By Anne W. Semmes
Sentinel Columnist
In this world, in this time, humor is a precious commodity, so one has to mourn when we lose those who bring us humor. Illustrator, cartoonist, author, Jim Stevenson is the latest treasure Greenwich has lost as of two weeks ago, after Jerry Dumas three months ago.
It never ceased to amaze me at work as a reporter when the James Stevenson, with nearly 80 New Yorker covers to his credit, would suddenly appear at my desk with a large drawing pad full of a local story he’d illustrated. His outsize visage itself made you smile, with his Fu Manchu mustache and slow grin.
This time he’d captured a summer’s day visit to Tod’s Point and its concession stand, describing “A Morning at Johnny’s” featuring its menu of “nearly sixty offerings,” and early customers. One Christmastime he arrived with an illustrated visit to Santa and the reindeer at McArdles, with drawings so real you were there. His liquid pen could walk a dog off a page. All this when he was into his 80’s and had such a distinguished reputation for his nearly 2,000 New Yorker cartoons. But wherever he was, with wife Josie, he was at work, on Block Island, capturing Greenwich’s Roy Rowan casting off a beach, or on Greenwich Point cozying up to the local head of the Greenwich Shellfish commission on a story called “Bivalves on Parade.”
To honor her ingenious husband in his last years, Josie Merck put together an exhibit of his work on view at the Century Association (Club), which in a small room tells his talented tale of humor through the ages. Displayed in a glass case is a cardboard box inked as typewriter and gift to a stepchild, with the note: “If this typewriter doesn’t work too well, please use attached check to assist in obtaining a better one.” Alongside it is a fanciful guest log open to Jim’s favorite famous names in their “own” hand that he masterfully executed, “introduced by” illegible names.
New Yorker covers on exhibit include a couple of favorites: the control room at Cape Canaveral at launch time, with three winged cherubs at the controls and a giant (Eros) arrow on the launch pad.
Another is of an art gallery with an Easter theme—featuring an egg sculpture and egg art on the walls being seriously studied by large brown bunny rabbits. One cover sure to appeal to the GRTA (Greenwich Riding-Trails Associates) is of a homeowner just having clipped his hedge seeing a group of horses in a steeplechase race headed towards his hedge!
Jim Stevenson was truly a man “inclined toward comedy” as was written about that other artist famous for his New Yorker covers, Saul Steinberg, whom Jim must have known. I’ll never forget visiting Steinberg’s studio in Union Square in New York, and walking in, seeing Steinberg’s work table on a sawhorse, with yellow legal pad, rulers, pencils, pens, ink pot, etc. Watching me closely with his smile, Steinberg took great pleasure fooling me: he had hand-carved everything on that table.
But it’s Jim’s children books—there are over a hundred of them—that have me laughing out loud. One seen online had the up-to-the-moment title “Could Be Worse,” so I sought it out at the Greenwich Library to find it strangely missing among 60 other titles. But one was located at the Ferguson Library. Its cover is a grabber for this bird person—a giant eagle of sorts is flying over snow-covered mountains with an elderly gent being carried along in its talons.
The story line features “Grandpa,” always responding to his grandkids when they share their mundane mishaps with the phrase “Could be worse.” The grandkids finally decide his response comes “because nothing interesting happens to him.” But one breakfast morning he surprises them with what happened to him in his sleep. And there the fantastic tale begins that had me laughing so that I ordered the book online to share with my grandkids.
Another I’d like to share is “The Most Amazing Dinosaur,” which takes readers into the American Museum of Natural History via a homeless rat looking for a place to sleep. It’s a fun-filled introduction for kids to that extraordinary museum. It put me in mind of that other classic New York City romp, “Eloise at the Plaza,” by Kay Thompson. But Jim was an ever-resourceful tour guide of the Big Apple in his writings, for children (he had nine) and adults.
And so it was that when he moved to Greenwich in his marriage to Josie, he was often pulling out his pen and pad in our neighborhoods. I was sorry not to have visited him in his Cos Cob studio, which he kept private. But I do have his inscription in his memorable 123-page book about a fellow New Yorker cartoonist, “The Life, Loves and Laughs of Frank Modell.” That inscription continues to haunt me: “You could have written a book this size in a week.”
The exhibit of Jim Stevenson’s work is on view until March 16 at the Century Association, 7 West 43rd Street in New York City.
