Please Don't Quote Me By Caralee Aschenbrenner Clare Briggs led an ordinary life growing up as he did in small town Dixon, Illinois. The thing about Clare was that as ordinary as his life seemed to be, he possessed extraordinary talent. The photo here (below) of a sketch of the woman was done by him as a boy which shows his early ability. It is at Loveland Museum, Dixon. The Briggs family came to the Rock River Valley in about the mid-1880s when Clare was nine. They came from his birthplace in Wisconsin; Reedsburg, (1875), a town near Baraboo where Ringling Brothers Circus and others made their winter quarters. His first love as wanting to be in a circus as a clown or trapeze artisté. He wondered in later years if the colorful life of the circus inspired him to become an artist-cartoonist.

In the mid-1880s when the Briggs family came to Illinois the senior became a traveling salesman for an agricultural implement dealership although he had wanted to be an artist. With little skill, the pay of a salesman was much better!

The junior Briggs, meanwhile, was occupied during the Dixon years with all the activities of boys growing up at the time ... Swimming, fishing, rafting in the Rock, delivering the Chicago Tribune or the Dixon Telegraph, doing a multitude of chores as boys of that era were meant to do.

Writing a short biographical sketch in later years, he said that he didn’t recall doing much drawing or thinking much about the world of art then but his talents were apparent. Those years, however, were background and a limitless well from which he pulled ideas for years of cartooning and comic strip output. Those memories were what brought him national fame for more than two decades in syndicated newspapers.

With the opening of the 1890s the Briggs family moved on to Lincoln, Nebraska where Clare, all of 16 enrolled in the Western Normal College where he began to study drawing.

Another student in the class drew various streams of cartoons which piqued Clare’s interest and brought him to the attention of a teacher, Emma Edwards, who influenced his ability and, as he remarked, was the biggest thing that ever happened to him. He had a special skill in the drawing of maps but in working on serious projects his humorous remarks on paper cut him out of that project! Miss Edwards praise, however, was a most valuable occasion that a young boy could receive, a period in a boys’ life when they receive so little.

Enrolling then at the University of Nebraska, he still had no idea of what he would do for a career so took a general course including math which was taught by one John Pershing whose main duty was teaching military science.

Clare learned from the eventual general and Army Commander of the European forces during World War I that math was not his field. Doing a theorem on the blackboard one day for Pershing, he was only muddling, when the frustrated strictarian said to him, “Go sit down, Briggs, you don’t know anything!” Perhaps “Black Jack” hastened Briggs’ career in the arts. Of that Briggs said that Pershing conquering Germany in the war probably was easier than teaching him math!

After two discouraging years at the University, Briggs decided he wasn’t getting anywhere when a friend in St. Louis wrote inviting him there; that jobs were easy to come by. Clare had never before been away from home and his father’s job wasn’t doing well because there was a drought which had cut crops to a low, therefore no machinery was needed. He determined to go. His father gave him twelve dollars and fifty cents and had seen a friend who “scalped” railroad tickets which saved fare for the trip.

Father Briggs gave Clare detailed instructions on how to be passed on in Kansas City, a certain house, a certain man which he did to the last. That done, he again boarded the train and he said in later years, “Not knowing there was more than one train going anywhere, the conductor asked for his ticket.

Seeing it, a scalper’s work, he demanded $7.50 for a genuine one. That left Clare with but five dollars on which to survive. But without eating he got to St. Louis, met his friend who then told there were no jobs after all.

Briggs trudged the streets seeking work, however, all the time thinking that a boy should never let his hopes rise too high because when things don’t work out he can become embittered and so crushed in faith that it’s too hard for some to bear and their lives can be changed forever to the negative.

“Boys are timid and sensitive, so no matter how they seem on the surface, their lives can never be revived.

A friend told him that there was no chance of a job on the Glove-Democrat whose editor was the best in St. Louis, perhaps even in Missouri. Joe McCullough and Clare went in anyway and told the editor he needed him, showing him his drawings. He told Mac he’d worked in Lincoln, Omaha, Kansas City, lying all the while. Thinking he’d impressed him, he replied $15 a week when asked how much salary he’d expect.

The knowledgeable, experienced editor cut him down to $10 a week which so pleased the artist that he had all he could do not to sing. His colleagues were getting only $6. He later said he had no idea why he was hired.

For two years Briggs drew all necessary work at the Glove-Democrat and then an axe fell ... The invention of the half-tone printing press that produced details, shading, nuances that until then only the artist could achieve in the publishing process. Photos would replace the drawing.

Seemingly faced with an impossible change, Briggs decided to enhance the illustrations he did do by showing details a photograph did not ... For instance, a local brewery with its product being produced or being sent out to market. Another lesson he learned from it was that forced up against it, you fight. He learned, he said, what was inside himself from that challenge. Then another event occurred that changed his career and attitude ... The Spanish-American War began in Cuba. It actually prolonged his job because maps were part of the reporting and his skill with maps in school aided in the news process. He could enhance those with supposed scenes of the fighting, or haciendas and other regional, topical places—alledgedly! It was an anticipated portion of the newspaper and became so popular that another newspaper in St. Louis, The Chronicle, hired him away from the Democrat for an amazing $25 a week.

Because of that raise in pay he decided that it was time to propose marriage to a girl back in Nebraska who was “waiting” for him. But was there a guarantee that she’d wait for very long?

At the war’s end, he was fired by the Chronicle which put marriage on hold. Clare was then free to travel to Washington, D.C. and New York to conquer the major market for illustration. Unfortunately, it took time. The descriptive term, “starving artist” was fulfilled in the case of Clare Briggs, late of Dixon and Lincoln and St. Louis.

For nearly two years, 1898 to 1900, he trudged the streets of the Big Apple looking for lucrative work but found little. His father’s health had broken so he asked him to come to New York and they’d pull together. All these down times from the ups in St. Louis were more experiences to add to the collection that would serve him well in the days to come as cartoonist and comic strip illustrator.

—NEXT WEEK.

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