Lear, Edward, English artist and poet (1812-1888). Autograph letter signed ("Edward Lear").

€ 1,800.00

To Emily Tennyson (1813-96), the wife of the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson: a long, amusingly written and engaging letter on Lear's daily life in London, his progress on writing a new book, and his thoughts on religion. Suffering from writer's block, he starts the letter expressing his frustration: "I meant to have answered your last before now, but could not for though I am doomed to do-nothingness just now, I am so unsettled that I cannot write, ­ & it is only because I am a tome [!] & have been dining on cold beer & beef that I am able to write a tall [!]". He goes on to complain about visitors who interrupt his daily routine: "For, since I asked people to come & see my pictures, they come, - horribly & disjointedly; sometimes 20 at a time - of all kinds of phases of life: sometimes - for 3 hours no one comes:

so then I partly sleep, & partly draw pages of a new Nonsense book. If I sleep, I wake up savagely at some newcomer’s entrance, & they go away abashed. If I write nonsense, I am pervaded with smiles, & please the visitors". Lear provides an entertaining list of things he desires to have if he ever has some money: "I shall pay off all my debts - & profits - if there's any overplus, buy a pleasing tabby cat, or a guitar or some currant jelly, but I don't think there will be anything over".

An avid traveller, Lear was disinterested in the life and company which the city offered: "No, indeed, I do not like life in London. Dinners daily - but except now & then, they bore me to death [...] The middle classes - professional & otherwise, are by far the best fun & pleasure & knowledge or to converse. The big folk are in most cases a woeful bore. To hear the bigots & the apes talk of the Essays & Reviews!! It makes one ill." - The letter continues with a long digression on his dislike of religion and church: "It is a pity so kindly a man should have forsaken God's attribute - reason - for the Priests' art - 'religion' [...] If a man comes to believe the bread & wine made yesterday is the flesh & blood of a person dead 2000 years ago - how can he laugh at Timbuctoo & Mumbo Jumbo? Yet one may pity these poor fanatics - & never in anywise persecute them, for they are but as children who cannot reason much".

In the last pages of the letter, Lear discusses his travel plans and expresses concern for his sister Ann's health: "I am very uncomfortable about it, tho' I cannot at all realize her not getting well. She brought me up from the leastest childhood, & when she goes, - my whole life will change utterly." Ann died on 11 March 1861, only five days after this letter was written.