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And Another Thing

Paul Johnson

Wednesday, 4th June 2008

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

Pont’s work embraces the world of art deco in England, the world of the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth, the Dorchester in Park Lane, Philip Sassoon at Port Lympne, Evelyn Waugh in Metroland, Graham Greene in the British tropics, the Sitwells and Walton, Anthony Powell’s Afternoon Men and Noël Coward’s Blythe Spirit. It is true that Pont seems fixed on the upper or rather upper-middle classes, the people who in those days still dressed for dinner and wore white ties to go out, still employed those useful figures in telling a cartoon story, the butler, the valet and the ladies’ maid. But of course doing men in tails is more fun to draw, and makes a point more emphatic. The little foreigner in The British Character: Importance of Not Being an Alien is made more isolated by being placed in a circle of white-tied gents two foot taller than he is. But Pont can do the cocktail party rig too, as in The Importance of Not Being an Intellectual, where the ferocious X Trapnell figure is inspiring genuine fear in the ladies with fox-furs and little hats, and the men in Leslie and Roberts double-breasted suits.

Some of the best drawings on display came from his trip to America. He does New Yorkers striding down Fifth Avenue with extraordinary subtlety and truth. There is a little rear view of a bell-boy trotting down a hotel corridor with armfuls of luggage, as good as Rembrandt at his best. I missed my favourite, though, set in a Highland glen, The British Character: Inability To Understand Machinery. An Englishman, kneeling down beside a broken-down car, raises his arms to heaven in despair, while a sympathetic half-circle of immense long-haired cattle gather round. We become very fond of Pont cartoons, which are pure humour without malice or nastiness or crudity of any kind, until they seem like a personal possession. I can only compare him to Jane Austen in his ability to twine his spirit round our hearts. What fun for him to live in her age, or she in his — and meet to compare notes, and share laughter. The British Character: Anxiety to Find Husbands for Unmarried Daughters. What a Pont cartoon that would make!