A Crowded Life in Comics –

 ❆   Frost Bitten.  ❆ 

Frost’s early treatment of the ice-sliding scene from Dickens’ humorous masterpiece.

❆  By Rick Marschall  ❆

Those who know me, and those who don’t, and the vast portion of humanity in between who don’t care, might know that I am fanatical about Arthur Burdett Frost (1851-1928). A. B. Frost ought to be remembered and celebrated and, indeed, honored, more than he has been. When I admire a cartoonist (or illustrator or author or composer or performer) I tend to be come a completest, acquiring complete printed or recording works when possible, or as much ancillary material as possible.

In the case of this revered artist (close to Opper in my personal pantheon) (and one of many figures responsible for my perpetual penury) I have collected published works, original art, correspondence, rare portfolios, and sketches by Frost. I have visited the house where he lived for much of his career, and traded items with subsequent occupants.

Why is Frost special… No, let me say, A B Frost should be near the top of the list of cartoon scholars and fans for myriad reasons. He was a master at realization, anatomy, composition, humor, and many disparate genres. The Dionne Quintuplets, collectively, had fewer individual facets then did A B Frost. To list significant facts about the modest genius:

He was one of the first newspaper (New York Daily Graphic) and magazine cartoonists (Harper’s, Century, Scribner’s) when technology allowed pen-and-ink artists freedom. His only early rivals were Felix O C Darley, Thomas Nast, and Thomas Worth;

He was a pioneer political cartoonist (Graphic and Harper’s Weekly);

He was a frequent illustrator of scores of books, and for major authors – Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Frank Stockton, Theodore Roosevelt;

His illustration for the iconic Uncle Remus stories were so pitch-perfect that when an anthology was published, Joel Chandler Harris wrote a printed dedication to Frost, claiming that it was Frost’s drawings, more than the texts, that accounted for the success of the books;

He mightily contributed to the growing art form of the comic strip – his frequent multi-panel series in Harper’s and Scribner’s were popular before most other artists were experimenting with the form;

If he had restricted himself to one genre, he would be a notable figure… but he was versatile enough to be the dominant artist / cartoonist / illustrator in several fields: Humor… Western adventure… Hunting and sporting scenes… Rural and nostalgia subjects… Nature… Americana;

He was a master of pen and ink, but also frequently painted in colors and gouache (he was color-blind, so usually worked in grays unless his sons suggested colors to use);

For a while he laid aside cartoons and illustration, and moved to Giverny in France to live – and learn and paint with – the great French Impressionists of the era;

At the end of his life he returned to his first love, cartooning, and drew weekly panels and strips for Life Magazine. Besides the many books and stories he illustrated, he is at least known to collectors and fans for a couple of his stunning strip collections – Stuff and Nonsense and The Bull Calf.

In the future I will spill more about this great figure, and my crossed-paths along which I have hunted for information and artifacts.

Here, just a little curiosity – a “footprint” of how he worked. I have letters where he turned down assignments, and a story of his rudely treating an emissary of William Randolph Hearst who showed up at Frost’s farm with an open-ended invitation to draw strips.

But we share a letter to Frost from the Art Department of Scribner’s Magazine (rather frantic!) asking Frost to put aside an assignment to illustrate The Last of the Mohicans, and illustrate instead Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers… suggesting three chapters from which to choose.

A letter from the Art Department of Scribner’s Magazine suggesting illustrations for Dickens’ Pickwick Papers. Some urgency: “I pray do let us have it as soon as possible...”

(To be precise, the book’s actual title is The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Dickens' first novel concerns the doings of Mr Pickwick and his circle including Nathaniel Winkle, Augustus Snodgrass, and Tracy Tupman. The original illustrator for this novel was Robert Seymour. Undoubtedly the humorous situation related in Chapter 30, one of Dickens’ funniest in any of his books, appealed to Frost. That chapter’s title, by the way, is “How the Pickwickians Made and Cultivated the Acquaintance Of a Couple Of Nice Young Men Belonging To One Of the Liberal Professions; How They Disported Themselves On the Ice; and How Their Visit Came to a Conclusion.”

The chapter’s humor is thus forecast… besides the evidence that Dickens was paid by the word…)

Mr Pickwick was not the only posthumous character in this story; Dickens had passed when Frost was asked to illustrate editions of his great works. And Uncle Remus’s creator represented many authors and editors who clamored for Frost’s work; but Lewis Carroll, who assigned Frost work on books subsequent to the Alice tales, unbelievably was not happy with Frost’s work, and it was an unhappy collaboration. The drawings he did do hold up, however, and were printed; that situation said more about the eccentric Mr Carroll than about the illustrious Mr Frost.

Later. For now, an early frost.

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