by Jenny Uglow
‘Anglo-Sunday’. D 22 September 1861.
‘After dinner’. D 19 April 1859.
‘Athanasian Creed’. Final section. Book of Common Prayer.
‘or they would not say’. EL to CF, 21 October 1862, L 252.
‘A man’s life’. EL quoted in letter from Eleanor Newsom, 4 February 1873, Family letters.
‘my own preference’. EL to HH, 15 October 1856, (Huntington) BL RP 800/1.
‘Phaedo’. EL to CF, 3 January 1858, L 75.
‘Renewal of Egyptian impressions’. D 19 March 1858.
‘20 different languages’. EL to Ann, 29 March 1858.
‘I saw all the places’. EL to Ann, 29 March 1858.
‘of a kind I had not looked for’. EL to Ann, 29 March 1858. The preacher, Revd Barnes, son of the secretary to the Bishop of Exeter, was, said Lear, ‘an old friend’.
‘Martha, Martha’. Luke 10, 41–2.
‘holy ground’. Thomas Seddon, Memoir and Letters of the Late Thomas Seddon (1858), quoted in Allen Saley, The Pre-Raphaelite Landscape (2001), 133.
‘lo! the Dead Sea’. D 28 March 1858.
‘Afterwards’. D 29 March 1858. His dinner companions were ‘the usual party: Gibbs, Reginald Barnes [the preacher Lear had admired], Turner, Lord Dunglass – Sykes, McAnn.’
‘Hubblebubble’. Quotations for the Palestine journey are from Lear’s journal. Also printed as ‘A Leaf from the Journal of a Landscape Painter’, ed. Franklin Lushington for Macmillan’s Magazine 75 (April 1897), 410–30.
‘an ancient temple’. Identified today as the Temple of the Winged Lion. For precise location of Lear’s sketches in Petra, see G. W. Bowerstock, From Gibbon to Auden: Essays on the Classical Tradition (2009), 101–8.
‘you may imitate’. EL to Ann, 23 April 1858.
‘a religion professing’. EL to Lady W, 27 May 1858, SL 156.
‘natural grandeur’. RA cat. 112.
‘his most ambitious painting’. Cedars of Lebanon. Watercolours include V&A P.4-1930; Ashmolean WA1942.169 (21 May 1858). See also Nicholas Tromans, ‘The Orient in Perspective’ in The Lure of the East: British Orientalist Painting (2008), 102–9.
22. A Was an Ass
‘A was an Ass’. John Rylands Library, for Tatton children: published as Facsimile of a Nonsense Alphabet (1926). Known alphabets include: Massingberd 1851; Crake November 1857; Gage March 1858; Shakespeare March 1858; Reid March 1858; Blencow May 1859; Braham August 1860; Craven February 1862; Prescott December 1862; de Vere February 1865 (Fitzwilliam); Williams April 1866; Rawlinson June 1866; Drummond October 1866. Three were for unidentified children, published as ABC (1965), and ‘A was an Ant’ and ‘A was an ape’ (both in NSSBA), CN 492.
‘Sir James Reid’. D 15 June 1858.
‘Dear Sam’. CN 492.
‘The pasting and the ironing’. ET to EL, 11 January 1856, TRC/Letters 5437. The TRC catalogue for the sale in 1980 noted: ‘Mounted on canvas. Professionally removable’.
‘3 Alphabets’. EL to CF, 10, 27 February 1858, L 88. For Colonel Edward and Arabella Gage (‘very good people’), for Ida Néa Shakespear, and the Reids’ two-year-old.
‘Enthusiastic Elephant’. CN 259, for the Terry children, 25–31 August 1871.
‘stories of Papa’. ‘A was an Area Arch’, CN 306–18, for the children of Revd Walter Clay, 1871. MS Princeton, Robert Taylor Collection, RTC01 (75).
‘In one letter’. EL to Mrs Gurney Sutton, 7 May 1870, Beinecke GEN MSS 601.
‘are you a tome’. EL to Mansfield Parkyns, [26 July 1865], Houghton BMS Eng 707.
‘What would Neptune say’. EL to CF, 16 August 1863, L 288.
‘What letter’. EL to CF, 13 September 1871, LL 141.
‘mishearings and battles’. Adam Phillips, The Beast in the Nursery (1998), 47.
‘immense lots of tangle’. Excursions vol. 2, 3 April 1845.
‘horrible borrible’. EL to ET, 30 December 1861, TRC/Letters 5477.
‘the perspective’. EL to CF, 1 February 1858, L 85.
‘Ribands & pigs’. Undated, but the first seven verses are on paper watermarked 1849, the rest 1850. CN 493n. See Hugh Haughton, ‘Edward Lear and the “Fiddleydiddlety” of Representation’, The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Poetry, ed. Matthew Bevis (2013).
‘pictogram letter’. Yale University Library, Tennyson papers, Box 3/161.
‘if he dined alone’. D 29 July 1862.
23. Home Again, Rome Again
‘Foord and Dickinson’. Sometimes spelled ‘Dickenson’. For the company’s connection with Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites, see ‘The Frame Blog’, archives, 19th century.
‘sent details’. EL to CF, 25 November 1858, L 119.
‘Knowsley’. He stayed at Knowsley Cottage with Wyndham Hornby, purchaser of one of his paintings of Corfu, son of Revd Geoffrey Hornby.
‘the most beautiful things’. Thomas Woolner to ET, 22 October [1858], Noakes 139, citing Amy Woolner, Thomas Woolner, R.A. (1917), 154.
‘the painter’. D 24 August 1858.
‘Much conversation’. D 28 October 1858.
‘many true & kind words’. D 18 September 1855.
‘impatience blindness & misery’. D 12 October 1858.
‘O! Mimber for the County Louth’. EL to CF, 4 November 1859, L 155–6, CN 152–3.
‘A very ugly woman’. D 28 November 1858.
‘& it does seem most wondrous’. D 2 December 1858.
‘deep black bitter melancholy’. D 27 December 1858.
‘Indeed, indeed’. D 24 December 1858.
‘We are in the desert’. EL to Ann, 1 January 1859.
‘4 male & 6 female Arabs’. EL to Ann, 19 February 1859.
‘a great roaring watering place’. Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Isa Blagden, 15 February 1859, quoted in Alison Chapman and Jane Stabler, Unfolding the South: Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers and Artists in Italy (2003), 83.
‘and one from Hosmer’. D 9 May 1859.
‘The Cushman sings’. William Wetmore Story to Lowell, in Henry James, William Wetmore Story and His Friends (1903), vol. 1, 255. See D 28, 29 January 1859.
‘Oh I so long’. Elizabeth Gaskell to William and Emelyn Story, July 1858, The Letters of Mrs Gaskell, ed. J. Chapple and A Pollard (1966), 515, 642.
‘the lover of Italy’. James, William Wetmore Story, vol. 1, 246.
‘everyone shook his hand and went away’. EL to Ann, 19 February 1859.
‘very much like his mother’. D 6 February 1858.
‘I shewed him’. D 29 March 1859.
‘To tell truth’. EL to Charles Church, 15 March 1859. VNA, Somerville, Letter file 1859.
‘All public news’. D 30 April 1859.
‘three full “lots”’. D 9 May 1859.
‘At present’. EL to CF, 12 June 1859, L 139.
‘independentissimo’. EL to CF, 7 September 1859, L 152.
‘puddle along the shingly beach’. EL to CF, 18 July 1859, L 146.
‘I am tired’. ‘The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò’, CN 325.
‘There is no Peace’. ‘First news from Villafranca’, The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1932), 547.
‘Tuscany’. EL to CF, 18 July 1859, L 147. In the negotiations Piedmont-Sardinia absorbed Lombardy: the duchies of Parma and Modena joined Piedmont against Austria.
‘Bowels, stomach’. D 26, 27 December 1859.
‘stagnation’. EL to CF, 6 January 1860, L 162.
‘I deeply hate this place’. D 3 February 1860.
‘Have I ever lied’. D 15 February 1860, and EL to Ann, 16 February, 11 March 1860.
‘Better never to have been born’. D 21 February 1860. Translation from note to Marco Graziosi’s transcription.
‘actual as a wall’. D 4, 5 April 1860; EL to Ann, 11 April 1860.
‘Charles Coleman’. Coleman’s family had no sympathy for his Italian wife Fortunata and eight children. Lear wrote to his brother offering money to help pay his passage.
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‘foaming with spirit’. D 11 March 1860.
‘What good does one get’. EL to ET, n.d. 1860, Noakes 146.
‘No sir’. EL to Ann, 27 March 1860. Lear began to pack on 13 April.
‘calmly enough’. D 25 May 1860.
24. No More
‘the Lady of Astolât’. D 7 June 1859.
‘looking out of the window’. 10 June 1859, ET Journal 136.
‘computing moderately’. EL to CF, 12 June 1859, L 138.
‘five more Tennyson songs’. These were ‘Home they brought her warrior dead’, ‘As through the land at eve we went’, ‘Come not when I am dead’, ‘O let the solid ground not fail’ and ‘The time draws near’, published by Cramer, Beale & Co., 1859. Lear had also planned to add ‘Break, break, break’ and ‘O, that ‘twere possible’. Houghton Typ 805 L.53. D 14 September 1858. (Robert Tear recorded these in 1984.)
‘wonderfully beautiful’. 8 April 1859, ET Journal 134, and ET to EL, 16 April 1859. TRC/Letters 5459.
‘settings from Idylls of the King’. Others included ‘Turn, fortune, turn’ and ‘Late, late, so late’, also arranged with Rimbault’s help. Lear’s copy of the Idylls, signed by Tennyson ‘July 12./59’, was sold at Sotheby’s New York, December 2015.
‘Prinseps’. Sarah’s husband, Henry Thoby Prinsep, was on the advisory Council of India. Their artist son Valentine was a friend of Millais, Burne-Jones and Rossetti.
‘Virginia Woolf’. See Hermione Lee, Virginia Woolf (1996), 86–90.
‘odious incense palaver’ D 16 June 1860.
‘most disagreeably querulous’. D 17 June 1860.
‘polykettlejarring’. EL to ET, 16 February 1862, TRC/Letters 5491.
‘We come no more’. D 16 June 1860.
‘Pattledom’. D 11 February 1861.
‘But all experience’. Pitman 125, and see Richard Cronin, ‘Edward Lear and Tennyson’s Nonsense’ in Tennyson among the Poets, ed. Robert Douglas-Fairhurst and Seamus Perry (2009), 269.
‘there is nothing’. EL to CF, 26 August 1851, L 20.
‘his twenty-one years seemed’. D 15 October 1858.
‘it is not easy to say why’. D 1 June 1870.
‘Bother all painting’. EL to CF, 9 July 1860, L 141–4, CN 153–4.
‘subscription’. See EL to HH, 9 December 1859.
‘cedars of Lebanon’. D 9 July 1860.
‘I am wretched.’ D 26 July 1860. Colonel Charles Churchill, Mount Lebanon. A Ten Years’ Residence from 1842 to 1852, 3 vols (1853).
‘wonderfully fine’. D 15 July 1860; also ‘Great & fine Cedars’. Lear was back again at Ockham on 30 September 1860.
‘seized with incapacity to work’. D 28 November 1860.
‘for truth and conscientious work’. The Times, 11 February 1861.
‘Other reviews’. The Morning Chronicle, 11 February, thought it overpriced, sacrificing art for ‘the absolute representation of a peculiar and arbitrarily chosen aspect of nature’. The Illustrated London News, 2 March, and the Saturday Review, 6 April, see Marco Graziosi, ‘Reviews of Edward Lear’s Masada’, Bosh, 11 February 2011.
‘diabolical Professor Tindall’. D 7 February 1861.
‘Sir Francis Goldsmid’ (1808–78). Civitella is now in the Clothworkers Hall, City of London. Goldsmid bought paintings of Mount Athos (1862), Piana Rocks and Bavella, Corsica (1869). Julia Goldsmid also bought several paintings and drawings.
‘all my debts’. EL to ET, 6 March 1861, TRC/Letters 5482.
‘poor dear’. D 25 September 1858.
‘My kind love’. EL to Ann, 16 February 1860.
‘She will bounce’. EL to Ann, 3 February 1859.
‘Islington’. Ann moved in June to live here with ‘Miss Randall and Miss Peel’. EL to Ann, June 1860, Michell.
‘curious stories’. D 21 December 1860.
‘Ann – dear Ann’. D 1 February 1861.
‘what a blessing’. EL to ET, 6 March 1861, TRC/Letters 5482.
‘her pain’. D 8 March 1861.
‘sending Ellen to bed’. D 10 March 1861.
‘a change’. EL to CF, 7 March 1861, L 183.
‘all at sea’. EL to CF, 18 March 1861, L 184.
‘Therefore wander’. D 5 April 1861.
‘the Artillery ground’. D 9 May 1861.
‘Mandate mi un lettera’. EL to Marstrand, 25 May 1861, Gillies.
‘the real view of Turner’. D 12 June 1861.
‘his heart bled for Browning’. D 29 June 1861.
‘Mary had died’. D 17 June 1861.
‘I suppose’. EL to CF, 26 August 1861, L 191. The most recent battle, on 10 August, was Wilson’s Creek in Missouri, Frederick’s home state, a Confederate victory. In 1863 Frederick’s son Frank was taken prisoner: Henry’s son died on sick leave in Boston, late 1864.
‘Ever all she was to me’. D 17 January 1865.
25. ‘Overconstrained to Folly’: Nonsense, 1861
‘always so quiet’. D 31 March 1861.
‘Jemmy’. D 2 April 1861.
‘Little Kathleen’. D 4 April 1861.
‘so I took them on my knee’. D 27 May 1861. They turned out to be Mary and Robert Clive, children of his friend Robert Clive (not the same family as Archer Clive.) Lear was also friendly with George Clive (Under Secretary of State for the Home Department, 1859–62).
‘no one in but the baby’. Visiting the Crakes, D 24 September 1861.
‘Assuredly one’. D 1 September 1861.
‘bosh requires a good deal of care’. EL to David Morier, 12 January 1871, SL 228.
‘distracting Miss G.’ EL to CF, 11 October 1861, LL 198. For Lear and Julia Goldsmid see Montgomery, 138–62, although I disagree that Lear thought of marriage.
‘gt. Laughter’. D 30 September 1861. See 12 September: ‘Looked over Nonsenses, & gave some nonsense prints to the little boy next door.’
‘Dalziel brothers’. George Dalziel (1815–1902), from Newcastle, set up the firm in 1839, joined by his brothers Edward, John and Thomas, and his sister Margaret: from 1850 they worked closely with Routledge. [G. Dalziel and E. Dalziel], The Brothers Dalziel: a record of fifty years’ work … 1840–1890 (1901). D 1 February 1861, EL notes: ‘I came to Dalzell’s, & gave them 2 nonsenses to woodcut.’
‘A wary Scotsman’. D 1 November 1861. For McLean relinquishing all rights, D 10 October 1861. The agreement in Routledge registers, 5 November 1861, notes that they will buy ‘at 2/6 per copy, 13 as 12 less 15%’, F. A. Mumby, The House of Routledge (1934).
‘dropped three limericks’. These were ‘The Old Sailor of Compton’, ‘The Old Man of Kildare’ and ‘The Old Man Of New York’.
‘the large dresses’. EL to CF, 6 September 1863, L 290.
‘now they can postulate’. EL to CF, 25 July 1877, LL 205–6.
‘Incongruous’. See Cronin, ‘Edward Lear and Tennyson’s Nonsense’, 263.
‘so then I partly sleep’. EL to ET, 6 March 1861, TRC/Letters 5481.
‘Perhaps it is better’. EL to CF, 18 October 1875, LL 187.
‘easily bored’. EL to CF, 2 February 1862, L 225.
‘I am come to a point’, D 15 June 1862.
‘dirty boots’. EL to ET, 15 December 1861, SL 173.
‘Lewis Carroll’. Carroll had a go at limericks when he was thirteen; two are in Useful and Instructive Poetry. See Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, The Story of Alice (2015), 39–40.
‘defied sense’. Spectator, 17 December 1870, archive.spectator.co.uk.
‘Water-Babies’. EL to Charles Kingsley, 8 November 1871, Notes and Queries (June 1969): see Bosh, 1 June 2015.
‘the rules “they” imposed’. For this social aspect see Ina Rae Hark, ‘Edward Lear: Eccentricity and Victorian “Angst”’, Victorian Poetry 16 (1978), 65–85.
‘conformity is the first thing’. J. S. Mill, On Liberty (1859, 2nd edition), 110–11.
‘little time for oddity’. Aldous Huxley described Lear’s limericks as ‘episodes from the eternal struggle
between the genius or eccentric and his fellow beings’: ‘Edward Lear’ in On The Margin (1923), 169.
‘If an author pipe’. Christopher Ricks, ‘Tennyson’, ODNB.
‘Darwin’s researches’. Journal (1845), 361. Darwin’s journal was originally the third part of the four-volume Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of Her Majesty’s Ships Adventure and Beagle (1839); revised as Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited during the Voyage of HMS Beagle round the World 1832–5.
Essays and Reviews. Edited by J. W. Parker, dubbed ‘the manifesto of Liberal Anglicanism’. Contributors included Benjaim Jowett, Frederick Temple, Baden Powell, Rowland Williams, H. B. Wilson, C. W. Goodwin and Mark Pattison.
‘Apropos of the Essays & Reviews’. D 16 February 1861.
‘Should Williams be condemned’. EL to CF, 2 February 1862, L 225.
‘I begin to be vastly weary’. EL to Lady W, 15 March 1863, L 277, 276.
‘Ernest Renan’. EL to CF, 9 August 1853, L 285.
‘advanced or liberal principles’. EL to TW, 1 May 1870, SL 216.
‘Jonah’. Book of Jonah 2, verse 5.
26. Mr Lear the Artist
‘to meet Lear’. AT to Granville Bradley, Ann Thwaite, Emily Tennyson (2009) 305.
‘took an immense amount of time’. See Painter 13–14.
‘Millais’. D 23 April 1861.
‘Charles Roundell’. MP for Grantham and Skipton. Picture, 1862, Charles Nahum Ltd. Roundell bought three more paintings of 1862: Mont Blanc, Pont Pelissar, The Dead Sea and Cliffs of Cenc, Gozo. In 1872 he bought Ravenna Forest.
‘No life is more shocking’. EL to CF, 29 August 1861, L 189; Taunton has ‘damnable’.
‘which I must now wash’. EL to CF, 21 January 1862, L 222.
‘the concluding paragraph’. EL to CF, 5 September 1861, L 194.
‘a new spadmodic poet’. EL to CF, 11 October 1861, L 198.
‘Caroline Jones’. D 10 October 1861. After his first wife Sarah died Henry Chesmer m. Caroline in Montreal in 1818: in 1828, two years after his death, she married Senator Robert Jones, a Quebec politician. Lear met Jessie on 21 September, ‘wonderfully like her father & my aunt & father, but goodlooking & very lively & nice’.