Waugh | Edward Lear | A Victorian Escapist (1938)

[Waugh ‘A Victorian Escapist’ Review of Edward Lear, by Angus Davidson Spectator 6/5/1938’] “…. Most of us had formed an impression of [Edward] Lear which approximates to that of all but the most intimate of his contemporaries – twinkling eyes behind gold-rimmed spectacles, a wistful smile behind the whiskers, a fund of puns and the art of pleasing children – but for those who cared to look deeper there was always an underlying problem; how was it that a man who possessed in a high degree the first of genuine poetic expression was content to limit them to nursery rhyming? Mr Davidson has provided an answer and at the same time the opportunity for recalling from disrepute a word which, if judiciously used, is of real value in criticism.

A school of critics who see no reality except in the raw materials of civilization have popularized the jargon-word ‘escapism’ as a term to condemn all imaginative work; they hold that the only proper concern of man is buying, selling and manufacturing and the management of these activities in an equitable way; that anyone who interests himself in other things is trying to escape his obligations and his destiny. In consequence of this stultifying misuse a useful word is in danger of being lost as soon as it was born. For ‘escapism’ does represent a reality, and Lear gives a classic example. His disability, now recorded for the first time, was not unique; it was the disability of feeling unique. ….” (Gallagher D, The Essays Articles & Reviews of Evelyn Waugh, Methuen, 1983 p231)