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And Another Thing

Paul Johnson

Wednesday, 4th June 2008

‘Mr Pont, may I introduce you to Miss Austen?’

The original of this odd work of art, and many others, are to be seen at the Cartoon Gallery in Little Russell Street, a delightful place not well enough known to those who relish the arts. This display of Pont’s work is well served by a magnificent catalogue, which reproduces all the drawings on display, and more, with an admirable accuracy and polish, so that none of the crucial details are lost. Pont was a man who, superficially, the gods appeared to love. He was an only son of a well-off family in Newcastle-on-Tyne, his father running a successful painting and decorating business. He grew up tall and exceptionally good-looking, and on a horse was a commanding figure. His talents as a draughtsman and a coiner of jokes appear to have evolved naturally and effortlessly and with a sparkling flourish, so that the ideas tumbled out ceaselessly, though Pont like all professional humorists had a terror of running out of them. He must have seemed an amazing figure of grace and skill when he first walked into the grey Punch offices in Bouverie Street. Alas, he was not what he seemed, this handsome paragon. Even as a child he had suffered from a tubercular kidney. Much of his life was spent, like the girls from the Chalet School, in the high, dry air of the Tyrol. He seemed always, if faintly, under sentence of death, though its execution was delayed until the second winter of the war when polio carried him off. Today medical science would have saved him for a ripe old age.

As it was, he completed over 400 cartoons and a host of smaller drawings and sketches, virtually all of high quality and many deserving close study. His series on the British character are the most famous and made him a celebrity even while he still lived: more than a celebrity, indeed — somebody much loved and treasured. The amount of skill that went into his work is phenomenal. One drawing shows a working-class couple in their kitchen with their eight children playing uproariously, the ceiling hung high with drying clothes, the wife reading the gossip column: ‘I see the Shippley-Melvilles are staying in their villa at Juan-les-Pins.’ To which the husband, who has his cap on but removes his pipe to speak, replies: ‘Funny! I thought it was Cannes.’ The organisation of this complex drawing is high art. So too is the beautiful design of a Tube in the rush hour in the British Character series, entitled Patience in Adversity. The intertwining of the squashed figures, and the counterpoint of resignation, stoicism and irritation on their faces, took some doing. I also recommend close inspection of another item in the British Character series, showing a big dinner party and entitled Absence of the Gift of Conversation. This tells 12 admirable little stories.