I was interested to get an email from Selby Whittingham on Thu, 19 Aug 2021 …
Subject: Edward Lear and Clarence Bicknell
Dear Marcus I have just bought a remaindered off copy of the praised Faber paperback biography of Lear by Jenny Uglow. (Our late friend Vivien Noakes wrote a shorter one years ago). She makes a passing mention of Clarence near the end when Lear was at San Remo, and I see that Valerie Lester had a couple of mentions of Lear. Perhaps more interesting is the vogue for teaching young women to draw (Turner did that for a while, as did more enthusiastically his great friend James Holworthy). Uglow cites “Bowles’s Drawing Book for Ladies; or Complete Florist” (pp.32-3, pl.2). This inspired his sisters and to some extent himself. I wonder if Clarence’s sisters had a copy and he learnt from that? Best wishes Selby
I replied to Selby…
I love Jenny Uglow’s work and she is a relation by marriage. Her son married my mother’s second husband’s grand-daughter. Valerie and Jenny would have spoken during the writing of MARVELS but Jenny declined to help get it published.
Clarence’s sister Ada, his favorite sibling did not draw as far as I know. Of Lucinda Constance (1840-1902) I have never found a record. He had no daughters, no offspring, but he taught and encouraged his daughter in law Margaret Berry and his two nieces Nora and Linda (daughters of Percy from whom I am descended). The two young ladies’ works were mostly sold to help charitable works and they seem to have spent a lot of time making very kitch Victorian Christmas cards, a couple of which I have deep at the bottom of one of the cases of the Clarence collection.
“Bowles’s Drawing Book for Ladies; or Complete Florist” was not in Clarence’s library. We have an accurate record. It would sound to him rather like “‘I am so sick of all the ordinary tea party, church-going people who are so conventional and such gossips and have so little of an international spirit’, MARVELS page 62! He also did not like Flowers or Florists. He liked mountain flowers where no florist is necessary; god arranges them so nicely…