Judge, 1915-10-23 · page 5 of 28
Judge — October 23, 1915 — page 5: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This cartoon satirizes a social situation where someone named Elmore is pretending to have read "Jean Christophe," a serious literary work by French author Romain Rolland. The caption has another character (Nathan-E-) calling him out: he's bluffing about reading an intellectual book, claiming it has "a red cover," suggesting superficial familiarity. The scene depicts a garden party or social gathering where Elmore appears to be among educated, cultured people discussing literature. The satire targets social pretension—someone trying to appear intellectually sophisticated by feigning knowledge of important books without actually reading them. This was a common subject for Judge magazine's humor about class aspiration and social climbing in early-20th-century America.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
GETTING ‘IN BEYOND HIS DEPTH Elinore—Of course you've read “Jean Christophe?” Now when he——~- Nathan—Er—ah—yes, I think so. It's sort of a thin book, isn’t it, with a red cover? comicbooks.com