by Jenny Uglow
‘Mr Lear, who is a whimsical Punster’. Symonds to his sister Charlotte, 1 January 1868, Horatio F. Brown, John Addington Symonds (1908), 252.
‘an affection of the brain’. D 5 January 1868.
‘the worst of my whole life’. Regis (ed.), Memoir, 342.
‘Fierce cruel loves.’ J. A. Symonds, ‘Stella Maris’, Vagabunduli Libellus (1884).
‘singular Sybilline Fortitude’. ODNB, quoting Margaret Symonds, Out of the Past (1924), 163; see also K. Furse, Hearts and Pomegranates (1940).
‘certainly a goodly amount’. D 31 December 1868.
‘drew pictures for Janet and baby Lotta’. D 24 January 1868.
‘rest there is none’. EL to CF, 16 August 1869, LL 106.
‘a kind of awful doom’. ET to EL, 17 February 1865, ET Letters 188; also D 3 February 1865. Lear was godfather to all the Lushington children: Henry 1862–5; Louisa Gertrude, b. 1863; Edmund Henry, 1867–8; Mildred, b. 1870; Clare Emily, 1871–5; George, b. 1872, Franklin b. 1876.
‘their everlasting silence’. D 11 July 1868. See also D 11 October 1868.
‘Certainly, as far as I can see’. EL to CF, 22 August 1868, SHC.
‘little changed’. D 28 August 1869.
‘so remote & quaint’. D 8 September 1869.
‘beautiful semi-oriental colour’. D 29 August 1869.
‘It can’t be good’. D 9 September 1869.
‘how wonderfully they worry’. D 7 September 1869.
‘Rose 5.30’. D 8 September 1869.
‘Much fun about my poem’. D 10 October 1869.
32. ‘Three Groans for Corsica!’
‘By degrees’. EL to Lady W, 9 January 1868, LL 91.
‘I never can apply’. D 14 March 1868.
‘Colomba’. Corsica, Preface.
‘a vast & manlike maiden’. EL to ET, 6 May 1868, SL 213. Her book was Southward Ho! Notes on the Island of Corsica in 1868 (1868).
‘The children are grave’. EL to ET, 6 May 1868, SL 212.
‘George Kokali’. Corsica, Preface.
‘one of the most wonderfully beautiful sights.’ EL to Lady W, 6 May 1868, LL 103.
‘The trees’. EL to FC, 5 May 1868, Beinecke GEN MSS 601.
‘in deepest shadow’. Corsica 93.
‘he fantasised’. EL to ET, 6 May 1868, SL 213.
‘A ghastly sight’. EL to Lady W, 6 May 1868.
‘I eat trout’. EL to FC, 5 May 1868, Beinecke GEN MSS 601.
‘Smith, Elder & Co.’. D 27 July 1868.
‘quoted Epitaphs’. D 2 November 1868.
‘Smithanelder’. D 7 December 1868.
‘Langton is nephew of DARWIN’. D 10 January 1869. Darwin’s aunt Emily Darwin married Charles Langton: his first wife was her cousin Charlotte Wedgwood.
‘though he will not have more’. D 10 January 1869.
‘a real pleasure’. D 16 May 1869.
‘a good Dickens chapter’. D 21 June 1869.
‘to find new places’. Corsica 1.
‘one would fancy him a mere child’. D 13 November 1868.
‘& so we all exploded’. D 27 September 1869.
‘subscriptions came in’. Familiar names included the Clive family, Clowes, Edwards, Fairbairn, Goldsmid, Vernon and Godfrey Lushington, Nevill, Prescott, Potter and Percy Shelley.
33. Degli Inglesi
‘Of course, George was there’. D 14 December 1869.
‘my name in full’. EL to James Fields, 18 November 1869, SL 215.
‘Learical Lyrics’. EL to CF, 1 January 1870, LL 112.
‘My last mania’. D 28 September 1868. He wrote to enquire about the land on 6 October.
‘it by no means follows’. D September 1869.
‘Good Gracious!’. D 28 February 1870.
‘Very cold all day’. D 30 March 1870.
‘a stone terrace’. EL to Thomas Woolner, 1 May 1870, Thomas Woolner, 284, SL 216.
‘lemon-groves’. A Diplomat in Japan, Part II: The Diaries of Ernest Satow, 1870–88, ed. Ian Ruxton (2009), 141.
‘Thomas Hanbury’. See Charles Quest-Ritson, The English Garden Abroad (1992) and Michael Nelson, Queen Victoria and the Discovery of the Riviera (2007).
‘La Mortola’. D 17 August 1876. The painting, dated 30 December 1865, was sold at Christies, 16 November 2006. Lear also called on Hanbury in London in 1869.
‘to his friend Mrs Ker’. EL to Mrs Ker, Beinecke GEN MSS MISC 10549741.
‘Roya’. D 26, 27 June 1870.
‘I have had advice’. EL to CF 31 July 1870, LL 123.
‘my sudden death’. D 9 July 1870.
‘Piedmontese gentry’. EL to CF, 31 July 1870, LL 123.
‘the Certosa’. Since the 1930s the Certosa has been run by the Padri Missionari della Consolata di Torino as a religious foundation and retreat.
‘Unless I WORK’. EL to CF, 31 July 1870, LL 122.
‘There is & must be’. EL to Amelia Edwards, 26 October 1885, A. B. Edwards papers, Somerville.
‘fair copies’. See for example, D 6–8 June 1870.
‘completed the Jumblies’. D 7, 8 July 1870.
‘the Carthusian friars’. EL to 15th Earl Derby, 26 July 1870.
‘Luther Terry’. D 2 August 1870.
‘drew for little Daisy Terry’. D 18 August 1870.
‘rosy, gray-bearded’. Mrs Winthrop Chanler, Roman Spring (1934), 29–30, Noakes 211.
‘a turbulent little creature’. Mrs Hugh Fraser, A Diplomat’s Wife in Many Lands (1910), vol. 2, 333.
‘strange meats’. ibid.
‘Lady Jingly’. Maria Price La Touche to Mrs Severn, June 1886, The Letters of a Noble Woman, ed. Margaret Ferrier Young (1908), 121.
‘Amblongus Pie’. CN 249–50. The printed version has ‘Bottlephorkia spoonifolia’.
‘It is funny’. D 19 February 1884.
‘dined on barley broth’. D 5 March 1866; 18 December 1869.
‘Biscuit Tree’. T&Q 57. ‘Flora Nonsensica’, 1871, Houghton MS Typ. 55.14.
‘wrote out all the rest’. D 30 August 1870.
‘& certainly’ D 2 November 1870.
‘Counted every hour’. D 21 November 1870.
‘Charles’s birthday’. D 24, 30 November 1870.
‘just as if it were in Stratford Place’. EL to Lady Wyatt, 4, 11 December 1870, Morgan MA 6421
‘all my Autumn & Summer Work’. D 8 December 1870.
‘genuine nonsense’. Spectator, 17 December 1870. Archive.spectator.co.uk.
34. Nonsense Songs and More Nonsense
‘real critters’. EL to Emma Parkyns, 18 December 1871, SL 233.
‘poem of adventure’. T. S. Eliot, ‘The Music of Poetry’ (1942), On Poetry and Poets (1957), 30.
‘whose metres were as varied’. For stanza form, scansion and rhyme-schemes see Haughton, ‘Edward Lear and “The Fiddlediddlety of Representation”’, Oxford Handbook of Victorian Poetry (2013) 351–69.
‘dear little Gussie’. D 33 July 1870.
‘I work without hope’. D 23 November 1870.
‘In a note’. Houghton MS Typ 55.1.
‘the breath of my nostrils’. EL to Nora Bruce, Florida State University, Special Collections, 24 December 1870.
‘Generally speaking’. EL to EB, Introduction, QLN 12.
‘Edward Earl’. EL to Lady W, 17 October 1866, LL 78–9.
‘the Albanian dervish’. A connection made by James Williams; see Bevis, ‘Lines of Flight’, 62.
‘Cold as the crags’. See note, CN 526; also Pope, ‘Cold is the breast that warmed the world before’, and Tennyson’s ‘Tithonus’: ‘Cold thy rosy shadows bathe me, cold/Are all thy lights, and cold my wrinkled feet/Upon thy glimmering thresholds’. For Pope, see Byrom, 230; for ‘Tithonus’, Anne Stillman, ‘T. S. Eliot plays Edward Lear’, Play 272. The poem was published as a sonnet sixty-five years after Lear died in T&Q, 62. In CN it has twenty lines. In Houghton MS Typ. 55.14, the last four lines are written sideways up the page.
3
5. Restless in San Remo
‘such a painting room’. EL to Lady W, 24 April 1871, LL 133.
‘neither too much in’. EL to HH, 7 July 1870 (Huntington) BL RP 800/1.
‘he chose one’. For this exchange, and the fifteenth earl’s importance as a patron in Lear’s late years, see Colin Harrison, ‘Edward Lear’s Landscapes at Knowsley’ in Lloyd 179–84.
‘Lear was always in want of money’. Derby diary, Liverpool, 920 DER (15) Diaries 10; 14 July 1870.
‘It pleases me much’. Liverpool, 920 DER (15) Diaries 10; 18 October 1870.
‘Goldsmid bought one’. D 14 January 1871.
‘singularly good’. D 10 February 1872.
‘very kind & friendly’. D 19 December 1870.
‘Polish governess’. Rosa Poplawska. Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey, 19 March 1850, Margaret Smith, ed., Letters of Charlotte Bronte, 1848–51 (1995), 367.
‘her son Ughtred’. EL to Lady W, 22 January 1871, LL 129. The drawings were a gift for Princess Louise, and two for Alfred Drummond. See Ughtred Kay-Shuttleworth to Sir James, 24 December 1870, 16, 21 January 1871, and Blanche Kay-Shuttleworth to Sir James, 28 November 1871: JRL, GB 133 JKS/1/1/857, 858, 859, 873.
‘a 3d Mrs. C.’ D 14 December 1870.
‘a tall, heavily built gentleman’. Hubert Congreve, Preface, LL 17–18.
‘gt laughter’. D 8 December 1870.
‘sketched the boys’. D 27 June to 4 and 5 July 1871: the drawing was for their aunt, Miss Congreve, to whom Lear wrote on 7 July. See Bosh, 30 November 2015.
‘a pious and instructive work’. EL to Nora Bruce, 24 December 1870, Florida State University.
‘four pictures’. The RA exhibits were: Cattaro in Dalmatia; On the Nile near Assioot; On the Nile, Nagadeh; and On the Nile, near Ballas.
‘for even if Mr Hanbury builds’. D 2 August 1870.
‘Rome 1837’. D 23 July 1871.
‘solace in nonsense’. ‘Mr and Mrs Discobbolos’, copy 24 December 1871; ‘Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò’, written out 11 December 1871, ‘The Scroobious Pip’, begun November/December, continued January 1872; CN 521–6.
‘It is queer’. EF to CF, 31 December 1872, LL 123.
‘coves and covesses’. EL to CF, 28 February 1872, LL 145. On Christmas Day 1871 he told CF and Lady W: ‘San Remo is fullish: Knatchbulls, Philip Miles’, Calls, a’Courts, Monteiths, Ldy K Buchanan & Co – Ldy. Isabella Hope & Co – Pitts, Levern Gowers, Galtons & what not’. SL 235.
‘Life is pretty easy’. D 29 October 1871.
‘My elth is tolerable’. EL to CF, 25 December 1871, LL 142.
‘give up once more the chance’. D 9 March 1872.
‘Vastly good dinner’. D 24 March 1872.
‘travelling as part of a viceregal suite’. EL to CF, 26 May 1872, LL 148–9.
‘a giant negro’. D 20 October 1872, in Greek, translated in Levi 259.
‘The Indian bubble’. D 21 October 1872.
‘as at Jerusalem’. D 22 October 1872.
‘Ellen’. D 13 and 23 December 1871 (Giorgio heard the rumours from a local man) and 13 February 1872. See Montgomery 239–41, where Green is wrongly identified as the local Anglican vicar, corrected by Marco Graziosi, Bosh, 19 February 2016.
‘the sedentary life’. EL to Lady W, 6 July 1873, LL 153–4.
‘with a few exceptions’. EL to CF, 12 September 1873, LL 156.
‘impossible to record’. D 19 August 1873.
‘I must leave this place’. D 20 September 1873.
‘altogether I considered’. EL to CF, 15 October 1873, SHC DD/SH/62/337 (2/341): Noakes 225.
‘I have thought’. D 27 September 1843.
‘good old George’. D 26 October 1873.
36. India
‘beauty of Bombay harbour’. All quotations in this paragraph, D 22 November 1873.
‘when the men change the pole’. IJ 11 April 1874, edited version of Lear’s Indian Journals 1875–8, Houghton MS Eng 797.4. I have used the names that Lear used: modern versions include Mumbai (Bombay), Kanpur (Cawnpore), Varanasi (Benares), Kolkata (Calcutta), Pune (Poona), Chennai (Madras), Mathura (Muttra), Kozhikode (Calicut).
‘What groves’. D 21 December 1873.
‘Delhineations’. EL to CF, 24 April 1874, LL 171.
‘Vast numbers’. D 2 December 1873.
‘a miserable hullabaloo’. D 5 December 1873.
‘At Hyderabad’. D 27 July 1874.
‘What strange scenes’. IJ 123, 19 April 1874.
‘old George’. EL to CF, 12 June 1874 (from Poona), SL 242.
‘to speak freely’. ODNB, quoting Northbrook to Lord Hobart, 19 May 1872, Baring Archive, Northbrook MSS, MS Eur. C. 144/13.
‘away from Levees’. Rudyard Kipling, ‘His Chance in Life’, Plain Tales from the Hills (1886). For the lack of understanding that Northbrook noted, see also Kipling’s ‘Tod’s Amendment’ about a new Land Bill.
‘fluent exactness’ IJ 103, 18 March 1874.
‘Henry V’. IJ 203, 23 September 1874.
‘The feast of words’. For the correct meanings, CN 533. For the swapping of English and Indian terms – a kind of ‘linguistic kedgeree’ – see the review of Hobson-Jobson, A Glossary of Anglo-Indian Words or Phrases quoted by Marco Graziosi, Bosh, 12 June 2004.
‘later he added’. Houghton MS Typ 55.16.
‘making fast drawings’. Over 2000 are at Houghton, including some from the return voyage, MS Typ 55.11 and 55.26. The Houghton collection also includes forty-nine drawings in Northbrook’s bound volume, Vol II. Central India 1875. MS Typ 55.5.
‘Remarked the beauty’. IJ 52, 31 December 1873, also quoted in Dehejia, 23.
‘fuss’. D 30 January 1873, 2 January 1874.
‘highly pagan and queer’. IJ 45, 12 December 1873.
‘Taj Mahal’. IJ 79, 16 February 1874.
‘A stupidly written book’. D 2 February 1872.
‘on show in London’. e.g. D 23 July 1863. Pictures exhibited included The Heart of the Andes (1859), The Icebergs (1861), Cotopaxi (1862) and Chimborazo (1864).
‘& one of his works’. He admired Church’s ‘unfailing force’ and his ability to paint ‘Arctic scenes, South American magnificences & endless other distinctly various phases of nature’: EL to James Fields, 18 January 1880, RA cat. 20.
‘Marble Rocks’. Lear made seven ‘scraps’, five larger sketches and four full-scale watercolours. Houghton MS Typ 55.26, 1494–1504; Scraps 2440–2449.
‘Kinchinjunga’. Quotations are from IJ 63–5, 17–22 January 1874. Lear bought photographs in Darjeeling as an aide-memoire.
‘his later paintings’. Lear painted three large oils, for Northbrook, Lord Aberdare and Lady Ashburton. The latter two show the Buddhist shrine.
‘The poetical character’. IJ 180, 1 November 1874.
‘good and patient always’. D 7 December 1874.
‘Still getting out cargo’. D 30 1 December 1874, IJ 231–2.
‘absolute Turner’. Houghton MS Typ 55.26. 3478 (Scrap 1157, ‘En route to Bombay’).
37. Families
‘Oranges’. D 30 January 1875.
‘odd stout big man’. A Diplomat in Japan, 143, 148: 21 December 1875–3 January 1876. Lear met and liked Tozer, by now curator of the Taylor Institution in Oxford in 1872, and painted many pictures for him, now in the Ashmolean.
‘mint’. EL to Lady Wyatt, 16 April 1875, CN 407.
‘As her son says’. D 1 April 1875.
‘the only one remaining’. EL to CF, 24 May 1875, Taunton (Passage not in LL.)
‘they say Gussie is happy’. D 1, 15 July 1875.
‘Strawberry Hill’. D 10 July 1875.
‘O Chichester!’ CN 404.
‘Gertrude is a duck’. D 25 September 1875; succeeding quotations 27, 28 September.
‘Lear is at 8 Duchess St’. FL to ET, c. July 1875, TRC/Letters 3912.
‘Frank & Kate’. D 30 September 1875.
‘sat up very late’. D 30 June 1876.
‘That all this trouble-whirl’. D 21 May 1876.
‘had resigned’. Northbrook resigned partly to extract his son from an affair, but also at the Foreign Office’s insistence on the Tariff Act, abolishing duties on Indian cotton imports to please Lancashire manufacturers, and at their aggressive stance towards Afghanistan.
‘pile of novels’. Lothair, D 9 June; Middlemarch, D 10 June; Sylvia’s Lovers, D 19 August; Edgeworth, D 8 October 1875.
‘vermouth’. D 21 November 1875.
‘must ask F.L.’. D 9 June 1875.
‘Alack! Alack!’ D 29 August 1875.
‘Wolff’s Wild Animals’. Joseph Wolf (1820–99), a German artist specialising in natural history illustration, worked for the British Museum in 1848, illustrating works for the Zoological Society, and for David Livingstone, Alfred Wallace and Henry Walter Bates – much admired by Gould and the Pre-Raphaelites; Clemency Fisher, ODNB.
‘well and strong’. D 4 October 1875.
‘Loudon’s botany’. D 19 May 1875. Jane Loudon, wife of the landscape designer and writer John Claudius Loudon, published a series of botanical books in the 1840s.
‘Dinner good’. D 7 May 1875.
‘delightful experiences’. All quotations from Hubert Congreve, Preface, LL 22–37.
‘Tasmania’. D 15 April 1876.
‘but shall not bring her here’. D 30 December 1876.
‘How can a fellow bear’. D 28 February 1876.
‘demanded to return’. D 26 February 1877.
‘Ill & tears’. D 3, 4 March 1877. Lear recorded G’s speech in Italian.
‘& not a word’. D 25 July 1877.
‘Meanwhile the present’. D 2 August 1877.
‘May he that gave so beautiful a form’. D 19 August 1877. Lear’s copy makes slight errors in punctuation, but is otherwise faithful to the Eton College Magazine, June–November 1832 (Google Books). The poem is signed ‘H.’ This is the only place I have yet found it.
‘ordering dinner’. D 1 July 1880.
‘You are just beginning’. Hubert Congreve, Introduction, LL 35–6. Twenty-four letters from Lear to Hubert are in the Robert H. Taylor Collection of English and American Literature, Princeton, Box 11 Folder 9. Several have drawings, including one showing Lear carried on a litter by three young friends, Hubert, Arny and their cousin. Hubert did become an engineer, working for the Manchester Ship Canal Company from 1887 and eventually becoming Chief Engineer. In 1911, worried by the Company’s finances and by recent strikes, he climbed a high bridge, shot himself and dropped into the canal.