Mr. Lear by Jenny Uglow

Author:Jenny Uglow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

He had doubts about the success of his gallery, feeling that photography was now a rival to topographical prints, something that had dawned on him rather slowly. Six years ago he had bought a ‘photographic machine’ himself, but thought of photographs only as an aide-memoire. ‘If I can come to use this mode of working,’ he had explained to Ann, ‘it will be of great service to me in copying plants, & in many things which distance, limited time, heat etc. would prevent.’ Photography had developed rapidly in the last twenty years and many amateurs were now keen: Lewis Carroll bought his first camera in the same spring as Lear, becoming a master of the new medium, processing as well as taking his pictures. Lear’s many friends now often pored over photographs, as well as prints, after dinner. But Lear was never happy with his experiments: two years after his first purchase he tried again, buying a new camera but selling it after a few months for £15 to Major Shakespear, who took many views of the island.

* * *

Despite opposition from his brother Lord Clermont, in which he sought Lear’s help as an intermediary, Fortescue married Lady Waldegrave on 20 January 1863. He wrote to ‘my dear Lear’ at midnight before his wedding day: ‘Today I am going to be married! I will not try to tell you what I feel tonight. How could I if I did try? I wonder that the world goes on as usual. I am almost overwhelmed.’ The thought of this wedding made Lear feel more alone, but he had new friends like the de Veres, for whose daughter Mary he drew a set of coloured birds, and he became fond of Giorgio’s family, paying for his sons’ schooling, worrying about scarlet fever and giving the boys their medicine. He was thrilled, too, when the Shelleys arrived in their yacht and Percy Shelley copied his setting of ‘O world! O life! O time!’

On the last day of February 1863 the Tyrants were finished. That day a letter came telling him that Frank and Kate Lushington had a daughter, Gertrude, and asking Lear to be her godfather. He looked back with some amazement at the misery of his time on the island with Frank, more than five years ago. By contrast the current year, with its string of cloudless days, had been calm, despite, or perhaps because of his hard work. He had not felt so serene for many years, he thought, putting this down to better climate, better health, getting over Ann’s death and less anxiety about money, ‘but I believe most of all to the better state of the “demon”– or rather to his greater absence’. Even his rooms were perfect: ‘This home is a sort of Paradise this year: now & then the children below make a noise, but the most beautiful playing on the Piano of the Consul’s wife is indeed a blessing. The only drawback is that she plays so little, & that the Instrument is below my bed room.

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