A Quiet Dinner with Dr. Bottles

Gibson draws three figures around a white-clothed dinner table set with a samovar, decanters, and small cups. At left, a young woman in a low-cut evening dress rests her chin on her hand, expression glassy with boredom. At center, a stout, cheerful woman listens with apparent pleasure. At right, the angular, hawk-faced Dr. Bottles reads aloud from a manuscript. The caption completes the joke: the text being inflicted is Miss Babbles's Latest Work—a dig at the era's vogue for women authors and at the domestic ritual of after-dinner reading. Gibson's social target is upper-middle-class self-congratulation: the doctor performs culture while at least one guest endures it.