A 1928 installment of H.T. Webster’s The Timid Soul in which in which a bellman announces a message for Caspar Milquetoast (far right), but he is too embarrassed by his name to answer
6 May 2021
A milquetoast is a meek, mild-mannered, submissive person, usually a man. The word comes from the name of a cartoon character, H.T. Webster’s Casper Milquetoast, star of the comic The Timid Soul, which debuted in the pages of the New York World in May 1924 and was syndicated nationwide until 1953. The word is often capitalized, and in recent years, as memory of the comic has faded away, is sometimes spelled milktoast.
Milk toast is an easily digestible food and is exactly what it sounds like—toast soaked in milk. It is typically given to those who are ill or who have a “nervous stomach.” H.T. Webster clearly modeled this character’s name after the dish.
The comic debuted in 1924, and by 1930 the term started to be used outside of references to the comic. But at first, those non-comic references were in the forms Mr. Milquetoast or Caspar Milquetoast. For instance, there is this from an intriguingly titled November 1930 article “Of Course You Can’t Tell Whether It’s Your Baby”:
“My offspring might be born, say, clubfooted or harelipped: my physical soundness is no guarantee of offspring’s physical soundness. Despite clubfoot or harelip, that offspring might become a monstrous, insane criminal; or a nice gentle Mr. Milquetoast.
Or this from a Washington Post review of the movie The Royal Bed from 18 January 1931, a review that desperately needed a proofreader:
His Majesty was surrounded in his palace, and without, by a lot of bullies of various sexes. What with his over-zealous premier, hen-pecking wife, plotting revolutionists, love-sick daughter, bartered by her queenly mother on the matrimonial block, and a few shells blowing the royal establishment to smithereens, the King seemed in for a bit of in glorious abdicating until, by superb insight into the weakneses [sic] of his opponents, a keen play of with and the temerity to cease permitting his wife to be king, he turned the whole muddled business to own complacent advantage. All very buoyant, very glib and very heartening to the world’s Jasper [sic] Milquetoasts.
And there is this critique of Lionel Barrymore’s performance as Otto Kringelein in the movie Grand Hotel from the Oakland Tribune of 12 June 1932:
Each incident was conveyed with the Barrymore craft, each scene was carefully built and meticulously evolved. It was exciting to watch, but it was always Barrymore and never Kringelein.
The Kringelein was a Mister Milquetoast. For thirty years he had accepted the insults, the long hours and the short pay of his Prussian boss.
Barrymore, who won the highest prize in filmdom’s gift for making a real personage out of a phony melodramatic figure in “A Free Soul,” converting the dross of hokum into the gold of artistry by the alchemy of his art, missed Kringelein entirely.
But by 1932 we start seeing milquetoast deployed on its own and as an adjective. From the Charleston Daily Mail of 26 August 1932:
We venture another political forecast: Neither Mr. Roosevelt nor Mr. Hoover has anything to worry about in the so-called movement to write Mr. Alfred E. Smith’s name on the ballot on November 8. No states will be won or lost to the notified candidates on that account. The average voter, Old Forgotten Man, feels that he is making his great sacrifice if he spends five minutes registering and ten minutes voting. Does anybody think that he is going to go to the trouble of writing a name on the ballot, with the strong fear of authority that the Milquetoast majority has that if he does vote the straight ticket his ballot won’t be counted.
And there is this 12 February 1933 complaint in the Springfield Sunday Union and Republican about how technology has put an end to privacy:
And as if this were not enough, the broadcasting companies are sending representatives through the streets to waylay chance passers-by and coax them to broadcast extemporaneous speeches through label microphones. The victim cannot simply gasp “Hullo, Momma!” in the manner of a breathless athlete at the ringside. He must answer questions on specific subjects such as “To what extent will the small independent prune grower be affected by Schedule K of the Hoot-Smawley Tariff Act? or, “Do you approve of capital punishment for mothers guilty of infanticide—and if so, why?”
The mute, inglorious Milquetoast must be ready at a moment’s notice to offer opinions on any topic. In all his conclusions he must be quick on the draw and shoot from the hip. He is the “man in the street,” and the world wants to know what he’s thinking about.
The more things change. But at least the milquetoasts are still in line to inherit the earth.
Sources:
Bell, Nelson B. “RKO-Keith’s.” Washington Post, 18 January 1931, 4. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
“The Conning Tower.” Charleston Daily Mail (West Virginia), 26 August 1932, 6. NewspaperArchive.com.
Dorsey, George A. “Of Course You Can’t Tell Whether It’s Your Baby.” Hearst’s International Combined with Cosmopolitan, November 1930, 116. ProQuest: Magazines.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. Caspar Milquetoast, n.
Holbrook, Weare. “Home Movie Camera Puts All in Spotlight.” Springfield Sunday Union and Republican (Massachusetts), 12 February 1933. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2020, s.v. Milquetoast, n. and adj.; March 2021, s.v. milk, n.1 and adj.
Soanes, Wood. “Screen Adaptation of ‘Grand Hotel’ Compared with Gilding of Lily.” Oakland Tribune (California), 12 June 1932, S-5, 26. NewspaperArchive.com.
Image credit: H.T. Webster, “The Timid Soul,” The Citizen (Ottawa), 21 June 1928, 16. Fair use of an image to illustrate a topic under discussion.