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HOMER DAVENPORT CARTOONIST
Davenport himself witnessed an illustration of the fame of some of his work. While waiting in Senator Hanna's ante-room for an interview one day, there came in an old colored preacher. As soon as the Senator showed himself, the preacher exclaimed: "Why, how is that, " said Mr. Hanna, "I've never met you." "Well, you see, Marse Hanna, I knowed you from your pictures in the papers -- the ones Mr. Davenport draws." Davenport was sitting close by, so the Senator couldn't help but smile, although it is not on record that he relished the portrait of himself which Davenport had made familiar to millions of Americans all over the country. |
WITH
the death of Homer Calvin Davenport last month, the work of one of America's
foremost political cartoonists was brought to a sudden end. And powerful
work it had been, especially in the field of politics and industrial reform.
Few cartoonists had attained such great fame, or dealt stronger blows than
Davenport. Although his work covered a wide range of subjects, it was his
political cartoons for which he was best known. His original creations
of the Trust figure -- brutal and burly -- and the dollar-marked suit of
Senator Hanna, have been accepted as distinct additions to the symbolic
stock-in-trade of his craft.
Davenport's
"Uncle Sam" was one of the best produced by any cartoonist. He
usually pictured him as a dignified and serious gentleman, shrewd of face
and spare in form, clad, of course, in the traditional tricolor, but, emerging
as a rule only in great crises, scenting trouble on the international horizon
perhaps, and reaching out for his old flintlock, or bowed with grief over
some tragic event of national interest.
backwoods
where Davenport was born. These cartoons made such an impression in the
Davenport home that the mother set her heart on having her son become a
great cartoonist.
Although
his first efforts in newspaper work were neither brilliant nor successful,
Davenport's subsequent rise to fame was rapid. Like many another American
farm boy, his earliest ambitions led him in the direction of the sawdust
ring; but his circus career was brief and inglorious. His first newspaper
job was on the Portland Oregonian, from which he separated suddenly
-- the story goes -- because his drawing of a stove for an advertisement
was far from satisfactory.
After
drifting about somewhat, now on the San Francisco Examiner, then
on the Chronicle, and doing other miscellaneous work, he was discovered
by Mr. Hearst and brought to New York in 1895 to draw for the Evening
Journal as one of the highest paid men in the profession. Here his
powerful work attracted wide attention and he quickly achieved national
fame. Mr. Davenport remained with the Journal during the silver-and-gold
campaign of 1896, the Spanish War of 1898, and the second McKinley campaign
of 1900. In all of these important periods he and his pencil were in the
very forefront of the molders of public opinion. In the campaigns of 1904
and 1908 he was with the New York Evening Mail. It was in the Roosevelt
campaign of 1904 that Davenport drew the famous "He's good enough
for me" cartoon of which millions of copies were circulated.
Davenport
spent a good deal of time traveling in Europe, and on one of his trips
he attended the Dreyfus trial, sketching the principal characters. He also
visited England and caricatured some of the prominent statesmen there,
including Gladstone, Sir William Harcourt, Balfour, and others. Recently
he had gone back to the Hearst forces, and was engaged on the New York
American. His last cartoon, and the one which probably cost him
his life, was on the Titanic disaster. He had gone down to the dock
the night the Carpathia was due and there caught a cold, which turned
into pneumonia and resulted in his death.
