Thurber Thursday: A “Restful” Thurber Dog

Back on the very last day of 2020  I wrote about John Updike’s Thurber dog. Here’re some edited excerpts: 

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For those of us who treasure Thurber’s art, there is I would suggest, nothing  more wonderful than a Thurber drawn dog. In Updike’s Introduction to Lee Lorenz’s The World of William Steig, he tells us that in 1944, when he was 12 years old, he wrote Thurber a fan letter. Thurber responded with the drawing you see here (Thurber obviously enjoyed this image as he previously did a similar drawing, published as a “spot” in the May 29th, 1943 issue of The New Yorker. (See below left).

…Updike’s Thurber dog is also mentioned in a piece he wrote for the January-February 1987 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, calling his framed Thurber dog the “chief wall decoration” that hung in his office overlooking the Ipswich River in Ipswich, Massachusetts. (Updike lived and worked in Ipswich from 1957 through 1973).

…When newly acquired cartoon art (whether it is 80 years old or was just published last week) arrives here at the Spill, I feel somewhat of a buzz from it; having the original is a giant step closer to the artist.” 

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Here at Spill headquarters, there was quite a buzz last month when a Thurber dog drawing arrived in the mail.* As you see, it’s a relative of the 1943 New Yorker spot, and Updike’s dog. 

 

The drawing, on a now brittle and browned 8 1/2″ x 11″ piece of paper, was mailed in July of 1943 by Thurber from his home in Cornwall, Connecticut to a U.S. soldier. In the  letter accompanying the drawing, Thurber wrote:

“I am enclosing an original drawing of my dog. He doesn’t make as good a pin-up as Miss Grable, but he might be more restful.”  

 

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* A big big thank you to Steve Stoliar, who alerted me the minute this wonderful drawing showed up online.  

–The scan of John Updike’s Thurber dog courtesy of Miranda Updike.

If there are other variations of the Thurber dog with a flower I’d love to see them.