The Baseball Rialto
Clare Briggs
Clare Briggs is a famous cartoonist who lived from 1875 to 1930. Poems by Wilbur Nesbitt.
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Cement Heads for the Cement Show
March 8, 2025
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Suppertime and the living is easy
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Trying to figure out the ‘Arabella Cinch’ reference, came across this Briggs comic from two years previous (1914). Still not sure of the reference. Cinch is almost certainly being used in the same context as clinch but Arabella is just an Italian name? keeping with the Rialto (a famous part of Venice) theme?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/195459897343Report
http://ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/35632/1/09.pdf (search for “Arabella” to see the writing in question)
Between this and other references, it seems like this was an allegorical allusion to a team winning a baseball game.
As for this cartoon, it’s referring to movies that were popular at the time; “Rialto” was (and remains) a common name for movie theaters.Report
“Cinch” is an old term for the pennant, or the team that is a cinch to win the pennant (see: cinch).”Arabella Cinch” is a human manifestation of the pennant, and wedding her means winning it.Report
OK…as far as I can tell…”Arabella Cinch” APPEARS to have been a character in a moving picture serial, for whose hand suitors are perpetually fighting. Multiple baseball writers of the time (including the great Ring Lardner) decided that “courting Annabella Cinch” was a good metaphor for chasing a pennant. Baseball references to her started in 1908 and ended around 1920.Report
The March 1920 issue of The American Magazine published an essay titled “Briggs Tells His Own Story”. A portion of the essay relevant to the question is here (Briggs’ implication that he had created the “Arabella Cinch” character himself is not true):
https://ia800405.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages.php?zip=/18/items/frank-leslies-popular-monthly/Frank%20Leslies%20Popular%20Monthly%20v01%20%281876%29%20%28UIll-Urb%29_jp2.zip&file=Frank%20Leslies%20Popular%20Monthly%20v01%20%281876%29%20%28UIll-Urb%29_jp2/Frank%20Leslies%20Popular%20Monthly%20v01%20%281876%29%20%28UIll-Urb%29_0440.jp2&id=frank-leslies-popular-monthly&scale=4&rotate=0Report