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Illustrations for "In Dark New England Days"
with two other examples of Kemble's work
Kemble (1861-1933), a self-taught illustrator, is most famous for his work in the first edition of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and is remembered for illustrating a post-Civil War edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Considered in his own day a specialist in Black American subjects, he was the author of Kemble's Coons. (Source: Mantle Fielding's Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors, & Engravers (Optiz, ed. Poughkeepsie, New York: Apollo, 1986, p. 481.) Following the illustrations for this story are two of Kemble's cartoons that appeared in Bric-a-Brack, the humor section of Century 40 (1890), the same volume in which this story appears.
Officious Mrs. Downs
"You stole it, you thief!"
On the hill.
Two Kemble Cartoons from 1890
The following cartoons appeared in Century Magazine (40), on the Bric-a-Brack humor pages. The attitudes toward race expressed in them are typical of a period when American "nativism" and scientific racism were popular ideas. Magazines between the American Civil War and The Great War of 1914-1918 regularly included humor at the expense of Black Americans, Irish and Chinese immigrants. Kemble's illustrations for Adventures of Huckleberry Finn betray similar attitudes despite their appearing in a novel that portrays African Americans with considerable sympathy. Jewett was among those who endeavored to tell humanizing stories about the Irish and about another ethnic group that suffered from prejudice in Maine, French-Canadian immigrants and migrant laborers.
p. 319 The Possum Hunt
p. 480
Mary: And what do the notes be, Andy?
Andy: I can't tell them off; but had I me flute I c'u'd
play thim.
Strangers & Wayfarers
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