DAVID LOW’S ARRIVAL IN BRITAIN

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28157, 21 December 1956, Page 3

DAVID LOW’S ARRIVAL IN BRITAIN

Gloomy First Impression, But Brighter Prospects “I WAS FOR EVER MORE A LONDONER”, (“Low’s Autobiography" has been published by Michael Joseph, Ltd. The series \ of articles of which this is the fourth is published by permission of the "Manchester Guardian." Copyright is reserved.] IV Was this London? Bleak, dark and uninviting. Our arrival, a 4 dusk on a November evening in the middle of a big railway strike, was a bad start. In the devil-take-the-hindmost rush to catch a makeshift train from Liverpool, our landing port, I had lost my baggage. I hadn’t been able to get to a bank and I was uncomfortably short of ready money. We had to stand all the way, packed like cattle without even the solace of a cup of tea. There was no-one to meet us, of course, on the ill-lit, untidy Euston Station, with bits of newspaper blowing about in a chill wind.

The half-dozen taxis were snapped up, the hansom-cabs likewise. The only vehicle left was an unbelievably ancient growler, looking as though it had just been vacated by Boadicea. As we clattered along the dark back streets I risked cracking the springs by leaning out of the window. Sadness brooded, gloom lurked, winter was approaching; but romance was everywhere. I could hardly wait. After dinner, I left my sister unpacking at the hotel and set out for my first London walk. There were few street lights, owing to a power shortage, the place was dark, bleak, and chill, but with imagination afire I followed my nose along some circuitous route which I have never been able to rediscover, until I found myself at the door of Madame Tussaud’s. The door was closed, but what of it? This was palpable confirmation that I was in London at last. What delight! What joyful

promise of treading the fabulous streets, entering the enchanted places until then only known at second-hand in books and photographs! I was for ever more a Londoner. But then 1 had always been a Londoner. Next evening, after a busy day of discovery and introductions, I took another after-dinner stroll. As I returned through an empty street oft Marylebone road I came on a deserted newspaper pitch with a string of newsbills, under a dim street light not yet repaired from the war. One caught my eye. THE STAR NEW CARTOONIST ARRIVES That was me. I had arrived. The “Daily News” office was very different from the “Bulletin” office 1 had left in Sydney. All old mahogany and worn stone steps, solemn rooms and dark walls, relieved by engravings of Charles Dickens and old-time cartoons about Chinese slavery by Arthur Moreland. Oh, lor’, I thought. “Charles Dickens was our editor,” said someone. “Did you say ‘was’ or ‘is’?” I murmured. Explanations. “Did you know that Charles Dickens . . .” started off another c ha P- . . , r “Charles Dickens? Who s he? I asked. The chap gave me a wink. ‘ Oh, one of our sub-editors. Anyway, he only lasted six months around here.” That was Hugh Jones. We became firm friends. Papers Badly Printed Nothing came out as I had.expected. A. G. Gardiner, the editor I had hoped to work with, had left. In any case. I was not to work for the “Daily News” but for the company's evening paper, the “Star.” It looked to me a miserable little sheet, badly printed. For the matter of that, all the London evenings—there were about nine of them then—looked miserable little sheets, badly printed, but the “Star” was the littlest and worst printed of the lot. My first cartoon in London was such a mess—in two columns —that nobody could have known what it was about. It had a scornful paragraph in a rival paper. With memories of my beautiful well-printed full pages on the Sydney “Bulletin,” I was desperate with disappointment and vexation. ... A fat chance here of anybody ever becoming a Gillray or a Daumier. Exit art. Enter industry. Moving on full steam I sped to the office and caught the board at the tailend of a conference. Most of these gentlemen were still at the welcoming stage with me. I took them by sur-

prise. Slapping half a dozen of my “Bulletin” cartoons on the table and beside them my shameful little first effort for the “Star,” I threw a display of temperament which would have done credit to a prima donna. The board was impressed by my passionate harangue. I impressed myself too. Space was vital. I had to have room to breathe or I would suffocate. A Challenge “Gentlemen,” I said, “there has been a mistake. That” (the “Bulletin” heap) “is what you engaged me. on and that’s what I’m anxious to do for you. This” (the “Star” atrocity) “I am no good at. If you want this you’ve wasted time and money getting me here. Give me some half-pages and if at the end of three months I an not justified we will tear up the contract. If not, I’m willing to call the whole thing off right now.”

Consternation. Half-page cartoons! Unprecedented, unheard-of. Worse, other papers had not done it first. Two columns was the size. ... I reached for my hat. Very well. I’m not that kind of cartoonist. I resign.

What a relief at last to see a twinkle in the eye of old Ernest Parke. That grand old man of Fleet Street gave me a fatherly look. He persuaded the 1 others, and I got a half-page to do a bit of drawing in. They would try anything once too. Toil and Trouble Although the invention of the Double-headed Ass saved me a lot of! work—until the Government fell off l it and had to resign—it was not| evolved without a great deal of trouble. After a lot of experiment, during which my table became littered with asses of various kinds, I 1 almost absent-mindedly made what autograph collectors call a “ghost.” I folded over a piece of paper upon one side of which a portion of drawing was still wet, so that a reproduction in reverse blotted itself upon the blank of the other side. And this, with a little adjustment of legs, was the Coalition Ass. 1 After that I could have drawn it with my eyes shut. The Ass “took on” with the “Star” readers. I drew him in all kinds of asinine circumstances suggesting the futility of going both ways at once and getting nowhere. He was “LI. G’s” racehorse. Churchill’s charger, Bonar Law’s carthorse, Carson’s hunter, and Austen Chamberlain’s four-footed circus marvel, besides doing duty as the Bridge of Asses between Free Trade and Protection, and a foster-mother hatching a large egg representing The Future. (To be continued.)