Walter Charles Alan Ker Poor Captive Monkey, Original Poem

An original 1906 pen & ink drawing, Walter Charles Alan Ker, Poor Captive Monkey, Original Poem.

An original handwritten poem by barrister and scholar Walter Charles Alan Ker (1854–1929), who was the nephew of Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809–92), Poet Laureate and one of the most influential figures in the history of English Literature. The poem is a moving lament on the subject of an Amazonian monkey now in captivity.

Walter Charles Alan Ker was born in Antigua in the West Indies. He was the son of Tennyson's sister, Mary, and her husband, Alan Ker, who was Attorney General of Antigua (1854–6), Chief Justice of Nevis, Chief Justice of Dominica, then judge of the Supreme Court of Jamaica. Mary Tennyson was considered the finest of the Tennyson sisters and was herself a talented poet. Walter became a barrister like his father and a scholar, editing law books and translating a volume each of Cicero and Martial for the Loeb Library. His obituary writes that he was 'an intimate friend of Tennyson, and frequently visited him at Freshwater... He was a classical scholar, and wrote many unpublished poems.

On watermarked laid paper. The left-hand side of the paper has a vertically folded strip.