Leslie Ward ('Spy') — 'Below the Mark' (Mark Twain)

Leslie Ward's caricature presents Samuel Clemens — Mark Twain — in his trademark white flannel suit, holding a briar pipe and wearing pince-nez glasses, his wild grey hair and drooping mustache rendered with affectionate exaggeration. The caption 'Below the Mark' is a dry pun on his pseudonym, the sort of wordplay Vanity Fair's editors relished. Ward inflates the head relative to the body, a standard Spy formula, but the pose is almost statesmanlike: Twain at sixty-something as American literary monument. No ethnic caricature operates here; the comedy is entirely of manner and celebrity. By 1908 Twain was one of the most recognizable men in the English-speaking world, and Ward's treatment reads as fond tribute rather than satirical attack.