify the actress, please let me know!). From the original art; published in Photoplay Magazine. 

One evening in 1931 the increasingly distraught Barton, in his Manhattan penthouse, wrote a note about having lost the only woman he ever loved. He raised a pistol to his temple and blew his talented brains out.   

There are many geniuses in humankind's history that have lived relatively brief lives; perhaps disproportionately. I have tracked such lives, and deaths, in desultory fashion, and in the 1980s wrote an article for The Comics Journal on the anomaly of cartoonists' suicides. But among creative figures in history -- not all cartoonists; and not all suicides -- there is the very sad list of geniuses who died young: Caravaggio, Raphael, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Beardsley; Purcell, Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Gershwin; Bix Beiderbecke, Fats Waller, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, Buddy Holly, Gram Parsons.

Different factors took these creators from us. Schubert died of  syphilis. Van Gogh was a presumed suicide (I am persuaded it was not suicide); as I said there have been many cartoonists, and many "distraught" creators who overdosed or otherwise committed "soft suicides." And of course accidents have claimed the lives of many such as Buddy Holly.

The word "tragedy" is often applied, or misapplied, and these days vulgarized: stripped of its distinctions. Oftentimes, deadly storms are, really, just bad weather (and when not categorized as tragedies are more seriously mischaracterized as "acts of God"). When people "tsk-tsk" over someone's momentary encounter with bad luck, we can be inured to the healthy and contemplative grief wherewith we should reflect on cultural losses. "What if?" is more than a parlor game. 

Mozart and Schubert and Van Gogh created bodies of work that would have exhausted other creators who might have lived to 100. So we think of the adage at the top of this essay (an ancient Chinese proverb, allegedly). If tragedy is, as Aristotle defined and as Elizabethan dramatists thematically affirmed, more than a horrible circumstance but something from which a protagonist is virtually doomed or finds inextricable due to inherent "character flaws," then we must choose our words carefully.

In that view we can imagine what works might have been produced if, say, Ralph Barton had lived to twice his age. Eighty is not an unusual age for artists to attain, and moreover "active till the end." We might have had Ralph Barton's cartoons and caricatures and illustrations and written humor into the 1970s. I am tempted say that the tragedy is ours, too.

An admirer asked Ralph Barton for an autographed and was blessed to receive one... and a self-caricature... and a poem he wrote!

"My autograph cannot be read, (a frightful task to start on!) I'll draw my effigy instead -- Sincerely yours, Ralph Barton"

The South. — A Baltimore Secession Newspaper

[1] Harper’s Weekly, November 26, 1864, ‘Long Abraham Lincoln a Little Longer,’ by Frank Bellew, Sr.

    

by E.M. Sanchez-Saavedra

 Abe Lincoln.

WHEN Abraham Lincoln took office in 1861, freedom of the press was the constitutionally guaranteed law of the land and a babel of conflicting editorial voices clamored from every news stand. The entire spectrum from rabid secessionist to intensely pro-Unionist sentiments was represented in New York’s daily papers. While Horace Greeley was shouting ‘On to Richmond!’ in the Tribune, Ben Wood was advocating accommodation with the Southern Confederacy in the Daily News. The New York World, a Democratic paper, skated close to the edge, but avoided outright disloyalty. It reprinted many items from Southern papers and stressed a peaceful solution to the war. Impartial news reporting was definitely not the order of the day; people chose their papers according to editorial partisanship. Besides the more general news sheets, there existed a wide variety of niche publications – trade, mechanical and agricultural papers, religious organs, foreign language papers, medical journals and lunatic-fringe tracts. Many of them likewise exhibited political biases.

[2] The South, June 14, 1861, masthead.

The Lincoln administration has remained under fire both from contemporaries and from later historians and students of constitutional law for the past century and a half.

[3] The World, New York, early 1861 and late 1864 front pages.

The outbreak of war in April 1861 changed the editorial landscape. Despite the vaunted First Amendment right:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,

[4] The World, New York, March 12, 1861, editorial.

freedoms of speech and of the press were doomed as soon as Fort Sumter surrendered to Confederate troops. Angry mobs, North and South, threatened editors suspected of disloyalty and outright treason. Certain papers became the victims of government censorship. Three-fourths of the First Amendment was suspended until further notice!

[5] The World, New York, March 12, 1861, flag of the Confederate States of America

   

The South.

A CASE in point was a pro-Secession paper published in Baltimore, Maryland by Thomas W. Hall, Jr., called simply The South. Hall, a prominent Baltimore attorney and later City Solicitor from 1878 to ’82, trusted the First Amendment to protect his right to publish ‘disloyal’ views. He was sadly mistaken.

[6] Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, August 31, 1861. ‘Tarring and feathering of Ambrose L. Kimball, editor of the Essex “Democrat,” Haverhill, Mass., a rebel-sympathising journal. — From a sketch by a correspondent.’

Maryland, a slaveholding ‘border state’ was a classic example of the ‘brother against brother’ nature of civil wars. If Maryland had joined the Southern Confederacy, the federal capital at Washington, D.C. would have been completely behind enemy lines and one of the first efforts of the new administration was to secure Maryland for the Union. The state capital at Baltimore was a particular hotbed of southern sympathizers: City Marshal Kane had assembled an arsenal of weapons to combat coercion, the city council remained hostile to Lincoln and regiments of Confederate volunteers began to organize.

[7] The Baltimore Riot on April 19, 1861, various illustrations.

As a key seaport, Baltimore occupied a strategic position to threaten Union interests by land and sea. In addition, the principal railroad lines linking Washington, D.C. with the rest of the Union passed through Baltimore. On April 19, 1861, a regiment of Massachusetts volunteers was changing trains in the city when a mob attacked the troops, killing two and wounding several. Seventeen-year-old Pvt. Luther C. Ladd had the melancholy distinction of becoming the first Union combat death of the Civil War. The soldiers eventually battled their way to the safety of a southbound train.

[8] Luther C. Ladd.

One of Adalbert J. Volck’s earliest war etchings depicted the violence in his home town. Unlike engravings that appeared in the Northern press, his spirited view emphasizes the heroism of angry citizens repelling hated armed invaders with sword canes and stones. This intolerable state of affairs led to a federal military invasion of Maryland and widespread arrests of prominent politicians, law officers and journalists. Despite the unconstitutionality of these actions, Maryland stayed in the Union. Northern illustrated papers reveled in the discovery of Marshal Kane’s stash of weapons, federal troops occupying downtown Baltimore, and other scenes of the crisis.

[9] Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, July 13, 1861, ‘Entrance to the Provost-Marshal’s building, Holliday Street, Baltimore, guarded by canon to prevent the intrusion of the mob —,’ front page.

If not a confirmed anti-federal before the Baltimore riots, Thomas W. Hall, Jr. was radicalized by the violence. He and several business associates were walking along the railroad tracks when his friend Robert W. Davis was shot and killed at his side by a stray Minie bullet, possibly fired by the panicked Massachusetts volunteers aboard the train taking them out of the city. On the editorial page of his paper, Hall repeatedly printed extracts from the U.S. Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Rights of the People of Maryland and the Declaration of Independence, stressing freedom of the press, freedom from unwarrantable search and seizure, freedom from imprisonment without trial, the right to bear arms, and the subordination of military forces to the civil authorities. His worst fears would all be realized within a few months.

[10] The South, June 14, 1861, front page.

Thomas Hall’s newspaper, The South, and its editor would likewise become casualties of the war. According to Col. Thomas J. Scharf’s The Chronicles of Baltimore (1874),

The South, a very able afternoon paper, “devoted to the South, Southern Rights and Secession,” issued the first number on Monday, April 22, 1861… From the first it became exceedingly popular, and was eagerly sought after by all classes of our citizens. The South flourished until Friday, September 13, 1861, when the printer announced in the afternoon edition on a half sheet, under a flaming head of the “Freedom of the Press,” that the “usual hour for the arrival of the editor, Thomas W. Hall, Jr., Esq., having passed this morning, an effort was made to gain admittance to his editorial room. This was easily accomplished, for on trying the door, it was found that the lock had been forced, and that all his papers and documents of value had been abstracted. The locks of Mr. Hall’s desk and private drawers had been picked with an expertness that would do no discredit to the most accomplished convict, and all the letters and scraps of papers contained in them carried off, as were also the full files of the Exchange and South, the files of the American, Clipper and Sun being left. Whilst looking on with wonder and amazement, the astounding intelligence was brought in that Thomas W. Hall, Jr., Esq., had been arrested ***** and it is only reasonable to suppose that he is now an inmate of the American Bastile [sic], formerly known as Ft. McHenry. As all communication between the editor and the printer of the South is forcibly cut off, the latter is constrained to announce to its numerous readers that its publication, for the present, must necessarily cease with the current number.” This was certainly, for the times, bold language of the printer. On Thursday, the 19th of September, The South, after a suspension of six days, was continued by Messrs. John M. Mills & Co., on a half sheet. On Thursday, the 13th of February, 1862, the paper was issued on a full sheet by Messrs. S.S. Mills & Bro., who continued to publish it until Monday, the 17th of February, 1862, when it was suppressed by the military authorities.

[Samuel S. Mills, of the printing firm of Mills and Colton, would also be arrested by U.S. troops.]

[11] The South, June 14, 1861, editorials.

According to The War of the Rebellion; A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series II – Volume II (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1897), Major General George B. McClellan submitted to Secretary of War Simon Cameron a letter for his signature. This missive, delivered by Allan Pinkerton, chief of McClellan’s secret service, requested General John A. Dix to arrest seditious Baltimoreans, including members of the legislature. Dated September 11, 1861, McClellan’s cover letter stated that ‘it would seem necessary to arrest the parties named. I have indicated Fort Monroe as their first destination in order to get them away from Baltimore as quietly as possible…’

[12] The South, June 14, 1861, military ads.

Secretary Cameron’s signed order directed General Dix to dispatch Pinkerton and his men to ‘take immediate charge of the arrests and examination of papers.’ The persons named in the order were Thomas Parkin Scott, Severn Teackle Wallis, Henry M. Warfield, Francis Key Howard, Thomas W. Hall, Jr. and Henry May. Dix was ordered to arrest these suspects ‘and to keep them in close custody, suffering no one to communicate with them, and to convey them at once to Fortress Monroe there to remain in close custody… The exigencies of the Government demand a prompt and successful execution of this order.’

[13] The South, June 14, 1861, song text.

On September 27, Thomas Hall and a growing number of political prisoners were transferred from Fortress Monroe, Virginia, to Fort Lafayette, in New York Harbor. A cartoon in New York’s The Phunny Phellow for November 1861 shows ‘Uncle Sam caging the Rats who would undermine the Union” in Ft. Lafayette. On February 15, 1862, Hall was transferred once again, this time to Fort Warren, in Boston Harbor. He and his fellow Baltimore secessionists, including George William Brown, the ex-mayor, two ex-police commissioners, Kane, the ex-city marshal of police, four ex-legislators, several merchants, and his fellow editor, F.K. Howard, of the Exchange, were quietly released from captivity on November 26, 1862, by order of the Adjutant-General’s Office at Washington.

[14] The South, June 14, 1861, ads.

Note that none of the captives had ever faced the due process of law following their arrest – a proceeding eerily foreshadowing the ‘renditions’ and close confinement of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay 150 years later. The Lincoln administration defended its actions with regard to Thomas W. Hall, Jr., as

a military precautionary measure of great necessity for the preservation of the peace and maintenance of order in Maryland. His paper was openly and zealously advocating the cause of the insurrection and largely contributing to unsettle and excite the public mind. A mass of correspondence and manuscripts were found in Hall’s possession in prose and poetry, much of it intended for The South newspaper and all of intensely disloyal character.

[15] The Phunny Phellow, Vol. 3, No. 1, November 1861. ‘Fort Lafayette; Uncle Sam caging the Rats who would undermine the Union,’ front page.

Hall’s fate illuminates the constitutional crisis of 1861: was the preservation of the Union a justification for the suspension of civil liberties, such as habeas corpus and freedom of the press? As a shrewd lawyer, Lincoln drew on the traditions of English and European law and believed that keeping the nation together transcended a strict construction of its constitution. This dangerous precedent has led to many abuses in the name of ‘emergency decrees,’ whereby liberty is traded for security and often never regained. Lincoln proved to be a benevolent despot in this respect. Perhaps the best proof of this is the huge corpus of violently anti-Lincoln cartoons and editorials that were allowed to circulate during his presidency. Personal attacks on Lincoln and his policies were not considered disloyal or treasonable. They were part of an established American tradition of lampooning current officeholders. Advocating secession and armed rebellion was a different matter. Unlike a sad majority of world governments throughout the ages, the U.S. and Canada do not punish dissent with torture and death. Despite charges of tyranny, Lincoln’s summary roundup of secessionist editors resulted in no maiming or execution of the culprits. After a year languishing in damp military dungeons, they were allowed to return home, sadder and wiser. The only man to be executed as a war criminal was Henry Wirtz, commandant of the infamous Camp Sumter (Andersonville) prison camp. In spite of public sentiment, Jefferson Davis was never ‘hung to a sour apple tree.’ Following the war, top Confederate statesmen and military leaders were able to resume their lives in an impoverished and ruined South. Thus we find Alexander H. Stephens, the only Vice President of the C.S.A. publishing a rather tame History of the United States in 1884. Antebellum congressmen gradually returned to Congress, despite frantic ‘waving the bloody shirt’ by their Republican opponents.

[16] Alexander H. Stephens, 1876, ‘History of the United States,’ frontispiece portrait and title page.

As late as the election of 1864, when the fortunes of war had shifted to the Union side, cartoonists continued to lambast the Lincoln administration’s tyranny. In the London humor magazine Punch, John Tenniel’s ‘The Federal Phœnix’ depicted the reelected president as a human-headed eagle, rising from the ashes of ‘Commerce,’ ‘United States Constitution,’ ‘Free Press,’ ‘Credit,’ ‘Habeas Corpus’ and ‘State Rights.’ In Comic News, fellow-Brit Matthew Somerville Morgan showed Lincoln as a ravening stage vampire, menacingly intoning, ‘Columbia, thou art mine; with thy blood I will renew my lease of life — Ah! Ah!’ as he hovers over a shrinking female figure. Although many of these vicious drawings undoubtedly hurt Lincoln deeply, his well-developed senses of humor and justice prevented him from suppressing all dissent. Comic journals like Vanity Fair took pot shots at many administration foes as well, such as ‘Copperhead’ ex-mayor Fernando Wood and his wobbly successor George Opdyke. Had Lincoln quashed the majority of political cartoons, we would have lost the affectionate ‘Long Abraham Lincoln a Little Longer’ by Frank Bellew in Harper’s Weekly, following his reelection.

[17] Punch, December 3, 1864, ‘The Federal Phœnix’ by John Tenniel.

[18] Comic News, November 26, 1864, ‘The Vampire’ by Matt Morgan. ‘Abe: ‘Columbia, thou art mine; with thy blood I will renew my lease of life — Ah! Ah!’

[19] Vanity Fair, Vol. 6, No. 134, July 19, 1862. ‘Fernando Wood in his famous role of Oliver Cromwell,’ front page.

[20] Vanity Fair, Vol. 6, No. 137, August 9, 1862, ‘George Opdyke: Mayor of New-York, and First Recruiting-Sergeant to the Union,’ front page.

•¡•

Vanity Fair: a Civil War Comic Paper

  

“Vanity Fair, another sixteen page quarto was commenced December 31, 1859. Louis H. Stephens was the publisher, and Frank Wood, the burlesque writer and dramatic critic was the editor. The cartoons were drawn by Henry L. Stephens, a brother of the publisher, assisted by Bellew, E. F. Mullen, McClenan, Sol Eytinge and others. The corps of writers embraced among others Fitz James O’Brien, William Winter, dramatic critic of the Tribune, Henry Clapp, Jr., (“Figaro”) Richard Henry Stoddard, George Arnold, Edmund Clarence Stedman, Fitz Hugh Ludlow, Charles Dawson Shanley, C. F. Browne, (“Artemus Ward”) and Thomas Bailey Aldrich. After a little over a year, Charles Godfrey Leland became the editor and was succeeded in a brief time by “Artemus Ward,” who left, after contributing some of his best sketches, on a lecturing tour. Charles Dawson Shanley then assumed editorial control, and continued until the periodical expired on the fourth day of July, 1863, aged about three and one half years.” -- Comic Periodicals of America HERE

Henry L. Stephens, the principal cartoonist on Vanity Fair, was born in Philadelphia 11 Feb 1824 and died at Bayonne, New Jersey 13 Dec 1882. His first venture into comic art was illustrating a small pamphlet entitled Billy Vidkins. He studied at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts and was engaged as an artist by Frank Leslie in 1859 followed by a stint at Harper’s Weekly. In 1863 he began a series of chromolithographs and drew cartoons for Mrs. Grundy in 1868 and for Punchinello in 1870. He was an accomplished watercolorist and illustrated The Comic Natural History of the Human Race, six volumes of Nursery Rhymes for Julius Bien, Mother Goose Melodies, published by Hurd & Houghton, and Aesop’s Fables. In 1860 R. M. De Witt of Frankfort Street published The Goblin Snob: an Extra Extravaganza and Funny Phantasy imagined and perpetuated in nearly fifty plates by Henry L. Stephens. Vanity Fair was published from 100 Nassau Street, jokingly known in the trade as “the Swamp.” Several volumes are available for perusal HERE