Cold as ever ― & snowlike ― with clouds. Greek from 6 to 8 as usual. But I begin the day wearily & sadly. Lushington is 35 years old today. [H.]1 Somehow I did nothing all this day. Wrote Greek: fidgetted for letters ― had bookshelves put up: ― prepared to paint. At 2½ Lushington called ― but anything sadder or more unsatisfactory than his visit could not be. As for me, I went out at 3, & saw the downfall of the Bastion, & up by the olives to Ascension.2 The sea was all deep dark green, white flecked: the hills very purple & gold. ― On, to one gun battery:3 & back to home by 5½. To Sir J. Reid‘s at 6: ― no one there. Very pleasant.

Edward Lear, Corfu from the Village of Ascension, 1862

A letter from Clowes was here when I returned at 6: ― wrote to him. Wind began today ― the first since I am here this winter. East tonight.

[Transcribed by Marco Graziosi from Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Eng. 797.3. Previously published in part in Lear 1988, 119.]

  1. The sign, which appears to have been inserted as an afterthought, might be an H., perhaps indicating that Lear was thinking of Helena Cortazzi, or as a paragraph-ending mark. [↩]
  2. Análipsis. [↩]
  3. Kanóni. [↩]