Editing Edward Lear (section)

===Relationships===
Lear's most fervent and painful friendship was with [[Franklin Lushington]]. He met the young barrister in Malta in 1849 and toured southern Greece with him. Lear developed an infatuation for him that Lushington did not wholly reciprocate. Although they remained friends for almost forty years until Lear's death, the disparity of their feelings constantly tormented Lear. Indeed, Lear's attempts at male companionship were not always successful; the very intensity of Lear's affections may have doomed these relationships.<ref>Susan Chitty, That Singular Person Called Lear, Atheneum, 1989</ref>

He proposed twice to another writer, [[Augusta Bethell]], whom he had known for a long time, when he was 26 years her senior.<ref name= "bethall">{{cite web|title=Augusta Bethell, 1. Upper Hyde Park Gardens, London, to [John] Gibson|url=https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/archive/augusta-bethell-1-upper-hyde-park-gardens-london-to-john-gibson|access-date=18 August 2024}}</ref> For companions, he relied instead on friends and correspondents, and especially, during later life, on his Albanian [[Souliotes|Souliote]] chef, Giorgis, a faithful friend and (as Lear complained) a thoroughly unsatisfactory chef.<ref>Levi, Peter. ''Edward Lear, a Biography.''</ref> Another trusted companion in San Remo was his cat, [[Foss (cat)|Foss]], who died in 1887 and was buried with some ceremony in a garden at Villa Tennyson.