Drawn at a Venture: A Collection of DrawingsFougasse
General
Drawn at a Venture: A Collection of Drawings
Fougasse
English wit and humor, Pictorial
We have our artist, then, Kenneth Bird of Morar, Inverness. When I
first met him at the beginning of 1919, he was just out of hospital,
swinging slowly along with the aid of a pair of rocking-horse crutches.
This was on his annual journey south, for they have the trains in Morar
now. Once a year Fougasse makes the great expedition to London, to
see what the latest fashions may be, and is often back in Morar again
before they have changed to something later. I have seen him each year;
in 1920 with two ordinary crutches; in 1921 with two sticks; in 1922
with one stick; perhaps by 1923 he will be playing again the games of
which he makes such excellent fun. But, selfishly, we cannot regret the
Turkish bullet, which turned what I suspect of being quite an ordinary
engineer into such an individual black-and-white draughtsman.
I am really the last person who should be writing this introduction,
for all drawing is to me a mystery. When I put two dots, a horizontal
line and a vertical line into a circle, the result is undoubtedly
a face, but whose, or what expressing, I cannot tell you until
afterwards, nor always then. But these mystery men can definitely
promise you beforehand that their dot-and-line juggling will represent
Contempt or Surprise or Mr. Asquith, just as you want it. It is very
strange; and, sometimes I think, not quite fair. However, this is not
the place wherein to dwell upon the injustice of it. What I wanted to
say was that with Fougasse I feel a little more at ease than usual;
we have something in common. Accepting the convention that writers
write exclusively with the pen, and that black-and-white artists draw
exclusively with the pencil, I should describe Fougasse as more nearly
a Brother of the Pen than any of the others. Were I in the _Punch_
office now, I should never begin my weekly contribution until his
drawing had turned up, lest it should prove that he had already written
it for me; and he, I like to tell myself, would be equally fearful lest
that very week I might have got his drawing into type. "The Tragedy of
a Trouser," for instance--it is a whole article. Any wide-awake Trade
Union would forbid it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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