PERNICIOUSNESS OF MR. LEAR
We are rather startled to find, on beginning to read Edward Lear’s immortal Nonsense Books to our Archurchin, that liquor plays a considerable rôle in his waggishness. This phase of Lear’s works we had quite forgotten, although it may have played a subtle part in undermining our character when young. But what are we to do, we ask, when, in reading aloud we come upon such distressing testaments as this:
B was a Bottle blue,
which was not very small;
Papa he filled it full of beer,
And then he drank it all.
Or this:
There was an Old Man with an Owl,
Who continued to bother and howl;
He sat on a rail, and imbibed bitter ale,
Which refreshed that Old Man and his Owl.
Or this:
There was an old person of Sheen,
Whose expression was calm and serene;
He sate in the water, and drank bottled porter,
That placid old person of Sheen.
Now, of course, in reading these passages we can improvise variations: we can say that Papa’s blue bottle was filled with tea; we can substitute “ginger ale” for “bitter ale”; we can make the old person of Sheen sit in the porter and drink bottled water; but before very long our audience will begin to read the book for himself, and when he finds that we have implanted a false version in his mind there will be a swift succession of logical inquiries. The Old Soak’s problem is far easier: his sons are grown up and become “revenooers”; their minds were long since formed on this topic. But what is the comparatively Young Soak to do in the matter of explaining literature to his offspring?
Only in one place, as far as we can see, does Mr. Lear refer to drink with any tinge of moral or reprobatory feeling. Thus:
Twas a tumbler full
Of Punch all hot and good;
Papa he drank it up, when in
The middle of a wood.
We shall have to lean heavily upon that cautionary stanza in reading to the Urchin. We will not try to bias him, of course; but by grave and solemn repetition surely the idea will pierce his meninges—that no matter how excellent the libation, it must be performed in secret and far from scrutiny.
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