Ronald Searle

ART is for weeds and sissies whose mater hav said Take care of my dear little Cedric, he is delicate you kno and cannot stand a foopball to the head. Whenever anebode mention Art they all sa gosh mikelangelo leenardo wot magnificent simetry of line. Shurely the very pinnackle of western civilisation etc.etc. Pass me my oils Molesworth that I may paint my masterpeece. The headmaster sa gosh cor is that the medeechi venus hem-hem a grate work so true to life reminds me of young mrs filips enuff said.

Molesworth sa on the contry the most beatiful form in art is a Ronald Searle GURL from St Trinian's in a tunick with black suspenders and armed with a hockey stick to beat the daylites out of another gurl or maybe just a teacher chortle chortle. Mr Searle sa he hav based her on his sister Olive. She hav wild platts and an empty gin bottle in her pocket a sack of poysinous todestools two sticks of dynamite and possibly a hippo on a lede while an old crone alias a teacher sa from a window Elspeth put that back AT ONCE. Or she will be sharpening a massiv knife on a grinder with grusome heads of gurls on a shelf behind and the headmistres will be telling the surprized parent this is Rachel, our head gurl, ha ha ha. We offer every attention to your prescious chicks including drunken orgeys wiches sabbaths every form of the subjunctive in fr. or lat. and coffin-making for a modest charge.

The luvely creaturs of St Trinian's so pleased the publick that Mr Searle sa, people think I have drawn nothing else, I am sick to dethe of them, so he began in 1953 to draw from Geoffrey Willans words the farest forms of St Custard's, viz, Peason my grate frend who hav a haircut like a chimney brush, fotherington-tomas with curlie hair who believe in fairies, Molesworth 2 my younger bro who is uterly wet and a weed and Grimes the headmaster, alias soho sammy with a face of evil unparralled. Not to mention Me n. molesworth brave and feerless wot a noble BOY in his yellow blazer and his cap at a rakkish angle, a gift to Art with the lite of geenius gleeming from his glasses and an expreshun that strike fear into every teacher in the skool. Mr Searle hav drawn too the charming scenes of the place, viz, the headmaster's office with escape runways, the many varities of Kane one with telescopic sights, the Glurk and Lesser Titwort as found in Botany, the hairy gerund as found in lat. chiz chiz, Matron smoking in her room ahem, a corner of the playing fields with pouring rane and a ghastly THING with many feet and claws that is Molesworth 1 about to curse the skool for EVER.

Mr Searle left skool at 15 cheers cheers. He was office boy for a solicitors but he could not stop drawing, even on leegal dokuments scratch scratch, is that a kartoon you have done my lad, yes it is a fantasy of the future Molesworth, wot a horrible thing I think you had better leave. Cambridge Art Skool and then in the war camooflaging pill-boxes as haystacks, how about sum more straw round the doorway, perhaps a dunghill outside, how artistick feel free.

A mistery voyage to Singapore then followed drawing all the way, but then come the Japs invading, Boom KABOOM!! ack-ack-ack-ack-ack, motorbikes roring by, urum-urum-urum-uraaaaaa, too late, into prison camp, still drawing. He staid four yeres there and was six stone when he left. A wunder he could smile agane after seeing men die all around him from cholera or torchure with bodes like sticks, but what he drew afterwards had a savvage melankoly underneath it as the art master sa, old majors with large noses and small handkerchiefs, dogs that are undoutedly plotting an evil dede, lugubrioos couples dancing hem-hem, criket bats and balls killing players at a single blo, a man catching music like flys in a jar, a child-hater selling balloons that carry the pathetik little weeds far away.

Yet in 1961 tired of drawing for Punch or roming America for Holiday magazine he zoomed across to France, where there were long thin men in berets long thin loaves of bred and many swurly balconys besides the usual sad dogs, maniack cats, mademoiselles with long eyelashes ahem who sa, how about a good time will you have a glas of Champagne. And he looking autour de lui sa Houp-la I am so happy here pore as a mouse in my attick in Paris and then on my hilltop in Provence, I will never return to boring old Blighty, but I will work for Le Monde and Le Figaro Littéraire, and also Life and the New Yorker. For I recall that for my first t.v. over there I was paid $1,000 a minit, super smashing good show. And he drew New York City as per ushual very tall and thin and inky humans with bodies still like sticks scowling among the skycrapers but also collossal painted butterflys flutering by, hullo clouds, hullo sun, and giant flowers of many coluours sprowting out of desks. And his Nature was v. grand and beattful red and blue while the spiky tarts and bisnessmen raced round not seing it or ruining it all.

And speking of Life, sa silently the long black undertaker in his tall black hat sitting by the grave, I do not think much of that as a titel for a magazine, why not Dethe, but Dethe where is thy sting, where Grave thy victory cry Molesworth (over the WHACK of the Kane), when everbode still kepe larffing at the world Mr Searle hav made.