Left by his friend to breakfast alone on the white
Italian shore, his Terrible Demon1 arose
Over his shoulder; he wept to himself in the night,
A dirty landscape-painter who hated his nose.
The legions of cruel inquisitive They
Were so many and big like dogs: he was upset
By Germans and boats; affection was miles away:
But guided by tears he successfully reached his Regret.
How prodigious the welcome was. Flowers took his hat
And bore him off to introduce him to the tongs;
The demon’s false nose made the table laugh; a cat
Soon had him waltzing madly, let him squeeze her hand;
Words pushed him to the piano to sing comic songs;
And children swarmed to him like settlers. He became a land.
W. H. AUDEN
Lear, one of twenty children, was born in Holloway. Son of a stockbroker, he was mostly looked after by his sister Ann. Having worked for a while as a draughtsman at the Zoological Gardens, he was commissioned by the Earl of Derby to sketch the animals in his extensive menagerie at Knowsley Hall. It was while working there that he wrote A Book of Nonsense (1846) for the Earl of Derby’s grandchildren. As his fame grew, he received more prestigious commissions, and gave drawing lessons to Queen Victoria. Further volumes of nonsense verse include Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and Alphabets (1871), which contains ‘The Owl and the Pussy-cat’ and ‘The Jumblies’; More Nonsense, Pictures, Rhymes, Botany, etc. (1871); and Laughable Lyrics (1877). Having travelled throughout Europe and beyond (he visited India and Ceylon), he finally settled at San Remo in Italy. A great friend of Tennyson, Lear spent the end of his life in a villa named Villa Tennyson on the Swiss–Italian border, where he planned to sketch a series of illustrations to accompany Tennyson’s poems – in fact he completed 200 but none were published in his lifetime. Lear was afflicted by a deep-rooted melancholy, and his comic verse can be seen as a compensation. The footnotes in the nonsense rhymes set by Stanford are by the composer.
There was a Young Lady of Norway,
Who casually sat in a doorway;
When the door squeezed her flat, she exclaimed ‘What of that?’
This courageous Young Lady of Norway.
(dedicated to his friends, the great Violinists of Europe)
There was an Old Man of the Isles,
Whose face was pervaded with smiles:
He sung high dum diddle, and played on the fiddle,
That amiable Man of the Isles.
There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, ‘It is just as I feared! –
Two Owls and a Hen, four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!’
An Obiter Dictum
There was an Old Man who said, ‘How,
Shall I flee from this horrible Cow?
I will sit on this stile, and continue to smile,
Which may soften the heart of that Cow.
There was a young Lady of Ryde,
Whose shoe-strings were seldom untied;
She purchased some clogs, and some small spotty dogs,
And frequently walked about Ryde.
There was a young Lady of Tyre,
Who swept the loud chords of a lyre;
At the sound of each sweep, she enraptured the deep,
And enchanted the city of Tyre.
There was an Old Man in a pew,
Whose waistcoat was spotted with blue;
But he tore it in pieces, to give to his nieces, –
That cheerful Old Man in a pew.
(dedicated to Signor Robinsonis Carusoe)
There was an Old Man in a boat,
Who said, ‘I’m afloat! I’m afloat!’
When they said, ‘No! you ain’t!’ he was ready to faint,
That unhappy Old Man in a boat.
There was an Old Person of Philæ,
Whose conduct was scroobious and wily;
He rushed up a Palm, when the weather was calm,
And observed all the ruins of Philæ.
There was an Old Man with a nose,
Who said, ‘If you choose to suppose,
That my nose is too long, you are certainly wrong!’
That remarkable Man with a nose.
There was a Young Lady of Russia,
Who screamed so that no one could hush her;
Her screams were extreme, no one heard such a scream,
As was screamed by that Lady of Russia.
There was an Old Man with a gong,
Who bumped at it all the day long;
But they called out, ‘O law! you’re a horrid old bore!’
So they smashed that Old Man with a gong.
The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat:
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
‘O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!’
Pussy said to the Owl, ‘You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?’
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood,
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.
‘Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?’ Said the Piggy, ‘I will.’
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible2 spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.
(Corp, Hely-Hutchinson, Rutter)