The Wasp, 1913 · page 318 of 364
The Wasp — 1913 — page 318: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This appears to be prose dialogue rather than a cartoon. Two young men ("Jack" and another) gossip about a character named Percy—a disgraced aristocrat. The satire targets class pretension and hypocrisy: Percy's family rejected his marriage to a tailor's daughter despite her beauty, preferring a ruined baron's daughter for financial gain. When Percy married for love instead, his family expelled him with minimal support (1,000 guineas plus a meager annuity). The passage mocks Percy as a "bully, sot, and coward" whose privileged background—military service, a corset-maker grandfather's fortune—couldn't prevent his social and moral collapse into poverty and domestic violence. The final question ("Why does she stay?") suggests contemporary concerns about women trapped in abusive marriages, though without ironic commentary offered here.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE WASP $11 “So does he,” replied the other young blood, and laughed immoderately. “Youdon’t know Percy and his affairs as I do, Jack,’ he continued. ‘A bully, a sot, and a coward, with a dead corset-maker for a grandfather. There you have him, Jack. He was in the army and served in the Indies. When he came home he hada wife with him—a little beauty, too—but who was she but the daughter of a tailor from some village in Berkshire! There was the deuce to pay, for his people had set their hearts on his making a fine match. His father and mother and sisters had even gone so far as to find a daugh- ter of a ruined baron, who was willing to marry our bold Percy for the spending of the corset- maker’s fortune. They gave Percy a thousand guineas in hand, settled an annuity of twenty-five guineas on him; kicked him out of Corset Castle, and told him to go to the deuce. You saw his start, Jack. He’s finishing in the lowest pot-houses; and IT hear that he vents his spleen on his wife. He beats her, they say, and starves her.” “Why does she stay with him, if she’s such a beauty ?” ~ comicinooks.com