ESSAY | Edward Lear: The man in the mirror

The Victorian limerick writer and artist spent 13 months travelling India’s length and breadth, drawing landscapes and keeping a cranky journal. After her death, Lear’s “morbids” increased: in times of acute distress, he conjured up her face and calming voice. “Prone to being peevish in company and making puzzling conversation, he was decidedly “odd”: the same made him a hit among children.” These lines can be a minefield for modern-day psychoanalysts, who are likely to tape him to the couch, but in Lear’s day the chief cure for all unexplained heebie-jeebies was to “take the air”. In a Sieve we’ll go to sea!” Highlights The Victorian limerick writer and painter Edward Lear was a quirky character. As Peter Whitfield remarks in Travel: A Literary History, Lear in his travels was “an eccentric, an oddity, and he knew it, representing no tradition of learning, no imperial or nationalist agenda, no viewpoint but his own.” Before Lear, the artist duo of Thomas and William Daniell had documented India in their paintings.