Edward Lear
Autograph Letter Signed, to the wife of painter William Holman Hunt, explaining that the delayed reply to “Daddy’s” letter [Lear’s nickname for Mr. Hunt] was due to illness, expressing sympathy for the troubles of John Everett Millais and [Edward] Burne-Jones, hoping to forget his recent miseries, mentioning his Tennyson landscape works and discussing a new 15-foot work depicting “Enoch Arden’s Island.” 4 pages, 8vo, written on a folded sheet; marginal markings spanning third and latter portion of fourth paragraphs likely in Mrs. Hunt’s hand, minor soiling along folds, faint scattered foxing.
Mendrisio, 28 August 1881.
“. . . Please thank Daddy for his letter. By yours . . . I find he has still to work very hard, & I fear by your having taken a house at Fulham [London] that you see as yet no near prospect of rest–or have you finally given up all thoughts of returning to Jerusalem?
“. . . My trouble & illness had to do with leaving the old house, & suffering from the glare of the immense white building opposite . . . . But I hope when I return to be able to forget the misery of the past 2 years, & to think as little as possible of the nasty people who caused it.
“Besides the Tennyson Landscapes, I am going to try to paint one subject more, 15 feet long!! Do not laugh. It is a principle with me, that though a man be never so old, he ought not to fold his arms & give up all energy & adopt moulderings; but on the contrary keep himself, if possible, alive for a little extra time, by making new interest & working harder.
“. . . [I]n this new subject, (which is already much backed up by immeasurable studies,) I introduce every kind of flower & tree I saw in India & Ceylon &c &c. And if any Cricket chirping says, ‘it is impossible that all those should grow in one place!’ I shall say, ‘Yes, they do.’ ‘Where?’ ‘In Enoch Arden’s Island!’ ‘And where is that?’ ‘215 miles from the port Enoch’s ship was going to.’ ‘And where then was that port?’ ‘Just 215 miles from Enoch Arden’s island!’ And that is all I shall say. . . .”
“Enoch Arden’s Island,” inspired by Alfred Tennyson’s poem, Enoch Arden, was a large work on canvas begun by Lear in 1876–but never completed–and worked on intermittently until his death in 1888. Although the work was lost, small pencil sketches and watercolor studies exist, showing dense foliage in the foreground extending to a vast and misty expanse of trees in the background.
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