THE TOPOGRAPHY OF EDWARD LEAR
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—The thoughtful article by Miss Josephine Fry, in your issue of December 31st, on the topography of Edward Lear must be warmly welcomed by all students of that profound genius, and I hasten to make my small contribution to the subject. Broadly speaking, Lear's canon of art is that of the surrealists. In his limericks especially his object is not to give definite recognisable presentments, but to arouse a mood in the reader. The man, for instance, in whose beard owls, a wren and a hen nested, has no individual existence, but is the abstract symbol of a dismayed ornithological complex. Like the surrealists, too, Lear arouses different moods in different natures. To Miss Josephine Fry " Calico Pie " is a " cryptic dirge." To my mind it is a corybantic feast, for the butterfly, beetle and bee, having drunk up all the tea, dance in the empty cup. Unless this proceeding is of the nature of a " wake," I see nothing dirge-like in it : it produces in me the same festive mood (though on teetotal lines) as Lear's botanical specimen " Botdeforkia Spoonifolia." Similarly the poems which Miss Fry so rightly classes as symbolising metropolitan congestion areparalleled by the gaudy herb " Manypeoplia Upsidcdownia " which rouses all the bewilderment experienced in a crowded street. . . . Other poems are certainly prophetic ! Who can doubt that the Dong with the luminous nose foreshadows the discovery of those deep-sea fish which have head-lights, like a motor-car, to attract their prey ?
But in general I feel certain that the principles of surrealism supply the key to the proper understanding of Lear's philo- sophy, and this modern movement in art is directly derived Lamb House, Rye.
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