“Do Not Disturb” (“Puck,” May 10, 1892) Part 2 of 3
by Louis Dalrymple (1866-1905)
9 x 12 in., ink on board
Coppola Collection
Dalrymple was known for his caricatures in publications such as Puck, Judge, and the New York Daily Graphic. Born in Cambridge, Illinois, he studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Art Students League of New York, and in 1885 became the chief cartoonist of the Daily Graphic. He died in 1905 in a New York sanitarium.
The Dalrymple story is continued from Part 1 of this 3-part cartoon.
Seven years later Dalrymple met Miss Mary Ann Good, an exceedingly attractive young woman, belonging to a good Baltimore family, who had come to New York on a visit. He eloped with her to Jersey, and they were married there.
But Dalrymple was compelled to go on paying his former wife $75 a month as long as he was within the jurisdiction of the State Courts. He finally decided to leave New York.
Mr. and Mrs. Dalrymple moved to Greenwich, Conn., where he contributed to Judge and other comic publications, sending his copy in by mail. He used to slip into New York on Sunday, when process-servers were powerless and Sheriff’s officers could not nab him.
These Sunday visits only added to his desire to return to this city. He resolved to put a good stretch of continent between him and the temptation. In turn he was employed in the staff of the Philadelphia Press, the Baltimore News, the Pittsburg Dispatch, and the Chicago Tribune. But a demon of unrest kept driving him on – he couldn’t get settled and be satisfied anywhere. It was a wander-lust which fed on his brain.
A few weeks ago the Dalrymples came back to town and took lodgings in Twenty-ninth street.
“Not even the fear of Ludlow Street Jail can keep me away,” the big artist told his friends. “Good old Broadway kept calling me, and I had to come.”
The friends noticed a change in him. Dalrymple, once one of the handsomest men in New York, was thin to emaciation. He was painfully nervous. He wandered in his speech.
Those things kept gnawing worse. He imagined that Tammany workers had drugged him on the night before election, and he threatened to kill Mayor McClellan. He was found sketching himself while looking in a mirror in the lobby of the Fifth Avenue Hotel. His antics necessitated his forcible removal from the Waldorf-Astoria. Later he became violent.
The physicians hold out little hope of recovery for the talented cartoonist, who in his day had made millions laugh.
The Dalrymple story concludes in Part 3 of this 3-part cartoon.