Low's Progress

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 917, 8 March 1957, Page 12

Low's Progress

LOW’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY, Michael Joseph, | English price 30/-.

(Reviewed by

David

Hall

NE of the persistent nightmares of educationists is the abominable success from time to time of those who almost entirely escape their enticing nets. Low left school at 11 (his father was a man of independent mind, too) and was a more-or-less-self-supporting cartoonist in Christchurch at 15. True, he did have a stab at Matric at 16, with some help from a coaching establishment, but retained his buoyant independence by failing miserably, even in drawing. But that was self-taught: "For me it seemed that only by dint of smithing could one become a smith." The frightening moral need not be laboured. Perhaps we can give ourselves a pat on the back that it was New Zealand schools he avoided attending. At 20 Low was called to a temporary job with the Sydney Bulletin, at its Melbourne office-a strategic point for political close-ups, as it was then the seat of the Commonwealth Legislature. He stayed on with the Bulletin. One of his jobs was roving the country immortalising local potentates. About this time he consciously perfected the technique of self-effacement, bringing "unobtrusiveness by experiment almost to a science. . . I got near to invisibility as I sleeked myself into forbidden places." This engaging modesty led him in later years to diminish his own size (his actual height is 5ft. 1012in.) when he appeared in his own drawings, "and recreated myself a sad little Charlie Chaplin kind of character for public use," a pop-eyed foil to Blimp-his richest gift to popular mythology. Low rose to fame with his commentary on the deeds and personality of Billy Hughes. A few years of work ("Making a cartoon occupied usually about three full days, two spent in labour and one in removing the appearance of labour") under congenial conditions (he could never command such space in London), and Low went to England at the invitation of the Quakerowned Daily News: "I never could pass the door of Opportunity without trying the handle." His famous partnership with Lord Beaverbrook-whose Evening Standard he adorned for many years-was to begin a little later, one of the strangest episodes in modern journalism. Beaverbrook gave Low a contract which expressly allowed him freedom of action in the subject-matter of his cartoons. London laughed often enough at the cartoonist following his own political line in defiance of his paper’s policy; Beaverbrook was big enough to laugh, too. Ironically, when Low recently joined > the Labour Herald from a sense of political duty, conditions were not so congenial, and he soon moved on to the Manchester Guardian. Meanwhile, of course, independence has paid its own dividend, both in selfrespect and in the respect of others. Low scarcely belongs now to one paper or another; his cartoons appear in a great many different journals throughout the world. In any case, no one can make him turn his back on his own

strong, upright, mildly leftish opinions. He is the original sea-green incorruptible -on a five-figure income. His other strength is, of course, his superb technique-the apparent simplicity, actually the fruit of unremitting labour. He has never been facile and has always needed to study his subjects carefully. Since his arrival, in a double sense, in London, Low has enjoyed the society of the great and the great have enjoyed Low. Wells was his friend, but Shaw suspected his bump of irreverence. He has a lucky knack of getting on with opponents or victims. Hitler and Mussolini might ban him, but he often hobnobbed with Baldwin, and carried on a long flirtation with Jix (the egregious Joynson-Hicks, a golden gift to a cartoonist). Low’s penultimate gift is his considerable ability as a writer. He can hit almost as hard in prose as in caricature. The last gift of all is that no one can envy, him all the rest-wit, talent brilliantly exploited, integrity and success. His autobiography is an _ enthralling document, lively, sincere, cocky, but essentially modest, full of eminently quotable titbits I could go on with till the cows come home,