James Thurber And Mary Petty
The other day I mentioned Morris Markey’s That’s New York! featuring Johan Bull’s illustrations. Mary Petty’s one and only collection of her work, This Petty Pace (Knopf, 1945) isn’t the same animal.
James Thurber had at least two intersections with Ms. Petty’s collection. He not only provided the title (from Macbeth :“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day”)* but the preface as well. Forwards, prefaces, introductions, etc., sometimes get lost in that old literary dustbin of history (where is that dustbin!?) and so I thought I’d spend a few moments on Thurber’s piece. It’s three-and-a-half pages long; not a knocked-off couple of paragraphs telling us how great Ms. Petty’s work is.
I thought I’d show a select few of what Thurber had to say. If you have a copy of Thurber’s Credos and Curios you’ll be able to see the whole piece (or, obviously, a copy of This Petty Pace).
“She never studied art, but taught herself, with the same slow patience and great care with which she makes each of her drawings, sitting in what she insists is a dark corner, surrounded by a ring of erasers. It takes her three weeks to finish a drawing, and at the end of that time she protests she hates the drawing and herself. Everybody else, of course, loves it and her.
In her whole career, Mary Petty has done only two drawings from ideas that originated outside her own mind. Many artists depend chiefly on gagmen, and most others profit to a considerable extent from lines sent in to the magazine or suggested by friends. Mary Petty’s world, however, is peculiarly, jealously, and devotedly her own…the Petty idiom and point of view, like the Petty draughtsmanship, are intensely original and personal. What this artist has is not a trick, but a magic, and magics are not transferable.”
Additional info:
In Russell Maloney’s (Nov. 11, 1945) New York Times review of This Petty Pace he calls the book’s cover, originally a New Yorker cover published May 24, 1941, as Ms. Petty’s “strongest bid for immortality” and cites a particular Petty drawing (published in The New Yorker August 3, 1935) as “…just possibly the ultimate achievement in cartoon art.”
And finally, bringing this all back to Thurber since it’s Thurber Thursday, Mr. Maloney, who knew a thing or three about The New Yorker and its cartoons, took a small pot -shot at Thurber’s preface in his review:
“James Thurber contributes a preface in which he rather condescendingly explains Miss Petty in terms of The New Yorker…”
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Even more additional info:
*Macbeth: From Harrison Kinney’s James Thurber: His Life and Times (Henry Holt, 1995), p. 864.
And as long as I’m footnoting Mr. kinney, his fab Thurber biography also mentions Harold Ross giving Thurber a sheaf of Petty drawings to try captioning. After one of Thurber’s captions was rejected, he sent a long letter to Ross, crititquing the cartoons that had appeared in a recent issue. [you can find this letter on pages 781-783]
The A-Z entry
Mary Petty Born, Hampton, New Jersey, April 29, 1899. Died, Paramus, New Jersey, March, 1976. New Yorker work: October 22, 1927 – March 19,1966. 219 cartoons; 38 covers. Collection: This Petty Place ( Knopf, 1945) with a Preface by James Thurber.