Penny is Thelwell’s fat little equestrienne

Press, 29 March 1979, Page 19

Penny is Thelwell’s fat little equestrienne

By

GARRY ARTHUR

She may not look like it, but Mrs Penny Jones of Dallington is the little fat girl on Thelwell’s ponies. She is the Penelope of her father’s famous horseriding cartoons — a figure o'f fun to thousands of Thelwell admirers around the world. When the little

fat girl goes "w™ through the air and lands on the seat , of .. hpurs, that’s Penelope. Norman Thelwell first drew a pony cartoon when the family lived m '••erhampton in the Midlands, and he was ... .- ployed on a local news-

papcr. “A couple of little girls in the field behind our house used to joust — really joust — and beat each other with riding sticks.” Penny remembers. “My father did just One cartoon inspired by them, but he had so many letters asking for more that he made himself think up pony cartoons.” Penny had her own New Forest pony. When she got him, he was an emaciated mount with the stirring name of Thunder — pronounced “Tonda” by the Irish groom at the stables where they bought him. So Tonda he became. They fed him so much and so Often that the po'ny soon became as round as a ball. “I was a little fatty too,” Penny admits. Her father wanted to start a strip cartoon on the pony theme. “He tried to think of a.snobby little name to suit a precocious little brat on a fat pony — and Penelope seemed just right. I didn’t mind; it was quite flattering in a wav.”

For his second book of pony cartoons, “Angels on Horseback” Thelwell took photographs of Penny and her brother David, and drew little horse-riding bodies on them for the fly-leaf. From then on there was no hiding the

fact that the cartoon children were modelled on them. The Thelwells are an artistic family. Penny’s mother paints, her brother David illustrates books, and Penny draws. But she fights shy of ponies. Her forte is pen-and-ink drawings, done in considerable detail. “Father always thought I could draw, and he encouraged me,” she says. At school, where she studied art for her A levels, Penny found she had to do her drawings “before their very eyes,” or they would say “Oh, your father did that for you.” Until now, she has drawn only for her own pleasure, but since she started drawing Christchurch’s remaining colonial buildings, she thinks she might have some printed tor sale. Her husband, Allan, is not an art-

ist, but Penny says he is very good at making picture frames. A keen traveller, Penny Thelwell met her husband in Perth on a visit to Australia in 1974. They went home to get married, then returned to have a look at New Zealand. They like Christchurch so much that they have bought a house and plan to settle here — after a trip to South America. “I find Christchurch very conducive to drawing,” Penny says. “It’s the old colonial buildings, especially the little ones with verandahs.” She gave up riding little fat pon' w ago. Tonda kept throwing her off in front of the toffee-nosed children of the local gentry in Hampshire, where they moved when her father began to freelance. It was almost as if the nony was trying to live up to ms cartoon, image.