The Adventures of Lovely Lilly

*The New York Herald building, circa 1908*

It was here in the New York Herald building (above) that it all began. No, not the Creation, but the American tradition of the Fourth Estate being free, unbiased, and without political influence. The derivation of the term arises from the traditional European concept of the three estates in a realm: the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners. The New York Herald building was located on Herald Square at the north end between West 34^th and 35^th streets.

In the first issue of the paper (May 6, 1835) publisher James Gordon Bennett, Sr., wrote, “We shall support no party, nor be the agent of no faction or coterie, and we care nothing for any election, or any candidate from president down to constable.” The newspaper’s editorial staff and most of the reporters, however, were frequently considered sympathetic to the Jacksonian Democratic Party and later President John Tyler.

Using the NYH’s announced claim, the Herald was the perfect medium that writers and journalists, cartoonists, and poets chose to deliver their professional creations to the public without conflict or acrimony.

Carolyn Wells was one such contributor. Her work often appeared in the magazine or children’s section of the paper throughout the first decade of the twentieth century.

Without debate or doubt, one of the weirdest of Wells’s contributions was the Adventures of Lovely Lilly, which ran in the Sunday New York Herald from December 1906 to January 27, 1907, and again from May to June 9, 1907. The Lilly illustrations were done by George F. Kaber a Philadelphian, born in 1860. He was, indeed, a contemporary of the author.

“Lovely Lilly” is not the sweet little girl you would imagine: each episode consists of her encounter with a wild animal. When Lilly meets each beast (who is really the star-of-the-show), she often without reason scolds it, boxes its ears or otherwise submits it to her torture-du-jour while smiling graciously and without crumpling her clothes.

Lilly’s adventures are quite outlandish, and even in that decade the tales brought fierce criticism from animal-rights groups and huge cadres of calamity howlers. The animals she tormented in a most loving fashion were a buffalo, elephant, hippopotamus, shark, alligator, cobra, lion, and tiger. Apparently sometime after their appearance in the newspaper four of the eight “adventures” were chosen to be reprinted as postcards.

The Snake (cobra), Lion, Hippopotamus, and Tiger postcards, (sixteen cards in total) were apparently copyrighted separately in 1906 and 1907 by the New York Herald Company and published by Fred C. Lounsbury. Each card illustrates one line in the poems that make the Lilly adventures.

The Adventures of Lovely Lilly by Carolyn Wells are all quatrains. In the first line Lilly finds a wild animal in the woods or lying in the sun. In the second line Lilly wonders how she could interact with the animal to provoke a reaction; then in the third line when the wild animal reacts as expected, the fourth line tells how Lilly gets the better of her awful antic and walks away unscathed.