CROQUET

[Croquet in the Raj.] Anonymous nineteenth-century manuscript poem titled ‘Lines on a picture of “Croquet at Materan” [Matheran hill station] by a Cynic.’ With cartoon of bewhiskered man behind mask of comedy.

Author: 
Croquet in the Raj [Matheran hill station; British India; Edward Lear (1812-1888)]
Croquet in the Raj
Croquet in the Raj
Publication details: 
No date (mid-Victorian). On ‘J WHATMAN’ laid paper.
£180.00
Croquet in the Raj
Croquet in the Raj

Although there is no clear connection, the present unpublished poem dates from around the same time as Edward Lear was drawing watercolours in the place referred to in it. Vidya Dehejia’s‘Impossible Picturesqueness / Edward Lear’s Indian Watercolours, 1873-1875’ (1989) describes how Lear visited ‘The two small hill-stations of Matheran and Mahabaleshwar near Bombay’. Of the former Lear wrote: ‘Matheran by the bye, has most probably been the original Eden - I don’t mean the first Lord Auckland, - but Paradise -’.

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