Mr Lear

by Jenny Uglow

  ‘Late at night’. 6 May 1849, Albania 371–2.

  ‘Any one’. Greek journal, extract: Westminster School Library, Noakes 85.

  ‘What scenery’. Greek journal extract, Westminster School Library.

  17. The Brotherhood

  ‘What to do’. EL to CF, 25 August 1848, L 13–14.

  ‘Henry and his eldest son were described as painters’. US Census, 1860, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Henry m. Jemima Pestell in Islington, 1828: children Henry, b. 1826, Jemima 1828, George 1831, George E. 1832, Anna 1835, Washington 1838, Susan 1841, Frederick 1845.

  ‘Fred’. Sarah to Frederick, 12 September 1849, Family letters. US Census 1850. Frederick Lear m. Rosa Annie Smyth in Shoreditch, 1830.

  ‘Adjouah’. Bowen transcript, Michell.

  ‘if there was a Chapel.’ Ann to Frederick, 1847, Family letters.

  ‘What a funny dear old couple’. EL to Ann, 15 July 1856.

  ‘He has arrived last’. Sarah to Frederick, 12 September 1849, Family letters.

  ‘New Zealand’. Their emigration was paid for by a legacy from Charles Street’s sister. For Sarah’s impressions, see Ellen Newsom to Fanny, 25 March 1854, Family letters.

  ‘The more I read travels’. EL to CF, 23 January 1853, L 28.

  ‘I might see Sarah’. EL to Ann, 29 June, also 15 July 1856.

  ‘viddies’, EL to CF, 1 August 1849, L 16.

  ‘in a constant state’ EL to CF, 1 August 1849, L 15.

  ‘Immense fun’. EL to CF, 1 August 1849, L 16.

  ‘stuffed birds’. EL to Gould, August 1849, Houghton MS Eng 797.

  ‘I tried with 51’. EL to CF, 20 January 1850, L 23–5.

  ‘slavy labours’. D 8 December 1860.

  ‘heaps and loads’. EL to Henry Catt, 11 April 1851, Houghton Ms Eng 797.

  ‘Athenaeum’. EL to CF, 26 August 1851, L 22.

  ‘Great Exhibition’. Ann to Fanny, May 1851, Family letters.

  ‘oil of the road to the Acropolis’. Exhibited at British Institution 1852, as The Acropolis of Athens, Sunrise, People Assembling on the Road to Piraeus. Museum of Athens.

  ‘He said last Sunday’ and ‘tew litters’. EL to CF 19 July 1851, L 19, 17.

  ‘I hope to go on’. EL to CF, 19 July 1851, L 17.

  ‘numbers grew to seven’. Other members by late 1849 were William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens and Thomas Woolner.

  ‘Go to nature’. Ruskin, Works, vol. 3, 623–4, in Allen Staley, The Pre-Raphaelite Landscape (2001), 7.

  ‘stated aims of the PRB’. William Michael Rossetti (ed.), Dante Gabriel Rossetti: His Family-Letters, with a Memoir (1895), vol. 1, 135. See also Hunt.

  ‘Such men’. Charles Dickens, Household Words, 15 June 1850, 12–14.

  ‘Ruskin, in two letters’. The Times, 15, 30 May 1851.

  ‘overflowed with geniality’. Hunt, vol. 1, 328.

  ‘It was curious’. Hunt, vol. 1, 329.

  ‘In the intervals of working’. Hunt, vol. 1, 330–1.

  ‘doesn’t carry his own cuttlefish’. Hunt, vol. 1, 333.

  ‘Brotherhood and their circle’. For the wider circle, and Lear’s long association with PRB ideas, see Sara Lodge, ‘“My Dear Daddy”: William Holman Hunt and Edward Lear’, RSV 79–99. Also W. M. Rossetti, Some Reminiscences of William Michael Rossetti (1906), 156–7. With Hunt, Rossetti, Ruskin and others Lear was briefly a member of the short-lived ‘Hogarth Club’: D 1 July 1859.

  ‘pearly sheen’. As in Fairlight Downs – Sunlight on the Sea (summer 1852).

  ‘traditional pigments’. See Carol Jacobi, William Holman Hunt: Painter, Painting, Paint (2006), 122.

  ‘beyond doubt’. Hunt letter, 1852, John Rylands, Eng MS 1214/1: RSV 81.

  ‘a wheel of sharp knives’. HH to EL, 24 January 1853, in Jacobi 97.

  ‘where at least’. EL to CF, 23 January 1853, L 26–7.

  ‘worked in his new Hunt-influenced style’. View of Reggio (Tate), Venosa, Apulia (Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio), The Mountains of Thermopylae (Bristol Museum and Art Gallery).

  ‘off & on’. Painter 13.

  ‘if the Thermopylae turns out right’. EL to HH, 19 December 1852, (Huntington) BL RP 800/1.

  ‘99 out of a hundred will blame’. EL to HH, 9 February 1853, SL 120.

  ‘Altogether I foresee’. EL to HH, 9 February 1853, SL 120

  ‘hop on one leg’. EL to HH, June 1853, SL 121.

  ‘utterly impossible’. EL to HH, 11 July 1853, (Huntington) BL RP 800/1.

  ‘bought some Southdown sheep’. North, vol. 1, 28.

  ‘a drove of Apes’. EL to HH, 27 July 1853, (Huntington) BL RP 800/1. For his impatience with the sheep see EL to Lord Derby 15 June 1853, Liverpool 920 DER (13) 106/8.

  ‘Giorgione & water’. EL to Hunt, 7 July 1854, (Huntington) BL RP 800/1. Lodge comments that ‘veal’ was PRB slang for a patron, RSV 85.

  ‘did not always agree’. EL to Ann, 2 June 1856.

  ‘As he that taketh away’. Hunt, vol. 1, 347.

  ‘the skill and genius’. EL to Ann, 11 May 1856.

  18. Meeting the Poet

  ‘sing Tennyson’s songs’. North, vol. 1, 29.

  ‘two-volume Poems’. This included new works such as ‘The Lady of Shalott’, ‘The Lotos Eaters’ and ‘The Palace of Art’, and revised works, among them ‘Mariana’, ‘Morte d’Arthur’, ‘Ulysses’, ‘Locksley Hall’ and ‘Break, break, break’.

  ‘You will see and groan!’ Robert Browning to Alfred Domett, 13 July 1842, F.G. Kenyon (ed.), Robert Browning and Alfred Domett (1906), 41.

  ‘grander than Campbell’. Hallam Tennyson, Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir (1897), vol. 2, 93.

  ‘Locksley Hall’. Quotations from Christopher Ricks (ed.), The Poems of Tennyson, 3 vols (1987).

  ‘I enjoy hardly any one thing’. EL to ET, 28 October 1855, SL 133.

  ‘I am always fancying’. EL to CF, 21 December 1881, LL 257.

  ‘The Princess’. The opening reflects the annual festival for the Maidstone Mechanics Institute at Park House: Waller 123–4. In the debate between brother and sister, well-informed readers saw ‘Walter’ as Frank and ‘Lilia’ as his spirited youngest sister Louisa.

  ‘Mrs T also pleased me’. Thomas Carlyle to Jane Carlyle, 3 October 1850, AT Letters, vol. 1, 339.

  ‘A thousand things’. EL to ET, 2 December 1851, SL 115. Emily had invited Lear to stay for the weekend, 4 December 1851: TRC/Letters 5398.

  ‘more agreeable recollections’. ET to EL, 4 December [1851], ET Letters 56.

  ‘It is a sad evil’. EL to ET, 18 November 1852, TRC/Letters 5402.

  ‘I thought that if I tried’. EL to ET, 24 November 1885, Pitman 33.

  ‘extracted and placed’. EL to ET, 5 October 1852, TRC/Letters 5399.

  ‘There was a period’. Hallam Tennyson, Memoir (1897), vol. 1, 257. AT to Dawson, 21 November 1882, used by HT in relation to The Princess, 1847. Partially quoted by Pitman 30–1.

  ‘on purpose to smoke on’. EL to ET, 12 October 1852, TRC/Letters 5400.

  ‘A. said’. [November 1852], Journal of Emily Tennyson. Hallam was born 11 August 1852.

  ‘all crookedwise’. EL to ET, [26 November 1852], TRC/Letters 5401.

  Hunt’s Lady of Shalott (1850), National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

  ‘I must now ask you’. Hunt, Pre-Raphaelitism, vol. 2, 124–5. Millais’s designs included Mariana and the weeping Amy from ‘Locksley Hall’; Rossetti contributed Sir Galahad.

  ‘To E.L. on His Travels’, LL v. See Anne Barton, ‘Delirious Bulldogs and Nasty Crockery: Tennyson as Nonsense Poet’, VP 47, 1 (2009), 313–30; Richard Maxwell, ‘Palms and Temples: Edward Lear’s Topographies’ VP 48, 1 (2010), 73–94.

  ‘one very fine picture’. AT to ET, 22 June 1864, AT Letters, vol. 1, 372.

  ‘edged with broadening light’. EL to ET, 11 November 1855, TRC/Letters 5431.

  ‘But stay here I won’t’. EL to ET, 12 October [1853], TRC/Letters 5404.
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  ‘I have not shaved’. EL to Hunt, 12 October 1853, SL 123.

  ‘settings of four Tennyson songs’. Poems and Songs by Alfred Tennyson, published by Cramer, Beale & Co. (1853).

  ‘a set of songs’. EL to ET, November 1853. The first four were ‘Tears, idle tears’ and ‘Sweet and low’ from The Princess, and ‘Edward Gray’ and ‘A Farewell’.

  19. An Owl in the Desert

  ‘so we have dinner parties’. EL to Ann, 7 February 1854. The island was flooded after the building of the Aswan dam, and the temples were removed to another island.

  ‘Philae –’. RA cat. 147.

  ‘all in broad stripes’. EL to Ann, 17 January 1854. His Nile sketches formed the basis for many paintings, and over 20 Tennyson illustrations.

  ‘a very pleasant party’. EL to Ann, 7, 19 December 1853.

  ‘Don’t laugh!’ EL to Ann, 23 December 1853.

  ‘leghorn hat’. EL to Ann, 15 January 1854.

  ‘like giant moths’. EL to Ann, 4 January 1854.

  ‘Turtle doves’. EL to Ann, 15 January 1854.

  ‘a great forest’. EL to Ann, 15 February 1854.

  ‘like a ladies “goffrée” frill’. EL to Ann, 23 August 1854.

  ‘she died in Frank’s arms’. Waller 187.

  ‘I have been wondering’. EL to CF, 20 April, 1862, L 234.

  ‘We are united as a people … Let Hamlet stand aside’. Henry and Franklin Lushington, Preface to La Nation Boutiquière & Other Poems Chiefly Political and Points of War (1855), x, xxv. ‘The Muster of the Guards’ was published in a Macmillan Shilling Pamphlet, Points of War (1854), and included, with Henry’s Inkerman poem, in Two Battle Pieces, Macmillan pamphlet (1855). See also Matthew Bevis, ‘Fighting Talk’ in The Oxford Handbook of British and Irish War Poetry, ed. Tim Kendall, 17.

  ‘Lady Ashburton’. Approach to Philae (1854), Andrew Clayton-Payne website.

  ‘& so completely uncertain’. EL to CF, n.d. 1855. L 294 dates this letter as ‘September 1863’, but I accept Noakes’s redating, SL 131.

  ‘By the bye’. CF to EL, 7 November 1855, SHC DD/SH/62/337 (2/13).

  ‘Fortescue’s influence’. CF to EL, n.d. 1855. Also ET to EL, 7 April 1855, ET Letters 75.

  ‘album of drawings’. ‘Edward Lear drawings of landscapes, animals and birds’, inscribed to ‘Cecilia Lushington from Mr. Lear, May 25th 1855’. Houghton MS Typ 55.13.

  ‘invited Edmund, Tennyson and friends’. EL to Edmund Law Lushington, 6 June 1855, Glasgow MS Gen 557/2/161. Other guests included James Spedding, George Stovin Venables and B. L. Chapman.

  ‘I of course would be happy’. AT to EL, 7, 8 June 1855, AT Letters vol. 2, 111.

  ‘woundily like a spectator’. EL to AT, 9 June 1855, TRC 5415.

  ‘As Frank’s friend’. ET to EL, 27 July 1855, ET Letters 77–8.

  ‘Mr Lear’. Cecilia to Edmund Lushington, 2 August 1855, Glasgow MS Gen/557/2/17/5.

  ‘Frank will make it all easy for you’. ET to EL, 17 August 1855, ET Letters 79, and 30 August, TRC/Letters 5423.

  ‘at heart grateful’. ET to EL, 7 September 1855, TRC/Letters 5424.

  ‘more of himself, his secret feelings’. Carlingford Diary, 16 September 1855.

  ‘wellest and freshest’. ET to EL, [late September 1855], ET Letters 83.

  ‘Mr Lear’s singing’. ET Journal, 17 October 1855.

  ‘mostly pretty things’. Millais and Lady Charlotte Schreiber, quoted in Anne Ehrenpreis, ‘Edward Lear Sings Tennyson’s Songs’, Harvard Library Bulletin 27 (1979), 72n.

  ‘Alack! For Miss Cotton!’ EL to ET, 29 October 1855.

  ‘I am afraid’. ET to EL, 27 October 1855, ET Letters 87.

  ‘You, Alfred & Frank’. EL to ET, 28 October 1855, SL 132–3.

  ‘You are not alone’. ET to EL, 17 November [1855], ET Letters 89–90.

  20. Half a Life: Corfu and Athos

  ‘Was there ever such luck’. EL to Ann, 4 December 1855.

  ‘begged Ann to write’. EL to Ann, 13, 18 December 1855.

  ‘a necessity of existence’. FL and HSM [probably fellow Apostle, Henry Sumner Maine], Memoir of Henry Fitzmaurice Hallam, privately printed 1850, included in Remains of Arthur Henry Hallam (1853) TRC/BC/4611, lix.

  ‘I suppose’. FL to ET, 13 April 1855, TRC/Letters/5440.

  ‘no place in all the world is so lovely’. EL to Ann, 18 December 1855.

  ‘Sir James Reid’. EL to Ann, 3 April 1856. Reid had been Chief Justice since the 1830s.

  ‘Just now’. EL to Ann, 26 January 1856.

  ‘School of Art in the university’. CY, Introduction, 13.

  ‘a great addition’. CF to EL, 17 September 1856, L 37.

  ‘the Court has taken a whim’. EL to Ann, 10 February 1856.

  ‘We Corfiotes’. EL to Ann, 11 May 1856.

  ‘music-hater’. FL to ET, 13 April 1856. TRC/Letters 5440

  ‘all the fields’. EL to Ann, 3 April 1856.

  ‘screwy & squashy’. EL to Ann, 27 April 1856.

  ‘Carlyle’s Past & Present’. FL to ET, 20 June 1856, TRC/Letters 5441.

  ‘Last night the mountains’. EL to Ann, 29 June 1856.

  ‘It seems but the other day’. EL to Ann, 15 July 1856.

  ‘though I am beginning’. EL to Ann, 29 July 1856.

  ‘not thought half as much of’. EL to William Michael Rossetti, 6 May 1854. Noakes 119.

  ‘so full of poetry’. EL to HH, 11 May 1856, Noakes 119

  ‘annual infants’. EL to CF, 23 January 1853, L 29.

  ‘A world of thought’. D 1 October 1858.

  ‘long desired Mount Athos’. EL to Ann, 29 July 1856.

  ‘verifying Alfred’s poem’. FL to ET, 14 September 1856, TRC/Letters 3909.

  ‘a high peak’. EL to Ann, 8 October 1856.

  ‘for any money’. EL to CF, 9 October 1856, L 41–2.

  ‘many many thousand monks’. EL to ET, 9 October 1856, SL 138–9.

  ‘The impetuosity of my nature’. EL to ET, 9 October 1856, SL 143.

  ‘Major Shakespear’. EL to Ann, 30 November 1856.

  ‘this queer Albanian trip’. EL to Ann, 9 January 1857.

  ‘dancing and rushing’. EL to Ann, 22 March 1857.

  ‘James “Jemmy” Edwards’. EL to Ann, 23 April 1857. Edwards was the godson of Thomas Lister Parker of Browsholme Hall, Yorkshire (now Lancashire): Lear had known Parker, a fellow of the Royal Society, since 1830, when he subscribed to the Parrots.

  ‘Why are you coming?’ EL to CF, 1 May 1857, L 50.

  ‘poor, mean, dirty’. EL to Ann, 23 May 1857.

  ‘the whitening of the ground’. EL to ET, 14 January 1861, SL 166.

  ‘Why has Fanny Coombe’. EL to Ann, 19 June 1856: see also 29 June and 29 July.

  ‘I have now letters’. EL to Ann, 15 December 1856.

  ‘small dinners’ EL to CF, 11 October 1861, L 198.

  ‘of all things’. EL to ET, 6 March 1861, TRC/Letters 5481 (p/copy)

  ‘painting of Nuneham’. Nuneham (1860), Denver.

  ‘Captain James Dalzell’. EL to Ann, 28 December 1857, Michell.

  ‘Frank’s brother Tom’. Thomas Davies Lushington (1813–57). In 1850 m. half-cousin Mary, daughter of Charles May Lushington, a judge and Member of the Council at Madras.

  ‘HURRAH!’. EL to Ann, [August 1857], Michell.

  ‘three weeks in Ireland’. Carlingford Diary 29 August–2 October 1857. ‘L is full of good feeling, an excellent friend, & values the obligation of friendship very high – but he is over sensitive & self-tormenting.’ 6 September.

  ‘a mixture of Socrates’. EL to Mrs Ford, 30 June 1865. Sotheby’s catalogue, VNA Somerville, Letter file 1865.

  ‘Thomas Fairbairn’. Fairbairn was a keen admirer of Hunt, commissioning The Awakening Conscience in 1853 and corresponding about changes to The Scapegoat.

  ‘Wiliam Nevill’. Nevill bought Philae and Civitella at Sunrise (1855), now Worcester Art Museum, Mass., RA Cat. 147.

  ‘The
H’s’. D 31 May 1860.

  ‘All pleased’. ET Journal, 3 November 1857.

  ‘These railway matters’. EL to Ann, 25 November 1857.

  ‘The ludicrous sentiment’. EL to CF, 6 December 1857. L 65.

  ‘Some Greek of St John’. EL to CF, 6 December 1857, L 67.

  ‘rhinoceros-like insensibility’. EL to CF, 26 August 1851, L 22. For Bowen, Young and Corfu politics, see Sonia P. Anderson, ‘Sir John Young, High Commissioner for the Ionian Islands, and His Private Letter Book, 1856–57’ in Every Traveller Needs a Compass, ed. Neil Cooke and Vanessa Daubeny (2015), 9–10.

  ‘Somehow I did nothing’. D 4 January 1858.

  ‘one cannot help feeling’. EL to CF, 27 December 1857, L 72.

  ‘millennial, corpse-like’. D 3 January, 3 February 1858. See also 7, 14, 27 February.

  21. Bible Lands

  ‘Tell them you introduce’. EL to HH, 7 February 1857, (Huntington) BL RP 800/1.

  ‘but I suppose’. FL to ET, 18 January 1857, TRC/Letters 5445

  ‘read as much as he could’. EL to Ann, 24 December 1857. For ‘Pilgrim of Bordeaux’ and a longer list of reading see EL to CF, 27 December 1857, L 69–70. Books mentioned include William Francis Lynch, Narrative of the United States Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea (1849); Edward Robinson, Biblical Researches in Palestine and Adjacent Regions: A Journal of Travels in the Years 1838 and 1852 (1856); Félicien de Saulcy, Narrative of a Tour around the Dead Sea, and in the Bible Lands (1853).

  ‘David Roberts’. The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt and Nubia, 3 vols (1842–9).

  ‘turquoises & emeralds’. EL to Ann, 28 December 1857.

  ‘reassuring Ann’. EL to Ann, 2 February 1858.

  ‘Brought up by women’. EL to CF, 9 March 1858, L 92.

  ‘set off alone’. He had planned to go with Samuel Clowes (1821–98), son of Col. Clowes of Broughton Hall, Lancs, MP for Derbyshire 1868, High Sheriff 1888, an adventurous, military Derbyshire squire whom he had known at Knowsley.

  ‘Weather frightful’. D 13 March 1858.

  ‘some good Ministers’. Ellen to Fanny (Frederick’s sister-in-law), 25 March 1854, Family letters.

  ‘Stoke Newington’. EL to ET, 28 October 1855, TRC/Letters 5411.