Life, 1897-02-25 · page 7 of 20
Life — February 25, 1897 — page 7: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis of Life Magazine Page 149 This page contains two satirical cartoons and literary discussion about George Meredith's comic writing style. **Top cartoon** ("The Brute"): Shows a man threatened by a woman with an umbrella, with the caption "He said he would blow my brains out. Vain did he!" The joke mocks domestic quarrels and male bravado—the woman's threat proves empty, inverting expected gender dynamics. **Bottom cartoon** ("Dance du Ventre"): A grotesque sketch of a rotund figure, likely satirizing fashionable dance crazes or social pretension popular among wealthy society. The accompanying text discusses Meredith's use of "Comic Spirit"—refined intellectual humor targeting social hypocrisy and affectation rather than crude buffoonery. The page exemplifies Life magazine's mission: witty social commentary aimed at educated readers.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
-STANAWS, - Cholly: THE BwUTE! what is more to the point, that he can luminate a subject with flashes of con- wit, and embroider cpigrams and figures of fancy that put summate to shame professional es think they know their business. Moreover, he has what few j possess in great measure —the human- izing touch that makes an abstract sub- part of the great current of social With him an idea is entirely human ject life. s nothing. 7 8 @ ' is impossible to condense the theme of such an essay as this— but for ¢ itis the key to Meredith's method as a novelist. It gives in a nutshell his attitude toward who reads with an open ¢ DANCE DU VENTRE. HE SAID HE WOULD BLOW MY BRAINS OUT. “AND DID HE?” life in the organized form that we call Society. The Comic Spirit is that re- fined laughter of the mind ‘finely tem- pered, showing sunlight of the mind, al richness rather than noi: The thing that interests the Comic Spirit is not man's future on earth, but his honesty and shapeliness in his present condition.” Whenever men ‘offend sound reason, fair justice, false in humility or mined with conceit, individually or in bulk—the Spirit overhead will look humanely malign and cast an oblique light on them, followed by volleys of silvery laughte : Every one of Meredith's novels is an exercise in the silvery laughter of the Comic Spirit, It is the civilized mind applying its tests to civilization. ‘It laughs through the mind, for the mind directs it; and it might be called mind.” How the scope and boundaries of fiction are enlarged by such an attitude! Instead of novels devoted to studies of morbid individual conditions, to barbaric passions, and warped energies, the writer possessed of the true spirit of Comedy looks upon his characters as pawns in the game of civil- ization. ‘You must believe that our state of society is founded in common-sense, otherwise you will not be struck by the contrasts the Comic Spirit perceiv it with 3 who enor- ists are the humor of the No people can be more ready to welcome such a Spirit than our own, and nowhere is it more needed. What a clearing away of the subterfuges of the new journalism, of the Senate, of pompous professional deliverances, of pulpit insinceritics, would take place if the true Comic Spirit were let loose among them! Before the laughter of the intellect they would roll up like burned scrolls. Droch. H (affably, hav- MBS. PorKe 4 ing spent the whole afternoon looking at pictures without buying one): My dear Mr. Canver, I wonder, now, if there is anything vainer than you artists about your pictures? Poor Artist: Our efforts to sell them, madame. comicbooks.com