{"id":37652,"date":"2025-05-12T08:30:11","date_gmt":"2025-05-12T12:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=37652"},"modified":"2025-05-11T06:30:12","modified_gmt":"2025-05-11T10:30:12","slug":"on-this-day-may-12-1812","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=37652","title":{"rendered":"“My dear child, I\u2019m sure we shall be allowed to laugh in Heaven!” — Edward Lear"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\nEdward Lear (the “father of nonsense”) was born on this day in 1812 in London.<\/p>\n

I could recite from memory a lot of his stuff when I was pretty close to the age I was in the “candid” photo above. The Big Golden Book Of Poetry<\/a>\"\"<\/i> was so read in our family that the cover faded completely, the binding fell apart, and I can still see all of the illustrations, and where they were placed on the page. (My mother still has the book.) <\/p>\n

When I read those poems now, I hear in my father’s gravelly voice. <\/p>\n

“The Owl and the Pussy-cat” is still a favorite. The verse rocks and sings. <\/p>\n

The Owl and the Pussy-cat<\/big>
\nby Edward Lear<\/em><\/p>\n

I
\nThe Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
\nIn a beautiful pea green boat,
\nThey took some honey, and plenty of money,
\nWrapped up in a five pound note.
\nThe Owl looked up to the stars above,
\nAnd sang to a small guitar,
\n‘O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,
\nWhat a beautiful Pussy you are,
\nYou are,
\nYou are!
\nWhat a beautiful Pussy you are!’<\/p>\n

II
\nPussy said to the Owl, ‘You elegant fowl!
\nHow charmingly sweet you sing!
\nO let us be married! too long we have tarried:
\nBut what shall we do for a ring?’
\nThey sailed away, for a year and a day,
\nTo the land where the Bong-tree grows
\nAnd there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
\nWith a ring at the end of his nose,
\nHis nose,
\nHis nose,
\nWith a ring at the end of his nose.<\/p>\n

III
\n‘Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
\nYour ring?’ Said the Piggy, ‘I will.’
\nSo they took it away, and were married next day
\nBy the Turkey who lives on the hill.
\nThey dined on mince, and slices of quince,
\nWhich they ate with a runcible spoon;
\nAnd hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
\nThey danced by the light of the moon,
\nThe moon,
\nThe moon,
\nThey danced by the light of the moon.<\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\nQUOTES:<\/big><\/strong><\/p>\n

Michael Schmidt, Lives of the Poets<\/a>\"\"<\/i> writes that Lear, and Lewis Carroll (Lear’s younger peer) wrote “nonsense verse” which <\/p>\n

“[Lear] strays into the musical zones that Longfellow mapped with his self-propelling meters.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\nWas Edward Lear the inventor of the term “snail mail” in this whimsical letter to Evelyn Baring? The letter itself reads, along the twists of the snail shell:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Feb. 19. 1864 Dear Baring Please give the enclosed noat to Sir Henry – (which I had just written:-& say that I shall have great pleasure in coming on Sunday. I have sent your 2 vols of Hood to Wade Brown. Many thanks for lending them to me – which they have delighted me eggstreamly Yours sincerely<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nHarold Bloom, The Best Poems of the English Language<\/em>:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lear’s masterwork is his first volume, A Book of Nonsense (1846), replete with his unique limericks and his mysterious lyrics of visionary nonsense that fuse Shelley and Tennyson in quest-poems that are at once laments for lost love and yet weirdly boisterous.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Robert Lowell, letter to Elizabeth Bishop, November 24, 1965:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The great Victorians for me are Tennyson, Browning, Lear, Fitzgerald, Arnold and Hopkins.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

William Pitt:<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Don’t tell me of a man’s being able to talk sense; every one can talk sense. Can he talk nonsense?” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nCarolyn Wells:<\/strong><\/p>\n

In regard to his verses, Lear asserted that “nonsense, pure and absolute,” was his aim throughout; and remarked, further, that to have been the means of administering innocent mirth to thousands was surely a just excuse for satisfaction. He pursued his aim with scrupulous consistency, and his absurd conceits are fantastic and ridiculous, but never cheaply or vulgarly funny. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nGeorge Orwell, “Funny But Not Vulgar”:<\/strong><\/p>\n

However, there are subtler methods of debunking than throwing custard pies. There is also the humour of pure fantasy, which assaults man’s notion of himself as not only a dignified but a rational being. Lewis Carroll’s humour consists essentially in making fun of logic, and Edward Lear’s in a sort of poltergeist interference with common sense. When the Red Queen remarks, “I’ve seen hills compared with which you’d call that one a valley”, she is in her way attacking the bases of society as violently as Swift or Voltaire. Comic verse, as in Lear’s poem “The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo”, often depends on building up a fantastic universe which is just similar enough to the real universe to rob it of its dignity. But more often it depends on anticlimax — that is, on starting out with a high-flown language and then suddenly coming down with a bump. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nFrom Michael Sala, Lear’s Nonsense<\/i>:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Edward Lear, a skillful illustrator of science books (botany, zoology), started his literary career by chance. As a matter of fact, “most of Lear’s limericks were not written with publication in mind, but rather as gifts for specific children” (Rieder 1998: 50). He was persuaded toward their publication by the enthusiastic reaction of his young audience.<\/p>\n

There was an old person of Rimini
\nWho said, “Gracious! Goodness! O Gimini!
\nWhen they said, “Please be still!” she ran down a hill
\nAnd was never once heard of at Rimini.<\/p>\n

There was an old person of Sestri
\nWho sat himself down in the vestry,
\nWhen they said “You are wrong!” – he merely said “Bong!”
\nThat repulsive old person of Sestri.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is a typical example of Lear’s limericks, and a perfect example of what is intended by nonsense, that is to say, “language lifted out of context, language turning on itself [a] language made hermetic, opaque” (Stewars 1979: 3), language that “resists contextualization, so that it refers to ‘nothing’ instead of to the word’s commonsense designation [and] refusing to work as conventional communication ” (Rieder 1998: 49). In other words, what happened to the old person of Rimini? What is wrong with the person of Sestri? It is impossible to answer, because, despite the perfectly grammatical use of the words, they don’t tell much. They are just bizarrely arranged so as to sound appealing. If there is a shadow of a story, usually it is nothing more than that: only a shadow of a story (without causes or consequences). In Lear’s limericks, words introduce “a number of possibilities, including dangerous and violent ones, and at the same time disconnect those possibilities from the real world, that is, from what goes on after the game is over” (Rieder 1996: 49). <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Vivien Noakes:<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the limericks [. . .] to an extent difficult for us now to imagine, Lear offered children the liberation of unaffected high spirits [. . .]. Here are grown-ups doing silly things, the kind of things grown-ups never do [. . .]. for all their incongruity, there is in the limericks a truth which is lacking in the improving literature of the time. In an age when children were loaded with shame, Lear attempted to free them from it. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Robert Lowell, letter to Elizabeth Bishop, January 4, 1960: <\/strong><\/p>\n

Your poem [“Brazil, January 1, 1502”] is one of your most beautiful, I think–wonderful description, the jungle turning into a picture, then into history and the jungle again, with a practical, absurd, sad, amused and frightened tone for the Christians. I have been re-reading [Edward] Lear whom you like so much. I guess it would be far-fetched to find his hand here; yet I think he would have enjoyed your feeling, your disciplined gorgeousness, your drawing, your sadness, your amusement. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nSusan Chitty on Lear’s ballads:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Like the limericks, they celebrate the outsider. Their principal characters are socially unacceptable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nSir Edward Strachey:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mr. Lear was delighted when I showed to him that this couple [the Owl and the Pussy-cat] were reviving the old law of Solon, that the Athenian bride and bridegroom eat a quince together at their wedding.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More information on Edward Lear here.<\/a><\/p>\n

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