Obscurity of the Day: The Matinee Club

Here's one I was ambivalent about finding.

The Matinee Club ran twice in the New York Herald on 7/10 and 7/17/1898. The feature ran on the back page of the Herald's Sunday magazine section, not on the comics pages. Ken Barker's excellent Herald index doesn't list this feature so I assume he wasn't checking this section of the paper when he was going through the microfilm. That means the Herald needs to be given a second indexing by me to catch these additional items.

The De Yongh who signed these Sunday panels is probably John de Yongh (1856-1917). A quick Google search finds that he was responsible for a line of humorous postcards in the late oughts, and drew portraits and advertising matter as well.

By the way for the purposes of full disclosure I did replace the original lettering at the bottom of the panel. For some reason though the panel is given half page play the type at the bottom was set in tiny little agate type. Go figure.