H.
Harold Tucker Webster (1885–1952) was an American
cartoonist known for
The Timid Soul,
Bridge,
Life's Darkest Moments and others in his syndicated series
which ran from the 1920s into the 1950s. Because he disliked his
given name, his readers knew him as
H.
T. Webster, and his signature was
simply
Webster. His friends, however, called him
Webby.
Because of the humor and human interest in his cartoons, he was
sometimes compared to
Mark Twain, and his
art style was quite similar to the work of
Clare Briggs. During his lifetime, Webster drew
more than 16,000 single-panel cartoons.
Born in
Parkersburg,
West Virginia
in 1885, Webster grew up in the small town
(pop. 3,365) of Tomahawk, Wisconsin
where his father was a druggist. He began
drawing at age seven. When he was 12, he switched from cigarettes
to cigars, and that same year he sold his first cartoon for $5 to
the magazine
Recreation.
He studied drawing from a correspondence course when he was 15, and
two years later, he left high school and Tomahawk to study in
Chicago at the Frank Holmes School of Illustration, where
cartoonist
Harry Hershfield had
also studied. However, the Holmes School closed only a few weeks
after Webster's arrival, bringing an end to his formal art
training. With little success as a freelance artist, Webster began
a salaried job with the
Denver Republican, moving to the
rival
Denver Post when he was
offered $15 a week as a sports cartoonist. Webster commented, "If
they had known it, they could have got me for $1.50".
He returned to Chicago, where he spent three years drawing
front-page political cartoons for the
Chicago Inter-Ocean,
prompting one politician to introduce a bill in the state
legislature forbidding unflattering cartoons. After two years with
The Cincinnati Post, he
had enough saved to spend a year traveling around the world.
Returning from China, he joined the
New York Tribune in 1912. He married
Ethel Worts on August 2, 1916, two weeks after he met her.
Caspar Milquetoast quietly enters
The titles of Webster's cartoons reflected the different
situations, as in
Our Boyhood Ambitions and
Bridge. In 1924, he moved to the
New York World
and soon after added
The Timid Soul featuring
Caspar Milquetoast, a wimpy character
whose name is derived from milk toast. Webster described Caspar
Milquetoast as "the man who speaks softly and gets hit with a big
stick". The modern dictionary definition of
milquetoast
(meaning a very shy or retiring person) comes from Webster's
cartoons.
In 1927 Webster trained himself to draw left-handed in three months
after a severe case of arthritis impaired the use of his right
hand. In 1931, the
World folded, and that same year,
Simon & Schuster published
a collection of
The Timid Soul reprints. Webster then went
back to the
New York Herald-Tribune, where he then
launched a
Timid Soul Sunday strip. He alternated his
various features throughout the week: Caspar Milquetoast was seen
on both Sunday and Monday. Youth's glories (
The Thrill That
Comes Once in a Lifetime) and the downside (
Life's Darkest
Moment} appeared on Saturdays and Tuesdays. On Wednesday,
The Unseen Audience offered satirical jabs at radio.
How to Torture Your Husband (or Wife) was published each
Thursday, and the week ended with
Bridge on Fridays.
Webster's assistant, Herb Roth, took over when Webster died in
1952. When Roth died the following year, the series came to an end
with the last new drawing appearing in the
New York Herald Tribune on
April 4, 1953.
Television
On June 22, 1949, the
DuMont
Television Network adapted
The Timid Soul to
television as the premiere presentation of their
Program
Playhouse series. Caspar Milquetoast was portrayed by
Ernest Truex.
Bibliography
- Our Boyhood Thrills and Other Cartoons (1915)
- Boys and Folks (1917)
- Webster's Bridge with William Johnston (1924)
- Webster's Poker Book (1926)
- The Timid Soul (1931)
- The Culberston-Webster Contract System with Ely Culbertson (1932)
- Webster Unabridged (1945)
- To Hell with Fishing (1945)
- Who Dealt This Mess (1948)
- How to Torture Your Husband (1948)
- How to Torture Your Wife (1948)
- Life with Rover (1949)
- The Best of H. T. Webster, a Memorial
Collection (1953)
References
- "Webster's Unalloyed", American
Heritage.
- "Average Man," Time, Monday, November 26,
1945.
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