Let's start with a somewhat poetic work of original cartoon art from the New Yorker:
The reference is to the Greek historian Plutarch.
According to Plutarch's Moralia, Spartan women would exhort their sons going off to war to come back either with their shields or on them, that is either victorious or dead. George Price's cartoon has a somewhat befuddled husband going off to work while his wife delivers the same exhortation as the Spartan women. Tone is important here; she seems to mean it encouragingly and she is fully cognizant that the rhetoric is overdone, particularly with reference to her underachieving husband.
Skinner's listing describes the woman as "frumpy" and the man as "Walter Mitty-ish." This seems to be beside the point. The confidence and the sense of play reside in the woman, however plain her dress. James Thurber's Walter Mitty was an inveterate daydreamer; this guy is just in over his head, both at work and at home. I don't see the telltale signs of a rich fantasy life, only of befuddlement.
Skinner follows its practice of noting the "light blue washes" while failing to identify their role in shading with Ben-Day. The writing on the back of the artwork even identifies the process of Ben-Day underneath the tape, right below the printer's instructions about which tones to use.
Here then is just one more:
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| "Farewell, brave lover! Come back either with your shield or upon it." George Price Original artwork for the New Yorker, October 17, 1970, page 36. The World of George Price: A 55-Year Retrospective. New York: Beaufort, 1988. |
The reference is to the Greek historian Plutarch.
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| http://www.translatum.gr/forum/index.php?topic=925.0 |
Skinner's listing describes the woman as "frumpy" and the man as "Walter Mitty-ish." This seems to be beside the point. The confidence and the sense of play reside in the woman, however plain her dress. James Thurber's Walter Mitty was an inveterate daydreamer; this guy is just in over his head, both at work and at home. I don't see the telltale signs of a rich fantasy life, only of befuddlement.
Skinner follows its practice of noting the "light blue washes" while failing to identify their role in shading with Ben-Day. The writing on the back of the artwork even identifies the process of Ben-Day underneath the tape, right below the printer's instructions about which tones to use.
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| Printer's instructions for rendering Ben-Day in "B" and "C" tones |
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| http://www.skinnerinc.com/auctions/2658B/lots/427 |
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| "Farewell, brave lover! Come back either with your shield or upon it." George Price The New Yorker, October 17, 1970, page 36 |
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| "Farewell, brave lover! Come back either with your shield or upon it." George Price The New Yorker, October 17, 1970, page 36 |
This is certainly not the sole instance of a famous quotation appearing in a George Price cartoon. Here are two more examples from the same era:
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| "The tumult and the shouting dies; The captains and the kings depart." George Price The New Yorker, June 27, 1970, page 32 |
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| "The tumult and the shouting dies; The captains and the kings depart." George Price The New Yorker, June 27, 1970, page 32 |
The cleaning lady is somewhat incongruously quoting Rudyard Kipling's "Recessional."
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| http://quotes.dictionary.com/the_tumult_and_the_shouting_dies_the_captains |
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| "I heard a bit of good news today. We shall pass this way but once." George Price The New Yorker, April 14, 1973, page 35 |
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| "I heard a bit of good news today. We shall pass this way but once." George Price The New Yorker, April 14, 1973, page 35 |
The source of this one is well known to me. It was a favorite quotation of my fifth grade teacher, Mr. A. Nick Treglia of the Alice P. Willits Elementary School. These words, or a close variant thereof, were posted in the classroom from day one, an imposing frieze of gothic letters encircling the classroom. Mr. Treglia had absolute confidence that Stephen Grellet's sobering and inspiring Quaker message would resonate with his ten-year-olds.
Who was responsible for these clever cartoon quotations? One would like to think it was Price himself, of course, but could he have come up with all three of these? These literary references might easily have come from a gagman, someone like Richard McCallister perhaps who was known to work closely with Price.
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| https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/131923-i-shall-pass-through-this-world-but-once-any-good |
George Price's cartoon, with its hopelessness and squalor, brilliantly subverts the meaning of the very line it quotes. It just doesn't get better than this.
November 15, 2020 Update: Michael Maslin's Ink Spill interview with cartoonist Edward Frascino, posted today on the occasion of the subject's 90th birthday, reveals that it was Frascino who came up with the idea for Price's classic "We shall pass this way but once" gag of April 14, 1973.
Note: There are more posts on the blog about George Price, though not quite so quotable as this one. Read them all here.
I don't know what made me think of this, but here is a link to Attempted Bloggery's past football posts.
Note: There are more posts on the blog about George Price, though not quite so quotable as this one. Read them all here.
I don't know what made me think of this, but here is a link to Attempted Bloggery's past football posts.
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