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WAYNESTATDUNIVERSITYUBRARY
TttDELOlSDRAMSEYCOLLECTION

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LETTERS OF EDWARD LEAR

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LETTERS
OF
EDWARD LEAR
Author of “THE BOOK OF NONSENSE*’
TO
CHICHESTER FORTESCUE
LORD CARLINGFORD
AND
FRANCES COUNTESS WALDEGRAVE
EDITED BY
LADY STRACHEY
OF
SUTTON COURT
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK s
DUFFIELD & COMPANY
36-38 WEST 37th STREET

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(All rights reserved.)

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E. L., ON HIS TRAVELS IN GREECE.
Illyrian woodlands, echoing falls
Of water, sheets of summer glass,
The long divine Pene'ian pass,
The vast Akrokeraunian walls,
Tomohrit, Athos, all things fair,
With such a pencil, such a pen,
You shadow forth to distant men,
I read and felt that I was there :
And trust me while I turn’d the page,
And track’d you still on classic ground,
I grew in gladness till I found
My spirits in the golden age.
For me the torrent ever pour’d
And glisten’d—here and there alone
The broad-limb’d gods at random thrown
By fountain-urns ;—and Naiads oar’d
A glimmering shoulder under gloom
Of cavern pillars ; on the swell
The silver lily heaved and fell ;
And many a slope was rich in bloom
From him that on the mountain lea
By dancing rivulets fed his flocks,
To him who sat upon the rocks,
And fluted to the morning sea.
Tennyson.

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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ....
CHAPTER I
ROME, GREECE, AND ENGLAND .
CHAPTER II
CORFfr AND ENGLAND
CHAPTER III
CORFfr .....
CHAPTER IV
PALESTINE, CORFIJ, AND ENGLAND .
CHAPTER V
ROME REVISITED
CHAPTER VI
ROME AND A WINTER IN ENGLAND

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Letters of Edward Lear
CHAPTER VII
PAGE
ITALY AND SWITZERLAND . . . . *185
CHAPTER VIII
CORFU . • . • . • 206
CHAPTER IX
MALTA AND ENGLAND . . . . . *243
CHAPTER X
CORFU . . . . . . 256
CHAPTER XI
ENGLAND . . . . . . . 281
CHAPTER XII
LAST VISIT TO CORFU . . . . .297
APPENDIX—
PICTURES PAINTED, 1840-1877 . . . . 311
INCOMPLETE LIST OF THE WORKS ILLUSTRATED BY LEAR 319
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LIST OF PLATES
Edward Lear and Chichester Fortescue (Photogravure)
Frontispiece
Front a Daguerreotype taken at Red House, Ardee, September, 1857.
Pentedatilo ...... Facing page 1
From Lear's "Journal of a Landscape Painter in Calabria'’
(R. Bentley, 1852).
The Mountains of Thermopylae (Coloured Re
production). . . . . . „ 12
From a painting by Edward Lear in the possession of Lady
Slrachey.
Sulii (Coloured Reproduction) ... „ 20
From Lear's “Journal of a Landscape Painter in Albania"
(R. Bentley, 1851).
GlOIOSA . . . . . „ 28
From Lear’s “ Journal of a Landscape Painter in Calabria ”
(R. Bentley, 1852).
Frances Countess Waldegrave, .et. 29 . „ 36
From a coloured lithograph of a crayon drawing by J. K. Swinton.
Tempe (Coloured Reproduction) . . . ,, 40
From Lear’s “ Journal of a Landscape Painter in Albania ”
(R. Bentley, 1851).
San Vittorino . . . . . . „ 50
E. Lear del. et lith.
Mrs. Ruxton . . ’ . • . „ 54
From a photograph of a picture.

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To Lord Tennyson my social tlumks are due for Ms Mnd
permission m allowing to be included in tMs book photographs
%f*7 °/77 t c ‘ ures f rom "Poems by Alfred Lord Tennyson
iSsT ft r E i w ? rd L Lear ” Thi * work was brought out in
1889, after Lear s death, by Boussod, Valedon a- Co. The edition
hun f red copies ’ and each co & was si s md by
the poet. For the sake of his old friend and to partly fulfil one
ofthe most cherished objects of Lear's later life, which, alas! he
never was able himself to carry out, this book was published,
containing twenty-two out of the many pictures drawn and
specially put aside for this purpose by Lear. I am also
fortunate m being able to include such a poem as “ To B L
on his Travels in Greece,” written by the poet after Lear's
‘Z!nv7 aU tl hatC ° Untry ' M0S ‘ rmders *he foem, but
many do not know to whom it was addressed. To these will
come the surprise and to all the pleasure, of finding these verses
Z n 7 ^ lU a dedicator y 3ense , both to the words of the
IhTsff nZ ° tkS aCC ° Un ‘ ke ^ ves of “journey over
the same ground they commemorate.

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INTRODUCTION
"True humour is sensibility in the most catholic and
deepest sense; but it is the sport of sensibility; wholesome
and perfect therefore; as it were, the playful, teasing fond
ness of a mother to her child.”—Carlyle.
I T is said that humour is allied to sadness,
and that it is this quality which defines
it from its kindred talent, wit. The writer
of the following letters was a master of the
former art, as well as a painter of beautiful
and original pictures.
The English and American public of the
present day, only know Edward Lear through
his “Books of Nonsense.” To only a cultivated
few and the survivors of a past generation
who possess many of his works, are his
pictures existent. But practically to none is
known the depth of character and person
ality of the man who wrote these rhymes
and painted these pictures. How few have
realised the vein of sadness and other
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Letters of Edward Lear
qualities, which went to make Lear’s humour
of the highest order and his pictures of
special interest. Therefore it has seemed
to me that these letters to one of his
most intimate and life-long friends, would be
acceptable to the many whose childhood was
associated and made glad by his inimitable
fun and frolic, and that these should be
given some idea of his real life-work—his
paintings, to which he dedicated every energy
of his being. Besides, the total want' of
knowledge by them of the man himself, has
led I believe to a growing and rising
interest in his doings and sayings, his aims
and ambitions, as distinct from the mere
writer of the immortal nonsense verses.
Those who in their childhood loved him
for the joyousness he gave them, now in
their more mature days would be interested
to know what kind of man was the writer
of “The Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo,” “The Owl
and the Pussy Cat,” and the verses and
rhymes he brought to such perfection.
These letters to my uncle and aunt, Lord
Carlingford and his wife Frances Countess
Waldegrave, show the man in every possible,
vein of humour, both grave and gay, and
also show forth a most lovable personality.
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Introduction
I, who knew him from my earliest years,
remember how he attracted me at all periods
of my life. From the time when he drew for
me an alphabet when I scarce can remember
his so doing, when he sang with little voice
but with intense feeling and individuality, songs
by Tennyson his friend, which he had himself
put to charming music; to the time when he
sent me an exquisite framed water-colour
drawing—a delicious harmony in blue of
the “ Vale of Tempe ”—as a wedding gift.
And later still when we spent a few weeks
near him in his San Remo villa home in
1880, though much aged and broken by
worries and health, still the same sad whim
sical personality and undefinable charm of the
man attracted as ever, and one day to us was
literally shown forth, in his singing of an
air to which he had set the “ Owl and the
Pussy Cat.” But of this rendering, alas!
there is no record, as not knowing music
though a musician by ear, he had been
unable to transcribe it to paper, and grudged
£>5 he said it would cost to employ
another to do so. And again the last time
I saw him, as we passed the San Remo rail
way station on our way north from Genoa
to England. It was a Sunday, and he
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happened to be walking dreamily away from
the station as our train slowed into it, but
out of earshot of our calls. The sad, bent,
loosely-clad figure with hands clasped behind
him, we did not know was walking away
from us then and for ever, for we never saw
him again.
The following letters date only from 1847,
therefore a few pages of what is known of
Lear’s history and kindred before this period,
will not come amiss in this introduction.
There is a singular dearth of information
on these points, considering the size of the
family to which Lear belonged. Of its
representatives now I have only heard of one
member in England, and that one was, I
believe, a colonial born, and a sister’s
great-grandson.
Edward Lear, the youngest of twenty-one
children, belonged to a Danish family natural
ized a generation or so back in England, and
was born at Highgate on May 12, 1812.
His family had some connection, I believe,
with Liverpool, and this fact seems to be
borne out by Mr. Holman Hunt having, in
consequence, presented a portrait drawing of
Lear by himself to that city some few years
ago. Lear’s mother must have died very
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Introduction
early in his life, for he always spoke and
in his letters writes, of his eldest sister Ann
as having brought him up and of being as a
mother to him. She must have been a woman
of a good deal of force of character; for
when domestic adversity and money difficulties
came upon the family, it was through her
small income and by her care, that Lear was
educated and brought up.
He, at the age of fifteen, began to earn a
living by painting. As a dreamy child, as he
must have been, he pored over books of natural
history and dabbled with paints. Thus he was
led to " drawing small coloured pictures of
birds, and of colouring prints and screens and
fans for general use.” As time went on he
advanced in his art, and his remuneration and
improvement increased in due proportion.
This again led to his being employed at
nineteen, through the good offices of a Mrs.
Wentworth, at the Zoological Gardens as a
draughtsman. The following year, 1832, he
published his “ Family of the Psittacidse,”
a most interesting work, “ one of the earliest
collections of coloured ornithological drawings
on a large scale made in England,” "as far
as I know,” as he himself adds, with his
usual devotion to accuracy and truth.
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These carefully and exquisitely drawn
pictures of parrots with their brilliant colour
ings, naturally arrested the attention of such
men as Professors Bell and Swainston, Sir
William Jardine, Mr. Gould and Mr. Gray
of the British Museum, who recognised the
merit of his work and his fidelity to detail.
He further illustrated G. A. Gould’s book
on “ Indian Pheasants ” about this time, and
did other work for the same author and
others of those just mentioned. At this
period came the great opportunity of his life,
and to a small circumstance was he indebted
for the lifelong friendship and help, of the
first and greatest of the many important
patrons for whom he worked during his life.
At this time Lord Derby, who had brought
together an interesting collection of rare
animals and birds at Knowsley, was con
templating the illustrating and printing of a
magnificent work, which he eventually privately
printed in 1856, and which has now become
the rare and valuable volume known as the
‘‘Knowsley Menagerie.” He, one day, I
believe, went to the Zoological Gardens,
where he was so much struck by the work
of a young man whom he observed drawing
there, that he immediately made inquiries
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Introduction
about him, and engaged him on the spot to
execute the bird portion of the illustrations
for his book. This was Lear. From this
happy moment, for four years Lear con
tinued not only to do work for his patron,
but, as he observes in a small memorandum
to Fortescue, in a letter many years later
than those published in the present volume,
during those years and many after, he met
and mixed with half the fine people of
the day.
Here I transcribe the fragment intact:—
C.s. writing of Lord Carlisle’s journal reminds me
of a curious discovery I have made lately in looking
over old things of my dear sister Ann’s. I remember
telling C. F. that for 12 or 13 years when at
Knowsley, I kept a journal about everything and
everybody, but one day in 1840, I burnt the whole.
It has all turned up again, for I copied out all, or
nearly all, in letters to my sister, and she preserved all
those, and here they are!
During those years I saw half the fine people of
the day, and my notes about some are queer enough.
One for instance about Lord W. “The Earl of W. 1
has been here for some days: he is Lord W.’s 2 d
son, and married Lady Mary S. He is extremely
1 The second Earl of Wilton, second son of the first Marquess
of Westminster.

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picturesque if not handsome, and dresses in crimson
and a black velvet waistcoat when he looks like a
portrait of Vandyke. Miss——says and so does Mrs.
that he is a very bad man, tho he looks so nicely.
But what I like about him, is that he always asks me
to drink a glass of champagne with him at dinner.
I wonder why he does. But I don’t much care as I
like the champagne.” And some days later I wrote,
“ I have asked why on Earth she thinks the Earl of
W. always asks me to drink champagne, and she
began to laugh, and said, because he knows you are a
clever artist and he sees you always look at him and
admire him : and he is a very vain man and this
pleases him, and so he asks you to take wine as a
reward.” Ha! Ha! Ha!
Note in 1871.
Still in our ashes
etc. etc.
In 1846 Lear gave drawing lessons to the
late Queen Victoria. Two stories he himself
told of that time will be of interest. Lear
had a habit of standing on the hearthrug.
When at Windsor he was in the room with
the Queen, and as was his wont, he had
somehow managed to migrate to his favourite
place. He observed that whenever he took up
this position, the Lord-in-Waiting or Private
Secretary who was in attendance kept luring
him away, either under pretext of looking at a

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Introduction
picture or some object of interest. After each
interlude he made again for the hearthrug,
and the same thing was repeated. It was
only afterwards that he discovered that to
stand where he had done was not etiquette.
On another occasion the Queen, with great
kindness, was showing him some of the price
less treasures in cabinets either at Windsor
Castle or Buckingham Palace I do not know
which, and explaining their history to him.
Mr. Lear, entirely carried away by the wonder
ful beauty and interest of what he saw, became
totally oblivious of all other facts, and in the
excitement and forgetfulness of the moment
exclaimed, “ Oh! how did you get all these
beautiful things?” Her Majesty’s answer,
as Mr. Lear said, was an excellent one, so
kind, yet so terse and full of the dignity
of a Queen: “ I inherited them, Mr. Lear.”
In a delightful article by Mr. Wilfrid
Ward several years ago in the New Review
called “Talks with Tennyson,” I have ven
tured to recall a story given apropos of
Edward Lear:—
“On one occasion Tennyson’s friend, Edward
Lear, was staying in a Sicillian town, painting. He
left the town for some weeks and locked up his
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pictures and other things in a room, leaving the key
with the hotel keeper. A revolution had just broken
out when he returned, and he found the waiters full of
Chianti and of patriotic fervour. He ventured to ask
one of them for the chiave of his camera that he
might find his roba. The waiter refused entirely
to be led down from his dreams of a golden age and
of the reign of freedom to such details of daily life.
“O che chiave !” he exclaimed. “ O che roba! O che
camera I Non ce piu chiave! Non ce piti roba /
Non ce pill camera / Non ce piu niente. Tutto e
amore e liberta. O che bella rivoluzione / ” 1 Constant
little local revolutions took place at this time in Italy,
and the inhabitants drank an extremely large quantity
of Chianti and talked, enthusiastically of liberta and la
fiatria for a couple of days ; and then things settled
down into their former groove.”
The acquaintanceship of Lear and Fortescue
began in 1845, when Lear was thirty-three and
Fortescue twenty-two. After leaving Oxford,
the latter took an extended tour in Europe
and Greece, before starting on a parliamentary
career. Fortescue, with his friend Simeon, left
England on February 1, 1845, f° r Italy, where
they remained over six months. In the middle
1 “ Oh ! what key ? Oh ! what property ? Oh ! what room ?
There is no more a key ! . There is no more property ! There
is no more a room ! There is no more anything ! All is love
and liberty. Oh what a beautiful revolution ! ”
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of March they reached Rome, where they
stayed for over eleven weeks. In Fortescue’s
diary, very fully kept during this journey, we
find the entries of his first meeting Lear, and
of how rapidly the friendship which lasted
till Lear’s death, ripened between the two.
A few extracts from my uncle’s diary may
be interesting to those reading the following
letters:
Thurs., April 15, 1845.—Went with Conybeare
to Lears, where we stayed some time looking over
drawings. I like what I have seen of him very
much.
Sat. 2 6th.—Saw Lear.
Sun. 27 th.—After church took a walk with Lear
until nearly dinner-time.
Thurs., May 1st.—Simeon went with Scotts and
General Ramsay to Tivoli. . . . I declined. Walked
with Lear to the Ponte Salaro sketching. ... I like
very much what I have seen of Lear ; he is a good,
clever, agreeable man—very friendly and getonable
with. . . . Spent the evening in Lears rooms looking
over drawings, &c.
Friday, May 2nd.—Simeon and I started for Veii
in a fiacre and overtook Lear. We drove on to near
I sola Farnese, and then got out and sketched. . . .
Then walked down the valley to the S. of Isola to the
Arco di Pino. . . . The day which had been lovely
had gradually clouded over, and we had not left the
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Arco di Pino many minutes, before we were caught
in a thunderstorm which lasted an hour or more.
Lear and I ran to the Osteria at Isola. Simeon
stayed behind under a rock. After eating our dinner
and waiting some time we grew uneasy about
Simeon, and set out in the rain to look for him. We
found the little " Fosso ” which we had stepped across
an hour before so swollen, that we did not like to
cross it, and Simeon, who had been delayed by the
same cause, had to wade. . .
Sun.—Went to Lear’s in the evening.
Thursday. Started at 5 o’clock with Lear, Simeon,
and a Mr. Chester to Tivoli per carriage. After
breakfast started thence for Palestrina on foot,
Simeon riding.
Explaining' the places and views they passed,
including “ a villa built by some ‘ lotus eating ’
Cardinal who loved retirement, and dying
under a hill on whose top stood a temple of
the Bbna Dea,” they halted for Lear to see
some fine aqueducts, which he admired.
. Lear wanted to sketch them, and very grand they
are most striking in themselves and in the solitude
of the glens which they cross. ...
Still drawing and walking, they came to
and were “entertained at his house, by a
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Introduction
friend of Lear’s at Gallicano,” and returned
to Rome after a two days’ expedition, too late
to see the “ Vatican by torchlight with/ Two
penny’s’ party.”
Fortescue adds :
These were two very enjoyable days. Lear a
delightful companion, full of nonsense, puns, riddles,
everything in the shape of fun, and brimming with
intense appreciation of nature as well as history. I
don’t know when I have met any one to whom I took
so great a liking.
Sat.—Lear, Simeon, and myself drove to Veii.
Sketched — walked . . . then Lear and I walked
home some twelve miles. This was a delightful
day.
Sunday.—Called with Lear to ask Bentinck to join
bur party to Soracte to-morrow. Lear found he could
not go to-morrow, so that project was knocked on the
head. I was disappointed and strolled alone ... in
rather a disgusted and gloomy state of mind. . . .
Went to Lear’s in the evening.
Thurs.-—Lear dined with us and gave us a drawing
lesson.
Friday.—Felt done, relaxed—in abeyance, as Lear
says. . . . Dined with Lear. ... I shall be very
sorry to part with Lear.
Sunday. — Lear breakfasted with us. . . . Lear
came to say goodbye just before our dinner —he
has gone by diligence to Civita Vecchia. I have
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1831, through Mrs. Wentworth, I became employed
at the Zoological Society, and, in 1832, published
“The Family of the Psittacidae,” the first complete
volume of coloured drawings of birds on so large a
scale published in England, as far as I know—unless
Audubon’s were previously engraved. J. Gould’s
“ Indian Pheasants ” were commenced at the same
time, and after a little while he employed me to draw
many of his birds of Europe, while I assisted Mrs.
Gould in all her drawings of foregrounds, as may be
seen in a moment by any one who will glance at my
drawings in G.’s European birds and the Toucans.
From 1832 to 1836, when my health failed a good
deal, I drew much at the Earl of Derby’s ; and a
series of my drawings was published by Dr. Gray
of the British Museum—a book now rare. I also
lithographed many various detached subjects, and
a large series of Testudinata for Mr. (now Professor)
Bell; and I made drawings for Bell’s “ British
Mammalia,” and for two or more volumes of the
“Naturalist’s Library” for the editor, Sir W. Jardine,
those volumes being the Parrots, and, I think, the
Monkeys, and some Cats. In 1835 or ’36, being in
Ireland and the Lakes, I leaned more and more to
landscape, and when in 1837 it was found that my
health was more affected by the climate month by
month, I went abroad, wintering in Rome till 1841,
when I came to England and published a volume of
lithographs called “ Rome and its Environs.” Re
turning to Rome, I visited Sicily and much of the
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Introduction
South of Italy, and continued to make chalk drawings,
though in 1840 I had painted my two first oil-paintings.
I also gave lessons in drawing at Rome and was able
to make a very comfortable living. In 1845 I came
again to England, and in 1846 gave Queen Victoria
some lessons, through Her Majesty’s h|iving seen a
work I published in that year on the Abruzzi, and
another on the Roman States. In 1847 I went
through all Southern Calabria, and again went round
Sicily, and in 1848 left Rome entirely. I travelled
then to Malta, Greece, Constantinople, and the
Ionian Islands; and to Mount Sinai and Greece
a second time in 1849, returning to England in that
year. All 1850 I gave up to improving myself in
figure drawing, and I continued to paint oil-paintings
till 1853, having published in the meantime, in 1849
and 1852, two volumes entitled “Journals of a Land
scape Painter,” in Albania and Calabria. The first
edition of the “Book of Nonsense” was published
in 1846, lithographed by tracing-paper. In 1854
I went to Egypt and Switzerland, and in 1855 to
Corfu/where I remained the winters of 1856-57-58,
visiting Athos, and, later, Jerusalem and Syria. In
the autumn of 1858 I returned to England, and ’59
and ’60 winters were passed in Rome. 1861, I
remained all the winter in England, and painted the
Cedars of Lebanon and Masada, going, after my
sister’s death in March, 1861, to Italy. The two
following winters—’62 and ’63—were passed at Corfu,
and in the end of the latter year I published “Views in
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the Ionian Islands.” In 1862 a second edition of the
“Book of Nonsense,” much enlarged, was published,
and is now in its sixteenth thousand.
O bother!
Yours affectionately,
EDWARD LEAR.
The following letters from 1847 to 1864 tell
their own story during those years, and
therefore nothing further with regard to them
is required in this introduction. But Lear’s
life continued and his letters to my uncle
also, till his death at San Remo in 1888, at
the age of seventy-six. Consequently a slight
sketch is required here to make his life
intelligible from the time the letters in 1864
cease, though it is hoped that at some future
date should this series be found of interest
to the public, a further instalment up to his
death of equal value may be forthcoming.
From 1864 to 1870 Lear spent his winters
in Nice, Malta, Egypt, and latterly at Cannes.
His summers were busy in having exhibitions
at 15, Stratford Place, and from thence visiting
old friends in different parts of England. His
output of a year’s work ending April, 1865,
was enormous, and is a sample of his stupen
dous industry and his marvellous capabilities of
work, in the face of bad health and difficulties.
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During the time mentioned he visited Crete,
the Corniche and the Riviera Coast. To
quote from a letter of his to Fortescue of the
i8th of the above month, he writes: “You
ought some day to see the whole of my outdoor
work of twelve months—200 sketches in Crete,
145 in the Corniche, and 125 at Nice, Antibes,
and Cannes.” But at last in April, 1870,
finding the lease of his Cannes rooms expiring
and unable to be renewed and many things
unsatisfactory and uncertain, he evolved the
idea of buying a piece of land and building
for himself a villa and studio. Land being
very expensive at Cannes and a suitable plot
besides not being available, he decided on
settling down arid establishing himself at San
Remo instead.
He therefore finally removed from Cannes
in the following June, and July finds him in
lodgings at San Remo for a few months, till
his new villa which he was building “ shall be
ready for my occupation.” The studio was in
such an advanced state if not quite finished,
that he was able to use it and paint in it.
At this time, too, he had been unfortunate
in selling his pictures, and he complains that
he “only got £3° from the rich Cannes public
this last winter.” His pessimism, which grew
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upon him more and more as time passed on,
is more noticeable at this period when he
writes, “ that after he settles down in San
Remo, his visits to England and his friends
will be less and less,” and wonders if he “will
get any sales for his pictures.”
Besides, another very serious cause, which
the following extract from a letter of July 31,
1870, will explain, suddenly came upon him at
this time as a shock and added to this state
of mind :
I must tell you that I have been, at one time,
extremely ill this summer. It is as well that you
should know that I am told I have the same com
plaint of the heart as my father died of quite suddenly.
I have had advice about it, and they say I may live
any time if I dorit run suddenly or go quickly upstairs;
but that if I do I am pretty sure to drop morto. I ran
up a little rocky bit near the Tenda, and thought I
shouldn’t run any more, and the palpitations were so
bad that I had to tell Georgio all about it, as I did
not think I should have lived that day through.
But when he gets into the “Villa Emily”
(so named, as he says in a letter, after his New
Zealand sister’s granddaughter), his spirits
seem to rise again. But through all, his
letters retain their humour—sometimes gay,
sometimes sad—and their whimsicality and
xxxii

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Introduction
attractiveness never fail. Besides, there is added,
a certain charm of the older experienced man
with a riper knowledge of persons and things.
At his new house he remained more or less
permanently, till he went to India in 1874, by
invitation of Lord Northbrook then Governor-
General, there making many sketches for future
use; and from his return early in 1875 to
1881' with occasional holidays, the Villa Emily
was his home. For some years it had been a
very happy home, where he painted his beautiful
pictures and entertained passing friends.
Although most anxious to sell his pictures,
he may sometimes, by his strange ways, have
turned from his door intending purchasers.
He was by way of showing his studio on one
afternoon in the week. On this day he some
times sent his servant out and opened the
door himself. This procedure was resorted
to in order that he might keep out Germans,
whose presence, for some unknown reason
filled him with dread. If he did not like
the appearance of a visitor, with a long face
and woe in his voice he would explain that
he never showed his pictures now, being much
too ill. He would then shut the door, and
his cheerfulness would return.
But gradually a grievance grew up, which
xxxiii A **

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Letters of Edward Lear
by degrees assumed proportions which so
preyed upon his mind that he decided to
abandon his beloved Villa Emily, and build
another perfectly similar house on a site,
where, he sadly and fancifully observed to his
friends, he was safe, “ unless the fishes build.”
This “ nightmare ” was the building of a huge
hotel close to his villa, the reflection from the
roof of which he declared, ruined the light of
his studio, maddening him and rendering his
life hideous.
It was a great trial to him this abandoning
of his cherished home, the garden of which
time had made a paradise. His new abode—
the Villa Tennyson as- he called it, after one
of his best friends—though similar in every
respect, had none of the mellowed charm
which age had given the older house; and the
garden, though he transplanted many shrubs
and moved various arbours and pergolas from
the Villa Emily, was balder and newer and had
not the capabilities of the older one.
His faithful Suliot servant Georgio who
had remained with him ever since his Corfu
days, now having a young son to help him
and train in his duties, was the mainstay
of Lear’s life. The artist took a short
holiday to Bologna and the North of Italy
xxxiv

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Introduction
while the change of houses was being accom
plished, the faithful servant cheerfully coped
with all the difficulties of the more practical
side which moving to a new house entailed.
And from this time till Lear’s death on Jan.
29, 1888, his home was the Villa Tennyson,
with occasional holidays during the early
summer months to the North of Italy and
later yearly to Monte Generoso, but after the
year 1880 he never again came to England.
He lies buried at San Remo, beside the
eldest son of his faithful Suliot servant
Georgio Kokali, and the stone raised above
his grave records the following touching
memorial :—
‘ In memory of
Edward Lear, Landscape Painter
in many lands
Born at Highgate May 12. 1812
Died at San Remo Jan 29. 1888
Dear for his many gifts to many souls.
—“all things fair”
‘ ‘ With such a pencil such a pen ”
“You shadow’d forth to distant men”
“ I read & felt that I was there.”
CONSTANCE STRACHEY.
Sutton Court, Somerset,
Oct 4, 1907.
xxxv

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APPRECIATION OF LEAR AS A PAINTER
T HE following note by my brother-in-law,
Mr. Henry Strachey, is an artist’s
endeavour to estimate Lear’s position as a
painter. C. S.
The landscape painting of Edward Lear has
never been popular either with artists or the
larger public. The reason of this being so
with the latter probably depended both on
fashion and the fact that Lear chose to paint
foreign countries rather than England. That
fellow-painters should have been slow to
appreciate Lear’s work depended on other
reasons. What these were it may be of
interest to try to discover. I remember when
I was a student at the Slade School, under
Legros, I paid a visit to Lear at San Remo,
and in talking of art he quoted to me, with
complete approval, these words of some friend
of his, “ Copy the works of the Almighty
first and those of Turner next.” Now the
xxxvi

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Appreciation as a Painter
great and fundamental quality that lies at
the root of the art of Turner is appreciation
of atmospheric effect. His preoccupation was
not so much what the objects painted were
like in themselves, but how they looked when
modified by the ever-changing atmosphere.
It was the light that fell upon the mountain
rather than the shapes of its rocks and slopes
that Turner represented. He painted the
scene for the sake of the light that fell on
it, and not the light as an incident in the
landscape. The lines on which landscape
painters progressed during the latter half of
the last century were on those of light and
atmosphere both here and in the great schools
of France. But Lear never seems to have had
complete sympathy with any aspect of nature
except one which showed him the greatest
number of topographical details. If he painted
the Roman Campagna every sinew in the
plain was lovingly recorded, as was every
arch of the aqueducts, and even the lumps
of the fallen masonry in the foreground.
One is sometimes tempted to think that when
Lear painted an olive-tree near at hand against
the sky he counted the leaves. A traveller
could almost plan his route over a pass from
one of this artist’s faithful realisations of
xxxvii

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Letters of Edward Lear
mountains. To help him portray nature
minutely the “ topographical artist ”—and I
remember hearing Lear call himself by this
title—wishes for quiet, equal light and weather.
For his purpose the shadows of storm clouds
are things which blurr and obscure, though
for the emotional painter they may turn a
commonplace scene into a picture. Lear’s
interest in landscape was dual : he was both
a painter and a traveller. This appears in
the letters forming this volume ; indeed, it
often seems as if the historic and geographical
interest predominated. In saying this it must
be remembered that it is much easier to
express in words these constituents of a
scene than it is a purely aesthetic impression.
If it must be admitted that a large part of
Lear’s outlook on nature was not purely
pictorial, to him must be conceded a very
real and true sense of beauty. It is because
he could feel the beauty of nature and record
it with individuality that his work is valuable,
and not because it represents exactly some
given piece of country. The labyrinthine
valleys of the blue mountains above Ther
mopylae, as seen in the picture reproduced
in this book, weave patterns of beauty which
are independent of historic association. In-
xxxviii

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Appreciation as a Painter
stances might be multiplied where the artist
has got the upper hand of the topographer,
and the result has been a picture. Lear
painted both in water colour and in oil. It
was, however, in the former medium that he
was most successful. The delicate drawing
and the tendency to use fine lines made the
more fluid water colour answer to his hand
better than the oil paint. Indeed, he seems
never quite happy when working with the
latter, and he is always trying to make it
behave like the more limpid medium.
Only on the rarest occasions did Lear use
the sky except as background. I cannot recall
a picture of his in which the motive was essen
tially a cloud effect. This was partly due, no
doubt, to the southern climates in which he
painted, with their predominance of blue sky.
Also I think the painters love of the realisa
tion of minute detail made him feel that
things which stayed still to be drawn were
those which best suited his style.
The love of detailed representation naturally
made Lear range himself with the Preraphaelite
painters. He, indeed, considered himself one
of the brotherhood in the second generation.
This is the meaning of his allusion in the
letters to Mr. Holman Hunt as his father. I
xxxix

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Letters of Edward Lear
remember his telling me that he looked upon
Millais as his artistic uncle.
As a colourist Lear was simple rather than
subtle. Straightforward harmonies of blue
suited him best. Many exquisitely beautiful
water-colour drawings 'of the blue Apennines
overlooking the aqueduct-lined Campagna
came from his hand. No one has given
better than he has the strange charm of this
melancholy landscape. His success in this
direction is, I think, due to that delicate sense
of style which he possessed and which is
needed to interpret such a classic scene. If
Lear’s pictures cannot rank beside those of the
great masters of landscape, the best of his
works will always have a real value for those
who see beyond the fashion of the moment.
This will be so because the artist’s work was
always dignified and sincere, and he had a true
if somewhat formal sense of beauty. More
over, his style was perfectly individual and
distinctive.
H. STRACHEY
xl

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NOTE
A MONG the various small details and
elucidations which have reached me
since the first edition of this book was pub
lished, many have been too late to be incor
porated in the text of this second impression.
I propose, therefore, to condense these into
a short postscript to my preface.
Through correspondents both known and
unknown many small matters have been
cleared up, and I am therefore able thus to
make use of their kind help in these pages.
Beginning with page xxxii, Lord Tennyson
tells me it was always said in the family “that
the Villa Emily was called after his mother,
Lady Tennyson.” This is veiy probably the
case, and possibly in some way indirectly the
grand-daughter, if a godchild of Lear’s, may
have been given the name of one of those he
loved best.
At page 6 the Mrs. Sartoris mentioned

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Letters of Edward Lear
in Roman society when Lear was painting
there in 1848, was not Miss Barrington but
her sister-in-law Mrs. Edward Sartoris, the
well-known Adelaide Kemble.
Again at page 66, her husband Edward
Sartoris, is supposed by a correspondent, to
be identified in the drawing companion
“ Edward,” whom Lear misses so terribly at
Corfu in 1857.
At page 222, mention is made of “one
Luard,” who attracts Lear both as a person
and by the “thirty lettered” definition of his
tastes. Now Major-General C. E. Luard, R.E.
Since interrogatively and humbly naming
the plate at page 243 for want of better, as
Gozo, Malta, owing to a similarity of “ shere
rocks ” between it and a photogravure given
in “The Poems by Alfred Lord Tennyson/’
illustrated by , v Lear, I have been informed by
an old friend and pupil of Mr, Lear who.
possesses a sketch of the subject though: also
unnamed, that to the best of his remembrance
he is certain that the scene represents.“ Kom
Ombos, Egypt,” painted to illustrate Tenny
son’s line “the crag that fronts the even, all
along the shadowy shore.” , A correspondent a
charming old lady of.81, refers in an inter
esting letter to the expression “Abercrom-
ii

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Preface
bically” on page 129. In her young days,
she says, Dr. John Abercrombie a great Scotch
physician, was the well-known author of “ The
Intellectual Powers,” “The Moral Feelings,”
and “ The Culture and Discipline of the
Mind.” These works had a great vogue at
that time, and young ladies were given them
to read. She quotes, “ How to live and act
‘ Abercrombically ’ is best shown on pp. 143
and 144 of the latter work. Dr. Abercrombie
chose a high standard, and bade his disciples
adhere to it uncompromisingly.” Hence when
Lear says Woodward preaches “ Abercrom
bically,” and Fortescue writes and acts so,
they are carrying out the gospel laid down
in these books. Consequently on these occa
sions their actions are full of correctness and
decorum of a high order.
With reference to the Greek and its transla
tion on which I had a great deal of correspon
dence, confusion has been caused by so much
of Lear’s Greek having been modern Greek.
I have had kindly help from many Greek
scholars, who have sent me corrections which,
in a later edition if such ever sees the light,
will quite perfect what now stands as faulty.
Of the more conspicuous mistakes in trans
lation, the following corrections may be
iii

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Letters of Edward Lear
incorporated in this preface. Page 60, “ O
mighty Krites, Richard son of Cyrus, wishes
me to send you greeting,” should read, “The
mighty judge, Sir Richard Bethell, wishes me
to send you his greetings.” Again at page 74,
note 3 should stand as “ The Morier, fat and
beautiful,” and at page 116, note 4 should
read thus, “ The day after to-morrow I will
come to you before eleven o’clock to greet
you—and see with admiration your pictures
of Palestine. Fearful must be the ups-and-
downs of the Ionian Sea, such brayings I
never heard of.”
At page 253, note 1 should read, “ Let
us talk to-morrow at breakfast.”
On page 148, Lear writes Itti ko\6vo'L instead
of the correct «ri icoXwv^, perhaps as a pun
on “Colonies.”
Lord Sanderson, who was a friend both of
the late Lord Derby and Lear, gives me the
following interesting version of Lear’s intro
duction to his great patron. The information,
which was given to Lord Sanderson by the
late Mr. Latter who had been librarian at
Knowsley since 1871, and previously employed
there he believes from his boyhood was as
follows: “Lord Derby said to one of his
friends who had been staying at Knowsley
iv

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Preface
and was going up to London, that he wished
to find some young artist who would come
down to Knowsley and make paintings of the
birds. The friend (I am not sure if I was
told the name, but if I was I have forgotten
it) promised to make inquiries, and some time
afterwards he saw in a print-shop a small
water-colour drawing of two birds and a
nest, priced at a low sum, which struck him
as having considerable merit. He bought
the drawing and asked who the artist was.
The shopman said it was a young man of the
name of Lear, who was extremely poor and
made these sketches for his living. The friend
sought out Lear, made some further inquiries,
and wrote to Lord Derby that he thought he
had found a young man who would suit. The
result was an invitation to Knowsley and the
commencement of Lear’s work there—which,
however, was intermittent.
Mr. Latter also told me that on the “ first
occasion of giving a lesson to The Queen, Lear,
who was rather roughly dressed and was
always awkward in appearance, went to the
door at Osborne and simply said he wished
to see The Queen. The servants were a good
deal perplexed, but showed him into a room
where an equerry came to see him. On

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Letters of Edward Lear
his repeating that he had come to see The
Queen, the equerry blandly inquired what
was the business on which he came, being
convinced that he was a lunatic. To which
he replied, ‘ Oh, I’m Lear,’ and some further
inquiries revealed the fact that he had an
appointment to give a lesson.”
Mrs. Henry Grenfell also gives me some
valuable information as to Lear’s introduction
at Knowsley. She writes, “ I have often heard
my husband tell how Lear first got introduced
to ‘ Society ’ at Knowsley. He (Henry - R.
Grenfell) lived much at his uncle’s, Lord Sefton,
at Croxteth close by, and was told the story by
the young Stanleys. Old Lord Derby liked to
have his grandsons’ company after dinner, and
one day complained that they constantly left
him as soon as dinner was over. Their reply
was, ‘ It is so much more amusing downstairs! ’
4 Why ? ’ 4 Oh, because that young fellow in
the steward’s room who is drawing the birds
for you is such good company, and we like to
go and hear him talk.’
44 Like a wise man, instead of scolding them,
and after full inquiry, he invited Lear to dine
upstairs instead of in the steward’s room, and
not only Lord Derby, but all his friends were
equally delighted with him, and it ended in his
vi

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Preface
being a welcomed guest there and well known
to the many visitors at Knowsley who became
his friends.”
« - l .
J
/fly-w y*j. /«i .
\ s/ { ^ ^M/.
f V<2. V
I f / I fruT4^%m
f f >Ml
\V/ki
nt&K f
66i
^ ^ j // Pe&ZZifi.
w- tt Ayte.
23 &6£~~£z*.
^4 ^ c y 4C ^ x ~' „
/f Au^^r
2J /?
/h*t+*+A**4L' / rs A*&'
2# AwU'. -i-of I .
J3a ^
A short time ago I came across a little plan
of visits to be made by Lear before starting
vii

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Letters of Edward Lear
and reaching Rome, by Christmas Day. It is
exact and minute, as he always was in all he
did, and also proves his “ genius ” for friend
ship—typified on page 16 in the following
sentence: “ I trust to get through 14 or 15
visits out of my 68.” It has seemed to me
that a reproduction of this “ Progress of Lear,”
in his own handwriting, would be of interest.
I rather think from investigation that the
date must refer to the latter end of 1859, and
that dilatory-wise Lear getting belated, only
arrived as will be seen at page 157, as far as
Marseilles by the 26th of December, on his
journey Rome-ward.
I would take this opportunity of thanking
the public and the reviewers, for the kind way
the first edition of this book has been received.
My reward is in knowing that the memory of
one who was such a delightful and lovable
combination of complexities, has had appre
ciation not only as the author of the Books
of Nonsense, but as a man.
“Exceeding wise, fair-spoken, and persuading:
Lofty and sour to them who loved him not;
But to those men that sought him sweet as
summer.”

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Preface
ERRATA
Page 56. Note 1, read The residence of the Earl
Roden.
,, 59. Dean, read Canon of Wells.
,, 127. Note 5, Antonetti read Antonelli.
,, 319. For Albania, 1841, read 1851.
' For Calabria, 1842, read 1852.
„ 328. Vere, Aubrey de, read 128, 209.
,, 328. Vere, Major F. H. de, read 228, 257.
,, 328. Vere, Mrs. Aubrey de, read Mrs. F. H.
de, 257.
ix

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PENTEDATILO.
From Lear’s “ Journal of a Landscape Painter in Calabria " (R. Bentley, 1832).
To face page 1.

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Letters of Edward Lear
CHAPTER I
1847, to August, 1853
ROME, GREECE, AND ENGLAND
T HE earliest letter in this collection which
I have found is dated October 16,
1847, written to my uncle, Chichester
Fortescue, by Edward Lear immediately on
his return to Rome (his headquarters at that
time) from his tour in Calabria. The diary
he kept on that journey was published in
1852, illustrated by many striking litho
graphs made- from sketches taken during
the tour, two of which are here reproduced.
The whole of Italy at this time was in a
state of political upheaval and unrest ; the
people felt that the time for more liberal
forms of government had come.
Chichester Fortescue, then in his twenty-

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Letters of Edward Lear
fourth year, had, after a brilliant Oxford
career, following the usual course of young
men of the aristocratic class of that period,
just completed the grand tour, including
Greece, with his friend Sir Francis Scott,
of Great Barr. He returned to find a seat
in Parliament in his native county of Louth
awaiting him, and at once was launched
into political as well as social life in London.
The sudden necessity of returning to England
prevented his joining Lear in Rome as he
had intended to do, and was the cause of
the appearance of Sir Francis Scott alone,
at which Lear took umbrage—afterwards
regretting his conduct.
Lear to Fortescue.
107, 2D0, Via Felici, Roma.
16 Od., 1847.
Dear Fortescue,—Do not expect an unhampered
& simple epistle as of yore, but allow something
for the effect of your M.P’ism on my pen and
thoughts : Or rather I will forget for a space that you
are a British senator, & write to that Chichester
Fortescue whose shirt I cribbed at Palestrina.
Your letter, (one of 27, awaiting my coming,
which coming took place extremely late last night,)

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Rome, Greece, and England
diverts me highly:—Proby 1 my constant com
panion (& few there be better,) agrees with me
about your view of the road to Aviano—which we
have only just, oddly enough gone over. Avellino
is certainly exquisite, & so is Mte. Vergine when
not in a fog,—But of Apulia we saw little, only
from hills apart, because why? the atmosphere was
pisonous in Septbr. Nevertheless Proby went to
Cannae, and I believe found one of Annibals shoes
or spurs,—also a pinchbeck snuffbox with a Bramah
lock belonging to a Roman genl.—I rather chose
to go see Castel del Monte, a strange record of
old F. Barbarossa & which well repaid no end of
disgust in getting at it. We saw the tree Horace
slept under at Mte. Volture, & were altogether
much edified by the classicalities of Basilicata.
I will begin from the beginning. First then I
went (May 3) to Palermo, & on the nth set
out with Proby for Segestae. Excepting a run
round by Trapani & Massala, & a diversion to
Modica, Noto, and Spaccaforno, one Sicilian giro
was like that of all the multitude. The Massala trip
does not pay—& the only break to the utter
monotony of life & scenery occurred by a little dog
biting the calf of my leg very unpleasantly as I
walked unsuspectingly in a vineyard. At the caves
of Ipeica we became acquaint with a family of
1 John, Lord Proby, eldest son of the Earl of Carysfort, of
whom Lear speaks as such “ an excellent companion,” was a
friend of long standing. He died in 1858.
3

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Letters of Edward Lear
original Froglodytes : they are very good creatures,
mostly sitting on their hams, & feeding on lettuces &
honey. I proposed bringing away an infant Frog,
but Proby objected. Siracuse only wanted your
presence to make our stay more pleasant: I waited
for and expected you every day. We abode in a
quarry per lo piu, & left the place sorryly. From
Catania we saw Etna & went up it: a task, but
now it is done I am glad I did it: such extremes of
heat and cold at once I never thought it possible
to feel. Taormina the Magnificent we staid at 4 or 5
days, & then from Messina returned by that abomin
able North Coast to Palermo, just in time for the
fete of Sta Rosalia a noisy scene which made me
crosser than ever, and drove away the small remains
of peaceful good temper the ugliness of the North
Coast had left me.
So, 19th July-—we returned to Naples—& there,
as at Palermo was Scott—& to my disgust—no
Fortescue. I fear when Scott sent up your card, &
then entered too soon himself-—I fear my visage fell
very rudely. But I wish much now I had seen more of
Sir F. Scott: as he improves immensely on knowing
him. On the 26th we left Messina for Reggio.
(N.B. I have crossed the sea from Naples to Sicily so
often this year, that I know nearly all the porpoises
by their faces, & many of the Merluzzi.) Would
I had gone on to the 2nd & 3rd provinces : but
the revolution which bust out in Reggio prevented
me. What is the use of all these revolutions which
4

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Rome, Greece, and England
lead to nothing ? as the displeased turnspit said
to an angry cookmaid.—Returning to Naples for
the 199th time, we disposed of a month as I have
said over leaf, in the provinces of Basilicata,
Melfi, Venosa, etc. etc., and were not sorry to have
done so.
Rome is full of fuss and froth : but I believe now
that Pio IX. is a real good man, & a wonder. Rail
roads, gaslight, pavements, for all to be done in
i960? The last part of my stay here was a blank
from the death of my oldest Roman friend, good kind
Lady Susan Percy. 1
Remember me to my friends, & believe me,
Dear Fortescue,
sincerely yours,
Edward Lear.
107 2D0 Via Felici, Roma,
Feby. 12, 1848.
Your letter of Oct. 25th 1847, ought to have been
answered before now, & I have been going to do so
ever since I had it, but I have said to myself “ what’s
the use of writing to-day when you haven’t 20 minutes
—or to-day when you’ve got the toothache, or to-day
when you are so cross ? Fortescue won’t thank you
for a stupid letter, particularly as his was so very
amusing, so you’d better wait you had. And so I
have till I’m ashamed of the delay and therefore I’ll
send off note 18th be the letter of what degree of
badness it may. First glancing over your bi-sheeted
1 She was a sister of the fifth Duke of Northumberland.
5

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Letters of Edward Lear
epistle—thank you for your introduction to Baring : 1
he is an extremely luminous & amiable brick, and I
like him very much, & I suppose he likes me or he
wouldn’t take the trouble of knocking me up as he
does, considering the lot of people he might take to
instead. We have been out once or twice in the
Campagna, and go to Mrs. Sartoris, 2 or other
evening popular approximations together. He
would draw; very well, and indeed does, but has
little practice. Altogether he is one of the best
specimens of young English here this winter, tho’
there is a tolerably good sprinkling of elect &
rational beings too. In fact it is a propitious season,
the rumours of distraction prevented a many nasty
vulgar people from coming, and there is really room
to move. Among families, Greys, Herberts, Clives 3
stand promiscuous ; of young ladies, Miss W.
Horton, & Miss Lindsay are first to my taste, &
of married ones, Mrs. G. Herbert & Mrs. Clive,—
then Lady W. is admired though by me not:
she is so like a wren, I’m sure she must turn into
a wren when she dies. The variety of foreign
society is delightful, particularly with long names :
e.g., Madame Pul-itz-neck-off— and Count Bigenouff;
1 Afterwards first Earl of Northbrook, Governor-General of
India, 1872-6.
2 Daughter of Lord Barrington.
3 George Clive, a close personal friend of Lear’s, was a
barrister and politician, and at this time Judge of County Court
Circuits. He became Under-Secretary of State for the home
department 1859-1862.
6

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Rome, Greece, and England
—Baron Polysuky, & Mons. Pig:—I never heard
such a list. I am afraid to stand near a door, lest
the announced names should make me grin.—Then
there is a Lady Mary Ross, 1 and a most gigantic
daughter—whom Italians wittily call “the great
Ross-child,” and her mama, “ Rosso-antico.” ... I
miss the Gordon’s 2 and my old kind friend Lady
S. Percy sadly, & somehow the 6 & 30-ness of my
sentiments and constitution make me rather graver
than of old:—also, the uncertainty of matters here
and everywhere, and my own unfixedness of plans,
conspire to make me more unstable & ass-like than
usual. . . .
And now regarding yourself I heard all about your
Greek tour with interest, and that you were returned
to England and for Louth, as you will have found by
a disgusting little letter I sent you at the end of
last October. The most important part of your
letter seems to me that which gives me news of your
being so rich a man 3 :—I can only say I am sincerely
glad of it, and I don’t flatter you when I say I believe
you will make as good a use of your money as
anybody. I long to know how you like your new
parliamentary life :—(Do you know a friend of mine,
Bonham Carter M.P. for Winchester? 4 This
1 One of the daughters and co-heiresses of the 2nd Marquess
Cornwallis. 2 Sir A. and Lady Duff Gordon.
3 Fortescue inherited Red House, Ardee, Co. Louth, from
Mr. Ruxton his uncle, whose wife was a sister of Fortescue’s
father, Col. Fortescue of Dromiskin.
■* Brother-in-law of Baring.
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reminds me of “ Have you been in India ? ” “ Yes.”
“O then do you know my friend Mr. Jones?”)
So pray let me hear from you. . . .
Now I am at the end of replying to your letter,
and a very jolly one it is. So I must e’en turn
over another stone as the sandpiper said when he
was alooking for vermicules. You ask what I am
about, making of little paintings, one for Ld.
Canning etc. etc., and one of a bigger growth for
Ld. Ward, but I am in a disturbidous state along
of my being undecided as to how I shall go on with
art, knowing that figure drawing is that which I know
least of & yet is the “crown and roof of things.” I
have a plan of going to Bowen 1 at Corfu and thence
Archipelago or Greeceward, (Greece however is in a
very untravellable state just now) should the state of
Italy prevent my remaining in it for the summer.
But whether I stop here to draw figure, or whether I
go to Apulia & Calabria, or whether I Archipela go
(V. A. Archipelago, P. Archipelawent, P. P. Archi-
pelagone) or whatever I do, I strongly long to go to
Egypt for the next winter as ever is, if so be as I can
find a sufficiency of tin to allow of my passing 4 or
5 months there. I am quite crazy about Memphis
6 On & Isis 81 crocodiles and ophthalmia &
nubians, and simooms & sorcerers, & sphingidoe.
1 Afterwards Sir George Fergusson Bowen, and successively
Governor of Queensland, New Zealand, and other colonies.
At this time he was President of the University of Corfu, and in
1854 he was appointed Chief Secretary to Sir J. Young, Lord
High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands.

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Seriously the contemplation of Egypt must fill the
mind, the artistic mind I mean, with great food for
the rumination of long years. I have a strong wish
also to see Syria, & Asia Minor and all sorts of
grisogorious places, but, but, who can tell? You see
therefore in how noxious a state of knownothingatall-
aboutwhatoneisgoingtodo-ness I am in. Yet this is
clear :—the days of possible Lotus-eating are diminish
ing, & by the time I am 40 I would fain be in
England once more. . . .
But a truce to growling and reflections. I should
have told you that Bowen has written to me in the
kindest possible manner, asking me to go and stay
with him at Corfu and I shall regret if I can’t do so.
I wish to goodness I was a polype and could cut
myself in six bits. I wish you were downstairs in
that little room.
The introduction to Baring, afterwards first
Earl of Northbrook, of which Lear here
speaks with such genuine pleasure, was
to be the beginning of a friendship which
lasted until his death. Baring, throughout
his long and varied public career, was not
only a true friend to him, but also a patron
of the kindest and most generous description.
In the summer of the same year, Lear
undertook a long-desired visit to Greece, in
the company of Professor Church, another
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old friend and patron. To this visit we are
indebted for one of the most beautiful pictures
he ever painted, a large oil-painting of Ther
mopylae. Several replicas of this work exist,
but I believe that the one possessed by
Fortescue and reproduced in this book, is
the original.
Hotel d’Orient, Athens,
July 19, 1848.
Here I am having made somewhat of a dash into
Greece, but most unluckily, obliged to haul up and
lay by for the present. You may perhaps see my
handwriting is queerish, the fact is I am recovering
rapidly thank God, from a severe touch of fever,
caught at Platoea & perfected in ten days at Thebes.
1 did not think I should ever have got over it, nor
should I, but for the skill of two doctors, & the kind
ness of my companion Church. I was brought here
by 4 horses on an Indiarubber bed, am wonderfully
better, & in that state of hunger which is frightful
to bystanders. I could eat an ox. Many matters
contributed to this disaster, first a bad fall from my
horse, and a sprained shoulder, which for three weeks
irritated one’s blood, besides that I could not ride.
2nd. A bite from a Centipede or some horror,
which swelled up all my leg & produced a swelling
like Philoctetes’ toe, and lastly, I was such a fool
as go to Platoea forgetting my umbrella, where
the sun finished me. However, I don’t mean to
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give up and am very thankful to be as well as
I am.
I came you know here on June ist with Sir
S. Canning, 1 and staid a fortnight working like mad.
On the 13th Church and I set out. Chalcis is most
interesting & picturesque, what figures! would, ah!
would I could draw the figures! We then resolved
to do Euboea, so, 19th, Eretria, very fine. Aliveri,
& Kumi. 21 st. Pass of mountains, grangrongrously
magnificent! Alas ! for the little time to draw ! 28th
Lamia. 29th a run up to Patragik a queer mountain
place. All these things we were constantly warned
off, as full of rebels, brigands &c., but we found all
things as quiet as Pimlico. 30th Thermopylae! how
superb! & Bodonitza. July ist. Costantino &
Argizza. 2nd Proschino & Martini. 3rd, over
Kokino & the mountains to the Thebes. Only this
last, of the last 3 days was good. Thebes is sub
lime, but as I said, the day following it became a
grisogorious place to me.
I must stop for I am not much writable yet. Give
my love to Sir F. Scott if you see him & to Baring:
I am glad he is secretary or anything good, as he
is such an extreme brick.
Therapia, 25^ August, 1848.
Your kind letter, just exactly though what I
expected, came to-day, much sooner than I anticipated.
1 Sir Stratford Canning, afterwards Lord Stratford de Red-
cliffe, at this time Ambassador at Constantinople.

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Alas! of myself I can give 37-011 but a most flaccid
account, greatly to be summed up in the word “ bed,”
but not wholly so. However I have known perfect
health for 11 years thank God, and if the tables
are turned I must not be ungrateful, indeed I have
been able to suck a large lesson of patience out of
my 2 months compulsory idleness, and I hope I may
be like any Lamb if ever we meet again.
I continued to recover after I wrote to you,
(20th July) & left Athens in good spirits & pretty
strong, (i.e. I was able to walk as far as the Acropolis
slowly, & with a stick,) on the 27th to Alexandria.
Then I speedly fell ill again, but differently :—yet
when I got to Const ple I was obliged to be taken
up to the Hotel in a sedan chair. Well, after two
days I went up to the Embassy & was instantly
put to bed with erysipelas & fever, and did not
emerge on the banks of the Bosphorus till about
August 13; and then very feebly. Since then I
went a-head but had bad fever fits from not minding
diet: to-day as 2 days have gone and the enemy
comes not again, I have hope an am an hungered.
Hunger! did you ever have a fever? No con
sideration of morality or sentiment or fear of punish
ment would prevent my devouring any small child
who entered this - room now. I have eaten every
thing in it but a wax-candle and a bad lemon.
This house is detached from the big Embassy Palace
& is inhabited by attaches, and though Lady Canning 1
1 Wife of the Ambassador.
12

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THE MOUNTAINS OF THERMOPYLAE.
Painted by Edward Lear. iSf2.
From the Picture formerly belonging to Chichester Fortescue, now the property op Lady Strachey.

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A IfI‘
' A! /✓
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is as kind as 70 mothers to me, yet I see little of
them. Could I look out on any scene of beauty,
my lot would be luminous ; bless you! the Bosphorus
hereabouts at least, is the ghastliest humbug going!
Compare -the Straits of Menai or Southampton
Waters or the Thames to it! It has neither form
of hill nor character of any possible kind in its
detail. A vile towing path is the only walk here
or a great pull up a bare down,—of course,—sun
and climate make any place lovely, & thus all the
praises of this far-famed place I believe savour of
picnics, &c., &c. However I have seen but little
of it so I will not go on, but lest you think ennui
or illness disgust me let me say, that Thebes &
Athens shed a memory of divinest beauty over much
worse and more tedious sufferings than those I have
endured here, which indeed are nought but weariness
now.
What to do, my Dear Fortescue when I return
to England!! ? ? 1—<r j! (expressive of indelible doubt,
wonder, & ignorance.) London must be the place,
& then comes the choice of two lines; society, &
half days work, pretty pictures, petitmaitre praise
boundless, frequented studio &c., &c. wound up
with vexation of spirit as age comes on that talents
have been thrown away :—or hard study beginning
at the root of the matter, the human figure, which
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to master alone would enable me to carry out the
views & feelings of landscape I know to exist within
me. Alas ! if real art is a student, I know no more
than a child, an infant, a foetus. How could I. I
have had myself to thank for all education, & a
vortex of society hath eaten my time. So you see I
must choose one or other—& with my many friends
it will go hard at 36 to retire—please God I live for
8 or 10 years—but—if I did—woulddt the “ Lears 55
sell in your grandchildrens time !—But enough of this,
and self. Grandchildren make me think of Baring’s
marriage, 1 which I am so really glad to hear of &
shall write to him by this post. That good-natured
fellow wrote to me from England, which I wonder
anyone does so busy as you all must be there. I
sincerely wish him a long career of happiness. But
I trust you will soon follow his example & I keep
on expecting of it.
A year later finds Lear in England, paying
visits to various friends, and meeting again
Lord Derby, who had been his patron from
the first. “The admirable quality of Lear’s
work for the Zoological Society had won him
the close friendship and the generous
patronage of the thirteenth Earl of Derby,
for whom he drew the beautiful illustrations
of that now rare volume ‘ The Knowsley
1 Baring’s marriage to Miss Sturt took place in September.
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Rome, Greece, and England
Menagerie.’ ” Thus says his friend and
executor, Franklin Lushington, in his preface
to the “ Poems by Alfred Lord Tennyson,”
illustrated by Edward Lear, and brought out
after his death, by Lord Tennyson, as a tribute
to his memory.
Tabley House, Knutsford,
i August, 1849.
On leaving town I came to the James Hornby’s 1
at Win wick, & then migrated with them to
Knowsley. After a week at each place and a day
or two about Manchester, I came for 4 days to
Tatton’s of Wythenshawe and now am here for
as many more. . . .
Now all this time I have been living in a constant
state of happiness. . My dear old friends Mr. Hornby
& Lord Derby I found just as ever, though 72 & 75
and every day has caused fresh shaking of hands
with old friends. Certainly English people do go
on with friendship just where they left off, as you
go on with a book at the page you last read. So
you see, barring the queer climate I have been
intensely happy, & if one were morbidly inclined,
one would think that like Dives one was enjoying
all one’s good things here below. This place is
one of the very nice dwellings in this land, the old
house & the church & the lake are a perfect picture.
So was old Elizabethan Wythenshawe, & at Winwick
1 J. Hornby of Winwick, brother-in-law of Lord Derby.
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and dear old Knowsley there was a lot of sunshine
quite vavacious to feel. Immense fun we have
had, one has done little but laugh, eat, drink,
& sleep. ...
I trust to get through 14 or 15 visits out of my 68.
Willingly would I an your house were one:—but I
must be back in town by 20th Sept. at latest, (then
comes furnishing & fidgetting & fussing,) after that
hard real work. Did I tell you I had finally settled
on taking 17, Stratford Place? 1 signed sealed and
delivered, O! yes. How I hope you will come very
often to look yourself into other lands.
What do you think of my having nearly, all but
become possessor of 40 or 50,000^ ? Fact, I assure
you, it makes me laugh to think what I could possibly
have done with such a statistic heap of ore! How
ever, I have never it seems been attentive enough to
the old Lady 2 who always said she would enrich me,
so she has died and left all to 30 poor widows for
ever & ever, and much better too that she has left it
thus, for I should not have made as good use of it.
I thought directly I heard of this matter that I would
instantly marry one of the 30 viddies, only then it
occurred to me that she would not be a viddy any
more if I married her.
1 “Stratford Place,” now Lear’s headquarters when in England
for some years. He had several “ shows ” of pictures both at 17
and later at No. 15.
2 I cannot trace this old lady, but she was not a relation, I
fancy, for I believe he had no relations outside his own brothers
and sisters, few of whom were still living at this time.
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Lydford, near Bridestow, Devon,
July 19, 1851.
Enter Mary.
“ Mary, has the boy come back from the Post with
the letters yet?”
“ Noa zur, hiss be drewndid ! ”
“He’s what Mary ? ”
“Hiss be drewndid zur in the pewerfil rain.”
“ Well, it certainly does rain Mary but I hope he
aint drowned, for all that.”
Exit Mary.
Re-enter Mary.
“Here be tew litters zur:—the boy is all queet
drewndid zur as ever you see ! ”
Upon which I took up one, and you having been in
my thoughts during this very morning, says I, how
odd, it’s Fortescue’s writing!
Upon which I opened it.
Upon which I found it was from Mr. Gladstone.
Upon which I said, Pish!
Upon which I took up letter No. 2.
Upon which I found that was really yours.
Upon which I took this paper and began,
Dear Fortescue,—I was very glad to find you were
pleased with the painting, for I have taken long and
great trouble about it, all my artist friends say I have
made an enormous stride, so I hope to go on, but only
by the same road, i.e., constant study and perseverance.
You suppose rightly that I felt Lord Derby’s death; I
17 c

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have not felt anything so much for many many years:—
22 years ago I first went to Knowsley, & have received
nothing but kindness from him & his family ever since,
so it is no great wonder his death should cause me
sorrow. The painting 1 belongs to the present Earl,
who will kindly allow me to have it for some time yet.
Overworked and unwell & unable to bear the dis
quiet of London, I came at once to this very out of
the way place, as, to get away at all, I was obliged to
select a deadly cheap place, since while here I have to
pay for 17, Stratford Place, also. I shall remain here
and hereabouts, a tour in Cornwall with Lushington 2
etc. till nearly November.
Genus homo! I aint. I’m a landscape painter, & I
desire you to like me as sich, or not at all:—if I grow
worse in my professional power, be sure I shall worsen
in all ways :—Lord how it does rain! It always does
here, but that’s nothing, for I have a house full of
books, & I’ve got a little bedroom and a small parlor,
& a big loft made into a study (which would be pleasant
if the cats didn’t bumble into it every 5 minutes).
And all that costs 5s. a week:—& I have 3 meals of
food daily for is. 6d., and I’m finishing some water-
coloured drawings by degrees, and arranging in my
mind some paintings for the winter. There’s only a
curate as lives opposite, & keeps bees:—all the rest
1 Lord Derby died on June 13, 1851.
2 Franklin Lushington, another intimate friend and patron of
Lear and his executor after his death. He was one of the two
Justices in Corfu when Lear first went to reside there.
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of the village is miners, which reside underground.
On Sunday I go to church, when there is a congrega
tion of 7 or i o and a tipsy clerk. O ! beloved clerk !
who reads the psalms enough to make you go into fits.
He said last Sunday, “ As white as an old salmon,”
(instead of white as snow in Salmon), “ A lion to my
mothers children ” (for alien) & they are not guinea
pigs, instead of—guiltless ! Fact:—but I grieve to say
hes turned out for the same, & will never more please
my foolish ears.
I suppose you never come into Devonshire ?
Lord! how it rains!
I have forsworn by this provincial step of mine all
the luxuries & niceties of the year, to wit, cherries &
all fruit, wine, & a number of other necessaries of life.
We primitive Christians of Lydford have thrown off
such fopperies.
Please recommend all the Grand Jury to buy my
‘Journal of a Landscape painter.’ 1 What are you
doing with a Grand Jury?
Where are you going this summer ? O Lord ! how
it keeps raining!
Every post brings heaps of dinner & evening invita
tions. I think myself well off to be able to decline
them at id. a piece. Now I must go back to my
drawing of Syracuse, which thank goodness, is nearly
done.
1 This was the “Journal of a Landscape Painter in Albania/’
published in 1851 ; the companion volume in Calabria was
published in 1852.
19

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Lydford, near Bridestow, Devon,
26 August, 1851.
I have only just returned here, from a ramble in
Cornwall, (not Simeon but the county, 1 ) and among a
heap of letters, one from you, shall be answered first
of all, barring sister Ann 2 & R. Hornby.
You do perfectly well to project all your uncom
fortablenesses into my ear & bu^zim at all times, for
I can sympathize with you most perfectly, though I
can do nothing else. Lord, how I wish I was a
sucking Socrates like some men I know, wouldn’t
you have 5 sheets of advice ! But as I aint I may as
well say that there is nothing of which I have so
distinct a recollection as the fearful gnawing sensation
which chills & destroys one, on leaving scenes &
persons, for which & whom there are no substitutes till
their memory is a bit worn down. I say, there is
nothing I so distinctly remember, because those feeling
are with me already taking the form of past matters,
never again to recur, like cutting ones teeth, measles
&c. Not that one has actually outlived the possibility
of their repetition, but rather, I prevent them by keep
ing them at arm’s length :—I wont like anybody else,
if I can help it, I mean, any new person, or scenes, or
place, all the rest of my short foolish life. But the
vacuum which you describe I used to suffer from
intensely, & can quite feel for you. Yet you, it
appears to me, might put an end to all chance of such
1 Cornwall Simeon, his friend, son of Sir R. G. Simeon.
2 His eldest sister, who had been a mother to him, she being
the eldest and he the youngest of a family of twenty-one children.
20

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SULI.
{From Lear's “ Journal of a Landscape Painter in Albania
and Lllyria1851.)

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Rome, Greece, and England
blacknesses, by asking any young (or old if you prefer)
Lady to marry you, which if you asked her she
instantly would,\ whereas if / asked any, she instantly
wouldn't. Well, I suppose you will one day : but I
shall be in a horrid way till I see her, because as you
are of the sensitive order, you will either be very
happy or you won’t.
I shall not allow you to be deceived into the idea,
that I am perfectly tranquil & happy here :—quite the
contrary. There is only one fine day out of 15, &
all the rest are beyond expression demoralizing &
filthy. My “straitened circumstances” forbid moving
now I am here, and besides, I hate giving up a thing
when I try it, & having declared I would paint the
Glen scene, I will, I’ll stay till I do. I would not so
much care for the wet, as for being obliged when it is
wet, to look at a dead waif and a rubbish heap opposite,
and to see nothing all day but 27 pigs, & 18 cows.
Experience teaches, and a village summer in Italy is
another thing to this. ... I have faithfully promised
to pass some days with C. Church near Ilchester
before I return :—these things, with the vain and
frustrated attempts to get some studies of weeds and
rox fill up my beastly Autumn, and send me back
again to Stratford Place.
I don’t improve as I wish, which added to the rain,
and the view, prevents “happiness and tranquillity.” It
is true I don’t expect to improve, because I am aware
of my peculiar incapacities for art, mental & physical :
—but that don’t mend the matter, anymore than the
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knowledge that he is to be always blind delights a man
whose eye is poked out. The great secret of my
constant hard work is, to prevent my going back, or
at best standing quite still. I certainly did improve
last year a little, but I aint sure if Lydford and the
rain and the cows won’t have made me go back this
year. However I did it all for the best, as the old
sow said when she sat on her little pigs. . . .
Bowen I must write to again, he wrote since I
last did so to you, & I answered him. He is very
good-natured, though as you say his rhinoceros-like
insensibility to the small annoyances he deals out,
would aggravate me. He is going to review my
Albania he says,—Bye the bye, I should think that
little book has had as much good said of it as any ever
have. I dare say you saw the Athenceum &c., &
Taifs Magazine for this month. I wish I may get
something for all this. When I return to town I shall
join a nightly Academy for drawing from the life :—
thus you see showing you that I believe hard work is
the best substitute for the Ideal. I shall try also to set
about sundry big landscapes. But I will paint this glen,
for all the rain and cows, if I stay here All my life.
0 Lord ! Lord! it is such a beastly place!!!!!!
1 can go on no more. It makes me almost cry to
think of what I suffer. So I’ll read King Arthur.
Write please. I wish I could see you, but I think
you’d like me better where I am just now. I’m so
savage.
Alfred Tennyson has gone to Italy.
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On his return to London, Lear joined the
Academy schools, as the following letter and
pictures will show:—
A
/h
ri £. ‘fastict&ot&'JL-
23

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Hastings (vulgarly ’astins), Sussex,
Jany. 23, 1853.
You know all about how my front room ceiling fell
down last July. Well—after a very regular appli
cation here I completed '3 paintings—Venosa, Reggio,
and Thermopylae—all 3 far the best I ever didded
(or dod). On the 6th. Jany.—having written before
hand to put my rooms right, I went up to town :
anyhow, my time would be up at Stratford place at
the half-quarter, so I was prepared to go on with a
search for lodgings, you have heard me speak enough
against the darkness of those I lived in. But lo!
when I arrived the horrid fact was announced to me
that that very morning all the back room ceiling had
fallen!
“ Is there confusion in the little room ? ” (said I to
myself when I saw it). “ Let what is broken so
remain! ”
It was indeed high time to quit the stage of
Stratford Place, so I instantly packed up—no slight
operation with my immence lot of drawings and boox
—and as instantly rushed all over North West
London for lodgings. At length I fixed on a house
which Hansen has taken for himself, and where I
have taken 2 floors for 1 year—at 65, Oxford Terrace,
Hyde Park.
I could not, of course, stay in the Stratford Place
aboad after the fall of Paris No. 2., nor can I
get into the Oxf d Terrace till Feby. 10—so I had
nothing to do but come down here again—where at
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least there are fresh air, and muffins. I must tell you
what yOu will be very glad to hear : wizz : that my
large Parnussus is bought by the new Slissiter
General—my old and kind friend, Mr. Bethell (Sir
Richard to be shortly). 1 It will be capitally placed
and well seen—a futuer wh : compensates for my not
having got so much for it as I axd. Wots the hods
so long as ones appy?
I am now doing a huge picture of Syracuse
Quarries ; £ starved Athenians judiciously introduced
here and there. Since August I have been, as I told
you, painting on an oly different principle, and so
far with gt. success : I hope the Thermopylae will be
hung in the Brit : Institution.
If you come up to town before the iot let me
know—might you not rush down to dine here with
me by a 5 p.m. train on Saturday and stay all
Sunday ? I now could give you a bed—as the
cucumber bed is too cold, and I have got a spare
room. Do you know I have cut 2 new teeth ? It
was supposed I was ill of the mumps—whereas it
was dentifery. I impute all my health, and sperrits,
and improved art and sense herefrom to the arrival of
these 2 teeth.
My sale of Parnussus, just enables me to pay part
of the annual bills off, and to begin decently at Oxf d
Terrace. Like a nass I gave away all I could, so as
usual have none over to spare. One of my sisters is
1 Afterwards first Baron Westbury. Became Lord Chancellor
1861.
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horridly poor, and another is going with all her child 11
and grandchild 11 to N. Zealand, and another wants
some port wine being ill, and so on. But the fact is, I
only wish for money to give it away, and there’s lots
to be done with it here if people wouldn’t be above
looking at what they should do, and wouldn’t keep
fussing about those fooly blacks.
I’ve been reading Brooke’s “ Borneo ” lately. What
do you think of a society for clothing and educating
by degrees the Orang outangs?
The more I read travels, the more I want to move.
Such heaps of N. Zealand as I have read of late ! I
know every corner of the place—ditto V. D. land—
ditto N. Holland. Will you go there ? Will you go
to the Lake Tchad ? Someday though, if I can’t
scrape up money to go up the Nile, I think I shall
ask you to take me there. I should like to go up
there for 3 or 4 months well enough.
Have you ever read “Calabria” yet? If you
haven’t do get it and recommend it astuciously to
heaps of Dukes and Dsses. : it will do them good,
and me too.
In town I saw hardly anyone—as you may suppose
from my cadent ceiling and its sequences. The
Bethells—my sisters &c., and A., and o! Mrs A.
How frigid that icie ladye was no Polar or N. Zemb-
lan tongue can tell! Not to me though—for she is
always very good natured to me—but to all things in
heaven and earth generally. By jingo ! it’s too dread
ful to me that awful indifference ! Yet they seem
28

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GIOIOSA.
’ of a Landscape Paintet
(R. Bentley, 18S2).

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,<:r, ^
llli' 1 1

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Rome, Greece, and England
happy together. No, my dear Fortescue, I don’t
mean to marry—never. You should, but there’s time
enough yet for you—6 or 8 years perhaps. In my
case I should paint less and less well, and the thought
of annual infants would drive me wild. If I attain to
65, and have an “ establishm* ” with lots of spoons
&c. to offer—I may chain myself:—but surely not
before. And alas! and seriously—when I look
around my acquaintance—and few men have more,
or know more intimately, do I see a majority of
happy pairs ? No, I don’t. Single—I may have few
pleasures—but married—many risks and miseries are
semi-certainly in waiting—nor till the plot is played
out can it be said that evils are not at hand. You
say you are 30, but I believe you are ever so much
more. As for me I am 40—and some months : by
the time I am 42 I shall regard the matter with 42 de
I hope.
In one sense, I am growing very indifferent to the
running out of the sands of life. Years are making
me see matters with totally different eyes than I
formerly saw with :—but at the same time I am far
I more cheerful. I only wish I could dub and scrub
myself into what I wish to be, and what I might be I
fear if I took proper pains. But chi sa ? How much
will be allowed for nature, and early impressions, and
iron early tuition ? Looking back, I sometimes
wonder I am even what I am. I often wonder and
wonder how I have made so many certainly real
friends as I have. Sometimes 6 or 8 of the kindest
29

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Letters of Edward Lear
letters in the world come together, and the effect is
rather humiliating tho’ not to my peculiar idiosyn-
cracy.
I hope to go to Reigate to see, Ld. Somers. 1 He
is a great favourite of mine, from my knowledge of
many excellent points of his character, from our
having many sympathies in common, and from our
looking at many present-day matters with similar
views. She is a most sweet creature. I think her
expression of countenance is one of the most unmiti
gated goodness I ever contemplated. I call that a model
of a woman. Bother : I wish they wern’t Earls and
Countesses—though I don’t much care—for I’ve been
so rummy independent all my life that nobody thinks
I ever like rank for ranks’ sake I should think.
I don’t understand the Gladstone question—only as
I detest the bigotry of Denison and Bennett,—so I
suppose G. has a shade less of it. 2 Ma non troppo
me ne fido anche a lui.
But I grant your present Govt, are the best lot of
workers we have had for a long time yet,, and I do
not see why Conservatives should be growled at if
they advocate moderate reforms,—without which a
1 Formerly Lord Eastnor; succeeded to the earldom in
1852, husband of the beautiful Virginia Pattle (one of the
loveliest women of her time), himself a man of great culture
and artistic perception.
2 After the defeat of Lord Derby's Ministry, Mr. Gladstone
became very unpopular with the Conservative party, and was
violently attacked by Archdeacon Denison and others, who said
that the University of Oxford which Mr. Gladstone had been
elected to represent, could place no more confidence in him.
3P

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Rome, Greece, and England
blind man may see that nothing will be conserved at
all very shortly. O mi little i’s and pegtops! how
it do rain and bio!
Will you give my compliments and remembrances
to L d and L dy Clermont. 1
1 Lord Clermont was the elder brother of Fortescue, and had
married a daughter of the Marquis of Ormond.
31

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CHAPTER II
1856 and 1857
CORFtJ AND ENGLAND
'T'HREE years later we find Lear settled
at Corfu, then under British protec
tion, and he remained there at intervals until
the cession of the Ionian Isles to Greece in
1864. The light thrown by his letters on a
little^-known chapter of our foreign policy
gives them an additional interest. In 1854
Lear had gone to Egypt and Switzerland, and
in 1855 again to Corfu, but I unfortunately
have failed to find any letters of those years.
The long gap between the following letters
and the last one quoted may be partly accounted
for, by the fact that several written by him in
the interim never reached Fortescue at all.
Lear to Fortescue.
Corfu, 19 Febry., 1856.
It seems we were a writing to each other pretty
nearly at the same time, for yours which I was truly
32

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Corfu and England
thankful for, is dated Jan. 6th and I sent mine off to
you on the 6th. But the letters were different, mine
I fear me was so glumy that you might have been
uncomfortable about me ever since, notwithstanding
my growlygrumbleraroc (most), known nature, and
therefore and wherefore, I shall send you this, though
it will not be a long letter, rather than not write at all,
for the days are so full of occupation that I vainly try
for leisure. Up at 6, Greek master from 6f to 7f.
Breakfast &c., to 9, then work till 4, or sketching out
of doors, and either dining out or at home with
writing and drawing fill up my hours. First, I wish
vou a happy new Year, & continually, if I didn’t do
so before. At all events I wish you a lot of happy
new Leap-years.
I, still think of making Corfu my head-quarters, &
of painting a large picture here of the Ascension festa
in June, for 1857 Exhibition, & of going over to
Yannina and all sorts of Albanian abstractions.
I hope to send your drawing soon, together with
Sir John Simeon’s & Mr. Clive’s pictures. The reason
I did not send the fellow to your “ Morn broadens” 1
was because I could not satisfy myself at all as to the
quality of the one I began. Yours is so finished a
picture that I should not like a less good one by its
side.
Do you know there has been literally no winter
here ; they say it is 27 years since there was so little
1 “ Morn broadens on the borders of the dark,” a beautiful
oil belonging to Fortescue.
33 D

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cold, & still some think we shall have a touch of
rigour in March :—in fact, I have scarcely any Asthma,
& no symptom of Bronchitis at all. When I get a
house, you must come out and have a run, & I’ll put
you up : I’ll feed you with Olives & wild pig, and
we’ll start off to Mount Athos. Bowen his marriage 1
takes place at the end of April. The Balls are all
over now & gaiety generally, dinners excepted, though
I am going to soon back out of all, by dining early.
The not being able to get any properly lighted
painting room annoys me horribly, and I confess still
to being at times very lowspirited and depressed, but
not so much as before.
You cannot tell me news of the Millais: the blind
girl picture 2 was begun .when we were together in
Sussex. W. Holman Hunt has just come back, &
Mr. Tennyson 3 writes is going there. I wish he was
here—The sort of lonely feeling of having no one who
can sympathyze professionally with one’s goings on, is
very odious at times. Lushington would more or less,
but his work is tremendously heavy, & when he gets
any leisure, he rides or yachts, or shoots, all out of the
way sports for me, except the former; I did ride all
last Saturday for a wonder, & wish I had tin to keep a
1 He married a Greek, daughter of Roma, who was appointed
Vice-Governor of Ithaca in 1858. Her brother married a sister
of the Queen of Montenegro.
2 Now in the Birmingham Art Gallery.
3 Tennyson became a great friend of Lear’s, who often stayed
with him when in England. One of his poems is dedicated
“ To E. L., on his travels in Greece.”
34

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Corfti and England
horse. Have yon any message to Lady Emily
KoZZypig?! The Lord High C. 2 & Lady Young are
very good-natured, but I don’t take to Court life, and
not playing cards am doubtless a bore, or rather useless.
But I suppose they are good people. There are really
some very nice people here among the Militia Officers
—Ormsbys, Barringtons, Powers, &c. &c., and their
going would aggravate them as stays behind. I am
painting “ And I shall see before I die the palms and
temples of the south,” for Sir John Simeon, being
Philae by sunset, 3—but my eyes give me a good deal
of trouble, and I don’t know how they will bear the
summer.
The following letter from Fortescue, con
taining an early reference to the celebrated Lady
Waldegrave, may be of interest. Frances,
widow of George, seventh Earl Walde
grave, was at this time the wife of George
Harcourt, of Nuneham. She was the daughter
of the greatest of English tenors, John Braham,
who in his time carried the musical world
by storm. He was of Jewish descent, a man
of intense personality and independence of
mind, and his daughter inherited these charac-
1 Daughter of the second Earl of Clancarty and a cousin of
Fortescue’s. She married Signor Giovanni Kozziris in 1843.
2 Sir John Young was appointed Lord High Commissioner
in 1855.
3 A replica of this was painted for Fortescue this year.
35

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Letters of Edward Lear
teristics together with many others, which
united to make her one of the most remarkable
and interesting women of her day. She
eventually married Fortescue: he had been
devoted to her for years, and it was one of the
happiest of unions.
Fortescue to Lear.
Red House, Ardee,
17 Sept. 1856.
. . . During the latter part of the season I passed
almost every Sunday at Strawberry Hill, 1 which Lady
Waldegrave has restored, and made the oddest and
prettiest thing you ever saw. She often asks after
you and says she hopes often to see you there. I am
sure you would like it, and she gets a charming society
around her there. She did not go out last season
at all on account of her fathers death. Charles
Braham 2 sang two or three times at the Haymarket
opera with Wagner and Piccolomini. He was dread
fully nervous, but I am in great hopes will do well.
... I was at a great Nuneham party. We had the
D’Aumale’s3 there, and very likeable Bourbons they
are. . . .
1 Strawberry Hill, Walpole’s historic villa at Twickenham—
during the sixties and seventies the resort of all fashionable
London.
= Brother of Lady Waldegrave.
3 The Due d’Aumale was the fourth son of Louis Philippe,
and was then living at Orleans House, Twickenham, to which
he had retired after the revolution of 1848.
3b

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FRANCES COUNTESS WALDEGRAVE, AiTAT
m a coloured, lithograph of a crayon drawing by f. K. S

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Corfti and England
I am for holding hard by the Ideals—and, if one
set go, getting another ordered as soon as possible—
as we do our coats and boots when they wear out.
This life is meant to be a life of ideals. We ought to
feel like children—and live on ideas of the future, as
children do of the time when they will be “grown up.”
This is a cheerful view—you will say—and easier
preached than practised. True—I often “reck not
my own rede”-—and I could give you a reason for
this view of things at this moment presenting itself to
my mind. Nevertheless it is true. And, if we cannot
keep hold of our ideals, Schiller tells us of two com
panions which never forsook him, and which I suppose
would console and soothe—though I think there are
some ideals even they would never replace—Friend
ship and Employment. As to myself, I got through
the Session and season pretty well. ... I made one
Parliamentary effort of some importance in defence of
the Irish system of National Education, which I
believe to be a just one and doing great good. I had
a very nice letter from your amiable Lord High
Commissioner, congratulating me on my speech on
that occasion. Touching you, he speaks thus :—“ I
ought to have written to you before in answer to your
note about Lear. We have found him a most agree
able person—and a great addition to- our society, and
we all like him very much—especially Lady Young,
who has taken to sketching with great ardour.” I
have always liked Sir J. Y. : I never knew much
of her Ladyship.
3 7

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Letters of Edward Lear
Lear to Fortescue.
ffllVATf: cLsyuk KON\^PIBBNCT/At-*
Quarantine Island, Corfu,
9. October, 1856.
I have just returned from a 2 nionth’s tour, whereby
I have seen and drawn all Mount Athos, 1 & have
seen Troy, slightly and whereby, which is far better,
I have gained a great amount of health bodily &
mentle, to my great satisfaction & I hope thankful
ness, 8l also I trust to the benefit obliquely of many of
my felly creatures who will hereafter peeroase my
jurnles, and admyer my pigchers. Among a heap of 2 8
letters one from you delights my soal: date—R.D. 2
17. Sept. I am glad you are so merry & that you are
enjoying the summer so much. You have not written
to me, (you nasty brute!) for six months. I wish I
could see Strawberry Hill. Have you seen Alfred
Seymour3 since he came back ? I was very glad of your
parliamentary movement.4 I’m not''for holding by
the “Ideals”: they’ve bothered me all my life, and I
now mean to try how far I can make some realities.
1 Athos was his magnum opus.
2 Lear’s way of writing Ardee.
3 Alfred Seymour, a barrister, younger son of Henry Seymour
of Knoyle House. Entered Parliament 1863.
4 On the 17th of June Mr. Walpole moved a resolution on
the subject of Education in Ireland, which was carried against
the Ministry, but Mr. Fortescue subsequently moved a counter
resolution, which, after a considerable discussion, was carried.
38

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Corfti and England
Nevertheless a letter from Mrs. A. Tennyson tells me
that Alfred is writing away. (I saw QEnone on the
plains of Troy : she had a pink gown on : one arm
and one breast wholly uncovered, a large mole upon
the latter & a slight moustache on her upper lip :
altogether a different person from what one , expected.)
Sir J. Youngs notice of me was flattering, tho’
I vow I was never agreeable at all. Lady Y. is a
good-natured lively woman, albeit she takes no
especial part such as her position might warrant, as
to schools &c. &c. I believe seemingly Sir John is
an amiable well-meaning man, but wholly easy &
quite in the hands of Bowen: as indeed how for a
time can it be otherwise, since in so shprt a time, not
even Solomon could understand these Islands.
Please give my best remembrances & compliments
to Lady Waldegrave. Her conduct to her father
and family has evidently always been heart-action,
and everyone respects her for. it, as being like unto
what very few dare to practise.
I trust to paint a magnificent large view of Corfu,
straits, and Albanian hills. This I trust to sell for
500^ as it will be my best, and is 9 feet long. If
I can’t sell it I shall instantly begin a picture 10 feet
long: and if that don’t sell, one 12 feet long. Nothing
like persisting in virtue. O dear! I wish I was up
there, in the village I mean, now, on this beautiful
bright day! However I got unwell, & bluedevilled,
& I made up my mind that I could work no more till
-something called put my boddly & mentle N.R.G.S.
39

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So 1 said, I’ll go to Mt. Athos : (I should have gone
to M. Negro with A. Seymour had I not missed the
steamer). And off I set on Aug. 7th taking my
servant, canteen, bed & lots of paper & Quinine Pills.
F. Lushington saw me as far as (juXaOeg, but then I fell
down a high flight of (19) stone stairs & damaged my
back sadly. I thought I was lame for life, but after 4
days on a mattress, I got on pillows & a horse, &
went over to Yannina & to Pindus, & (in great pain)
to Larissa, & finally to Saloniki. There getting
better I went slick into To ” Ay tog ''Opog or the Holy
Mountain, altogether the most surprising thing I have
seen in my travels, perhaps, barring Egypt. It is a
peninsular mountain about 2000ft. high & 50 miles
long ending in a vast crag, near 7000 feet high, this
being Athos. All but J:his bare crag is one mass of
vast forest, beech, chestnut, oak, & ilex, and all round
the cliffs and crags by the sea are 20 great and ancient
monistirries, not to speak of 6 or 700 little uns above
and below and around. These convents are inhabited
by, altogether perhaps, 6 or 7000 monx, & as you
may have heard, no female creature exists in all the
peninsula:—there are nothing but mules, tomcats, &
cocks allowed. This is literally true.
Well, I had a great deal of suffering in this Athos,
for my good man Giorgio caught the fever, & nearly
died, & when he grew better I caught it, but not so
badly. However I persisted & persisted & finally
I got drawings of every one of the 20 big monasteries,
so that such a valuable collection is hardly to be
40

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TEMPE.
{From Lear's “ Journal of a Landscape Painter in Albania
and Lllyria1851.)

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Corfu and England
found. Add to this, constant walking—8 or 10 hours
a day—made me very strong, & the necessity I was
under of acting decidedly in some cases, called out a
lot of energy I had forgotten ever to have possessed.
The worst was the food & the filth, which were uneasy
to bear. But however wondrous and picturesque the
exterior & interior of the monasteries, & however
abundantly & exquisitely glorious & stupendous the
scenery of the mountain, I would not go again to the
”Ay 10q “Opog for any money, so gloomy, so shockingly
unnatural, so lonely, so lying, so unatonably odious
seems to me all the atmosphere of such monkery.
That half of our species which it is natural to every
man to cherish' & love best, ignored, prohibited and
abhorred—all life spent in everlasting repetition of
monotonous prayers, no sympathy with ones fellow-
beans of any nation, class or age. The name of
Christ on every garment and at every tongue’s end,
but his maxims trodden under foot. God’s world and
will turned upside down, maimed, & caricatured:—if
this I say be Xtianity let Xtianity be rooted out as
soon as possible. More pleasing in the sight of the
Almighty I really believe, & more like what Jesus
Christ intended man to become, is an honest Turk
with 6 wives, or a Jew working hard to feed his little
old clo’ babbies, than these muttering, miserable,
mutton-hating, man-avoiding, misogynic, morose, &
merriment-marring, monotoning, many-mule-making,
mocking, mournful, minced-fish & marmalade masti
cating Monx. Poor old pigs! Yet one or two were
4i

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Letters of Edward Lear
kind enough in their way, dirty as they were : but it
is not them, it is their system I rail at.
So having seen all, and a queer page in my world-
nollidge is Athos!—I came back to Saloniki, and
set sail for the Dardanelles, where being obliged to
stay 4 days for a steamer, I spent 3 in seeing Troy.
But dear Mother Ida I could not reach, & I do trust
to go there in the spring of 1857, for there is a some
thing about the Troad scenery quite unique,—if it be
not equalled by the R. Cornpagna as to grand and
simple outlines.
Thence I came by sea to Corfu, getting here on the
7th & being thrust into this place till Saturday the
nth & be d d to the owls for their folly.
Fortescue to Lear.
Red House, Ardee,
9th December 1856.
... I am delighted to hear that, while you abuse
the “ Ideal,” you are growing rapidly into the
ideal Edward Lear—the “ model man.” Don’t you
know that there is somewhere or other an ideal
Edward Lear—and an ideal Chichester Fortescue?
There we are arranged in some Divine Museum—
probably ticketed to avoid mistakes: the question is,
how like the actual E. L. and C. F. are to their iSia.
Do you think we should know ourselves ? Let us try
—in God’s name—to grow as like our ideals as we
can. What a splendid saying that is “till we all
42

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Corfti and England
come to the Perfect Man—to the measure of the
stature of the fulness of Christ.’ 5 ...
I am looking forward to Tennyson’s book. My
temper was sorely tried the other day by old Lady
Ormonde saying that “she wondered how an old
man could write such nonsense as Maud.”
Lear to Fortescue.
Corfu, ii. January 1857.
Let me see, the best way to answer your letter
is to look over the document hisself, & go on
a answering it symoniously. ... 1st Come remarks
about my Athos tour :—I am getting up (by my
usual dilatory but sure process of penning out and
colour) all my drawings of the Monasteries, and
have them ready all but 10 or 12, thanks to after
dinner applecation and stayathomeaciousness. They
are a reemarkible lot of work, as I hope one day you
will see: mind, if you do come while I am here,
I have now a better spare bed-room than you’ll get
anywhere in the town, & you should do just as you
liked, barring leaving the windys open all night,
because then my landlord’s 29 cats would perforate
the domestic tranquillity of my establishment. I must
tell you with a feeling of pride & conflatulation that
I have made such progress in Greek as to be able
to read the Testament (in old as well as modern,)
quite comfortably —and since I can read the life of
Christ in the Original, my desire of seeing the actual
places he lived in are not to be stoppled any more.
43

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Letters of Edward Lear
I gain more fixed and real ideas from the actual
history than from our translation.
2ndly I understand you now quite about the
“ Ideal”:—My dear boy, I alas! am a long long
way off my ideal! & I don’t see how it can
ever be got at, though I am notwithstanding
happy to say that I sometimes DO think I am
a little bit nearer the mark than I was. But,
hang it, there must be an ideal Mrs Lear to make
up the perfect ideal, & how that is to come about
I can’t yet tell. Some of your expressions on this
head are exactly like my friend Lushington’s here,
only that yours come out spongetaneous, whereas his
have to be got at by wrenching and imploring, he
being, though a diamond as to value, yet hidden in
a tortoise’s shell, Sc doing nothing so little as con
tributing an iota of personal experience for the benefit
of others.
3rd About the blessed Bowen. On the day your
letter came, burst out the news that he was, to use his
own account, “offered the Gov. Secretaryship of
Mauritius, such change being intimated as a mere
step to further advancement:—and that he should
return here as Lord H[igh] C[om]. 1
4th All you said of “ Maude ” is true & interesting.
O my i! Lady Ormonde!. In this queer place very
few^ever heard of Maude or Tennison, & if you hear
of such a song spoken of as from “ Maude” so certain
are you to hear “ oh ( ! indeed! Colonel Maude of the
1 Bowen did not go after all.
.44

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Corfu and England
Buffs! very distinguished officer, but I had not the
least idea he was a poet! ”
5th I trust your Aunt 1 will recover quite and be
spared to you many years. You are a great comfort
to her, & I certainly should like to see her. Some
how that does not seem to me so much off the cards
as a year ago. For though I shall hardly come to
England this year, yet if I do so next, I really believe
you’ll see me in Patland. Prepare notwithstanding
the ideal, to see me a good deal changed like Dan
Tucker, all de wool comes off my ’ed, & I am older
than Babylon in many ways. I wish sometimes I
grew hard and old at heart, it would I fancy save
a deal of bother :—but perhaps its all for the best.
There, that is all of the answering. And I must
needs wind up with a short & serious account of
myself. On coming out of Quarantine, the brutal
earthquake having spiffiicated my old rooms, I had to
remove, & I thought it better to get an expensive
place at once, on condition I could find a room for
work. Whereby I took the ground floor of Scarpa’s
house on the Condi Terrace,- or more properly speak
ing, Bastione, St. Atanasio,—for which I pay 6£ a
month. This is the plan of the baste. 1. is my
stewjew 30 feet long : 3 windys all a looking to
the North East, whereby the light is always perfect.
1 Mrs. Ruxton, widow of Mr. Ruxton of Red House. She was
devoted to her nephew Fortescue, and this affection was fully
reciprocated by him. He spent much of his time with her at
Ardee.
45

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This room I use only as a study,—Greek & painting.
My great 9 feet canvas makes a good show of work
in it just now. 2. is the sitting & dining room : very
nice & comfortable,—library,—good table,—matting, &
very old prints of Oxford Terrace around : Tennyson,
Lord Derby, & Mr. Hornby portraits : various Athos
oddities here & there. 3. is a small & sinbpotho-
mostic chamber adorned with my framed sketches &
pick pictures as are finished, for people to come
& see. Vich the coming of a live Markis & Mar
chioness (Drogheda) and several other mem biers of
the Peeriage vos the proudest moment of my life.
4. is my bedroom plain & comfortable. 5 a lumber
& spare room—-to be done up proper for you when
you come. 6. my man Giorgio Kokali’s 1 room. It
is Mr. Kokali’s opinion & compliment that the painting
I am now doing of Corfu will prevent all other
Englishmen coming here, for says he Sion dvai S& rrjv
(j>v<Tiv, roaov aicpi&(i)Q on Kavsva Si\si va TrXrjpwasi va eXSt) iSaf
—where’s the good of people paying for coming so far
if they can see the very same thing at home ? Giorgio
is a valuable servant, capital cook, & endlessly obliging
1 Giorgio Kokali, Lear’s faithful servant, lived with him till
he died at San Remo, when his son took his place.
8

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Corfu and England
and handy, not quite as clean as I should like always,
but improving by kindness. I teach the critter to
read & write, & he makes long strides!
Over-head live Major & Mrs. Shakespeare, really
clever & nice quiet people. The houses here are so
thin that one hears everything, so good neighbours
are real blessings. Condi Terrace is the “ West-end ”
of Corfu and we are all more or less swells as lives
in it. Next door lives my friend the Justice F.
Lushington. Further on the Cortazzi, a family of
whom more another time. Then the Parson, which
is a brick. At the other end Colonel Gage, & the
other Justice Sir James Reid. 1 If you come I’ll ask
them to come and dine : being a distinct Lord of the
Treasury 2 it behoves a friend to match you with
almighty swells.
Well I set to work fearfully, riz at 5J always—at 6\
& to 8^ 6 ScSaaicaXog tp'^rai.^ And then I paint till 3
4 having breakfasted at 9 and I walk a bit till 6. Dine
at 6|, and pen out my Athos drawings till 10. My
’elth is on the ’ole pretty good & I can work longer
than before this year. My big Corfu will be a
stunner, & I mean to try for 500 guineas for him, he
be 9 feet 4 inches long, & 6 feet ’i. I hope to get
him to Manchester in time.
I meant to finish out & out a regular long letter
1 Member of the Supreme Council in Ionian Islands, holding
office of Supreme Justice in rotation, 1837-58.
2 Fortescue was appointed a Lord of the Treasury in March,
1854.
3 “ The master comes.” •
47

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but cannot do so, for 6 letters having come by post,
and among them one very sad one from Holman
Hunt; who writes in great affliction on account of the
death of his father, and of Seddon our friend who was
with us in Egypt. 1 So I have to reply to that as well
as 3 others. One is from Alfred Seymour, a very
nice letter. I am so sorry I have not received one he
wrote from Vienna. If you see him, thank him &
say I will write very omejutly. Moreover, the wind
has turned Sopth & so virulent that my chimbly
smokes, so that I can’t go on no how, & it is so damp
& cold I must go to bed I fear. This is the only
drawback to the house.
The Palace folk continue to be very kind to me,
& I like them better. Sir John Y. is evidently a kind
good man, & I fancy more able than he was thought
to be. The truth being that it is no easy matter to
act suddenly, where as here, language & people are
unbeknown & all power is in the hands of the secre
tary. Lady Y. lives too much for amusement, but she
certainly improves & I believe I should end by liking
her very'much if I saw more of her. Now my dear
boy I must close this as the Cyclopses used to say of
their one eye. I wish I had written more or betterer,
but can’t. My ’ed is all gone woolgathering. Do
you write again as soon as ever you can, if ever so
shortly, & believe me always, Dear Fortescue,
Yours affectionately
Edward Lear.
1 Thomas Seddon, the landscape painter.

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May this and many others be very happy New
Years to you.
Here my boy! give me your eternal thanks for
what I am going to suggest to you as a parliamentary
motion, to be brought out & spoken on by yourself,
to the ultimate benefit of society & to your own post-
perpetual glorification. As soon as Parliament meets,
move that all Sidney Herbert’s distressed needle
women be sent out at once to Mount Athos ! By this
dodge all the 5000 monks young and old will be
vanquished:—distressed needle-babies will ultimately
awake the echoes of ancient Acte, & the whole fabric
of monkery, not to say of the Greek church will
fall down crash & for ever. N.B. Let the needle
women be all landed at once, 4000 at least, on the
South-east side of the peninsula & make a rush for the
nearest monastery, that subdued, all the rest will
speedily follow.
Corfu, May 1, 1857.
My dear 40scue, May 4. Which the above was
writtle flee days ago, but this very mominlet comes a
letter from you, date Apl. 23 ? as usual always one
of my regular pleasures. Now, this letter will neither
be a nice one nor a long one, but, just the hopposit
for it is to say I am coming to England fast as I
can, having taken a redboom at Hansens 16. Upper
Seymour Street, Squortman Pare, and also a rork-
woom or Stew-jew at 15 Stratford Place.
My big picture is in a mess, & without Holman
Hunt’s help I can’t get on with it, though it is done
49 E

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as to what must necessarily be done here, and requires
but 2 months of cropping and thought. Pray heaven
I may sell it. I bring to England my drawings of
Athos, I hope, for publication. Also sketches of Corffi
for separate lithogrofigging, & sale here. Also one
or two paintings to finish. Why are you coming say
you ? because I can't stay here any longer—without
seeing friends & having some communion of heart &
spirit—with one who should have been this to me,
I have none. And I can’t bear it. And I want to
see my sister. And also another sister who is going
to N. Zealand, before she goes. And some Canadian
cousins. And you. And my dear Daddy Holman
Hunt, & other people. So I’m off.
What a talk we will have! B[owen] goes about
saying that Mauritius is very angry that L[abouchere] 1
sent them out a Doctor, 2 and beg for him. ... I am
glad T. Baring is M.P.3 he is a good-hearted boy.
I shall do you the little Jerusalem con amore. Don’t
pollygize about your not writing : I gnoo ho# bizzy u
were. I didn’t go off East, because Clive'did not
come, he stood for Derbyshire and failed. I hope
I may see Strawberry Hill with you. Give my
remembrances to Lady Waldegrave.
1 Henry Labouchere, at this time Colonial Secretary, became
Lord Taunton in 1859.
2 Humphrey Sandwith, C.B., was appointed secretary at
Mauritius. He had had a varied and interesting career, as
correspondent to the Times at Constantinople in 1853, and
as staff-surgeon, &c., during the Crimean War.
3 For Falmouth.
SO

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■; ! I '
fJI
! 1i V
i : !
r;
' 1 i
i \ «! '
if'
be
an
Se
tin

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How I long to have a talk with you. You seem
to me to be much more be firm-ified & be-moral-
strengthefied and goaheady since we parted. I don’t
know what to say about the Secretaryship for the
Colonies. 1 Personally I should like you there
naturally:—-but the place ought to be filled by one
who knows and studies the subject thoroughly.
(Stanley 2 for instance.) But I don’t say you wouldn’t
or couldn’t. Do not decide hastily on non-application
for it. But who is going out of it? Just a beastly
letter as this never was ! O life ! life ! life ! What is
the next to be ?
Lear to Lady Waldegrave.
Red House, Ardee, 14. Sept., 1857.
Dear Lady Waldegrave,—I think you may be
amused by my writing you some account of my visit
to Ireland, if you have courage to look at such an
alarming sheet of paper as this is : but if it appears
too frightful you can easily tear it up, or at least not
read it. You will have heard from Charles Braham
that we were very comfortable at Ravensdale :—really
I never saw a more delightful place, nor a better house
than Lord Clermont’s, & the days I passed there were
most pleasant. I had known Lord & Lady Clermont
1 Fortescue’s friends wished him to apply for the post. He
became Under Secretary for the Colonies from 1857 to 1858,
and again from 1859-1865. Afterwards he was appointed Chief
Secretary for Ireland, &c., &c.
2 Edward John, second Baron Stanley of Alderley, at this
time President of the Board of Trade.
51

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years ago in Rome, (even before I knew the Fortescue,)
& as they are extremely nice persons, Ravensdale,
including possessors, grounds, gardens, house, hills,
heather, views, peacocks, & rabbits, rivers, dinners,
with all the objects and things in general, seemed to
my thinking a first rate place. Nevertheless I was
curious to see RD, & the Red House, & above all
the Aunt, so that I was not sorry to come here, the
rather that I am always more or less disagreeable if I
am not at work.
The Irish are funny people, & the moment one
lands here it is evident that England & Ireland are
very different countries in many respects. Among
other odd ways of speech, the common people never
by any chance say Yes, or No, '—e.g. Is it time to go ?
“It is not Sir” or “It is Sir” Have you cleaned
my boots. “ I have Sir ” or “ I have not Sir.” When
we asked at Dublin if the Scientific Association meet
ing was over, they said “ Indeed & it isn’t, but the
strength of it is pretty well broken,” as if it were a
revolution. But one of the best absurdities is told of
an old woman here, who though pretty well off grumbled
horribly, & when they said to her that for good clothes,
prosperous children, a kind husband & comfortable
house she ought to thank God—“ And sure don’t he
take it /)ut of me in Corns! ” said she. I go into fits
of laughing here, when they call after Fortescue,
“Mimber!” and it is also very queer to hear them
congratulate him on being at home again.
But the wonder and crowning part of Redhouse is
52

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Corfti and England
the Aunt, Mrs. Ruxton :—I never saw such a delightful
or so extraordinary an old lady:—at 8 5, she has all the
activity of mind and body of persons at 60 in usual
life, & far more of the bright intelligence, absolute
fun, constant cheerfulness, unselfishness, good sense
and judgment, kindness of thought & deed than
usually can be found united in any individual of any
age. Only she is a little deaf, but that at times, not
always. It is quite singular to observe how she enters
into the interest of all kinds of matters, & never seems
to tire, tho’ she is out in the garden by 7, & goes to
bed not before 11 at night! What with her garden,
the grounds, the house, writing letters, visiting her
poor people, attending her schools, (she drives herself
about in a pony-chaise,) reading and talking, she never
seems to have an unoccupied moment, & tho’ at first
I thought this might be an unusual state of things,
I find she is exactly the same day by day. The old
lady has still the remains of great beauty & her
expression is one of the most perfectly benevolent &
animated you can imagine. She is immensely fond
of Fortescue, & no wonder, for he is just like a son to
her. Chichester Fortescue has in fact appeared to me
quite in a new light since I saw him here : I always
knew many of his qualities well, his good and general
taste in matters of literature, art, &c., his great truth
fulness & his warm and generous disposition : but I
was not prepared to find him so active in all county &
parochial business, nor had I ever seen him in the
position of a most affectionate child as he is to Mrs.
53

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Ruxton. It is always a great thing to find that longer
and closer knowledge of character makes it more
esteemed & liked, and my stay here has already caused
me to think higher of Chichester Fortescue & to like
him better than I ever did before, & that is saying
no little.
Another point of Mrs. Ruxton’s character is her
quiet & regular piety, though that you might assume
from my description of her goodness : she is in a word
a tip top Christian multiplied by 20 & I never believed
I could see so much to admire in any old lady.
Our party is small here only Chichester Hamilton,
Fortescue’s nephew, a good quiet lad. (They are all
anxious enough about his brother John, 1 who is near
Benares). And a fourth person is a lady, formerly
governess to Miss F[ortescue]. 2 A very good person
also, but given to enunciate sentences & ask questions
as if she were reading from a book in a manner that
tries our gravity now & then. “ Have you ever, Mr.
Fortescue, been induced to tempt the tempestuous
waves of the remote Atlantic in order to visit the
wondrous New World?” “Tea is an innoxious &
wholesome beverage & is acceptable at all times,” are
specimens of what I mean :—but Miss B. is very full
of information & very amiable & attentive to Mrs.
Ruxton. After prayers & breakfast, I collapse into a
1 John Hamilton was at this time holding a post as Engineer,
and was in the thick of the Indian Mutiny. He died on
October 19, 1858.
2 Younger sister of Fortescue, and wife of David Urquhart,
later M.P. for Stafford.
54

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MRS. RUXTON.
From a photograph of a pictur,.
To pace f age ;4.

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Corfii and England
small studio which they have given me, where I paint
away till luncheon time, & again afterwards till 6,.
when I walk with C. F. till 7 : but I am not sure that
the experiment of working in a friends house is a good
one, seeing that I am always wrapped up in what I
am. about, and as I rarely succeed as I wish, am in
proportion cross and disgusting. Meanwhile every
body is very kind and good natured and lets me do as
I please, so that I have nothing particular to growl
at, not even having corns, like the old lady above
mentioned.
Dublin Royal Hospital,
3. October, 1857.
I have at last left the Red House and its happy
family, for so they really are. I cannot remember
to have been so happy for a long while past. As
for Mrs. Ruxton, she is certainly a more extra
ordinary and delightful old la,dy than any description
can convey an idea of: she is so constantly the same
and yet with such varied interest and liveliness that
one cannot help liking her more and more each day. I
am so glad to have a photograph of her with Fortescue,
which is very good I think. 1 On the 26th F. & I
went to Newcastle, which is not in Northumberland
as the school books tell us, but in the county of Down,
& is a village by the side of the omnivorous ocean.
Lord & Lady Clermont had a house there, & the
scenery all about the place is very charming. One
1 The frontispiece is a companion one, taken of Lear and
Fortescue at the same time at Red House.
55

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day we passed at Tullamore Park, 1 a really fine place,
full of beautiful ruins & bridges & trees 8z roads &
mills & hills, & lawns & laurels & a high mounting
above all, up to the top of which, Lady C. F., Miss
Hamilton, 2 & I walked, which was not an easy task
because we 3 had to go at such a pace to keep up with
Fortescue,3 who, having the luncheon in his pocket,
insidiously endeavoured to distance us, to eat it, so our
fears told us, clandestinely, before we reached him.
Nevertheless we all reached the top together, &
behaved very well & amiably, all of us. In coming
down thro’ the woods we were seized with frightful
pangs of hunger, & devoted some time to the im
moderate consumption of blackberries. After that we
found a place where there had been a picnic, & we
amused ourselves very intellectually for a long period
in shying stones at a bottle, which nobody hit, tho’
after Lady Clermont & I turned & left the spot, 40scue
& his niece basely made a tinkling sound on the glass,
& declared they had thrown at it successfully. After
that we found a million of bits of blue paper, torn up
by the picnic-makers in triumphant certainty that
oblivion would rest upon their names thus destroyed :
but we employed a considerable space in sedulously
joining all the little bits, & finally made out two cards
& addresses, viz, “ Miss Maconochie ” & “ Dr. Forde ”
1 The residence of Captain Edward Finch.
2 Fortescue’s niece.
3 Fortescue always outdistanced all walkers, and brought
them in a, state of breathlessness to the end of their walks
or climbs.
56

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Corfu and England
which we left openly in the middle of the road, to the
dismay & disgust of all deceitful & presumptious lovers
hereafter.
On Tuesday the 29th we all broke up, & C. F. & I
returned to Red House. A letter came yesterday
from John Hamilton at Dinapore, but to his father, 1 so
its contents were unknown : but the fact of its being
sent seems to be good news, at least of his safety.
0 dear ! such a many people have rushed upon me,
that I must leave off:—This good kind Lord & Lady
Seaton are exactly the same as they used to be 10
years ago. Excuse my detached & absurd note,
because I am so distractable.
Lear to Fortescue.
Royal Hospital Oct. 3. 1857,
Mimmbr !
1 shall write you a line, though there aint much to
say. I got to Dublin safely, only discompozed a little
because the only person in the
Railway compartment I got into 1 * ..
was a very fat woman, just exactly
like a picture of Jonah’s whale I
used to see when a child in a
picture bible. I was horribly afraid
she would eat me up & sat expect
ing an attack constantly, till the
arrival of the train relieved me of apprehension. At
the Bilton I found a note from that kind good Lady
1 Husband of Fortescue’s eldest sister.
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Seaton, saying as an old acquaintance of mine, Mr.
Drummond & others had left suddingly,—& there vos
beds to spear. So I went on, and passed a very
pleasant evening. Some of the party were excursing
in Wicklow, & among them the fair De Salis 1 who
only came in late, & I don’t think I delight in her
appearance or manners any more than I used to do.
The Pictures gave great pleasure, & I had a good deal
of talk with fine old Lord Seaton 2 about the Indian
Revolt. He believes that Havelock will succeed at
Lucknow. 3 I have pretty well made up my mucila
ginous mind to cross to Liverpool to-night. The day
1 Daughter of Count Jerome de Salis, and afterwards wife of
Col. Challoner, of Portnall Park.
2 One of the most distinguished soldiers of his time, and a
Peninsular and Waterloo hero. He died in 1862.
3 The city was relieved on the 25th of September.

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is highly beastly & squondangerlous, & there is no fun
in going about in the pouring rain in a car to make
calls, so I shall write to Arch d - Strong, & send a book
to Dudgeon’s children, whereby you see, albeit I quiet
my conscience, yet I am not so virtuous as You thought.
However, it is all on your shoulders.
So, I shall very probbabbly be in the great Exbt ion -
on Tuesday, after all. Stand at the 2nd arch-place
marked X—and looking through the door D. you will
see Syracuse.
I wish I was at Redhouse, a dispensing of Butter.
Goodbye, my dear Mimmbr.
A fortnight or so later, after a series of
visits to Henry Bruce afterwards Lord Aber-
dare, another patron of his Gambier Parry,
and many others in the South and West of
England, he finds himself at Wells, with his
old friend Church, now Dean of Wells, and
shortly afterwards he writes in Greek from
Hackwood:
Hackwood Park, Hants,
Novbr. 2, 1857.
’Q <J?opr£(TKOv, 'Ayairr\T£pLOV (jtiXa
Hpiiru otl crag ZaXXto ravrriv rijv IttlZoXtiv, Slotl
SeXlo ETriZpbifjEL slg Aov^lvov avpLOv ) ri<$ri aypaipa Trpog eva
<j)iXov juov, kcll rbv i^avipoGa otl TjSreXov TrriyaLVEl'Va yavpaTiZw
jUET 'avrov,—sav avTog p.£ r/SrXa ypaipei otl dvai hg to crwrjrrjov
gov,—aXXa, OTav Sev p.£ ZteXXel Ti7T0T£g,—SwaTOV kai KaXov
7rpaypa rjSaXav uvai va yavpaHZdipev op.ov.—’O o uayaXog
59

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KpirriQ, o Kvpiog JPaacapSvg MtteS'cXX SIXei otl ere Tripiru)
rog cKnraapovg crov. 1
Which is to say, if the Beadons aint at home, what
time shall you be where & when & which ? If I get
no note from them I will call on you at any hour you
will name in a note sent to 16 Upper Seymour St.
or be at the Blue Posts &c.
1 Merely saying to his “ beloved friend Fortescue ” that he
has already written to another friend to propose himself to dine
with him, but if he does not do so he will dine with F. He
ends up with u O mighty Krites, Richard son of Cyrus wishes
me to send you greeting.” Lear’s Greek is u atrocious,” so
scholars I have consulted have told me. But with so exact a
man, so minute in detail and with such a perfect ear, as Ruskin
said, for versification, I cannot help thinking that perhaps a
part of what seems to the outsider hopelessly incorrect may
have been intentional, and that there was “a method” of his
own in his madness. In English he joked and, as it were,
executed acrobatic somersaults of imagination to the wildest
degree in that language, and it is possible he may have
attempted the same thing in Greek, a sample of which may
be seen in his translation of “ Oly mountain,” the wrong
turn of the apostrophe, being, I feel sure, made intentionally.
It has been thought best to give the Greek sentences in
words as near the original as possible, but this is difficult, as
Lear always turned his Greek Z’s upside down besides giving
a double-lined comet-like tail to them, and ornamented with
wonderful flourishes and additions many other letters. Besides,
he was,' it must be remembered, learning ancient and modern
Greek at the same time, and who knows what combinations
he may have effected consistent to his own mind if to no
other ? Therefore I ask leniency on the part of readers
understanding Greek, both as to orthography and translation.
I would also add in this note that Lear loved to u frisk and to
gambol ” in spelling as in all else, and the results in the following
letters have been most carefully preserved by both editor and
publisher, and in no case are misinterpretations or misprints.
60

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CHAPTER III
November, 1857, to March, 1858
corfCj
S ETTING out for Corfu again on the 20th
of November, he writes :
Lear to Fortescue.
Pairlim Hotel, Folkestone,
20 Nov. 1857.
I got your last letter at Hastings, together with an
extremely nice one from Chi:—Many thanks, & also
for the extracts from dear old Mrs. Ruxton’s letter.
Do not forget to thank her from me, & also the Chi.
for his letter.
All the ill luck and bad omens possible seemed to
conspire to prevent my starting, 1st the ticket master
at Lewes gave me a wrong ticket, (on my way to
Bournemouth,) so I was hauled up at Brighton, &
nearly missed the Portsmouth train: but I didn’t.
2nd. We ran into a semishunted goods train at Botley,
& squashed our carriages. Happily we were not
61

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going fast. Meanwhile my back was very badly
jarred, & I was unable to walk without great pain.
Laying up next day at good Mrs. Empsons bettered
me & tho’ still very lame, I am now getting over the
wrench. At first I thought I could not have started
at all. . . .
To-day at noon I am going to start by the
stereopyptic sophisticle steamer & so on to Paris—
the weather being miscelaynious & calm, thanks be
to Moses.
I am glad to know you are working hard —the
more you conquer the details & grammar of the
“whole duty” of the Colonies, the better for you.
Know every detail of every kind in all the colonies
if you can, & the character &c. of everybody em
ployed. For, whenever (if ever) the time should
come that you may put into practise theories of a
wider & grander kind than fill the noddles of many
men, then you will feel the advantage of being up to
the full use of the instruments & circumstances you
have to work with & by—to shift, control, or forbid,
as fate may turn up. I quite understand your dinner
at the Chiefs :—he is a good easy man used to public
life :—voila tout. 1
Of you, I heard a grumpy man say a few days
back, to my great pleasure, “ That F. used to be the
veriest idler, & would have turned out good for
nothing in spite of his head if he hadn’t begun to
work—but now he does, I can see, besides being told
1 Labouchere.
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so.” I hope to be in Corfu by the first week; in
December.
Lear to Fortescue.
Corfu, December 6. 1857.
I cannot persuade myself to do anything for more
than 1 o minutes. Painting, drawing, looking at sketches,
reading all kinds of books, German or Greek exercises,
sitting still, or walking about, not a possibility of
application can I make or discover. But for all that I
shall try to get a letter done for you, because I shan’t
be able to get on at all unless you write, & I know I
cant hear till I write first. So here goes, for a
fortnight’s journal. The knock-shock-sprain which I
got in that Southampton train bothered me a good
deal as I left England, & it is by no means clear
away yet, but I got off hook or by crook on the 20th,
& had a neasy passage over to Boulogne, none the
less so that there was Lady Somers to talk to &
look at:—she is certainly the handsomest living woman.
It seems that she, S, & Coutts Lindsay really landed
at Athos, & lived there 2 months ! in tents, various
mucilaginous monx coming now & then to see them.
A few more such visits would bust, or go far to bust,
the Greek monasticism, I think.
Well, I didn’t stay in Paris, except that night, &
got on to Strasbourg on the 21st, sleeping there, and
going on to Heidelberg on Sunday morning. The
rest of the day I passed with the Bunsens, 1 who live
1 Baron and Baroness de Buhsen. He had been German
Ambassador in London 1841-54. She was the eldest daughter
of Benjamin Waddington, of Hanover.
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in a house opposite the castle : I thought that evening
very pleasant and quiet, talk & music & domesticity,
which you know are in my way. Next afternoon,
23rd, I got to Frankfort & cut away all night long,
sustaining myself by a big bag of books, which I
read by lamplight till day break. Have you read C.
Bronte ? It is very curious & interesting. The morn
ing & middle of Tuesday 24th, I passed at Dresden,
certainly the prettiest city I ever saw, but how cold it
was! Allowing time to dine, I got on to Prague by
night, & without stopping, to Vienna early on the
25th. Undoubtedly the railroads in Germany are
most delightful, when compared with ours ; neverthe
less long continuance of railway travel plays the deuce
with my irritable mind & body. I found out the
hearty good Morier soon, & saw a good deal of him
that day & the next. We got on very simultaneously,
(none the less so because he speaks of you in a way
that pleases me,) & had long talks on various
subjects. Robert Morier 1 seems to me a man who
thinks about his business or profession, & I imagine
he would be one to get on, if want of talent and want
of principle were not a sure pass to prosperity. We
talked too of Tennyson, Pattledom, Strawberry Hill,
& all kinds of things ; nor was a very good dinner
and wine an item of my visit to be left unnotified.
1 At this time unpaid attache at Vienna. He fulfilled Lear’s
prophecy, and had a long and useful diplomatic career. In
1884 he became ambassador at St. Petersburg till his death in
1893.
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Early on Friday 27th I was off to the Rail again, &
certes no scenery can be more striking, beautiful, won
derful than that of the R.way between Vienna and
Trieste. But I wasn’t sorry to be at my journey’s end,
nor the next day, to embark in the “ Jupiter” for Corfu.
The first part of the voyage was Hell :—that is a
mild expression for the torture I suffered, but I can’t
find any stronger at present:—the second part was
better, and anyhow the whole was short, for we were
at Corfu by 8 on Monday 30th. And as my man
Giorgio came down to meet me, and as my boxes
went straight to my rooms, which I found all arranged
just as I left them, & as I had only to unpack my
things,—you can’t tell how absolutely ridiculous the
effect of the whole common placidness of matters was
& is to me. Moreover, Lushington came & asked
me to dine that day, & Sir James Reid the next, &
the 46th mess for the next, & the Youngs for the
next, 8z as in all these cases, plates, food, conversation,
& persons were precisely the same as they all were
6 months ago,—the ludicrous sentiment of standstill &
stagnation was truly wonderful. Wonderful at first,
but gnawing & shocking to me now. My dear
Chichester, I do not know how I shall bear it, being
an ass:—& if you don’t write, & if others don’t
write, I really can’t tell what I shall do.
Just figure to yourself the conditions of a place
where you never have any breadth or extent of
intellectual society, & yet cannot have any peace or
quiet: Suppose yourself living in Piccadilly, we will
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say, taking a place with a long, surface, from Coventry
St. to Knightsbridge say. And suppose that line
your constant & only egress & ingress to & from the
country, and that by little & little you come to know
all & every of the persons in all the houses, & meet
them always and everywhere, & were thought a brute
& queer if you didn’t know everybody more or less !
Wouldn’t you wish everyone of them, except a few,
at the bottom of the sea ? Then you live in a house,
one of the best here it is true, where you hear every
thing from top to bottom :—a piano on each side, above
and below, maddens you :—and you can neither study
nor think, nor even swear properly by reason of the
proximity of the neighbours. I assure you a more
rotten, dead, stupid place than this existeth not.
All this you would understand as coming from me,
but others would speak differently of the place. Lady
Young for instance calls it Paradise. No drawbacks
annoy her at home, and between horses, & carriages, &
yachts, she is away from it as she pleases. The Reids
do not dislike Corfu as they would, had they not a
nice family, and themselves to care about. The
Cortazzi are gone, almost all the military offices are
full of new people. My drawing companion Edward 1
is gone, & I miss him terribly. I vow I never felt
more shockingly alone than the two or three evenings
I have staid in.
Yet all this must be conquered if fighting can do it.
Yet at times, I have thought of, I hardly know what.
1 I cannot trace this companion of the former visit.
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The constant walking and noise overhead prevents my
application to any sort of work, & it is only from 6 to
8 in the morning that I can attend really to anything :
Then o yipog SiSacrKaXog pov spiral, kat epya^ops^a opov
elg ti)v 7raXaiav ’EXXevtt/c^v yXwcraav. 1 I am beginning
bits of Plutarch and of Lucian dialogues. And
then, if I can’t sleep, my whole system seems
to turn into pins, cayenne-pepper, & vinegar &
I suffer hideously. You see I have no means of
carrying off my irritation : others have horses, or
boats, in short:—I have only walking, and that
is beginning to be impossible alone. I could
not go to church to-day. I felt I should make
faces at everybody, so I read some Greek of St.
John, wishing for you to read it with—some of
Robinson’s Palestine, some Jane Eyre, some Burton’s
Mecca, some Friepds in Council, some Shakespeare,
some Vingt ans apres, some Leakes Topography, some
Rabelais, some Tennyson, some Gardiner Wilkinson,
some Grote, some Ruskin—& all in half an hour
O ! doesn’t “ he take it out of me ” in a raging worry ?
Just this moment I think I must have a piano : that
may do me good. But then I remember Miss Hendon
over my head has one, & plays jocular jigs continually.
Then what the devil can I do ? Buy a baboon & a
parrot & let them rush about the room ? Aev s^ivpu)
riTToreg. 2 I still hold to going to Palestine if possible.
1 My old master comes and we work together upon the
ancient Greek language.
2 Perhaps I shall discover something.
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If I could but get myself comfortable and untwisted by
the noise & general discomfort of these houses, I
think I could bring myself right yet, but I cannot tell.
Sometimes I think I must begin another big picture,
as I want something to gnash & grind my teeth on.
If Helena Cortazzi had been here, it would have been
useless to think of avoiding asking her to marry me,
even had I never so little trust in the wisdom of such
a step.
That’s enough of me, I think for this once. If you
don’t write a lot about yourself you are a spider &
no Christian. Meanwhile things here are not as, by
all I was led to suppose, they were represented to you
as being. ...
There is one thing here which cannot be grumbled
at:—at present at least. The weather, it has been
simply cloudless glory, for 7 long days & nights.
Anything like the splendour of olive-grove & orange-
garden, the blue of sky & ivory of church & chapel, the
violet of mountain, rising from peacockwing-hued sea,
& tipped with lines of silver snow, can hardly be
imagined. I wish to goodness gracious grasshoppers
you were here. I believe the cussed people above
stairs have goats or ox feet, they make such a deed
row. Among the chilly mocky absurdities, opposite
me on Friday, as I dined at the Palace, sat Lord
Clermont’s first cousin, L. J. E. Kozziris : 1 —neither
1 His mother was a daughter of the second Earl of Clancarty,
a cousin of the Fortescues, who in 1843 married Signor
Giovanni Kozziris.
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Greek, Irish, nor English. As for Lady Y. she looks
handsomer and younger than ever. Lord & Lady
Headfort 1 are expected daily. How comes it Lord
Strangford 2 is dead?
Dec. 27th, 1857.
, I am glad to hear of your riding: I wish to-
heaven I could, or purchase a Gizzard. Tell me
something of the general aspect of things at Red
House, including the curly brown dog & the two
milkophagous calves who abode in the square field.
I had met Norman Macdonald 3 at Lord Cannings
sometimes. Lady Buller4 his sister, the generals
wife here, has collapsed into nonreception along of
his demise.
The uppermostest subject in my feeble mind just
now is my Palestine visit. I read immensely on the
matter, and am beginning to believe myself a Jew, so
exactly do I know the place from Robinson, De
Sanley, Lynch, Beaumont, Bartlett, & the old writers
from the Bourdeaux Pilgrim to Maundsell, not to
1 The second Marquis.
2 The seventh Viscount. He had been Under Secretary of
State for Foreign Affairs in 1846. He had some reputation as a
political journalist, but was better known in his early career for
his connection with the “Young England ” party.
3 He was Controller of the Lord Chamberlain’s Department.
He was seized with apoplexy while talking with Lady Ely at
Lady Elizabeth Hope Vere’s, and died quite suddenly at St.
James’s Palace on the 1st of December.
4 Wife of Sir George Buller, G.C.B., who after serving in the
Crimean War and the first and second Kaffir Wars, was now
commanding a division in the Ionian Isles.
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speak of Stanley, & Josephus, whose works I can now,
thank goodness, read in their natural garb. Now my
particular idea at the present hour is to paint Lady
Waldegraves 2nd picture from Masada 1 whither I
intend to go on purpose to make correct drawings,
though, whether I shall get up without breaking my
neck is a doubt. In that case Lady W. cannot have
my painting. My reason for this choice is, that not
only I know the fortress of Masada to be a wonder of
picturesqueness, but that I consider it as embodying
one of the extremest developments of the Hebrew
character, i.e. constancy of purpose, & immense
patriotism. This subject I believe will as it were
“ match ” J erusalem well.
At present I think my view for Lady W. will either
be from Scopus, or from the glen coming up from
S. Saba. I shall like to show her all the drawings
of this place—which I wish I could see her now
walking past, or into this room, with the browny-
lilac velvet many banded dress, and a nosegay in her
hand. You are certainly right in thinking most
women are like Copses after her : only Lady Y. here
is not copse-like being highly vivacious : but she
lacketh other of my Lady’s qualities which one would
fain see, hear, & be sensible of. Why the deuce I
compare them I don’t know, only Lady Y. is the only
lively creature here. They have been very good-
natured since I came, but I never go to the evening
1 Now in the possession of the Hon. Mrs. Stanley, of Quantock
Lodge,
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parties, rising as I do, at a little after 5, I cannot bring
myself to dress & go out to parties wholly without
interest, at 10.
They asked me on the 15th to meet Lord S. de
Redcliffe 1 at a luncheon. He is a remarkable old
gentleman, & I was surprised to see him so unbroken
& with his eagle eye still so clear. I sat next to Lady
Y. at table, and Lord S. shook hands with me across,
and was otherwise exceedingly amiable—nothing can
be more regal and sostenuto than his manners, and
one can only believe in his temper by observation of
his brow and eye. Old Lady Valsamachi (Mrs.
Heber 2 ) rushed in where angels fear to tread &
came unasked to the Palace, with the ancient bore,
her Greek husband; but Lord S. was I remarked
particularly kind and affable. Just as he went off in
the steamer there was an Earthquake, big enough to
send people out of their houses & the bells ringing,
but whether the coincidental concussion was caused
by, or for, Lord S. de Redcliffe, I leave you as a more
educated man than myself, to determine.
Since that day I have not been to the Palace, not
even to see the live Marquis & Marchioness of Head-
fort,3 who with Miss Erskine, Lady H’s reputed
1 See note, p. 11. 2 Widow of the Bishop of Calcutta.
3 Lady Headfort was Lady McNaughten, widow of Sir
William Hay McNaughten, Bart., of the Bengal Civil Service.
Assassinated at Cabul, Dec. 25, 1841.
4 Afterwards knighted. Had been private secretary to the
Earl of Derby in 1852. He was at this time British Resident at
Cephalonia.
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heiress, & Col. Talbot4 on his way to his Island
Kephalonia, arrived a week ago. Lord H. is described
to me as a well got up blasd old boy ; milady not
to be perceived clearly, along of Indian shawls and
diamonds, of which jewels and of her concealment
of them, during a flight from some Afghan place
when she was Lady Me. N., wonderful tales are about.
The weather has been utterly wonderful, this the
28th day since I came, being the first with a single
cloud in it! Nor has there been the least wind, or
temporal annoyance of any kind, but always a lovely
blue & golden sphere about all earth sky & sea.
How different from the 2 preceding years this ! And
the Olives are one bending mass of fruit. I have
however walked but little. I grow weary of the 3
dull miles out & 3 back in order to reach any
scenery. And although J. has walked with me at
times, yet it is a weary silent work, & now that he
has got a dog, one cannot help feeling how far more
agreeable it is to him to walk with that domestic
object, to whom he has not the bore of being obliged
to speak. We are on perfect good terms, but all or
anything might happen to either, & neither would
dream of telling the other, a state of things I do not
call friendship. But on this and such a matter I
dwell as little as possible. I have to live alone &
do so though ungracefully :—(Whereas you who are
pretty well alone as to the possibility of others sym-
pathyzing with you in your principal interests, manage
to do so remarkably well). So I stay at home, and
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From a photograph taken about 1853 or 1834.
To face page 32.

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oppose the morbids. I can tell you that I miss Helena
Cortazzi though—a few—now & then. The Reids
are good and friendly people, but of them even I see
little. Campbell of the 46th (Simeon’s cousin) is a
really nice fellow, but all these people are mad
after snipes & woodcox now, & abjure all intellect
& repose. Edward my last years companion I miss
abominably. Bunsen 1 as I said is a good little chap,
clever, but talks like 50 thousand millions of tongues.
Corfu. Jan. 3. 1858.
0 mi i! how cold it is ! The weather hasn’t changed
after all, & I believe don’t mean to. It’s as bright
and cold & icicular as possible, and elicits the ordibble
murmurs of the cantankerous Corcyreans. As for the
English they like the cold generally, I don’t:—Not
withstanding which, I must own to being in absolously
better health than for I don’t know how long past.
Yesterday I went up a mounting & made a sketch,
EKafie fiLav £wypa<£tai/. 2 A majestic abundance of tym
panum-torturing turkeys are now met with on all the
roads, coming into Corfu to be eaten. These birds
are of a highly irascible disposition, and I never
knew before 2 days' ago, that they objected to being
whistled to. But Col. Campbell informed me of the
fact, and proved it to me, since when it is one of my
peculiar happinesses to whistle to all the Turkeys I
meet or see, they get into such a damnable rage I can
1 Theodore Bunsen, son of Baron and Baroness de Bunsen.
2 He wrought a painting.
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hardly stand for laughing. After all, suppose a swell
party in London, say at Cambridge House, if any one
person began to whistle furiously at all the rest,
wouldn’t they get into a rage I should like to know ?
On the first of the year I was wishing you and
others a happy (new) one and many such, when lo! your
letter from Holyhead of the 22nd came, to my great
pleasure. I am so glad you will have been able to
pass your Christmas at Redhouse. Stay, let me look
over the epistle, & reply dg rd biroia 1 want comments.
It is (pronounced strongly izz) a satisfaction to talk
with you, & both doing so & receiving your letters
does me a great deal of good.
In re Bunsen—the telegraphic small Bunsen here,
talks as I never nevernever heard anyone talk:—
he makes you long to scream.
I wish I had studded with you at Dresden. 2 I quite
feel how that life and your present one seem like
that of two persons, from having seen you in Ireland
I now can understand all your life pretty well: the
more analysis one brings to what one is interested
in, the more one not only understands but gains by
the process,—secondo ame.
'O Muipte, o, wa^pg Krj KaXog.3
Reflections on daily life, etc. : what you say to me
is exactly true, but infernally difficult to follow out,
i.e. “That the freedom of the inner man consists in
1 Upon whatever matter.
2 Fortescue lived in Dresden for four months of the winter
of 1846 to learn German.
3 O Morier, big and beautiful.
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obedience.” Doubtless whenever the time comes
that a man so willingly practises obedience as to
find no annoyance from the process, he does so with
a good will, & therefore a choice, & that is freedom.
For my own part at present I find stuffing every
a? )
moment with work the sole panace [ against more
um ?'
thought than is good for one. I only wish there
were 28 hours in every day.
I do not, sir, read the Testament now—much—
leastways in Greek:—though I could do so with
pleasure. But would you believe it, I have read the
death of Socrates & Plato. I was so struck by
QaiSov that I rose at night and worked till I made
out the last part of it entirely. How is it that the
thoughts of this wonderful man are kept darkly away
from the youths of the age? (except they go to the
universities, & then only as matters of language or
scarcely more) because Socrates was a “Pagan”?
I shall have more to say, & think about, concerning
Socrates, whose opinion on death I now read for
the first time, & there is no harm in wishing that
we two may some day read Plato together; we both
have much similar tendency to an analytical state of
mind I think. Intanto, my old SiSaa-KaXog 1 persists in
keeping me in nXovrapx 0 ^ & a Lo i n Lucian’s dialogues,
& won’t hear of Plato. The former, Plutarch, I hate
—Lucian delights me as so very absurd and new.
1 Master.
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Dining at the Palace 3 days ago, I sat next to
Sir J. after dinner & he talked to me a good deal.
(His way of talking of you moreover is agreable to
me.) His appreciation of Greek character is all the
more near the right one, inasmuch as he is longer
here : but as you say in your last, the firm hand is
wanted here, & I add is wantzV^.
I stop my letter to add what I cannot yet quite
realize, but what grieves me most extremely.
Lushington writes in a note that Mrs. Cortazzi has
just died at Paris. We heard she was ill but not
dangerously.
Poor Helena, & Madeline! what will become of
those poor girls ?
4th. I can’t add much more to this, my dear
boy. In so small a place as this one is more
dependent than I had fancied on the few one sees
and at all cares for. The absence of the Cortazzi was
a blank in itself, but now to know, that poor Mrs. C.
died before she saw her English friends! (She was a
Lancashire Hornby, and first cousin of William
Hornby who married Sir Philip’s daughter,) and
without seeing her only son, is sad enough. Besides
that, I became interested enough about Helena to
feel for her extremely. As yet we know no par
ticulars.
Here are 10 woodcox, what can I do with them
all ?
I must leave off,' I feel like 5 nutmeg-graters full of
baked eggshells—so dry & cold & miserable.
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Corfu, ioth. January, 1858.
I shall begin a letter & let it burn up gradivally
like the gun-powder which they throw on the fire. I
have been working tooth & nail at Lord Clermont’s
Athos, & am succeeding in making it the best I have
done of that ’oly mounting. In the foregroung there
is a Nilex tree, which I take no end of pains about,
and the little woody dell will I think be a pet bit of
the picture with Lord C. It is doubtless, though still
to have much added, a better picture than the one I
did at Redhouse, but I can’t help that. The other 2,
Mrs. Empson’s Athos and Corfu, are also less good,
which I am sorry for, but I can’t help either, for
naturally every successive piece of work should be
better than its foregoer.
And I am doing the bilious memories of EevoQw
concerning Socrates, by which I am immensely
interested. Life goes on here very dummily, :—I
feel however, the want of forcing myself to under
take some work of a tougher, or more difficult
gnashmyteethupon nature. At the Palace I have
been once or twice to dinner; for to the Evening
Balls I can’t & won’t go. Lady Y. is always cer
tainly very kind in inviting one, a brute. Lady
Headfort comes out each time in new & astound
ing jewels. We get on very well, having endless
topics of mutuality-talk, from Rosstrevor & Lady
Drogheda, to “Virginia Pattle,” or Afghanistan.
They “the court” (I suppose Sir John also) are
all- off to Athens in a fortnight or so. Lady Y.
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characteristically observing “ I have always wanted
to see the Ball room at the Palace, and there are
to be some fine fetes.” My! won’t Queen Amelia
be down on them! for Sir John’s profundities are
pretty well known there.
I am reminded that I told you quite wrongly some
thing of the state of feeling here as developed in
representation, nearly all the members of this Island
are anti-English, the contrary is the case with Cepha-
lonia. Yet in the main perhaps I was right, as to
the greater general dislike to us in the latter place.
'Neither was I correct about the Italian or Roman
Catholic element:—The Greek screw has been
allowed to be put on so much more strongly, with
each successive Govt., that every other consideration
is giving way to a settled desire to join Greece, &
get rid of English.
After these ozbervations, which are more temperate
and less triumphiliginous, than those I last wrote, I
shall proceed to state that Shakespear is come, by
which assertion I do not mean the author of “As
you like it,” “Hamlet,” or other popular drammers,'
but the Major of that name of the Royal Artillery,
who used to live over me, & whose wife is one of
the very nicest, even if not the nicest woman here.
They are gone to live in the Citadel, next door to
the General. The General objects to the odour of
cooking generally & of onions particularly. Lady
Buller has not expressed any opinion on the subject
so far as is publicly known :—the matter rests in
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a state of oblique & tenacious obscurity for the
present.
Last night I, the Shakespear’s, & Wyndham, dined
with the honourable Edward & Arabella Gage, 1 very
good people. We of this Terrace & this part of the
town chaff the Shakespears, who now live so far off,
and we ask them to “ set us down ” on their way to
“ Wimbledon.” It is but right'you should know the
important life concerns of the Island, and therefore I
shall not hesitate to insert the following facts before
I conclude this morning’s scribble. Madam Vitalis,
the Greek consul’s wife has purchased a large red
maccaw. Mrs. Macfarlane’s female domestic has
fallen down stairs, by which precipitate act Mrs. M’s
baby has been killed. Sir Gorgeous Figginson
Blowing has had an attack of fever. Colonel
Campbell (first cousin of Sir J. Simeon,) dined
with Mr. Lear the Artist on Thursday. On Friday
that accomplished person entertained Mr. Bunsen &
Mr. Justice Lushington. Capt. R. has purchased a
Cornopeon, & practises on it, (Mrs. G. invariably
calls it a cornicopean.) but it is not heard generally,
on account of the superior row made by Mrs. Vitalis’
maccaw, Capt. P’s howling dogs, & about 400 turkeys
who live at ease about the terrace and adopt a remark
able gobble at certain periods. Lady H[eadfort] has
astonished the multitude by a pink satin dress stuffed
with pearls. Bye the bye I heard rather a good thing
1 Brother of Viscount Gage and a Colonel in the Royal Horse
Artillery. Married to a cousin, Miss Arabella Gage.
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yesterday, Lady H. (with! an aide de camp,) has been
“doing” the sights of Corfu, & among others the
churches. At the Greek Cathedral a beggar came
and importuned the glittering Marchioness, who at
the moment was indulging in the natural & pleasant
act of sucking an orange. Lady H. after a time
paused & said or implied “silver & gold have I
'none,” but such as she had, (being the half sucked
orange,) she politely gave the beggar-woman, who
(oranges being any number for a half-penny,) threw
the fruit in her Ladyship’s face, and rushed frantically
out of the desecrated edifice.
Jany. iStk. 1858.—Hooray! Here’s a letter from
you dated Jany. 6th. What a good boy it is! I
shall post this to-morrow therefore. The day is so
cold that I can hardly hold my pen, & feel that all
or more than all the population of Corfu will expire,
or become icicles. No such cold was ever known
here, a keen east wind, the first I have ever felt in
the Island. Snow on Salvador :—and a great deal
of sad illness among the natives. Of course the
Anglo-saxons rather like the freezing than no, I
don’t, & yet am well because the air is so pure I
suppose. Mr. George Cockles, my Suliote, refuses
to write his copy. IIoioc ^piropec va ypaipy, Klpis, tig
TOVTO TO Kpvov. 1 But until yesterday we have had
wonderfully lovely weather & never yet any rain
to speak of,, sun nearly ever. To-day, however, all
is gray and ugly. With your letter came a letter
1 How did you travel or paint in this cold weather ?
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from sister Ann, who was 67 yesterday, I am sorry
to say.
While I think of it here are two anecdotes, this
time from the Citadel. Colonel Campbell has a
celebrated horse, a stallion, called “ Billy.” I hate
the sight of him myself, in as much as he bites and
kicks whoever he can. The other day being loose,
and seeing a helpless horse in a cart, he pounced on
him and began to oppress him horribly, the two
making any amount of row. This happened oppo
site Lady Buller’s window, whereon the lady being
of a tender-heart and a decided manner, opened the
window & called out, Sentinel! (Sentinel shouldered
& presented arms) “ Shoot the horse directly,”
(Sentinel looks horribly bewildered but does nothing)
“Why don’t you shoot it”! (S) “ Lord Madam! its
Billy!” Lady B. “ What’s Billy? what do I care
for Billy? shoot it I say.” (Billy all the time
tearing & biting the prostrate victim horse.) Sen
tinel “ Can’t nohow madam my lady, cause its the
Colonel’s Billy.” Here the General Sir J. came up
& tranquillized the agitated nerves, of lady, sentinel,
& both horses.
Another anecdote is that Sir Henry Holland 1
being here, & dining at the General’s :—Lady B.
said promiscuously, “Sir Henry in all your travels
were you ever in Albania?” Can’t you fancy Sir
1 Physician to William IV., Queen Victoria, and Prince
Albert. Author of “ Travels in the Ionian Islands, Albania,
Thessaly, Macedonia,” 1815.
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Henry’s smile & quiet:-—“Why, Lady Buller, I
wrote a book on Albania, because I happened to be
there as Physician to Ali Pasha in 1812 & 1813.”
I think there are no more anecdotes, but, (as
Ollendorf may say) there is much ice & innumerable
woodcox. They say old Nassau Senior 1 is coming
to Athens, also General Fox 2 is reported to be at
hand. All last week my AiScuvaXog has not been to
me his only child being about, I fear, to die: he has
lost 4 before, poor man. So I shall poke on alone
in Plato & &Evo<pwv3 & wish you were here to help
me.—To-day all the Palace folk were to come, but
Lady Y. is unwell, & could not. I dine there
to-night, if I don’t die of the cold first. Patrick
Talbot is here, whom I like. As yet I do not
hear anything certain about Jaffa & the rotten
Arribs:—but I shall do so before long. We,
intanto, abound in turkeys this year, the whole
country is black with them, and a sound of gobbling
pervades the Corcyrean air.
My friend Miss Dennett must have had a sad shock
by Lord Spencer’s sudden death.4 Everyone should
1 Author of “Journals Kept in France and Italy from 1848 to
1852,” “ Conversations with M. Thiers, Guizot, and other Distin
guished Persons during the Second Empire,” &c., &c.
2 A natural son of the third Lord Holland. Had the finest
private collection of Greek coins in the world, purchased by the
Royal Museum at Berlin, 1873. 3 Xenophon.
4 The fourth Earl. Fought at Navarino, 1827 ; afterwards
Vice-Admiral on the reserve list. Steward of Her Majesty’s
Household, 1854-57, &c., &c.
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know that so high was his^ esteem for Miss D. (who
brought up his two daughters, and was much with
Lady S. at last) that he settled an income of £200
per annum on her for life. Let me look over your
letter & see if anything wants replying to. I was
enormously delighted with it, because being morbid,
I fancied I might have written too violently in my
last but one. (I remember calling Mr. Labouchere
a muff a dummy &c.,) but one gets angry sometimes.
The fortifications go on, and the blasted bartizan
before my windows will improve the landscape by
being blown up. You are very kind to have
thought & written to Lady W. as you did about
me. I assure you, your active and living sympathy
is of value to me here not to be expressed. Dear
good Mr. Clark came here two days ago, seeing I
have not been at church, but he never said a word
about it. He is really a good man spite of the
Dogmas & Catechisms. Yesterday I went like a
good boy and he preached a sermon from “be not
slothful in business ” etc. hardly to be surpassed.
He might be split into fifteen Bishops.
I can’t write any more now, but will try when I
come home from the Palace, to finish this. Mean
while, I must go & try & birculate my clood, by a
rard hun on the righ hoad.
II pee hem :—I’ve just come from the Palace, where
the dinner was agreeable enough. I sat next Lady
Young, & Miss Eisenbach, the Austrian Consul’s
daughter, and opposite poor Lady Emily Kozziris :
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certainly her husband is a stunner of a misery-bore.
Then there were Col. and the pretty Mrs. Herbert,
Miss Erskine, Miss Murray, the live Markis and
March 85 , old Eisenbach, Capts. Furville, & Churchill
A.D.C’s. Nautical Capt. Bromley, 1 Dr. Evans, &
the landscape painter. Certes ! Lady Y. is a singular
woman, no end of talents of a sort, but rayther “pro-
noncde.” Her singing is sometimes wonderfully
good. Old Lord Headfort persisted in supposing
Miss Eisenbach my daughter—why, I can’t conceive :
I wish she were: but I’m glad she ain’t my wife.
So I came moam 8z rote this. Alack my dear Sir
John:—you lack some things. They are going to
England this year I find.
I meant to have written a lot about the priests &
signori, and the good peasantry, & the orange-trees,
and sea-gulls, and geraniums, & the Ionian Ball, &
Jerusalem Artichokes, & Colonel Paterson, & old
Dandolo’s palm-tree, & my spectacles and the East-
wind, & Zambelli’s nasty little dogs, 2 & fishermen, &
Scarpe’s cats, & whatnot, but I am too sleepy.
Corfu. Feb. i. 1858.
I shall send a little letter to-day, as the time draws
nearer for going eastward, so that if possible I may
get still one line from you before I start.
I cannot tell you much of anything at present, &
1 Afterwards Sir Richard Madox-Bromley, at this time
Accountant-General of the Navy.
2 Mr. Lear detested and feared dogs and they seemed to
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besides that I am full of little fussy letters & bother-
ings, I am so cold, as to be half-dead. No such
winter has ever been known here, & last night
Lushington who dined here was glad, as was I, to
wrap ourselves in Railway rugs as we sat on each
side of the fire.
While I write the post comes, & one letter contains
a bit I will transcribe, as I know it will please you as
it does me. “ When Lady Waldegrave came to • ,
I met her in a spirit of prejudice & ignorance,—but I
recovered from that while she staid & made herself
known. She certainly is one of the most remark
able characters of the day, which few give her credit
for being, at least none who know her superficially.”
Well I wish I were at Redhouse and you reading
me the diary in the small Jam studio :—or walking up
& down the long walk with or without Chi, the per
spective struggling milkly enthusiastic calves afar off—
the Million 1 remotely seen in the far background. I
shall write to you from Jerusalem. Goodbye my dear
4<oscue. Remember if I die you are to choose a book
from my books:—B. Husey-Hunt, & W. Holman
Hunt are my executors.” 2
1 Mrs. Ruxton’s companion, so called because she was 11 one
in a million.”
2 The well-known artist and another intimate friend of Lear’s.
Amusing remembrances of his first meeting with Lear are told in
Mr. Holman Hunt’s Memoires.
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Fortescue to Lear.
Red House,
Thursday night, 4 Feby. ’58
... I shall get Beaumont’s book and “ insense ”
my Lady about Masada. She has been surrounded
by French Royalties and English Dookes etc. etc.
What a contrast to my life here! The brilliant
crowd of her friends—many of them very intimate—
is terrifying. I feel sometimes as if I should not
be able to reach her through the throng—or to see
her quietly. But I must hope it will not prove
so. ... “So runs the round of life!”
Lear to Fortescue.
13 Feb. 1858
Slowly goes on the Indian horror, (beg pardon
the “mutiny”) what is John Hamilton about? It
does not quite seem to me that “all will be quite
settled in a month or two,” as the Times said a
long while back. I hope I shall hear from you before
I go, but I hardly think I can get any letter if you
have not yet written.
Regarding mylady, courage and quiet : if you do
not light on bright times it seems strange: some
day or other. Let me know always how you go on.
Now mind, write if you can, I will write once
more before I go. Confound the Cats !
Febry. 27, 1858.
Your letter of the 19th. has just come, & is one
of the nicest of the many you have written since I
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left England. I shall sit down and answer it at
once, & this time I won’t be hirritated if I can help
it. I vex myself often after I send off hastily
written letters. However, you are so very just as
well as kind in weighing my ways and doings, that
I am not afraid of having vexed you much. In this
infernal hole of a place, so little novelty occurs that
some small worry constantly friddles ones temper.
You aint ‘‘red tape” and you can’t help the state
of things : whereby I recant my osbervations.
I am sorry you were so beastly unwell, not but
that a good routing may do good, and still more
sorry about Mrs. Urquhart’s child. 1
I shall write to you from Jerusalem, & to Lady
W. as soon as I have returned from Masada:— It
was Miss Dennett who wrote that: 2 I knew you
would like it—you do not say you have seen her,
Lady W. since your return. Tell her I shall take
great pains about her views, if she asks about my
going. I think her Sunset must be from Scopus.
(Bye the bye, I have been reading a good deal,
my old teacher being quite knocked up, so that I
have had but 2 months of Greek lessons out of the
last 12.—Finlay’s 5 volumes of Greece are admirable.
Try to get Gambinis pamphlet on the Jews. I have
1 In this letter of the 19th, Fortescne says : u While in bed
received a summons from my sister to go down to her instantly,
she having lost her little boy.”
2 The passage with reference to Lady Waldegrave in the
previous letter.
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just read Paul Ferrol a very nasty odious book.
Lady Buller lent it to me. She is a very nice
woman, I dined there two days ago for the first
time, and was really pleased. Everyone seems to
like her. As for Lady Y. she has been a flouncing
off to Egina with the K[ing] of G [reece] & the
whole Palace party are not yet returned.
I shall long to hear from you in the Holy Land.
Clowes 1 has written but does not come :—& so I go
alone, & perhaps it is better. There are but few I
could travel with & yet keep my own thread of
thoughts unwispy & unentangled. The journey to
Palestine will give one really a great deal to think
of in many ways. Sir J. Reid says I must do a
large Jerusalem and get Sir Moses M. or Rothschild
to buy it. Now I finish 3 Alphabets for children—
and so get pretty wearied at end of the week. O!
for a quiet passage! And again ditto from Alexda.
to Jaffa! I shall leave off now, & wind up.
The following letter refers to the overthrow
of Lord Palmerston’s Ministry in February,
1858. The Bill to amend the Law of Con
spiracy, brought in by the Prime Minister
in consequence of Orsini’s attempt to
assassinate the Emperor of the French, was
the cause of the Government’s defeat. Lord
1 F. Clowes was a godson of Lear’s, I think. He was some
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Stanley became Colonial Secretary, but a
little later was appointed Secretary of State
for India, when Sir E. Bulwer Lytton took
his place.
Fortescue to Lear.
St. James’ Place,
Sunday, February 28 1858
What events have happened since I wrote last !
Here I am out of office—no more “ red tape ” for
the present. I wound up at the C.O. on Friday—
bid goodbye to Merivale and Co. and had a great
many flattering and pleasant things said to me.
Merivale was just going to telegraph the news to
Malta and Corfu—so that you no doubt know that
Lord Stanley is Secretary of State for the Colonies,
after having held out for some days against taking
office in a Government with which he can feel very
little agreement. He is in a false position privately
and publickly.
I do not take these political events to heart, but
I am sorry for what has happened. . . . These people
will very probably not last long, but they may survive
upon the dissensions of their opponents—If those were
to be made up—particularly the matter of Palmerston
and Russell, they would go at once—or at all events
would dissolve and then go. . . . Palmerston has
greatly mismanaged the French affair. I believe he
was spoilt by success, and had become overbearing
and rash. At the same time, substantially I think
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he’s right, in endeavouring to strengthen the law of
Conspiracy to Murder, in order to give some pro
tection to our ally the Emperor—or at least to show
that we would not have the “ right of asylum ” so
abused, if we could help it, while maintaining the
right for all peaceful refugees. Lord Derby, D’Israeli
etc. had espoused the same opinion in the strongest
way, and I think their joining with Milner Gibson to
defeat the Government was a most inconsistent and
dishonest party move, but they were unable to “ resist
the temptation.” . . .
I dined at Lansdowne House last night—a great
dinner ... I got next Lady W. who dined there—
in wonderful beauty and force. Then went to a small
party at poor G. Palmerston’s—he looking low.
Lear to Fortescue.
On Pistol shooting, Liars, and other subjects,
Corfu, March 9. 1858.
It is particularly kind of you to have written this
last—(date Sunday 28th—) which I got yesterday.
All your letters are so like yourself—so even &
clear & regular. I have been thinking a great deal
about you since this break up, which I believe would
have come somehow or other, French matter or not.
That was the tree or steeple which drew down the
lightening storm, but the storm was all ready to burst
somewhere, for sometime past. I had heard enough
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of Lord P [ajmerston] latterly, to expect it:—and his
own altered public & private manner, the gross error
of Lord Clanricarde’s readmission and other things,
were but forerunners of a crash; but I wholly agree
with you in every word you write. The combination
is odious, & with all respect to my friend & patron, he
is not the man to be a leader of England for any long
period. I cannot conceive how he can like to be in
power on such terms. For Lord Stanley I am vexed,
for as you. say he cannot really unite with those from
whom he differs so much. Pakington 1 I suppose
accepted. What sort of a man is Lord Carnarvon?
I believe Lord John will be in tho’ perhaps not
Premier, before 6 months are out.
In the mean time don’t you drop habits of.study &
business, but keep them up all the more. Make your
self master of anything Colonial. The compliments
and pleasant things said are but what was your due, not
only for your strict attention to routine of business,
but for your earnest wish to do what was right,
tho’ you had not much power in your hands. Give
my love to the late Mr. Labouchere, & say he’s
a miserable muff. Also to Mr. Merivale & say he is
either dishonest or stupid. Thank God you so far
as you have gone in public life are as white as a
Jerusalem artichoke, and I believe you will always
keep so.—Tell both of them they are no better than
they should be !
The Palace party are come back, they had horrid
1 He became First Lord of the Admiralty.
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weather & an Earthquake. Corinth is totally ruined,
not one single house habitable. People all fled.
Vialimachi down flat on the ground. These earth
quakes are dreadful. Boyle, w T ho has just come
back from Naples, fills us with horrors! Amalfi,
Sorrento and such lists of old lovely places, all gone !
down on the earth, and every inhabitant killed or
maimed.
O! here is a bit of queerness in my life. Brought
up by women—& badly besides—& ill always, I never
had any chance of manly improvement & exercise,
etc.—and never touched firearms in all my days—But
you can’t do work at the Dead Sea without them. So
Lushington, who is always vy kind and good—makes
me take a 5-barelled revolver, &. I have been prac
tising shooting at a mark (I can hardly write for
laughing), & have learned all the occult nature of
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pistols. Don’t grin. My progress is slow—but always
(I trust) somewhat. At 103 I may marry possibly.
Goodbye dear 40scue.
Yrs. affectionately,
Edward Lear.
I’ve left you all Leeke’s Greece, in case of my being
devoured by Arabs or fever.
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CHAPTER IV
April to November, 1858
PALESTINE, CORFCj, AND ENGLAND
the 13th of March, 1858, Lear set out
for his long-projected visit to Jerusalem,
accompanied by his servant, George Kokali.
Arriving there on the 27th, he writes :
Lear to Fortescue.
Jerusalem, April 1st. 1858.
Dear 40scue,—During my stay here this the
5th., day, every moment has been occupied, or rather
fussed away :—writing a long letter to my sister, &
a short line to Lushington, walking all about the
neighbouring hills, to understand its most pictural
points,—endless interviews with interminable Drago
men, besides the hourly distraction of a public Hotel
chok full of people, & the overcrowded state of the
streets, all this will give you some idea of the land
scape painters state of body & mind,
Leaving Corfu on the 13th. or rather 14th. of
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March, a decent voyage brought me to Alexandria
on the 17th, too late for the French Jaffa steamer
by one day. So I passed 5 days in a trip to Cairo,
which I greatly wish you could see some day, &
renewing delightful impressions of the Pyramids,
Caliph’s tombs, Heliopolis, &c., &c. Returning to
Alexandria on the 23rd, I sailed on the 25th. in the
Austrian Jaffa steamer, in which the crowds of clean &
dirty, high & low pilgrims was a wonder, and you may
suppose its combinations to some extent, when I tell
you that 20 different languages were spoken on
board. Most happily the voyage was fine, or I can’t
tell you what we must have suffered.
At Jaffa we arrived on the 26th. at noon, but
owing to the immense crowd of Eastern pilgrims, the
landing & getting under way were most difficult
matters, & had it not been for Arthur Stanley’s
Dragoman, I do not know how I could have got on.
By 3, p.m. we were off, loaded & mounted for
Ramleh, where we slept, or rather stopped that night.
The way thither is through one almighty green lovely
corn-field, perfectly delicious at every time of day, and
not at all unlike many parts of the Roman Campagna ;
though more resembling the southern plains of Sicily,
particularly in the long unbroken line of blue-lilac
hills, poetically the “frowning mountains of Judah,”
though I could not see any justice in the term so
applied to them. From Ramleh the same cheery
plain of corn extends to the foot of these hills, & you
then ascend through shrubby & stony & olive planted
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passes, up & down, (though always upper not downer)
till about the 8th hour after leaving the aforesaid
Ramleh, you find yourself toiling up a steep & bare
rocky hill-side, at the top of which an undulating
level of rather wearisome duration brings you in sight
of the western walls of the Holy City.
The Holy City itself is just now in a most odious
state of suffocation & crowding, this one week uniting
all sorts of creeds & people in a disagreeable hodge
podge of curiosity & piety. Lucky it was for me to
get even the last single room & one for my servant,
and that day I was content to give up struggling
through the fearfully thronged hustle-streets, & after
a tabledhote dinner was glad to be thankful & sleep
at Jerusalem, which I had so long wished to see. On
Sunday 28th, service in our church was a real pleasure
—well arranged, simple & good in all respects, and the
more to find the preacher an old friend, son of Ralph
Barnes the Bp. of Exeter’s Secy. Afterwards my
delight in going, (on Palm Sunday too,) to the Mount
of Olives you can imagine. But the immense beauty
of the environs of Jerusalem you can not nor could I
before I saw it. Independently of the grandeur of the
position of this wonderful place, & the claim every
part of its walls & buildings, has on the Xtian as well
as the observer of general history & antiquity, most of
the vallies of Johosaphat & Himmon abound in
beautiful quiet scenes, wholly unexpected by me as
part & parcel of Judean Landscape:—Then the
ancient tombs cut in the rock, the innumerable flat

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ones* the scattered olives, (not fine as at Corfu but
pollardy,) the constantly varying beauty of the Mount
of Olives, the realities of Siloam, Zion &c. and the
very ancient traditional sites of Gethsemane &c &c
&c., keep you constantly alive to the fresh interest
that awaits you at every step. I had not the slightest
idea of the amount of wonder & admiration the walks
hereabout must call up, in all thinking visitors.
Meanwhile, I am off now to Bethlehem & Hebron
in a few hours : too glad to get to some quiet from
this noisy place. Thence I go by the Dead Sea to
Sebbeh, (Masada) Engedi, Mar Saba, & Jericho, &
possibly beyond the Jordan, returning here for a
fortnight or 3 weeks. 1
Lear to Lady Waldegrave.
Damascus, 27^ May. 1858.
I had thought of writing to you long ago, to tell
you what I had done by way of trying to fulfil the
commissions you kindly gave me; but the difficulties
of sending anything like a letter “ while I am on the
road ” in these countries, are not to be told. At least
they are great to me, who am always unable to write
by candle-light; and the early morning is snatched
for moving forward, while mid-day heat & weariness
put a veto on all labour, but that of catching & flap
ping away flies. And when in Hotels, (in the very
1 A scarcity of letters at this period, will be explained by the
following paragraph : “ I have told Ann [his sister] to send you
my letters, & you will post them to the address you will obtain.”
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few spots where such houses exist) there are so many
things to look after and look at, & so much re
arrangement for the next journey, that the time for a
real sitting down for letter writing never seems to
come. To-day the Syrian Haj takes its departure
for Mecca,, and as there is no chance of drawing
anywhere out of doors, along of the excitement of the
pious Moslem mind, which finds a safety valve in
throwing stones at Nazrani, I shall remain here and
fill a sheet, if not two, which may reach you to amuse
an hour or two of your leisure some fortnight
hence.
My stay in Jerusalem or
rather opposite the City,—for
I pitched my tents on the
Mount of Olives when I had
ascertained the point I thought you would like best for
your picture, was the most complete portion of my
tour: i.e. I was able to attend thoroughly, and to the
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quiet: whereas much of the rest of my Palestine
journey has been toiled through under far other
circumstances.
After describing at great length the reasons
which led him to select a north-east view of
the city for Lady Waldegrave’s picture, illus
trated by various little sketches reproduced
here, he continues :—
And now what shall I say on the subject of the
companion painting ? One of the most remarkable as
well as of the most picturesque studies, I have
obtained, is of Sebbeh, or Masada, the history of
which you will find in ? Translation of Josephus.
This was one of the places I so much wished to visit
& one which I am so pleased at having drawings of.
It is like this somewhat, only I cannot give here what
only detail & colour can produce. The great depth
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of the ravine below. A. is the Dead Sea :—B. is the
line of Moab mountains. This scene, as that of the
last Jewish struggle for freedom against Rome, would
I think be a very excellent subject in its way, but
in case you should not like this there is Hebron,
which is very particularly a Hewbrew antiquity, & is
besides sufficiently picturesque to form a good picture :
though why Abraham choose to live there I cannot
think : I found it abominably cold & wet, & besides,
they threw stones at me whenever I drew, so that
I wished the whole population in Abraham’s bosom or
elsewhere 20 times a day.
Another subject which is astonishingly grand is Petra.
(Not that I can ever see the sketch without feeling
my ears tingle at the memory of the filthy Arab
savages.) Petra was the capital of the Nabathcean
MASADA.
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(or Idumcean) Kings, who reigned in Jerusalem as
Herods, & it was one of them who built Masada.
The magnificence of Petra is not to be told, I mean
the magnificence of combined ruin, splendour of
sepulchral architecture and excavated temples, united
to the most romantic mountain or rock scenery & the
most beautiful vegetation.
At present the heat is getting too great to allow
of my drawing much, & also the country is in such a
state that many places can only be visited at the
risk of robbery &c., even if the traveller goes over
the ground as rapidly as possibly. So travelling,—
he may escape outrage, but with me, that mode of
progress is useless :—I must stop often and for
a considerable time, so that it is not easy to escape
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those odious Arabs. The whole plain of Eisdrcelon
for instance swarms with them, & they attack all
passengers. Of known names Lord Dunglas, 1 Col.
Cust, Sir J. Fergusson 2 & of unknown names,
numbers have been stopped:—and lately many
Americans have been robbed & some murdered,
which in one sense is a very good thing, since I do
not understand that the American Govt., think
proper to uphold the fiction of Turkish renovation,
& instead of being compelled to pooh-pooh the
entirely dislocated state of all order in Palestine &
Syria, they will it is to be hoped get riled and act
accordingly. If it were not shocking, the fate of
one large American party near Nazareth is beyond
belief absurd:—the Arabs actually went off with
all but one large blanket, of which Mr. & Mrs.
T. made two garments & therein rode to the town.
Some revenge was probably mixed up in the case,
on the part of some Arab it is said they had
threatened; for they took every book & drawing,
& paper, & even Mrs. T.’s wig & spectacles. Of
Dr. Beattie’s 3 party 10 days ago, the ill-fortune was
as great or even greater-they were setting out
for America, but these animals took all their treasures,
not only clothes, but books, collections of plants &c.,
1 Eldest son of the Earl of Home.
2 At this time Governor of Malta.
3 Foreign Secretary to the British Archaeological Society.
He had been Physician and Private Secretary to the Duke of
Clarence.
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things of no use to them, but I believe taken as
diversions for their nasty little beastly black
children.
Of my own mishaps at Petra you perhaps have
heard; how about 200 of them came down on me,
and every-thing which could be divided they took.
My watch they returned to me, but all money,
handkerchiefs, knives, &c., &c., were confiscated.
Since then my 2 muleteers, whom I sent by land
from Jaffa to Beirfit were robbed of their little all
by the way, & one might add others. But, cui bono !
English people must submit to these things, because
we have no influence in Syria or Palestine, nor in the
East generally. I should like to hear of a French
party being stopped or murdered ! ! The Arabs
(& Turks) know too well that neither French nor
Austrians can be touched with impunity.
The time is evidently near at hand when all the
country will be a field of dispute for Latin & Greek
factions once more, and the most miserable Jerusalem
once again the bone of contention. If on the one
hand the Latin Patriarch is building a great Palace
& Convent near Bethlehem, and the Austrians are
raising a splendid “Hospital” (a sort of Knight
Templars affair,) in Jerusalem itself, to be opened
by Pius IX it is said,—on the other hand the Russian
clergy have constantly increasing influence among
the natives, & even just now a particular delegate
has come to the “Holy City” with important powers
from Alexander. In the meantime, the “ Protestants ”
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stand alone as a mark for Hebrew, & Heathen,
Musulman, Latin, Greek, & Armenian, to be pointed
out by all & each as the living Pharisees of the day,
professing a better & simpler form of Christ’s religion
than their fellow Xtians, yet scandalizing the whole
community by their monstrous quarrels ; their Consuls
& Bishops regarding each other with hatred, & each
acting to each with open contempt & malignity, while
every portion of their resident fellow religionists take
one or the other side of the faction. And this forsooth
at a place for example for Turks & Jews ; this at the
very place where He whom they believe the founder
of their faith, died! By Heaven! if I wished to
prevent a Turk, Hebrew, or Heathen, from turning
Christian I would send him straight to J erusalem! I
vow I could have turned J ew myself, as one American
has actually lately done. At least the Jews do not
lie ; they act according to their belief: and among
themselves they are less full of hatred & malice
(perhaps,—for bye the bye, they excommunicated
Sir M. Montefiore in 3 synagogues because they
said he tried to introduce Xtian modes of life,) than
the Xtian community. But these latter, arrogating
to themselves as they do all superiority in this & the
next life, trample the most sacred doctrines of Christ
below their feet daily: “ I say unto you love one
another” are words which Exeter Hall, or Dr.
Phillpotts, 1 — Calvinist, or Puseyite, Monophysite
1 The famous Bishop of Exeter, who spent about £25,000 in
litigation. In 1847 he refused to institute the Rev. G. C. Gorham
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Armenian & Copt, or Trinitarian Greek, & Latin
receive with shouts of ridicule & blasphemous derision.
—“ Almost thou persuadest me not to be a Xtian ” is
the inner feeling of the man who goes to the “ Holy
City ” unbiassed towards any “ religious ” faction —
& it is at least my own deliberate opinion that while
“the Christ that is to be,” is so far, far removed
from the Xtian priesthood and Xtians in a body as
it is in South Palestine, while, in a word Jerusalem is
what it is by & through Xtians dogmas & theology,
—so long must the religion of Christ be, and most
justly, the object of deep hatred & disgust to the
Moslem, of detestation & derision to the Jew. From
all this mass of squabblepoison let me except the
Americans :—these alone, particularly in Northern,
Syria seem to think that Christ’s doctrines are worth
keeping thought of: as far as I can perceive, they are
as much respected for their useful practical lives, as for
their uniform peaceful & united disposition of
brotherly love one towards another.
One word about the Jews: the idea of converting
them to Xtianity at Jerusalem is to the sober observer
fully as absurd as that you should institute a society to
convert all the cabbages & strawberries in Covent
garden into pigeon-pies & Turkey carpets. I mean
that the whole thing is a frantic delusion. Are the
to the living of Brampford Speke. Gorham appealed to the
Privy Council and was instituted in 1850. A fierce controversy
arose, in the course of which Dr. Phillpotts excommunicated
the Archbishop of Canterbury.
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Jews fools that they should take up with a religion
professing to be one of love & yet bringing forth
bitter hatred & persecution? Have the Jews shown
any particular sign of forgetting their country & their
ancestral usages, that you should fancy it easier for
them to give up their usages in the very centre of that
country they have been so long attached to, & for
the memory of which they have borne such and so
much misery? Once again the theory of Jew-con-
version is utter boshblobberbosh—nothing more nor
less.
With all this, and in spite of all this, there is enough
in Jerusalem to set a man thinking for life, & I am
deeply glad I have been there. O my nose ! O my
eyes ! O my feet! How you all suffered in that
vile place! for let me tell you, physically Jerusalem
is the foulest and odiousest place on earth. A bitter
doleful soul-ague comes over you in its streets.
And your memories of its interior are but horrid
dreams of squalor & filth, clamour & uneasiness,
hatred & malice & all uncharitableness. But the
outside is full of melancholy glory, exquisite beauty
& a world of past history of all ages:—every point
forcing you to think on a vastly dim receding past,
or a time of Roman war & splendour, (for JEYia
Capitolium was a fine city) or a smash of Moslem
& Crusader years, with long long dull winter of
deep decay through centuries of misrule. The Arab
& his sheep are alone the wanderers on the pleasant
vallies and breezy hills round Zion :—the file of slow
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camels all that brings to mind the commerce of Tyre
& other bygone merchandize.
Every path leads you to fresh thought :—this takes
you to Bethany, lovely now as it ever must have
been : quiet, still little nook of valley scenery. There
is Rephaim & you see the Philistines crowding over
the green plain—Down that ravine you go to Jericho :
from that point you see the Jordan and Gilead.
There is Anatoth, & beyond all, the track of Senna-
cherrib—Mishmash, Giba, Ephraim. There is the
long drawn hill line of Moab. There is Herodion,
B
where the King-Tetrarch was buried : below it you
see the edge of Bethlehem which he so feared. That
high point is Neby Samuel and beyond it is Ramah.
Close by, that single peak is Gibeah of Saul, where
Rizpah watched so long. (Bye the bye that is a 5th
subject to choose from, for I went there on purpose
to get the view : & wonderful it is. A. the Moab
hills. B. Dead Sea. C. Jordan.) And thus, even
from one spot of ground, you are full of thought on
endless histories & poetries—I cannot conceive
any place on Earth like Jerusalem for astonishing
and yet unfailing mines of interest.
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But to leave an endless subject: My stay at
Bethlehem delighted me greatly, And I then hoped
to have got similar drawings of all the Holy Land.
All the country near it is lovely, and you see Ruth
in the fields all day below those dark olives. (This
is the 6th subject. A. the Moab hills.) Next
to those I came to the Dead Sea, which is a
wonder in its way, but the finest part, Ain Gidi,
I could not draw well, by reason of more Arab
botheration. Beyond there I saw little else of
Southern Palestine, the plain of Jericho, but not
the Jordan, for there again my beloved Arabs dis-
troyed my peace. Mar (Deir) Saba, a wonderful
monastery “ all as one cut of a Cheshire cheese ” as
my man said :—the plain of Sharon, & Jaffa :—this
was all.
The last part of my journey, (for I came from
Jaffa by sea to Beirut,) has been of a different kind.
All the Lebanon country is safe & pleasant, & the
Maronite Xtians are kindly & respectable critters.
But on the other hand, there wants that indescribable
charm, far above and beyond all local beauty &
novelty, which the scenery of sublimer Palestine
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Palestine, Corfii, and England
brings to the mind. The higher portions of Lebanon,
i.e. the outer side—recall Etna:—& the stonier &
more confined scenes, many a well known Cumberland
& Westmoreland dell:—The whole plain of Coelo-
Syria, green & lovely as it is, is but Sicilian land
scape, or Thessaly on a larger scale. The interior
of Lebanon is however wonderfully fine :—a kind
of Orientalized Swiss scenery :—innumerable villages
dot the plateaus & edge the rocks which are spread on
each side of & rise above dark ravines, winding
winding downward to the plains of Tripoli and
the blue sea. All these I could well have wished
to explore and draw, & I might have gone thither,
had I not become so very unwell from the extreme
cold of the upper part of the mountain as to be
obliged to return into Ccelo-Syria as soon as I could,
having my drawing of the Cedars as a sign of my
Lebanon visit.
Next I saw Baalbec but I can by no means endorse
the enthusiasm of travellers regarding these very
grand ruins. Their immense size, their proportions,
the inimitable labour & exquisite workmanship of
their sculptured details, none can fail to be struck
with, nor to delight in contemplating. But, all the
florid ornaments of architecture, (Roman withall,)
cannot fill up the place of simplicity, nor to me is
it possible to see hideous forms of Saracenic walls
around & mixed with such remains as those of
Baalbec, without a feeling of confused dislike of the
whole scene, so incomplete & so unimpressive. To
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my mind, the grand and positive-simple Temple of
Psestum— the lonely Segesta the Parthenon &
Theseium, & above all, the astonishing singleness
of the Egyptian temples are worth heaps of Baalbeks.
Possibly also, the presence of 6 tents full of English
travellers, of a rope-dancer from Cairo, with conse
quent attendant crowds, & of a village full of tiresome
begging impical Heliopolitans had somewhat to do
with my small love of Baalbek & its neighbourhood.
The days journey thence half way over Anti
Lebanon, & the following journey down hither would
be of great interest could more time be spent on
the way:—but though I have added little to my
collection of drawings, the view of this city and its
plain is almost a recompence for any trouble. Imagine
16 worlds full of gardens rolled out flat, with a river
and a glittering city in the middle, & you have
a sort of idea of what the Damascus pianura is like.
I really hope to get a good view of this, but I am
sadly put out at losing two days by the vagaries of
these horrid Musclemen, not to speak of my being
lame from a stone thrown at me yesterday, pig! I
shall set off from here on Saturday the 29th & get to
Beirut I hope on June 1st.
Lear to Fortescue.
Corfu. 18. June. 1858.
I have brought all my Judean and Coelo-Syrian
drawings back safe, and have gained in energy
physical and moral, by this tour into the most
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interesting land I have ever travelled over, besides
filling my mind with scenes enough to last a longer
life than mine is likely to be.
My own plans are not for an immediate going
away from here unless European war should break
out, when I shall come to England at once.
Frank L[ushington] goes in a few weeks :—I need
not say how I shall miss him :—whenever I have
thought him less friendly than I have supposed he
should have been, I have invariably found he was
acting rightly and uprightly & that I myself had
misinterpreted him now and then. He is one of the
best unions of mind & principle I have known. I
wish you knew him : Do try & do so when he gets
to England :—there are few better worth knowing on
every account.
Shall all of you come in again? For I don’t
believe the Derbyites will stand. I regret Lord
S[tanley] ever having joined them.
July 5th. Corfu. 1858.
Those Jerusalem letters I never had, but I have
written to have them sent here. Concerning that,
is you justly call it, “ ridiculous Bishopric,” 1 I hardly
know to whom you can apply. Holman Hunt knows
a good deal. Have you seen a pamphlet by Dr.
Graham ? ask for & get it. Holman Hunt can tell you
1 The Jerusalem Bishopric was founded about 1841. Lear
is referring to the difficulties that had arisen between the
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where. I don’t believe you can really understand the
whole mess except by going there & finding out what
each party says. You are right to enquire & work.
(Did you see a passing observation on yourself in the
Saty. mag. (or Leader?) week before last?) Work,
work : so that the next turn of the wheel you may be
only one step below Merivale, not two as you were last
ministry. (!)
You will be sorry to hear I have had a bad eye, a
sty, only more like an abscess : My brain is con
fused between cause & effect, & I don’t know if my
being a pig has produced the sty, or whether the sty
makes me a pig. But I know I am a pig.
I will send you such a funny book, “ The Tempest,”
‘H TPIKYMIA. It is extremely well translated, Caliban
& Ariel are delightful. Isn’t this pretty.
o ’'ApisX rpayav^aei.
iSa> ’g tovq appovg (ftOaaere
k eSoj ‘xepaTriaadriTB.
Suxrrs (piXia jcai Xaj3ere
(to Ktipa aTTOKUpUTaBl)
k eSaj 7nSi^io (Trrjaere
’g rrjv appodtu), %Ojoo,
k avTHpcovijore Trvevpart
y\vKa, (T otl \aA(o.
yeia, yeia, rovg aypoucw.
’A VTl(j).
M7raov, (3yaov.
yavyovv ra (frvXaKocncvXa.
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A VTlty.
M.TTaoVy (3ydov.
TOV 7TETELV ajpOlKab)
yU£ KOpdlDfXtVO <j>ep(TL
XoXeL KOVKOVpOVKOV.
ra pvcFTripia tt}q KS<paXoviag. T
This place is wonderfully lovely. I wish you could
see it; if you came I could put you up beautifully, &
feed you on Ginger-beer & claret & prawns & figs.
A. Tennyson has written two more poems, one I
hear is a dialogue between a gent. & lady.
If I go to Jerusalem, I shall have to ask you a
good deal about the matter, as I am inclined to be
“ impetuous ” overmuch, & might start a periodical
“ The cursed City ” as a title.
P. S.—The K. of Greece landed here 3 days ago:
& went up to see Sir J. & Lady Y. He was. received
immensely by the Corfiotes, as you may suppose.
About the middle of August Lear left for
England with Lushington, who was hurrying
back in consequence of the death of his brother
and niece. After the usual succession of
visits to the Husey Hunts, the J. Crosses,
the Hornbys, and others, he settled down in
his London lodgings to execute the numerous
orders received.
1 Translation of “Come unto these yellow sands, ”&c.—Act I.
sc. ii.
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16. Upper Seymour Street,
Portman Square,
13. Sept. 1858.
I forget what I told you of my doings : after
Knowsley I went to Liverpool, & then to Man
chester where the kind Sir John Potter 1 took me
in. Coming back by Derby, I saw the “Corfu” in
its place, & I passed my Sunday at W. Neville—
the 7th house I have seen beadornamented by my
own paws.
My dear boy,—I cannot go to Dudbrook. 2 My
straight plan now, as soon as I get the pictures
unpacked, is to WORK. I cannot work with my
mind frittered by agreable society. A painter must
be a painter. If you are writing to Lady W. say I
shall write : And both you & she may be sure that
my not going is because I want to do her Pictures
WELL, also Lord Clermonts.
You will be glad—not to say skipping to hear that
Holman Hunt has seen the sketches both of Masada
& her view of Jerusalem & is thoroughly pleased with
both. It is the funniest thing to talk over all those
places with him.—When you are coming to town
let me know. I long to see you again. I keep in
lodgings here, but shall paint elsewhere.—At present
I am all upside down—nohow—bebothered—& can
only write this much. Did I tell you A had
written in all 5 new poems ?
1 The member for Manchester, and first Mayor of the City.
2 In Essex. One of Lady Waldegrave’s houses.
“4

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Palestine, Corfu, and England
i Tor Villa.
Campden Hill
Kensington.
Monday evening
[Before Nov. i, 1858.]
I am exceedingly annoyed that I cannot come :—I
have appointed Dr. Rimbault 1 to come & set down
some of my songs 2 this evening—& he comes all the
way from Camden Town, & it is the first night: more
over I have just been into town—-to send off poor
sister Ann,—but that would not matter if I could
possibly otherwise manage it.
with a wet sheet:—3 But I believe you will be al
the better for it. Is Ward Braham rubbed rubbing
rubbable or rubbabibbabubbapbimbubabebabblllleee
1 An indefatigable composer and writer on musical subjects.
He rescued from oblivion and published, some of the best work
of the early English composers.
2 Lear set many of Tennyson’s poems to music and sang them,
though he had no knowledge of music, and had only what the
French call a “filet de voix” pyet he rendered them with so
much expression as to make tears start to the eyes of his hearers.
3 Refers to a visit of Fortescue to Dr. Gully’s establishment and
cold water cure.
16. Hupper Seemore Street,
Portman 18th Nov. f$8.
Coming home at 11.30,
from Mr. Stanley’s, I find
your Wusstussher noat.—
Thank God I ain’t to be
rubbed by a beastly fiend

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also ?— 1 I rote to you this morning :—but, how the
debble could your letter reach me to-night ?
At Mrs. Stanley’s there was Arthur, 2 (who is grown
much more expansive & talkative & World-like than
of old—though as good & kind as always :) Mr.
Penrhyn 3 & Emmy ditto, always good. Mary Stanley
Of Scutari memories & twisted faith,—Walrondwho is
stilty & scholastic:—& one Adolphus, whose name
savours of Dolphins. The conversation was not
bad : mostly of Spain & Biarritz, with sparks of fun.
Show’d all my sketches to Arthur S. & Walrus,—&
was pleased by their praise of their fiddlediddlety of
representation. But we don’t agree about the beauty
of Palestine :—I say that “ there is beauty in every
thing” is a better principle than “look for conven
tional beauty, & failing that don’t see any.”
Returning here, I find varicose gnoats. One from
Mr. Morier, containing ever so much good Greek.
“ jul& avpiov Sa ipypfiai rrpog ere irptv tcuq evSeica wpaig, va <te
XaptTiOb) ity va %avp.aZ,u)v, rag Trig YiapaLaTr]vr\g Zcoypatyiag
crov. <Poj3epa Sa yivtovTai ra ava/caraw^tara Trig I (vviKrjg
SraXaaatjg, Tsroia yaiSapoXiKia 7TOte Sev rjfcou<ra.”4 He Writes
really good Romaic.
1 Lady Waldegrave’s youngest brother, who accompanied
Fortescue.
2 Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, a close personal friend of Lear’s,
who is mentioned frequently in the letters, was the second son
of the Bishop of Norwich. He was appointed Chaplain to the
Prince Consort in 1854, and afterwards became Dean of West
minster. Mary Stanley, his sister, was in charge of fifty nurses in
the Crimea during the war. 3 Brother-in-law of Lord Derby.
4 To-morrow I am coming to you before eleven o’clock. Yea
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0 mi! how giddy I is!—Perhaps it is along of the
cliff of Ain Giddi: perhaps of the glass of sherry &
water close by—only I ain’t drank it yet.
1 wen tup two the Zoological Gardings, & drew
a lot of Vulchers : also I saw the eagles & seagles &
beagles & squeegles : leastwise the big bears & all
the other vegetables.
also the little dragging, who is the Beast of the
Revialations.
Miss Me. Kenzie 1 is married this afternoon to Lord
Ashburton, 34—60.
The cold is so great that my nose is frizz so hard
that I use it as a paper cutter.
I have axed Lord Stanley for the Cadetship, 2 &
have written to Lady Derby to know if she wants
her usbing’s hancester’s picter.
To-morrow I go to Holman Hunts, to city, pay
bills, & dine at Beadons.—Saturday Clowes comes
I shall greet you and shall see with admiration your pictures of
Palestine. Fearful indeed did the up-and-down motions of the
Ionian Sea become, what universal longings for terra firma have
ever come to me.
1 The well-known friend of Carlyle and a woman of great
cultivation. 2 Probably for a nephew or young friend.

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up: & I go to Cramers to arrange finally about the
5 songs. Poor dear Lady Bethell writes me a sad
note: I fear now that she is really ill.
It is zis ted-bime.—Goodnight. My love to the
water fiend.
Pavilion Hotel, Folxton.
Novbr. 25/58.
Still one more line. Your’s retched me here
(spelling adaptable to circumstances,) this morning,
on my coming over from my last visit to my old
sister. I don’t see any phun in the 2 coal’d pales of
water on one’s bak :—& I think your remarx on
Water-worx generally are far from untrue. Seriously,
I should conceive that the necessity of constant con
templation of one’s health can’t be good for the body or
mind, & I don’t see but that you are right to cease
the trial.
This, I suppose will find you at L d Clarendon’s
of whose visit to the Montalembert-scruncher, 1 I hope
you will think well,—
And hereabouts, my bilious and skrogfrodious
temperament screws itself up to give you a rowing for
what your enemies call a “ desultory ” & “ dilettante ”
tone of life. The moral of this abrupt & angular
1 The fiery debate which took place in Parliament in March
on the subject of Lord Canning's Indian proclamation, was the
occasion for the issue of the Comte de Montalembert’s
celebrated pamphlet “ Un Debat sur l'lnde au Parlement
Anglais,” in which he contrasted the political freedom in
England with the conditions prevailing in France. For this
he was prosecuted by the French Government.
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preachment is that neither you nor nobody else will do
no good if you do things by halves and squittles.
My feeling is, Lord Stanley in political life, or
Holman Hunt in painting are the best 2 coves to be
imitated in 1858 : alike in this, that what either do,
they dp thoroughly & well. As a set off to this beastly
jerk of my temper, I do allow that you thought of me
in sending Kingsley’s book by post as you did, where
by I am cutting it & some toast at the present
momenx.—also that in matters of friendship you are
not a “dilettante” but a realist & praeraphaelite.
Since I left town I have suffered less from Asthma
daily—but yet a good deal. At Husey Hunts—(Lewes)
I felt, as I alway do, their extreme kindness, greatly.
Thence I went to Ann at Margate :—Sister No. 2 is
coming home from New Zealand, (about April,) and I
hope Ann will then live with her, as at 68, & in failing
health I do not like her being so alone.—It is always a
hard task to leave the poor dear old lady, & I have to
act hard-hearted to keep her at all quiet.
Arrived here, I find a most good and kind letter
from Lady Isabella Proby—on poor dear John Proby’s
death. 1 She says, “ I send you these details of my
brother John’s death, because I know you loved
him.” And this was true : I did love him very
much, and that fellow Bowen’s coarse ridicule of
him was one among many of my causes of dislike
towards him.
1 Lord Proby, heir to the Earldom of Carysfort, died at the
age of 35. Lady Isabella was his sister.
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But I myself was never kind to John Proby as I
should have been, for which I suffer now, and some
day shall perhaps suffer more.
Regarding money—Gibbs writes here that he has
paid in 60 odd ^s to Drummings,—& also Cramer &
Beale have putchissed my 5 new songs, & the copy
rights of the old 4. So, if so be as you wants to get,
(1) “ Come not when I am dead ” (2) “ When thro’ the
land,”—(3) “The time draws near” (4) “Home they
brought ” 1 —(5) “ O let the solid ground ”—nows your
time at Cramers 201, Regent Street. I could tell you
a kind doing of Lord Stanley, but have no thyme now.
Goodbye once more : my dear Chichester Fortescue.
Lord Lyons’ 2 death has just come to me also. You
know I think that he saved my life when at Thebes
1848 3 by sending promptly out two doctors in a coach
& four:—had they not arrived I should not be
writing to you now.
Aprettygo this of the Montalembert decision in Paris.
1 Twelve of Lear’s songs from Tennyson were included in
this series, and afterwards were published by Hutchins and
Romer. The following extract from a letter of Lear’s in 1882
on the death of Archbishop Tait will give some idea of Lear’s
singing : “ The latter was always very kind to me, and once
said in a big party when I had been singing ‘ Home they brought
her warrior,’ and people were crying : ‘ Sir, you ought to have
half the Laureateship.’ That was in ’51, when he was Dean of
Carlisle.”
2 At Arundel Castle when he held the post of Minister at
Athens. He was practical commander of the Fleet throughout
the Crimean War.
3 See letter of July 19, 1848, from Athens, p. 10.
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CHAPTER V
December, 1858, to November, 1859
ROME REVISITED
HE Ionian islands, which had been
formed into a republic under the
Protectorate of Great Britain after the Treaty
of Vienna, had long been seething with dis
content, as they very naturally disliked the
foreign yoke, and desired union with Greece.
Sir Edward Lytton, who had succeeded Lord
Stanley as Secretary for the Colonies, decided
to send an envoy to investigate the causes
of dissatisfaction, and for this purpose he
appointed Mr. Gladstone Lord High Com
missioner Extraordinary to the islands in
November, 1858. Mr. Gladstone’s mission
was not a success, as the people persisted in
regarding him as the herald of freedom, and
public opinion was so hostile in England that,
after his return, a new Lord High Commis-
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sioner was sent out to enforce the British rule
with greater stringency. But the idea grew
and gained ground that the cession of the
islands to Greece was only a matter of time.
Lear to Fortescue.
Rome, 13. December. 1858.
I have just got your letter—2nd & 4th. If you
knew how often I have worried myself about the letter
I wrote to you, you would not have added coals to my
head by writing so kindly. The very fact of my
opinions having weight sufficient to draw forth an
answer should make me more careful of the ways &
manner in which I put them into words or on paper.
There are times when I turn into bile and blackness,
body & soul,—& in those phases of life I hate myself &
through myself hate everybody, even those I like best.
The general accusation of forgetfulness may have had
some foundation as regards you, but I am sure I
ought not to have written disgustingly—as I know
I did, and, as I set out by saying, I have been
thoroughly vexed by having done so ever since. Pray
forget this ugly little parenthesis in our friend-life:—
and believe that the irritation of an artist’s life
produces much which works its possessor bitterness,
when that individual’s brain has been so little guided
in youth as mine was.—
I was at Margate with my old sister on the 25th.
Novr. & Clowes joined me on the 26th. at Folke-
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NINFA.
'I Italy" by Edward Lear (The
Woodcut from “ Illustrated Excursi

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i

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Rome Revisited
stone—whence we crossed to Paris & remained there
the 27th. & 28th.—What a splendid city that has
become! I never saw anything like the Rue de
Rivoli:—On Monday the 29th. we reached Marseilles,
& that evening left for Italy, reaching Rome at mid
night on Wednesday the 1st, and glad to get to bed in
the Europa.—
The 12 days since then have been to me the most
weary and sadly depressing I have passed for lpng
years.—And so dismal has been the return here, that
only the friendlyness of ancient acquaintances, & the
even temper and kindness of Clowes could have kept
me above water :—2 or 3 times I have nearly resolved
on going off straight to America. Day after day I
have gone up & dow n stairs, but could find nothing to
live in under any circumstances :—Every place of any
sort I could paint in, furnished, & at Grosvenor-
Square prices, fancy, for 3 stuffy pokey rooms, foul, &
vile, & up 4 floors,—i$£ a month! At last, having
resolved that I must finish the pictures here—(which
as yet are not heard of even as far as Leghorn) I
determined on taking (& I could only get it for 2
years) a set of apartments in the New Palazzo
Albertazzi; I have got the 4th floor (half of it) & am
furnishing it as fast as I can—: it is to cost 2o£ per
quarter, a sum I ought not to pay, & yet cannot avoid
i j nailing myself to :—As yet I have only got carpets
i j cut, besides a portable bed-stead, six chairs, a pair of
j bellows, & a pepper-box. Clowes has got a lodging
| at 31 P. di Spagna & we see much of each other.

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But how can I tell you of the curious feelings which
an absence of 11 years has occasioned on revisiting
this place? It is impossible to do so. Moreover, I
wish to send this off to-morrow, Robt. Hay, 1 the
Knights, 2 the Bertie Mathews, Williams, & Gibson,3
are here of old friends.
Dec. 14th. Here is a go! Poor Clowes riding with
C. Knight yesterday—had a fall—(his horse stepped
in a hole) & he has broken his collar bone. So there
is enough for me to think of just now. Meanwhile,
I can’t get into my rooms yet at all, and am really
nearly mad.
5. January. 1859.
9. Via Condotti. Rome.
It is all well that you did not come into the room,
instead of the apparition of your letter :—if you had I
should have had a fit & died. For I was so miserable
that I had to put away my drawing & pace up & down
the room, so that when your dear good kind letter
came, I could not help the tears a busting out of my
eyes incontinent, all the more as I read it:—a weak
ness I had to conceal from Giorgio, who has a theory
that “ chi piange per altro che la morte di sua madre,
1 Robert Hay was the leading member of an archaeological
expedition to Egypt, 1826-32, and forty-nine volumes of his
drawings were afterwards purchased by the British Museum.
2 The family of John Knight of Wolverley. The eldest
daughter married the Duke of Sermoneta ; the second daughter,
Isabella, was a hopeless invalid.
3 John Gibson, the sculptor, who died in Rome 1866. He
revived the use of colour in statuary.
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e sciocco,” 1 or as he words it usually—“6 ottoIoq kXule
X^piQ tov Savarov Trjg p.r\rp6g rov, uvai ya'i^apog {i.e.,
an ass). 2
I shall now dismiss my worries & reproaches about
you, leastwise considering myself a mitigated beast, &
I shall send this as soon as I can, hoping also you
may soon write again, for the relief your letters &
those of F. Lushington & others give me is not to be
expressed. (Bye the bye—do try & know F.
Lushington—at the Cosmopolite or elsewhere.)—I
shall now look over your letter, & answer in comments
—dividabJe by linear appearances.
Gladstone & Corfu are queer absurdities :—why
didn’t Dizzy let Lord Stratford—(who was on the
spot)—settle things ?—But still, though Gladstone was
not a fit man to send,—the Govt, have shown that
they mean to set a new system to work,—Gorgeous’
going to wit as proof—for he had no alternative, tho’
he vows he is going by choice.—I expect poor Sir J.
will resign,3 as he ought to have done earlier—& that
he & all the Ionian suite will come here bye and
bye.
I am very glad you have been enjoying yourself.
It is not wonderful that anyone should like Stanley :—
I envy those who see much of him, as I have a kind
1 “Who weeps for aught but the death of his mother is
foolish.”
2 Practically the same as the Italian translation, with Lear’s
addition.
3 Sir J. Young did resign, and Sir Henry Storks was appointed
in his place.
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of mixed affection and interest and admiration for him
I never felt united for anybody.
I need not say I was glad to know you saw more of
Lady W.-—(What a fuss I am in to-day about her
pictures :—they are come but the d-^ d dogana will
not let them pass—d brutes.)
My kindest respects to Mrs. Ruxton : I am glad
the i,ooo,ooo’s sauce-pan is more to the purpose.
By jingo ! if you were to come at Easter ! Only, I
might go crazy.
I have hung my show-room with white, & hope to.
get some drawings into it before long:—but I am
dreadfully bothered by invitations, which I abhor.
Dinners are natural and proper: but late mixed tea-
parties foul & abhorrent to the intelligent mind.
Do you know I like Egerton H[arcourt] 1 better than
I expected,—indeed very well and also Lady Frances. 2
I laughed at your note about “Jessie ”3 she is too
powerful by half, yet somewhat jolly. I am asked
there to-morrow night, but I’m hanged if I’ll go.
That’s the end of my notes on your’s—& now I shall
shuffle on promisquis.
First for goodness sake say who is Richard Bright ? 4
who rather is Mrs. B. ? I have taken a liking to
1 Youngest son of the Archbishop of York. George Harcourt,
Lady Waldegrave’s husband, was the eldest son.
2 Daughter of the fifth Earl of Oxford and widow of, an
elder brother of Egerton Harcourt.
3 Second wife of Mr. Granville Vernon, another brother of Mr.
George Harcourt. She was a daughter of the twenty-second,
Lord Dacre.
4 He in Parliament. She a daughter of Admiral Wolley.
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R. B. because he knows & likes you :—also he knows
others of my friends. So I dined there, last week,
with S. W. Clowes—(who having broken his collar
bone is now out again,) & showed him a bit of the
Campagna on Sunday. He seems a sensible fellow,
& don’t talk watering-place rot. At his house I met
Gibbs 1 (former tutor to P[rince] of W[ales]) whom I
liked—& W. Palmer of religious fervid search 2 &
George Waldegrave 3 who seemed a nice fellow also.
But, as all here, these people go squittering after
sights, & are no more themselves seen.
The Stratford’s 4. live a long way off—beyond the
4 Fontane. I have been asked to T., & have not
gone but called : I doubt my seeing much of them.
Can you get, or write, & send me out—a letter of
introduction to Odo Russell? 5 or to him to me—if
that is the better way ?—He is spoken of as well worth
knowing, & I should like to know him if I could.
1 Frederick W. Gibbs, Q.C., C.B , tutor to H.R.H. the Prince
of Wales, 1852-8.
2 Palmer of Magdalen, author of many theological works.
When Augustus Hare’s mother and sister were left destitute in
Rome in September, 1859, through the treachery of an abscond
ing lawyer, the son relates how their old friend, Mr. William
Palmer, came forward, and “ out of his very small income
pressed upon them a cheque for ^150.”
3 Third son of the eighth Earl and cousin of Lady Walde
grave’s husband, the seventh Earl.
4 Lord and Lady Stratford de Redcliffe.
s The brilliant diplomatist, afterwards Ambassador at Berlin ;
while nominally holding paid Attacheship at this time at Flor
ence, was employed at Rome on special service. Having no cre
dentials for the Vatican, his relations with Cardinal Antonetti and
the resident diplomatic body, were thus of an informal nature.
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The Knights live here much as ever, Isabella pass
ing her 18th year in bed (I mean she has been in bed
18 years—) but bright & patient always. Margaret
Dss. of Sermoneta fading slowly : but kinder & softer
than most Knights are. All are just as friendly as
ever to me. So indeed are all—Mr. Hay now nearly
blind : & the Bertie Matthews, but these two last live
in society & cliquerie.
The James Marshalls *—(she was a Spring Rice)
with Aubrey de Vere 2 are gone to Naples. The
Barrett Brownings also are here, but I know them
not. Various Americans—Cushman (Miss 3) Perkins,4
& Storeys are pleasant & good but as yet I eschew
general society, being wholly cross & bigongulous.
My hopes are set on the Grand Duchess Maria
Nicolowiena 5 of Russia, whom I hope to see here
when I get my Athos paintings out—if they ever do
come out. Your friend Lord Granville 6 is here on
crutches.
The Holy Church outside the P. del Popolo,
thrives : it is belarged and beorganed, & be-beautified :
1 Third son of John Marshall of flax-spinning fame.
2 Third son of the poet-baronet, and himself a poet.
3 Charlotte Cushman, the great American tragic actress.
+ Augustus Hare mentions meeting at Venice in 1892 a Mrs.
Mary Ridge Perkins, a quaint old American lady, who had
adopted thirty homeless children.
s Sister of the Czar Alexander II., widow of Maximilian, Duke
of Leuchtenberg.
6 The second Earl, President of the Council in Lord Palmer
ston’s Ministry, 1852-8, when he resigned, but resumed the office
in 1859.
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& the chaplain Woodward is a good earnest man. &
preaches most Abercrombycally, 1 tho’ he is a High
Churchman. Everybody likes him, but the misery of
the Sunday sittings on feeble chairs! Vast women
in black velvet hoops utterly carry off & prostrate
many delicate men as they struggle to their seats.
Many men kneel on hoops & dresses, & a
section of the congregation is all over-balanced in
consequence.
The philosophical silent Suliot is of the greatest
comfort to me. His remarks in Greek—by play—
kill me. “’AtteStapzvoi ovtol 61 avSpuHroi” 2 he says of the
Romans, who are so slow & odiously indifferent.
And of their incessant begging, “Avtol uvai ”Apa&oi,
povov £%ow TrspicrcroTzpa kvSopaTa.” 3 It is hardly possible
to be thankful enough for so good a servant. He
says of Lushington that when he left, Giovanni (G/s
younger brother who was L.’s under-servant—) would
not stay with the new Judge, but returned to his
former trade of tailor, but, says G. he does, nothing
but talk of his old master instead of working. L.
seems to have made himself beloved at Corfu as
everywhere else.
Correct your toe & tete in what it ails.—It is a mis
take to have toes at all: hoofs would have been
simpler & less expensive as precluding boots.
1 A reference used often in Lear’s letters, but I cannot discover
the man or the origin of the expression.
2 “ These men are dead.”
3 “ These men are Arabs, but have more clothes on.”
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9. Via Condotti. Roma.
Janry. 24. 1859.
To-day has brought me yours of the 15th, which
oily rejoiced me. I won’t go to church to-day, like a
good boy, & will write to you instead. I heard of you
two days back when Lady Bethell wrote to me, &
said she had been talking with “an extremely nice
friend ” of mine at Lord Palmerstons.
I seem to have a great deal to say, but am scattery,
& shan’t write connectedly. I am not rejoiceful in
Rome & cannot “set myself in any good way.” I
have no one with whom to sympathize at all closely.
S. W. Clowes is the kindest hearted & best fellow
possible, but he has no application to or taste for
much I would always lean to, nor could I talk with
him as I do with you on many subjects. s I wish
indeed you were here for a time, but I trust to see
you in Ireland or England before next winter.—The
mass of people here pass their lives in mere pleasure,
a regular Bath & Brighton life—& I don’t care to
know them. Others are naturally using every
moment in seeing sights & learning Rome. Others
have jealousies & smallnesses & professional quirks
from wh. I wholly stand aloof. O Lord! I wishes
I was a beadle! 1
All my smaller painting’s here have been bought—
1 The beadles who stand outside the palaces of the great
Roman nobles are still objects of admiration. The magnificence
of their traditional costume no doubt attracted both the artist
and humourist in Lear.
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3 by a dear delightful chap—one Aubrey de Vere
Beauclerk, 1 who lives somewhetfc near Belfast.
Lord Stratford was here for nearly two hours the
other day & really delightful: he spoke of you in very
nice terms. The Youngs & all the Palace party are
coming here directly. Do you think Dizzy selected
Sir H. Stork 2 on purpose that being called King
Stork, his predecessor might for ever be dubbed King
Log ?
We have the Prince of Wales here, who seems a
very nice looking & prepossessing lad.—
15th. Febry.—I think I shall send this off to-day.
I hear a Colonel Dunn 3 is appointed in the room of
G. F. B. Gladstone appears to be making a great
mess. Do you know Spring rice-ious people? I
dined with some to-day. I wish one could know if
there is likely to be war or not: it would be a bore to
be boxed up here in the middel of hennemies. Do
you know Odo Russell our new envoy here ? All the
English fribble-world is irate about a Miss Cavendish,
whom Mrs. Hare a pervert, (sister of Sir John Dean
Paul,) has cajoled & bebaptismalized, unbeknown to
1 Of Ardglass Castle, Co. Down.
2 Sir Henry Storks was appointed Lord High Commissioner
of the Ionian Islands in February, 1859, and remained there till
the protectorate was resigned. He was afterwards Governor of
Malta and Jamaica.
3 Possibly Colonel F. P. Dunne, who was secretary and aide-
de-camp at this time to Lord Eglinton, Lord Lieutenant of Ire
land. Mr. (afterwards Sir) Henry Drummond Wolfe, was,
however, appointed secretary in the place of Sir George Bowen.
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her parents. 1 Manning 2 is preaching most atrocious
sermons here, to which nevertheless, all heaps of
fools go. A vile beastly rottenheaded foolbegotten
brazenthroated pernicious piggish screaming, tearing,
roaring, perplexing, . splitmecrackle crashmecriggle
insane ass of a woman is practising howling below-
stairs with a brute of a singingmaster so horribly,
that my head is nearly off.
P.S.—Has Cramer published my songs yet?
Lear to Lady Waldegrave.
9. Via Condotti, Roma.
26. March. 1859.
At last your two pictures are done, & will be out
of my hands in two days from this, & before the first
of May I trust they will be in Carlton Gardens. So
far as admiration of them can please an artist I have
certainly had a full share from the 7 or 800 people
who have seen them in my study : but I shall never
theless be very desirous to know how you are pleased
with them. The Masada is the most striking : its
sunset-colour, & excessive lonely character must
always make it so. The Jerusalem is perhaps the
most interesting ; & I hope both will give you plea-
1 A daughter of Admiral Cavendish. The “ Mrs. Hare” here
mentioned was the mother of Augustus J. C. Hare, “ Italima ”
in the “ Story of my Life,” and in vol. ii. p. 97 he tells a story
of. his mother’s earlier acquaintance with Miss Cavendish in
August, 1858.
2 The following year Cardinal Manning became domestic
prelate to the Pope
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LADY WALDEGRAVE.
From a photograph taken in 1859.
One among a number taken in contemplation of a statuette
executed later by Aoble.
This one a special pose ft om one of the plays acted at Nuneham.
To face page 132.

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Rome Revisited
sure for many years to come. At any time I should
have finished these two pictures carefully for my own
sake, & on account of the interest of the subjects, but
I must tell you that I have been more than ordinarily
attentive to your two Commissions, in as much as they
were given me in faith, and because the payment of
one of them was an assistance to me in going to the
Holy Land.
For the same reason I have taken as much pains
as I could with Lord Clermont’s picture too, which
I believe I shall send off also next week. Neither
picture of Jerusalem will I ever repeat, for the minute
architecture has tried my sight a good deal, & more
over I hold that an Artist loses much of his originality
by repetition of his works.
The war between France and Austria now
broke out, but was over very quickly. The
difficulties in Italy, however, were rather
augmented than diminished, as the Italians
found that Louis Napoleon had no intention
of literally fulfilling his promise to free them
from the yoke of Austria. The national move
ment against foreign supremacy and the
temporal claims of the Pope, soon began to
assume threatening proportions under the
leadership of Garibaldi.
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Lear to Fortescue.
9. Via Condotti, Roma.
May 1, 1859.
Here’s a pretty kettle of fishes! ain’t it? Every
body here is trying to get away, but they can’t, for the
roads thro’ Tuscany are more or less uncertain, & no
one chooses to risk horses being taken for troops.
While, the same panic fills all the boats at Naples,
&not a place is to be got at C. Vecchia, where several
hundred English are staying,—on dit,—like to poor
folk about the pool of Bethesda. The last 3 or 4
days are indeed very full of thunder clouds,—& no
one knows what is to follow. (The P[rince] of
W[ales] goes to-morrow).—As for myself, I do not
know which way to turn, Should the war continue,
or spread in new directions, it is clear that no
strangers will come here, & the place will be utterly
odious ; yet I have taken expensive rooms for 2 years
& a half, and have spent every farthing I have in
fitting them up as a winter home. Possibly, if things
grow much worse, I may come [to England], & pub
lish some of my tours by subscription, living ob-
skewerly & cheaply. In less than 10 days I hope
to send off Baring’s & the other pictures. Next
to make the studies for Gibbs, Hey wood, 1 & Stam-
field’s pictures in the Campagna. This will bring me
to June, by which time I must decide some way or
other.
If I ever come to England I must see you at Red
1 Arthur Heywood, of Stanley Hall, Yorks.
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House, but I should mainly have to poke about
London, & therefore I had half as rather not come
this year, all the more that the N.Z. sister comes over
for 2 years—& at first family matters won’t be
happy, as there has been much bother of late, &
I always keep out of these messes, though I have
come down with £20 in the winter for the amiable
relatives here and there, as is right & fit. My
money affairs are, au plus bas : but I don’t like giving
up,—so I shall hold on.
I hope you have not been over-bothered by the
Election 1 —but, do you know I rather like you to
have to do the work, because it stirs you up, & your
nature requires that, I take it now and then. Lord
D[erby]’s speech about the Indian heroes was
good :—but I don’t think his Govt., or Lord Stan
ley] in particular have acted well to Lord Canning,
whose career has been one of the utmost difficulty,
and needed no ungenerosity to embitter it further :
the Earldom & the praise do not tally with the Ellen-
borough Stanley dispatches. 2
Yes indeed, I do feel “sick of time” here. I am
convinced of this more and more :—if you have a
1 The defeat of Lord Derby’s Government over Mr. Disraeli’s
Reform Bill led to a Dissolution of Parliament in May.
2 On March 3, 1858, Lord Canning, then Governor-General
of India, issued his famous Proclamation practically confiscating
the whole of Oude. This was condemned by Lord Derby’s
Government, and Lord Ellenborough, then President of the
Board of Control, sent a despatch disapproving of it in the
most violent terms. Lord Canning received an earldom on
May 21, 1859.
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wife, or are in love with a woman, (both phases
of the same state of self division, the only real and
proper state of life in this world) if I say such be your
condition, w avSpajire! 1 then you may stay in any place
& in any circumstances : you are raised out of the
necessity of contemplating the cussed nuisances of
poverty or bores by sympathy :—but if you are abso
lutely alone in the world, & likely to be so, then move
about continually & never stand still. I therefore
think I shall be compulsed & more especially by the
appearance of things on the horizon,—to go to Japan
& New York, or Paraguay, or anywhere before long.
Littlegreen, Petersfield, Hants.
June 2/59.
You may suppose I was regularly delighted at
hearing from Lady Waldegrave how much she liked
the pictures. Out of the 6 paintings, my years work,
3 have given, & I trust will give, their proper share
of knowledge & pleasure.
I should gladly see Millais’s worx, but do not
greatly expect to like them. I am quite aware of the
qualities of his mind, which I do not apprehend are
of the progressive nature, as are Holman Hunt’s:
but his power and technical go, I have no doubt are
wonderful.
Here, there is as much cheerfulness as so much
sadness, the death of Lady Wilton 2 and Mrs. Hornby,
1 u O man ! ”
2 A daughter of the twelfth Earl of Derby and cousin of the
Hornbys. She died December, 1858.
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& 2 children of Lady Denison, 1 & the sudden total
blindness of the dear old Admiral, can allow. I go
on writing quietly, 3 tours, Athos & Judaea & Alba
nian Zagorian, & am generally placid in mental &
obese in physical conditions. Movov pi Svaapeo-kh otl
Siv kpiropio va kapw TrepiaraoTipav 7rpooSov rtjc r EXXevt/cr}e
crripitpivriQ yXojcro-rjc, r/rog TTavrore pi (ftaiveraL (1)? ev 7rpaypa
7rov pi 'Xpeia^sTCLi KaS’ ppipavov. 2
From here I go to, Alfred Tennyson’s Esqre.,
Faringford, Freshwater, Isle of Wight, whence let
me hear from you :—I shall be there about Tuesday
next, the 7th.
I am on thorns for news about Italy :—what a time
of events is it not ?
East Wellow Vicarage, Romsey.
12. June, 59.
Your’s of yesterday week (posted later tho’) I got
at Tennyson’s, which place I left yesterday morning,
& after being in 12 vehicles reached this unutterably
quiet remoteness, whither I had come to see dear old
Mrs. Empson, & poor Wil. Henry E. the vicar.
I have not been here for 13 years, since which two
boys, 9 and 7 years old are di piu, & the kind mistress
of the house is gone, & lies under a white grave, on
which the Villagers put a fresh chaplet of roses every
1 Littlegreen was the residence of Admiral Sir Phipps
Hornby, K.C.B. Lady Denison was his second daughter and
the wife of the Governor of Van Diemen’s Land.
a “ I am only annoyed that I cannot make more progress
in modern Greek, which always seems the thing I need every
day.”
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Sunday—a circumstance I never saw in England
before.
Happily for me the Athanasian blasphemy was not
read to-day & I fancy never is here : the living being
in Nightingale of Emley’s gift, who is not as you may
know reputed over orthodox, perhaps because he is
a truly good Xtian. They have 3 pictures of mine
here, Licenza, Athos, & Corfu, & it is very odd how
they bring me back past years. The fact is, time is
all nonsense:—it is shorter & shorter & suppurates
into nil.
My visit at Fairford was very delightful in many
ways. I should think computing moderately, that
15 angels, several hundreds of ordinary women, many
philosophers, a heap of truly wise and kind mothers,
3 or 4 minor prophets, and a lot of doctors and
school-mistresses, might all be boiled down, and yet
their combined essence fall short of what Emily
Tennyson 1 really is. And the 2 boys are complete
little darlings. Alfred T. went up to town Friday,
& I hope the “Four Idylls of the King” will come
out very soon. You will be more delighted with
Elaine, & Guinevere than you can imagine.
A twitching regret bothers me at having left the place.
What does Urquhart 2 say to things in general as to
Russia?3 I cannot see any daylight of certainty, or
1 Wife of the poet, and daughter of Henry Selwood.
2 Husband of Fortescue’s younger sister.
3 “ Mr. Urquhart was a very clever, self-opiniated, and often
curiously wrong-headed man. He had seen much of the East,
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any kind of comfort anywhere :—much as I disagree
with Lord D[erby]’s party as guides of public pro
gress, I cannot forget Lord P[almerstonJs Sicilian
& Italian or French obliquities. In fact my dear
40scue I begin to think that public men are mainly
alike : & the debates on the address read to me very
like a personal set of quarrels carried thro’ on polite
technical principles. I still hope to be in town about
the 25th or 27th., when I must set to work experi
mentalizing about photographs, or lithographs or gros-
pigraphs for new publications. At present I am doing
little, but dimly walking on along the dusty twilight
lanes of incomprehensible life. I wish you were
married. I wish I were an egg and was going to be
hatched. Intanto, I shall go to sleep, for hang me
if I’ll go to church again to-day.
Friday Knight.
Come, continually come :—continually continue to
come. The morer the betterest or bestestmost. But
I must tell you that R. Cholmondeley 1 comes to
brekfiss on Sunday morning—tho’ that need not
prevent your doing so—but it is phit I should
tell you.
and had a knowledge of Eastern ways and Eastern history which
few Englishmen could equal. But he was under the absolute
dominion of a mania with regard to Russia, which distorted
all his faculties” (McCarthy’s “History of Our Own Times,”
vol. iii. p. 276).
1 Probably Reginald Cholmondeley, of Condover Hall,
Shropshire.
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Mrs. Urquhart answered my letter, and David U.
comes to-morrow. But, O Lord! They have sent
beforehand a huge paper on Turkish Baths, and
another on General poltiks, the which I can’t and
don’t intend to read. My hope is that several other
people will call at the same time—So that no discussion
will enshoo. ...
Did you ever meet a Baroness Blaise de Bury ?
Not that that that that that has anything to do with
the subject except that I am going to sleep rapidgely,
and have no more sense. . . .
13 Upper Seymour Street,
Portman Square,
July, 1859.
I had the message from the Attorney General 1 :—
but I intended to have told you so, in a note I left on
your table yesterday— A doubled up so.
I read your speech this morning, & it seemed to me
to read sensible & downright, & yet perlite & not
cross.—I am very glad you have this additional scope
for your talents & study, & hope you will be a con
tinually a speaking. Please give me a “ place ” in
New Zealand: then I shall be always in such a mess
you will always be obliged to be a excusing of me.
I wish I’d a “place ” to paint in, meanwhile.
I have worse accounts of my poor sister Harriett,
this morning, but do not apprehend any immediate
1 Sir Richard Bethell.
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danger. I fear I shan’t go to Ireland this year.—
How I wish I had some settled aboad, at least until
the last narrow box.
But if I settled myself I should go to Tobago the
next day.
What Italian doings!
Yrs affly
that’s my new assygram.
The following poem shows Lear had evi
dently been reading Clough’s “Amour de
Voyage.” The metre is the same and the
imitation of the style is clever. In Lear’s
letters, too, one meets the same Roman society
that is described by Clough :—
15, Stratford Place,
9 July.
Dear F.—
Washing my rosecoloured flesh and brushing my
beard with a hairbrush,—
—Breakfast of tea, bread, and butter, at nine o’clock
in the morning,
Sending my carpet-bag onward I reached the Twicken
ham station,
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(Thanks to the civil domestics of good Lady Wald’-
grave’s establishment,)
Just as the big buzzing brown booming bottlegreen
bumblebizz boiler
Stood on the point of departing for Richmond and
England’s metropolis.
I say—(and if ever I said anything to the contrary I
hereby retract it)—
1 say—I took away altogether unconsciously your
borrowed white fillagree handkerchief;
After the lapse of a week I will surely return it,
And then you may either devour it, or keep it, or
burn it,—
Just as you please. But remember, I have not for
gotten,
After the 26th day of the month of the present July,
That is the time I am booked for a visit to Nuneham.
Certain ideas have arisen and flourished within me,
As to a possible visit to Ireland,—but nobody
Comes to a positive certainty all in a hurry :
If you are free and in London, next week shall we
dine at the Blue Posts ?
Both Mrs. Clive and her husband have written most
kindly
Saying the picture delights them (the Dead Sea)
extremely
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Bother all painting! I wish I’d 200 per annum !
Wouldn’t I sell all my colours and brushes and
damnable messes !
Over the world I should rove, North, South, East and
West, / would
Marrying a black girl at last, and slowly preparing to
walk into Paradise!
A week or a month hence, I will find time to make a
queer Alphabet,
All with the letters beversed and be-aided with
pictures,
Which I shall give—(but don’t tell him just yet) to
Charles Braham’s little one.
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Just only look in the “ Times” of to-day for accounts
of the “ Lebanon ! ”
Now I must stop this jaw, and write myself quite
simultaneous,
Yours with a lot of affection—the Globular foolish
Topographer.
E. L.
Monday Afternoon 18 July.
1859
I think I told you that my sister Harriett was ill, &
not likely ultimately to recover. The last accounts
however, were rather improved : until on Saturday
Evening a telegraphic message came to my sister in
Surrey, to say she was worse:—& on the following
day a second message told that she had died in the
course of the night.
In any case I should not have been able to go to
Lady W.’s but as it is I am going off to-morrow
morning, to get to her funeral on the following day :—
a long journey, near Aberdeen.
There are only now 7 of us left living out of all the
21.—My eldest sister is staying in Sussex, & we are
anxious about the effect this sudden news will have
on her.
Is there any conceivable history known resembling
this frightful Italian juggle ?
And from St. Leonards-on-Sea, where he
had taken some rooms in order to finish his
work in quiet, he writes on the 28th:—
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My sister’s death was so sudden at the last, that her
nearer Scotch friends did not get to see her alive, poor
thing. She however wrote a note to another of my
sisters, only a few hours before her death,—merely in
these words.—“ Do not be grieved that I am alone :
Christ is always with me : ” & there is no doubt that
she died in complete calm & happiness. What a
dreary life hers has been! & yet that of thousands
& thousands. “There’s something in the world
amiss.”
Bye the bye, you have not told me of Guinevere
yet, or perhaps have not had time to read it. Of
course prudes are shocked. I should like to tell you
some day or other of my argument with the Attorney
General, who contends A. T. is a small poet.
I am inclined to think that it is not difference of
opinion which makes me intolerant, so much as a
certain injustice, or “ force majeure ” applied in lieu of
bona fide argument.
31st. July. This week past, & the end of that pre
ceding it, have gone in what I call absolute work;
& although the queer solitude in which I live & the
displeasing mill-round of toil is not particularly joyful,
yet apart from the thorough necessity of the daily life,
(in order that 1 may be out of debt if possible before
November,) I quite believe it is a better extreme for
me than the lounging existence to which I can look
back with no comfort, passed, since May 1. in doing
nothing, & by expenses getting further into debt. I
believe, well as I know how much good I derive from
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friends & also, how often I give them pleasure, I shall
not go into the houses of the rich for some long time
to come, so painful to me is the retrospect (so far as
regards myself,) of the time I pass with them. I
except Red House, (& you know how regularly I
worked there,) & my dear friends the Winwick
Hornbys where I was always at work all day long.
This is what I do here :—rise at 5^, & after 6 or so
am at work till 8, breakfast then work till 5—occa
sionally obliged to leave off on account of sight, or
from utter weariness, when I do a line or two of
Sophocles, or compose some new song music, & at 5
dinner—to 5f at most. Then to 7^ paint again, and
by the time the brushes are washed it is nearly dark,
& I potter out to the post with some notes I may
have written, or puddle along the shingly beach till
9J—Then, half an hour Sophocles, & bed. This is
unvaried, barring the Sundays, when I go to Hastings
to dine with somebody or other—No “followers” or
visits allowed in the week, nohow.
I believe if you go on working that you may & will
be of great service to your country: but I could point
out a more rapid course of usefulness, if you did not
object to the summary sacrifice of yourself upon the
halter of patriotism; & that is instantly to squash
Messrs. Cobden & Bright, by pistol, pison, or knife,
as you think phit. You would assuredly & properly
be hung for the offence, but then think how the state
would gain!
Meanwhile, to me things look bitterly serious, as
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regards our own land, & Europe too. More especially
of Italy, 1 whose Tuscany is at present a beautiful, but
lonely beacon of hope—alas! who knows if fated to
burn or die out ?
You may imagine how interested I am in all that
comes from Central Italy. Whether Garibaldi turns
up in the Legations, is a wonderful problem for a
week or two to solve.
Don’t you delight in Bowyer & Macguire ? 2
Reading some of the speeches, by them & others,
I should feel if I had to hear them, “ woe is me
as I am constrained to dwell in these tents of
Kedar!”
At present you all, Gladstone & Herbert & all,
seem working famously together, & Lord John’s
speech is far beyond what I had expected.
Would it be possible that a subscription should be
set on foot, for national defences? such as “ steam-
rams ” &c., the existence of which cannot be construed
as offensive ? 3
1 The news of the Treaty of Villafranca had jnst been
received, which dashed the hopes of Italian patriots to the
ground, as it practically reduced the results of the war to
the expulsion of the Austrians from Lombardy for a time.
The Tuscans issued a proclamation that they would never
again submit to the yoke of Austria.
2 They delivered speeches on our policy with regard to Italian
affairs, the subject having been introduced in a lengthy explana
tion by Lord John Russell.
s The success of the French arms in Italy revived the in
vasion panic in England, and various schemes for defence were
proposed.
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