Interesting People: Peter Newell

by Charles Battell Loomis

 

INTERESTING PEOPLE

PETER NEWELL

A little over two yards of concentrated friendliness mixed with shyness. That’s Peter Newell, the Hole Book man.

He may have enemies, but if he has they are ashamed of themselves and never acknowledge their enmity.

Peter Newell has made a reputation all over the English-speaking world by his gifts as a quaint and gentle caricaturist, but to the people in the little New Jersey town in which he lives his simple life, he is “Uncle Peter,” a tried friend and a mighty good citizen.

That his mind is full of quaintness has been proved by his: “Topsies and Turveys,” his “Hole Book,” and his diversified and versified pictures in Harper's, the Saturday Evening Post, and elsewhere.

Years ago, when a young man, he was camping out with some friends in Colorado in a tent. A man had been murdered by a burglar in a jewelry booth or pavilion near by, and the campers were inclined to be nervous.

Newell hit upon an ingenious idea to give the impression that their tent was a good one to steer clear of. He cut out a number of silhouettes of tough characters, in sombreros, and so placed them that the lamp cast their shadows on the sides of the tent. They looked like a wild lot engaged in a game of poker, and when Peter and his friends went out and looked at the effect they decided that they did not need the services of any of Pinkerton's men but could retire with easy minds.

When asked to give some facts in regard to his life Peter Newell somewhat reluctantly said: “Oh, I broke out about the same time as the Civil War did, in a cross roads in the country in MacDonough County, Illinois. The place hadn't any name, but its nickname was ‘Gungiwam.’ Our house was the only frame house in the place (the rest were log huts), and it was clapboarded with walnut. Expensive clapboarding, according to modern ideas.”

Newell left school when he was in the neighborhood of seventeen and entered upon work in a cigar factory. Whether he learned to smoke at the factory or not, he smokes at his work with all the skill of a professional smoker—if there is any such thing.

After he had learned to make cigars that would sell he went to Jacksonville, Illinois, called there by a man who had seen his first attempts with the pencil and who employed him to make crayon enlargements of photographs. A Peter Newell enlargement to-day would cost considerable money, but in those days "Peter Newell” on a picture didn't mean anything, and he no more than made a living out of the work. Probably they gave the pictures away and sold the frame!

When he was about twenty-one he came on to New York and took some lessons at the Art Students’ League, and began sending ideas for pictures for Harper's Magazine. 'These were redrawn by other artists, but after a time Peter contracted the habit of drawing his own pictures, and he has stuck to it ever since. And how Newellian they are!

The art world lost a delightful water colorist when Peter found that he could butter his bread and even build a house by drawing “comics” and illustrating stories and books, but in his few leisure moments (for he is an indefatigable worker) he sometimes goes into the country and gives evidence of a delicate color sense and a poetic mind by his water-color transcriptions of nature.

He married when he was twenty-two and has remained married ever since. A happy and contented family has grown up around him.

PETER NEWELL

Who has a real sense of the comic both in word and in picture. As a quaint and gentle caricaturist Mr. Newell is known all over the English-speaking world

He loves to fish, he loves to play tennis, but perhaps he loves best of all to play chess.

If you're looking for Peter Newell after nightfall, don't search New York for him because he won't be there. He'll likely be smoking a pipe or a cigar over a game of chess out in the wilds of New Jersey, at least fifteen miles from the Great White Way—or, to be exact, in Leonia, where his comfortable house has been standing for full fourteen years and where a little colony of illustrators has gathered, all of whom love Peter.

Twice he has crossed the ocean, but he never studied in Europe. He has a remarkably able jackknife, and if he had been born in Nuremburg he would probably be making his living to-day carving strange beasts for the amusement of children.

Over six feet tall, with a whimsical face in the construction of which economy of flesh seems to have been the main point aimed at, with shaggy eyebrows acting as awnings over the kindest blue eyes, and a nose and mouth that suggest his own pictures, Peter Newell believes this is a good world.

If the United States consisted of ninety million Peter Newells it would be a good world.

Perhaps it is anyhow.

CHARLES BATTELL LOOMIS