by Jenny Uglow
‘Lake Nemi’. D 7 April 1860.
‘Those Civitella days’. D 16 January 1867.
‘very considerable moustaches’. EL to Ann, 26 September 1838.
‘All kinds of young men’. Regis, 347.
‘Though I be not’. EL to Gould, 17 October 1839, SL 47.
‘St Peter help me!’ EL to FC, 1 December 1838.
‘my old complaynt’. EL to FC, 8 December 1838.
‘I wish to goodness’. EL to Gould, 27 February 1841, SL 51.
11. Third Person
‘What I shall do’. EL to Gould, 27 February 1841, SL 51.
‘apt to sprain your feet’. EL to Ann, 23 November 1857.
‘four-page prospectus’. BL edition, with prospectus: extracts quoted in Swaab 118–20.
‘publishing transaction’. EL to FC, 27 November 1841.
‘I feel I ought to go’. EL to FC, 27 November 1841.
‘foreignized’. EL to Derby, 5 June 1842, SL 54. Lear painted the Stanley crane, Scops paradisae, in September 1835: Gleanings, Plate XIV.
‘I like the weather’. Byron, Beppo, XLVIII.
‘John Drewitt’. d. 15 July 1842; bankruptcy commissioners at Norfolk Arms Hotel, Arundel to audit accounts and declare a dividend for creditors, Hampshire Telegraph, 3 October 1842.
‘the family were leaving’. 1841 Census shows Fanny Coombe in Maltravers Street, Arundel; Fanny Jane Dolly with her grandmother.
‘curiosities in the cabinet’: EL to FC, 27 November 1841. Auction: ‘A genuine library of books, valuable cabinet of insects, shells and other curiosities, the property of the late John Drewitt, arranged and collected by the celebrated naturalist, the late W Jones’, Hampshire Telegraph, 15 August 1842.
‘I hope you will dress very nicely’. EL to Ann, 27 August 1844.
‘Gladstone’. Quoted in ‘Edward Lear in Italy 1837–1848’ in Fisher 179; ‘an artist of great promise’. Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Central Italy (1843), 457, 459.
‘the court jester’. See James Williams, ‘Lear and the Fool’ and, in his letters, Hugh Haughton, ‘Playing with Letters, Lear’s Episthilarity’ in Play 16–50, 223–42, and ‘Just Letters: Corresponding Poets’, in Letter Writing among Poets: From William Wordsworth to Elizabeth Bishop, ed. Jonathan Ellis (2015), 57–80.
‘Romulus and Remus’. 1841, MS Beinecke GEN MSS 601.
‘Caius Marius’. October 1841, MS, Cotsen Children’s Library, Princeton University: published in limited edition by Justin G. Schiller (1983).
‘Mr Lear recovers his hat’. EL to Lady Susan Elizabeth Percy (1782–1847), 28 February 1842, Beinecke GEN MSS 601; and EL to Lady Susan Percy, 29 March 1844.
‘fly with the birds’. See ‘A Walk on a Windy Day’, 1860, Beinecke GEN MSS 601.
‘2 live tigers’. EL to GC, 24 July 1835.
‘walking in Scotland’. VNA, Letter File, 1842, ‘Hornby Notebook’.
‘Woolwich Dockyard’. Original 176–84 (described as Greenwich).
‘riding lessons’. Tour with Charles Knight, June 1842: ‘Lear’s Adventures on horseback’, twenty-one drawings, BM 1970, 0411.26.
‘a most elephantine nose’. EL to Charles Empson, 1 October 1831, SL 16.
‘touring Sicily’. Twenty drawings, Lear in Sicily (1938). For a further collection of eight drawings in a friend’s guestbook, see Ye long nite (1972), MSS Fitzwilliam, 1087/1–8.
‘and surprised me’. Hunt, vol. 1, 332.
‘capital watercresses’. 4 November 1848, Albania 321.
12. Excursions
‘devouring his letters’. EL to Ann, 17 January 1838.
‘if you are absolutely alone’. EL to CF, 1 May 1859, L 136.
‘Peter Leopold Acland’. (1819–99), later Prebendary of Exeter Cathedral. Son of Sir Thomas Acland, a friend of the Hornbys, and a nephew of Sir Stamford Raffles.
‘Just above Taormina’. EL to Derby, 5 June 1842, SL 59.
‘that brilliant bird the Roller’. EL to Derby, 5 June 1842, SL 59.
‘three provinces’. In Lear’s map, these are Abruzzi Citeriore (eastern province, capital Chieti), Ulteriore Primo (northern province, with mountain range of Gran Sasso) and Ulteriore Secundo (the largest, western province, including Avezzano and Lake Fucino). See the short film on YouTube, ‘Viaggio nell’Abruzzo romantic di Edward Lear’, showing many of the palazzi he stayed in (Italia nostra Pescara, 2012).
‘These people’. Excursions vol. 1, September 1843.
‘Sir Richard Colt Hoare and Richard Keppel Craven’. Sir Richard Colt Hoare, A Classical Tour through Italy and Sicily (1819), and R. Keppel Craven, Excursion in the Abruzzi and Northern Provinces of Naples (1837).
‘a wild chaos’. Excursions vol. 1. See Raffaella Antinucci, ‘“… in those few bright (Abruzzi) days”: Edward Lear’s Landscaping Gaze and the Discovery of Abruzzo’, RSV 159–88.
‘crowded with peasants’. Excursions vol. 1, 26 July 1843.
‘carrying a dead fox’. Excursions vol. 1, 13 August 1843.
‘Arabian Nights’. The set, inscribed by Lear, was auctioned by Bloomsbury, 11 December 2014; see Marco Graziosi, Bosh, 17 December 2016.
‘out before sunrise’. Extract copied from journal, 2 August 1844, University of Rochester, NY. Also letter to Gould, 12 August 1844. Houghton BMS Eng 707.
‘Now you are not coming’. EL to Ann, 24 September 1844.
‘You great fool!’. Excursions vol. 1, 126–7, 28 September 1844.
‘Virgil’. EL to the poet Angelo Maria Ricci, 18 December 1844. Biblioteca Communale di Rieti, Fondo Ricci F=1=16/212. Lear said he must put this off because of his weak eyes and inability to reach some places. See also letter of 22 March 1845, and Bosh 5, 17 June 2013. Lear drew in the Alban and Volscian hills, March–April 1845.
‘Lord Stanley’. For political career see Angus Hawkins, ‘The 14th Earl of Derby’ in Lloyd 200–20. As Colonial Secretary he oversaw the new colonies, Hong Kong, Natal and Sind.
‘the pifferi also inspired’. Berlioz, Harold en Italie (1834). Berlioz and Mendelssohn travelled in Italy in 1831–2: Berlioz thought the pifferi music was that of the Sabines, Aeneid Book IX.
‘Ruskin’. John Ruskin, Modern Painters, vol. 2 (1846), esp. Ch. 2, Sections 19 and 20.
‘a treat’. EL to Ruskin, 16 February 1883, SL 262.
‘snug and nice’. Queen Victoria to Leopold, 25 March 1845, The Letters of Queen Victoria, vol. 2 (1908), 35.
‘& particularly a Terrace’. EL to CF, 29 December 1861, L 214. Albert met leading artists through his appointment in 1840 as President of the Fine Arts Committee.
‘all whim and fancy’. Edwin Landseer to Lady Abercorn, in Vanessa Remington, ‘Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and their relations with artists’, www.royalcollection.org, 2012.
‘teaches remarkably well’. Queen Victoria, A VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W), 15–18 July 1846 (Princess Beatrice’s copies). See also Marina Warner, Queen Victoria’s Sketchbook (1979), 117, 139.
‘Helena’s christening’. A VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W), 25 July 1846 (Princess Beatrice’s copies).
‘complaints’. EL to Ann, 6 February 1847.
‘beautiful things’. LL xx–xxi.
‘such nice letters’. EL to Ann, 6 February 1847.
‘and should I never revisit’. Excursions vol. 2, 17 October 1844.
13. Derry down Derry: Nonsense, 1846
‘a good, clever, agreeable man’. Carlingford Diary 14 April 1845, BL Add MS 63664.
‘I have enjoyed’. Carlingford Diary 11 May 1845, BL Add MS 63664.
‘an advertisement’. Excursions vol. 2.
‘Book of Nonsense’. Published 10 February 1846. The verses have 36 Old Men, 15 Old Persons (male) and one Old Sailor, 16 Young Ladies, 2 Old Ladies and one Young Girl.
‘expanded edition of 1861’. Officially the third edition. As well as the second edition of 1854, there were other intervening reprints, mostly lost or destroyed. Howard M. Nixon, ‘The Second Lithographic Edition of Lear’s Book of Nonsense’,
British Museum Quarterly 28 (1964), 7–8.
‘quite unlike the standard fare’. See Ann C. Colley, ‘Edward Lear’s Limericks and the Reversals of Nonsense’, Victorian Poetry 26 (1988), 285–99.
‘wrote and drew them fast’. For variations, see Schiller, Nonsensus.
‘old person of Barnes’. EL to Mary Nicoll Wyatt, 24 December 1863, Beinecke GEN MSS 601.
‘giving one manuscript’. The Phipps Hornby version, MS Koch, is published in Original, and MS Duncan, published in 1982 as Bosh and Nonsense, is in V&A, Warne.
‘Derry down Derry’. John Brand, Observations on Popular Antiquities (1841).
‘With hey dum dum’. www.wantagemummers.org.
‘tradition of nonsense’. This line was followed by contemporaries like Sir Edward Strachey in his ‘Nonsense as a Fine Art’, Quarterly Review, 1888. For later studies see Ann Colley, Edward Lear and the Critics (1993) and James Williams, RSV: ‘Edward Lear’s Luminous Prose’, 139–158.
‘local and historical references’. SeeThomas Dilworth, ‘Lear’s Italian Limericks’, RSV 51–78.
‘Old Man of New York’. Drawing, Duncan MS, 1864, B&N 64.
14. ‘Something Is About to Happen’
‘lithographs’. Transcribed from Lear’s watercolours by J. W. Moore, printed in sets of 100 by Hullmandel and hand-coloured by professional watercolourists. Fisher 172.
‘the annual experience’. [Richard Ford], ‘Fanny Kemble and Lear in Italy’, Quarterly Review 81 (June–September 1847), 464.
‘The review seems written’. EL to Ann, 15 November 1847 (also 28 October 1847).
‘crawling on’. EL to Ann, 25 December 1846, plus handwritten note of journey times.
‘sounding slightly homesick’. EL to Ann, 31 December 1846, 24 January 1847.
‘problems with her eyesight’. Ellen Newsom to Fanny, 25 March 1854, family letters. Photocopies of many family letters, especially to Sarah Street (née Lear), are in the Hocken Library, Otago, New Zealand, Misc-MS-0564.
‘please God’. EL to Ann, 27 March 1847.
‘like thistledown’. Mary Boswell to Frederick Lear, May 1850.
‘To tell you the truth’. EL to Ann, 24 July 1847.
‘perched himself at the top’. Calabria 5.
‘an outsider’. EL to CF, 23 October 1881, LL 250.
‘Many other causes’. EL to Ann, 6 February 1847.
‘although no war’. EL to Ann, 27 August 1844.
‘large and portly’. EL to Ann, 30 January 1847.
‘climate & beauty’. EL to Ann, 27 March 1847.
‘to half the grandees’. EL to Ann, 29 April 1847. (Also Proby MSS, Elton Hall, Peterborough.)
‘entranced’. EL to Ann, 27 June 1847.
‘one of his finest oil paintings’. The City of Syracuse from the Ancient Quarries where the Athenians were Imprisoned BC 413, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1853, bought by Frederick Lygon, later sixth Earl Beauchamp, Madresfield Court, near Malvern.
‘Sometimes I rolled back’. EL to Ann, 17 June 1847.
‘full, full, full’. EL to Ann, 17 June, 11 July 1847.
‘ending with’. Calabria 12.
‘delight at Bruzzano’. Calabria 59.
‘dense carpet-forests’. Calabria 56.
‘cicadas’. Calabria 27.
‘nest of crags’. Calabria 116.
‘king of nine-pins’. Calabria 135.
‘Supper and silkworms’. Calabria 58.
‘like an armadillo’. Calabria 85.
‘Calabria!’ Calabria 2.
‘pointed hats’. Calabria 106.
‘Polsi’. Calabria 73.
‘gooseberries were unreal’. Calabria 103.
‘Perche?’ Calabria 125.
‘in the habit’. Calabria 154.
‘revolution or no revolution’. Calabria 188.
‘Non ci sono più chiavi’. Calabria 199.
‘Gloom, gloom’. Calabria 205.
‘Most people’. EL to Ann, 28 October 1847.
‘exactly like looking at you’. EL to Ann, 15 November 1847. This was painted by her friend Mrs Arundale, who had studied at the RA Schools: Ann was staying with the Arundales in Brighton in early 1847.
‘Calabrian moustaches’. EL to Ann, 5 December 1847.
‘Lord Eastnor’. (1819–83), later third Earl Somers.
‘Thomas Baring’. (1826–1904), later Earl of Northbrook. EL to CF, 12 February 1848, L 6.
‘You see therefore’. EL to CF, 12 February 1848, L 8–9.
‘I spent my last evening’. Charles Church (1823–1915). ‘With Edward Lear in Greece’, Introduction to Lear’s journals, transcribed and edited by Church between 1907 and 1915, Westminster School Library. edwardlear.westminster.org.uk.
‘What do you think of the Sicilians?’. EL to CF, 12 February 1848, SL 68.
‘to make you understand’. EL to Ann, 9 April 1848.
‘the whole tone’. EL to Ann, 9 April 1848.
15. ‘Calmly, into the Dice-box’
‘Daybreak and wailing’. 26 October 1848, Albania 280.
‘Ulysses island’. EL to Ann, 19 April 1848.
‘Venetian control’. CY Introduction, 9–14
‘Land of Albania!’. Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812), Canto II, XXXVII.
‘If I go to Albania’. EL to Ann, 14 May 1848.
‘Poor old Rome’. EL to Ann, 3 June 1848.
‘fields of pink hollyhocks’. 29 June, Church, ‘With Edward Lear in Greece’.
‘from 3 in the morning’. Church, ‘With Edward Lear in Greece’, introduction.
‘on an Indiarubber bed’. EL to CF, 19 July 1848, L 10.
‘books, jelly’. EL to Ann, 19 July 1848.
‘good for knitting needles’. EL to Ann, 9 September 1848.
‘sent money’. Cross and Fortescue each sent £40, Lord Ellesmere and Samuel Clowes £50. EL to Charles Church, 10 November 1848. VNA transcript.
‘who entirely cover’. Albania 13.
‘first pale and distinct’. Albania 13.
‘abandon firearms’. Albania Introduction, 7–8.
‘vast yet beautifully simple’. EL to CF, 26 August 1848, RA 107; William Martin Leake, Travels in the Morea (1830), Travels in Northern Greece (1835).
‘sending sketches’. EL to Richard Ford, 27 November 1852, VNA.
‘Make, I thought to myself’. 11 September, Albania 22.
‘dragoman’. 14 September, Albania 35.
‘Countless kestrils’. 13 September, Albania 27.
‘Yok, Yok!’. 19 September, Albania 56.
‘take to a fez’. Albania 67.
‘drawing bolts’. 23 September, Albania 69.
‘come what might of it’. Albania 91.
‘luxury and inconvenience’. September 29, Albania 102.
‘Tik-tok’. September 29, Albania 115.
‘O khan of Tyrana’. 27 September, Albania 103.
‘Four begin to form a sort of chorus’. 15 October, Albania 194.
‘wildest of singular melodies’. 1 October, Albania 120.
‘vendette’. 7 October, Albania 151.
‘talk about pelicans’. 29 October, Albania 297.
‘They were all pelicans!’. EL to Derby, 12 January 1849, SL 97.
‘Shut out’. 22 October 1848, Albania 234.
‘a dreary, blank scene’. 31 October 1848, Albania 304.
‘In marble-paved pavilion’. Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto II, LXII.
‘the wild octave singing’. 8 May 1849, Albania 377.
‘I gazed’, 1848, Albania 364. After their defeat the surviving Suliots crossed to the Ionian islands, many returning at the start of the Greek War of Independence in 1820.
16. ‘All that Amber’
‘The matter is a secret’. EL to Ann, 7 November 1848.
‘high winds and hurricanes’, and Greece and Malta. EL to Ann, 9, 17, 26 December 1848.
‘Henry Lushington’. For the Malta appointment see Walle
r 151–60, 166–7, 174.
‘I am quite crazy’. EL to CF, 12 February 1848, L 8.
‘I shall never be surprised at anything’. EL to Ann, 11 January 1849.
‘Riding a camel’. EL to Ann, 16 January 1849, SL 99.
‘no romance of hardships’. EL to Ann, 11 January 1849.
‘across gravelly plains to green oases’. ‘Near Wadi El-Sheikh’, 8 a.m., 30 January 1849. Houghton Typ 55.7. 663.
‘excessive & wonderful grandeur’. EL to Ann, 16 January 1849, SL 105.
‘topographical artist’. FL, introduction to ‘A Leaf from the Journals of a Landscape Painter’, Macmillan’s Magazine 90 (April 1897).
‘I decided it would be more kind’. EL to Ann, 24 February 1849.
‘wind up all my Thessaly’. EL to Ann, 2 January 1849.
‘Here I am’. EL to Ann, 8 March 1849.
‘his fellow traveller’. EL to Ann, 8 March 1849.
‘Before visiting any country’. FL, introduction to ‘A Leaf from the Journals’.
‘Doctor Holland’s narrative’. EL to Ann, 2 January 1849.
‘One of the most delightful’. FL to ET, 13 April 1856, TRC ‘Letters/ 5440.
‘The two eldest Lushington brothers’. Edmund Law Lushington (1811–93), Henry Lushington (1812–55).
‘I had rather address’. Donne to Richard Trench, May 1851, Catherine B. Johnson, William Bodham Donne and His Friends (1905), 165, quoted in W. C. Lubenow, The Cambridge Apostles, 1820–1914: Liberalism, Imagination and Friendship (1998), 64.
‘one of the most touching’. Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine 17 (August 1850). In addition, in 1847 Tennyson dedicated The Princess to Harry.
‘to sketch as much as Lear’. The Benaki Museum in Athens holds two hundred of Lushington’s drawings from this tour. Levant 122.
‘I do not know’. EL to Ann, 4 April 1849.
‘the ground has been literally covered’. EL to Ann, 4 April 1849.
‘As for Lushington’. EL to Ann, 21 April 1849.
‘one night in Greece’. FL, introduction to ‘A Leaf from the Journals’.
‘F.L., my Greek companion’. 24 April 1849, Albania 340.
‘which F.L. had bequeathed’. 5 May 1849, Albania 360.