When I suggested to Norman Conquest, the CEO of Black Scat Books, that I translate the Captain Cap stories of Alphonse Allais, he was all for it.  However, he also proposed that I draw the cover, which left me with a problem:  what did Captain Cap look like?

The French pocket book that my friend Serge gave me back in the ’70s was my first introduction to to the intrepid adventurer.  Here, the Captain was depicted as a rather stereotypical sailor, placed, as is only appropriate, in a bottle.

The Argentinian edition used a picture that looks suspiciously like Alfred Jarry.

For some reason, the Captain was also used at one point to advertise a brand of cookies.  In the stories, he was much more fond of cocktails than pastries, but I suppose that advertisers follow their own hearts.  At any rate, the ad later adorned the cover of a Spanish edition of the book.  He looks rather dapper here, somewhat like a Londoner in his club.

 

 

Fortunately, François Caradec’s 1994 biography of Allais reveals the only known photograph of the real Captain Cap, Albert Caperon, published in the Parisian papers during his run for parliament in 1893.

 

 

There is also a caricature extant of the Captain, drawn by Jean Veber, and published in Le Journal, January 6, 1896.

 

 

From left to right, we have Major Heitner, Allais, and Cap.  Allais used this drawing as a pretext for a column; he threatened legal action, claiming that the liberties taken with his likeness would drive away his female clientele.  Oddly enough, that caricature, with Heitner and Cap cropped out, was used as a cover for yet another edition.

 

 

Cropped from the cover of his own adventures!  Well, with this new edition, I have, at long last, placed Captain Cap on the cover of Captain Cap.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

 

This lovely set of cards from Argentina teaches the uses of common objects.  On the reverse is a question and answer.  The icebox, you will be glad to know, keeps food fresh.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Alphonse Allais was a peerless French humorist, celebrated posthumously by the Surrealists for his elegant style and disturbing imagination.  Among other things, he wrote a series of wonderful stories about his friend Albert Caperon.  In Allais’s hands, “Captain Cap” became an adventurer and inventor, with a disdain for bureaucracy and a heroic thirst for cocktails.  He collected the Cap stories in his last book, Captain Cap: His Adventures, His Ideas, His Drinks, in 1902.  It remains popular in France, but has never been translated into English.  So, I’m doing just that, in a series of chapbooks for Black Scat Books.

The first installment, Captain Cap Before the Electorate, contains Allais’s dossier on Caperon’s farcical run for parliament in 1893.  It’s published in a limited edition of 125, with illustrations and introduction by the undersigned, and comes with a free Cap campaign button for the first twelve customers.  You can cast that vote at Black Scat Books.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

“Black Peter” — a sort of Eastern European version of “Old Maid” — reappears in an undated deck from Piatnik, in Vienna.  This delicate rendering of an accordion and cat duet is particularly nice.  For some reason, two Black Peters are included, which seems to belie the point of the game.  Do the players choose boy or girl at the outset?  Are there two losers?

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

This battered and stained booklet is on sale online for an exorbitant price.  Fortunately, I was able to snag a scan of the cover.  It was published in 1919 by The Quill; Edwards was not yet editor, but apparently had free rein in the guidebook.  I’d like to know more, but will content myself with admiring Art Goat.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

“Life’s Game of Artists,” published sometime around 1910 by Parker Brothers, featured cartoons by Life magazine’s roster of illustrators.  This was, of course, the early humorous Life, not the later oversized photo mag.  The cartoons usually depicted courting couples, often with Cupid hovering nearby.  The game itself is a version of Quartet or Authors, in which you collect four of a kind; the artists are: A. D. Blashfield, Bayard Jones, C. Clyde Squires, C. Coles Phillips, C. D. Gibson, C. J. Budd, Balfour Kent, F. W. Read, F. T. Richards, Henry Hutt, J. M. Flagg, Orson Lowell, W. L. Jacobs, and W. B. King.  I hope some of today’s cartoonists will revive that distinguished custom of two initials.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Nancy Hertel Melvin has kindly passed along a painting by Bobby Edwards, her great-uncle: a portrait of Edwards’ sister, Rebecca Chapin Edwards.  I’ve posted several of Edwards’ pen and ink drawings, but had never seen one of his paintings. Lovely muted colors, I think (especially compared to his ukes!), and lush, loose brushwork.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

“The Game of Moneta, or Money Makes Money,” was published in 1888 by F. A. Wright.  Each card shows a coin; the denominations are: 1¢, 2¢, 3¢, 5¢, 10¢, 20¢, 25¢, 50¢, $1 (silver), $1 (gold), $2½, $3, $5, and $10.  We certainly had more elaborate currency back then.  The object of the game is to make as much money as possible by complicated rules, which I suppose prepares children for adult life.

The backs and box are fine examples of Victorian design (actually, since it’s American, I should probably call it Clevelandian).

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

I’ve been posting information here, from time to time, on Bobby Edwards: a singer-songwriter who became somewhat of a local legend in Greenwich Village in the ‘teens and ‘twenties.  He also made his own cigar-box ukes, which he sold at souvenir shops in the Village.  I had resigned myself to the idea that none had survived.

But now, thanks to Nancy Hertel Melvin, the great-niece of Bobby Edwards, I can bring you a photo of one of those elusive ukes.  Thanks, Nancy!  And, as usual, you can click to enlarge.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

John G. Saxe takes his rightful place in the canon, in this 1874 edition of “Vignette Authors” from Selchow & Richter.  His colleagues are: Washington Irving, W. C. Bryant, Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, Bayard Taylor, W. M. Thackeray, J. F. Cooper, J. G. Whittier, Wilkie Collins, Revd. H. W. Beecher, J. Russell Lowell, J. G. Holland, H. W. Longfellow, Geo. Wm. Curtis, O. W. Holmes, Nathl. Hawthorne, and E. E. Hale.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)