LOW’S “THUNDERING PIECE OF LUCK”

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28155, 19 December 1956, Page 3

LOW’S “THUNDERING PIECE OF LUCK”

Employment By Fred Rayner, Caricaturist AN APPRENTICESHIP MORE PRECIOUS THAN RUBIES [“Low’s Autobiography” has been published by Michael Joseph, Ltd.. The series of articles of which this is the first is published by permission of the Manchester Guardian.” Copyright is reserved.} (II) It was in 1907 that I had just fluffed my matriculation examination. As consolation I now had a thundering piece of luck. A spurt of local enterprise called forth by the holding of an international exhibition at Christchurch in that year included the publication of a skittish new weekly, the “Sketchcr.” Fred Rayner, the proprietor, was a caricaturist himself, the first real caricaturist I had met. In the academic sense he could not draw, but his portraits were penetrating and intimate because he had that rare thing, a sense of individual character and, even rarer, the wit and confidence to represent it freely in line without troubling about technical shortcomings.

I was waiting with my orown-paper parcel of drawings of local celebrities when he opened his office. He. took me on at two pounds a week. But what I gained watching him taking notes behind a newspaper in the street, and working them later into caricature portraits, was more precious than rubies.

Cathedral square was the Piccadilly Circus of Christchurch. If one stood long enough, everybody in the local world passed by. It was an excellent observation ground. My maestro, with his red hair, sharp pink nose, twinkling blue eyes bespectacled and shaded by a rakishly worn straw hat, took full advantage of it, lurking, shadowing, and making secret notes. At his elbow I lurked too, fascinated.

“Haven’t quite got his mouth, my boy,” he would say, screwing a critical nose at my attempt on the back of an envelope to catch some nob waiting for his tram a couple of yards away.

‘‘That fellow’s all in his mouth. Now just watch it. Watch the way it opens and shuts.” So saying he would calmly walk over and politely request the subject to direct him to the next street or to give him a light for his cigarette, while I stood studying jawaction. That kind of direct examination greatly improved my judgment , of essentials. So character may reside in a boot, an ear could be the man. The difference between good work and trash in the caricature of personality became clearer. I learned to scorn the so-called “likenesses” taken from photographs, both the wooden or polite kind and the aimlessly distorted “funny” kind, and to appreciate the art that lay in the synthesis and emphasis of truth perceived in the living person. Political Cartoons The “Sketcher” ended, and Rayner departed, leaving me with enough local reputation to justify, almost immediately, a return to the “Spectator,” now to a full-time job as its political cartoonist, no longer a reserve junior Two full-page cartoons, four small ones weekly. Two pounds. -I was 17 and growing up. As things were then in New Zealand there was an economic inevitability about my gravitation towards political cartooning. Up till then I had been interested mainly in the drawing, and not in drawing my opinions. Now I had to take a closer interest in public affairs. It had been my luck to be born into the middle of a 20-year period of bold radicalism under the successive Governments of Ballance, Seddon, and Ward. It was a time of ideas, in which an astonishing number and variety of social experiments were carried into law. New Zealand 50 years ago must have seemed dangerously “advanced” to an English visitor,

with its adult suffrage, its free education, its State insurance and State railways, its industrial arbitration, its old age pension. Nobody had been frightened of a bit of socialism or State ownership, which were such bogies to the British in the Old Country. To me, of course, it all seemed natural and normal.

The “Spectator,” for which I was to work for the next three years, was ostensibly Liberal in politics and out to advance the policies and ambitions of its proprietor, G. W. Russell, popularly known as “Rickety” Russell because of his precarious occupation of the parliamentary seat for the constituency of Riccarton. Our policy was liberal, but cautious. We were for progress, liberty, land settlement, education, arbitration, cheap money, maternity homes, and Home Rule for Ireland; but we were suspicious of State control and we deplored labour agitators. We sat on the fence about Prohibition. Russell provided me with suggestions for the cartoons and week by week I dutifully called Prime Minister Seddon to account, severely denounced the Kaiser for building a navy, and chided King Edward VII when he seemed to need it. The proprietor of the. “Spectator” got back into the House of Representatives and to celebrate his success he took a two-month holiday, leaving a friend of mine, George, to edit the paper. George and I took the opportunity to brighten up the policy a little in his absence. Things were never quite the same after that. George departed suddenly. A firmer hand was felt. I chafed for an outlet for my growing political conscience. Rickety’s two pounds had not bought my exclusive services. Conditions were not softened by the fact that while I was the cartoonist

ot the “Spectator,” I had had myself appointed also as cartoonist to a new Labour weekly, the “Herald,” published in Wellington. On Thursdays I piped in the “Spectator” the circumspect voice of liberalism, on Mondays I was Labour’s messenger dad in thunder in the “Herald.” The situation was too piquant to last. Russell and I had a row and parted. To Australia My two years as a journalist had given me an inside view of the comparative business positions of the Christchurch newspapers. Our two bulky weeklies, all solidity and dignity, the Liberal “Canterbury Times” and the Conservative “Weekly Press,” were in cut-throat competition, and I knew that the “Canterbury Times” was weakening. With Machiavellian craft I “dummied up” a copy of the “Canterbury Times” with a couple of full pages of lively cartoons and, choosing a time when I figured the periodical statement of his depressing circulation figures would be lying on his desk, I took it along to the business manager, with a carefully prepared sales-talk explaining how necessary for him it was to engage me. To my delight it came off, hook, line, and sinker. I landed a plum job such as I had dreamed of. excellent reproduction at last, large space to spread, sympathetic editor, practically a free hand—all this and the fabulous salary of five pounds a week, too. I took my savings, thirty pounds, and gave myself a month off before I started, to go to Australia and see for myself what kind of people ran the Sydney “Bulletin.” They had been accepting a lot of my work latterly, and one never knew where that might lead. On my return, all went very well indeed, artistically. The bigger space gave me a chance to experiment with bolder effects, the excellent reproduction and good printing a possibility of subtler expression. Politically, however, all soon was not sg well. General Godley, sent from Britain to advise on New Zealand defence, recommended the Government to initiate a measure of compulsory military training. Immediately the country was filled with argument For and Against. I was Against, mainly on political grounds. Mine was the traditional Liberal attitude. If anyone wants to know what Mr Gladstone said in 1862, it was probably very like what young Mr Low said in 1911. Deadlock But the “Canterbury Times” was FOR. Deadlock. The chairman of the board, a Very Important Person, had me to his house for private con-

ference. But no conclusions emerged except that everyone was out of step but me. Both sides retreated in good order. For the present I refused to draw cartoons approving the act and the paper refusing to publish any 1 drew against it. But my days were numbered. Governments are not as amenable as individuals. Hacked by my father, I was preparing to resist medical examination when out of the blue came a telegram from the Sydney “Bulletin.” “Can you take position as our Melbourne cartoonist for six months?” Could I? Wow! I replied “Yes” without asking about pay or conditions. “But has not Australia a similar law?” my chairman of the board asked me. “And is not the ‘Bulletin’ in favour of it?” , “I will attend to that when it arises. Life is full of uncertainties,” replied tight-rope walker Low. (To be continued)