“ON THE WHOLE IT'S A FINE LIFE”

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXX, Issue 20165, 20 July 1935, Page 12

“ON THE WHOLE IT'S A FINE LIFE”

DAILY CALL ON CARTOONIST NEW ZEALANDER IN LONDON “My quest for prominent New Ze£ landers in England,” writes G.S.C., l “Tlie New Zealand News” (London “led me again to Fleet Street. Ther in an upper room, I found F. I Cumberworth, ex-Christchurch, ex Auckland, ex-Sydney, the tall, cheer ful, bespectacled Sports Cartoonist < “The News Chronicle,” at work on drawing of a Grand National hors retreating in horror from a notice ( its premature decease. Mr Cumber worth has been on the staff of “Th News Chronicle” since he landed i London five years ago. He went t the editor on his arriyal. left a bundl of drawings for inspection and a f£\ hours later was offered a job. Behind those drawings he had, how ever, a long record to back up his ap plication. He held his first job as cartoonist at the age of seventeen, oi the old "Spectator” in Christchurch in the days when the paper was owne< by G. W. Russell, the member fo Riccarton. (David Low also began hi career on the “Spectator.”) At th same time Mr Cumberworth carried or his sutdies at the Canterbury Colleg: School of Art. From the “Spectator’ he went to “The Evening News.” ant was there when the war broke out. Ir 1916 he went to France as a member o; the N.Z.E.F. Several of his drawings done in huts or dug outs, were published in the New Zealand Army Magazine. In 1917 he was invalided out of France, and was attached as artist to an army depot in England to da sketches for the Imperial War Museum. “I had one chap with me as a model, and we used to feature as the last item on the Parade Statement. ‘Present—one artist, one mode

.. .’ I turned out a lot of drawings but where they got to no one has eve: yet managed to discover. They disappeared from the War Office files Some Major is reputed to have purloined them.”

Demobilisation brought a scholarship at the St. Martin’s School of Art, and from that came a job as cartoonist on “The Star” in Auckland. “It was there I did the only writing I ever did on any newspaper," was Mr Cumberworth’s smiling comment. “I used to do the golf notes.” The “Star” led in turn to a position on “The Evening News,” in Sydney, the post which Mr Cumberworth left to go to England. Style in Cartooning “Mr Cumberworth considers that the style of cartooning is vastly different in Australia from that in England. 'ln Australia you must draw as if you had a heavy boot on, with which you kicked the other fellow as hard as you could. Here cartooning is more reticent. You must imply laughingly that you are going to kick the other fellow pretty hard if he is not careful. Will Lawson’s cartoons on “The Daily Herald” in pre-war days has the full Australian vigour about them. Any English cartoon must, moreover, have plenty of humour about it. The success of Strube is due largely to the fact that his humour, like the jam hiding the pill, makes the point of the cartoon more palatable. That is why English cartoons so often leave the foreigner absolutely baffled.’ ” Cartoon Every Week-day “Mr Cumberworth does a cartoon a day six days a week for eleven months of the year. I asked him that question which one always wants to ask cartoonists: ‘How on earth do you get ideas enough, day after day?’ 'They just keep coming. Cartooning is like a disease. The cartoonist can’t help himself—the ideas just keep coming to him —and if they don’t—well, he wouldn’t last long as a cartoonist. But often, of course, one feels completely stuck for something to draw, and one just has to sit down and think something out bit by bit. Often those are the better drawings. One spends more time and thought on them than on the drawings the ideas for which just spring into one’s mind. It has its drawbacks but on the whole it's a fine life.’ ”