Читать книгу The Complete Nonsense of Edward Lear - Edward Lear - Страница 10

His varied gifts and dual character were encouraged by the manner of his upbringing, and although we have no cause for complaint, Edward Lear was always conscious of some masculine inadequacy. ‘Brought up by women—and badly besides—and ill always,’ he had no chance of ‘manly improvements or exercise’. Yet, he says, ‘I am always thanking God that I was never educated, for it seems to me that 999 of those who are so, expensively and laboriously, have lost all before they arrive at my age (47)—and remain like Swift’s Strulbruggs—cut and dry for life,’ whereas he seemed always to be on ‘the threshold of knowledge’. Much as he loved quietness, inwardly and outwardly, he could not be still. He never lost the restlessness of childhood, and as he could not achieve the inward calm he craved, he denied its existence: ‘As for content that is a loathesome slimy humbug —fit only for potatoes, very fat hogs—and fools generally. Let us pray fervently that we may never become such asses as to be contented.’

One of the most surprising things about him is that he managed to combine roving habits and impecuniosity with a considerable social status. It surprises even Lear himself. He cannot understand how ‘such an asinine beetle’ could have made so many friends. ‘The immense variety of class and caste which I daily came in contact with in those days, would be a curious fact even in the life of a fool.’ Many of his friends were patricians or ‘swells’, as he called them, and if he had wished he could have spent much more time than he did in the houses of the great and affluent, but being social rather than gregarious, he hated the ‘bustle and lights and fuss of society’ and soon tired of being a flâneur. Yet, pursued as he was by the demon of boredom, he must have friends as well as work, and contriving to enjoy both he went his grumbling, but, on the whole, cheerful way always rather surprised that ‘such a queer beast’ should have so many friends, and whimsically resentful at the drudgery which temperament and circumstances imposed upon him.