(See Cover)
Millions of Americans know Caspar Milquetoast as well as they know Tom Sawyer and Andrew Jackson, better than they know George F. Babbitt, and any amount better than they know such world figures as Mr. Micawber and Don Quixote. They know him, in fact, almost as well as they know their own weaknesses.
If the creator of The Timid Soul had done nothing but invent Milquetoast—the quavering quintessence of the Little Man at his least manly—he would have earned his modest place in the nation's pantheon. Harold Tucker Webster has done a great deal besides, in the 15,000-odd panels he has drawn in the past 43 years. Last week Webster's fourth collection of cartoons (Webster Unabridged; McBride; $2) appeared.
Caspar Milquetoast is the only character Cartoonist Webster has ever given a name to—and Caspar,* with appropriate shyness, sneaked into the strip as a space filler. The rest of Webster's bald-headed bores, thin, puzzled wives, and freckle-faced kids need no name; they are, when they hit the mark—as they often do—Everyman.
H. T. Webster has learned to slice and serve his generous chunks of U.S. life methodically. Caspar (The Timid Soul) appears Sundays and Mondays. The pitilessly fanatic and bad-mannered bridge players run Fridays. Boyhood's lovingly elaborated triumphs (The Thrill That Comes Once in a Lifetime) and defeats (Life's Darkest Moment} appear on Saturdays and Tuesdays. Thursdays bring How to Torture Your Husband (or Wife). On Wednesdays, in The Unseen Audience, he pokes a sharp-pointed stick at radio—which of all mixed blessings most needs satirizing, and gets it least. Webster, in fact, is possibly radio's most effective critic.
Webster is one of the few journalists of his troubled time who has managed consistently to remind people of the news that they are human beings, and that that news is not as bad as it is generally made out.
Right to Left. H. T. Webster insists that Milquetoast is a self-portrait. Short of perhaps Joseph Stalin, it would be difficult to think of any man who looks less like Milquetoast than his creator. Webster carries all of his 6 ft. 3 in. without either the cringing or the exaggerated erectness of the man who is uneasy in this world. His face is handsome, ruddy and unlined, his blue eyes are direct and uncomplicated.
He combines a still faintly rural quietude of speech and motion with a kind of suavity which can come only of many years of assured performance and comfortable living. Such troubles as he has encountered he has taken tranquilly; in 1927, when overwork permanently ruined his drawing hand, he learned in four months to draw with his left. At 60, he suggests a prematurely grey ex-athlete who has not had to work very anxiously to keep in good shape.