Edward Lear in the Third Millenium

Posted on June 12, 2015 by Marco Graziosi

I have just received a copy of the special issue of RSV: Rivista di Studi Vittoriani devoted to “Edward Lear in the Third Millenium: Explorations into his Art and Writing” edited by Raffaella Antinucci and Anna Enrichetta Soccio; here is a list of the essays that have now been added to the bibliography:

Colley, Ann C. “Edward Lear and Victorian Animal Portraiture.” RSV: Rivista di Studi Vittoriani 34-35 (2013): 11-26.

Marroni, Francesco. “Edward Lear and Albania.” RSV: Rivista di Studi Vittoriani 34-35 (2013): 27-49. [Academia.edu]

Dilworth, Thomas. “Lear’s Italian Limericks.” RSV: Rivista di Studi Vittoriani 34-35 (2013): 51-78.

Lodge, Sara. “My Dear DAddy: Edward Lear and William Holman Hunt.” RSV: Rivista di Studi Vittoriani 34-35 (2013): 79-99.

Bruni Roccia, Gioiella. “Edward Lear’s Metaphorical Mind: A Cognitive Approach to A Book of Nonsense.” RSV: Rivista di Studi Vittoriani 34-35 (2013): 101-18.

Tigges, Wim. “Edward lear’s Limericks and the Aesthetics of Nonsense.” RSV: Rivista di Studi Vittoriani 34-35 (2013): 119-38.

Williams, James. “Edward Lear’s Luminous Prose.” RSV: Rivista di Studi Vittoriani 34-35 (2013): 139-58.

Antinucci, Raffaella. “‘… in those few bright (Abruzzi) days’: Edward Lear’s Landscaping Gaze and the Discovery of Abruzzo.” RSV: Rivista di Studi Vittoriani 34-35 (2013): 159-88.

Soccio, Anna Enrichetta. “Struggling with Genres: Edward Lear’s Short Stories.” RSV: Rivista di Studi Vittoriani 34-35 (2013): 189-201.

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Edward Lear, Nice (1865)

Posted on June 11, 2015 by Marco Graziosi

el_nice-s

Edward Lear, Nice, France.
Pen and brown ink and watercolour over pencil heightened with white;
inscribed in ink lower right: Nice. / 2.= 3. P.M. / 8 January 1865 / (18) the 4ground olive section / brown dark – off all the distance; further inscribed with the artist’s colour notes
370 by 543 mm.

Lear drew this landscape from life in the early afternoon of 8th January 1865. He had arrived in the French Riviera in November of the previous year and had decided to spend the winter there, before returning to London in April.

This drawing belongs to Lady Evans, in whose family it has been since the early 20th Century. Lady Evans was married to the late Sir Charles Evans (1918-1995), who was the deputy-leader of the triumphant Everest expedition of 1953.

Sotheby’s.

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Mrs Jayfer, Millais, Dicky Doyle and Wilkie Collins in an Edward Lear Letter

Posted on June 9, 2015 by Marco Graziosi

Among the many subjects touched in the letter to Henry Bruce, Lord Aberdare transcribed below from the scans available on the Florida State University website, is Edward Lear’s statement that the second part of “Mr and Mrs Discobbolos” was suggested by Wilkie Collins (see previous post), and that he was thinking of publishing a new collection of his nonsense songs with additions; he also mentions Richard Doyle as a “wonderfully beautiful artist,” and complains of the difficulty he has in “getting rid” of some of his paintings:

Villa Tennyson
Sanremo

25th. Septer. 1884.

My dear Lord Aberdare,

Your letter of the 22nd has just reached me: I had already known of your choice, both from Williams (Foord’s) & from Drummond’s who announced your payment of £31.8.0 ― for which many thanks. I think you chose admirably; the Campagna Arch had long been one of my chief favorites. Ceylon scenery is always very difficult to render, but I think the specimen you have taken is about one of my best of the kind.

Thank you ^[also] for mentioning the spottiottibottiness of the Corsica Mounts. In writing to Williams this day I will mention the matter.

Regarding the 4 large pictures, which I tried to render with fidelity and contshientiumsness, I am glad you like them. I live still in hopes that the Duke of Westminster (who has written to me that he is going to visit Wardour St.,) may buy one or two ― particularly the Gwalior. I am thankful that I have never known what it is to envy anyone, but it cannot be otherwise than strange to me that with all my labour I find a difficulty in getting rid of such works, while Johnny Millais gets 1,000, 2,000, or 3,000£ for what costs him hardly any labour at all. Yet I should not use the word “strange” ― for Fashion explains all things odd, & besides Johnny M.’s works have great talent.

For all that, (though the technical workmanship is very inferior & pottering) the real likenesses of such places as Ravenna Gwalior & Argos seem to claim 300 guineas each, not unrighteaously if compared with a portrait head for a thousand pound.

Of the 4th painting ― there have been frequent talks of 30 people who admire the Laureate’s works, buying it for 10.10 each, as a wedding present for his son. I however do not choose to move actively in this matter.

Thank you also for your advice or confirmation of my suggestion about the Advertisements. Williams of Foord’s says the same; ― he will on no account resort to the “Sandwich men.”

I am negotiating with Hogg of 32 Charing Cross about a republication of the Corsica ― small ― in 2 vols. ― And, if possible, of all the Nonsense Songs & stories (not the “old persons”) in one vol., with additions. You, for instance have never read what I wrote from Wilkie Collins’s suggestion ^[viz.] ― the 2nd part of Mr. & Mrs. Discobbolos. ――― nor have you ever come to know the wisdom of Mrs. Jayfer.

(Mrs. Jayfer said, it’s safer
If you walk along a Road,
First to fill your shoes with pepper,
Lest you tread upon a toad.
For when the Toad the pepper smells
He will squeeble awful yells,
And ^[far] in his remote abode,
Live, a disappointed toad.) ――

I have a very long letter from C. Fortescue yesterday [sic]. The stuff in the papers about his resignation & going as Ambassador to Constantinople I hardly required to be told was bosh. Frank (Lord) Baring writes: if his Father don’t return in October, he will come out this way, & join him at Cairo. I do not at all like what I hear of Evelyn B.’s health: ― he has had so much illness in India & elsewhere that I am anxious to know that he gets stronger.

I wonder if you saw much of Dicky Doyle in his later days. He was ― to my taste, a wonderfully beautiful Artist.

Isn’t it strange that my eyesight keeps what it is? And I am now constantly at work on the 200 AT illustrations, which I rather expect will be published as small photographs, &, if successful, as enlarged Autotypes later.

As you affirm that Mountain Ash is a real town, I am bound to believe you. But would it not be better then to separate the ideas of town & tree by writing the name differently ― say for instance, MOUNTY GNASH?

My kindest remembrances to all at Duffryn. Yrs affly,

Edward Lear.

MS letter HAB 1884-09-25 1

MS letter HAB 1884-09-25 2

MS letter HAB 1884-09-25 3

MS letter HAB 1884-09-25 4

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An Edward Lear Letter to Wilkie Collins

Posted on June 8, 2015 by Marco Graziosi

The friendship between Edward Lear, the Victorian poet of nonsense verses, and Wilkie Collins, the novelist, has long been well-known. Yet, strangely enough, it was a friendship of which, as Collins’ biographer tells us, “hardly a trace remains.”{1} We know that Lear, ill and depressed, wrote at the end of 1881 to Hubert Congreve that he would continue to correspond in the future only with those “I have been in the habit of writing to since 1850 ― 32 years.” Among those he named was Wilkie Collins.{2} That Collins had written at least once to Lear is seen in a single reference in a letter written by Lear to Lord Carlingford on January 7, 1884, in which he said he had received a “long and very nice letter from Wilkie Collins. . . .”{3} We are told that Lear sent to Collins a copy of John Ruskin’s letter to the Pall Mall Gazette praising the nonsense poet,{4} and that Lear sent to Collins a manuscript copy of his last nonsense-poem ” Uncle Arly.”{5} In view of all this, it is extremely odd that in the two volumes of Lear’s published letters not one to Collins appears. In the J. Pierpont Morgan Library there has been for some years an autograph letter from Lear to Collins; so far as I can ascertain this letter has never been published. For some unaccountable reason those who have written on Lear and on Collins have seemingly been unaware of its existence. If it is, as seems very probable, the only letter from Lear to Collins in existence, it should be of interest not only to students of both Lear and Collins but also, because of a reference in it, to those of Ruskin. This letter of two and one-half pages may very well be the one in which Lear enclosed the copy of ” Uncle Arly,” for that poem may be the “absurdity ” which he mentions in the first paragraph. An exact transcription of the letter follows:

7. March 1886
Villa Tennyson
Sanremo.
My dear Wilkie,
“Ee’n in our ashes live” &c &c ― so, ― though I have been in bed some 14 weeks, I have nonetheless written an absurdity which I fancy you may like ― whereby I send it.
The acute Bronchitis which I began with, Dr Hassall I am grateful to say has pretty well abolished. Not so the congestion, which with its dreadful cough ― is trying enough. Yet many thousands suffer more, & I may be very thankful that only increasing weakness is my greatest drawback.
One of my oldest friends, Fortescue, (now Ld Carlingford) was here for two months & with me almost all day daily. And other friends come & are coming from Cannes, Hyères ― &c. & I have lots of books, (many by one Wilkie Collins,) & most attentive & able servants ― to feed me or lift me in or out of bed. Of what is called the “Colony” here I know ― I am happy to say nothing. Neither perpetual church services ― (high or low ― candlestix or cursings ―) are to my taste, nor are balls & Lawn Tennis among my weaknesses.
Mr Ruskin (vide Pall Mall Gazette Febr 15 ―) has of late greatly exalted me, & he is now taking much interest, he writes most kind letters, ― about yeverlasting & never terminated AT or Alfred Tennyson illustrations ― still let us hope ― to come out in Autotype ― about the year 4810. Meanwhile, if I go off in one of these terrible phitz of coughing, this may be the last note you will ever be bothered by from, Your’s affly,
Edward Lear{6}

David Shusterman
University of Kansas
{1} Kenneth Robinson, Wilkie Collins (New York, 1952), p. 93.
{2} Later Letters of Edward Lear, ed. Lady Strachey (London, 1911), p. 34.
{3} Ibid., pp. 296-297.
{4} Angus Davidson, Edward Lear Landscape Painter and Nonsense Poet (London, 1938), p. 265.
{5} Robinson, p. 93. [See a MS of the poem]
{6} Quoted by permission of the J. Pierpont Morgan Library

Modern Language Notes 71.4, April 1956, pp. 262-264.

Catalogue entry for this letter at the Pierpont Morgan Library. They have another Lear letter to Collins, of 25 May 1887 “concerning his poor health, and the sale of his large ‘Argos picture’ to Trinity college, Cambridge― ‘a matter of high honour & pleasure to me’.”

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The First English Limerick?

Posted on June 2, 2015 by Marco Graziosi

The text set as No. XXII in Michael East’s Second Set of Madrigals 1606 is an almost perfect limerick (East, xii and 115-20; Fellowes, 91{1}); a fact which I believe has not been noted before.

The piece runs:

O metaphysical tobacco,
Fetched as far as from Morocco,
Thy searching fume
Exhales the rheum,
O metaphysical tobacco.

and it can be seen that it conforms in every respect to the ‘rules’ of the limerick, except that it changes to an iambic rhythm for lines 3 and 4, Like Edward Lear’s limericks, but unlike most modern examples, it uses the first line as the concluding line.

The tone and diction of the piece are at odds with the other, more courtly lyrics used in East’s collection and this, taken in consideration with the more homophonic and chordal music to which it is set, seems to anticipate the fashions of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the era of ‘Wit and Drollery’. Indeed it is surprising that a precurson to the limerick-form has not already been discovered amongst the glees, catches, and ‘Pills to Purge Melancholy’ of that period. Now with this example of the form in front of us the absence of any proto-limericks from the eighteenth century is even more unaccountable.

John Leonard
University of Queensland.

Notes and Queries, n.s. 40.2 [Volume 238], June 1993, pp. 207-208.

As you may have realised, I’m throwing away tons of paper and scanning and ocr-ing my Lear-related photocopies: publishing some of this material here is a good way to make the material easy to find. Bonus: you can listen to Michael East’s ‘limerick’ here, or get a glimpse of the score and listen to a MIDI version here.

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Edward Lear and Charles Kingsley

Posted on June 1, 2015 by Marco Graziosi

From Notes and Queries, n.s. 16.6 (Vol. 214), June 1969, pp. 216-217:

An Edward Lear Letter to Charles Kingsley

Apparently, Edward Lear and Charles Kingsley never became personally acquainted. No records are presently known to attest sucha relationship.

However, after the successful appearance in 1871 of Lear’s Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and Alphabets, Kingsley (as did others) requested permission from the author to use quotations from the book. In response Lear wrote the following letter explaining the procedure for obtaining such approval, expressing praise for the works of Kingsley, and referring to a previous inability to take advantage of an opportunity for meeting the rector of Eversley.

Villa Emily.
San Remo, Italy.{1}
8 Novbr 1871

Dear Sir,

I have only this morning received your note, — though dated some time back, — and hasten to answer it. I am sorry I cannot do so exactly as I like. For, owing to a vast number of requests such as that you have sent me. I have been obliged to leave the arrangements of permissions &c entirely in my publisher’s hands, — and as he has already communicated three [sic for “these”?] to several persons, I may not even interfere with what has been settled. I have by this post written to Mr. Bush,{2} begging him to release this to you together with anotice of what he has written to others on the same subject.

Your kind remarks as to the pleasure my little book has given you delight me; I have often thought I should like to thank you for so much satisfaction given me by your many works — (perhaps above all — “Water Babies,” which I firmly believe to be all true,) and I ought to have done so at the Grenfells of Taplow{3} long ago — but I was not able to go there when asked to have the pleasure of meeting you. And I half feel that I am somewhat churlish in thus officially as it were turning you over to my publisher; only that (after a larger number of similar requests than you can imagine,) — I have declared I would abide sic his decisions.

Believe me,
Dear Sir,
Yours obliged and truly,
Edward Lear{4}

To the Rev. Charles Kingsley
Eversley

Fred L. Standley.
Florida State University

{1} Lear’s newly constructed home; for details see Angus Davidson, Edward Lear: Landscape Painter and Nonsense Poet (New York, 1939), pp. 209-210.

{2} Robert John Bush, publisher of Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and Alphabets (London, 1871).

{3} The family of Pascoe Grenfell, M.P., of Taplow Court, relatives of KIngsley’s wife, Francis Eliza.

{4} This autograph letter is in the Childhood in Poetry Collection of Robert Manning Strozier Library of Florida State University and is reprinted by permission of the Curator, John Mackay Shaw.

 

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Edward Lear, Ravenna

Posted on May 22, 2015 by Marco Graziosi

el_ravenna-s

Edward Lear, Ravenna.
Inscribed ‘Ravenna.’ (lower left). Wwatercolour and gum arabic. 16.5 x 26.3cm (6 1/2 x 10 3/8in).

Bonhams.

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Edward Lear, View of Abu Simbel (1867)

Posted on May 21, 2015 by Marco Graziosi

el_abu-simbel-s

Edward Lear, View of Abu Simbel.
Signed with monogram and dated 1884 (lower right), inscribed ‘The Temples of Ipsambl. Feby 8. 1867′ (lower left), further inscribed ’14. Temples of Ipsambl.’ on the reverse. Watercolour. 9 x 17.5cm (3 9/16 x 6 7/8in).

Provenance: Private collection, UK.

Edward Lear visited southern Egypt in early 1867, executing the present lot on 8 February. In a letter to Lady Waldegrave, dated 9 March of the same year, he describes ‘Aboo Simbel which took my breath away'[1]. Painted from the opposite bank of the Nile, the present watercolour depicts both temples at Abu Simbel, built over 3,200 years ago by Ramesses II as monuments to himself and his queen, Nefertari. For centuries the temples were seemingly forgotten and covered with sand until their rediscovery by Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt (1784-1817) in 1813. It is said that ‘Abu Simbel’ was the name of the local boy who guided the first re-discoverers to the site, and later this was the name given to the complex.

When the construction of the Aswan Dam began in 1960, it became apparent that the ancient temples would soon be submerged and destroyed by the rising waters of the newly created Lake Nasser. An international fund-raising campaign by UNESCO led to their relocation to higher ground – a highly complex and costly process that was finally completed in 1968. Thus, the present lot shows the original location of the Abu Simbel temples.

[1] Vivien Noakes, Edward Lear: Selected Letters, London, 1988, pp. 208-209.

Bonhams.

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Edward Lear, Malacca Parakeet

Posted on May 20, 2015 by Marco Graziosi

el_malacca-p-s

Edward Lear, A Malacca Parakeet, Palaeornis Malaccensis, an illustration for Prideaux J. Selby’s Natural History of Parrots, Edinburgh,W. H. Lizars; 1836.

Signed and inscribed ‘E. Lear fct.’ (vertically from branch), inscribed ‘Plate 3d’ (upper left), and ‘Palaeornis Malaccensis/Plate’ (lower centre), indistinctly inscribed along lower framing edge. Watercolour and pencil. 18.5 x 11cm (7 5/16 x 4 5/16in).

Provenance: with Thos. Agnew & Sons Ltd., London. Private collection, UK.

The modern term for the Malacca Parakeet is the Long-tailed Parakeet (Psittacula longicauda). The breed was discovered by the Dutch physician and naturalist Pieter Boddaert (1730-1795).

Bonhams.

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Edward Lear, Ravenna (1867)

Posted on May 15, 2015 by Marco Graziosi

el_ravenna-67-s

Edward Lear, ‘Ravenna.’
Inscribed and dated ‘Ravenna.May 5.1867.8AM.’ (lower left), numbered ‘(13)’ (lower right) and inscribed with various colour notes. Pen and watercolour. 15.4 x 25cm (6 1/16 x 9 13/16in).

Bonhams.

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