Nonsense — Needed, Wanted in Literature and Life

1901

IMPORTANCE OF NONSENSE

It Dwells In the Memory, Long After Things Have Faded Away

On a topographical map of literature, Nonsense would be represented by a small and sparsely settled country, neglected by the average tourist, but affording keen delight to the few enlightened travelers who sojourn within its borders. It is a field which has been neglected by anthologists and essayists; its only serious recognition, so far as we know, being a few pages in a certain "Treatise of Figurative Language," which says: "Nonsense; shall we dignify that with a place on our list? Assuredly will vote for doing so everyone who hath at all duly noticed what admirable and wise uses it can be, and often is, put to, though never before in rhetoric has it been so highly honored. How deeply does clever or quaint nonsense abide in the memory, and for how many a decade — from earliest youth to age's most venerable years."

Perhaps, partly because of this neglect, the work of the best nonsense writers is less widely known than it might be.

But a more probable reason is, that the majority of the reading world does not appreciate or enjoy real nonsense, and this, again, is consequent upon their inability to discriminate between nonsense of integral merit and simple chaff.

"A jest's prosperity lies in the ear
Of him that hears it. Never in the tongue
Of him that makes it."

And a sense of nonsense is as distinct a part of our mentality as a sense of humor, and is by no means identical therewith.

It is a fad at present for a man to relate a nonsensical story, and then if his hearer does not laugh he says, gravely: "You have no sense of humor. That is a test story, and only a true humorist laughs at it." Now, the hearer may have an exquisite sense of humor, but he may be lacking in a sense of nonsense, and so the story gives him no pleasure. De Quincey said, "None but a man of extraordinary talent can write first-rate nonsense." Only a short study of the subject is required to convince us that De Quincey was right; and he might have added, none but a man of extraordinary taste can appreciate first-rate nonsense. — Scribners.

Edward Lear — More Than Nonsense Maker

1917

Edward Lear, Known to Most as Gentle Humorist, Was Also Famed as a Painter

Most of us when we think of Edward Lear think vaguely of someone who wrote delectable rhymes of nonsense and fun, a man who made queer pictures of impossible creatures to go with his rhymes, who compiled a weird natural history and botany all his own, and spent his life making odd jokes.

We have sung, or heard someone else sing, his "Owl and the Pussy Cat"—and—and—well, that's about all.

But Edward Lear's nonsense books were the very smallest part of the work of a long and busy life, and his real labor was that of a painter rather than a writer.

More than what he did, even, was what he was — a lovable and charming man, adored by children, with the gentlest heart in the world, a great lover of beauty and devoted to his friends.

Lear's real character and work have been described in St. Nicholas, by Hildegarde Hawthorne. Though Lear's work was in general so serious, to the end of his life in 1888, Miss Hawthorne says, he continued to write his ridiculous verses and make his funny sketches in letters to his friends.


Accidental Nonsense

1909

Things That Amused Lear, the English Artist and Writer

It is not surprising that the gifted inventor of such classic imaginative nonsense as "The Jumblies" and "The Owl and the Pussy Cat" took a keen delight in the real nonsense or real life whenever he chanced to encounter it. During a doleful stay in a dreary little mining village where it rained all the time and he was not well and could not accomplish the work he had set his heart on doing, the late Edward Lear, although a good and decorous churchgoer, found his source of cheer in the parish clerk.

"Oh, beloved clerk," he wrote gratefully to a friend. "He reads the psalms enough to make you go into fits. He said last Sunday, 'As white as an old salmon,' instead of 'White as snow in Salmon,' 'a lion' for 'alien to my mother's children' and 'they are not guinea pigs' instead of 'guiltless.' Fact, but I grieve to say he's turned out for the same and will never more please my foolish ears."

Even funnier was the erratic English of a foreigner which once enlivened for him the prolonged formalities of an official dinner.

"Sitting next to the captain of an Austrian frigate at Sr. H. Sterle's on Thursday evening," he recorded, "the German officer said to a subaltern — the conversation was about the good looks of women — 'I do not think the English woman conserve her aperient galship (girlhood) longer than all the women, even as far as her antics' (antiquity, age.)

"The subaltern withered with confusion till I ventured to interpret, 'The Englishwoman preserves her appearance of youth longer than all women, even if she be old.' " — Youth's Companion.


The world will never grow old so long as it has little children and flowers in it. — Edward Lear.