The Press: Oats for a Hoppocampus

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Oats for a Hippocampus

Even longtime readers of The New Yorker know little of the man responsible for its famed first department, entitled "The Talk of the Town." When last week's issue appeared bearing a cover-picture of a small seahorse eating oats from a nosebag, few readers found anything remarkable in the artist's initials, E. B. W. E. B. W. stands for small, diffident 32-year-old Elwyn Brooks ("Andy")

White, writer of "The Talk of the Town." The seahorse cover was Writer White's first venture in illustrating.

Writer White is the second prominent staffman of The New Yorker to show drawing ability after success in writing. Three years ago he collaborated with his staffmate James Thurber in writing a book called Is Sex Necessary? Writer White noticed that Writer Thurber had 1 habit of nervously scribbling little figures and throwing them in the wastepaper basket. Writer White fished them out, found them amusing enough to save. Publishers Harper & Bros, also found Writer Thurber's hastily scrawled figures amusing, used them to illustrate Is Sex Necessary? Since then the sketchy, slightly neurotic illustrations of Writer Thurber have appeared regularly in The New Yorker, won wide recognition.

Unlike Writer Thurber, Writer White admits to no natural aptitude for drawing. He believes his watercolor seahorse will be his last attempt at art. Shy, he does not woo publicity, rarely lets his name appear in the magazine. Before joining the editorial staff of The New Yorker, Writer White was a poet without much sense of location. He had wandered from New York, where he was born in Mount Vernon, to the Aleutian Islands. After graduating from Cornell in 1921 he worked a year in New York City, then wandered West, worked a year on the Seattle Times as a reporter. Returning to Manhattan after a voyage to the Arctic on a trading ship, he got a job writing copy in an advertising agency. When The New Yorker discovered him in 1926, both he and it were delighted. After three years there he married one of his bosses, Mrs. Katherine Angell, associate editor.