Mr Lear

by Jenny Uglow

  38. Laughable Lyrics

  ‘The Quangle Wangle’s Hat’. Written for Arthur Buchanan, 26–27 May 1872, copied for Gertrude Lushington 8 June (Edinburgh).

  ‘but I can make little of it’. D 21, 22 April 1876. He wrote out ‘Vestments’ and ‘Quangle-Wangle’s Hat’ for Bush on 9 April.

  ‘Too late’. D 8 December 1875.

  ‘aunt (Jobiska)’. D 30 April 1876.

  ‘Quangle Wangle Quee’. D 9 November 1875.

  ‘smart red and green books’. CF to EL, 22 December 1876, LL 198.

  ‘fooly-book’. EL to CF, 25 December 1876, SHC DD/SH/62/337 (2/367).

  ‘The New Vestments’. See Carol Rumens, Guardian, 30 December 2013.

  ‘sandbanks’. D 9 January 1867, also quoted CN 535.

  ‘The Dong’. D 24 August 1876.

  ‘Wrote to F. Lushington’. D 27 August 1876.

  ‘who with Byron’. EL to CF, 26 September 1875, LL 186–7. Trelawny died in 1881, aged 88.

  39. Shocks

  ‘Demon’. D 9 September 1875; 9, 19 March 1876.

  ‘crawled into bed’. D 18 June 1876.

  ‘strangely as it may seem’. D 21 April 1877.

  ‘where Ann & I began’. D 25 July 1877.

  ‘Tennyson’. D 2 July; 19, 21 June, 7–9 July.

  ‘a vast scene’. D 1 August, 24 July 1878.

  ‘happier in Paradise’. EL to CF, 28 October 1878, LL 211. In 1875 Hanbury wrote that he would only let the land on a building lease for ninety-nine years and would build three low villas.

  ‘keep out Germans’. Henry Strachey, quoted in Introduction, NSS xi.

  ‘horribly out of humour’. D 3 January 1879.

  ‘O dear’. D 3 January 1879.

  ‘Devil’s Hotel’. D 9 October 1880; triumvirate, EL to CF, 16 April 1879, Taunton.

  ‘How cheerful’. EL to Bevan, 14 January 1879; copied, D 9 April 1879.

  ‘The Song of Eve’. See Alexandra Ault, BL ‘Untold Lives’ blog, 12 May 2016, and for the music, Marco Graziosi, Bosh, 29 May 2016, and Hymnary.org.

  ‘sent his poem’. EL to Bevan, 14 January 1879, BL Add MS 61891 ff. 104–9.

  ‘I was sorry’. D 26 April 1879.

  ‘I am crushed’. CF to EL, 25 July 1879, LL 223.

  ‘There are few women’. D 18 September 1879.

  ‘The Enemy’. North, Recollections, vol. 2, 83–5.

  ‘So look out for me’. EL to James Fields, 14 October 1879; next day he sent the poem and statement to Wilkie Collins, who sent it to the World (D 2 November 1879).

  ‘all the Sanremisi’. EL to James Fields, 15 October 1879, SL 255: Athenaeum, 1 November 1879, printed an abridged version.

  ‘Altogether I was never in a greater fix’. D 22 October 1879.

  ‘young Earl of Derby’. See Derby diaries: Liverpool, 920 DER (15) Diaries 10, 11 12; 14 July 1870, 18 October 1871, 4 July 1872.

  ‘soothing and strengthening’. CF to EL, 6 October 1879, LL 226.

  ‘I seem by doing this’. D 24 February 1880.

  ‘Northbrook and Baring’. D 11–14 March 1880.

  ‘33 Norfolk Square’. EL to ET, 16 February 1880, TRC/Letters 5538.

  ‘Here’s a shindy!’ EL to CF, 7 June 1880, LL 231. Bush had published Corsica, 1870; Nonsense Songs etc., 1871, More Nonsense, 1872, and Laughable Lyrics, 1877. No new editions appeared until Routledge bought the rights to these after Lear’s death.

  ‘little Fentons’. D 24 January 1880.

  ‘Watching Gussie’. D 12, 26 June 1880.

  ‘a Chicken’. D 13 June 1880.

  ‘So far’. D 25 August 1880.

  40. The Villa Tennyson

  ‘The walls’. D 26 February 1880.

  ‘only the road’. EL to ET, 16 February 1880, TRC/Letters 5538.

  ‘decided on a name’. EL to CF, 4 September 1880, Taunton.

  ‘When he moved’. EL to 15th Earl of Derby, 13 April 1881, SL 256.

  ‘God bless you’. ET to EL, 7 June 1881, TRC/Letters 5543.

  ‘the small initiative’. D 23 June 1871; Pitman 28–9.

  ‘Claude’s Liber Veritas’. D 26 August 1867, at Stratton. Turner purchase, facsimile: D 27 July 1863.

  ‘the new autotype edition’. Published in 1871 by the Autotype Fine Art Company: 2nd edn 1880 with notes by Revd Stopford Brooke.

  ‘early works’. As part of the Turner bequest, twenty-four of these were included in an exhibition of 102 watercolours at the Marlborough Gallery in 1857, and were on display at South Kensington museum (now the V&A) soon afterwards. Two volumes of photographs, published 1861 and 1862, returned to National Gallery, 1878. Matthew Imms, ‘Liber Studiorum: Drawings and Related Works’, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J. M. W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours (2012), www.tate.org.

  ‘Tom Moorey’. EL to Mrs Richard Ward, 22 July 1873, SL 239 and note.

  ‘Nluv, fluv’. Evelyn Baring, Introduction to QLN, 8.

  ‘Delirious bulldogs’. EL to CF, 28 February 1872, LL 161. See Anne Barton, ‘Delirious Bulldogs and Nasty Crockery: Tennyson as a Nonsense Poet’, Victorian Poetry, 47.1 (Spring 2009), 313–30.

  ‘Akhrida’. (Ohrid, Macedonia). Drawing at head of chapter. Houghton MS Typ 55.7. 105.

  ‘with regard to scenes’. EL to ET, 5 October 1852, SL 116–17.

  ‘Bottini’s man’. D 24 August 1876.

  ‘he was glad’. EL to ET, 11 November 1855, Beinecke GEN MSS 601.

  ‘Bill’s sons had also sent’. D 18 November 1876.

  ‘Worked all day’. D 17 October 1876.

  ‘in converting memories’. EL to LW, 5 January 1862, 1862 L 216.

  ‘lines from “Ulysses”’. Houghton MS Typ 55.7. 88, Pitman 125. See also Cronin, ‘Edward Lear and Tennyson’s Nonsense’, 269.

  ‘It interests me much’. D 19 June 1875. Arthur Glennie (1803–90) was known for hazy Italianate landscapes.

  ‘Palm Trees at Bordighera’. (1884), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

  ‘the glory & beauty of the Turners’. D 1 August 1877.

  ‘giving armless pleasure’. EL to Henry Bruce, Lord Aberdare, 23 August 1877, SL 251.

  ‘dined with Lady Ashburton’. D 21 June 1880.

  ‘gilt leather’. EL to CF, 7 June 1880, LL 231.

  ‘When the 300 drawings are done’. EL to CF, 14 April 1881, LL 238–9.

  ‘no reproduction process’. See Pitman, Appendix, 214–15.

  ‘Mariana’. Four pictures: pine trees at Cannes; Albegna on the Genoese Riviera; the woods of India; temples almost standing in the water, Houghton MS Typ 55.7. 1–4.

  ‘drew Mount Athos’. Sketches, Houghton Library, MS Typ 55.7.

  ‘the Egg state’. EL to HH, 27 October 1880, Noakes 248. The small versions were at the Tennyson Research Centre until 1980 when they were separated and sold. A set of photographs was used by Judith Pitman for her book in 1988.

  ‘Chrysalisses’. D 20 November 1885; also see EL to Underhill, 19 August 1885, SL 270–2. A manuscript list of the drawings and lines is in Yale University Library, Tennyson Papers, Purchase from Colonel E. S. M. Prinsep/ Box 8/ 359

  ‘it is plain’. D 16 October 1880.

  ‘A looming bastion’. Houghton MS Typ 55.7.181, the Coast of Travancore, India.

  ‘Enoch Arden’. Houghton MS Typ 55.7 (200).

  ‘I try to look forward’. EL to CF, 14 April 1877, LL 203.

  ‘There is religion’. CF to EL, 29 September 1882, LL 270.

  ‘At 8.30’. D 15 December 1881.

  ‘Lear’s gallery’. Henry Strachey, quoted in Introduction, NSS ix.

  ‘a big Philae’. EL to HH, 24 September 1883, (Huntington) BL RP 800/1.

  ‘the following spring’. D 8 May 1884.

  ‘parrot’. For this detail, see Bevis, ‘Lines of Flight’, 63–6. The watercolours are at TRC, the drawings at Harvard, MS Typ 55.7.

  ‘The foreground’. EL to ET, 1 June 1884, TRC/Letters 5556.

  41. ‘As Great a Fool as Ever I Was’

&nbs
p; ‘Henry James’. The Portrait of a Lady, 1881, ch. 21.

  ‘such wretchedness’. Cheque to FL. D 22, 23, 24 January 1881.

  ‘Giuseppe’. D 20, 21 February 1881.

  ‘Watson’. D 28 April 1881. Selwyn published his ‘Later Letters of Edward Lear’ in the Cornhill Magazine, 1910, a reminiscence with copious extracts; this promoted a re-evaluation of Lear, in the Spectator, 26 March 1910.

  ‘When “grand old men”’. EL to CF, 9 February 1884, CN 452.

  ‘Should you be injuiced’. EL to CF, 30 April 1885, LL 335.

  ‘room full of work’, Derby to EL, January 1882, Shelves, 96–7.

  ‘in a world’. Derby diary, 14 January 1880, Liverpool 920 DER (15).

  ‘Advertisement-universal’ EL to 15th Earl of Derby, 26 June 1884, SL 265; for Derby’s response to earlier letter, Derby diary, 18 March 1884, Liverpool 920 DER (15).

  ‘trying to sell his work’. E.g. EL to Angela Burdett-Coutts, 7 February 1883, SL 260–1.

  ‘If he did not like’. LL, Introduction, xxxiii.

  ‘Victoria’. RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) 5 April 1882 (Princess Beatrice’s copies).

  ‘A friend warned Lear’. EL to CF, 30 March 1882, 10 April 1882, LL 258, 262.

  ‘Princess Royal’. D 2 August 1882.

  ‘the question of drink’. D 23 November 1880.

  ‘Lambi was sent home’. D 28 September, 8–10 October 1879.

  ‘Strange place Rome!’ D 13 May 1881.

  ‘as does the Sumatra’. D 15-16 May 1881.

  ‘queer & violent fits’. D 14 June 1882.

  ‘he disappeared’. D 30 June 1882.

  ‘more to be thankful for’. EL to CF, 2 July 1882, LL 265.

  ‘This place just now’. EL to CF, 31 August 1882, LL 266–7.

  ‘The Octopods and reptiles’. D 13 September 1882, CN 444.

  ‘Georgio is immensely better’. D 30 September 1882.

  ‘After he had done seven’. Henry Strachey, quoted in Introduction, NSS xii.

  ‘Watson may perhaps’. D 20 January 1883.

  ‘Alas, Alas!’ D 20, 21 March 1883.

  ‘nosegays’. D 21 March 1883.

  ‘a good woman’. EL to CF, 8 April 1883, Taunton.

  ‘absolutely delightful’. D 27 May 1883.

  ‘It is impossible’. D 14 June 1883.

  ‘wonderfully lovely’. D 30 June 1883.

  ‘poor Giorgio’s 3 sons’. D 24 July 1883.

  ‘O dear Giorgio’ Written later, at the bottom of D 8 August 1883.

  ‘stepping-stones’. Earlier mention, D 5 December 1858.

  ‘It is well’. EL to ET, 18 August 1883.

  ‘a dream and a waste’. D 3 March 1886.

  ‘the old Villa Emily’. D 23 February 1884.

  ‘John and Catherine Symonds’. D 13 May 1884. During their stay Symonds finished his study of medieval Latin poetry, Wine, Women and Song, dedicated to Robert Louis Stevenson.

  ‘a sack of hay’. EL to CF, 4 June 1884, LL 309.

  ‘Slave Emancipation’. EL to CF, 8 September 1884, LL 315.

  ‘Tennyson was made a peer’. EL to ET, 13 December 1883, TRC/Letters 5550. He was created Baron Tennyson of Aldworth and Freshwater in late 1883 and took his seat in the Lords in March 1884.

  ‘Centipede’, EL to CF, 23 December 1883, LL 293. Lear had finished the first set of two hundred drawings by late 1883.

  ‘directly-suddenly’. EL to Hallam, 21 November 1883, VNA transcript.

  ‘poetical and mysterious’. EL to CF, 28 September 1884, LL 318.

  ‘We know nothing’. EL to CF, 25 December 1882, LL 282.

  ‘Is there no medium’. EL to CF, 3 May 1885, Taunton, VNA transcript, Somerville.

  ‘But with the feathers of his tail’. CN 545, draft April 1885.

  ‘chess’. D 29 December 1885, 6 January 1886, etc.

  ‘if you only play JIGGS’. EL to Frank Underhill, 28 October 1885, SL n. 287.

  ‘He really lived’. FL to HT, 7 March 1888, TRC/Letters 5580.

  Amelia Edwards. Her review appeared in The Academy Magazine: EL to Amelia Edwards, 18, 26 October 1885, Amelia B. Edwards Papers 102, 103, Somerville.

  ‘any summer place’. EL to Underhill, 189 August 1885, SL 271.

  ‘dedication to Emily’. 21 November 1885, Pitman 33.

  ‘Barchester series’. D 14 November 1885.

  ‘Slept badly’. Carlingford Diary, 25–26 November 1885: VNA notes.

  ‘fell over Foss’. D 12 December 1885.

  ‘saying’. Carlingford Diary, 25 December 1885, VNA notes.

  ‘political talk’. D 5 January 1886.

  ‘Elegy’. D 31 January 1886.

  ‘Uncle Arly’. See CN 549–50. Drafts: 1873, on the endpapers of The Letters of Horace Walpole, vols 8 and 9 (Beinecke); amended 1884, finished February–March and copied 5 March 1886. MSS sent to Wilkie Collins, 7 March 1886, MS Typ 55.22.

  ‘Kept always in bed.’ D 22 February 1886.

  ‘I esteem it’. EL to Ruskin, 1 March 1886, SL 276.

  ‘Un-cleArly’. This point is made with his usual insight by Byrom, 219.

  ‘poetry’s lasting power’. For a comparison with Keats, ‘On the Grasshopper and the Cricket’ (1817), see Bevis, ‘Lines of Flight’, 66.

  ‘the last nonsense poem’. Sent to Fortescue, FL, Mrs Kettlewell & Lady Wyatt, 11 March 1886.

  42. Pax Vobiscum

  ‘Pax vobiscum’. He bought C. F. Gordon Cumming’s At Home in Fiji in June 1886: copy owned by Sir David Attenborough.

  ‘small sums’. List of legacies, 15 October 1877, on final page of 1877 diary.

  ‘He opened drawer after drawer’. Bowen transcript, Letter File 1, VNA, Somerville.

  ‘in 1929’. Sold at auction by the Lushington family, and mostly acquired by the dealers Cradock and Barnard. The Northbrook drawings of India, also sold in 1929, were eventually given to Houghton. See Donald C. Gallup, ‘Collecting Edward Lear’, Yale University Library Gazette 61 (April 1987), 125–42, and Hope Mayo, ‘The Edward Lear Collection at Harvard University’, Harvard Library Bulletin (2011), 69–124.

  ‘Earl of Derby’. Frank Lushington’s list is in his letter to the 15th Earl of Derby, 9 April 1889, Liverpool DER (15) 43/24/75. For Lear’s landscapes at Knowsley sent by FL, see Edward Morris, ‘Landscapes by Edward Lear’, in Fisher 185–209.

  ‘my hundred authors’. Letter from John Ruskin to the Pall Mall Gazette, 15 February 1886.

  ‘influence’. See the excellent essays in the final section of Play: Anne Stillman on T. S. Eliot, Adam Piette on Joyce, Seamus Perry on Auden, Will May on Stevie Smith, Stephen Ross on John Ashbery. (Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop were also admirers.) Also see Marco Graziosi’s article, ‘Mr Lear, Humpty Dumpty and Finnegan’, Bosh, 8 January 2011, and posts on Lennon, McCartney, 4 January, 25 May 2016, and Syd Barrett, 27 December 2015. Among many illustrators, Maurice Sendak gave ‘A Book of Nonsense’ to one of his creatures to hold in Where the Wild Things Are.

  ‘the big magnolia flowers’. D June 1886.

  ‘Brianza’. D 2 July 1886.

  ‘sadly aged’. FL to HT, 14 November 1886, TRC/Letters 5569; see also FL to Lady Reid, 6 November 1886.

  ‘He only said’. EL to CF, 10 December 1886, LL 353.

  ‘There!’ EL to HT, 30 May 1887, TRC/Letters 5573.

  ‘the Colony’. EL to Wilkie Collins, 7 March 1886, Pierpont Morgan.

  ‘The sad, bent, loosely-clad figure’. L xv–xvi.

  ‘Hardlines!’ D 13 January 1887.

  ‘a very great blessing’. EL to CF, 1 April 1887, LL 354.

  ‘Agnes Pears’. D 20 April 1887.

  ‘Foss always here’. D 1 February 1887.

  ‘had his photograph taken’. D 28 April 1887.

  ‘more nice and charming’. D 2 April 1887.

  ‘sent him a volume’. D 20 June 1887.

  ‘Paul Nash’. Gussie m. Thomas Nash, who was writing a life of her father. Note on title page states that she gave this to Lear, 4 Apr
il 1887, and to Paul Nash c.1908. Princeton.

  ‘platinotype’. The new, platinum photographic print process, patented in 1873.

  ‘very artistic treatment’. Estes to HT 8 May 1887, TRC/Letters 5578; D 7 May 1887, and EL to HT 27 April 1887, TRC/Letters 5572.

  ‘private edition’. Published by Boussod, Valadon & Co. in London. It contained sixteen full-page illustrations. Pitman, 31 n.

  ‘in a vast tantrum’. D 23 December 1886.

  ‘pigeons’. EL to the Hon. Mrs Augusta Parker, 18 June 1887. SL 281, also D 22 May 1887.

  ‘the same goldengreen’. D 3 July 1887.

  ‘rumbly bumbly’. D 28 July 1887.

  ‘the affectionate regular correspondence’. SL xviii.

  ‘deep below the Figtree’. EL to Aberdare, 29 November 1887, SL 282. ‘Qui sotto e sepolto il mio buon/Gatto Foss. Era 30 anni in casa/mia, e mori il 26 Novembre 1887, di eta 31 anni’.

  ‘Very absurd’. EL to CF, 21 October 1887, SHC DD/SH/62/337 (2/641).

  ‘a great and ridiculous bore’. EL to CF, 10 November 1887, LL 358.

  ‘an inexhaustible profusion’. Spectator, 8 September 1887, 11.

  ‘Very nice indeed’. EL to CF, 10 November 1887, LL 358.

  ‘by way of a leavetaking’. FL to HT, 4 February 1888. TRC/Letters 5577.

  ‘Mio caro Giuseppe’. FL to CF, 6 February 1888, LL 362, translated by Constance Strachey.

  ‘It was most peaceful’. Mrs Hassall to Constance Stracey, 21 January 1911.

  ‘none of his friends’. FL to HT, 8 March 1888, TRC/Letters 5580. Frank’s affectionate obituary appeared in the Saturday Review, 4 February 1888.

  INDEX

  Numbers in italics refer to pages with illustrations.

  Aberdare, Henry Bruce, first Lord, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

  Ackermann, Rudolph, 1, 2, 3, 4

  Acland, Peter Leopold, 1