There are few writers whose works I care to read more than once, and one
of them is certainly Edward Lear. Nonsense, like poetry, to which it is
closely allied, like philosophic speculation, like every product of the
imagination, is an assertion of man’s spiritual freedom in spite of all
the oppression of circumstance. As long as it remains possible for the
human mind to invent the Quangle Wangle and the Fimble Fowl, to wander
at will over the Great Gromboolian Plain and the hills of the Cnankly
Bore, the victory is ours. The existence of nonsense is the nearest
approach to a proof of that unprovable article of faith, whose truth we
must all assume or perish miserably: that life is worth living. It is
when circumstances combine to prove, with syllogistic cogency, that life
is not worth living that I turn to Lear and find comfort and
refreshment. I read him and I perceive that it is a good thing to be
alive; for I am free, with Lear, to be as inconsequent as I like.
Lear is a genuine poet. For what is his nonsense except the poetical
imagination a little twisted out of its course? Lear had the true poet’s
feeling for words—words in themselves, precious and melodious, like
phrases of music; personal as human beings. Marlowe talks of
entertaining divine Zenocrate; Milton of the leaves that fall in
Vallombrosa; Lear of the Fimble Fowl with a corkscrew leg, of runcible
spoons, of things meloobious and genteel. Lewis Carroll wrote nonsense
by exaggerating sense—a too logical logic. His coinages of words are
intellectual. Lear, more characteristically a poet, wrote nonsense that
is an excess of imagination, coined words for the sake of their colour
and sound alone. His is the purer nonsense, because more poetical.
Change the key ever so little and the “Dong with a Luminous Nose” would
be one of the most memorable romantic poems of the nineteenth century.
Think, too, of that exquisite “Yonghy Bonghy Bo”! In one of Tennyson’s
later volumes there is a charming little lyric about Catullus, which
begins:
Row us out from Desenzano,
To your Sirmione row!
So they row’d, and there we landed—
_O venusta Sirmio!_
Can one doubt for a moment that he was thinking, when he wrote these
words, of that superb stanza with which the “Yonghy Bonghy” opens:
On the coast of Coromandel,
Where the early pumpkins blow,
In the middle of the woods,
Dwelt the Yonghy Bonghy Bo.
Personally, I prefer Lear’s poem; it is the richer and the fuller of the
two.
Lear’s genius is at its best in the Nonsense Rhymes, or Limericks, as a
later generation has learned to call them. In these I like to think of
him not merely as a poet and a draughtsman—and how unique an artist the
recent efforts of Mr. Nash to rival him have only affirmed—but also as a
profound social philosopher. No study of Lear would be complete without
at least a few remarks on “They” of the Nonsense Rhymes. “They” are the
world, the man in the street; “They” are what the leader-writers in the
twopenny press would call all Right-Thinking Men and Women; “They” are
Public Opinion. The Nonsense Rhymes are, for the most part, nothing more
nor less than episodes selected from the history of that eternal
struggle between the genius or the eccentric and his fellow-beings.
Public Opinion universally abhors eccentricity. There was, for example,
that charming Old Man of Melrose who walked on the tips of his toes. But
“They” said (with their usual inability to appreciate the artist), “It
ain’t pleasant to see you at present, you stupid old man of Melrose.”
Occasionally, when the eccentric happens to be a criminal genius, “They”
are doubtless right. The Old Man with a Gong who bumped on it all the
day long deserved to be smashed. (But “They” also smashed a quite
innocuous Old Man of Whitehaven merely for dancing a quadrille with a
raven.) And there was that Old Person of Buda, whose conduct grew ruder
and ruder; “They” were justified, I dare say, in using a hammer to
silence his clamour. But it raises the whole question of punishment and
of the relation between society and the individual.
When “They” are not offensive, they content themselves with being
foolishly inquisitive. Thus, “They” ask the Old Man of the Wrekin
whether his boots are made of leather. “They” pester the Old Man in a
Tree with imbecile questions about the Bee which so horribly bored him.
In these encounters the geniuses and the eccentrics often get the better
of the gross and heavy-witted public. The Old Person of Ware who rode on
the back of a bear certainly scored off “Them.” For when “They” asked:
“Does it trot?” He replied, “It does not.” (The picture shows it
galloping _ventre à terre_.) “It’s a Moppsikon Floppsikon bear.”
Sometimes, too, the eccentric actually leads “Them” on to their
discomfiture. One thinks of that Old Man in a Garden, who always begged
every one’s pardon. When “They” asked him, “What for?” he replied,
“You’re a bore, and I trust you’ll go out of my garden.” But “They”
probably ended up by smashing him.
Occasionally the men of genius adopt a Mallarméen policy. They flee from
the gross besetting crowd.
La chair est triste, hélas, et j’ai lu tous les livres.
Fuir, là-bas, fuir....
It was surely with these words on his lips that the Old Person of Bazing
(whose presence of mind, for all that he was a Symbolist, was amazing)
went out to purchase the steed which he rode at full speed and escaped
from the people of Bazing. He chose the better part; for it is almost
impossible to please the mob. The Old Person of Ealing was thought by
his suburban neighbours to be almost devoid of good feeling, because, if
you please, he drove a small gig with three owls and a pig. And there
was that pathetic Old Man of Thermopylæ (for whom I have a peculiar
sympathy, since he reminds me so poignantly of myself), who never did
anything properly. “They,” said, “If you choose to boil eggs in your
shoes, you shall never remain in Thermopylæ.” The sort of people “They”
like do the stupidest things, have the vulgarest accomplishments. Of the
Old Person of Filey his acquaintance was wont to speak highly because he
danced perfectly well to the sound of a bell. And the people of Shoreham
adored that fellow-citizen of theirs whose habits were marked by decorum
and who bought an umbrella and sate in the cellar. Naturally; it was
only to be expected.