MY HORROR.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 27, 1 February 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

MY HORROR.

THE CARICATURIST. A DEGRADING- CALLING. SLAUGHTERING PREFERRED. (By LADY ADAMS.) Most people have to do something for a living, have to "wu'k to get enough to eat to 'ave the stren'th to wu'k," but if I had to choose between being a butcher's killer and a caricaturist, I would be a slaughterman. For, if I were a slaughterman, I would not have to select, personally, the animals I had to kill; others would take that responsibility for me; I would only have to "swing the spear," and after a certain amount , of practice, I might become an adept. If I were not a vegetarian, and if I ever reflected, I would console myself by the thought that I was doing good' work in giving the finishing touch to the home-fed beef that every Eng- : lishman relishes; but if I were a butcher's killer, I hope I would never reflect, and therefore I would require little consolation. To be a caricaturist is more complex; a caricaturist cannot be normal; he must i have a twist in hi 6 brain; he is often a diseased genius; he walks the world in an oblique nightmare, seeing ghastly ] distorted faces and figures everywhere. : His mental vision is full of people going ; to dine at Roly and Poly's, and coming ; from Roly and Poly's. We loved those mirrOr advertisements in our childish days, we dislike them now, and we avoid glancing at our emaciated or bloated 1 selves. But the hunting, bread-seeking ' caricaturist has to live with those , monstrosities of his own making. i The Caricaturist in Society. He has to live and .talk and "behave like a gentleman; he has to be very particular, for the more distinguished the people he can caricature, the better for his purse, and though he may earn a few guineas by making fun of tramps, still, most people do not want to buy caricatures of them, and • they certainly do not care to pay a shilling to look at rows of them in an exhibition. So it is needful for him to go into society; he must have time to study his victims carefully and quietly; he must be. able to fix them under his magnifying glass, catch any oddity of face or motion, while never forgetting that he is pretending to be a gentleman. There are many definitions of that word; my favourite is, one who never gives unnecessary pain to others. Now,' what is a poor caricaturist to do?" He knows that if he i 3 a good craftsman he must give pain; it ■is_ a matter between himself and his microscopic conscience that the pain is unnecessary. The good caricaturist made his first caricature, not with pencil or pen, but with his own unformed baby features in his cradle; before the little dear could walk or talk well, he pulled his first funny face. "Just like Nanny when she is in a tantrum," his delighted mother declared, and he fought'his way up to the top of his trade over the hurt hearts of nurses, relatives and friends. A caricaturist "arrived" is dead to all feeling; there can be none of the honest bonhomme of the genuine artist in him; he would make a funny drawing of his own micro- ! scopic conscience if it ever struck him he , had one; poor, lonely, clever car jcaturis , everyone dreads him; everyone avohhim; the people he has caricatured ioa e

him, with the exception, perhaps, of that case-hardened group who seem to be fair game for every cruel pencil and biting pen; those who think he is studying them in public try to stand straight and keep their features in order while he is near; not even the nobodies cringe to him; no one wants to attract his attention or to pose for him. A Degrading Trade. But it is his cruel, degrading trade; he must live, and his kinked mind has always centred itself on other people's idiosyncracies: waking and sleeping, he sees people as raw material; he dare not draw a well-known man and put in just what his friends love to linger on in his face; he may not give the public the man as he is, ugly, round-shouldered, awkward but kindly; he must wipe out the happy smile, the genial look, and replace them by a sinister eye or a greedy mouth; he must emphasise the clumsy gait and accentuate the ugliness. He knows that our quaint English law will let him draw what he likes, as he likes, how he likes, so long as he does not draw his victim's conduct. Sober and decent his victim must be; suggestion may do the rest. If he said in a newspaper one quarter of the things he may draw, he and his editor would be gaoled. I maintain that exhibitions of caricatures are a blot on civilisation, and that those who find cause for libel in the written ,or spoken word should be allowed to find it in the wordless sketch. A little boy I knew said of earache that "it gets behind the place you bear pain at." I wonder if that is what happens when a sensitive literary or artistic man suddenly sees himself as a caricaturist chooses to see him; he has not been struck by a bludgeon, but by a poisoned rapier; the blow is not meant to kill, but to leave a festering wound; he has no redress, his sole consolation is that he is important enough to be noticed by the man with the diseased brain; and there's an end of it. What an old age awaits the cruel caricaturist; the clever hand too feeble to draw the man as the weary, twisted eye sees him, but the old tongue not too tremulous to spit out its venom, for the habit of a lifetime cannot be given up at once, and not much of the milk of human kindness can be left in him; he has spent his life looking for faults, for the things most people would rather not see; he has transposed the old showman's j plea, and has always thought the wutht I of people, not the betht; his wife's crowns have depended on his being able to catch and sketch somebody, so as to make the public, the cruel, easily tickled public, laugh afresh. He has not had a gentle or a dignified career; he has been a jester, and a worn-out jester is melancholy.