A Blog of Bosh

If you thought the runcible spoon (below left: a Victorian example by the renowned manufacturer Elkington & Co. Birmingham, ca 1880; right: George III Silver Runcible Spoon/Fork, John Hutson, London, 1800) was a strange object…

Take a look at this modern gadget, the Pizzafork:

(Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing, 19 September 2005.)

Michael Montgomery, Lear’s Italy. In the Footsteps of Edward Lear. London: Cadogan Guides, 2005.

When I ordered the book I expected a travelogue comparing present-day Italian places with what Edward Lear saw in his extensive travels (endless migrations) across the country, similar to Michael Booth’s Just As Well I’m Leaving. To the Orient with Hans Christian Andersen, whose author follows the Danish writer on a tour of Italy and the East (Reviews in The Observer, New Statesman, and The Independent).

After a few pages, however, it is obvious that this is not the case; Michael Montgomery, who is writing a screenplay about the “tragic story of Lear’s lengthy and ultimately unfullfilled love affair with Gussie Bethell”, is only interested in Lear’s life and does not know, or care about Italy. In the whole book I spotted no more that three personal remarks about the country, and their quality does not inspire one to wish for more, Mr. Montgomery clearly only has stereotyped opinions of Italy (which also transpires in the very short Independent review), so after quoting Lear’s first impressions of Naples and the asssault on his senses, he writes:

Barring only the advent of cars and cigarettes, and the brooding presence of the Camorra, it seems that little has changed in Naples over the past 150 years (42).

Apart from this, the book is not a disappointment. It strings together passages from Lear’s travel books, letters and diary, providing a lot of new material. In particular the chapters on Lear’s early travels in Florence, Rome and Naples are in great part extracted from never-before-printed letters to his sister Ann and later chapters include long extracts from his equally unpublished diary.

The book is stricly focused on voyage impressions so for the most part it only includes Lear’s observations on landscape, hotels and sometimes the general character of the people, and relates some of his, usually already famous, adventures. Readers interested in Edward Lear, and I do not see who else would buy the book, would probably have preferred to get more about his feelings and personal relationships (Lushington, Fortescue and Baring are mentioned only in passing, though they were probably the most important people in Lear’s life) as well as of his funny letters and drawings.

Someone made curious by the announcement in the inside front cover of the January 1870 issue of Our Young Folks (number 61) that “another new contributor, a distinguished English artist, will furnish some laughable verses” would have been happy to find more details in the last page (72):

We shall give, in the February number, a capital specimen of nonsense-poetry, by Edward Lear, an English artist. It will be followed by others from the same hand. The author is one of Tennyson’s intimate friends, and the fact that these verses have been read and laughed over by the poet and his children, adds to their interest.

It takes a genius to write real nonsense. Few besides the immortal “Mother Goose” have ever had the gift of doing so, in a manner acceptable to children. These will be acknowledged genuine by all who can appreciate the ludicrous.

Lear had agreed to let Fields, Osgood, & Co. print some of his as-yet-unpublished nonsense songs in November 1869, after sending copies of his poems to the publisher’s wife, Mrs. Fields, on 14 October 1868 (The Complete Verse and Other Nonsense, edited by V. Noakes, London, Penguin, 2001, pp. 500, 506 and 510). The time of the anonymous publication of the Book of Nonsense was long gone:

You will I know kindly print my name in full “Edward Lear,” wh. will, when I get the Magazine, delight my feeble mind, & console me for remaining in this cold foggy place. After all, small as it may be, one does some good by contributing to the laughter of little children, if it is a harmless laughter.

(Edward Lear to James Fields, 18 November 1869; Vivien Noakes, Edward Lear: The Life of a Wanderer, revised edition,Stroud, Sutton, 2004, p. 203.)

Our Young Folks would publish three of Lear’s most famous songs, with nice original illustrations by J.H. Howard. The first to appear was The Owl and the Pussy-Cat (number 62, February 1870, pp. 111-2):

The March issue (number 63, pp. 146-7) presented The Duck and the Kangaroo:

The sad tale of The Daddy-Long-Legs and the Fly would close the series in April (number 64, pp. 209-12):

Lear received his copies of the magazine in May 1870 and in August he wrote to Fields: “I thought the 3 poems very nicely printed, and capitally illustrated.” (The Complete Nonsense, p. 501.)

Kim Dyer has written to let me know that a new album by Al Stewart, called A Beach Full of Shells (Appleseed Records, 2005), has just been released and it includes a tribute to “Mr Lear”.

You can listen to a passage on Amazon.com; the reviews are very favourable.

Edward Lear has always been a favourite with song writers, as the sadly incomplete Edward Lear and Music page demonstrates, and appeared as a character in the Beatles’ “Paperback Writer”:

Paul wrote “Paperback Writer” as another of his “letter songs.” It is about a novelist who is begging a publisher to publish his thousand page book. In its literal sense, it’s about a paperback writer who has written a novel based on another novel, about a paperback writer. Lennon’s contribution to this song was the phrase “a man named Lear,” and the reference to “The Daily Mail.” The name Lear came from the Victorian painter Edward Lear, who wrote nonsense poems that Lennon loved, and the Daily Mail was the regular newspaper Lennon received. It was recorded on April 13 and 14, 1966.
Oh Look Out! Part 16, 1962-1966 – The Red Album by John T. Marck

BTW, you can listen to two very early recordings of The Owl and the Pussy-cat (Columbia Quartet, 1902, and Haydn Quartet, 1904) in the Sounds section of the site.