Stripper's Guide

He was born in London thirty years ago, but when quite small the family moved to Australia, where all his boyhood recollections cluster. 

“I cannot remember so far back as the time when I was not drawing,” said Mr. Warren recently. “My first offences were houses with great volumes of smoke pouring from their allied chimneys. From this it was only a short step to drawing the school-masters, and then trouble began. One day when I had just finished an atrocious effigy of the teacher, he caught me red-handed, and I, ‘like a wretch o’ertaken in his tracks, with stolen chattels on his back,’ tremblingly awaited my punishment. On this occasion the master, evidently determined to make the punishment fit the crime, compelled me to make one hundred drawings of a certain face. Well, I can tell you that long before that task was finished all the artistic instinct in me seemed dead beyond hope of resurrection; but such was not the case, as a few weeks later I was again at my old pastime.

“About that time, when I was still very young, the late Phil, May arrived in Australia and was engaged to furnish regular cartoons for the Sydney Bulletin. I remember his pictures were a wonderful stimulus to me, as were also the more broadly funny drawings of the American humorist, Livingston Hopkins, who had settled in our midst. Their pictures aroused a deep interest in my mind in politics, and perhaps exerted more influence than anything else in turning my attention toward journalism. Every week I eagerly looked for the cartoons, and though only about twelve years of age I was quite a politician among my comrades and playmates and was always eager for a discussion with my elders, substituting, no doubt, the assertiveness of ignorance and immaturity for wisdom and logic, as is the way with youth.”

At length the time came when the father wished his son to select a profession. It had been his hope and desire that Garnet should follow in his footsteps and become a physician, but this the boy was disinclined to do, lacking the necessary application. Finally deciding to become a dentist, he took service as an apprentice, but after five months the master declined to have the boy with him longer because of lack of interest and application. Next he became a stenographer in a business-office, remaining in that capacity for four years.

“During this period,” said Mr. Warren, in referring to his early struggles, “my old taste for picture-making led me to join a drawing-class. I was then about twenty. My office-work required my time from nine to five each day, but from seven to ten I spent in the drawing-school; then I would hasten over to the Parliament House to make sketches of the members for one of our weekly papers, working there till two in the morning; so my life at that time was strenuous enough to suit the most exacting American taste, and perhaps too strenuous for my constitution.”

After a time a tempting opportunity was offered Mr. Warren to go to South America on a business venture. He traveled along the whole Western coast and from thence up to San Francisco, California. [A passenger list at Ancestry.com said Warren arrived August 24, 1896 in San Francisco from Panama.] When in this bustling American metropolis of the Pacific, he applied for a position in the art department of the Examiner and was promptly assigned a place; but the well-filled department, with its numbers of young men working away like steam-engines under high pressure, frightened him so that before the morning came when he was to begin his work he had decided to return to Australia instead of remaining in the republic. Arriving home, he secured the position of cartoonist on The Queenslander, which he held for two years, when again his desire to travel and seek more promising fields overmastered him. Accordingly he set out for London, in which city he remained nine months, drawing some cartoons for the Chronicle, and several pictures for The King and other publications. London, however, seemed to promise less opportunity for advancement than America, so he set out for New York. [A passenger list said Warren arrived January 17, 1901 in New York from Liverpool.] That was about four years ago. He soon obtained a place on the New York Herald, though not as a cartoonist. He remained with the Herald for over two years, when he accepted an offer from the New York News, which position he retained until the reorganization of that paper. He then came to Boston and accepted a position offered on the Boston Herald. At the time of his coming to this city he determined to make cartoon-work his life occupation, and into his labors he has thrown much of that heart-interest which Longfellow tells us “giveth grace to every art.” His cartoons are widely copied, and though only thirty years of age he to-day ranks with our best American newspaper cartoonists.

Labels: Ink-Slinger Profiles

# posted by Alex Jay @ 8:00 AM