"I Know Something of Cows,” Says David Low

Greymouth Evening Star, 25 August 1928, Page 9

"I Know Something of Cows,” Says David Low

DAVID LOW, the brilliant New Zealander who has climbed to the top rung of the cartoonists’ ladder of fame, writes of early days in New Zealand for “T.P. s Weekly” ■ ■ ■

N these days of Hoss ' Smiths, Cobhams and ? Hinklers, travelling between New Zealand J and England seems a sj small matter; but not so long ago such a voyage was quite a respectable adventure, and one not within the lauge. of many. When my maternal grandmother set off from England to New Zealand it was in the days of sailing ships, when it took from six to nine months to get there. A courageous woman of a stern, religious stock, she settled in Dunedin when it was only a handful of cottages and lived to see it. grow around her into a flourishing town.

My mother was born in New Zealand, but my father was a. New Zealander only by adoption. lie was born in Scotland--at Carnoustie, just outside Dundee. We visited his native place recently and wc found the ancestral home still standing. I -was born in Christchurch, in 1891, and from my earliest consciousness I wanted to be an artist. Incidentally- I also wanted to be an actor, and a pirate. Christchurch is situated on the Canterbury Plains, where they raise sheep and grow corn; but there were four daily newspapers in the town, two morning ones, built on the lines of the “Daily Telegraph,” and two evening ones. And there were two heavy-weight weeklies that printed photographs, and one light-weight that used sketches. I was one of three brothers, and we all went to the Boys’ High School in .Christchurch; but when I was very young my elder brother died, and my father, concerned about the health of us remaining two, thereupon withdrew us from our lessons to a farm, and encouraged us to build up our constitutions in an environment of milk and eggs. We were there for seven years and I learned to milk cows Many were the enjoyable conversations I had with the fowls. My speciality, however, was clearing tim-

her. I would fell a. big bluegum, and then sit among the ruins reading “Jack Harkaway.” Happy days! Evenings in the farmhouse consisted, for me, mainly of bath and bed; but there was an old shed, remote from the house, and this became my studio. From the first I spent all my pocket money on comic papers Funny Cuts,” the “World’s Comic,” “Larks, and,’ later, “Pick-me-up.” In my precious studio I examined the drawings closely and practised the technique of the various artists. # X: *

When I was 12 I walked into the office of the light-weight weekly with a cartoon. Virtually this cartoon was a local variation of Phil May's famous joke about the angler and the lunatic. and the editor took it. printed it, and rewarded me with half-a-crown.

The time came when my parents had to decide my future, although I had decided it already. They selected the Church. Artists, as they pointed out, live in garrets and are not quite respectable. Obediently I did my best. 1 was not a success at examinations, but my studies provoked a keen interest in the classics and the subject of history, which persists to this day. At about this time the family had

left the farm and I was between 1 and 17. An International Exhibitio.

was being held in Christchurch, and a bright new weekly, “The Sketcher.” was started by one Fred Rayner. I learnt a lot from observing Rayner, who was one of the finest natural caricaturists I have ever met. I joined his paper at £2 a week. We used to go around the town together, and he would engage a man in conversation while 1 sketched him, and 1 would do the same ftvr him.

When, in due course, “The Sketcher" ( died, my old friend, the light-vf ?ight I weekly, discovered a, larger need of, my services, and I started to illus-l trate it—two full pages and four, double-column small drawings weekly i —for a salary of £2 a week. Hard work, but good fun, and 1 was very I young. Mr. Seddon and Sir Joseph Ward suffered grievously at my hands, | I made great havoc of the prohibi-1 tionists and I took a lofty view about ; the Empire and all that sort of thing. My contract with the paper was not! an exclusive one, and I did other i work, For a weekly publication in Wellington, called “Truth,” which specialised in crime, I did Court sketches, and one morning I was ignominiously turned out of Court by an orderly because I was in short trousers and looked too young to remain during the hearing of a divorce case. I earned —very hardly—the sum of five shillings for sketching the dead victim in a murder case, and, for the proprietor of a local “fun city” I did fifteen stereoscopic views of the BurnsJohnsoii fight to grace a penny-in-the slot machine. A little later there was a disturbance at that “fun city” in the course of which a woman was shot dead. The proprietor sent for me again to do him a series about the shooting, bu.t while I appreciated the compliment, I declined. I engaged upon an anti-smoking cartoon campaign iu the Salvation Army “War Cry.”

I attended the Canterbury School of Art till I found that it was doing me more harm than good as a black-and-white artist. Art Schools have a tendency to strip you of your original approach and to substitute a reverence for conventional technique; for which reason, among others, I never would advise a journalist artist to stop long at any one of them. At the age of eighteen I embarked upon a production of my own, persuading a printer to stake the cost of my production against the advertisement revenue. It was a pathetic production and advertisers proved so shy that I fear the poor printer does not cherish me in his thoughts. But I started to take a real interest in politics and to develop a conscience. I refused to do things that were not in accordance with my new-found principles, and became a nuisance.

I had now become a contributor to the “Sydney Bulletin,” and one morning received an offer to join their staff for six months during the absence through illness of Alf. Vincent, one of the most famous of Australian cartoonists. I accepted. When Vincent came back I left on a roving commission round Australia in the course of which I sketched everyone of actual and prospective importance in the country. It was splen-, did experience, but in the end I became so weary of variegated human society that I walked all the way back from Melbourne to Sydney, like any tramp. Not, if I may say so, a bad feat! It took me about two months. By the time I reached Sydney I was covered in dirt and dust and had grown a beard. When I returned to the “Sydney Bulletin” Office I was engaged more or less permanently to live in Melbourne, where the Federal Parliament was sitting, and to devote myself to political cartooning. Mr. W. M. Hughes was Primo Minister, and I found he provided enough controversial matter to keep me busy. I produced a book of cartoons entirely devoted to him. It caught attention in London, and they cabled for me from the “Star.” I don't think I need add any more, save, perhaps, that having produced more than eight thousand cartoons I still extract considerable joy from my job!