Óïðîùåííàÿ HTML-âåðñèÿ
10
SOMETHING LIKE A PREFACE TO “THE BOOK OF NONSENSE”
(From the private letters of Edward Lear)
My dear F.,
I want to send you, before leaving England, a note or two as to the
various publications I have uttered — bad and good, and of all sorts —
also their dates, that so you might be able to screw them into a beauti-
ful memoir of me in case I leave my bones at Palmyra or elsewhere.
Leastwise, if a man does anything all through life with a deal of bother,
and likewise of some benefit to others, the details of such bother and
benefit may as well be known accurately as the contrary.
Born in 1812 (12th May), I began to draw, for bread and cheese,
about 1827, but only did uncommon queer shop-sketches — selling
them for prices varying from ninepence to four shillings: colouring
prints, screens, fans; awhile making morbid disease drawings for hos-
pitals and certain doctors of physic. In 1831, through Mrs. Wentworth,
I became employed at the Zoological Society, and, in 1832, published
“The Family of the Psittacidae,” the first complete volume of coloured
drawings of birds on so large a scale published in England, as far as
I know — unless Audubon’s were previously engraved. J. Gould’s “Indian
Pheasants” was commenced at the same time, and after a little while he
employed me to draw many of his birds of Europe, while I assisted Mrs.
Gould in all her drawings of foregrounds, as may be seen in a moment
by anyone who will glance at my drawings in G.’s European birds and
the Toucans. From 1832 to 1836, when my health failed a good deal,
I drew much at the Earl of Derby’s; and a series of my drawings was
published by Dr. Gray of the British Museum — a book now rare. I also
lithographed many various detached subjects, and a large series of Tes-
tudinata for Mr. (now Professor) Bell; and I made drawings for Bell’s
“British Mammalia,” and for two or more volumes of the “Naturalist’s
Library” for the editor, Sir W. Jardine, those volumes being the Parrots,
and, I think, the Monkeys, and some Cats. In 1835 or 1836, being in
Ireland and the Lakes, I leaned more and more to landscape, and when
in 1837 it was found that my health was more affected by the climate
month by month, I went abroad, wintering in Rome till 1841, when
I came back to England and published a volume of lithographs called
“Rome and its Environs.” Returning to Rome, I visited Sicily and much
of the South of Italy, and continued to make chalk drawings, though