by Jenny Uglow
‘Major Foy’, D 2 November 1861.
‘a help and a pleasant sight’. Maria Lushington to ET, 29 September 1855, TRC/Letters 3925.
‘snow, peasoups’. EL to ET, 15 December 1861 TRC 5490.
‘looking back’. D 24 December 1861.
‘the too close boskiness’. EL to ET, 16 February 1862, SL 174.
‘the luckiest dog’. CF to EL, 19 September 1862, L 247.
‘a dim hum’. EL to CF, 20 April 1862, L 234.
‘o dear dear these dinners’. D 13 June 1862.
‘met Mrs Gaskell’. D 28, 29 June 1862.
‘Tom Taylor’. ‘Pictures at the International Exhibition: V’, The Times, 11 June 1862. Taylor’s main criticism was aimed at John Brett. When Lear met Taylor he thought him ‘superficial and bumptious & not altogether well bred’, EL to HH, 5 July 1862, HRC MS-2415.
‘vastly fine’. EL to CF, 3 October 1862, L 248–9.
‘What to do’. EL to CF, 4 October 1862, L 249.
‘began to draw outlines’. D 26 November 1862.
‘Paradise weather’. D 28 December 1862.
‘a singular spotch’. D 10 February 1863; ‘spot’ in letter to CF, 8 February 1863, L 271.
‘He was then at work’. Henry Strachey, quoted by Sir Edward Strachey, Introduction, NSS ix.
‘There’s a proof’. EL to CF, 1 March 1863, L 274.
‘photographic machine’. EL to Ann, 21 May 1856. See D 1 February 1858 for new camera.
‘Lewis Carroll bought his first camera’. 18 March 1856: Lindsay Smith, Lewis Carroll: Photography on the Move (2015), 11.
‘Major Shakespear’. John Davenport Shakespear. After fighting in the Crimea, Shakespear m. Louisa Sayer and was posted to Corfu in 1855. For Lear’s sale of the camera, D 4 February 1858. Seventy of his photographs are in the Mon Repos Museum, Corfu. See also Edward Lear: The Corfu Years, ed. Philip Sherrard (1988).
‘my dear Lear’. CF to EL, 19 January 1863, Taunton.
‘the de Veres’. D 30 November 1862.
‘coloured birds’. D 8 March 1863.
‘the Shelleys’. D 7–23 March 1863.
‘the “demon”’. D 31 January 1863.
‘This home’. D 18 March 1863.
27. ‘From Island unto Island’
‘enough tin’, and limerick. EL to CF, 23 March 1863, Lear’s Corfu, 34.
‘utter contempt’. Frances McLellen, Sketches of Corfu (1835), quoted in CY Introduction, 16.
‘You may not have heard’. EL to Edgar Drummond, 23 March 1863, SL 181–2.
‘O reason not the need’. King Lear, II, iv, 267.
‘a furious pamphlet’. Frank Lushington, Ionian Judges, June 1863.
‘awfully Sabbatical’. D 11 April 1863.
‘hideously dry’. D 18 April 1863.
‘Great naked slabs of rock’. D 6 April 1863, Paxos.
‘My master’. 29 April 1863, Ithaca.
‘Lord Byron’s house’. D 7 May 1863.
‘smoke, noise’. D 7 May 1863.
‘Korax’. D 27 April 1863. Translations are from Marco Graziosi’s transcription, Bosh, 30 April 2013.
‘It seems to me’. D 12 May 1863.
‘the Gk. Throne’. D 3 June 1863.
‘But nothing removes’. D 29 June 1863.
‘being well done’. EL to CF, 9 August 1863, L 284.
‘hoped to use photographs’. D 22 July 1863.
‘I could absolutely hear’. EL to CF, 14 September 1863, L 292.
‘Views in the Seven Ionian Islands’. For further reading he recommended The Ionian Islands in the Year 1863, by D. T. Ansted, whom he had helped in Corfu, and despite his dislike for George Bowen, he mentioned his contributions to Murray’s Handbook (1845).
‘old man with a Book’. EL to Mrs Prescott, 1863. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
‘What a beautiful book!’. ET to EL, 24 December 1863, TRC/Letters 5503.
‘to ask the Queen’. EL to CF, 6 September 1863, L 289.
‘Arch-nonsense-chatter-maker’. I adopt the flexible translation used by James Williams, Play 19.
‘perhaps I may go’. EL to CF, 15 January 1864, L 303.
‘Deerbaring’. EL to Evelyn Baring, 1864, SL 195.
‘The quiet of this house’. D February 1864.
‘Goodbye’. EL to CF, 31 March 1864, L 308.
‘little Nora Decie’. 3 April 1864. Ashmolean Library.
‘Once more’ and ‘the Bulbul’. D 4 April 1864.
‘George Finlay’. Lear had been reading Finlay’s early volumes: D 7 February 1863.
‘set off for Crete’. Lear’s Crete journal, 4 April–4 May 1864, Houghton MS Typ 55.24. The third edition of Lear’s Cretan Journal (CJ) transcribed by Rowena Fowler, contains an appendix on his drawings: for listings see Stephen Duckworth, ‘Edward Lear and Crete’ (2015), edwardlearandcrete.weebly.com, and Edward Lear’s Cretan Drawings (2011) from the Gennadius Library, Athens, which holds 205 drawings.
‘the women and children’. D 7 April 1864, CJ 26.
‘Madeleine’. D 23 May 1864.
‘Villette’. D 2 May 1864.
‘Its antiquities etc.’. D 15 April, CJ 31.
‘Knossos’. D 11 May 1864, CJ 66.
‘a dream-like vast pile’. D 24 May 1864.
‘the vast multitude of blackbirds’. D 15 May 1864.
‘eggs, olives’. 21 April 1864, CJ 37.
‘snails’ D 8 May 1864.
‘different communities’. Rowena Fowler, CJ, Introduction, 11.
‘The Venetian cathedral’. D 10 May 1864, CJ 65.
‘uprisings’. There were rebellions against Turkish rule in 1821–7, 1841 and 1858.
‘Michael Korakis’. D 10 May 1864, CJ 112, n. 67.
‘our unhappy country’. D 16 May 1864, translation from Greek, CJ 82.
‘All Crete diminishes’. D 31 May 1864.
28. ‘What a charming life an artist’s is!’
‘a Nem’. EL to Mrs Prescott, 12 October 1864, SL 198–9, Ashmolean.
‘to his funeral’. D 18 July 1864.
‘one of the places I am really happy in’. D 15 October 1864.
‘Pattledom has taken entire possession’. EL to CF, 19 October 1864, LL 47.
‘Mrs Cameron’. Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–79). ET to EL, 17 February 1865, TRC/Letters 5508.
‘the prettiest children’. Lewis Carroll to Julia Margaret Cameron, M. N. Cohen (ed.) Letters of Lewis Carroll (1979), vol. 1, 66.
‘going down hill’. D 15 October 1864.
‘Four ladies’. EL to HH, 6 October 1864, (Huntington) BL RP 800/1. This irresistible scene is also quoted, in full, in Noakes 174.
‘his Crete drawings’. Lear penned out 196 Cretan sketches and coloured 48. D, throughout July 1864.
‘absurd & utopian’. D 11 July 1864.
‘Reading Bates’. Henry Walter Bates, The Naturalist on the River Amazons (1863). Bates found seven thousand species of ant and other insects, and 550 species of butterfly, around Ega above Para: EL to CF, 8 October 1864, LL 48; EL to ET, 10 May 1865, SL 204.
‘the lopsided views’. D 12 December 1864.
‘Lear made his sketches’. He made 145: EL to HH, 7 January 1865, SL 202.
‘I loathe London’. EL to ET, 10 May 1865, SL 204–5.
‘How tremendously full’. D 7 November 1865.
‘O! O! what a sunset’. D 10 November 1865.
‘undiplomatic & demonstrative nature’. EL to Lady W, 24 November 1865, LL 64.
‘Fenian attacks’. Since the famine of 1847, resentment against the British had grown: the 1860s saw Fenian attacks on British forts in the United States and Canada, and uprisings in Ireland, quickly suppressed.. Fortescue introduced a new land bill to alleviate tension, but was out of office in July 1866, before he could see it through. He returned in 1868.
‘Read papers’. D 31 January 1866.
‘No greater bore’. D 9 December 1865.
‘Wonderfully shrilly-howly’. D 20 December 18
65.
‘hardly a bit of green’. EL to Ann, 19 April 1848.
‘sparklingness’. D 28 January 1866.
‘visit to Gozo’. EL to Lady W, 30 March 1866, LL 60. See Joseph Attard Tabone, ‘Edward Lear in Gozo, March 1866’ in Every Traveller Needs a Compass: Travel and Collecting in Egypt and the Near East, ed. Neil Cooke Neil and Vanessa Daubney, 15–22.
‘isle of Calypso’. EL to Henry Luard, 22 April 1866, HRC MS-2415; CN 210.
‘It was most beautiful’. D 31 January 1866.
29. ‘The “Marriage” Phantasy’
‘Every marriage’. EL to CF, 22 August 1868, LL 105.
‘Tittering’. D 16 November 1858.
‘frightful discussion’. D 9 July 1859.
‘sequax’. EL to CF, 21 October 1862, L 252–3.
‘Mansfield Parkyns’. Life in Abyssinia: Being Notes collected during three years’ Residence and Travels (1853, revised and expanded 1868).
‘disjointed’. D 14 April 1861.
‘a dear good true little girl’. D 19 September 1858.
‘she had already published’. Her books include Echoes of an Old Bell, and other Tales of Fairy Lore (1865); Maud Latimer: a Tale for Young People (1863); translation of the French version of Fernan Caballero’s La Gaviota, published as The Sea-Gull (1867); Helen in Switzerland: A Tale for Young People (1868); Love and Life in Norway (c.1870, translated with Augusta Plesmer); A Village Maiden (1871); Millicent and her Cousins (1881).
‘angel in the house’. D 10 June 1859. Patmore’s poem ‘The Angel in the House’, based on his courtship of and marriage to his wife Emily, was published in parts, 1854–62.
‘cut away’. D 17 February 1861.
‘Would one have been as happy?’. D 13 April 1862.
‘dear little Gussie’. D 24–27 June, 1862.
‘As pleasant a day’. D 27 July 1863.
‘perhaps as lovely’. D 4 October 1863.
‘A pleasant, but very sad visit’. D 6 October 1863.
‘This visit will I fear’. D 8 July 1864.
‘The risk of trying’. D 9 July 1864.
‘woman wheeled in the barrow’. This figure appears in old nursery rhymes, as a woman to be ‘bought’, and also in Sixteen Wonderful Women: for these, and medieval images, see Bosh, 25 February, 17 July 2014.
‘Best so’. D 9 October 1864.
‘Was there ever such a man’. D 9 July 1865.
‘for a moment’. D 23 September 1865.
‘Would Gussie like to live here?’. D 18 April 1866.
‘beside the mark’. D 20 April 1866.
‘a pleasant evening’. D 29 May 1866.
‘Like a sudden spark’. D 1 June 1866.
‘the “marriage” phantasy’. D 2 June 1866.
‘take my chances’. D 25 July 1966.
‘For the gulf is not to be passed’. D 23 September 1866.
‘not at home’. D 4 October 1866.
‘Down the slippery slopes of Myrtle’. ‘The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò’, CN 326.
‘The Duck and the Kangaroo’. CN 207–9 and n. 304. Lear noted in his copy of NSSBA that this was written at Chewton Priory ‘in 1865 or 1866’ for the children of Sir Edward Strachey. The first surviving MS was for the family of George Clive, 19 October 1868
‘a faithful serving man’. D 17 March 1863.
‘if that Lady’. D 21 April 1863.
‘Don’t you see’. D 17 April 1864.
30. Gradually Extinguified
‘Seriously, it does seem’. EL to Henry Bruce, 8 December 1866. Glamorgan DBR 153.
‘Claret 8’. D 2 December 1867.
‘even if I turn Mussulman’. EL to CF, 11 December 1866, LL 81.
‘violent lively American damsel’. D 12 December 1866.
‘as usual somewhat melancholy’. Recollections of Lady Georgiana Peel (1920), 239, quoted by Marco Grazioso, ‘Edward Lear in Malta’, Bosh, 11 January 2016.
‘borrowed from friends’. EL to Lady W, 9 March 1867, SL 208. The plan was to travel up the Nile to Nubia, then to head for Jerusalem, Galilee and Nazareth and on to Tyre and Sidon and possibly Palmyra. Finding that the trip to Nubia would cost £400, Lear asked Lady Waldegrave, Monkton Milnes (Lord Houghton), Mrs Clive, Bernard Husey Hunt, Thomas Fairbairn, Johnny Cross, William Langton and Frank Lushington to lend him £100 each. Milnes had commissioned a painting of Nazareth, and Lear asked for half the money in advance; when he failed to reach Nazareth he returned the money and sent a drawing of Philae.
‘O sugar canes!’. D 25 December 1866.
‘Holman Hunt’s wife’. Fanny died in Florence, two months after their son, Cyril Benoni, was born: her sister Edith looked after the baby, while Hunt stayed on in Italy alone.
‘a steam working engine’. D 6 January 1867.
‘& where one peeps’. D 16 January 1867.
‘I hope to goodness’. EL to Mrs Digby, 30 December 1866, VNA Somerville, Letter File 1866, 751.
‘the American element’. EL to Lady W, 9 March 1867, LL 83–4.
‘lovely rounded muscles’. D 21 February 1867.
‘perfectly astonishing’. D 18 January 1867.
‘to represent such beauty’. D 28 January 1867.
‘careless, foolish’. D 9 January 1867.
‘to the utmost perfection’. D 2 February 1867.
‘sad, stern, uncompromising’. EL to Lady W, 9 March 1867, LL 83.
‘so tired that he turned round’. D 15 April 1867.
‘I knew Dan’s writing’. D 18 May 1867 [Ravenna 6 May].
‘Gussie: – dreamland’. D 25 October 1867.
‘It is absurd’. D 2 November 1867.
‘broke up a dream’. D 3 November 1867.
‘T. H. Huxley’. ‘The Special Peculiarities of Man’, 16 March 1858, in Desmond and Moore, Darwin, 465.
‘a very great brute’. D 31 July 1864.
‘too wonderful’. Quoted in Steve Jones, The Darwin Archipelago (2011).
‘Disraeli’. Speech at Oxford Diocesan conference, 25 November 1864.
‘driven to despair’. Daily News, 3 May 1865 (also Morning Post).
‘close to the Prescotts’. Lear’s letters to the Prescott and Decie families are in the Ashmolean.
‘nobody ought to marry’. EL to ET, 10 May 1865, SL 204. Sarah Lear decided that Charles Street could travel with a ‘guard and assistant’. The third case was H. G. Mildmay.
‘Nothing could exceed’. This and the following letter to Lady Duncan were written on 3 and 7 January 1865. Beinecke MSS GEN 601. They were published in Bosh & Nonsense in 1983, with a manuscript of limericks that Lear drew for Anna’s eleven-year-old sister Ada. (Ada is often described as the recipient of the frog letters.)
‘pigeon fanciers’. Charles Darwin to T. H. Huxley, 27 November 1859, Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. Francis Darwin, 1887.
‘Dear old Mrs Wentworth’. D 11 February 1865.
‘drew some birds’. D 1 February 1865.
‘made them an alphabet’. D 10 February 1865.
‘absurd lot of stories’. D 13 February 1865.
‘Very happily for me’. EL to CF, 9 August 1867, LL 86.
‘satire on religious rows’. Sara Lodge, ‘Edward Lear and Dissent’, Play 85–6.
‘John Hanning Speke and Richard Burton’. John Hanning Speke, The Discovery of the Source of the Nile (1863). For the feud, see Tim Jeal, Explorers of the Nile (2011).
‘toucan’. Henry Walter Bates, In The Heart of the Amazon Forest (selection, 2007).
‘London Acclimatisation Society’. Richard Girling, The Man Who Ate the Zoo: a Life of Frank Buckland (2016), 174–5.
‘Here is Defoe’. Robinson Crusoe, 47.
‘elaborate plumes’. For discussion of ‘borrowed plumes’ see Matt Bevis, ‘Lear’s Lines of Flight’, Journal of the British Academy I (2013), 45–8.
‘Elizabeth “Pussy” Hornby’. See Colley 87–91.
‘elephants’ feet’. Colley 91.
�
�the grasshopper has become a burden’. EL to CF, 7 January 1884, LL 295.
31. Sail Away: Cannes 1868–1869
‘and so I went away’. D 7 November 1867.
‘O! O! O!’ D 8 December 1867.
‘All of a sudden’. D 1 December 1867.
‘the most amiable good Symonds’. D 2 December 1867.
‘Ekklogg’. D 9 December 1867.
‘For the first time in my life’. Regis (ed.), Memoirs, 156.
‘cohabitation’. Regis (ed.), Memoirs, 257.
‘the purely sexual appetite’. Regis (ed.), Memoirs, 259–60.
‘Janet Kay-Shuttleworth’. (1817–72). Her mother Janet (née Marjoribanks) m. Frederick North after the death of her first husband, Robert Shuttleworth of Gawthorpe Hall: Sir James Kay added his wife’s surname in 1842. They had five children, and in 1851 she moved to the Villa Ponente, San Remo, while Sir James remained in Manchester.
‘What the Greeks called paiderastia’. J. A. Symonds, A Problem in Greek Ethics: Studies in Sexual Inversion (2002 edn), 11.
‘The little girl is unwell’. D 14 December 1867.
‘walked to the Symonds’. D 18 December 1867.
‘The Owl and the Pussy-cat’, CN 238–9. Vivien Noakes notes that the whereabouts of this MS, owned by Symond’s granddaughter Dame Janet Vaughan and sold in 1937, are unknown. The drawings from original MS are in QLN, see CN n. 510–11. Lear sent copies to Lady W, 9 January 1868 (Morgan), to George Clive’s family, 19 October 1869 (Houghton MS Typ 55.14), and an unillustrated one to Mrs Fields, 14 October 1869 (Morgan). Copies were also made for the children of Lord Edgcumbe, 24 January 1868, Lear’s neighbour Giacinta Galleti, June 1886, and for the Nevills (nd).
‘early drafts’. See Daniel Karlin, ‘“The Owl and the Pussy-cat”, and Other Poems of Love and Marriage’, Play 202–22, especially the variations, 205.
‘I suppose some will be sold’. D 20 December 1867.
‘you may have it’. EL to Edgar Drummond, 22 September 1866, SL 207.
‘women’s novels’. D 19 December 1867, 15 January 1868.
‘Walt Whitman’. D 25 December 1867. William Michael Rossetti selected and edited Poems by Walt Whitman (1868); Symonds’s Walt Whitman: A Study was published in 1893.