Life, 1893-01-12 · page 11 of 16
Life — January 12, 1893 — page 11: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "The Bold Bad Butterfly" - Life Magazine Page 27 This is an illustrated moral fable about a butterfly who adopts deliberately bad behavior. A Poppy accuses the butterfly of being "naughty" and "bold bad," which the butterfly then embraces as an identity, affecting rough manners and claiming to be "a dangerous character." The satire targets affected badness and moral posturing. The butterfly becomes increasingly wild—frequenting "wildest flowers," consorting with "Dragon flies and drunken bees"—until he's finally caught and pinned to a board by an entomologist (Mr. J.), his dandy behavior literally catalogued and displayed. The joke appears to mock fashionable affectation of wickedness among the young or socially ambitious, suggesting such performative rebellion ends in humiliation and classification rather than genuine rebellion.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
‘id to a Butterfly **Go ‘way Go ‘way you naughty thing—Oh my ! But you're a bold bad butterfly !” Of course ‘twas only said in fun He was a perfect paragon In every way a spotless thing (Save for two spots upon his wing.) But tho’ his morals were the best, He could not understand a jest And somehow what the Poppy said Put ideas in his little head, And soon he really came to wish He were the least bit ‘‘ devilish.” He then affected manners rough And strained his voice to make it gruff, And scowled as who should say ‘* Beware, **T am a dangerous character, ** You'd best not fool with me, for I, ** Tam a bold, bad butterfly.” He hung around the wildest flowers, And kept the most unseemly hours, With Dragon flies and drunken bees, And learned to say ‘* Baw Jove" with ease, Until his pious friends aghast Exclaimed ‘* He's getting awf'lly fast!" “Tt seems a sin,” said Mr. J., “This harmless little thing to slay,” As, taking it from out his net, He pinned it to a board, and set Upon a card below the same, In letters large, its Latin name, Which is He shunned the nicer flowers; and threw Out hints of shady things he knew About the laurels, and one day He even went so far to say Something about the lilies sweet I could not possibly repeat ! At length, it seems, from being told, ie How bad he was he grew so bold, —but I omit it lest ‘This most obnoxious butterfly. Its family might be distressed. ‘That one day, swaggering ‘round the sky And stop the little sum per year, Me swaggered in the net of Mist- They pay me not to print it here, er Jones, the entimologist. Translated from The Butterfly by Oliver Her ford. comicbooks.com