Cartoons by Bradley/Biographical Sketch

by Henry Justin Smith

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

LUTHER DANIELS BRADLEY, whose cartoons commanded admiration everywhere, was never personally conspicuous. He did not make speeches, or sit on platforms, or seek office. His very portrait was almost unknown. In an age when publicity comes easily to less eminent men, when, indeed, popular persons are so much written about that their work is less known than their way of working, Luther Bradley managed to live unobtrusively. Yet he had friends, thousands of friends who never saw him, but who felt that in his cartoons he spoke directly to them. They wrote to him, not as "Dear sir," but as "Dear Mr. Bradley." In the scrapbooks wherein he methodically pasted every cartoon he had published for the last seventeen years, he laid away scores of these letters, some from people of note, the majority from that vast body of "plain citizens" he loved to serve. They said in these letters he had "helped" them. They asked his advice. Mothers poured out to him their thoughts. Little boys sent drawings painfully copying his style. He laid all these tenderly away where he could see them again. They were his banquets.

Now that he is dead it seems only fair to his public to tell something about how he lived, and what kind of man he was. A representative collection of his cartoons, such as this volume is intended to present, would be incomplete without the story of himself. It is a simple story, for his adventures were mainly of the intellect; but it has qualities arising from the fact that he was so sterling a man, and so patriotic an American.

THE story of Luther D. Bradley does not really begin with the date of his birth (September 29, 1853) but with the year 1857, when his parents embarked on the great adventure of moving to the "far West"—Illinois. They lived in New Haven, Connecticut, where they were highly regarded both for their own sakes and because of their ancestry. The father, Francis Bradley, was the grandson of Col. Philip Burr Bradley, who received from George Washington himself a commission as marshal of the State of Connecticut. The mother, Sarah Ruggles Bradley, came of a Vermont family similar in patriotic tradition. In New Haven Francis Bradley held the double position of cashier of the City Bank and instructor in astronomy in Yale College, whence his father had been graduated in 1800. Passing his days in the bank, and his evenings in gratifying his love for science, Francis Bradley set his son a high example of industry.

The Bradleys had heard of Chicago, Illinois, as a city of promise, a vigorous and growing community of more than 80,000. A brother of Francis (William H. Bradley, afterwards for many years clerk of the Federal courts in Chicago) was living there, and was enthusiastic about the West. So Francis and Sarah Bradley left New Haven forever, and with their son and two daughters entered the company of "early Chicagoans," whose memories are of a courthouse square across which people walked to work; of farmers' wagons standing at State and Washington streets; of sidewalks on stilts; of "Long John" Wentworth and Stephen A. Douglas; of wooded places now known as Hyde Park and the "north shore." In this chaotic but virile community the Bradleys made a new home.

In that same year, 1857, Lyman Baird, another New Haven man whose ambitions led him westward, became a citizen of Chicago, and a year later went into partnership with L. D. Olmstead, who in 1855 had established a real estate business. Mr. Olmstead died in 1862, whereupon Mr. Baird persuaded Francis Bradley—then auditor of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad—to enter partnership with him. Thus began a business relationship, and a friendship, that was to continue for many years, and was to establish in Chicago's shifting soil one of its permanent things: the successful real estate firm now known as Baird and Warner. One would like to dwell upon the struggles and triumphs of that pair of pioneers whose names were so long linked as "Baird and Bradley, Real Estate," to tell how they breasted calamities like the civil war and the "great fire of '71." But this is not their story. And Luther Bradley's destiny, after a few years when it seemed about to be bound up with that business enterprise, branched away.

captions of five photographs read at top left: As a Boy with his sister Eleanor; top right: As a "College Man," 1875; center: At home in Wilmette, 1914; bottom left: In his office, as cartoonist for "Melbourne Punch"; bottom right: In Evanston, 1899, with children of a sister.

As a Boy with His Sister Eleanor; As a "College Man," 1875

At Home in Wilmette, 1914

In His Office, as Cartoonist for "Melbourne Punch"; In Evanston, 1899, with Children of a Sister.

AFTER a few years of residence in the city, Francis Bradley took his family to a new house in Evanston. It stood on a lot of nearly half a block frontage in Hinman Avenue south of Church Street. A fascinating lot this was, shaded by Evanston's eternal oaks; full of sweet odors and singing birds. There was country all about, woodland and meadow, and to the east, almost, it seemed, at the edge of the Bradley property, the lake shim mered beyond the trees.

One hears of Luther Bradley growing up in Evanston, a boy with brown wavy hair and dancing brown eyes, who shot up presently to an astonishing height, and who had just the best time a boy can have. His father encouraged him to be athletic, and to make things, and to be a manly fellow that was a father worth having: one who could beat the fellows jumping, and who could do nice carpentry work, and who kept a little astronomical observatory in the back yard, with a real telescope. Luther Bradley became a very strong-and masculine youngster, quite untamed by the fact that he had a houseful of sisters. He had at first three of these—Sarah Elizabeth and Eleanor, born in New Haven, and Louise Ruggles, born in Chicago. But before long he had another sister, Bessie, and still another, whom they named Mary Frances. Next came a brother, Francis, who died at a comparatively early age, and lastly Jessie, who was his "little sister" as long as he lived. Six sisters to admire him, to pull his hair, to criticize his neckties. And besides, in their abounding love for children, the Bradleys adopted the daughter of a relative, who made really a seventh sister, as dearly loved as any.

It is not hard to believe that the house was full of laughter, of April showers, and of quaint ambitions. But it was also full of Luther's boy friends, and his playthings, and their playthings; and there were always his dogs, and theirs, trooping through. Luther loved his sisters, but neither he nor his pursuits were dominated by them. He had his own especial pleasures, such as pigeon-shooting south of Evanston, in regions now covered by apartment buildings and business blocks, or exploring wild places west of the Skokie, or driving old Frank, the family's amiable white horse, through the Wilmette forests. Better yet, he loved to sprawl in the sand and listen to the yams of the Evanston life-saving crew. Capt. Lawson, for so many years in charge of the station, took a fancy to Luther Bradley, and taught him how to sail a catboat. He taught him, too, to delight in a keen wind casting spray in one's face, while one shoots over whitecaps toward a misty horizon. And not only then, but always, Luther Bradley loved battles of that kind; loved the water, and its hardships and its romance.

Sometime in this period of growing up, perhaps on winter evenings when the lake was frozen, and the woods impassable, Luther developed a knack of drawing pictures. It was more knack than genius, and it made him when quite small the especial, exclusive artist for the Misses Bradley; but that is all. His father looked benevolently upon art as a pastime, but he did not encourage it as a serious matter. Luther had a few drawing lessons before the family moved to Evanston, taking them of a north side lady. They were the kind of lessons during which one works at a lop-sided peach, or a tortured hand. Afterward he had no art instruction whatever. He was just a gay, clear-eyed youth, full of pranks, who might be anything when he grew up, but who it was hoped would be a real estate man. As one old friend put it the other day, "Luther Bradley always seemed too much of a kid ever to be famous, to have a career." But perhaps it was even because he was so much of a kid, a happy boy his whole life long, that he achieved a career—yes, and fame.

AFTER preparation at Lake Forest Academy, and some study at Northwestern University, Luther Bradley was enrolled at Yale College in the class of '77. It was expected he would go through to graduation, and thus form one more of the famous line of "Yale Bradleys." His experience there, however, was not quite what was anticipated. He seems to have had two sides: one a romping side, which led him into pranks of the purely fun-making sort; and the other a graver tendency, under the spell of which he wrote verses for the college literary magazine. Incidents growing out of both these moods are told. They foreshadowed the man very distinctly.

First, he was suspended for hazing. Nothing very unusual, then or now. The notable thing in Luther Bradley's case was that he was not concerned in the particular scrape for which they sent him home. He had, however, been concerned in several hazings of earlier date, and had not been found out. When he was summoned for this new exploit, he considered that "in spirit,"—since he had been a hazer before—he was guilty this time. And he accepted sentence. But the faculty made his sentence light, and he was permitted to return.

The other incident came of his verse-writing. He had contributed to "Yale Lit" a poem, signed only by his initials, which, after a great deal of revision, he decided to try on a "regular magazine." He sent it to the New York Independent, with the stipulation, quite characteristic of his lifelong modesty, that his full name must not be used. This put him at a deadlock with the Independent, whose editor, Dr. William Hayes Ward, was willing to use the verses, but insisted in all cases upon using the complete and genuine name of contributors. There could be no compromise with Luther Bradley. He took back his poem, and gave up for the time his dawning "literary career." Later Frank Leslie's Monthly printed the verses, signed by initials only (see page 27 of this volume).

He took a literary prize, instead of the scientific honors expected of him. Instead of decorating New Haven with comic pictures, he joined the glee club. The one thing in which he seemed consistent with his boyhood was that he "made" the freshman crew. And then, in 1875, his father became anxious to bring him at once into the business, and sent for him to come home. He came, bringing with him, as old companions remember, the big oar he had used with the crew. And almost immediately he had to lay aside the big oar, with other trophies of boyhood, and go into the office. This was a tremendous change from the freedom of life in Evanston, and the comparative freedom of the campus. This was being at the command of somebody eight or nine hours a day, and having intricate new tasks to learn. This was work. And, whether he liked it or not, Luther Bradley worked. It is possible he did not like the real estate business; perhaps visions of sailboats or even drawing lessons floated before him, but he put these things aside, in business hours, and crooked his tall young form over ledgers. At first he was conveyancer, and afterward, when he had proved his worth, cashier. Always from youth to maturity he did with all his might whatever lay before him. So he was a diligent conveyancer and a scrupulous cashier. From an outdoor boy he had turned into an "inside man."

A little later Wyllys W. Baird, eldest son of the senior partner, came into the office to "work up." The Baird and Bradley families knew each other well, of course, and Wyllys Baird, though younger than Luther, was more than a mere office acquaintance for him. Mr. Baird is one of those who testifies to the fidelity with which the future cartoonist did routine work. He learned then much of the clean-cut efficiency, the determination to finish what was begun, that he practiced later, and that he demanded from others. Nevertheless, whenever he could he went in for athletics, for hard physical tests. Wyllys Baird recalls vividly a day when Luther Bradley challenged him to walk from the north end of the La Salle Street tunnel to Evanston. They did it that afternoon by dinner time. Thirty years later the same Luther, again with a dauntless companion, rowed a boat from the mouth of the river to Wilmette without dropping oars. He enjoyed such feats at fifty as much as he did at twenty.

WYLLYS BAIRD pushed on with the firm, and became at length its senior partner, as he now is. But Luther Bradley, after seven years, dropped out. His health had suffered somewhat from loyalty to those ledgers; and it may have come to him suddenly that he had other work to do. At all events he left the real estate business as completely and energetically as he had entered it. He had gone as far as he could toward being a logical, traditional Bradley. Now he was going to be a Bradley of his own creation.

It was the sea that called him, among various thrilling summonses from the outside world. Not as a profession, though that may have suggested itself, too. But, somehow, the sea —

And the sea's colors up and down the world,
And how a storm looks when the sprays are hurled
High as the yard . . .
And all the glittering from the sunset's red,
And the milky colors where the bursts have been.
And then the clipper striding like a queen
Over it all, all beauty to the crown."

(John Masefield; "Dauber.")

On a clipper just like that he sailed from Nova Scotia. It was in 1882, when sailing vessels were in their glory. He arrived in London after a good while, but with no intention of pausing there. He was restless. Some big change was passing within him. Where next could he go? What was the farthest place? The antipodes—Australia. Promptly he took another sailing vessel for Australia. It was the "Lammermoor," a three-master. He drew a picture of the ship, and sent it home. He drew many other pictures. For the first time, it would seem, he was having the leisure to develop as he might. And while the long, placid days succeeded each other, and lazy cloud-ranks marched by along the horizon, it was the art impulse that surged up in him most strongly.

He reached Melbourne somewhat tired of wandering. It was his plan to take the next ship for home. But owing to some chance he missed that ship, and found there would be no other for weeks. One of those determining events that arose every ten years or so, and that jolted his conservative, habit-forming nature into a new phase, had come. Alone in Melbourne, and not overstocked with money, he thought of going to work. He thought of writing, and he did do some routine newspaper work. And then he considered pictures. Was he an artist? He did not know. But one day, as he wandered along the street irresolute, his eye caught a sign in a newspaper office window:

 

"ARTIST WANTED"

 

He did not go in, but went away and prepared some sketches, which he sent to the editor. To his dismay came a reply that the paper had just died.

"The editor wrote me," runs Mr. Bradley's own account, as he told it some years ago, "that since I was not yet the paper's cartoonist, I could not be blamed for its death. He added he was going to start another publication, in which he hoped to use my pictures."

The new venture was named Australian Tidbits. Luther Bradley became its cartoonist, and gave up all thought of going home. He had found a brand new interest in life; the interest that was always afterward to be supreme.

WHAT began as a brief visit to Australia expanded into a residence of eleven years. After his service for Tidbits, afterwards Life, Mr. Bradley, then a robust, bearded man of thirty and more, drew cartoons for Melbourne Punch. On this last publication, a weekly, he remained the longest. He wrote dramatic reviews for it. And once, when the editor, Mr. McKinley, took a trip around the world, Luther Bradley was in editorial charge for a year. Meantime he entered joyously into the life of the city, which he found highly congenial, owing to its intelligent and rather leisurely atmosphere, and its passion, almost equal to his, for outdoor sports. He was becoming celebrated. Australia was many sunsets distant from the European capitals, but the mails got there after a while, and whenever an example of Luther Bradley's work reached London, its vigor and humor left their mark. New York, too, heard of him; and such papers and clippings as reached Chicago astonished friends who never had thought of Luther Bradley in this wise. He was at the door of fame, and it might have opened to him in any of the greater cities. But in 1892 Francis Bradley, now more than seventy, became ill. Luther was summoned. And while he was on the ocean the father, who had lived to delight in Luther's cartooning, to feel a pride as great as he had felt when his son was succeeding in real estate, passed away.

It was another of those determining events. Just eleven years since the last one. It was to be only seven to the next, when he was to form his connection with The Chicago Daily News.

His mother needed him now. It was clear that he must remain in Chicago. He did not think he would like it as well as Melbourne. But his duty now lay here, and his chance for a living. He did such art work as he could get, residing, meantime, in the old home in Evanston. It was not quite the same old home. The girls, most of them, had "married away." The city had grown up around the homestead, and the woods, where any were left, were thinner. However, many of his old friends remained: Henry S. Boutell, his companion on many a camping and fishing trip; Towner K. Webster, Frank Elliott, Philip R. Shumway, William H. Harper, and many others. Besides, there were nephews and nieces of whom he was fond. Having considerable leisure now and then, he drew some astonishing pictures for the children of one sister, Mrs. John R. Case, writing verses to explain the pictures. Two of these nonsense books afterwards were published and sold under the titles, "Wonderful Willie; What He and Tommy Did to Spain," and "Our Indians; a Midnight Visit to the Great Somewhere-or-other."

This was a kind of transition period for him. It may be passed over quickly in favor of the greater period to come, when, following some years of cartoon work on other Chicago newspapers, he joined, in July, 1899, the staff of The Daily News.

THE man who came among us then cannot be forgotten. He was forty-six years old, and might very properly have been gray-haired and sedate. Instead he was one of the most dynamic, quick-spoken and athletic beings ever seen in a newspaper office. His hair was solid dark brown, brushed up in a defiant pompadour. His face was ruddy. He was six feet two inches tall, and his physique almost massive. His whole bearing, even in such a trivial action as striding down a room, was that of a tremendously intense and vigorous man.

Everybody knew, when Bradley came, that a new element had entered The Daily News office. What we did not know was that this serious-looking individual of whom most of us never had heard was to do in the seventeen years remaining to him work enough for the average life-time—work so startling in vitality, so luminous with youth, that one could never believe him to be old.

His first cartoon in The Daily News appeared July 5, 1899. Thereafter he furnished one daily, except when illness or vacation kept him away, or when some "big news cut" occupied his place on the front page. (It was part of his modesty and sense of the fitting that he never objected when his cartoon was crowded out.) During those first months he did his pictures at home, and went to the office only occasionally. Later he found he could work to better advantage in close touch with his associates; and when, in 1900, he was made director of the art department, regular office hours of course became still more imperative. He now went to work with the "rush hour" crowds, and returned home when they did. He was a daily toiler, with trains to catch, and not much time for lunch. On the whole, he rather liked it that way.

Although he had efficient help in the routine of the art department, especially from Charles F. Batchelder, his assistant and friend, he was "in charge," and that fact he did not forget. He had a "comic page" to censor, a drove of nimble young artists to shepherd, news pictures sometimes to bother him, an engraving room to reckon with. He liked to have the department telephone on his desk, and to answer it himself. So he encountered a lot of details that he might easily have avoided.

"How do you do it?" he was often asked by people who did not see how he could produce his thoughtful-cartoons next door to an "art room."

He would only smile in reply, with the "what-does-it-matter" look he wore when asked about himself.

The fact was that he had a mind capable of utter absorption in the action of the moment. He could lay aside his drawing and forget it while he was consulted on some matter of the department, or to look at the sketches of a humble stranger, or to tell a mother what to do about her gifted son, aged eight. This done, he would resume his pen, and go to cross-hatching just where he left off. Elevated trains clattered past his window, and a multitude of other noises rose from the street. They could not detach his mind from the big idea of the day. And when the day was over and he had carried that big sheet of cardboard, the completed drawing, to the etchers, he could discard all the excitements and troubles of the last eight hours, and go home free for complete relaxation.

He carried with him from the office neither portfolios nor "atmosphere." He did not dress the artist part, nor try to look it. His work was his work. He never threw a halo around it, nor did he ever imply that because he did that sort of work, he was a being of a higher order. In connection with this absence of "pose" it is worth mentioning that Luther Bradley produced his cartoons without nearly as much academic preparation as they seemed to reveal. He read three weekly periodicals regularly, others desultorily, and he dipped into thoughtful books as they came out. But he did not try to know everything. His real library was the picturesque, laughable, dreadful book of life itself, as disclosed to him in the news of the day. He illumined these from the inexhaustible batteries within him. He did not seem to need the artificial light that came from other minds. As the years went by he was relieved more and more of the strain of executive work, although when an emergency arose he always seemed to be on the spot. "I am responsible," he would insist. He carried this feeling of responsibility into all his relations with the art staff. He was their bulwark, stimulus, and companion. More and more he adopted the fatherly role toward his young men. He liked to celebrate their successes, to advise them about vacations, and to hear about their new babies.

With all this—his cartoon, his frequent visits "upstairs" to see what the wires were bringing, his long and eager talks with associates, the correspondence with admirers (and cranks)—his days were full. This made him happy. There were to be no more wanderings. He was satisfied with the privilege, enjoyed every morning, of facing big tasks to be done before evening. And at evening, perhaps remarking, "Well, I 'm afraid to-morrow's cartoon won't set the world on fire," he would put on his undistinguished overcoat and hat and go away into another world.

THIS private world of his had come to be peopled, in his late middle age, with a wife and four children who entirely absorbed him. He hated to be away from them even for an evening; so that he dreaded long journeys without them, and rarely accepted a social engagement.

During his second Evanston residence he had met Miss Agnes Smith, daughter of the Rev. Daniel F. Smith, who founded St. Luke's Episcopal Church, in Evanston. Miss Smith enjoyed outdoor life and many other things that Mr. Bradley liked. She became his friend, then his betrothed, and in October, 1901, they were married. Their first months of married life were passed in a tent on the shore of a lonely bay of Catalina Island, where they reveled in their wild surroundings. One morning, for example, they were awakened by the blowing of whales and rose to see the water of the bay black with the great creatures which were disporting themselves there. Tent life did not end for them until the rattlesnakes came out at the end of winter and insisted on sharing their living quarters and drinking water from the same spring.

On returning to Chicago Mr. and Mrs. Bradley lived in Evanston for some years, but in 1909 they built a home in Wilmette, on the lake shore. There are four children: Francis, John Freeman, Sarah Elizabeth, and Margaret.

In Wilmette were passed what must have been Luther Bradley's most precious years. He was up there on a bluff, where Lake Michigan, perfect semblance of the sea, greeted him morning and night. It received him placidly at bathing time,—and his "season" ended only when his bathing suit fairly froze to the sand. He had a fine, long walk from the railroad station—an excellent bracer in zero weather, just like old times. And he grew a flower garden, and built a summer house, with stairs of rock up the cliff. And he helped the boys to put up a little clubhouse down near the beach. In front of this he laid out a tennis court. And the lake, as though grateful for his tenancy, "made" land for him until his beach was increased eastward by hundreds of feet.

There, after his hair became gray, he revived his boyhood pleasures, and romped with a company of admirers more congenial and outspoken than those who praised his cartoons: the children, both his own and the neighbors. Tennis, swimming, skating, boating, football, campfires on the beach, a thousand "days of real sport."

Of all the tributes he received, give me the one spoken by a little boy, a newcomer thereabouts, who after skating one day with Luther Bradley and a group of shouting sprites, remarked,

"Who was that big gray-haired feller? Say, he's a real feller!"

EARLY in January, 1917, his physique, so remarkably sustained, suddenly seemed to give way. He felt tired, and could not understand why. He would "soon be all right." Several times he had recovered from long and severe illnesses, one of which took him into the very face of death, and proved to him that he did not fear death. He remained home, this week of January, to rest. It was pleasant to be there, among the children, just after Christmas. Still, he felt uneasy about staying away from his desk. Word came to the office on Tuesday, January 9th, that he would "report without fail Thursday." But that Tuesday evening, before anyone thought he was definitely ill, a fatal seizure laid hold of him. And there in his lakeside home, he died as unobtrusively as he had lived.

HENRY J. SMITH.