Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, 1856–1935 (The Pickering Masters) [1 ed.] 1848934971, 9781848934979

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE, 1856–1935

THE PICKERING MASTERS SERIES

SELECTED LETTERS OF V E R N O N L E E, 1856–1935 The Pickering Masters Series

Edited by Sophie Geoffroy Contributing Editor Amanda Gagel Translators Sophie Geoffroy Crystal Hall

Volume III 1890–1896

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Sophie Geoffroy and Amanda Gagel; individual owners retain copyright in their own material. The right of Sophie Geoffroy and Amanda Gagel to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-8489-3497-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-66244-2 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/b23420 Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

This book is dedicated to the memory of Maryse and Jean-Claude Geoffroy, Carola “Lola” Costa Angeli, Fiorenza Angeli Parretti and Alfio Parretti, Beatrice Angeli, Geneviève Noufflard, Jacqueline Bayard-Pierlot as well as to Diane Vanskiver Gagel and Joseph Gagel.

And do we not belong, we people of the 19th century, rather to the future which we are forming, than to the Past which, much to its astonishment (I shd think), produced us? Vernon Lee, “Puzzles of the Past,” Hortus Vitae

CONTENTS

VOLUME III Table of illustrations Foreword Acknowledgements Vernon Lee’s life and letters: 1890–1896 Editorial policy: textual and technical considerations Table of the letters in this volume Correspondents 1890–1896

xi xiii xvii xxi xlv li lxv

The letters: 1890–1896

1

Selected letters of Vernon Lee – volume III: 1890–1896

3

References Bibliography (works cited) Resources and archives consulted Index

353 361 395 403

ix

I L L U S T R AT I O N S

1

2 3 4

5

Vernon Lee’s birthplace, Boulogne-sur-Mer, France: Château Pont Feuillet. Logis, vue d’angle sur voie. Photo: Jean-Michel Perin. Copyright Région Hauts-de-France – Inventaire général. 19816202460X xxii Eugene Lee-Hamilton before 1890, carte de visite. Courtesy of The Vernon Lee Collection at Colby College, Special Collections and Archives, Waterville (MA), USA. xxx The Yellow Book, An Illustrated Quarterly, Volume X, July 1896, cover illustration. (public domain) xxxii Portrait of Mary Darmesteter after the death of her husband James Darmesteter. Source: Gallica.fr. Correspondance de Mary Robinson, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Anglais 252. xxxiv Grave of Vernon Lee’s family, Cimitero Evangelico all Allori, Florence. Photo by Stefano Vincieri. xlii

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FOREWORD

As Henry James wrote, “[a] work of art or of letters becomes doubly interesting when one begins to perceive its connections; and indeed it may be said that the study of connections is the recognised function of intelligent criticism to-day.”1 To highlight some of the new vistas which these letters will no doubt open up is precisely the aim of this preface. This is the third volume of the Selected Letters of Vernon Lee. The present introduction intends to highlight some of the potential new research areas that these letters will no doubt open up.2 Collecting and transcribing all available letters by Vernon Lee, translating them into a widely used common language (English) so as to make them readable to an international readership, publishing them in chronological order rather than according to thematic or relational arrangements, and providing a sizeable critical apparatus are all meant to turn the six volumes of the Selected Letters of Vernon Lee into a corpus and a general research tool for future studies. It aims at forming a reliable basis to foster new biographies, monographs and critical assessments of Vernon Lee’s life and works, as well as her relational circle. Admittedly, this edition is not the first endeavour of its kind. Let me pay a tribute to some of them. In France, as early as 1904, Alidor Delzant printed a limited edition of some of his wife’s Gabrielle’s letters: Gabrielle Delzant. Lettres, souvenirs.3 Thirty-three years later, and eighty-two years ago, Lee’s executor Irene Cooper Willis, contrary to the orders of the grantor who had requested that she, her executor, publish some of her yet unpublished works, but had forbidden any biography of herself before 1980, had Nona Stewart decipher and type the letters which Vernon Lee had sent to her father Henry Ferguson Paget, her mother Matilda Paget (née Adams, Mrs Lee-Hamilton), her half-brother Eugene Lee-Hamilton and her mentor Henrietta Jenkin. Of the resulting Letters Home, 1881–1894, with a Preface by her Executor, fifty copies were privately printed in 1937 “for private circulation only” among friends and acquaintances who had been called for a subscription of £2.2. While Irene Cooper Willis’s editing of Lee’s letters was admittedly meant, as indeed was common practice, to protect the persons named in the letters or their siblings – some of them then still living – from potentially harmful disclosures or xiii

FOREWORD

insinuations, the emerging portrait of Vernon Lee as a quarrelsome and theatrical – or, at best, an indifferent – narcissist was shocking to many of the readers of the editor’s preface and selection. For other reasons, which I shall explain hereafter, Irene Cooper Willis’s edition was unsatisfactory to today’s scholars. From 1952, a few critical studies of extracts from Lee’s letters were published in The Colby Library Quarterly. These scholarly articles provided precious presentations of fragments of Vernon Lee’s exchanges with several correspondents. The November 1952 issue was particularly important, with three texts by Carl J. Weber: “A List of Those Who Wrote to Lee,”4 “Mr Wells and Vernon Lee,”5 and “The Date of Miss Jewett’s Letter to Vernon Lee.”6 In February 1854, Hilda M. Fife published a presentation of “A Letter from Mrs Humphry Ward to Vernon Lee,”7 and in August 1954, Gordon W. Smith, “Letters of Paul Bourget to Vernon Lee.”8 Six years later, the June issue offered Richard Cary’s article on “Aldous Huxley, Vernon Lee and the Genius Loci,”9 and Beatrice Corrigan a paper on “Vernon Lee and the Old Yellow Book.”10 But to have access to full transcriptions of a selection of letters by Vernon Lee in their integrity, readers had to wait until 2008, when Amanda Gagel dedicated her PhD dissertation, Selected Letters of Vernon Lee (Boston University), to a large selection of Lee’s letters from 1870 to 1933, gathering approximately 280 letters. That pioneering work was completed by Dr Gagel’s 2010 focusing on the 1897 letters between Vernon Lee, Bernard Berenson, and Mary Costelloe.11 The year 2014 marked another era of Lee scholarship: The Anglo-German Correspondence of Vernon Lee and Irene Forbes-Mosse during World War I; Women Writers’ Friendship Transcending Enemy Lines, edited by Herward Sieberg and Christa Zorn, was the very first critical edition of Lee’s letters published and notable as its contents are letters previously thought lost in a period of war (1914–1918). Focusing on 108 letters dated from World War I, this edition is a model of its kind and an important reference book for all Lee scholars and Irene Forbes-Mosse specialists and historians. In 2016, The Vernon Lee Collection at Colby Digital triggered yet another revolution in Lee scholarship. Facsimiles of selected letters and archival documents related to Lee and her circle were made accessible online via https:// digitalcommons.colby.edu/vernonlee. At roughly the same time, spurred, perhaps, by scholars’ individual requests for copies or scans of the letters they held, the Department of Manuscripts at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France also posted in its Digital Library Gallica a number of letters by and to Vernon Lee, the most important being her correspondence with Mary Robinson. Routledge launched the Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, 1856–1935 in 2016, initially in three volumes. The first volume, directed by Amanda Gagel, expanded on her doctorate thesis thanks to a sizeable critical apparatus and Francophone, Italian and German translations. Sophie Geoffroy’s analysis of Lee’s correspondence with Mary Robinson and their French circle enriched Lee’s early biography. The collaboration between Gagel and Geoffroy – based on the sharing of all our respective letters, sources, and partners – proved fruitful in spite of the xiv

FOREWORD

geographical distance between the USA and Reunion Island. The second volume was directed by Sophie Geoffroy with Amanda Gagel as Associate Editor, and so is the present third volume. Moreover, instead of the three scheduled volumes when we started, we are now working on a six-volume edition. Lee’s archival resources have been central to several doctoral theses, as is exemplified by Sally Blackburn-Daniels’s PhD thesis ‘The Scholar’s Copy Book’ and the ‘Blotting-Book Mind’: Stratigraphic Approaches to Interdisciplinary Reading and Writing in the Work of Vernon Lee12 containing transcriptions of 32 letters (from Vernon Lee or to her) and two of Lee’s unpublished essays. Other repositories may yet turn up. The latest case in point is Lee’s correspondence with Augustine Bulteau, recently made available by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France through Gallica: approximately 300 fascinating letters dated 1903–1905, unveiling Vernon Lee’s infatuation with “Toche” and her guarded relationship with the latter’s French milieu. These will be transcribed and translated in Volume IV. Another instance is Vernon Lee’s correspondence with the painters Berthe Langweil-Noufflard (1888–1971) and André Noufflard (1885–1968). On 12 June 2012, Dr Gilles Pasquet and myself, under the expert guidance of the late Geneviève Noufflard (1920–2016), the painters’ daughter, located over 250 letters, twenty-five notebooks and other manuscript material in the attic of a manor house in Normandy. This major finding includes vast numbers of letters and postcards to Vernon Lee or from her, and notebooks mostly dated from 1914 to 1919, making this repository one of the most important Lee archives in the world to this day.13 The Langweil-Noufflard-Halévy Collection of the Fond de Dotation André et Berthe Noufflard opens up new tracks for research about Vernon Lee and France, and more generally about Vernon Lee’s life and work in the twentieth century. This corpus will be published in the next volumes of the Routledge edition of Selected Letters of Vernon Lee. In 2018 the Holographical Lee (HoL) project was launched by Sophie Geoffroy, in collaboration with eMan and the research Institute ITEM-CNRS in Paris.14 Currently developed, HoL is a project in digital humanities and textual genetics dedicated to Lee and to her extended international network. A digital library for archival preservation, HoL was from the start specially designed to bring together into a single, accessible archive rare books and documents scattered in over forty repositories around the world. It initially aimed at giving access to the successive states of a document with its transcriptions supplemented by its genetic record, so as to allow a direct approach to Vernon Lee’s creative process and to highlight the relationship between official history and the individual stories of those who make it, between history and herstory – which is now possible thanks to the completion of the digitisation of Lee’s MSS by the Colby archive, turning Colby Commons https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/vernonlee/ into an essential database for Vernon Lee scholars.

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Notes 1 Henry James, “Pierre Loti,” The Fortnightly Review, New Series, Vol. 49 (NS) (May 1888), pp. 647–664. 2 More detailed comments and information will be found in the notes to the letters themselves. 3 Delzant, Alidor (ed.), Gabrielle Delzant. Lettres, souvenirs. Tiré à petit nombre pour les amis de l’auteur. Paris, 1904. 473 pp. 4 Carl J. Weber, “List of Those Who Wrote to Lee,” Colby Library Quarterly, series 3, no. 8 (November 1952), pp. 129–133. 5 “Mr Wells and Vernon Lee,” Colby Library Quarterly, series 3, no. 8 (November 1952), pp. 133–134. 6 “The Date of Miss Jewett’s Letter to Vernon Lee,” Colby Library Quarterly, series 3, no. 8 (November 1952), pp. 134–136. 7 Hilda M. Fife, Colby Library Quarterly, series 3, no. 13 (February 1954), pp. 211–215. 8 Gordon W. Smith, “Letters from Paul Bourget to Vernon Lee,” Colby Library Quarterly, series 3, no. 15 (August 1954), pp. 236–244. 9 “Aldous Huxley, Vernon Lee and the Genius Loci,” Colby Library Quarterly, series 5, no. 6 (June 1960), pp. 128–140. 10 “Vernon Lee and the Old Yellow Book” Colby Library Quarterly, series 5, no. 6 (June 1960), 116–122. 11 “1897, A Discussion of Plagiarism: Letters between Vernon Lee, Bernard Berenson, and Mary Costelloe,” Literary Imagination, volume 12, no. 2 (2010), pp. 154–179. 12 University of Liverpool, August 2018. 13 On 27 June 2018, more documents were discovered at the Noufflards’ hotel in Paris. 14 For a presentation, see www.eman-archives.org/EMAN/exhibits/show/parcours-dansles-projets-eman/holographical-lee-hol

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Like all scholars, researchers, or students interested in Vernon Lee’s career and life, we are indebted to the staff at the Vernon Lee Archive in the Miller Library at Colby College, Waterville, Maine. Special thanks are due to Patricia Burdick, Maggie Libby and Erin Rhodes. They have been conscientious stewards of Lee’s manuscripts and have generously given their time to assist us in our research and have become faithful friends over the years, sending us copies of the letters and then scanning them for us. The groundbreaking work of scholars Phyllis Mannocchi, Carl Markgraf and Carl Weber in the form of the bibliographies and articles they wrote introducing Lee’s manuscripts at Colby to the world have been essential aids for researchers struggling to make a timeline of the author’s life, works and letters. Many archivists at various institutions have helped us over the course of finding the author’s letters. The dedication and professionalism of the librarians at, for example, the British Library; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the Principal and Fellows of Somerville College, Oxford, especially Dr. Anne Manuel, of the Vernon Lee Archive there, which holds the letters of many of Lee’s correspondents; and Dr. Corinna Jäger-Trees at the Bern Literary Archive is admirable. Working with these individuals only increased our admiration for the services they provide and the preservation of the manuscripts in their holdings. In France, Guillaume Fau’s professionalism has been capital for our access to Vernon Lee’s letters to Mary Robinson (Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, Manuscrits), enriching this edition with hundreds of letters between the two friends. In 2001, Fiorella Gioffredi-Superbi at Bernard Berenson’s Villa I Tatti welcomed Sophie Geoffroy’s request, giving her access to eleven unpublished letters by Henry James Sr., Henry James Jr., William James and William James Jr. and entrusting the perusal of Vernon Lee’s and Clementina Anstruther-Thomson’s gallery notes to her. In 2007, Dr Gioffredi-Superbi and, at the Gabinetto Vieusseux, Laura Desideri, provided Dr Gagel with information and advice during her research in Florence and have continued to help ever since. We also wish to thank the staff at the Biblioteca Marucelliana and the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence; and in the USA, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center,

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University of Texas at Austin; the Special Collections in the University of Chicago Library; and in England the Hove Central Library (Wolseley Collection). The Angeli-Parretti family, and especially Federica Parretti and Stefano Vincieri of the Associazione Culturale Palmerino (Lee’s home from 1889 until her death), have generously hosted scholars at their residence and supported symposiums on Lee scholarship. Mr Vincieri has also assisted us with translations of Lee’s Italian letters over the years and offered invaluable comments on this volume. Indeed, if this edition is the outcome of a long story of patient, demanding, and sometimes daunting archival research, it is also and above all the fruit of a twentyfour-year friendship, which started in February 1999 when “Nona” Lola Carola Costa and Alfio and Fiorensa Angeli-Parretti welcomed Sophie Geoffroy at 12 Via del Palmerino, Florence, for the first time. The Palmerino colonica cherishes the memory of our dear departed (Fiorensa, Beatrice, Alfio), but the story goes on today, with our partners, children and a young generation of Vernon Lee friends and students. This work could not have been undertaken without the support of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Editorial Institute at Boston University. This edition began as Dr Gagel’s dissertation project at the Institute from 2005 to 2008. The Graduate School awarded her a grant in 2007 for research in Florence and the letters and other information found there greatly enhanced this edition. The Editorial lnstitute is a one of a kind graduate program that has prepared professional and academic editors in cogent practices of editorial methods since 2000. Knowledge gained there has informed much of the editorial policy of this edition. The advice and assistance provided by Co-Directors Christopher Ricks and Archie Burnett, as well as Frances Whistler, is without parallel. Their enthusiasm for this project and their skilfulness as editors and teachers made this work challenging and enjoyable. The editors first met in September 2012 at the Symposium “Violet del Palmerino” in Florence which had been convened and organised jointly by Serena Cenni of the University of Trento, Elisa Bizzotto of the University of Venice and Sophie Geoffroy of the University of La Réunion (France). As both their presentations were dealing with Lee’s letters, there emerged the idea of pooling their resources and combining their efforts for a joint publication, and Dr Gagel invited Prof. Geoffroy to join in this edition for – at that time – Pickering Publishers. The several volumes of Selected Letters of Vernon Lee will finally be edited by Routledge, at Taylor & Francis Publishers. Volume I was directed by Dr Gagel, and Prof. Geoffroy directed volume II and is also directing this volume. We wish to extend our thanks to the research centre LCF (Littératures créolophones et francophones) at the University of La Réunion, for the continued support to this project granted to Prof. Geoffroy until 2019. They were instrumental in sponsoring Geoffroy’s travels to various archives in Paris and in helping her to be awarded the necessary time for this enormous task through last year’s research delegation as a member of the renowned CNRS Institut des Textes et Manuscrits xviii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Modernes (ENS rue d’Ulm) in Paris, a leader in the field of textual genetics. The constant encouragements of Prof. Paolo d’Iorio, director of this institute, as well as the example set by his work on the genesis of Nietzsche’s thinking and writing, have been and still are major incentives. Working together with Prof. Jean-Marc Hovasse, the great scholar on Victor Hugo, and sharing our knowledge and questions with specialists of manuscript study, transcription, palaeography and archival sciences with the research group on Autobiography and Correspondence has been a major watershed in my career as a scholar. So has my work as a member of eMan (Digital Edition of Manuscripts and Archives), with research engineer Richard Walter (THALIM-ENS-CNRS) and our group of researchers, thanks to whom the Holographical Lee database is being developed. We wish to express our gratitude to the International Vernon Lee Society (IVLS),1 with a special thanks to Vice-President Prof. Michel Prum (University of Paris-Diderot), Treasurer Dr Gilles Pasquet, Secretary Prof. Shafquat Towheed (Open University UK), Communications Officer Dr Sally Blackburn-Daniels (Open University UK) and all our faithful members, Prof. Florence Binard (University of Paris), Prof. Christa Zorn (Indiana University Southeast) and to all our friendly followers of The Sibyl, A Journal of Vernon Lee Studies.2 Special thanks are due to the late Jacqueline Bayard-Pierlot for her invaluable help and for the permission to use Mary Robinson’s letters. To provide the full text and translation of Vernon Lee’s letters written in languages other than English, Prof. Geoffroy has translated Lee’s letters originally written in French. We have relied on the careful transcription and translation work of Dr Crystal Hall (from the Italian) and Dr Christa Zorn (from the German) and are most thankful to them for all their patient work. For the careful copyediting of the footnotes to this volume, we are grateful to Cinqué Hicks and Rachel Wright at Bookbright Media. Lastly, nothing would have been possible without the support of Dr Sophie Lohier-Bray and Camille Hector and the constant patience and continued interest of our loving team of personal supporters: Sophie’s adorable fellow decipherers Marlène and Chloé Menoux and treasure hunter, research partner, and loving husband Gilles Pasquet; and Amanda’s patient husband and supportive partner Kevin Gallagher and her enthusiastic daughter Violet.

Notes 1

The International Vernon Lee Society (IVLS) was founded in 2013 by Sophie Geoffroy. Its headquarters are at the University of Paris. 2 The Sibyl, A Journal of Vernon Lee Studies, dir. Sophie Geoffroy, was founded in 2007. It is accessible at https://thesibylblog.com/

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V E R N O N L E E’S L I F E A N D L E T T E R S: 1890–1896

Indeed, I venture to suggest that only the monotony of our forbears’ lives explains the existence of those endless volumes of dreary allusions and pointless anecdotes handed down to us as the Correspondence of Sir Somebody This, or of the beautiful Countess of That, or even of Blank, that prince of coffee-house wits . . . which we sycophantishly accept after a hundred or two hundred years, handing it on with hypocritical phrases about ‘quaintness’ and ‘vivid picture of the past,’ and similar nonsense. Vernon Lee, “Receiving Letters,” Hortus Vitae; Essays on the Gardening of Life, 1904

The sheer number and scope of Lee’s letters over the short period covered in this volume are particularly impressive. We are presenting here no less than 429 letters – including eight letters in Italian and six letters in French – written in the course of six years; they cover several European countries and beyond. By comparison with the 309 letters written in the nineteen years from 1865 to 1884 (Volume I) and the 421 letters written in the four years from 1885 to 1889 gathered in Volume II. All in all, the present edition of Vernon Lee’s correspondence in the first three volumes will amount to about 1159 letters, that is, approximately 4640 handwritten pages, ranging from postcards and single-page notes to twelve-page letters: the average letter being four pages. Apart from members of her family Matilda Paget, Henry Ferguson Paget and Eugene Lee-Hamilton, other correspondents in the present volume include Countess Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi, Percy William Bunting, Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”), Clementina Anstruther-Thomson, Guido Biagi, Paul Desjardins, Enrico Nencioni, Conte Giovanni Gigliucci, Bernard Berenson, Mary Ward (Mrs Humphry Ward), William Blackwood, Marie Belloc Lowndes, Mary Darmesteter, Lady Susan Elizabeth (Mary) Constantine Jeune (later St Helier), Harry Brewster, Carlo Placci, Lady Charlotte Julia Blennerhassett, Gaetano Salvemini, Lady Louisa Wolseley, Richard Garnett, Ethel Gwendoline Moffat Vincent, Alice Foulon de Vaulx, Alys Pearsall Smith (Mrs Russell) and Hannah Whitall Smith (Mrs Pearsall Smith). xxi

VERNON LEE’S LIFE AND LETTERS: 1890–1896

Transcribing from the original manuscript letters so as to provide full transcriptions of as many of Vernon Lee’s available letters as possible, I have noticed a number of adulterations by Irene Cooper-Willis. While minor differences (Yr/ Yrs, yr/your, it wd not/it wdn’t and spelling issues) may be deemed unimportant, I have chosen to point out in footnotes to the letters any deletion, alterations or omissions of strings of words, phrases, sentences or even complete paragraphs. In the present volume, most of the deliberately edited contents refer to Mary (Robinson) Darmesteter’s personal life or to the marriage of Violet Sargent, John Singer Sargent’s sister, to Francis Ormond in Paris in July 1890.

Vernon Lee from age thirty-four to forty Born in France to a part French, Polish, West Indian, Welsh and Scottish family, Violette or Violet Paget lived in France as a child. She was educated in Switzerland and Germany, settled in Italy in her teens, and discovered England and Scotland in her early twenties. This third volume follows Violet Paget–Vernon Lee from the age of thirty-four to the ripe age of forty. Where did she live? Who were her friends? What did she read or write? What were her dreams, her projects, her fantasies and her fears? What did she make a living from? What were her greatest successes and her worst failures? These letters offer vivid traces of her social life and intellectual activities and provide some keys

Vernon Lee’s birthplace, Boulogne-sur-Mer, France: Château Pont Feuillet. Logis, vue d’angle sur voie. Photo: Jean-Michel Perin. Copyright Région Hauts-de-France – Inventaire général. 19816202460X

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to her work. She was fully aware of this, writing in “Ghosts of Old Friendships” (p. 33): “who knows? Half of the disinterested progress of the world’s thoughts and feelings might prove, under the moral microscope, to be but a moving web of invisible friendships, forgotten, but once upon a time new, and so vivid!”1 The daily heart-to-heart letters she sent to her family, friends and colleagues provide her own candid answers to these questions, and sometimes from a variety of different perspectives; for example, when she sent out different letters to several correspondents on the same day from the same place: for instance one to her mother, Matilda Paget, and another one to another correspondent, for example Clementina (“Kit”) Anstruther-Thomson, Percy William Bunting, Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) or Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi. A precocious erudite writer, a cosmopolitan traveller and an amazing network builder, Vernon Lee produced an important oeuvre across disciplines. Yet, her friends and colleagues best remembered her as a great conversationalist, a talent that is vividly conjured up in the present edition of her correspondence. But the present edition intends to balance her disreputable representation as a blithe epigrapher apt to draw cruel vignettes of literary acquaintances2 – a reputation mostly based on Irene Cooper Willis’s edition of Lee’s Letters Home as well as on the testimony of rival authors, like the art expert Bernard Berenson and his circle, as Mary (Costelloe) Berenson’s diary records in 1897: Edith [Carpenter] was curiously impressed by the sight of these maiden ladies, dressed in stiff shirt-fronts with wrinkles where most women have a certain fullness, crossing their legs and putting their hands in their pockets, and taking this petty little squabble with the seriousness of a European war at least. She felt a MAN was needed in that atmosphere to give them a little sense of real values!!3 Such a biased testimony at the height of the Berenson–Lee dispute about the authorship of the theory of tactile values, which indeed was to have far-reaching editorial and personal consequences for Lee and Anstruther-Thomson, is telling evidence of the way in which gender stereotypes warped the debate on women’s expertise in their chosen fields. The present multi-volume edition of her letters unveils unsuspected facettes of Violet–Vernon’s complex personality: the painfully obedient – though quite emancipated by now – daughter, the devoted – albeit occasionally exasperated – sister and the hypersensitive friend hungry for “a glance, a grasp, a clasp.”4 Painfully insecure of her daunting mother’s conditional attachment to her, avidly seeking after her elusive father’s presence and unwaveringly supporting her ailing, bedridden despairing half-brother, Vernon Lee was keenly aware of her role as entertainer to her family, and being eager to please and to compensate for helpless Eugene, she provides a wealth of anecdotes about herself or about the persons she meets, not necessarily sharing with them the qualms and ecstasies of her own personal life with them. Even Paul Bourget was aware of the impact – xxiii

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both stimulating and restricting – of Lee’s exacting family environment on her social life at Il Palmerino when he introduced Edith Wharton to her: Bourget warned me that, though Miss Paget was an old friend of his, he could not promise that his introduction would be of any use, as her time was so much taken up by her invalid half-brother, Eugene Lee-Hamilton, who lived with her, that she saw very few people, and those only among her intimates. It was therefore with little hope of success that I drove out from Florence to II Palmerino, the long low villa on the hillside of San Domenico where Miss Paget has so long made her home. I left Bourget’s letter, took a yearning look at the primrose-yellow house-front and the homely box-scented garden, and drove away with no expectation of ever seeing them again. But the next day Miss Paget wrote that, though her brother’s illness prevented her receiving visitors, yet if I chanced to be the Edith Wharton who had written a certain sonnet (I forget its name) which had attracted his attention in “Scribner’s Magazine,” she begged me to come as soon as possible, as he wished to make my acquaintance. (Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance, p. 130) Whether brilliantly entertaining or touchingly introspective, these conversations taken down on paper allow us to hear Vernon Lee’s distinctive voice. Some of the letters read like memorable purple patches, especially when her sense of humour or her ardent wit flash out. Perfectly undeterred by adverse conditions of writing, Lee sometimes wrote on trains or at railway stations or on board ferries, at her desk at home or anywhere she might be staying, using all sorts of paper, ink or pencils, doing her best “not to miss the post” for her correspondents’ sake. She knew the little excitement of the arrival of the post-bag, or of watching the clerk’s slow evolutions at a poste restante window. . . . The flash past of the outer world, and the comfortable sense of having a following, friends, relatives, clients; and it is in proportion to the dullness of our surroundings.5 Occasionally, she inserted objects, documents or presents in the envelope: a photograph, a lock of hair, some press clippings, a poem, a letter or a note from another correspondent. Lee’s correspondence offers a wealth of new information, from the homely details of her personal life, including family issues or the ups and downs of friendship, love and romance, to the full range of her career as a professional writer. She writes to share the joys and the disappointments of reading, writing, translating, publishing, being read and appreciated, and getting fair pay for her work. Such first-hand testimony is, of course, of capital interest for studies in textual genetics. As she copes with her friends’ illnesses and ailments, but also with the painful puzzle of her half-brother Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s sudden lapse into agonising xxiv

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invalidism and equally sudden recovery, one witnesses Lee’s quest for adequate treatments both for his sake and for her own. The present letters are therefore of paramount importance for our knowledge of the history of the practice and teaching of medicine and nursing in Europe at the turn of the century and in the twentieth century, at a time when Lee’s friend Amy Turton, emulating Florence Nightingale, was organising nurses’ training and a convalescent home, which Lee sponsored and supported by circulating subscription lists among her affluent friends. Mental sciences are at the forefront here, from experimental psychology, psychiatry and neurology to neurophysiology (Dr Luys’s rotatory mirrors, Jean-Martin Charcot’s hypnotism, Dr Erb’s treatments, neuropsychiatrist Giuseppe Seppilli’s advice). In August 1892, Vernon Lee and Clementina Anstruther-Thomson attended the Psychological Congress in Paris where they heard the physicist and psychologist Hermann von Helmholtz, the philosopher and psychologist James Sully, the scientific empiricist Alexander Bain, the experimental psychologist Francis Galton, the American psychologist founder of child psychology G. Stanley Hall, and Amboise-Auguste Liebeault, who founded an institute based on the theory that hypnosis was suggestive. They saw experiments and Lee wrote about them, as she was “much interested in the new developments of the theory of nervous diseases & hyperaesthetic states” (Lee to Matilda Paget, August 5, [1892]). Indeed, Lee came to consider herself as a psychologist as much as a philosopher of art “[w]aiting with patient faith for the mystery of art to be solved” (Art and Man, p. 33) and delving more and more deeply into experimental psychology with her partner Clementina Anstruther-Thomson. Lee also had a vivid interest in alternative treatments like hydrotherapy and activities conducive to better mental balance and well-being. In 1892, she experienced some palpitations – a warning sign of her future fatal angina pectoris – and was aware of the necessary harmonious alliance of her body and mind. She enjoyed physical activities in the open air, like swimming and riding a pony, a horse or a bicycle, “This grotesque iron courser, not without some of the grasshopper’s absurd weirdness, is a creature of infinite capacities for the best kind of romance – the romance of the fancy” (“My Bicycle and I,” Hortus Vitae, p. 74). She loved the mountainous landscape of St Moritz, Switzerland, longingly admiring Miss Dunham’s project of climbing the Alps on donkeys (late August 1892). Do not let us despise even the foolish courtship of friends, if there comes from it the sincere and honest marriage of true minds. (Althea, “On Friendship,” p. 83) The generally accepted view of Lee as a ferocious “tiger-cat” living in a welldeserved isolation of her own doing turns out to be a mirage. With this third volume, our edition continues to reveal how much her daily preoccupation hinged on establishing or maintaining connections with her circle or with the people she wished to know, through letter writing. The present edition thus testifies to Vernon Lee’s faithful attachment to her old friends: John Singer Sargent and his xxv

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family, especially his sister Violet whose marriage to Francis Ormond she attends in Paris in July 1891; Countess Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi; the Irish nationalist political activist and historian Alice Stopford Green; Lady Louisa Wolseley, Sir Garnet Joseph Wolseley, later Baron Wolseley of Cairo and Viscount Wolseley, commander-in-chief of the British army, and their daughter, gardener and author Frances Garnet Wolseley, 2nd Viscountess Wolseley; the Italian literary critic and novelist Carlo Placci; Elena French-Cini. Her friendship deepens with Mabel Price (daughter of the Rev. Bartholomew Price, Master of Pembroke College, Oxford) who had studied painting in Paris at the Académie Julian with Flora Priestley, also a friend of Lee and John Singer Sargent; the archaeologist Eugénie Sellers; the influential French novelist, literary critic, essayist and translator Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”); Donna Laura Gropallo; Amy Turton; Evelyn Wimbush; and the French lawyer Ernest Pannier and his wife; to name but a few. In the present volume, we discover her first contact with new friends: the Italian actress Eleonora Duse, whom she met through Lady Louisa Wolseley (1893); Lady Margaret Brooke, Ranee of Sarawak whom she met at Carlo Placci’s on 9 January 1893. In July 1893, in Windsor, she met the composer Ethel Smyth, “a young woman who is, by competent persons, supposed to be the composer,” and was struck by her astonishing eccentricity, “her cleverness & the greatest expression of forcibleness I have ever seen in any woman.” Her circle of French friends widens, too. In France, she is acquainted with the French archaeologist, explorer and novelist Jane Henriette Dieulafoy; the American painter Mary Cassatt who invites her to stay with her and her mother at her Château de Beaufresne, Le Mesnil-Theribus in 1895; the French geographers Edouard Blanc (Marie-Thérèse Blanc’s son) and Jean Brunhes; and the French philanthropist and feminist activist Gabrielle Alphen-Salvador. She also met the French connoisseur and art collector Gustave Louis Dreyfus and his wife Henriette (née Obermayer), to whom she suggested Olive Anstruther-Thomson as a tutor or “female lad” for their son, Carle Dreyfus (who was to become curator at the Louvre). The influential art expert Albert Sancholle Henraux and his wife Maria del Carmen (Carlo Placci’s sister); the French painter and printmaker PaulAlbert Besnard; and even, through Ethel Smyth, the Empress Eugénie (Eugénie de Montijo) in 1893 are but a few more of her acquaintances. Proficient in the French language, Vernon Lee took advantage of any available venue for publication in France, and after “Voix maudite,” “Le Coffre de mariage,” “Deux romans” [“Lady Tal”], “Fragments du journal de Spiridion Trepka” [“Amour Dure”], all of which were first published in French, she went on writing in that language. Her relationship with her French translators, some of which developed into a fully fledged friendship, would deserve a thorough in-depth analysis: “Robert de Cerisy” (Marguerite Savary), Charles Bernard-Derosnes (“Camille de Cendrey”; translator of “Dionea”), Marie Talbot, Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”), Alice Foulon de Vaulx, Frédéric Masson, Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi (transl. Ariadne in Mantua) and even Eugene Lee-Hamilton, who translated “Le Pape Jacinthe” (“Pope Jacynth”). “The Virgin of the Seven Daggers” was initially xxvi

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published in French, translated by Eugene Lee-Hamilton as “La Madone aux sept glaives,” in Feuilleton du journal des débats du Samedi, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14 February 1896, seven years before it was published in English as “The Virgin of the Seven Daggers: A Moorish Ghost Story of the Seventeenth Century” (The English Review, January–February 1909) and with a few minor changes in For Maurice: Five Unlikely Tales (1927). This volume reveals a new name among Lee’s professional circle: the illustrator Albert Lynch, who illustrated “Deux romans” [“Two Novels”], translated by Frédéric Masson and published in French in Les Lettres et les Arts, revue illustrée on 1 December 1889; and “Le Pape Jacinthe” [“Pope Jacynth”] translated by Eugene LeeHamilton, published in the Christmas issue of the Figaro Illustré, December 1894. Often a go-between and sometimes a mediator, Vernon Lee never ceased writing letters of introduction for the benefit of her friends: Clementina Black met Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) through Lee’s agency; similarly, the Italian economist and philosopher Francesco Papafava dei Carraresi (1864–1912) met the Irish socialist historian Alice Stopford Green through her. Lee introduced Violet Florence (“Flo”) Garrard to Marie Belloc Lowndes (31 December 1895), begging her to introduce her to publishers of illustrated journals, such as William T. Stead. She encouraged Enrico Nencioni to meet the Paters when they stayed in Florence (1892); and through her Gaetano Salvemini met Daniel Halévy and Paul Desjardins. Hers was a formidable presence, although her letters may occasionally reveal some embarrassment, awkwardness or sadness. As her friend Maurice Baring recalls: In her tailor-made clothes she was very like Sargent’s portrait of her, and it is one of his most remarkable portraits, for he is successful in giving you the piercing gleam of her intelligent eyes. A year of two later I went back to Florence and stayed with her at her villa, and got to know her more intimately, and in the following years I saw much of her. . . . Vernon Lee was and is by far the cleverest person I ever met in my life, and the person with the widest range of the rarest culture. . . . She was not a scholar or an archaeologist, nor a professional specialist of any kind; but I have never met culture so shot with imagination. . . . She had worshipped the Lares and Penates of ancient Italy all her life, and knew the ritual and respect that should be paid to them as well as to the Christian saints who had taken their place, whether the cult and influence in question manifested itself in a cart drawn by bullocks or in a snatch of song, or in the piping of some skin-clothed shepherd in the Campagna, or in some floral tribute, rustic or religious festival . . . or in the uneven mosaic or marble paving of some seldom-frequented church. . . . She speaks French like a Frenchwoman of the seventeenth century, so a Frenchman said to me, and it is always a great pleasure to me xxvii

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to listen to her unhesitating, direct Italian. Indeed her Italian is just as nervous, and sometimes less complicated than, her English. (Maurice Baring, quoted in Gunn, Violet Paget, p. 136) Edith Wharton, remembering her first encounter with Vernon Lee in the spring of 1894, recalls in A Backward Glance (1933), p. 132: Vernon Lee was the first highly cultivated and brilliant woman I had ever known. I stood a little in awe of her, as I always did in the presence of intellectual superiority, and liked best to sit silent and listen to a conversation which I still think almost the best of its day. I have been fortunate in knowing intimately some great talkers among men, but I have met only three women who had the real gift. They were Vernon Lee, Matilde Serao, the Neapolitan journalist and novelist, and the French poetess, the Comtesse de Noailles. It is hard to establish any comparison between beings so unlike in race, traditions and culture – but one might suggest the difference by saying that Matilde Serao’s talk was like the noonday glow of her own Mediterranean, while Vernon Lee’s has the opalescent play of a northerly sky, and Madame de Noailles’ resembled the most expensive fireworks. Writing letters – and speaking on the telephone, which, alas, we can have little trace of – allowed Vernon Lee to bridge the gap with absent friends or family and to keep up a regular conversational flow, which, as a result, grants our readers the pleasure of discovering her adventures almost “live” or in the manner of the feuilleton-like diary of a woman of letters, for whom writing was as vital an experience as living and loving. The genesis of her texts (novels, short stories, essays, poems in prose, articles, reviews, theatre plays) is disclosed as an uninterrupted process of integration and transformation of the ups and downs of “real life” into professional writing through the crucible of letter writing, following on real discussions with her friends and family. There was yet another step in her creative writing process, between the letters and the drafted essays, novels or reviews: the Commonplace Books and notebooks, now at the Vernon Lee Archive, which she used to write down reading notes, comments on authors and works, or even passages from letters received or letters written by herself – notebooks from which she copied passages into published books. It is not known when exactly she started using notebooks and Commonplace Books in that way. The salient features in the period In 1890, Vernon Lee, then thirty-four, lived with her parents and her half-brother at Villa Il Palmerino where they had moved in 1889 (see Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II) and which she ultimately bought in 1906. But she still spent xxviii

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most of her summers in England and usually was back home by the fall, except in the summer of 1890 which she spent travelling around Italy with Clementina Anstruther-Thomson (“Kit”). In 1896 though, after her parents’ death and her half-brother’s moving out, she delayed as long as she could her return to a now empty Villa Il Palmerino and wasn’t back home until mid-November. While travelling, Lee never gave up her travel essays, and her first collection of such texts was published in 1899: Genius Loci: Notes on Places. In her letters, she reacted to the news she got from Florence: the electric tram catastrophe on 23 September 1890, the earthquakes on 18 May and 8 June 1895. Her letters are full of remarks about her friends’ housekeeping and advice about gardening gathered from her visits to the Wolseleys, or Carolyne and Frederic Eden’s famous “Garden of Eden” on the island of the Guidecca in the lagoon of Venice, or the Tremaynes’ garden at Heligan, near St Austell in Cornwall. She voices her concern about Kit’s nervous exhaustion and her younger sister Olive’s helplessness owing to John Anstruther-Thomson’s remarriage and coming baby. the disgustingness of the marriage of a man of 75 and a girl of 29. . . . surely children ought to be the result of the attraction of youth & beauty & health, not the attraction of sex, lasting when youth, beauty, health have long departed. . . . people seem to find me gross for not thinking octogenarian babies desirable. (Lee to Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi, July 30, 1892) Lee shared Kit’s grief and outrage all the more so as her father’s remarriage prolonged Kit’s and Olive’s financial hardship. Kit’s grief was made worse when her aunt, Miss Jean St Clair Anstruther, passed away in Rome on 28 February 1893. Lee and her family welcomed Olive at Il Palmerino for two months and Vernon struggled to find her a job as a tutor for children, recommending her to Mrs Dreyfus for her son Carle, to the Hildebrands, and to Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi for her daughter Lucrezia (Rezia). As Eugene had become unable to read or write, Lee recurrently looked for secretaries (Miss Little, Miss Craigmyle, Miss Goodban, Kit, Miss Jourdan or Jordan, Maud Cruttwell) for him. Her letters home from June 1891 are often lists of her movements, which she numbers: “I number sentences so that E. [Eugene] may get one at a time” (Lee to Matilda Paget, June 24, 1891). The letters convey Kit’s ingenious ideas to adapt his stretcher for Eugene to stay in places other than Il Palmerino, for instance in hotels at Venice. Eugene makes some progress, and on July 21, 1893, he writes (dictates) in “confirmation of his definitive victory over his illness,” although his full recovery occurred suddenly after his stepfather’s and then his mother’s deaths in 1896. According to Maurice Baring, after his miraculous recovery, Eugene’s “first act had been to climb up Mount Vesuvius” (The Puppet-Show of Memory, 1922, p. 167). On 26 August 1893, writing a few words with his own hand for the first time, he offered criticism of Lee’s “Dionea” and his sister’s “obscurity in the narrative” xxix

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“[preventing her] being popular.” Lee’s expression of joy at his good news is balanced first by a defence of her literary choices that sounds like a justification and turns into a defying challenge to him and to her mother: I don’t think it is my obscurity which prevents my being popular, but my habit & determination to write only to please myself, irrespective of readers, and by this means reach the only readers to whom I can give pleasure or profit, those who stand, naturally, in want of exactly the writer I am. . . . At thirty seven I have no public, but on the other hand, I am singularly far from being played out & crystallised . . . You see I happen to be absolutely unambitious . . . I think it better to restrict my

Eugene Lee-Hamilton before 1890, carte de visite. Courtesy of The Vernon Lee Collection at Colby College, Special Collections and Archives, Waterville (MA), USA.

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expenditure than to increase my income. . . . I will not read a book unless it conduces to my education as a human being or to my pleasure, which comes to the same . . . At sixty I will write a novel. So I am bound to be unpopular, & you must just put up with it. And so must Mamma. (editors’ emphasis, Lee to Eugene Lee Hamilton, August 31, [1893]) Indeed, Vernon Lee was by then acknowledged as a professional writer at the height of her production, and even then, like other women writers, intellectuals, artists or scientists at the time, she still struggled to have some of her works published and get fair pay for them. She refused, like the far more successful role model she admired so much, Mrs Humphrey Ward, to “sell herself.” She continued to write her popular supernatural tales; her Commonplace Book for 1890 registers her production in that field. In January, Lee wrote “The Legend of Mme Krasinska”; in June, she translated Voix maudite into English, wrote “A Worldly Woman” (124 pages), and began “Pictor Sacrilegus.” In October of that year, she began “An 18th Century Singer” (128 pages) and “Ravenna Ghosts,” both of which she completed five months later, in February 1891. Some of these essays were collected in Renaissance Fancies and Studies (1895), a sequel to Euphorion. Lee’s collection of fantastic short stories, Hauntings (1890), was duly acknowledged by Henry James, to whom she dutifully sent all her books (and so does he send his to her), and he congratulated her for the “gruesome, graceful, genialisch ‘Hauntings’”: I have enjoyed again, greatly, the bold, aggressive speculative fancy of them – and, in addition to this, what I always taste, deeply, in all your work, the redolence of the unspeakable Italy, to whose infinite atmosphere you perform the valuable function of conductor and condenser. You are a sort of reservicer of the air of Italian things, and those of us who can’t swig at the centuries can at least sip of your accumulations. (Henry James to Vernon Lee, April 27, 1890) She develops and perfects her technique for such stories as “Dionea”: You will then, I think, agree with me that such a story requires to appear & reappear & disappear, to be baffling, in order to acquire its supernatural quality. You see there is no real story; once assert the identity of Dionea with Venus; once show her clearly, & no charm remains. . . . I think stories in which adventure preponderates, like Stevensons[’s], cannot be too clear in narrative, & stories of the supernatural too allusive. (Lee to Eugene Lee Hamilton, August 26, 1893) Frédéric Masson, in his Preface to Lee’s collected fantastic tales in their French translation Au Pays de Vénus (1894), similarly admires the subtle way in which Lee “always” weaves “an invisible exquisite psychological bond, with a kind of xxxi

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scepticism and discreet disbelief that does not allow astonishment, attracting present-day people and leading them into living and loving in the past.”6 Indeed Lee characterises her ghosts as “spurious ghosts” who “used to haunt some people’s brains, including my own and those of my friends – yours, my dear Arthur Lemon . . . and yours too . . . dear Flora Priestley.”7

The Yellow Book, An Illustrated Quarterly, Volume X, July 1896, cover illustration. (public domain)

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Other fantastic fiction works include “Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady,” written between 15 January and 1 February 1896 and published in The Yellow Book in July 1896, dedicated “to H.H. the Ranee Brooke of Sarawak.” Galleries, salons, museums and art expertise From 1891, Vernon Lee and Clementina Anstruther-Thomson spent much of their time (which they did until 1897) touring galleries and museums in England, France and Italy. In 1891, John Singer Sargent took Lee, Placci and Flora Priestley to the Salon in Paris. She invited Mme Blanc to visit the National Gallery with her (August 1891) and studied there and at the British Museum. She is impressed by Eugénie Sellers’s British Museum lectures in 1891. In 1893, Sellers’s method (based on Morelli’s) aroused Lee’s interest in attribution and connoisseurship: “She is applying to antique sculpture the method lately invented by Morelli for painting.” (Lee to Matilda Paget, July 13, [1893]). A few days later, on 20 July 1893, Kit took her and Bernard Berenson – “That little art critic who appears destined to become famous” (Lee to Matilda Paget, July 21, 1893) – to see the Velazquezes at Apsley House. Lee and Kit wanted to use similar scientific methods to improve the psychological appreciation of art and Kit insisted on attending the Psychological Congress in Paris every day on 1–3 August 1892. In 1893 they started engaging in experimental psychology and mutual or selfobservation in order to refine their theory of aesthetic empathy and inner mimicry. According to this theory, a reader’s response to a work of art can be measured through his or her physiognomy, breathing, heartbeats and eye and muscular movements, thus providing a scientific basis for an innate appreciation of aesthetic value. These experiments were recorded in Lee’s “gallery diaries” (forthcoming in Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. IV). They consisted of self-observation and even “in Rome that spring of 1894, and the following months in Florence and London and Paris . . . we went on secretly ‘sampling’ statues and pictures with ‘tunes’. Humming in the galleries” (Art and Man, p. 38). They often toured the galleries with Bernard Berenson, and Lee offered him quite unasked for advice and criticisms on his early articles. These visits resulted in the publication of the synthesis of Lee and Thomson’s work: the article “Beauty and Ugliness” (The Contemporary Review, October-November 1897), and Berenson’s accusation who charged them (esp. Kit) with plagiarism of his ideas on “tactile values.” Their exchange of letters on this point will be included in Volume IV of our Selected Letters of Vernon Lee. To them it must seem very much as if, because we are rich, we need never give; and because they are poor, they shall never take. (Althea, p. 93) Her interest in socialism and political economy intensified as her circle widened beyond aristocratic and society milieux to working-class districts thanks to Clementina xxxiii

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Black and her sister, Mrs Mahomed. While in England in July 1892, she was present during the general election that took place in the United Kingdom. Lord Salisbury’s Conservatives lost the majority and William Ewart Gladstone’s Liberals, whom Lee supported, won 80 more seats than in the 1886 general election. Unimpressed by the royal family, in March 1893, she “[gives] up going to the Queen” who “wished to see [her]” “[for] lack of time” and clothes (Lee to Matilda Paget, March 16 and 18, 1893). About the royal wedding, on 6 July 1893, of Prince George, Duke of York, and Princess Victoria Mary of Teck, she offers weird anecdotes of a bad omen for the bride and groom. Visiting Windsor Castle with the Ponsonbys a few days later, her letter to her father describes “[t]he Queen’s apartments, which are frightfully vulgar & dull, like a big hotel with occasional fine pictures & tapestries about; the whole impression very German. There is an extraordinary want of stateliness & appearance of age about the whole thing, just the reverse of Oxford or Cambridge” (Lee to Henry Paget, July 22, 1893). On July 1893, through Miss Newcomb, she met G.B. Shaw for the first time, and she went to hear other Socialists speak at Hammersmith: Frank Podmore, Robert Bontine Cunningham-Graham, spending a day at “a sort of University settlement some of them have got near the Docks” (July 7, 1893). The year 1894 was marked by the beginning of the Dreyfus Affair (1894–1906) in France and the rise of anti-Semitism and nationalism, which shocked Vernon

Portrait of Mary Darmesteter after the death of her husband James Darmesteter. Source: Gallica.fr. Correspondance de Mary Robinson, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Anglais 252.

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Lee. She was an ardent Dreyfusard and admired the Captain’s supporters, best of all Emile Zola on account of his “J’accuse” and of all his novels, which she read eagerly, from Germinal to La fortune des Rougon, La Curée, Nana, Au Bonheur des dames, La Terre, Le Rêve, Pot Bouille, L’Argent . . . and of which she wrote a review: “The Moral Teaching of Zola,” published in the Contemporary Review 63 (February 1893): 196–212. She also liked another staunch defender of Dreyfus from the very beginning: the Norwegian novelist Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson who was later awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (1903). Many of Lee’s close friends, also defenders of Dreyfus, were victims of the hateful wave: James Darmesteter was one of them. After he died on 19 October 1894, Vernon Lee and Darmesteter’s wife, Mary (Robinson), once again became closer to one another. In 1902, Mary married Emile Duclaux, an ardent supporter of Dreyfus and of James Darmesteter. Theirs was a happy marriage, unfortunately cut short by Duclaux’s death in 1904. In 1894, Lee met Paul Desjardins and his circle at the Union morale. She met Daniel Halévy for the first time at Mary (Costelloe) Berenson’s in Florence in late March 1896, as he records in his Italian notebooks.8 He wrote to Mary Darmesteter about his first encounter with Miss Paget: Miss Paget lives in a charming place, in a small valley hollow from which one cannot see Florence and hears only its bells, between Maiano and San Domenico. The English who lived there have let large trees grow. You might think you are somewhere in France or in England, were it not for the olive and orange trees, and the overhanging mountains. . . . For a moment, I thought I was in Normandy, and I liked it. After lunch, we climbed into a large room currently being converted, a huge room, open on three sides onto the mountain. We hung your portrait by Sargeant [Sargent] first, – then Miss Paget’s portrait, which I much prefer to yours. (Daniel Halévy to Mary Darmesteter, March 29, 1896) And in April, Halévy wrote again: I had been there [at Mary (Costelloe) Berenson’s] for five minutes, when Miss Paget entered. She briefly said hello, sat down, raised a book. This was Aristotle’s Aesthetics; as you can guess, Miss Paget then embarked into a speech. I was immediately overwhelmed; her English was terribly fast, and what she said terribly unexpected. Mrs Costello, and another lady – I remember you said something about her, a German-French-English woman living in Italy, and the first archeologist in England. Both ladies first tried to stop Miss Paget’s torrent. But they were soon overwhelmed like me, and remained silent – and Miss Paget spoke alone. I caught a few words: literature is not art . . . immensely Superior, immensely inferior to art . . . Othello not art . . . art is not intellectual . . . art . . . not . . . some comedies of Shakespeare are art xxxv

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. . . All of a sudden, she got up. Uttered three more sentences; distributed handshakes and went out just like she had come in. And yet, Miss Paget is so charming! Even when she is being insane, she is fascinating; I, who did not understand her, could not stop for a moment following the movements of her lips. An hour later I had dinner at her place – we talked about a thousand things and about you; I paid more attention to Miss Thomson; you are right, she is a Shelleyian soul. But what an envelope! (Daniel Halévy to Mary Darmesteter, April 18969) Lee introduced Gaetano Salvemini to him and to Paul Desjardins, and would later consider that Daniel Halévy had introduced her to socialism – not mentioning Daniel’s brother, Elie Halévy’s multi-volume Histoire du Socialisme Européen (History of European Socialism) – and they were close friends until his nationalism, pro-colonialist and militarist views alienated her when, as early as 1911, she felt that World War I was looming. “I study not for my sake only, but for theirs that study not for themselves.” (Relig. Med. § III10) Lee’s Commonplace Book VII (“begun Florence Jan. 16, 1892, finished Aug. 20, 1892, Looked through 1920”) and the resulting volume Althea (1894) bear witness to her rising interest in and work on the moral and social questions, interconnected for her, of the unequal distribution of wealth, labour and capital. She constantly ponders on existential issues, too. “Does such a thing as Woman exist? . . . As a matter of fact, Woman is the great x of the world: we have barely a right to postulate her existence” (entry for Feb. 1, 1891). Lee’s Althea (1894), dedicated to Clementina Anstruther-Thomson, shows her interest in ethics, moral duties and free-thinking. It is a collection of philosophical dialogues and a sequel to Baldwin (1886), and she appears in her letters to be prouder of the sequel because it reflects “the attitude of maturer life” (Althea, p. 7). As with Baldwin, eight years before, the dialogues are taken from conversations she had with friends (e.g. Elena French, Donna Maria Pasolini Ponti), and “the handsome athletic, free-thinking candid Scottish Althea, with her face rather of a beautiful boy than of a woman” (Althea, p. 85) clearly modelled after Clementina Anstruther-Thomson, sometimes accompanied with her younger brother: “Althea’s little brother ‘Harry’ hanging on to her arm, and the fox terrier running on in front” (Althea, p. 13) whose mind was divided between this discussion, which delighted his schoolboy logic, and the desire to investigate into the rabbit holes of the rough ground they were coming to. . . . The boy walking along his sister’s arm on her shoulder, like one of the little fauns who support a young god in some antique group. xxxvi

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Lee herself is embodied in the character of Baldwin. These dialogues focus on social questions and on the moral, ethical and social duties of those who are independent of worldly ties (poverty, nationalism, ambition, vanity) to lead others who are not (“About the Social Question”). Althea is keenly aware of class struggle: “To them it must seem very much as if, because we are rich, we need never give; and because they are poor, they shall never take” (Althea, p. 93). She also often doubts the honesty of the richer people: “How many people ask themselves, I wonder, whether the source of their income is clean?” (Althea, “Duties of the Idle Class,” p. 104). Vernon Lee alias Baldwin envisions spiritual life from an evolutionary perspective, considering that our duties contribute to the harmonious evolution of mankind. For that reason, she supported women’s education, visited schools in the East End with Clementina Black’s sister, Mrs Mahomed, and circulated Evelyn Wimbush’s projected school for girls. Lee indicts the proponents of art for art’s sake. Art for art’s sake is like saying food for food’s sake; t’is a cutting down of the problem, making it manageable for certain manipulations, but leaving out the essential. The essential about food is man’s need of sustenance; the essential about art is man’s soul, and the soul’s clamouring for greater clearness, greater unity, greater moral warmth than reality supplies it with. (editor’s emphasis, Lee to Carlo Placci, Florence, January 3, 1893, pp. 17–28) Lee does not spare herself such stinging criticism and realises, “I must make an effort to come into contact with the world & the world of letters to meet people who will not, out of friendship or weakness, allow me to pontificate, to play cock of the walk as I do here” (Lee to M.-T. Blanc, March 25, 1893). The martyrdom and the waste of frivolous living Lee’s interest in ethics transcribed into fiction in Vanitas: Polite Stories (1892), a collection of three stories dedicated to her friend of San Marcello Pistoiese, “Baronessa Elena French-Cini, Pistoia per Igno.” Her preface to the volume reads like a defence of all women and a plea to educate those born or forced into an idle, frivolous life by “misfortune” – read: birth and marriage. For round these sketches of frivolous women, there have gathered some of the least frivolous thoughts, heaven knows, that have ever come into my head; or rather, such thoughts have condensed and taken body in these stories. Indeed, how can one look from outside on the great waste of precious things, delicate discernment, quick feeling and sometimes, stoical fortitude, involved in frivolous life, without a sense of sadness and indignation? Or what satisfaction could its portrayal xxxvii

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afford, save for the chance that such pictures might mirror some astonished and abashed creature; or show to men and women who toil and think that idleness, and callousness, and much that must seem to them sheer wickedness, is less a fault than a misfortune. For surely it is a misfortune not merely to waste the nobler qualities one has, but to have little inkling of the sense of brotherhood and duty which changes one, from a blind dweller in caves, to an inmate of the real world of storms and sunshine and serene night and exhilarating morning (Chelsea, October 1891). The collected stories narrate the evolution of “three frivolous women” as they are led to or forced to “abandon the service of the great Goddess Vanitas.” “The Legend of Madame Krasinska” is an unusual fantastic story based on metempsychosis inspired by Lee’s meeting with Buddhists. It resorts to the supernatural to “[teach] my Madame Krasinska that poor crazy paupers and herself were after all exchangeable quantities.” In “A Worldly Woman” the protagonist performed the miracle herself and abandoned freely her frivolous pursuits, and the third [“Lady Tal”] decided that frivolous living means not merely waste, but in many cases martyrdom” (editor’s emphasis). “Lady Tal” angered Henry James, his brother William and some of their common friends, including the Curtises. Indeed, the main character of the story, an expatriate American novelist in England, was closely modelled after Henry James, while his counterpart “Lady Tal” looked like Alice Callander. In the story, the novelist is a dishonest predatory mentor to a female author, so much so that the brothers thought this alluded to James’s relationship with Lee (see Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II). As Vineta Colby writes, Henry James, who had “suggested that his brother William, then travelling in Italy, visit the Pagets in Florence” suddenly sent “a word of warning about Vernon Lee” in January 1892: “Draw it mild with her on the question of friendship. She’s a tiger-cat!” William then wrote a highly indignant note to Miss Paget: “the using of a friend as so much raw material for ‘copy’ implies in your part such a strangely objective way of taking human beings, and such a detachment from the sympathetic considerations which usually govern human intercourse, that you will not be surprised to learn that seeing the book has quite drenched my desire to pay you another visit.” . . . Contrite, she wrote to William begging his forgiveness and confessed that his accusation had made her burst into tears. To which William replied: “A woman in tears is something that I can never stand out against! Your note wipes away the affront . . . only you must never, never, NEVER, do such a thing again in any future book!” (Colby, The Singular Anomaly, p. 261). Henry James was soothed as well, but he and Lee never discussed it, and their friendship mended after that. xxxviii

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I am decidedly an unsuccessful author, well known but not read. (Lee to Matilda, August 1, [1891]) The letters also reveal Lee’s relationships with publishers. Bankruptcies occur, like the collapse of the Fenzi banking business in January 1892 or among the book trade; book stocks get sold and bought between publishers or . . . burnt (“Half the edition of Hauntings was burnt accidentally” in 1891) and Lee’s struggle to have her legal rights as an author acknowledged is a difficult one. In her discussion of contracts, copyright and royalties, pirated editions, money matters are intertwined with educational ethics . . . and a concern for the fair recognition of women’s careers. In her dealings with the Contemporary, “the brute Knowles” (1892), Macmillan, Bunting or John Lane, Lee struggles to make a living out of writing. Keeping an eye on pirated editions of her works in America, she is satisfied when an agreement between her publishers grants her the American and foreign rights and a royalty for Vanitas (August 1891) and when the American publisher McIlvaine accepts Althea (1893). The time will come (Volume IV) when she is in need of an agent or a lawyer and she will have to choose between luxury editions as opposed to cheaper copies so as to ensure a larger readership: a sign that writing is at last recognised as a profession and her books as marketable. Such professionalisation of fiction, essay writing and translation entailed the necessity of looking for new markets, because the peculiarity of her position as a transnational and multilingual author resulted in poor distribution across an expensive patchwork of niche national markets (France, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom), which made distribution more costly and less efficient than around a single extensive market like America. Encouraged by Marie-Thérèse Blanc’s (Th. Bentzon’s) example, Lee states her wish to go to America for a round of lectures. Il Palmerino feels so empty now. But she is not the one who will end up going. Eugene will. From writing to lecturing and teaching Meanwhile, her books did not sell as well as Pater’s, Mrs Ward’s or other writers’, and yet, she is not ready to take the same turn as Henry James who, “[u]nder the lash of necessity,” decides to write for the stage in 1891. H. James invited her to the London premiere of his play The American, adapted from his 1876 novel, on 30 September 1891. Henry James was undeterred by the poor reception of his first play: Yes, the public is vulgar and vile, yes, a first play is a mere getting one’s foot into the stirrup; yes, one must be in the saddle, in order to go. . . . The American has put me in the saddle and now I shall go. But wait – ah, wait – this is nothing. Wait till I begin to ride! (Henry James to Lee, October 2, 1891) xxxix

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But Lee thinks otherwise: “A great deal . . . seems to me unnecessary concession to a vulgar public” (Lee to Matilda Paget, October 2, 1891), and “I would not ride such a public as this!” (Lee to Matilda Paget, October 4, [1891]). Two days after seeing the play a second time, on 7 November of that year, she decides to try lecturing as “a mode of influence and money making” (Lee to Matilda Paget, November 9, [1891]) and because she believes in enlightening those who cannot access high culture. While in London in the summer and fall of 1891, Lee becomes involved in the university extension program by giving her first lectures on ancient art and aesthetics in the East End and at Toynbee Hall (Kit also lectures at Toynbee Hall in 1892), and at times she stays in the new settlement houses for women. Lee’s first lecture in London on 20 November 1891 encouraged her, and in the spring of 1892, she lectures on “the place of sculpture in Renaissance art” at the Society of Public Lectures in Rome. In August 1893 she lectures in Cambridge and is invited to dinner by “the Lecturer ladies” of Newnham College. Her experience of lecturing in London, Cambridge, Oxford and Rome allows her to meet other intellectuals: Eugénie Sellers, Mrs Arthur Strong etc. and new audiences: The audience, as you know, were not at all university people, but a sort of vast intellectual pilgrimage called University Extension meeting, which come together here & at Oxford every summer for a sort of fortnight’s debauch [débauche] of lectures on every imaginable subject. . . . They are, I should think, mainly of the class of school teachers; also Americans & people desirous of disconnected culture. (Vernon Lee to Matilda Paget, Cambridge, August 20, [1893]) In 1894, she gives three lectures in London from late June to 13 July, trying to improve her technique: following Kit’s advice, she writes down her lectures so as to avoid “improvising much beyond the words – new ideas come up & I cannot restrain myself from going after them, with the result of confusing and spoiling the proportions of the whole.” This makes her second lecture that summer “a great success” much to her surprise: “people are evidently very different from me, to prefer dull reading out loud to speaking” (Lee to Matilda Paget, July 6, 1894). Kit helps her fight the fatigue caused by the process “by dosing [her] with champagne.” Lee comments: “As I never drink this from sumptuary motives at dinner parties, it has retained its medical powers, & pulled me round” (Vernon Lee to Matilda Paget, July 13, 1894). In June 1895, in Oxford, she enjoys her lecturing, although it turns out far less profitable than she hoped, and proudly announces to her mother: “I have been offered £100 for a series of lectures at Braemar College near Philadelphia!!!” (Lee to Matilda Paget, July 13, 1895). Her lectures on Art and Life get published in the Contemporary Review in 1895, and she collects some of them in Renaissance Fancies and Studies (London: xl

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Smith, Elder, 1895). Beyond the satisfaction of getting that work published, Lee is eager to teach others the “craft of writing,”11 and her pieces on this topic were to be collected in The Handling of Words and Other Studies in Literary Psychology (London: John Lane, 1923). that odd and unnatural word GONE. (Hortus Vitae, p. 82) By the time she turned 40, Vernon Lee experienced several emotional blows. Her close friend and longtime mentor Walter Pater died on 30 July 1894. She mourned him as a friend: “Although he gave himself so little in conversation, I feel a great satisfaction in having had his friendship & witnessed his kind, & in a way (being an invalid) bravely serene life” (Lee to Placci, August 9, [1894]). And her tribute to “the master we have recently lost, of the master who, in the midst of æsthetical anarchy, taught us once more, and with subtle and solemn efficacy, the old Platonic and Goethian doctrine of the affinity between artistic beauty and human worthiness” can be found in “Valedictory,” the last chapter in Renaissance Fancies and Studies (London: Smith, Elder, 1895). That same year, four months later, on 14 November 1894, her father died from asthma. Vernon had to deal with the funeral alone, hiding the truth of her father’s cremation from her mother. He had such a simple, sportsman’s or naturalist’s temper; latterly I used to enjoy making him tell me how plants grew, and clouds & water moved; he seemed to know by a sort of intuitive affinity. Perhaps he would have been an explorer like Beccari or Wallace; but with his very few wants, his life has been quite happy; & I am so glad he had that chapter of action & adventure in the Polish & Hungarian insurrection, that he had not been merely a common-place man of business or clubs. (Lee to Clementina Anstruther-Thomson, November 9–10, 1894) Far from showing any grief, Eugene Lee-Hamilton started to recover from chronic illness soon after his stepfather’s death – and Lee thanked Clementina Anstruther-Thomson for such a sudden resurrection: “it was Kit who carried through the long, delicate and extremely difficult work of giving [Eugene] the courage and pertinacity needful to carry out the instructions of the famous Dr Erb of Heidelberg” (Art and Man, p. 18). By that time, Eugene Lee-Hamilton had published four collections of poetry, and his name was better known in England, Italy and America. Eighteen months after her father’s death, Vernon Lee was hit again in the death of her mother on 8 March 1896. Kit also nursed Matilda until the end. “In the small hours of that night of 7 to 8 March K. [Kit] sent me to bed. And when she woke me at dawn it was to say my mother had died in her arms” (Art and Man, p. 18). That xli

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Grave of Vernon Lee’s family, Cimitero Evangelico all Allori, Florence. Photo by Stefano Vincieri.

was a severe blow to Vernon, who had enjoyed a daily contact with her mother throughout her life and acknowledged her debt to her “dearest Mamma,” whose “creature” she felt she was: “I think constantly, here in Rome, all that you did for me while we lived here, & how completely you made me intellectually, how completely . . . son la tua creatura” (Lee to Matilda Paget, Rome, 10 February 1890). The blow was all the harder as brother and sister drifted apart only hours after their mother’s death: “On coming back [from the funeral], my half brother told me that now that our mother was gone he wished to separate his life from mine xlii

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and make the best of the health to which he had been so unexpectedly restored” (Art and Man, p. 19). Having been brought into contact with so many deaths of loved ones, she tried to end a quarrel with Carlo Placci, writing: “the events of the last two years have made life seem too serious for unnecessary separations & estrangements. . . . All this seems rather sadly ridiculous, in the presence of poor Nencioni’s probable end” (Lee to Carlo Placci, June 16, 1896). On 25 August 1896, in Ardenza, their common friend Enrico Nencioni succumbed to the repeated attacks of chronic angina pectoris he had suffered from for over a year and a half. Feeling how vulnerable she was, Lee made her will on 28 September 1896. She asked Eugene to be her chief executor, Bella Duffy being the other one (Lee to Eugene Lee-Hamilton, September 28, [1896]), buying annuities and leaving “the residue of [her] capital” to Kit and “clinging to” the Palmerino which “might represent great pleasure & profit to people poorer than myself” and is “the only thing I care for in the world”. Published works during that time Hauntings: Fantastic Stories. 1889. London: Heinemann, 1890. Bodley Head, 1906. Contents: “Amour Dure”; “Dionea”; “Oke of Okehurst”; “A Wicked Voice.” “Pictor Sacrilegus,” The Contemporary Review, 60 (1891): 188–206, 372–387. Reprinted in Renaissance Studies and Fancies. London: Smith, Elder, 1895. Vanitas: Polite Stories. (“Two Novels”) London: Heinemann, 1892. New York: Lovell Coryell, ca. 1892. Contents: “Lady Tal”; “A Frivolous Conversion”; “A Worldly Woman”; “The Legend of Mme Krasinska.” “Ravenna and Her Ghosts,” Macmillan’s, 70 (1894): 380–389. Reprinted in the second edition of Limbo and Other Essays. London: Grant Richards, 1908. Au Pays de Vénus (Paris: Dentu, 1894). Transl. by “Robert de Cerisy” [Madame Gaston Paris, née Marguerite Savary] and “Camille de Cendrey” [Charles Bernard-Derosne], preface by Frédéric Masson. Contents: Préface; Première partie: Hallucinations: “Dionea,” “Voix maudite,” [Originally in French in Les Lettres et les arts. Août 1887, 125–153], “Oke de Okehurst”; “Amour qui dure” [sic]; Deuxième partie: Varia: “Le Prince aux cent soupes. Représentation de marionnettes en récit”; “La Nativité”; “Ottilie.” “A Wicked Voice” (slightly different from the French version). In Hauntings: Fantastic Stories. London: Heinemann, 1890. 195–237. “A Worldly Woman,” Contemporary Review, 58 (October-November 1890). “An Eighteenth-Century Singer, an Imaginary Portrait.” The Fortnightly Review, 50 (December 1891): 842–880. “A Seeker of Pagan Perfection: Being the Life of Domenico Neroni, Pictor Sacrilegus” The Contemporary Review, 60 (1891): 188–206, 372–387. Rpt. in Renaissance Fancies and Studies. London: Smith, Elder, 1895. Althea: A Second Book of Dialogues on Aspirations and Duties. London: Osgood, McIlvaine, 1894. [Includes “Orpheus in Rome.”] xliii

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Renaissance Fancies and Studies. London: Smith, Elder, 1895. “Emerson, Transcendentalists and Utilitarians,” The Contemporary Review, LXVII (March 1895), 345–420. “Cosmopolis,” 1896. Rpt. 1904. “Orphée à Rome,” S. l., 1895. Revue des Deux Mondes, 1er novembre 1895. “The Image,” Cornhill Magazine, May 1896 (rpt. as “The Doll” in 1927). “Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady,” The Yellow Book, July 1896; later rpt. in Pope Jacynth (1904). “Dionéa,” Les Lettres et les Arts, 1888. Transl. Charles Bernard-Derosne (pseud. “Camille de Cendrey”), 1894. “La Madone aux sept glaives”, transl. Eugene Lee-Hamilton, Feuilleton du journal des débats du Samedi, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14 February 1896, English translation as “The Virgin of the Seven Daggers” in two parts in the issues of January and February 1909 of The English Review (1908–1909), pp. 223–233; 453–465, rpt. in For Maurice: Five Unlikely Stories (London: John Lane, 1927), rpt. in Supernatural Tales, Irene Cooper-Willis (ed.) (London: Peter Owen, 1987).

Notes 1 Vernon Lee, “New Friends and Old,” Hortus Vitae, Essays on the Gardening of Life (London & New York: John Lane, “The Bodley Head,” 1904, pp. 65–74), p. 70. 2 Richard Cary, “Vernon Lee’s Vignettes of Literary Acquaintances”, Colby Library Quarterly, series 9, no. 3 (September 1970), p. 179–199. 3 Michael M. Gorman (ed.), Mary Berenson, Diaries, 1891–1900, p. 455: The Berenson Digital Archive: www.mmgorman.it/bernard-berenson/ 4 Vernon Lee, “Receiving Letters,” Hortus Vitae; Essays on the Gardening of Life, 1904. 5 Vernon Lee, “Receiving Letters,” Hortus Vitae; Essays on the Gardening of Life, 1904, pp. 55–64. 6 “toujours, par un lien invisible de psychologie raffinée, avec une sorte de scepticisme et d’incrédulité discrète qui ne permet pas l’étonnement, Vernon Lee conduit les êtres du présent à vivre et à aimer dans le passé” (Masson, Au Pays de Vénus, p. xiv). 7 “Mes fantômes sont ce qu’on appelle des fantômes de contrebande (les seuls véritables selon moi) dont je ne puis affirmer qu’une chose, c’est qu’ils hantaient certains cerveaux, et, qu’entre autres, ils ont hanté le mien et celui de mes amis – le vôtre, mon cher Arthur Lemon . . . et le vôtre aussi . . . chère Flora Priestley” (Vernon Lee, “Dedication to Arthur Lemon and Flora Priestley, painters,” Au Pays de Vénus). 8 Daniel Halévy’s Letters and Carnets 1886–1914, including his diaries and travel notes from Italy 1896, 1897, 1901 and 1904, are held at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Fonds Halévy. About Lee and Halévy, see Sophie Geoffroy, “Vernon Lee, Paul Desjardins, Daniel Halévy and Romain Rolland,” in Sophie Geoffroy (ed.), Women and Political Theory, Paris: Michel Houdiard, 2017, p. 113–131. 9 Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Fonds Halévy, N° 47. 10 Thomas Browne, Religio Medici The Religion of a Physician, 1642. Epigraph to Lee’s Commonplace Book New Series V. 11 “I feel greatly tempted, when I come to London, to give a series of lectures on the art (or rather the craft) of writing” (Lee to Lady Jeune, February 21, 1896).

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Transcription We are offering a standardised linear transcription of all available letters by Vernon Lee, held at more than forty archives around the world. The policy of this edition is to reproduce the text of the letters so that they appear as close as possible to the original manuscripts. That said, it is impossible to exactly replicate in typeface what is written by hand, to capture the nuance of a person’s handwriting. The following are points of transcription that we were able to incorporate that achieve our purpose of displaying the informal nature of Lee’s composition. • • • • • • •

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Deletions are rendered with strikethroughs. Inserted words and phrases are surrounded by ‸carets‸. Printed letterheads are rendered in SMALLCAP. If the physical location of transcribed text (written on the back of the envelope, in the margin) is significant, we note that in a footnote. If Lee included a drawing in the text, we either describe it or provide a scan of the image. We place full names in brackets in the letter text sometimes when Lee only uses an abbreviated name. We retain Lee’s use of punctuation. In general, she used commas sparingly, especially in letters written near the end of her life. In the few instances where we have added punctuation because the sentence would be difficult to understand without it, the mark is placed in brackets. Lee’s most common unorthodox use of punctuation (to modern eyes but not to the nineteenth-century reader) was dashes to end sentences, instead of periods. This occurs more frequently in her early letters, and we retain them because they are characteristic and their purpose is clear. We follow her paragraphing, which often results in long paragraphs. At times, she does not indent new paragraphs but gives a line space as an introduction into a new thought. In that case, we indent a new paragraph. However, it is not always clear whether she is indicating a new paragraph, or inadvertently

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allowing more space between lines. Regardless, we use our best judgment as to whether she is signalling a new thought and thereby a new paragraph. We retain abbreviations, such as “shd,” “wd” and “yr.” We retain ampersands. Due to typographical restraints, we were not able to reproduce Lee’s informal ampersand, which is written as a simple cross, like an addition symbol (+). Instead, we use the formal “&.” Though this is not completely representative of her mark, it was more important to show that she used a symbol rather than “and.” We place within square brackets and in italics any piece of information (such as dates or comments) not written by Lee at the time of writing the letter. It may have been written at a later date by her or by an archivist. Finally, but most importantly, for words that are illegible, we use “xxxxx” and we attempt to give as many x’s as we believe there are letters in the illegible word.

Headnotes to letters Letters are given in chronological order. The brief headnote to each letter gives the recipient’s name, the date or date range of composition, the location from which the letter was written and the archive where the letter is housed. If an envelope survives, we provide a transcription of the address and any other notes on it. If Lee did not date the letter, we use the date of the postmark if the envelope survives; otherwise, we provide a conjecture for the date. If there is a letterhead, we transcribe it, even when it is at odds with the actual place from where it was sent. Any part of the date in the headnote that is placed in brackets means it is the editor’s conjecture.

Emendations Lee was a clear prose writer for most of her life, but her compositional style, as described earlier in this introduction, provides some challenges to the average reader. Her long sentences can be filled with clauses that, at times, lack a verb or the correct verb tense. Sometimes, she writes a series of incomplete sentences that appear more like dashes of thought rather than clear statements. Also, Lee never received a formal education in the form of a boarding school or ladies’ college, but learned composition from a series of tutors and senior fellow writers over the years and from her reading in four different languages. She was fluent in French, German, Italian and English, and sometimes resorts to translanguaging, which undoubtedly turns the experience of reading her unique letters into an intercultural challenge. It has been essential for us to provide complete transcriptions of the letters in their entirety. Some of the letters transcribed by Irene Cooper-Willis were more or less heavily edited for her Vernon Lee’s Letters 1870–1894, privately printed in 1937. When there are deletions, alterations or omissions of words, phrases, xlvi

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sentences or even complete paragraphs, we have restored the omitted passages and signalled them in footnotes. When making editorial choices, it is also of primary importance to maintain the original tenor of the letters, which for Lee ranges from conversational and informal tones to a professional stance when writing to a publisher or colleague, and we were conscious of the effect any emendations could make to the style of her letter writing. In fact, we retain most of Lee’s errors in spelling and composition in her letters in Italian, French, German and English because we want to give an honest portrait of Lee’s capabilities in these languages, and we abstain, as elsewhere, from using “sic.” Emendations we did make allow for a comprehendible reading of the letters in book format. The obvious emendation is when a word or mark of punctuation is given in [brackets]. If Lee omits a word that is essential to the sentence, such as an article or verb, we add it in brackets. If it is necessary to add a comma in order to understand a run-on sentence, we place it in brackets. It should be understood that, throughout, whatever falls within brackets is the editor’s addition to the text. Silent emendations that were necessary to make are explained next. Any other emendations are visually cued in the letters themselves and/or explained in footnotes. •

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When Lee wrote a paragraph symbol “¶” or a “#” in the middle of a line, we do not retain it. If it is clear she meant to signal a new paragraph, we do so. If the usage is ambiguous (with the #), we let the sentence stand as is. Oftentimes, it appears the “#” was used to show Lee was starting a new thought, not a new paragraph. We correct anomalous spelling errors in English. Lee does sometimes offer unique misspellings of words that are illustrative of her style. If it is clear what the word is, we retain it with no explanation. However, if she misspells a word once or twice where elsewhere she correctly spells it, we give the correct spelling so as not to mislead the reader about her competency. Where she repeats a word, we transcribe one. We add a period where she forgot to punctuate a sentence. It is often easy to determine that she meant to end the sentence because the next word has an initial capital letter. We correct the position of apostrophes in her contractions; for example, we transcribe “isn’t” instead of “is’nt.” We standardise the placement of salutations and valedictions. We retain exactly what she wrote, but position it uniformly. This is because it is impossible to reproduce in a word processing software every variation in her placement of these elements on the manuscript page. For ordinal endings (3rd, 8th), we give a consistent superscript form. Lee sometimes underlines the “rd” or “th” (though not invariably), without necessarily making them visually superscript. xlvii

E D I T O R I A L P O L I C Y: T E X T U A L A N D T E C H N I C A L C O N S I D E R AT I O N S

Annotation Annotations are given as footnotes to each letter. For letters in languages other than English, the annotations are given in the English translations only. These footnotes draw attention to glosses and other explanatory information as well as record material aspects of the letter, such as a drawing in the margin or an emendation made to the text, as explained earlier. However, the majority of footnotes are explanatory in nature. Our policy is to provide glosses of words and phrases (if Lee’s usage is very obscure), to identify the people or subjects Lee discusses and to give a historical context when she writes about contemporary events. We provide transcriptions of any French, Italian, German or Latin words or expressions in the text, preceded by an editors’ note: “in French in the text,” “in Italian in the text,” “in German in the text” or “in Latin in the text,” as the case may be. We also provide as much bibliographic information as possible when Lee describes the books and articles she is writing, the books she is reading, as well as the work of her friends. Sometimes, it can be difficult to identify an article if published in a short-lived journal, but much of what she mentions we were able to identify. The identifications of Lee’s extended family and acquaintances that she mentions were in part the most challenging aspect of the annotation. After 1880, Lee regularly travelled to England in the summers. She would take various routes through Europe on her journeys there and back to Italy, stopping along the way to visit friends. When in England, she attended parties in London and Oxford and toured the countryside. In all these travels, she made many new friends and reported back to her mother, Eugene, Mary Robinson and her later partners everything she could recall about whom she met and her impressions of them. These figures ranged from the very famous to the very obscure. We have tried to identify and/or provide a full biographical note for every person mentioned. If we failed to identify a person that is mentioned more than once or in some other significant way, we say “unidentified” in the footnote. If a person is only mentioned once or twice and there is no footnote of identification, then the reader should assume we could not identify him or her. A biographical note is given at the first mention of the person in the letters, unless the figure is a correspondent in the volume. In that case, the reader is directed to the List of Correspondents where fuller biographies are provided. Cross-references are scattered throughout the edition to remind readers where biographical notes are given, but the index is indispensable for locating the first mention of a figure and his or her note. For those who were very important to Lee, but of whom little is known, we try to give as many details as possible, supplied from either the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, DataBnF, Lee’s biographies, or other biographical registers (see the Bibliography section). xlviii

E D I T O R I A L P O L I C Y: T E X T U A L A N D T E C H N I C A L C O N S I D E R AT I O N S

If no citation is given for biographical information that is not otherwise common knowledge, then it should be assumed that the ODNB is the source. Otherwise, citations are provided. Our primary purpose has been to represent the letters responsibly and to provide helpful but not excessive information in the annotations. Lee’s letters were a pleasure to read and we trust the reader will find them to be as well.

xlix

TA B L E O F T H E L E T T E R S IN THIS VOLUME

1890 1 Florence (Italy), [January 15?, 1890]: Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi (Italian original) 2 Florence (Italy), [January 15?, 1890]: Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi (English translation) 3 Florence (Italy), [January n.d., 1890]: Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi 4 Rome (Italy), [January 21, 1890]: Matilda Paget 5 Rome (Italy), [January 22, 1890]: Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi 6 Rome (Italy), [January 25, 1890]: Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi 7 Rome (Italy), [February 4, 1890]: Matilda Paget 8 Rome (Italy), [February 5, 1890]: Matilda Paget 9 Rome (Italy), [February 10, 1890]: Matilda Paget 10 Florence (Italy), [February 25, 1890]: Percy William Bunting 11 London (England), [April 27, 1890]: Henry James to Vernon Lee 12 Florence (Italy), [May 23, 1890]: Percy William Bunting 13 Florence (Italy), [July 9, 1890]: Percy William Bunting 14 Panzano (Italy), [July 22, 1890]: Matilda Paget 15 Siena (Italy), [July 23, 1890]: Matilda Paget 16 Siena (Italy), [July 26, 1890]: Matilda Paget 17 Siena (Italy), [July 30, 1890]: Matilda Paget 18 Siena (Italy), [August 1, 1890]: Matilda Paget 19 Siena (Italy), [August 7, 1890]: Matilda Paget 20. Siena (Italy), [August 10, 1890]: Matilda Paget 21 Siena (Italy), [August 12, 1890]: Matilda Paget 22 Siena (Italy), [August 13, 1890]: Matilda Paget 23 Siena (Italy), [August 14, 1890]: Matilda Paget 24 Siena (Italy), [August 17, 1890]: Matilda Paget 25 S. Gimignano (Italy), [August 19, 1890]: Matilda Paget 26 Volterra (Italy), [August 20, 1890]: Matilda Paget 27 Pontedera (Italy), [August 22, 1890]: Matilda Paget

li

3 3 4 5 7 8 9 11 11 13 14 16 17 18 18 18 19 19 20 21 22 23 23 25 27 28 28

TA B L E O F T H E L E T T E R S I N T H I S V O L U M E

28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70

Lucca (Italy), [August 22, 1890]: Percy William Bunting Lucca (Italy), [August 23, 1890]: Matilda Paget Lucca (Italy), [August 24, 1890]: Matilda Paget S. Marcello Pistoiese (Italy), [August 28, 1890]: Matilda Paget Prataccio (Italy), [August 30, 1890]: Matilda Paget Piteglio (Italy), [September 1, 1890]: Matilda Paget Piteglio (Italy), [September 4, 1890]: Matilda Paget Bologna (Italy), [September 14, 1890]: Matilda Paget Venice (Italy), [September 16, 1890]: Matilda Paget Venice (Italy), [September 18, 1890]: Matilda Paget Venice (Italy), [September 20, 1890]: Matilda Paget Venice (Italy), [September 21, 1890]: Matilda Paget Venice (Italy), [September 21, 1890]: Matilda Paget Venice (Italy), [September 25, 1890]: Matilda Paget Venice (Italy), [September 25, 1890]: Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi Venice (Italy), [September 26, 1890]: Matilda Paget Venice (Italy), [September 30, 1890]: Matilda Paget Venice (Italy), [October 3, 1890]: Matilda Paget Venice (Italy), [October 6, 1890]: Matilda Paget Venice (Italy), [October 8, 1890]: Matilda Paget Ravenna (Italy), [October 9, 1890]: Matilda Paget Ravenna (Italy), [October 11, 1890]: Matilda Paget Ravenna (Italy), [October 14, 1890]: Matilda Paget Ravenna (Italy), [October 18, 1890]: Matilda Paget Ravenna (Italy), [October 19, 1890]: Matilda Paget Ravenna (Italy), [October 21, 1890]: Matilda Paget Ravenna (Italy), [October 24, 1890]: Matilda Paget Ravenna (Italy), [October 26, 1890]: Matilda Paget Bologna (Italy), [October 28, 1890]: Matilda Paget Rubiera (Italy), [November 1, 1890]: Matilda Paget Coccolia (Italy), [November 3, 1890]: Matilda Paget Coccolia (Italy), [November 5, 1890]: Matilda Paget Coccolia (Italy), [November 8, 1890]: Matilda Paget Forli (Italy), [November 9, 1890]: Percy William Bunting Coccolia (Italy), [November 9, 1890]: Matilda Paget Coccolia (Italy), [November 12, 1890]: Matilda Paget Coccolia (Italy), [November 17, 1890]: Matilda Paget Coccolia (Italy), [November 18, 1890]: Matilda Paget Coccolia (Italy), [November 21, 1890]: Matilda Paget Coccolia (Italy), [November 23, 1890]: Matilda Paget Coccolia (Italy), [November 24, 1890]: Matilda Paget Florence (Italy), [December 9, 1890]: Richard Garnett Florence (Italy), [December 14, 1890]: Lady Louisa Wolseley lii

29 29 30 31 31 32 33 33 34 35 35 36 37 38 39 41 42 43 44 44 45 46 47 47 47 48 48 50 51 51 51 53 54 54 55 56 58 58 61 61 63 63 65

TA B L E O F T H E L E T T E R S I N T H I S V O L U M E

1891 1 Florence (Italy), [January 22, 1891]:Telemaco Signorini (Italian original) 2 Florence (Italy), [January 22, 1891]: Telemaco Signorini (English translation) 3 Florence (Italy), [January 30, 1891]: Telemaco Signorini (Italian original) 4 Florence (Italy), [January 30, 1891]: Telemaco Signorini (English translation) 5 Nervi (Italy), [March 5, 1891]: Matilda Paget 6 Nervi (Italy), [March 5, 1891]: Matilda Paget 7 Nervi (Italy), [March 10, 1891]: Matilda Paget 8 Florence (Italy), [May 7, 1891]: Percy William Bunting 9 Montericco near Imola (Italy), [June 24, 1891]: Matilda Paget 10 Montericco near Imola (Italy), [June 25, 1891]: Matilda Paget 11 S. Domenico (Italy), [June 27, 1891]: Matilda Paget 12 Milan (Italy), [June 28, 1891]: Matilda Paget 13 Paris (France), [July 2, 1891]: Matilda Paget 14 Paris (France), [July 4, 1891]: Matilda Paget 15 London (England), [July 7, 1891]: Matilda Paget 16 London (England), [July 9, 1891]: Matilda Paget 17 London (England), [July 11, 1891]: Matilda Paget 18 London (England), [July 14, 1891]: Matilda Paget 19 London (England), [July 17, ?1891]: Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) 20 London (England), [July 17, 1891]: Matilda Paget 21 London, England, [July 18, 1891]: Matilda Paget 22 London (England), [July 20, 1891]: Matilda Paget 23 London (England), [July 25, 1891]: Matilda Paget 24 London (England), [July 28, 1891]: Matilda Paget 25 London (England), [July 30, 1891]: Matilda Paget 26 London (England), [August 1, 1891]: Matilda Paget 27 Ashford (England), [August 7, 1891]: Matilda Paget 28 Ashford (England), [August 8, 1891]: Matilda Paget 29 London (England), [August 11, 1891]: Matilda Paget 30 Ascot (England), [August 13, 1891]: Matilda Paget 31 Ascot (England), [August 15, 1891]: Matilda Paget 32 London (England), [August 17, 1891]: Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) (French original) 33 London (England), [August 17, 1891]: Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) (English translation) 34 London (England), [August 18, 1891]: Matilda Paget 35 London (England), [August 22, 1891]: Matilda Paget liii

67 67 68 68 69 69 69 70 71 71 72 72 73 76 78 78 79 79 80 81 82 83 83 84 84 85 86 86 87 87 88 89 90 93 95

TA B L E O F T H E L E T T E R S I N T H I S V O L U M E

36 Guildford (England), [August 24, 1891]: Matilda Paget 37 Maidenhead (England), [August 26, 1891]: Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi 38 London (England), [August 28, 1891]: Matilda Paget 39 Crarae (Scotland), [September 3, 1891]: Matilda Paget 40 Crarae (Scotland), [September 6, 1891]: Matilda Paget 41 Crarae (Scotland), [September 8, 1891]: Matilda Paget 42 Crarae (Scotland), [September 10, 1891]: Matilda Paget 43 Caledonian Canal (Scotland), [September 12, 1891]: Matilda Paget 44 Assynt (Scotland), [September 14, 1891]: Matilda Paget 45 Assynt (Scotland), [September 17, 1891]: Matilda Paget 46 Assynt (Scotland), [September 19, 1891]: Matilda Paget 47 Corstophine (Scotland), [September 22, 1891]: Matilda Paget 48 Chip Chase Castle (England), [September 25, 1891]: Matilda Paget 49 Leeds (England), [September 27, 1891]: Matilda Paget 50 London (England), [September 29, 1891]: Matilda Paget 51 London (England), [October 2, 1891]: Matilda Paget 52 London (England), [October 2, 1891]: Henry James to Vernon Lee 53 London (England), [October 2, 1891]: Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi 54 London (England), [October 4, 1891]: Matilda Paget 55 London (England), [October 5, 1891]: Matilda Paget 56 London (England), [October 7, 1891]: Percy William Bunting 57 London (England), [October 8, 1891]: Matilda Paget 58 London (England), [October 9, 1891]: Matilda Paget 59 London (England), [October 11, 1891]: Matilda Paget 60 London (England), [October 14, 1891]: Matilda Paget 61 London (England), [October 15, 1891]: Matilda Paget 62 London (England), [October 15, 1891]: Percy William Bunting 63 London (England), [October 17, 1891]: Matilda Paget 64 London (England), [October 22, 1891]: Matilda Paget 65 London (England), [October 22, 1891]: Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi 66 London (England), [October 23, 1891]: Matilda Paget 67 London (England), [October 25, 1891]: Matilda Paget 68 London (England), [October 28, 1891]: Matilda Paget 69 London (England), [October 31, 1891]: Matilda Paget 70 London (England), [November 2, 1891]: Matilda Paget 71 London (England), [November 5, 1891]: Matilda Paget liv

96 96 97 98 99 99 100 100 101 101 102 102 103 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 110 111 111 112 113 113 114 115 115 116 116 117 117 117 118

TA B L E O F T H E L E T T E R S I N T H I S V O L U M E

72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85

London (England), [November 7, 1891]: Matilda Paget London (England), [November 9, 1891]: Matilda Paget Thetford (England), [November 11, 1891]: Matilda Paget London (England), [November 14, 1891]: Matilda Paget London (England), [November 16, 1891]: Matilda Paget London (England), [November 18, 1891]: Matilda Paget London (England), [November 21, 1891]: Matilda Paget London (England), [November 22, 1891]: Matilda Paget London (England), [November 29, 1891]: Matilda Paget London (England), [December 1, 1891]: Matilda Paget Paris (France), [December 3, 1891]: Matilda Paget Nervi (Italy), [December 5, 1891]: Matilda Paget Nervi (Italy), [December 7, 1891]: Matilda Paget Nervi (Italy), [December 29, 1891]: Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) (French original) 86 Florence (Italy), [December 29, 1891]: Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) (English translation)

118 119 120 120 121 121 122 122 122 123 123 123 124 124 125

1892 1 London (England), [January 15, 1892]: Clementina Anstruther-Thomson 2 Florence (Italy), [January 21, 1892]: Guido Biagi (Italian original) 3 Florence (Italy), [January 21, 1892]: Guido Biagi (English translation) 4 Orvieto (Italy), [April 12, 1892]: Matilda Paget 5 Rome (Italy), [April 14, 1892]: Matilda Paget 6 Rome (Italy), [April 28, 1892]: Matilda Paget 7 Rome (Italy), [April 28, 1892]: Matilda Paget 8 Paris (France), [June 16, 1892]: Matilda Paget 9 Paris (France), [June 17, 1892]: Matilda Paget 10 Paris (France), [June 19, 1892]: Matilda Paget 11 Paris (France), [June 21, 1892]: Matilda Paget 12 Paris (France), [June 22, 1892]: Matilda Paget 13 Paris (France), [June 24, 1892]: Matilda Paget 14 Paris (France), [June 26, 1892]: Matilda Paget 15 London (England), [June 28, 1892]: Matilda Paget 16 London (England), [June 30, 1892]: Matilda Paget 17 London (England), [July 2, 1892]: Matilda Paget 18 London (England), [July 5, 1892]: Matilda Paget 19 London (England), [July 7, 1892]: Matilda Paget 20 London (England), [July 10, 1892]: Matilda Paget 21 London (England), [July 13, 1892]: Matilda Paget lv

128 130 131 132 132 133 133 133 134 135 136 136 137 137 138 138 139 139 140 140 141

TA B L E O F T H E L E T T E R S I N T H I S V O L U M E

22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

London (England), [July 17, 1892]: Matilda Paget London (England), [July 18, 1892]: Matilda Paget Ranmore (England), [July 19, 1892]: Matilda Paget Ranmore (England), [July 22, 1892]: Matilda Paget Ranmore (England), [July 25, 1892]: Matilda Paget Ranmore (England), [July 28, 1892]: Matilda Paget Ranmore (England), [July 30, 1892]: Matilda Paget Ranmore (England), [July 30, 1892]: Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi London (England), [August n.d., 1892]: Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi London (England), [August 1, 1892]: Matilda Paget London (England), [August 2, 1892]: Matilda Paget London (England), [August 5, 1892]: Matilda Paget London (England), [August 7, 1892]: Matilda Paget London (England), [August 10, 1892]: Matilda Paget London (England), [August 10 or 17, 1892]: Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi London (England), [August 12, 1892]: Matilda Paget Guildford (England), [August 15, 1892]: Matilda Paget Ashford (England), [August 17, 1892]: Matilda Paget Ashford (England), [August 18, 1892]: Matilda Paget Ashford (England), [August 20, 1892]: Matilda Paget London (England), [August 23, 1892]: Matilda Paget St Moritz (Switzerland), [August 27, 1892]: Matilda Paget St Moritz (Switzerland), [August 29, 1892]: Matilda Paget St Moritz (Switzerland), [August 31, 1892]: Matilda Paget St Moritz (Switzerland), [September 1, 1892]: Matilda Paget St Moritz (Switzerland), [September 4, 1892]: Matilda Paget St Moritz (Switzerland), [September 6, 1892]: Matilda Paget St Moritz (Switzerland), [September 8, 1892]: Matilda Paget St Moritz (Switzerland), [September 10, 1892]: Matilda Paget St Moritz (Switzerland), [September 10, 1892]: Enrico Nencioni (Italian original) St Moritz (Switzerland), [September 10, 1892]: Enrico Nencioni (English translation) St Moritz (Switzerland), [September 13, 1892]: Matilda Paget Promontogno (Italy), [September 15, 1892]: Matilda Paget Cernobbio (Italy), [September 17, 1892]: Matilda Paget Monza (Italy), [September 19, 1892]: Matilda Paget Monza (Italy), [September 20, 1892]: Matilda Paget Monza (Italy), [September 21, 1892]: Matilda Paget Monza (Italy), [September 22, 1892]: Matilda Paget Bergamo (Italy), [September 24, 1892]: Matilda Paget lvi

141 141 142 142 143 143 143 144 145 146 146 146 147 147 147 149 149 149 150 150 150 151 151 151 152 153 153 154 154 154 155 155 155 156 157 157 158 158 158

TA B L E O F T H E L E T T E R S I N T H I S V O L U M E

61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70

Bergamo (Italy), [September 24, 1892]: Matilda Paget Bergamo (Italy), [September 27, 1892]: Matilda Paget Mogliano (Italy), [September 29, 1892]: Matilda Paget Asolo (Italy), [October 1, 1892]: Matilda Paget Asolo (Italy), [October 4, 1892]: Matilda Paget Venice (Italy), [October 6, 1892]: Matilda Paget Venice (Italy), [October 9, 1892]: Matilda Paget Montericco (Italy), [October 12, 1892]: Eugene Lee-Hamilton Montericco (Italy), [October 14, 1892]: Matilda Paget Florence (Italy), [October 22, 1892]: Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”)

159 159 159 160 160 161 161 162 162 163

1893 1 Florence (Italy), [January 3, 1893]: Carlo Placci 2 Florence (Italy), [January 4, 1893]: Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) 3 Florence (Italy), [January 9, 1893]: Carlo Placci 4 Nervi (Italy), [January 31, 1893]: Matilda Paget 5 Nervi (Italy), [February 2, 1893]: Matilda Paget 6 Nervi (Italy), [February 5, 1893]: Matilda Paget 7 Nervi (Italy), [February 6, 1893]: Matilda Paget 8 Rome (Italy), [February 28, 1893]: Matilda Paget 9 Rome (Italy), [February 29, 1893]: Matilda Paget 10 Rome (Italy), [March 3, 1893]: Matilda Paget 11 Rome (Italy), [March 6, 1893]: Matilda Paget 12 Rome (Italy), [March 7, 1893]: Matilda Paget 13 Rome (Italy), [March 8, 1893]: Matilda Paget 14 Rome (Italy), [March 9, 1893]: Matilda Paget 15 Rome (Italy), [March 10, 1893]: Matilda Paget 16 Rome (Italy), [March 12, 1893]: Matilda Paget 17 Rome (Italy), [March 13, 1893]: Matilda Paget 18 Rome (Italy), [March 16, 1893]: Matilda Paget 19 Rome (Italy), [March 18, 1893]: Matilda Paget 20 Rome (Italy), [March 21, 1893]: Matilda Paget 21 Florence (Italy), [March 25, 1893]: Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) 22 Florence (Italy), [May 7, 1893]: Enrico Nencioni (Italian original) 23 Florence (Italy), [May 7, 1893]: Enrico Nencioni (English translation) 24 Ashford (England), [June 8, 1893]: Matilda Paget 25 Ashford (England), [June 9, 1893]: Matilda Paget 26 Ashford (England), [June 11, 1893]: Matilda Paget lvii

165 168 170 171 171 172 172 172 173 173 174 174 175 175 176 176 177 177 177 178 179 180 180 181 181 182

TA B L E O F T H E L E T T E R S I N T H I S V O L U M E

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

Ashford (England), [June 14, 1893]: Matilda Paget Ashford (England), [June 17, 1893]: Matilda Paget Oxford (England), [June 19, 1893]: Matilda Paget Oxford (England), [June 22, 1893]: Matilda Paget London (England), [June 29, 1893]: Matilda Paget London (England), [July 4, 1893]: Matilda Paget London (England), [July 5, 1893]: Lady Louisa Wolseley London (England), [after July 4, 1893]: Eugene Lee-Hamilton London (England), [July 7, 1893]: Matilda Paget London (England), [July 8, 1893]: Lady Louisa Wolseley London (England), [July 11, 1893]: Matilda Paget London (England), [July 13, 1893]: Matilda Paget [London (England)], [July 16, 1893]: Matilda Paget London (England), [July 21, 1893]: Matilda Paget Windsor (England), [July 22, 1893]: Henry Ferguson Paget London (England), [July 27, 1893]: Matilda Paget Paddington (England), [July 29, 1893]: Matilda Paget London (England), [July 30, 1893]: Eugene Lee-Hamilton London (England), [August 1, 1893]: Matilda Paget Bushey (England), [August 4, 1893]: Matilda Paget Bushey (England), [August 7, 1893]: Matilda Paget Bushey (England), [August 11, 1893]: Matilda Paget London (England), [August 15, 1893]: Matilda Paget London (England), [August 17, 1893]: Matilda Paget Cambridge (England), [August 20, 1893]: Matilda Paget London (England), [August 21, 1893]: Matilda Paget London (England), [August 24, 1893]: Matilda Paget London (England), [August 26, 1893]: Matilda Paget London (England), [August 31, 1893]: Eugene Lee-Hamilton Weybridge (England), [September 5, 1893]: Matilda Paget Wimbledon (England), [September 9, 1893]: Matilda Paget Farnborough (England), [September 13–14, 1893]: Matilda Paget Grantham (England), [September 15, 1893]: Matilda Paget London (England), [September 17, 1893]: Matilda Paget London (England), [September 19, 1893]: Matilda Paget London (England), [September 22, 1893]: Matilda Paget London (England), [September 29, 1893]: Matilda Paget Monza (Italy), [October 3, 1893]: Matilda Paget Igno (Italy), [October 26, 1893]: Matilda Paget Ravenna (Italy), [November 26, 1893]: Matilda Paget Ravenna (Italy), [November 29, 1893]: Matilda Paget [Florence (Italy), [December 5, 1893]: Giovanni Battista Gigliucci lviii

182 183 184 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 190 192 194 195 197 198 200 200 202 202 202 203 204 206 206 208 208 210 212 214 216 217 219 219 220 222 222 222 223 223 223 224

TA B L E O F T H E L E T T E R S I N T H I S V O L U M E

69 Florence (Italy), [December 1893–January 1894]: MarieThérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) (French original) 70 Florence (Italy), [December 1893–January 1894]: MarieThérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) (English translation) 71 Paris (France), [December 25, 1893]: Mary Darmesteter to Vernon Lee

225 225 226

1894 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Florence (Italy), [January 8, 1894]: Bernard Berenson Florence (Italy), [January 25, 1894]: Bernard Berenson Rome (Italy), [April 15, 1894]: Matilda Paget Florence (Italy), [May 7, 1894]: Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) Milan (Italy), [May 31, 1894]: Matilda Paget Paris (France), [June 2, 1894]: Matilda Paget Paris (France), [June 3, 1894]: Matilda Paget Paris (France), [June 9, 1894]: Matilda Paget Paris (France), [June 12, 1894]: Matilda Paget Oxford (England), [June 15, 1894]: Matilda Paget Oxford (England), [June 23, 1894]: Matilda Paget London (England), [June 28, 1894]: Matilda Paget London (England), [June 30, 1894]: Matilda Paget London (England), [July 3–4, 1894]: Matilda Paget London (England), [July 6, 1894]: Matilda Paget London (England), [July 12, 1894]: Alice Foulon de Vaulx London (England), [July 13, 1894]: Matilda Paget London (England), [July 14, 1894]: Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) (French original) London (England), [July 14, 1894]: Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) (English translation) Windsor (England), [July 16, 1894]: Matilda Paget London (England), [July 21, 1894]: Matilda Paget London (England), [July 24, 1894]: Matilda Paget Richmond (England), [July 24, 1894]: Matilda Paget Haslemere (England), [July 28, 1894]: Matilda Paget Haslemere (England), [July 30, 1894]: Matilda Paget Buckinghamshire (England), [August 8, 1894]: Matilda Paget Buckinghamshire (England), [August 9, 1894]: Carlo Placci Tring (England), [August 10, 1894]: Mary Ward (Mrs Humphry Ward) London (England), [August 13, 1894]: Matilda Paget London (England), [August 16, 1894]: Matilda Paget London (England), [August 21, 1894]: William Blackwood lix

227 229 232 233 235 235 236 237 238 240 242 242 243 243 245 246 247 248 249 250 252 253 254 255 255 256 258 260 260 261 262

TA B L E O F T H E L E T T E R S I N T H I S V O L U M E

32 London (England), [August 25, 1894]: Matilda Paget 33 London (England), [August 28, 1894]: Matilda Paget 34 Dunster, Somerset (England), [August 29, 1894]: Hannah Whitall Smith (Mrs Pearsall Smith) 35 London (England), [September 1, 1894]: Matilda Paget 36 London (England), [September 8, 1894]: Matilda Paget 37 London (England), [September 11, 1894]: Hannah Whitall Smith (Mrs Pearsall Smith) 38 London (England), [September 12, 1894]: Matilda Paget 39 Paris (France), [September 14, 1894]: Matilda Paget 40 San Martino (Italy), [September 18, 1894]: Matilda Paget 41 San Martino (Italy), [September 19, 1894]: Clementina Anstruther-Thomson 42 San Martino (Italy), [September 20, 1894]: Matilda Paget 43 San Martino (Italy), [September 21, 1894]: Matilda Paget 44 Igno (Italy), [September 25, 1894]: Matilda Paget 45 Florence (Italy), [October 5, 1894]: Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) 46 Florence (Italy), [October 5, 1894]: Enrico Nencioni (Italian original) 47 Florence (Italy), [October 5, 1894]: Enrico Nencioni (English translation) 48 Florence (Italy), [October 14, 1894]: Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) 49 Florence (Italy), [November 9–10, 1894]: Clementina Anstruther-Thomson 50 Florence (Italy), [November 17, 1894]: Clementina AnstrutherThomson 51 Florence (Italy), [November 18, 1894]: Carlo Placci 52 London (England), [after December 13, 1894]: Alys Pearsall Smith (Mrs Russell)

263 264 265 266 268 268 269 269 269 271 273 273 274 275 277 278 279 280 282 285 287

1895 1 Florence (Italy), [January 1, 1895]: Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) 2 San Remo (Italy), [January 26, 1895]: Matilda Paget 3 San Remo (Italy), [January 29, 1895]: Matilda Paget 4 San Remo (Italy), [January 31, 1895]: Matilda Paget 5 Genoa (Italy), [February 1, 1895]: Matilda Paget 6 Nervi (Italy), [February 3, 1895]: Matilda Paget 7 Nervi (Italy), [February 5, 1895]: Matilda Paget 8 Bogliasco (Italy), [February 12, 1895]: Matilda Paget 9 Foligno (Italy), [March 19, 1895]: Matilda Paget 10 Citta di Castello (Italy), [March 23, 1895]: Matilda Paget lx

287 289 290 290 291 291 292 293 293 293

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11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

Rome (Italy), [May 3, 1895]: Matilda Paget Rome (Italy), [May 5, 1895]: Matilda Paget Rome (Italy), [May 8, 1895]: Matilda Paget Viareggio (Italy), [May 12, 1895]: Matilda Paget Viareggio (Italy), [May 14, 1895]: Matilda Paget Basel (Switzerland), [May 31, 1895]: Matilda Paget Paris (France), [June 2, 1895]: Matilda Paget Paris (France), [June 4, 1895]: Matilda Paget Paris (France), [June 7, 1895]: Matilda Paget Paris (France), [June 8, 1895]: Matilda Paget London (England), [June 10, 1895]: Matilda Paget London (England), [June 11, 1895]: Matilda Paget [Oxford] (England), [June 13, 1895]: Clementina Anstruther-Thomson Oxford (England), [June 19, 1895]: Matilda Paget London (England), [June 26, 1895]: Matilda Paget London (England), [June 28, 1895]: Matilda Paget London (England), [July 3, 1895]: Matilda Paget London (England), [July 6, 1895]: Matilda Paget London (England), [July 11, 1895]: Matilda Paget London (England), [July 13, 1895]: Matilda Paget London (England), [July 14, 1895]: Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) (French original) London (England), [July 14, 1895]: Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) (English translation) London (England), [July 16, 1895]: Eugene Lee-Hamilton London (England), [July 17, 1895]: Lady Louisa Wolseley London (England), [July 20, 1895]: Matilda Paget London (England), [July 21, 1895]: Marie Belloc Lowndes London (England), [July 24, 1895]: Matilda Paget Le Mesnil-Beau Frêne (France), [July 28, 1895]: Matilda Paget Paris (France), [July 28, 1895]: Matilda Paget Paris (France), [July 28, 1895]: Clementina Anstruther-Thomson Florence (Italy), [August 6, 1895]: Clementina Anstruther-Thomson San Marcello (Italy), [August 14, 1895]: Matilda Paget San Marcello (Italy), [August 15, 1895]: Matilda Paget San Marcello (Italy), [August 20, 1895]: Matilda Paget Foligno (Italy), [August 20, 1895]: Matilda Paget Florence (Italy), [August 26, 1895]: Clementina Anstruther-Thomson Florence (Italy), [September 2, 1895]: Enrico Nencioni (Italian original) Florence (Italy), [September 2, 1895]: Enrico Nencioni (English translation) lxi

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49 Florence (Italy), [September 4, 1895]: Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) 50 Florence (Italy), [September 10–12, 1895]: Clementina Anstruther-Thomson 51 Florence (Italy), [September 16, 1895]: Lady Louisa Wolseley 52 Igno (Italy), [September 21, 1895]: Matilda Paget 53 Igno (Italy), [September 26, 1895]: Matilda Paget 54 Seravezza (Italy), [September 27, 1895]: Matilda Paget 55 Seravezza (Italy), [September 29, 1895]: Matilda Paget 56 Seravezza (Italy), [September 29, 1895]: Clementina AnstrutherThomson 57 Ravenna (Italy), [October 14, 1895]: Matilda Paget 58 Montericco (Italy), [October 26, 1895]: Matilda Paget 59 Florence (Italy), [November 4, 1895]: Marie Belloc Lowndes 60 Florence (Italy), [November 7, 1895]: Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) 61 Florence (Italy), [December 31, 1895]: Marie Belloc Lowndes

319 320 323 324 324 325 325 325 327 328 328 329 330

1896 1 Florence (Italy), [January 28, 1896]: Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) (French original) 2 Florence (Italy), [January 28, 1896]: Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) (English translation) 3 Florence (Italy), [February 3, 1896]: Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) 4 Florence (Italy), [February 21, 1896]: Lady Susan Elizabeth (Mary) Constantine Jeune 5 Florence (Italy), [May 3, 1896]: Harry Brewster 6 Florence (Italy), [May 17, 1896]: Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) 7 Florence (Italy), [June n.d., 1896]: Carlo Placci 8 Bologna (Italy), [June 2, 1896]: Carlo Placci 9 Bologna (Italy), [June 2, 1896]: Carlo Placci 10 Florence (Italy), [June 16, 1896]: Carlo Placci 11 Heidelberg (Germany), [July 11, 1896]: Lady Charlotte Julia Blennerhassett 12 London (England), [August 31, 1896]: Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi 13 London (England), [early September 1896]: Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi 14 Exmouth (England), [September 12, 1896]: Clementina Anstruther-Thomson

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15 Exmouth (England), [September 15, 1896]: Clementina Anstruther-Thomson 16 London (England), [September 28, 1896]: Eugene Lee-Hamilton 17 Florence (Italy), [November 23, 1896]: Gaetano Salvemini (Italian original) 18 Florence (Italy), [November 23, 1896]: Gaetano Salvemini (English translation)

lxiii

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This list provides biographical information for those whom Lee addresses in this volume. Overall, they are brief biographies that draw attention to the ways in which the person’s life intersected with Lee’s. People who are not addressees, but only spoken about in the letters, are identified in an endnote at his or her first mention. As always, the index is indispensable for finding biographical notes on the people addressed or written about. Anstruther-Thomson, Clementina Caroline (“Kit”) (1857–1921) was a Scottish painter, sculptor, connoisseur, art theorist and sportswoman born into an aristocratic Scottish family from Charleton, Fife. Clementina was the eldest of the seven children of John Anstruther-Thomson (1818–1904) and Caroline Maria Agnes Robina Hamilton-Gray (Anstruther-Thomson) (1833–1882), six of whom lived beyond twenty – her eldest brother, John St Clair Anstruther-Thomson (1853– 1873), died when Kit was sixteen. Her other brothers were Charles Frederick St. Clair Anstruther-Thomson (1855–1925), who was in the Royal Regiment of Horse Guards (“The Blues”), the cavalry regiment of the British Army; Lieut-Colonel William Anstruther-Thomson (1859–1938); and Arthur St. Clair AnstrutherThomson (1872–1904), who was in the Fife Light Horse Volunteers (“the Life Guards”), which had been founded by Kit’s father. Her sisters were Rosia Mary Clayton (1862–1956) and Beatrice Louisa Blackburn (Olive) (1870–1941). Kit’s father had a substantial fortune, a portion of which she was to inherit, but he left it to his second wife, Isobel Bruce (1859–1918), daughter of Lieutenant General Robert Bruce of Glendouglie, married on 17 June 1891, with whom he had a daughter Rachel Anstruther-Thomson (Mrs Jean Gordon-Cumming) (1892– 1968), disinheriting his children until his second wife died. This made Kit’s financial situation precarious, and Lee at times helped to sustain her. Kit was educated at home, and in the 1880s she studied art at South Kensington’s National Art Training School (now the Royal College of Art), at the Slade School of Art and in Paris with Carolus Duran until 1899. She became interested in art history (e.g. Giovanni Morelli’s works), and in psychology, especially in William James’s works. She later attended lectures by Eugénie Sellers Strong at the British Museum in 1890–1891. Kit began to spend regular winters after lxv

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1891 in Florence. Lee dedicated Althea (1894) to “C.A.T.,” and the dialogues are inspired by conversations they had, often on the duties of the well-to-do classes. Kit was involved in numerous progressive causes. “During the 1880s, she worked in support of the Bryant & May matchgirls’ strike, alongside feminist and trade unionist Clementina Black, challenging the dangerous conditions and low pay in the production of matches. According to Lee, Anstruther-Thomson’s mind ‘never ceased running on social reform’” (Heritage Humanists UK). Wanting the working classes to have access to art history, she lectured at Toynbee Hall, gave a drawing class at Morley Memorial College for Working Men and Women (now Morley College) and later served as commissioner for Girl Guides of America (later “the Girl Scouts of America”). Years later, she became involved with the Union of Democratic Control, whose membership comprised many prominent humanists, including H.N. Brailsford, Bertrand Russell and Ramsay MacDonald. The UDC – formed in response to the outbreak of the First World War – brought pacifists, socialists and Liberals together to act as a pressure group, calling for greater public scrutiny in foreign affairs and diplomacy. Lee too was involved in the UDC, serving on its General Council. In 1910, Clementina Anstruther-Thomson became a member of the West London Ethical Society, then meeting at its “Ethical Church” in Bayswater. Other members were two of Anstruther-Thomson’s close relatives: her sister-in-law, Agnes Dorothea Anstruther (1860–1941), née Guthrie, wife of Charles St. Clair Anstruther (1855–1925), Clementina’s brother, and a member since 1896; and her niece, Margaret Grizel St Clair Bonde (née Anstruther) (1882–1970). In the Ethical Church, the West London Ethical Society experimented with “social worship” and designed the building to embody their secular reverence for examples of the good, the true, and the beautiful (Heritage Humanists UK: https://heritage. humanists.uk/clementina-anstruther-thomson/). Clementina Anstruther-Thomson and Vernon Lee met on 24 July 1887 through Lee’s friends Alice Callander and Lady Archibald Campbell at Susan (Maia) Muir-Mackenzie’s home in Effingham, Surrey. Lee received the news of Mary Robinson’s engagement when she was staying at the house of Clementina Anstruther-Thomson in Scotland, who looked after her quite devotedly, which initiated the next important relationship in Lee’s life. Thomson’s caring attitude and vitality made Lee immediately attached to her. Lee learned how to swim and ride horses at Clementina Anstruther-Thomson’s. John Singer Sargent painted a three-quarter-length portrait of her standing outdoors, wearing a walking suit and a hat, and at Calcot, Kit made a portrait of Lee. After the death of Lee’s father Henry Ferguson Paget in 1894 and shortly after Eugene’s recovery that same year, when Matilda Paget’s health began to decline in 1895, Kit and Lee nursed her until she succumbed 8 March 1896. Kit also looked after Lee’s half-brother Eugene. In 1898, the overwork and stress caused by the Bernard Berenson’s accusations of plagiarism took their toll on her health and on their relationship and Kit left Lee to nurse another friend of hers, Mrs Christian Head in Scotland. lxvi

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In the 1890s Lee and Kit launched into experimental aesthetics; they collaborated on theories of aesthetics, touring galleries in Italy, France and England. Bernard Berenson joined them, often taking just Thomson on these visits, lecturing her on his theory of tactile values. Kit’s focused on the body’s physical and emotional response to stimulation, the “James–Lange theory” developed by William James (1842–1910) and Carl Lange (1834–1900). For example, in her lecture, “What Patterns Do to Us” she explains that the physical patterns on a vase have a physical effect on the human body. Her arguments claim that the perception of any form is both a physiological and a physical act, one that promotes either health or sickness. Therefore, the body requires an exposure to art because the human physiological and physical processes enjoy the process of perceiving beautiful objects. (Sorensen, Lee, ed. “Anstruther-Thomson, Clementina.” Dictionary of Art Historians. 4 July 2019, www.arthistorians.info/anstrutherthomsonc) Lee and Thomson then co-wrote “Beauty and Ugliness” (in an article in 1897, and in book form in 1912). The article was a joint collaboration, although much of the theoretical work was done by Lee. She observed Thomson’s reactions to a work of art and noted what she perceived to be physiopsychological responses to form. The article’s publication in The Contemporary Review led to a charge of plagiarism from Berenson (see Lee’s letters to Bernard Berenson and Mary Costelloe Berenson, 1897, Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. IV). Although he later abandoned his charge, Kit was deeply hurt by this affair. Thomson was always deeply interested in social reform and alleviating the suffering of the sick and poor. This empathy can be seen in her constant care for her friends and family. Her break with Lee in 1899 was due to her wanting to care for her friend Mrs Christian Head (later Cameron-Head) in Scotland instead of staying at II Palmerino for the winter. While in England she was able to devote her time to different causes: she served as a commissioner for the Girl Guide movement and took East End residents to gallery visits as part of the adult education program. Lee tried many times to get Thomson to return to II Palmerino, though she never did beyond a visit. The two kept an intimate correspondence until Thomson’s death in 1921. Lee published Thomson’s papers and notes on aesthetics in Art and Man (1924), and included a lengthy and beautifully written appreciation of Thomson’s life and work (www.geni.com/people/John-Anstruther-Thomsonof-Charleton-and-Carntyne/6000000014565024534; Heritage Humanists UK: https://heritage.humanists.uk/clementina-anstruther-thomson/; Sorensen, Lee, ed. “Anstruther-Thomson, Clementina.” Dictionary of Art Historians. 4 July 2019, www.arthistorians.info/anstrutherthomsonc). Belloc Lowndes, Marie (1868–1947), author. Her father, Louis Marie Belloc (1830–1872), was a French barrister and her mother was the active British lxvii

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feminist Elizabeth (Bessie) Rayner Parkes (1829–1925). Marie Belloc and her younger brother Hilaire considered themselves part French, having grown up in La-Celle-Saint-Cloud near Paris. From 1888 she was a regular contributor to the Pall Mall Gazette and other periodicals, and she met prominent French writers (Edmond de Goncourt, Paul Verlaine, Jules Verne). On 9 January 1896 she married Frederick Sawney Archibald Lowndes (1867–1940), a staff writer on The Times; they had one son and two daughters. A prolific writer, she published over seventy books (biographies, romances and crime novels), two of them under the penname Philip Curtin and Elizabeth Rayner. Her crime novel The Lodger (1913) is the best known and has been adapted numerous times. She was friends with Constance and Oscar Wilde, Henry James, Rhoda Broughton, George Meredith and Margot Asquith and encouraged younger authors (e.g. Graham Greene, Hugh Walpole, Margaret Kennedy, E.M. Delafield, and L.P. Hartley). She is described as “one of the cleverest of the young ladies who make a living by their pens” by Robert H. Sherard in “Notes from Paris”, The Author, Vol. III/9 February 1893, p. 323 (cited in David C. Rose, p. 505, n. 1300). A staunch supporter of women’s rights, she was president of the Women Writers’ Suffrage League in 1913. After her husband’s death (1940), she published four volumes: I, Too, Have Lived in Arcadia, A Record of Love and Friendship (London: Macmillan and Co., 1941), Where Love and Friendship Dwelt (London: Macmillan, 1943), The Merry Wives of Westminster (1946), and A Passing World (1948). Her younger brother was Hilaire Pierre René Belloc (1870–1953), the poet and author who was a public, though unofficial, representative of Roman Catholics in England. Berenson, Bernard (1865–1959) was an art historian and connoisseur. His parents were immigrants from Lithuania and settled the family in Boston. (His name was Bernhard until about 1914 when he dropped the h.) He was raised Jewish but ceased to practice in adulthood and held a generally tolerant religious view most of his life. He attended Boston University in 1883, but transferred to Harvard to study language and literature – graduating in 1887. His interests were in combining studies of literature and religion with Italian and French art. He failed to earn a fellowship after graduation, and instead was supported by his friend Isabella Stewart Gardner to travel to London and Paris to study art and architecture. He was influenced by the work of Walter Pater and John Ruskin, specifically their writings on aesthetics. In 1888 he made his first trip to Italy, deciding to devote his career to Italian art and the attribution of Renaissance and medieval works. His methods of attribution were taken from the work of his mentor Giovanni Morelli, who determined criteria for recognising a painter’s characteristic formal style. Berenson outlined these methods in The Study and Criticism of Italian Art (1902). In 1890 he met Mary Costelloe (sister of Logan Pearsall Smith) in London. During this visit they fell in love and she left her husband Frank Costelloe and her two children in order to move to Italy and assist Berenson in his work. The late 1890s was a very productive period for Berenson, in which he wrote four monographs on Renaissance painters. He also at this time began working lxviii

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for art collectors in America, earning large commissions to attribute and acquire Italian works for them. He earned his fortune this way and bought Villa I Tatti outside Florence, where he amassed an impressive art collection and library. In 1899 Frank Costelloe died and Berenson and Mary were married in 1900. By this time he had converted to the Roman Catholic Church but was not a devoted practitioner. Berenson was an enthusiastic reader of Lee’s books during and after his student years and wrote favourable reviews of all of Lee’s works up to that date (except for Miss Brown), for The Harvard Monthly ([July 1886], pp. 207–209) when he served as editor there while attending Harvard. Lee and Berenson met around 1893 in either Florence or London and began to discuss their mutual interests in art history and aesthetics. Villa I Tatti was close to II Palmerino and, like it, was a gathering place for many American, British and Italian writers and artists; he and Lee shared a circle of friends most of their lives. Berenson joined Lee and Kit when they toured galleries in the late 1890s. He also often took just Thomson on visits, lecturing her on his theory of tactile values. Lee and Thomson then co-wrote “Beauty and Ugliness” (in an article in 1897, and in book form in 1912). The article’s publication led to a charge of plagiarism from Berenson (see Lee’s letters to Berenson and Costelloe Berenson, 1897), though he later abandoned his charge. (See Amanda Gagel, “1897, A Discussion of Plagiarism: Letters between Vernon Lee, Bernard Berenson, and Mary Costelloe,” Literary Imagination, 12: 2 (2010), pp. 154–179; Sophie Geoffroy-Menoux, “Henry James and Family: Eleven Unpublishd Letters”, Sources, Revue d’Etudes Anglophones, printemps 2003, N°14, Université d’Orléans, pp. 7–111.) Berenson remained in Florence during the First and Second World Wars but was forced to go into hiding briefly when the Germans occupied Italy after the fall of Mussolini. He and Mary never had children and she died in 1945. Thereafter his companion and secretary was Nicky Mariano, who assisted Berenson in finishing his last works on aesthetics and art history and his autobiography Sketch for a Self-Portrait (1949). Before his death at the age of ninety-five, he bequeathed to Harvard University Villa I Tatti and his library and art collection. Berenson, Mary (Costelloe) (“Mary Logan”) (1864–1945) was an author and art historian. She was born in Pennsylvania to Quaker missionaries Robert Pearsall Smith and Hannah Whitall Smith. Her siblings included the literary critic Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) and Alys Pearsall Smith (1867–1951), first wife of Bertrand Russell. Her first husband was the Irish lawyer Francis Conn Costelloe (1855–1899) with whom she had two daughters: Rachel (Ray) Pearsall Conn Costelloe (1887–1940), who was a suffragette and novelist and married Oliver Strachey (1874–1960), Lytton Strachey’s brother; and Karin Elizabeth Conn Costelloe (1889–1953), psychiatrist and member of the British Psychoanalytical Society; in 1914 she married the psychoanalyst Adrian Leslie Stephen (1883–1948), Leslie Stephen’s fourth child and Virginia Woolf’s and Vanessa Bell’s brother. lxix

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In 1890, Mary met and fell in love with Bernard Berenson, with whom she shared interests in Renaissance art. She moved to Florence soon after to be with him, but they lived in separate homes until Frank Costelloe’s death in 1899. Ray and Karin were brought up by their grandmother, Hannah Pearsall Smith, after their mother left. Then in 1900, Mary and Berenson married and lived together at Villa I Tatti. Her works included articles and pamphlets on Italian art, such as Guide to Italian Pictures at Hampton Court, with Short Studies of the Artists (1894) and A Tentative List of Italian Works Worth Seeing (1908), and books on her travels: A Modern Pilgrimage (1933), Across the Mediterranean (1935) and A Vicarious Trip to the Barbary Coast (1938). She suffered from depression and invalidism on and off during the 1920s and 30s, and died in 1945. Biagi, Guido (1855–1925), was a Florentine philologist, archivist, palaeographer and director of the collection “Biblioteca scolastica dei classici italiani” (Sansoni publishing house). He collected anecdotes about authors’ lives: Aneddoti letterari, 1887; Passatisti (1923); Fiorenza, fior che sempre rinnovella (1925). He was director of the Biblioteca Marucelliana (1886–1889) then of the Riccardiana and the Mediceo-Laurentiana (1899–1923) in Florence. He directed numerous bibliographical journals, for example from 1884 to 1894, Biagi directed the Rivista delle biblioteche, then from 1895 to 1923, he directed the Rivista delle biblioteche e degli archivi. He also published the phototypical reproduction of the Zibaldone boccaccesco of the Laurenziana (1915); in 1895, with L. Passerini, he began the diplomatic transcription of a codex by Dante. He founded the Journal of Libraries and Archives (1888), which he directed until his death. He devised and published the first Italian Who’s Who? in 1908. In 1892 when Lee met him, he authored Gli ultimi giorni di P. B. Shelley: con nuovi documenti; in 1895, Napoléon inconnu and in 1896, La vita privata dei fiorentini antichi. He was president, and Giuseppe Lando Passerini chancellor, of the Associazione amici dei monumenti a Firenze (see Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. IV, forthcoming). Blackwood, William (1836–1912), literary editor and publisher, was the grandson of the founder of Blackwood’s publishing business, William Blackwood (1776–1834). After a brief time at the University of Edinburgh, he joined his father William Blackwood (1810–1861) and uncle John Blackwood (1818–1879) in 1857 at the family business. After his uncle’s death, he took over as complete head of the firm in 1879. Blackwood’s was one of the most recognizable and successful publishing firms in England and Scotland in the mid-nineteenth century, as a book publisher and producer of the influential Blackwood’s Magazine. As editor, William contracted some of the first works of Stephen Crane, Jack London and Joseph Conrad, as well as Anthony Trollope’s An Autobiography (1883). He published Vernon Lee’s first novel Miss Brown (1884) and was Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s first publisher, producing his collection Poems and Transcripts (1878). Blackwood never married and finally stepped away from managing the business in 1910, handing over the reins to his nephews. lxx

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Blanc, Marie-Thérèse née von Solms (1840–1907) (“Th. Bentzon” or “Theo. Bentzon”) was an influential French novelist, literary critic, essayist and translator. She married banker Joseph Louis Alexandre Blanc at the age of sixteen (he was twenty-three years old) in 1857 and they later separated. Their son was the French explorer, geographer, engineer and photographer Edouard Blanc (1858– 1923). The present volume records the circumstances of his marriage (1893) with Jeanne Marie Madeleine Leblanc (1862–1913) and the birth of his daughter Marie Olympe Christine Blanc on 6 August 1894; another child Charles Alexandre Michel Blanc (1895–1965) was born in 1895. Marie-Thérèse Blanc is best-known for her fantastic stories, and her translations from English authors into French. As a major reviewer in the Revue des Deux Mondes she contributed to the reception of American authors in Europe, for example Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt Whitman, E.C. Stedman, Henry David Thoreau, W.D. Howells and Henry James. She became a personal friend of Sarah Orne Jewett and an important critic of her work. She published a laudatory twenty-page review of Lee’s Miss Brown in the March 1887 issue of the Revue des Deux Mondes (“La Satire de l’Esthéticisme”) and became a close friend of Lee’s. Immensely popular in America, her tour to Boston and Chicago in 1893–1894 was advertised in the press and resulted in The Condition of Women in the United States: A Traveller’s Notes (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1895, tr. Abby Langdon Alger). See Joan M. West, “America and American Literature in the Essays of Th. Bentzon: Creating the Image of an Independent Cultural Identity,” History of European Ideas 1987 Volume 8 (4–5) pp. 521–535. She often served as a go-between for Vernon Lee’s texts to be published in France and she contributed to Lee’s stories being translated into French, introducing translators to her and correcting those translations. The Fonds Foulon de Vaulx in the Tours Library holds a copy of Lee’s Renaissance Fancies and Studies: Being a Sequel to Euphorion (London: Smith, Elder, 1895; Edinburgh: Ballantyne, Hanson & Co) inscribed by Lee to Mme Blanc/Th. Bentzon (inscription dated 1895) (FDV 2643) and three books inscribed by the latter to Vernon Lee: Les Américaines chez elles: notes de voyage (2nd ed. Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1896) (FDV 1085); Choses et gens d’Amérique (Paris: CalmannLévy, 1898) (FDV 1086) and Nouvelle-France et Nouvelle-Angleterre (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1899) (FDV 1087). Vernon Lee met Gabrielle Delzant thanks to Marie-Thérèse Blanc. Blennerhassett, Lady Charlotte Julia (1843–1917) was a historian and author of several books. She was from an old Bavarian family (von Leyden) and in 1870 married Irish-born Sir Rowland Blennerhassett, Liberal MP and editor of the short-lived Roman Catholic Liberal periodical The Chronicle. Lady Blennerhassett’s works include Madame de Stael, Her Friends and Her Influence in Politics and Literature (1889), Talleyrand (1894) and contributions to the Cambridge Modern History. Brewster, Henry B. (“Harry”) (1850–1908) was a philosopher and a poet of Anglo-American origins. He was educated in France and spent most of his life in lxxi

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Italy. He authored books written both in French and in English on art and aesthetics and some atheistic philosophical dialogues. His works include The Prison: a Dialogue (1931); The Statuette and the Background (1896); The Theories of Anarchy and Law: A Midnight Debate (1887); and L’âme Paienne (1902), a philosophical dialogue between a doctrinaire and a pagan about religion and belief. Brewster favours the pagan argument. He was a part of Lee and Berenson’s circle of friends in Florence and was romantically involved with the composer Ethel Smyth (a friend of Lee’s as well) for many years. He collaborated with her on the libretto for her opera in French Les Naufrageurs (The Wreckers). His circle of friends often mixed with Lee’s and the two appreciated each other’s work. See “Vernon Lee, Brewster and the Berensons in the 1890s,” by Alison Brown (Dalla stanza accanto: Vernon Lee e Firenze settant’ anni dopo, Atti del convegno internazionale di studi Firenze 26–28, maggio 2005: Articles from Vernon Lee Conference in Florence, 2005). Harry Brewster’s son, Christopher, married Lisl Hildebrand, daughter of the German sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand, another acquaintance of Lee’s. Bunting, Percy William (1836–1911) was a social reform activist and editor of The Contemporary Review from 1882 to 1902. He had degrees from Owens College, Manchester, and Pembroke College, Cambridge. He practiced law from 1862 to 1895, but as his journalistic duties took over, he devoted less and less time to his practice. Marrying Mary Hyett (1840–1919) in 1869, they had five children together. The Buntings were devout Methodists, and Percy and his wife devoted much of their time to causes that promoted the Methodist Church and the free church movements, as well as movements dedicated to the advancement of standards of public morality. When Percy Bunting took over as editor of The Contemporary Review, its focus shifted to covering the arts, politics and social reform movements, and he encouraged contributions from foreign writers, especially in France and Germany. After leaving the Review, he fostered collaboration among journalists in different countries by helping to form the Anglo-German Friendship Society in 1911. Ferguson Paget, Henry (1820–1894), Lee’s father, was the son of a French émigré nobleman, Monsieur de Fragnier, and an English mother, née Paget. In Henry’s youth, the family lived in Warsaw as his father was commissioned by Emperor Alexander to open a University College, a school for the nobility, where he was headmaster for fourteen years. Henry was probably educated there and became an engineer. According to Lee’s memories of him, he helped to build the railway from Warsaw to Moscow. He was later involved in the Polish revolutionary insurrections and was forced to leave the country in 1848. He went to Germany and then France, where he became a tutor. That was where he met Matilda and was hired as Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s tutor, whose father, Capt Lee-Hamilton, had died in 1852. They lived in the Château of Bizanos, near Pau, with Matilda’s widowed sister-in-law Agnes Snow Shakespeare MacPherson Abadam and her young daughter Pauline, then three years old. Matilda’s brother William MacPherson Abadam (Adams) died in 1851 in lxxii

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Pau. Both women were widows with small children and may have hired Paget as tutor for all of them. Henry married Matilda in Dresden on 13 October 1855. At some point Matilda and Henry went to Boulogne-sur-Mer and stayed in the manor house of their friends Major François Bergonzi and his wife Mary Anne Marshal. Violet was born at Château Pont-Feuillet, Saint Léonard on 14 October 1856. (Michel Parenty, “Pont-Feuillet, demeure inspirée”, in De la demeure inspirée au château d’esprit balnéaire, Boulogne-sur-Mer, December 2022, p. 237–252.) An intelligent and talented man, he does not seem to have been really involved in Lee’s education, which her mother and brother almost completely controlled. Eugene Lee-Hamilton did not get on with him, but Lee was very fond of Henry, as her letters to him and her mother indicate. Henry devoted his time to hunting, fishing and painting, and he and Matilda were not a particularly devoted couple. Accounts depict him as “a good-looking man with a rather Russian expression, of middle-height, spare, thin-featured with fierce blue eyes and black hair going white in streaks” (Gunn, Vernon Lee, p. 13). He died from an asthma attack on 17 November 1894, just two years before Matilda’s death. This came as a shock to Lee who loved her father dearly. She dealt with his cremation alone and Matilda never knew about this. Lee often recollected the love for natural scenery and sciences he had instilled in her. Foulon de Vaulx, Alice Juliette Marie Charlotte (Alice) (1852–1926), née Devaulx was born in Noyon on 10 April 1852 and died in Paris on 20 March 1926, buried in the Cimetière Saint Louis (Versailles). She was a renowned pianist and knew F. Brunetière, influential editor of the Revue des Deux Mondes. Famed theatre actress Jeanne Sylvanie Arnould-Plessy (1819–1897) of the Comédie Française bequeathed to Alice her estate, Abbaye-du-Quartier (Côtes-d’Or), complete with some 1000 books. Her library testifies to her taste for contemporaneous English-speaking authors, who sometimes inscribed their works to her. She was also a translator of English works and Vernon Lee calls her “my dear translatress” (FDV 4332), and the FDV Collection holds two books inscribed by Lee to Alice Foulon de Vaulx: Penelope Brandling (Second edition. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1903) (FDV 2642) and Ariadne in Mantua: a Romance in Five Acts (Oxford: B. H. Blackwell; London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Company, 1903) (FDV 4332) which she translated into French. Alice’s husband was the industrialist and collector Henri Louis Joseph Foulon (later Foulon de Vaulx) (1844–1929) from Anvers. He had a passion for the French Revolution and came to be considered an expert after his historical enquiry (signed “Henri Provins”) into the real identity of Louis XVII. The couple resided at 139, Faubourg St-Honoré (Paris 8e). Their son was the novelist, poet, playwright and historian André Foulon de Vaulx (1873–1951), who, encouraged by Albert Samain (1858–1900), published his highly successful first volume of verse in 1894 as “André Gérard”; other works followed and he became a member (1899), then president (1936–1939) of lxxiii

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the Société des Gens de Lettres and a member of the Société des Poètes and of a number of other associations. The Foulon de Vaulx collection is held at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Tours (France). It gathers André’s own library as well as both his parents’ respective important collections: over 2000 volumes of poetry, literary and historical works, and some of them inscribed by their authors (https://ccfr.bnf.fr/portailccfr/ ark:/06871/0035427). Garnett, Richard (1835–1906) was a British scholar, librarian, biographer and poet. He read Greek, German, and Italian at the age of thirteen, and, refusing to go to Oxford or Cambridge, he entered the service of the British Museum. In 1875 he became Assistant-Keeper of printed books and superintendent of the reading room, and in 1890, Keeper. He was president of the Bibliographical Society 1895–97, and he retired from the Museum in 1899. (Joseph McCabe, Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists [London: Watts & Co., 1920], p. 280) He published his own poetry, translations of works in other languages (Greek, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese) and wrote biographies and other scholarly works: Relics of Shelley (1862); Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire (London and New York: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1895); The Age of Dryden (London: George Bell & Sons, 1901); History of Italian Literature (1898); and English Literature: An Illustrated Record (1903), and he published numerous articles in the Encyclopedia Britannica and the Dictionary of National Biography. In 1888, his collection of short stories The Twilight of the Gods (rpt. 1903) was published and it was a favourite of Lee’s. In 1901, he collected some of his literary essays in Essays of an Ex-Librarian (London: Heinemann, 1901) and was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society. Gigliucci, Giovanni (1844–1906) Italian nobleman, was the eldest son of the Italian politician Count Giovanni Battista Gigliucci (1815–1893), who was sent into exile for political reasons and took refuge in Nice from 1849 to 1861, then from 1861 to 1865 was elected to the Parliament of the Kingdom of Italy, and in 1889 became Senator of the Kingdom until his death on 29 March 1893. Giovanni’s mother was the celebrated English soprano Clara Novello (1818–1908), whom his father had met during his exile. Clara Novello performed in Germany, Spain, Portugal and Russia, but interrupted her career after her marriage. Giovanni’s siblings were Porzia (1845–1938), Mario (1847–1937) and Valeria (1849–1945). Mario and Giovanni joined the Garibaldi Volunteer Corps in the war of 1866 against the Austrians. In 1880, after living between Nice and Genoa, the two brothers and their partners Charlotte Sophia Mozley (1841–1920) and Edith Margaret Mozley (1847–1909), moved to Florence to work in the company founded lxxiv

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by Vincent Novello, the Magona d’Italia, which Mario Gigliucci later directed (1926–1936). With Edith Mozley, Mario Gigliucci had three children, Nerina (1878–1963), Donatello (1883–1975) and Bona (1885–1982), who were actively engaged in service during the First World War: Donatello as Officer of the Corps of the Alpini, and Nerina and Bona as nurses at Red Cross field hospitals. Nerina Gigliucci (later Medici di Marigliano), the eldest, was a friend of Lee’s also. A lover of theatre and literature, she is the author of several printed works, many of which are biographical about the voluntary nurses of the Florentine Red Cross during the war. (Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle, The New York Public Library; https://studiofirmano.net/fondi-archivistici/; Fondo Gigliucci, Gabinetto Vieusseux www.vieusseux.it/inventari/gigliucci.pdf) James, Henry (1843–1916), one of the greatest fiction writers and literary critics of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was a longtime friend of Lee’s. American-born but naturalised British subject in 1915, he was the son of philosopher Henry James Sr., brother of renowned psychologist and philosopher William James and of the diarist Alice James. He was exposed to European high culture at a young age and lived an expatriate’s life in France, Italy and England. A cosmopolitan writer, he developed what he called “the international theme” in most of his short stories and novels, which are based on his transatlantic experience of living abroad as a foreigner. A very conscious craftsman and careful architect of the “house of fiction” and endowed with a particularly insightful understanding of the feminine psyche, he pushed literary realism into “psychological realism.” Vernon Lee admired his work and regarded him as a friend and mentor as he had encouraged her writing, and in 1884, she dedicated Miss Brown to him: “To Henry James, I dedicate, for good luck, my first attempt at a novel.” He was embarrassed by his association with the novel which he found “unsavoury” and begged for some more time before sending her his true opinion of the novel. When they met in London in July and August 1885, James was eager to patch up their relationship and visited her often, and they became friends again. They would keep sending and inscribing their books to one another: he inscribed his Stories Revived, Vol. 1, “To Violet Paget, her friend and servant, Henry James, July 1885”; his Bostonians newly published in book form by Macmillan with the inscription “V. Paget from H. James, March, 86,” and The Princess Casamassima, Vol. I “V. Paget from H. James 1886”; Vols. II and III: “V.P. from H. James.” James had fifteen of Lee’s works in his library. In late August 1885 he introduced Lee to his American friends in Venice, Mrs Curtis from Boston and Mrs Bronson, and this was how Lee was introduced to the Palazzo Barbaro Circle which included John Singer Sargent, Isabella Stewart Gardner, Robert Browning, J.A. Symonds, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Edith Wharton and Franck Duveneck, among many others. James stayed in Florence from 5–6 December 1886 to late June 1887, spending a few days in Venice in between. In Florence, Lee introduced him to all her lxxv

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friends, such as Enrico Nencioni. They met again in July, when they were both back in London for Lee’s usual summer stay. Henry James, feeling “homesick for Italy already” (Lee to Lady Louisa Wolseley, 29 July 1887), sent his regards to Eugene. Writing to Grace Norton about his visit to the Pagets, he drew a characteristically ferocious portrait of the family: The most intelligent person in Florence is Violet Paget (Vernon Lee) who has lived there all her life, and receives every day, from 4 to 7, and as often in the evening as people will come to her. She is exceedingly ugly, not “well off,” disputatious, contradictious and perverse; has a clever, paralysed half-brother, Edward Hamilton [sic], formerly in diplomacy – who is always in her salon, bedridden or rather sofa-ridden – and also a grotesque, deformed, invalidical, posing little old mother, and a father in the highest degree unpleasant, mysterious and sinister, who walks all day, all over Florence, hates his stepson, and hasn’t sat down to table with his family for twenty years. Yet in spite of these drawbacks, Miss Paget’s intellectual and social energy are so great, that she attracts all the world to her drawing-room, discusses all things in any language, understands some, drives her pen, glares through her spectacles and keeps up her courage. She has a mind – almost the only one in Florence. (“Henry James to Grace Norton, Palazzino Alvisi, Venice, 27 February 1887.” Ms Harvard. Edel, Henry James, Letters, Volume III, pp. 165–166) Nevertheless, James’s novel The Aspern Papers was sourced from Eugene LeeHamilton’s anecdote, as the latter remembered: “Henry James has sent me (me) his new two volume novel – the Aspern Papers. Perhaps you may remember that I furnished him with the subject of it by telling him the story of old Silsby & Miss Clermont” (Eugene Lee-Hamilton to Vernon Lee, Florence, October 24, [1888]). In September 1885, Lee imagined a story whose main characters, Atalanta (Lady Tal) Walkenshaw and Jervase Marion were closely modelled respectively after Alice Callander and Henry James. This story, first entitled “Deux romans” [“Two Novels”], was published in 1889 in French in Les Lettres et les Arts, revue illustrée, with five illustrations by Albert Lynch (XVI, 1 December 1889, p. 289– 352). This issue, the last of the series, included texts by James’s friend Paul Bourget, and it is likely that James read it in French, a language he was proficient in, as soon as December 1889 or early 1890 – long before 1892, when the English version, “Lady Tal,” was published in Lee’s collection Vanitas. William James and Henry James were angered by the story, thinking it alluded to Henry’s relationship with Lee. Henry James warned his brother against being friends with her: But don’t caress her – not only on this ground but because she is as dangerous and uncanny as she is intelligent – which is saying a great deal. lxxvi

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Her vigour and sweep of intellect are most rare and her talk superior altogether. . . . At any rate draw it mild with her on the question of friendship. She’s a tiger-cat! (Henry James to William James, 20 January 1893) (Edel, Henry James, Letters, Volume III: pp. 401–402) Nevertheless, James was impressed by her gruesome, graceful, genialisch “Hauntings” . . . I have enjoyed again, greatly, the bold, aggressive speculative fancy of them – and, in addition to this, what I always taste, deeply, in all your work, the redolence of the unspeakable Italy, to whose infinite atmosphere you perform the valuable function of conductor and condenser. (Henry James to Vernon Lee, April 27, 1890) Lee included an appreciative stylistic analysis of Henry James’s The Ambassadors in her The Handling of Words (1923, p. 250): The sense is abstract, far-fetched; but how the fine ordering of the verbs forces us to go right through, with no gaping or wondering, no shirking of any part of the meaning! . . . With what definiteness this man sees his way through the vagueness of personal motives and opinions, and with what directness and vigour he forces our thought along with him! Jeune, Susan Elizabeth (Mary) Constantine (1849–1931), Baronness St Helier, was the wife of Sir Francis Henry Jeune (later Lord St Helier), a prominent judge. Susan Jeune was a well-known society hostess in London, and was active in charity work with the poor. Her social and political circle of friends was wide, and Lee may have benefited from it by acquiring connections with the elite classes. Jeune wrote a memoir titled Memories of Fifty Years (1909). Recent scholarship by William A. Davis, Jr., has shown that Lady Jeune must be credited with the invention of the expression “new woman” (lower case) in her article “Women of To-Day, Yesterday, and Tomorrow,” in the National Review (December 1889) and in the United States in the Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, new series 51 (January–June 1890), pp. 177–185 (Davis, Jr. 2014. p. 578). It was taken up and circulated by Sarah Grand five years later, then Ouida turned it into an upper-case “label that stuck” (Davis, Jr. 2014. p. 580; Kevin A. Morrison [ed.], Companion to Victorian Popular Fiction [Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2018], pp. 167–168). In 1893, she published her essay Ladies at Work: Papers on Paid Employment for Ladies by Experts in the Several Branches (London, 1893). See also Linda Hughes, “A Club of Their Own: The ‘Literary Ladies,’ New Women Writers, and ‘Fin-De-Siècle’ Authorship,” Victorian Literature and Culture, 35, no. 1 (2007), pp. 233–260, www.jstor.org/stable/40347133; William A. Davis, “Mary lxxvii

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Jeune, Late-Victorian Essayist: Fallen Women, New Women, and Poor Children,” English Literature in Transition, 1880–1920, 58 no. 2 (2015), pp. 181–208, muse. jhu.edu/article/563544. Lee-Hamilton, Eugene Jacob (1845–1907), poet and Lee’s half-brother. His father was Matilda Paget’s first husband, Captain James Lee-Hamilton (d. 1852). However, Matilda’s brother Edward raised doubts as to the legitimacy of Eugene’s birth from “a Captain Lee-Hamilton.” As Jill Davies has shown, It seems to have been a disastrous marriage for which no date is provided. No record of it has been found but if it occurred it must have taken place between 1841 and 1844. Lee-Hamilton is said to have died in 1852 when their son James Eugene, born in London on the 6th of January 1845, was aged seven. Significantly, when Matilda remarried, she was named on the marriage certificate as “Matilda Adams, daughter of Edward Hamlin Adams and Sophie, his wife, deceased”, i.e. not Mrs Matilda Lee-Hamilton, widow. In a scrapbook into which Edward [Abadam] pasted a variety of newspaper cuttings is an advertisement for a book, Fallacies of the Faculty by “Dr. Dickson”. Underneath the cutting Edward wrote “This is the father of Matilda’s son Eugene”. The advert is dated October 1839, but was pasted into the scrapbook in September 1864. (Jill Davies, “Violet Paget’s Cousin: Alice Abadam, an Active Suffragist,” The Sibyl, https://thesibylblog.com/violet-pagetscousin-alice-abadam-an-active-suffragist-by-jill-davies/) Dr Samuel Dickson (1802–1869) had been a well-known but divisive physician. His book The Fallacy of the Art of Physic (1836) challenged the standard practice at the time of bloodletting, and he built a career on criticising organised medicine through various publications. In the 1880s, his widow Eliza lived with her daughter Eliza (b. 1838), her son John (b. 1843), and John’s young son Guy (b. 1872) at Hyde Park Gate South, and Lee visited them often. Lee was especially close with “Lalla” Dickson, which may be a nickname for the daughter Eliza. Another daughter, Madeline (b. 1836), was married to a rector and lived in Glenfield. See Lee to Matilda Paget, 19–23 July 1881, Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. I (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; 1881 England Census, Class RG11; Piece 22; Folio 73; Page 4; GSU rol11341005; Ancestry.com, 2014). Eugene spent his childhood in France living with his mother and the family of his uncle William MacPherson Abadam (Adams) (d. 1851): his widowed aunt Agnes Snow Shakespeare MacPherson Abadam (Adams) (1806–1866) and his cousin Pauline at the Château de Bizanos, near Pau. On 13 October 1855, Matilda married Eugene’s tutor, Henry Ferguson Paget, and Violet, his half-sister, was born a year later, on 14 October 1856. The family then divided their time between France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. Eugene entered Oriel College, Oxford, in 1864, but left in 1866 with no degree. In 1869 he entered the Foreign Office lxxviii

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and was appointed to the embassy at Paris, all the while influencing his sister’s education at home by tutoring her in French and suggesting books for her to read. He was in the country through 1870 and during the Siege of Paris at the end of the Franco-Prussian War and during the Commune de Paris, at which time his sister and mother were visiting him and wrote letters to Henry Ferguson Paget describing scenes leading up to the siege. From Paris on January 26th he wrote to his mother that he had been selected to go as Third Secretary to Buenos Aires, but that he was determined not to accept. . . . He told his mother that if Lord Lyons and Lord Tenterden were unable to secure him a post in Europe he would get a certificate from a doctor saying that his health was very bad and necessitated immediate sick-leave. His plan was wholly successful. First the Buenos Aires plan was abandoned. Then, on February 8th, he wrote again to his mother, “I am laid up since yesterday morning with a pain in the ribs and upper part of arms, which Sr John Cormack tells me is irritation of the intercostal nerves caused by overwork . . . Cormack says I must absolutely go on leave at once.” (Gunn, 1964, p. 21) In 1873 he was offered a post in Lisbon, but throughout these years in the Foreign Office he often wrote to his mother of the stress and physical strain of the work, which took its toll in 1875. He resigned the service that year, as he had begun suffering severely from a nervous ailment, which left him almost completely paralysed for the next twenty years. The family moved permanently to Italy, where he was cared for by his mother and sister, often staying at Bagni di Lucca. During his invalid years he was able to devote himself entirely to his writing, producing five collections of poetry and two novels. His sister was sixteen when he collapsed. She was instrumental in getting his work published, for it was she who submitted manuscripts for him and negotiated on his behalf with publishers in London. His first collections include Poems and Transcripts (William Blackwood, 1878), Gods, Saints, and Men (W. Satchell & Co., 1880), The New Medusa and Other Poems (Elliot Stock, 1882), and Apollo and Marsyas: And Other Poems (Elliot Stock, 1884). He was drawn to the sonnet form in the style of Petrarch, and his most characteristic works are two fine volumes: Imaginary Sonnets (Elliot Stock, 1888) and Sonnets of the Wingless Hours (Elliot Stock, 1894). Though an invalid, he still was able to entertain in Florence and contributed to the Paget home (the “Casa Paget”) being a centre for literary gatherings, including visits from Italian, French, English and American authors. Under the care of Dr Erb from Heidelberg, Eugene’s health began to improve in 1893, and after his stepfather’s death (1894) he started recovering from his paralysis and was cured in 1896, the same year as the death of his mother. He soon began travelling and visited Edith Wharton, a friend of both his and his sister’s, lxxix

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in America in 1898. That same year he married the American novelist Annie E. Holdsworth whom he had met a year earlier in Florence. They lived outside Florence at the Villa Benedettini and collaborated on a collection of poetry entitled Forest Notes (Grant Richards, 1899). During these early married years he worked on translations of Dante’s works as well as authored two novels, The Lord of the Dark Red Star (Walter Scott Publishing Co., 1903) and The Romance of the Fountain (T. Fisher Unwin, 1905). The couple’s daughter, Persis Margaret, was born in 1903 but died in 1904. Eugene’s grief took strong hold of him, as expressed in a series of elegiac sonnets commemorating her, “Mimma Bella” (Fortnightly Review, November 1907; collected in book form in 1909 by his widow, published by William Heinemann). He fell into a deep depression for the remaining years of his life and died of “a combination of kidney disease and arterioscleroris” (Colby, p. 149) on 7 September 1907 while staying at Bagni di Lucca. He and his sister’s relationship changed from warmth to polite tolerance over time. They had been close during her adolescence and early adult years, but there is a definite change in her tone towards him as she grew older, as evidenced in her letters to others about him. Lee contemplated writing a biography of Eugene, a project that was abandoned, as the material and letters she had collected had been destroyed at his own request. She appeared to believe that his illness could have been overcome sooner than 1896 and that her mother coddled him to excess. Letters Lee wrote to Matilda in the late 1880s will sometimes stress her own illness and depression in comparison to Eugene’s, implying that Matilda did not care for Lee as much as she did for Eugene. In later life, Lee also helped to support her brother by giving him loans not always repaid, and by the time of his marriage they began to quarrel because she didn’t entirely approve of his choice. However, in earlier years, her letters to him consist of spirited discussions of her work and his poetry. In 1873, she wrote letters in French to him about her education and reading of the classics, and when she spent her summers in London in the 1880s, she was tireless in promoting his work to potential publishers and reviewers. She and Mary Robinson would read his poetry and offer him comments and edits, and her letters to him often suggest subjects for his sonnets and express her sincere belief in his talent. Nencioni, Enrico (1837–1896) was an Italian poet, critic, journalist, lecturer and a friend and mentor of Lee’s. From a young age he cultivated an appreciation for English writers and would come to devote his career to critical reviews and appreciations of their work. He studied at the Scuole Pie in Florence and developed lifelong friendships with writers and editors Giosuè Carducci, Ferdinando Martini and Giuseppe Chiarini. In the 1860s, he befriended many American and British expatriates in Italy, including William Wetmore Story and Robert Browning, both of whom remained lifelong friends of his, and he wrote one of the first Italian appreciations of Robert Browning, published in the Nuova Antologia (July 1867). He translated Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poems into Italian. lxxx

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His critical work of the 1860s–1880s, published in the Fanfulla della Domenica, Domenica letteraria and Nuova Antologia, greatly influenced the reception of English Victorian writers (especially poets) in Italy as well as the Pre-Raphaelite painters of England of whom he also wrote, providing extensive commentary, for example, on the work of Dante Gabriele Rossetti. Nencioni and Lee met after 1880, when he was on the staff of the Fanfulla della Domenica in Rome (1879–1883) and had written a positive review of her Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy. In Lee’s Baldwin the dialogue, “On Novels,” features two characters: “Baldwin” (Lee) speaks with “Carlo” (Nencioni) about the merits of The Ring and the Book. After 1883, when Nencioni was named professor of Italian at the Istituto Superiore di Magistero in Florence, he and his wife Talìa Amerighi were frequent visitors to the Paget home. Through Lee, Nencioni met another generation of English and Italian writers, including Mary Robinson and Carlo Placci. Placci became a close colleague of Nencioni’s, as they both wrote on English writers and were influenced by one another’s criticism. He died on 25 August 1896 in Ardenza after a long illness. Nencioni’s reputation had not attained the heights of some of his Italian colleagues who had had more lucrative publishing careers, but his contributions to fin-de-siècle Italian understandings of English literature were lasting (Camboni, Maria, “William Wetmore Story, Walt Whitman, and Enrico Nencioni: A node in the web of transatlantic ‘traffic’ in the second half of the nineteenth century,” Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526154637.00015; online publication date 17 August 2021; in Dabakis, Melissa and Paul Kaplan (eds.), Republics and Empires; Italian and American Art in Transnational Perspective, 1840–1970 (Manchester University Press, 2021). See also S. Pantazzi, “Enrico Nencioni, William Wetmore Story, and Vernon Lee,” in English Miscellany, 10, 1959, p. 258; Giuliana Pieri, “Enrico Nencioni: An Italian Victorian,” Biographies and Autobiographies in Modern Italy: A Festschrift for John Woodhouse (London: Maney, 2007). Paget, Matilda née Adams, formerly Mrs Lee-Hamilton (1815–1896) was the daughter of Edward Hamlin Adams (1777–1842) of Middleton Hall, Carmarthenshire and an American from Philadelphia of Scottish origins Amelia Sophia (née MacPherson) (1776–1831), who died in Florence. Matilda’s siblings, Mary, Edward, Sophia and Caroline, were born in Kingston, Jamaica. She was born at Saint-Giles-in-the-Fields, Holborn (England), the youngest of six children, five of whom lived to adulthood. Her father bought Middleton Hall in 1824 after earning his fortune as a businessman of various ventures in trade in Barbados. Adams did not believe in formal education, so his sons did not attend a university or pursue any kind of professional career. He left his children large inheritances, and the eldest, Edward, inherited Middleton in 1842 and had the family name changed to “Abadam,” in an attempt to signal a royal Welsh descent. To protect his inheritance and the interest on the estate, Edward challenged the legitimacy of his younger brother William MacPherson’s children. Matilda took William MacPherson’s side in the matter, which put her at odds with Edward and kept lxxxi

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her from her due share of the interest on her father’s estate for some years. See Lee’s letters to Matilda in August of 1882 (Volume I) and in the present volume for more on Matilda’s extended family and their disputes. Matilda had some informal schooling and was introduced to society when she came of age. She married ca. 1840 her first husband, Captain James Frederick Lee-Hamilton, Eugene’s father. However, there is some dispute as to whether the captain was Eugene’s father. See the biographical entry for Eugene LeeHamilton. It most likely was a loveless marriage and he died in 1852. Afterwards, Matilda moved to France with Eugene and lived with her brother William MacPherson’s widow Agnes Snow Shakespeare MacPherson Abadam and her children near Pau. She engaged Henry Ferguson Paget as a tutor for Eugene and married Paget in 1855. Violet was born in 1856. The lawsuit between her and her brothers was not settled until 1860, and even though the settlement was not very much in her favour, she did have enough of an allowance to support her family, but much of Lee’s income later in life came from her writing. Of her personality, what is known is that she was an independent and domineering woman and was the strongest influence in Lee’s early intellectual formation and personally handled Lee’s education with the assistance of tutors. Matilda was enamoured of the eighteenth century – as evident in her dress, what she read and her taste in music. An avid Voltairian and devotedly irreligious, she led an unconventional lifestyle and was happier renting homes in France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy than permanently settling in Victorian England. She was not very practical in household matters and, at times, not very social with her neighbours. She was also an anti-vivisectionist, a sentiment she instilled in Lee. Mary Robinson described Matilda in her article “In Casa Paget” for Country Life (28 December 1907), pp. 935–37: She was one of the dearest and most delightful persons I have ever met. . . . The sweetness in her was tempered by something aromatic, pungent, even bitter, as if uncounted disenchantments, mingling with the kindest disposition, had left her inclined at once to expect the worst and believe the best of human nature. With her tremulous sensibility, her dominating will, her generous benevolence (and her sense that the benefited should keep their proper place and not presume), she was like some amiable woman of the eighteenth-century. . . . I never knew anyone with a greater thirst for ideas or, rather, notions. Even out of doors she was constantly reading. I suppose she was full of fads, but they adorned the solid excellence of her mind, like fringes on a garment. She was proud of Violet; she worshipped Eugène; and need I say with what absolute and almost despotic oblation she sacrificed her life to his? Matilda did take prodigious care of Eugene after his paralysis in 1875, and Lee was left to handle many of the ancillary day-to-day concerns for the family and lxxxii

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the house. Matilda’s devotion to Eugene, no doubt, made Lee indignant towards her, especially as she came to believe that Eugene’s illness was auto-suggestive. During Lee’s own mental and physical difficulties in 1887 and 1888, her letters to Matilda were attempts to make her mother believe how “sick” she was, that now she was the one who needed rest and relaxation, as if she were in competition with Eugene for her affections. Their mother–daughter relationship was a mixture of love, respect, misunderstanding and resentment. One of the few instances of Lee writing about her mother and her influence on her is in The Handling of Words (1923), in the chapter “Can Writing be Taught?”: She was, almost in proportion as many of her views and ways would have been called “advanced,” decidedly old-fashioned, as belonging to a West Indian family and brought up in a remote district of Wales. Thus she clung, even in the seventies, to certain eighteenth century words and pronunciations, and to heresies which I later identified as Voltairian. . . . She was, in truth, at once intensely poetical and excessively prosaic; permeated with cynicism yet beyond description sentimental and idealising; philosophically abstract and passionately personal in all her judgements; more logical than all the Encyclopédistes rolled into one, and childishly unreasonable and credulous whenever herself and her belongings were concerned. . . . She was tyrannical and self-immolating more than any of us are or can imagine in these days; overflowing with sympathy and ruthlessly unforgiving; dreadfully easily wounded and quite callous of wounding others; she was deliciously tender, exquisitely humorous, extraordinarily grim and at moments terrifying; always difficult to live with and absolutely adorable. . . . I disagreed with all her criticisms, trembled before them; smarted and secretly rebelled under her teaching; and in my heart adored it, like her. (pp. 297–301) Matilda’s health began to decline after her husband’s death (1894), and shortly after Eugene’s recovery that same year, she became critically ill. Lee and her companion, Clementina Anstruther-Thomson, nursed her until she succumbed 8 March 1896. Pearsall Smith, Alyssa (Alys) (Mrs Russell) (1867–1951) Her parents were Hannah Whitall Pearsall Smith (Mrs Pearsall Smith) (1832–1911) and Robert Pearsall Smith (1827–1898). Alys was the first of the four wives of the mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970). In 1902 while working on Principia Mathematica, he began an affair with prominent Bloomsbury socialite Ottoline Morell, and he and Alys separated and eventually divorced in 1921. She never remarried but was much involved in charity work, including serving on the general committee of the St Pancras Mothers’ and Infants’ Society, 1907, which lxxxiii

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provided medical services for new mothers and infants (Susan E. Gunter (ed.), Dear Munificent Friends: Henry James’s Letters to Four Women, Michigan University Press, Ann Arbor, 1999, ftn 49 p. 165). Placci, Carlo Lee’s friend Carlo Placci (1861–1941) was born in London to an Italian father, banker Gennaro Placci, and a Mexican mother, Maria Guadalupe Ruiz Villegras. He spent much of his formative years in Florence, studying at Italian and French language schools, but devoted his later critical work, as Enrico Nencioni did, to the works of English authors. He considered himself to be half English (in spirit) and half Italian and was a consummate traveller, connoisseur of music and literature, accomplished pianist, and writer for a number of Italian and English periodicals in the 1880s. His home at 7 Via Alfieri in Florence was a popular salon for prominent artistic and political figures throughout the 1880s and 1890s, such as Gabriele d’Annunzio, Paul Bourget, Charles du Bos, Baronessa Elena French Cini, Adolf von Hildebrand, Gaetano Salvemini, and Bernard and Mary Berenson. His tireless travelling and entertaining resulted in his being welcome in social circles throughout Europe, which meant he was able to introduce a number of writers, artists and statesmen to one another over the decades. Placci had been a friend to Pasquale and Linda Villari (great influences on him) for some years, and it was through them that he met the Paget family around 1880. Thereafter, he spent much of his time at the Paget household and was a positive reviewer of Lee’s books, from Euphorion (1884) to Music and Its Lovers (1932) in his literary journalism over the years. It was at the Pagets that he met Enrico Nencioni, which resulted in a lifelong friendship and literary collaboration. Like Nencioni, Placci helped to bring to the attention of Italians the works of Pre-Raphaelite painters in England as well as the British poets of the mid-century. Placci’s first novel, Un furto (1892) was inspired by the life of Bemard Berenson and his milieu in Florence, as it told the story of an art historian who followed the Morelli method of attributing Renaissance works of art. He wrote another novel Mondo mondano (1897), as well as In Automobile (1908), a collection of essays that is a significant contribution to the genre of automobile travel writing that was just beginning at the turn of the century. Lee dedicated her collection Juvenilia (1887) to Placci. Rasponi, Angelica delle Teste (Countess) née Pasolini dell’Onda (1854–1919) was the wife of Giuseppe (“Geppe”) Rasponi dalle Teste, and belonged to an ancient noble family of Ravenna. Her father was the renowned Ravenna philanthropist Giuseppe Pasolini dell’Onda (1815–1876), who in the nineteenth century initiated civil and secular health service hitherto run by the religious institutions, and her mother was Countess Antonietta Pasolini née Bassi (1825–1873). Lee visited the Countess and her husband at the beautiful Villa Fontallerta crowning a hill above Florence, at Ravenna and at their home in Rome. Angelica Rasponi translated into Italian Lee’s Ariadne in Mantua (1907). Her brother was Pier Desiderio Pasolini of Ravenna (1844–1920), Senator of the Kingdom of Italy, historian and politician, who married Maria Ponti (1856–1938) lxxxiv

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who was prominently active in social and educational work for women’s emancipation. Lee dedicated Renaissance Fancies and Studies to her “dear friends Maria and Pier Desiderio Pasolini” and ascribes to him the idea for her short story “The Doll” (For Maurice, Five Unlikely Stories, “Fifth Unlikely Story; Pier Desiderio and the Doll,” [London: John Lane, “The Bodley Head”], pp. xlvi–li). Robinson, (Agnes) Mary Frances (Mme Darmesteter, later Mme Duclaux) (1857–1944) was a poet and literary critic well regarded in both English and French literary circles. She was the daughter of architect George Thomas Robinson (1828–1897) and his wife, Frances Sparrow (1831–1916). She and her sister, Mabel (1858–1956), a painter and writer, were from a young age familiar with well-known literary figures such as Robert Browning, Walter Pater, William Rossetti and George Moore – all of whom Mary would come to introduce to Lee. Robinson was provided a liberal education at home, in boarding schools and then at University College, London, where she may have been the only woman in the advanced Greek courses. Early in her career, she published under the name A. Mary F. Robinson, and her first volume of poetry A Handful of Honeysuckle (1878) was favourably reviewed and earned her a dedicated audience. The Crowned Hippolytus followed in 1881, including a translation of Euripides. In these early years, she was greatly influenced by and received mentorship from John Addington Symonds (1840–1893), who instructed her on her work in the classics and the composition of her poems. He also wrote to Lee on these topics and sometimes competed with her for Robinson’s attentions. Her third volume of poetry, The New Arcadia and Other Poems (1884) (dedicated to Lee) was directly influenced by the summers she spent with her family and with Lee in the English countryside in 1882 and 1883. Because of this shift away in form and content (she addressed the plight of the rural poor in her poems), it received less favourable reviews than did her earlier collections that focused more on traditional “feminine” themes. Later works that reaffirmed her positive reception among the public and critics are An Italian Garden (1886), Songs, Ballads, and a Garden Play (1888), and Retrospect (1893). Her one attempt at a novel was Arden (1883). Lee and Robinson met in Florence on 16 October 1880 at a party at Maria Spartali Stillman’s and they became steadfast friends and romantic partners for almost eight years – a romantic friendship to which their letters testify (Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vols. I and II); and Lee took on the role in Mary’s life of a strong companion who at times was both nurturing and domineering. They spent summers together in England, sometimes living alone as a couple in the countryside, and some winters in Florence. In her letters, Lee gave Robinson frank advice and criticism of her poems and it is evident that they collaborated quite closely in both their critical and creative enterprises. Lee introduced Robinson to literary figures in Italy (such as Enrico Nencioni) and likely made it possible for her to be published in Italian journals. In turn, Robinson provided entry for Lee into the many social and literary circles of London in the 1880s that resulted in Lee meeting the many artists, editors and publishers that would benefit her career. Mary was well lxxxv

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connected to the French intelligentsia at the most prestigious institutions (Collège de France, Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Ecole des Chartes, Académie Française) through Ernest Renan, Hippolyte Taine, Anatole France, Michel Bréal, Arsène Darmesteter, Max Müller and Gaston Paris, whose works on Old French she emulated. In 1887, Mary proposed to the orientalist James Darmesteter (1849–1894) after he had written to her as an admirer of her poetry in 1886, but their relationship had started much earlier. His influence on Mary’s work can be spotted quite early on, perhaps as early as 1883 or even 1882 when he replaced Ernest Renan (who had been his master) as Secretary to the Société Asiatique. They became engaged, which was a shock to both her family and to Lee’s family. The Robinsons and the Pagets frowned on the marriage mostly because he suffered from infirmities and they thought it would be unwise for Mary to have children. Lee suffered a long period of depression after the marriage took place in August 1888. Darmesteter taught at the Collège de France, and the couple moved permanently to Paris, where they lived happily together for six years. Mary’s widowed mother eventually joined her in Paris, as well as her sister Mabel, who never married and lived with her sister in later years. While in France, Robinson published more volumes of poetry and enjoyed a successful career as a critic of French and English literature, for example as member of the jury of the Prix Femina, publishing in the Times Literary Supplement and acting as a cultural mediator of English literature for French audiences, and vice versa. Darmesteter died in 1894, and she married the scientist Emile Duclaux (1840–1904), director of the Institute Louis Pasteur, in 1901, spending some of their married life in the French province of Auvergne at Olmet. She never had children of her own, but raised Emile Duclaux’s. She and Lee did heal their friendship after the break in 1887 and continued to be friends throughout their lives, sometimes meeting in Paris. Robinson died on 7 February 1944 at Aurillac, Cantal, France, where she was buried. Salvemini, Gaetano (1873–1957) was born in Molfetta, Southern Italy. He was a prominent scholar and political figure, “a tireless anti-fascist who mentored a new generation of young intellectuals and political activists, such as Piero Gobetti, Ernesto Rossi, and Carlo and Nello Rosselli.”1 In 1890 when he first moved to Florence he was only sixteen years old. His professor Pasquale Villari referred him to his wealthy friend Carlo Placci and the two became friends in spite of their political differences. Placci introduced Salvemini to Bernard Berenson, Vernon Lee and Elena French. In 1891, he met Maria Minervini, and they were married in 1897. In 1894 at the University of Florence, his doctorate dissertation, La dignità cavalleresca nel commune di Firenze, published in 1896, was “the first scholarly investigation of Italian knightly institutions during late medieval times.”2 In 1896, he was appointed Regent for the chair of history and geography at the Liceo Torricelli in Faenza, remaining there till 1898. In 1897, he joined the Italian Socialist Party, which he left in 1911.

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In 1899 he published Magnati e popolani in Firenze dal 1280 al 1295 and in 1902 he joined the faculty of the University of Messina where his family joined him. On 28 December 1908, at 5:21 a.m., a terrible earthquake razed the entire city of Messina to the ground in 37 seconds.3 Salvemini’s wife, five children and sister died in the catastrophe. Hugely popular among Salvemini’s books were his 1905 Il Pensiero religioso, politico-sociale di Giuseppe Mazzini and The French Revolution, 1788–1792. He was the founding editor of the weekly political journal L’Unità, Problemi della Vita Italiana which voiced the concerns of militant Italian democrats, ceaselessly opposed the rising Fascist regime in Italy throughout the 1920s and 1930s. He campaigned against Mussolini and organised support for this cause in France, England and the United States, and Lee smuggled out his clandestine antifascist newspaper Non mollare (Never give up) founded in January 1925. In June 1916 he married the French feminist writer and translator Fernande Dauriac (1873–1954), well-known contributor to Prezzolini’s La Voce. She had divorced the historiographer Julien Luchaire, professor of Italian language and literature at the University of Grenoble and founder of the Istituto Italo-Francese in Florence in 1908. The Luchaire couple’s children were Jean Louis Gabriel Luchaire (1901–1946), executed in Paris in 1946 for Nazi collaboration, and Marguerite (b. 1904). Salvemini raised them as his own. In 1917, he succeeded Pasquale Villari as Professor of Modern History at the University of Florence. In 1919, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies, as an independent radical. He was arrested in 1925, released under surveillance, deprived of status and citizenship, and spent most of the years between 1925 and 1934 in Paris, London, and the United States. He continued to actively organise resistance to Mussolini, assisted others in escaping Italy, and played an important role in galvanising both elite and public opinion in America against the Fascist regime.4 Lee shared his political views and published an article “Minoranze Dissidenti” (“Dissenting Minority”) in L’Unità, 24 February 1912. She introduced him to Paul Desjardins, advised Daniel Halévy to commission and publish his works in France, and helped him and his wife when he went into hiding from Mussolini’s police. For more, see Alice Gussoni, “Gaetano Salvemini (2021)”, in Patrizia Guarnieri, Intellectuals Displaced from Fascist Italy: Migrants, Exiles and Refugees Fleeing for Political and Racial Reasons (Firenze, Firenze University Press, 2019). Signorini, Telemaco (1835–1901) was a Tuscan painter who was a prominent figure of the Macchiaioli school of painters. He moved away from traditional academic style painting to embrace bold colouring and the emulation of natural light and shade. Signorini’s father had been a court painter for the Grand Duke of Tuscany and greatly influenced his son in his art. Aside from a few brief stints of living in Paris and showing at exhibitions there, Signorini almost exclusively lived and worked in Florence and also published art criticisms in Italian journals. Some of his most memorable scenes of Florence include Mercato Vecchio in Florence

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(1882–1883) and Ghetto of Florence (1882). Lee likely met the painter in the early 1880s. She would bring interested guests and potential art purchasers to his studio and may have introduced him to John Singer Sargent when the latter visited her. Signorini in turn provided her with introductions to other Italian artists. Ward, Mary (known as Mrs Humphry Ward) (1851–1920) was a novelist, political activist and niece to Matthew Arnold. Her most popular book was Robert Elsmere (1888), but she authored several successful novels and was also a translator, for instance, of the Journal Intime of Henri-Frederic Amiel (London: Macmillan, 1885). The income from her books helped to support her family with Thomas Humphry Ward (1845–1926), editor of the four-volume anthology The English Poets (1880), among other works. Ward’s efforts in philanthropy resulted in the founding of a settlement for the working classes, based on Unitarian principles, in Tavistock Square in London. She wrote many articles on Anglicanism, a series of which were published in the Times in the late 1890s. Her political activism and writings earned her respect in England and America and she was invited to be one of the first female magistrates in England in 1920. Whitall Smith, Hannah (Mrs Pearsall Smith) (1832–1911) came from an established prosperous Philadelphia Quaker family, as did her husband Robert Pearsall Smith (1827–1898). They travelled to England from 1872 to 1876, and finally settled there in 1888. Hannah’s charismatic personality and her books, starting with The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life (Boston: Willard Tract Repository, 1875), were immensely successful. The couple had six children, three of whom survived to adulthood: art connoisseur Mary (1864–1945) married first Francis Conn (Frank) Costelloe (1855–1899) and second Bernard Berenson (1865–1959); Alys Pearsall Smith (1867–1911) married Bertrand Russell (1872–1970); and the poet Logan Pearsall Smith (1865– 1946), who was a friend of Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s. After Mary eloped with Berenson in 1891, Hannah Pearsall Smith raised her granddaughters, the feminist Rachel Pearsall Conn (“Ray”) (later Strachey) (1887–1940) and the psychiatrist Karin Elizabeth Conn (1889–1953). See Barbara Strachey, Remarkable Relations: The Story of the Pearsall Smith Family (London: Victor Gollancz, 1980). Wolseley, Lady Louisa née Erskine (1843–1920), was the daughter of Alexander Erskine Holmes and lived with a grandmother in Ireland until her father’s remarriage in 1847. She lived in France for some time where she became fluent in French and acquired a good knowledge of the great French writers. French authors such as Rousseau, Voltaire, Sainte-Beuve, Victor Hugo, George Sand and Pierre Loti and writers in English such as Henry James, Vernon Lee, Mary Arnold Ward and Ouida (Marie Louise de la Ramée) were among her favourites. Highly cultured, strong-willed and outspoken, she travelled alone to France, Italy and Germany to visit Paris, Florence and Venice, and regularly took the waters at Marienbad, Bad Homburg and Vichy. lxxxviii

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In 1867 at age twenty-four, she married General Garnet Joseph Wolseley (1833– 1913) and was an intellectual and literary companion to him. Her letters were praised by Edmund Gosse, who encouraged her to write articles for the New Review in 1889, but to no avail. In his 1922 review of The Letters of Lord and Lady Wolseley for the Sunday Times, Gosse wrote: Lady Wolseley’s letters have no composition, but they were delightful to receive. There was always some turn of absurdity in them, some touch of heightened colour. She wrote so well that it may seem surprising that she resisted what must have been the temptation to write for the public. (Gosse, “The Wolseleys” 9; Henry James [ed], The Master, the Modern Major General, and His Clever Wife: Henry James’s Letters to Field Marshal Lord Wolseley and Lady Wolseley, 1878–1913. [Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press], 2012) Lee and Lady Louisa Wolseley met in 1884 and as her sixty letters to her testify, Lee eagerly sought the friendship of Lady Wolseley, who was equally strongly attracted to Lee, her junior by thirteen years. Lord Wolseley too was highly appreciative of Lee’s writing, In August 1887, Lady Wolseley wrote to Lee: I cannot help telling you how much you attract me, first perhaps because of your talent & your mind, & then because I find you so gentle & kindly in your judgments of people who fall so entirely short of your standards. (Papers of Violet Paget, Miller Library, Colby College; 5 August 1887)

Notes 1

Filomena Fantarella, Un figlio per nemico. Gli affetti di Gaetano Salvemini alla prova dei fascismi (2018). Transl. The Family of Gaetano Salvemini under Fascism: The Inimical Son (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). 2 Puzzo, Dante A. “Gaetano Salvemini: An Historiographical Essay.” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 20, no. 2, 1959, pp. 217–35. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2707820. 3 On the earthquake of Messina see J. Dickie, Una catastrofe patriottica. 1908: il terremoto di Messina (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2004). 4 Charles Killinger, Gaetano Salvemini: A Biography (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002. www.abc-clio.com/products/c7977c/

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896

1890 1. Countess Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi [January 15?, 1890] Florence, Italy Gabinetto Vieusseux Biblioteca [The original of this letter is in Italian] Mercoledì Carissima Angelica, grazie pel termometro ecc. Volevo le ricette per farle preparare onde servirsene caso mai durante la mia assenza. Ma non sono mica infetta, se non da quel male (chè mostra così cattivo gusto da parte di Domeeddio [sic]) per il quale, come diceva Michelet gentilmente, la donna è toujours faible et souvent furieuse. Non seguendo lì la legge Levitica spero che non ricuserai di vedermi, a dispetto del Ewig Weibliche, prima della mia partenza. Qui non c’è nessuna influenza nè sospetto d’influenza, essendo già due giorni che quel contadino è tornato ai lavori di campo. Non so poi come, coi tuoi cordoni sanitari, questa mia notizia possa giungere fralle tue mani. Tua V. 2. Countess Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi1 [January 15?, 1890] Florence, Italy Gabinetto Vieusseux Biblioteca [The original of this letter is in Italian] Wednesday Dearest Angelica, Thank you for the thermometer, etc. I wanted the prescriptions to have them prepared and make use of them if need be during my absence. But I am not infected DOI: 10.4324/b23420-1

3

SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896

at all, if not by that disease (which shows such poor taste on the part of Our Lord) because of which, as Michelet2 said kindly, woman is toujours faible et souvent furieuse.3 Since Levite law4 is not followed there, I hope that you will not recuse yourself from seeing me, despite the Ewig Weibliche,5 before my departure. Here there is no influenza nor suspicion of influenza, since it has already been two days since that farmer has returned to work in the field. I do not know how, with your sanitary cordons, this news of mine may reach your hands. Your V. 1 See List of Correspondents: Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi. 2 The French historian Jules Michelet (1798–1874) is considered the founding father of modern historiography, taking the people being studied, their legends, beliefs, and languages into account. The exact Michelet passage that Lee references reads, “Chez les unes, qui semblent fortes (mais qui alors sont d’autant plus faibles), un bouillonnement visible commence, comme une tempête, ou l’invasion d’une grande maladie. Chez d’autres, pâles, bien atteintes, mortifiées, on devine quelque chose comme l’action destructive d’un torrent qui mine en dessous” (Jules Michelet, “La femme est une malade,” in L’amour, La Femme, Oeuvres complètes de Jules Michelet [Paris: E. Flammarion, 1893– 1898], pp. 41–45). Lee may also refer to Michelet’s La Sorcière (Paris: E. Dentu, 1862), p. 103: “Elle [la femme] est effarée, violente, d’autant plus qu’elle est faible, dans le va-et-vient de l’orage.” For Lee’s discussion of Michelet’s insufficient efforts, see Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. I, Lee to Mary Robinson, 19 April 1884. Also see Lee to Pearson, 13 March [1886]: “I cannot but think that a great step will be gained by women becoming doctors: it will familiarise women with certain questions which they have utterly blinked [at], and it will bring to the fore a mass of information which very natural repugnances have hitherto kept back. The student of the woman question ought to be a woman: it is only then that we can get rid of that hideous French legend of La Femme, that is to say of a sort of diseased male, as expounded by Dumas fils, by Michelet and even by French men of science” (Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II). Perhaps the beginning of Lee’s writing on this was “The Economic Parasitism of Women,” first published as the preface for a translation of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Women and Economics (Boston, 1898). The autograph manuscript was written in Florence, Italy. It is now held at General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Rpt. in Vernon Lee, Gospels of Anarchy and Other Contemporary Studies (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1908). “Michelet defines the object of his love and pity, of his very genuine ‘Frauendienst’ as ‘la femme toujours faible et souvent furieuse’” (Lee, Gospels of Anarchy, p. 284). 3 In French in the text: Always weak and often furious. 4 Leviticus 15 declares a woman unclean for ceremonial participation during menstruation. 5 In German in the text: Eternal feminine; Lee is likely referring, not without some irony, to the myth of the eternal feminine as pure and sacred, brought back into popular German culture by Goethe and, later, Nietzsche.

3. Countess Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi [January n.d., 1890] Florence, Italy Gabinetto Vieusseux Biblioteca [The original of this letter is in Italian] PALMERINO (MAIANO) Via garibaldi, FLORENCE. 4

SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896

Carissima, I am very sorry for yr worry. But if you isolate the woman, why should it spread? I leave tomorrow. But I shall try & see you in the morning, dear. You have been very, very good to me, dear Angelica; I am very happy to think that you are beginning to consider me a friend. Here is the list of our subscriptions so far. Will you add yours & return it to Miss Turton?1 And if you can will you appoint day & hour to see the proposed matron? Amy Turton will come to stay here on the 27th in order to ride my horse. If you could not ride for any reason, would you kindly let my mother know? I should be happy if yr husband wd ride Stellino once or twice. Please send for him whenever wanted. My very dear love to Elena2 when she comes. Yrs afftly Vernon 1 Amy Turton (1859–1942) was a longtime friend of Lee’s. She was an English woman who lived most of her life in Florence. She helped to engineer the formal training of nurses in Italy by working closely with Florence Nightingale to establish a process of education for nurses there, creating nursing schools in Naples, Lucca, Rome, Milan and Florence (Lynn McDonald [ed.], Florence Nightingale: The Nightingale School: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale, Volumes 12 and 13 [Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2009], p. 504; Donatella Tombaccini, Donatella Lippi, Fiorella Lelli, and Cristina Rossi [eds.], Florence and Its Hospitals: A History of Health Care in the Florentine Area [Firenze: Firenze University Press, 2008], p. 43). 2 Baronessa Elena French Cini (1844–1922), granddaughter of Margaret King (Lady Mount Cashell), daughter of Bartolomeo Cini (1808–1877), and married to the banker of Irish descent Antonio Giuseppe French. She was a lifelong friend of Lee’s, Pareto’s and Salvemini’s. The wise “Signora Elena” in Lee’s Althea is clearly modelled after her. Her home was in San Marcello Pistoiese, near Pistoia, where Lee often stayed (Alessandro Panajia, Elena Cini French, dal borgo di San Michele degli Scalzi al Petit Cénacle au Nido di San Marcello Pistoiese, con inediti di Massimo D’Azeglio, Guido Mazzoni, Enrico Mayer e Carl Snoilsky [Edizioni ETS, 2000]). See also Neri Farina Cini, La famiglia Cini e la cartiera della Lima, 1807–1943 (Firenze: Le Monnier, 1947). Elena French Cini was the president of feminist Italian organisations Femminile Toscana and Consiglio Nazionale delle Donne Italiane. It was from the Cinis’Migliorini house nearby that Lee drew the inspiration for her genius loci essays. She paid tribute to this in her text “The House with the Loop-Holes” (Vernon Lee, “The House with the Loop-Holes,” Index to Life and Letters, Volume 5 [1930], pp. 69–84.). Lee and French Cini both enjoyed puppet shows, and in 1934, Flavia Farina Cini (Elena French Cini’s niece, being her nephew’s wife) staged an Italian production of Ariadne in Mantua at the Reale Accademia dei Fidenti in Florence. When Lee passed away, at the request of Mabel Price, Flavia Farina Cini placed on the rough stone wall of the “house with the loop-holes” a marble slab inscribed with the following lines from Virgil’s Aeneid: “Numina quae fontes, silvas, loca celsa tenetis, / Nostram animam vestro credimus hospitio” [O Divinities ruling over sources, forests and mountains, / we entrust our spirit to your hospitality] / Vernon Lee / MCMXXXV.

4. Matilda Paget [January 21, 1890] Rome, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Pal. Ruffo. Tuesday 5

SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896

Dearest Mamma. A 1000 thanks for postcard & proofs. I told Giuseppe to drive the pony [poney] only every second day, as I don’t want him to be driven often, but for a long time. Olive Thomson1 is delighted to come back with me & will ride my horse into order. She thanks you so much for your kindness. They ‸are‸ very kind here, & I am feeling very well & enjoying myself very much. Would you please send up for news to Fontallerta2 – They have not written for a long time. Dr Seppilli3 has sent the Vaglia.4 At Maria’s5 recommendation I have told him the money should be put down with his name for the convalescent Home as he is much interested in it. So much love 1 Clementina Anstruther-Thomson’s younger sister Olivia “Olive” Beatrice Louisa (1870–1941); her older sister was Rosia Mary “Rose” (1862–1956). Olive Thomson stayed at Il Palmerino in 1889. See Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II. See List of Correspondents: Clementina Caroline Anstruther-Thomson (“Kit”). 2 Fontallerta was the home of the Pasolini-Rasponi family, between Florence and Fiesole. 3 The Italian neuropsychiatrist Giuseppe Seppilli (1851–1939) was head physician at the Imola asylum and belonged to the network of researchers (e.g. Augusto Tamburini) of the San Lazzaro Asylum in Reggio Emilia who were working in the wake of Charcot’s experiments on hypnosis and hysteria. In the late 1870s, Seppilli, Buccola and Dario Maragliano investigated the effects of electrical currents, metals and magnets in hysterical anaesthesia. See D. Maragliano and G. Seppilli, “Studi clinici a contributo delle azioni delle correnti elettriche dei metalli e delle magneti in alcuni casi di anestesia,” Rivista sperimentale di freniatria 4, 36–55 (1878); G. Buccola and G. Seppilli, “Sulle modificazioni sperimentali della sensibilità e sulle teorie relative,” Rivista sperimentale di freniatria 6, 107–125 (1880). In 1881, engaged in research on cerebral localisation, Seppilli and Tamburini started their first experimental study on hypnotism in that institution, which had been modernised in the 1870s and was then “the psychiatric clinic of the University of Modena and the main training and research centre of post-unitary Italian psychiatry” (Maria Teresa Brancaccio, “Between Charcot and Bernheim: The debate on hypnotism in fin-de-siècle Italy,” Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science, 71, no. 2 [June 2017], pp. 157–177, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5554306/). 4 In Italian in the text: Money order. 5 Countess Maria Pasolini, née Ponti (1856–1938), who was an Italian historian and politician and a Senator of the Italian Republic, married to Count Pier Desiderio Pasolini dall’Onda (1844–1920). A highly educated woman, she came from a wealthy family active in social work. She initiated income-generating craftsmanship and small industries for peasant women, taking part in the Roman Federation of Female Works. She financed the traditional manufacturing of paper, opened a lace school in Coccolia, and set up and promoted a charity information office in Rome. She worked to create circulating libraries and, in 1897, founded the Andrea Ponti Library in Ravenna, aiming at disseminating basic knowledge on political economy and the “woman question.” Maria Montessori was among her correspondents. “La maggior parte delle opere educative ed economiche oggi fiorenti in Italia furono ideate proprio da Maria Ponti Pasolini. Quando morì nel 1938 ne diedero notizia persino molti giornali nazionali ed internazionali.” [Most of the educational and economic works now flourishing in Italy were conceived by Maria Ponti Pasolini. When she died in 1938, many national and international newspapers reported it.] (“Ponti Pasolini Maria,” Pari opportunità,

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 Direzione generale Cura della persona, salute e welfare, Bologna: Regione Emilia-Romagna, 2015. https://parita.regione.emilia-romagna.it/vie-en-rose/schede/ravenna-schede/ponti-pasolini-maria).

5. Countess Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi [January 22, 1890] Rome, Italy Gabinetto Vieusseux Biblioteca TRAMWAY: S. GERVASIO IL PALMERINO FIRENZE PER MAIANO Pal. Ruffo Wed. My dear Angelica – Thanks so many for yr kind card. I am so glad to think that all is going well at Fontallerta. I begged Adele Alfieri,1 who has more credit with Amy Turton than I have, to insinuate that she shouldn’t be perpetually starting new projects; & that by doing so she might make us lose the help of your dear, efficient but slightly impatient self. What am I to do with the Vaglia for 30 frs which that kind Seppilli has returned me? I think I will enclose it to you, so that, if it requires (as I fear) to be returned to him in order to be exchanged for a new one, you may send it when next with you. I have had no further answers, save from Mrs Moffat,2 Villa – I can’t remember what, Via Barbacane, who promises 25 a year. Remember to add also Mr Joehmus, Via Michele di Lando, for the same sum. Neither Matilde Gidè nor the black Gamba3 has given any sign of life. The worst has been Mme Villari.4 It is dreadfully sad, but I fear that her extraordinary behaviour & perhaps my too great indignation at it has put an end to our friendship. Quite gratuitously, & merely because I begged her to let me know what she intended giving (she had promised to) she wrote me 8 sides of abuse, warning me not to become one of those women who “flourish subscription lists in one’s face” (mind this is the first time in my life that I ask her for a penny) recommending me to give up keeping a horse since I think that such charities might be supported out of one’s savings, & finally saying that Italian people might look after their hospitals etc. themselves. I felt so indignant at the thought of this coming at once from an English woman & an English woman whose position is due to her marriage with an Italian, that I told her I couldn’t stand it. And I begged her to keep who the money which she offered to give “out of love for me” in such a beastly way. Avrò fattomale?5 But really it wasn’t possible to accept money given, thrown at one in that way, was it?

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896

I am so glad that Amy Turton or rather my little horse, has been riding with you. I shall bring back with me Kit’s little sister Olive, who can teach us ad lib: having no talk. I see that the excellent Seppilli has sent me a fresh Vaglia to be cashed here. Please my best greetings to yr husband & much love to the children & believe me Yrs always Vernon The lad is very nice, but not so nice as Signor Geppe. We go careening over the campagne. Grass, mounds, ditches, in a two wheel cart, to everyone’s consternation. 1 Adele Alfieri di Sostegno (1857–1936), the daughter of Italian politician Carlo Alfieri (1827–1897) and Giuseppina Benso di Cavour (1831–1888), Italian benefactress for children and young women. Her sister was Maria Luisa Alfieri di Sostegno Visconti Venosta (1852–1920). Adele had an epistolary relationship with Pasquale Villari from 1888 until his death in 1917. “From the letters . . . emerges the image of an autonomous, courageous woman, competent and generous, who travelled through Italy and Europe, committed to promote social solidarity towards immigrants and weak people, particularly in the region of Calabria, shattered by the earthquake.” (Giustina Manica [ed.], Adele Alfieri di Sostegno e Pasquale Villari nelle carte Villari (1888–1917), con documenti inediti. Preface by Sandro Rogari [Firenze: Edizioni Polistampa, 2016]). 2 Ethel Gwendoline Moffat Vincent, née Moffat became a friend of Lee’s from 1893. Ethel Gwendoline was the daughter and coheiress of tea-broker and politician George Moffat (1806–1878) and Lucy Morrison (1825–1876) whose father was businessman James Morrison. Although in her letters Lee persistently refers to her as Mrs Moffat, at that time Ethel Gwendoline Moffat was married with English politician Colonel Sir Charles Edward Howard Vincent (1849–1908). She published several accounts of her travels with her husband in 1886, 1891 and 1894: Forty Thousand Miles over Land and Water: The Journal of a Tour through the British Empire and America (London: S. Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1886); Newfoundland to Cochin China by the Golden Wave, New Nippon, and the Forbidden City: With Reports on British Trade and Interests in Canada, Japan, and China by Sir Howard Vincent (London: S. Low, Marston & Company, 1891) and China to Peru over the Andes: A Journey through South America, with Reports and Letters on British Interests in Brazil, Argentina, Chili, Peru, Panama and Venezuela (London: S. Low, Marston and Co., 1894). There are sixty-eight very affectionate letters from Ethel Moffatt to Vernon Lee at Somerville College, Oxford, dated ?1893 to ?1933. 3 For the Gambas, see Lee to Matilda Paget, August 17, 1890. 4 Lee’s old friend, Linda Villari née White. See Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vols. I and II. Lee’s friendship with Villari continued to deteriorate during this time due to a series of disagreements, this collection of subscriptions being just one of them. See Lee to Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi, January 25, 1890, and Lee to Matilda Paget, September 30, 1890. 5 In Italian in the text: Have I done wrong?

6. Countess Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi [January 25, 1890] Rome, Italy Gabinetto Vieusseux Biblioteca 8

SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896

TRAMWAY: S. GERVASIO IL PALMERINO FIRENZE PER MAIANO Rome Sat. My dear Angelica, Many, many thanks for yr letter. I have been very sorry of late that I allowed Maria to bother you about my business. It was her idea, not mine; and with her energy she carried me off my own inclinations, which were to limit this annoyance to Mme V. & myself.1 Carlo2 wrote to me about it, but as he only mentioned the thing casually, I merely answered, without further details, that I had been sorry about the letter, and that Mme V. had returned my apology unopened. If you think it worth while, please do or say whatever you think best. But my own desire is that as little fuss be made as possible, not because I mind potins3 in the least, but because a wretched business like this is best circumscribed & suppressed. I am very sorry to have hurt poor Mme Villari, who is a kind, good woman & to whom I owe much gratitude; but I am even more sorry that she should have written that letter. No amount of old friendship & gratitude can get the better of the feeling that she is a woman to whose good sense & good breeding one can’t trust oneself. The latter can be forgiven, the former can’t be forgotten. Don’t think me a beast, & believe in my gratitude for yr kindness. It was nice of Carlo to speak plainly with me. My dear love to Elena. I am most impatient to see her. Yrs afftly Vernon 1 See Lee to Angelica Pasolini Rasponi, January 22, 1890. 2 Lee’s friend Carlo Placci. See List of Correspondents: Carlo Placci. 3 In French in the text: gossip.

7. Matilda Paget February 4, 1890 Rome, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College PALMERINO (MAIANO) FLORENCE Feby 4. 1890 Rome Monday Dearest Mamma I send you back “Michael Field’s”1 letter about Eugene’s poems. I think part of their criticism absurd. If they object to “Crimson clouds to West”2 – they must object to 9

SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896

half of Webster’s finest thing [things], and to the finest thing in Euripides & Racine “Dieu que ne suis-je assise à l’ombre des forêts.”3 I think the page they devote to inculcating the mysteriousness of their dualism is a pathetic instance of the self importance of the literary worm, which always imagines the eyes of the world fixed upon its precious wrigglings. I hope Miss Craigmyle4 got two photos I sent her. We had such a pleasant dinner at the Princess of Venosa’s5 – All clever people, she very beautiful & beautiful rooms. One or other interesting person is to dinner here almost every evening. Still, I feel I ought to go back. So I have settled to return next Sunday. I shall bring Olive Thomson if possible, I hope Amy Turton may give the pony another ride before my return. So much love Yrs V. 1 Michael Field was the pseudonym of collaborative poets Edith Emma Cooper (1862–1913) and Katharine Harris Bradley (1846–1914). 2 From Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s sonnet “Catherine Talbot to Her Child,” in Imaginary Sonnets (London: Elliot Stock, 1888), p. 38; “Oh for an earthquake! Crimson clouds to west. / The sun’s face stoops to drink; it drinks the brine. / I too drink brine. – Those little feet can’t rest” (lines 12–14). 3 In French in the text. From act 1, scene 3 of Phèdre: “Dieu! que ne suis-je assise à l’ombre des forêts! / Quand pourrai-je, au travers d’une noble poussière, / Suivre de l’œil un char fuyant dans la carrière?” (Oeuvres de J. Racine par M. Paul Mesnard, vol. III. Paris: Librairie de L. Hachette, 1865). 4 Elizabeth “Bessie” Craigmyle (1863–1933), acting as Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s amanuensis at that time. She taught him extracts from Omar Khayyam’s texts, which inspired his poems “The Grave of Omar Khayyam” and “Wine of Omar Khayyam” (William Sharp [ed.], Dramatic Sonnets, Poems and Ballads: Selections from the Poems of Eugene Lee-Hamilton [London: Walter Scott, 1903]), p. 109. Miss Craigmyle was a Scottish poet in her own right, as well as a translator and schoolteacher (David Herschell Edwards [ed.], Modern Scottish Poets, with Biographical and Critical Notes (Brechin: D.H. Edwards, 1893), p. 193. She was born at Strawberry Bank, Aberdeen, the daughter of an English teacher, and was a scholar and book lover who developed her passion for books in several languages (Latin, Greek, French, German, Italian). She was educated at McBain’s School (later Aberdeen High School for Girls), obtained the degree of LL.A (St Andrews) and was equally successful in the sciences (anatomy, biology and botany) at Aberdeen and London Universities, wanting to study medicine and become a doctor. She was a talented translator from Greek, French and German (e.g. Heine). She taught at Dr Williams’s School in Dolgellau, Wales, then became a lecturer in 1887 at Bishop Otter College, Chichester. She was devastated by the death of her intimate friend Margaret Dale, to whom she had dedicated her first collection of poems, Poems and Translation (Aberdeen: J. & J.P. Edmond & Spark, 1886). Dale had died in Buenos Aires, where she had gone to teach at St Andrews’ Scots School. Craigmyle left her job and travelled to Florence, dedicating her very successful second book, A Handful of Pansies (Aberdeen: John Adam, 1888), to the memory of M. Dale. She travelled to Switzerland in 1890, spending the winter months in Florence. She started writing poems again, published in the Art Review. In 1889, she edited Faust (“Canterbury Poets Series,” London: Walter Scott) in a volume also containing her translations of Goethe’s memoir and ballads. Her favourite poets were Browning, Keats and Rossetti. She later returned to Aberdeen and was active as a Women’s Liberal Association and supported female suffrage. In 1892, she edited a collection, German Ballads (London and New York: Walter Scott, 1892).

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 5 Teresa Marescotti Boncompagni Ludovisi, Princess of Venosa (1848–1928), wife of Ignazio Boncompagni Ludovisi. The Palazzo Piombino had recently been built for the family along the Via Veneto, after the family was forced to sell most of their ancestral holdings in Rome due to ongoing financial difficulties.

8. Matilda Paget February 5, 1890 Rome, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College [5 Feb. 90]1 Wednesday. Dearest Mamma, Thanks so much for both yr postcards. What joy about the Stuarts!2 I find I cannot come, for various reasons, before Wed. or Thursday, so that if Amy cd ride again, I wish she might. Easter falls the 6th April. I suppose Miss L. [Little] won’t come before, as I fear Miss Ferguson3 may be late, & I do hope Kit will be able to come ear by April. We spent all yesterday at Anagni, a curious mountain town two hours ½ by train, where Boniface VIII got the famous slap.4 Bonghi was with us. A tiring business; Today saw all castle St Angelo 1 This was added by Lee in pencil at a later date. From here on, the editors place within square brackets and in italics any piece of information, such as dates or comments, that Lee did not include when writing the letter. Such information may have been added at a later date by Lee or by an archivist. 2 It is likely that Matilda Paget found someone to buy the Pagets’ two portraits of the Stuarts. About Lee’s attempts at selling these portraits, see Lee to Lady Wolseley, 15 June 1889, Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II. 3 See Lee to Matilda Paget, November 12, 1890. 4 Pope Boniface VIII (ca. 1230–1303), one of the first popes to put forth strong claims of influential power in the temporal world, inserting himself into local political and foreign affairs. He had a long history of conflict with King Philip IV of France. In 1303, the king sent his ministers to Boniface’s palace in Anagni to demand the pope’s abdication. When he refused, one minister, Sciarra Colonna, slapped him. It was a slap remembered as the schiaffo di Anagni (“Anagni slap”). Boniface was imprisoned by Philip and beaten. He was eventually released but died soon after.

9. Matilda Paget February 10, 1890 Rome, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College PALMERINO (MAIANO) FLORENCE [Feb. 10 1890] Monday

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896

Dearest Mamma – I have not written before because I have not been certain about departure. Now it is settled that, unless you hear to the contrary, Olive Anstruther-Thomson & I will arrive Thursday evening at 8.30. I am sorry it should be so late, but the earlier train is leaving at an hour which might inconvenience Maria, who will want to see me off. Please have dinner as usual. It would make me wretched to think of yr waiting, as it will be near tea before we can get home. And we shall eat something in the train, so that some soup & cold meat will be more welcome than real dinner. Will you kindly send the contadino1 with the donkey, as there will be Olive’s box as well as mine. And wd you kindly have some fire made in my room as well as in the spare one. I shall ask Evelyn2 to lunch for Friday as she seems so dolorous, & I cannot go yanking Olive into Florence as soon as arrived. So perhaps you will order a supply of eggs for Friday. Olive, poor child, is, considered as an Anstruther-Thomson, amazingly plain & bad in figure. She is also, like every other Anstruther-Thomson, utterly deficient in education. But she is modest & good, & I cannot forget her real kindness to me during my long illness at Charleton. Thank Miss Craigmyle for her note; and give her please, this sprig of myrtle from Keats’ tomb. Yesterday I had lunch at Donna Laura Minghetti’s3 – She has a most exquisite house, & made some beautiful music. Then we went to the country to the young Duchess Grazioli’s,4 which was full of foxhunting English. Mrs Stillman5 came to dinner. I think constantly, here in Rome, all that you did for me while we lived here, & how completely you made me intellectually, how completely, as Mme Venosa says to her sister, “son la tua creatura”6 – So much love Yrs V. 1 In Italian in the text: farmer. 2 Evelyn Wimbush (1856–1941) came to be a lifelong friend of Lee’s. She often stayed with Lee in Florence in later years, acting as her companion and secretary. They travelled together to Spain and Tangiers in 1888, and Lee dedicated Sister Benvenuta and the Christ Child (New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1905) “To my dear old Friend Evelyn Wimbush, In return for Embroideries, Stories of Saints, and much else besides” (Vineta Colby, Vernon Lee: A Literary Biography [Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001], p. 175; England and Wales Civil Registration Indexes [London: General Register Office] Ancestry.com). About Wimbush reading political economy with Lee, see Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 3 Donna Laura Minghetti (1829–1915), influential socialite and wife of two-time Italian prime minister Marco Minghetti, who had died in 1886. Her home at Piazza Paganica was a popular meeting place for the cultural elite of Rome. 4 Nicoletta Giustiniani Bandini, Duchess Grazioli (1863–1938). 5 Marie Euphrosyne Spartali, later Stillman (1844–1927). She was one of Lee’s oldest friends, fondly remembered by Lee and Mary Robinson as the “godmother” of their relationship, since they had first met at her home on 16 October 1880. She was an artist’s model for some of the Pre-Raphaelite painters and an artist in her own right. Her husband was the journalist and painter William James Stillman (1828–1901). The couple moved to Florence in 1878, which was when Lee probably met them. For most of their lives, the Stillmans split their time between Italy and England, and Lee often stayed with them in England. Marie Spartali Stillman helped to raise her husband’s children from his first marriage: John Ruskin Stillman (1862–1875); Eliza “Lisa” Ramona Stillman (1865–1946), who became an artist; and Bella Helena Stillman (1868–1948). The couple also had two of their own children who survived past infancy: Euphrosyne “Effie” Stillman (1872–1911), who became a sculptor, and Michael “Mico” Stillman (1878–1967), who became an architect. A third child, James William Stillman, was born on 12 August 1881 and died almost a year later, on 1 May 1882. Lee dedicated her book The Prince of the Hundred Soups: A Puppet-Show in Narrative (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1883) to Bella and Effie. 6 In Italian in the text: I am your creature.

10. Percy William Bunting1 February 25, 1890 Florence, Italy University of Chicago Library, Special Collections IL PALMERINO, FIRENZE PER MAIANO Feb 25. 90 My dear Mr Bunting, When I went to Rome six weeks ago it was in the hope of being able to finish there that “Imaginary Portrait” of a Renaissance painter of which I spoke to you already last year.2 And ere this I had hoped to have dispatched it to you. But alas, I have come back with a relapse only; And heaven knows when I shall be able to write, or to write at least anything so difficult. I should like to keep before yr readers, however. So I want to know whether I should copy out some old notes of mine on various Catholic churches – from a ceremony in the Sistine to a village preacher in an Apennine valley, and from the procession of the Dead Redeemer to the burial of a bead threader. I should unite them with numbers under the title – “In Church: heretical impressions”.3 Do let me know whether you would have these notes. They are really good, as they were written long before I fell ill.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896

My time now is spent riding a vicious horse & digging in a flowerless garden – a fit emblem for the life of a prematurely worn out artist! Yours sincerely V. Paget 1 See List of Correspondents: Percy William Bunting. 2 Lee’s essay “A Seeker of Pagan Perfection: Being the Life of Domenico Neroni, Pictor Sacrilegus” appeared in The Contemporary Review, no. 60 (1891), pp. 188–206, 372–387. It was included in Renaissance Studies and Fancies: Being a Sequel to Euphorion (London: Smith, Elder, 1895). See Lee to Percy William Bunting, April 11, 1888, Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II: “I am contemplating some things in the style of Mr Pater’s Imaginary Portraits – essays concentrated round an imaginary representative figure. The one I propose doing for you is the Imaginary Portrait of an artist of the 15th century, bent upon obtaining, like Mantegna, the Proportions of the Animates – Symmetria Prisca – and aligning Christianity for Paganism with this in view.” Andrea Mantegna (ca. 1431–1506) was an Italian Renaissance artist best remembered for his achievements in perspective and spatial illusion, or “pure symmetry.” 3 Essays of this type appeared in Limbo and Other Essays (London: Grant Richards, 1897).

11. Henry James to Vernon Lee1 April 27, 1890 London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College (manuscript autograph letter) & University of McGill (Typescript) 34, De Vere Gardens, W. April 27th 1890 Dear Miss Paget. Your gruesome, graceful, genialisch “Hauntings” came to me a good bit since;2 but, pleasure-stirring as was the gift, I have, to thank you for it, been able to control what George Eliot would have called my “emotive” utterance until I should have had the right hour to reassimilate the very special savour of the work. This I have done within a day or two and the ingenious tales, full of imagination and Italy are there – diffused through my intellectual being and within reach of my introspective – or introactive – hand. (My organism will strike you as mixed, as well as my metaphor – and what I mainly mean is that I possess the eminently psychical stories as well as the material volume.) I have enjoyed again, greatly, the bold, aggressive speculative fancy of them – and, in addition to this, what I always taste, deeply, in all your work, the redolence of the unspeakable Italy, to whose infinite atmosphere you perform the valuable function of conductor and condenser. You are a sort of reservicer of the air of Italian things, and those of us who can’t swig at the centuries can at least sip of your accumulations. Italy seems to have been made on purpose to have a past, whereas other countries are as if they had one by accident and didn’t quite like to confess it – as if they were

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896

maidservants with an illegitimate brat! Italy doesn’t blush for her prodigal son, and you are one of the most accomplished interpreters of the parable. The short tale is a divine form – I have the face to say it, I should already have sent you the longest three-volume novel ever written, if it hadn’t failed, and yet, to come out.3 (It was three or four weeks hence – when it will trundle to you over the Alps like a banal tricycle. Ride it but a few minutes at a time – unless – or until – you learn how: which perhaps you won’t). The supernatural story, the subject wrought in fantasy, is not the class of fiction I myself most cherish (prejudiced as you may have perceived me in favour of the close connotation, or close observation, of the real, or whatever one may call it – the familiar, the inevitable). And that only makes my enjoyment of your artistry more of a subjection. As for the land unspeakable, I hope to say something to it, if not of it, one of these very next weeks. I start for Italy ces jours-ci – by the 10th, I hope, at latest. The business is to consist mainly of Venice – I have promised to P[alazzo] Barbaro a visit – but I shall be very unhappy – more unhappy than I can afford to, in a world spiritually so expansive, if I don’t get down to Florence for a few days. But I shall not know when I shall take these few days (whether before or after Venice – or as an interlude) till I get to Milan (H. de la Ville). Probably before – but want to do so many things – Urbinos and Volterras and Urbanias: for which I lack the golden hours and the golden coin. I have seen lately a few of your friends – Mme Darmesteter at Easter, very much alive, very fresh and happy, apparently – quand même; Miss Marie Mackenzie, thoroughly and securely agreeable; Lady Wolseley,4 at last (just these days) facing the music and sounding the charge (her social Tel-el-Kebir)5 to bring her daughter a second time into the world; to which end she has taken a flat in London for the season. I believe it’s over (Frances’s first ball a couple of nights ago) and both of them doing very well. Will you give my very friendly remembrances and assurances to your brother? As to how he is and how you are I hope to have ocular, or auricular, confession some day in May. Sargent is, I believe, adding up dollars (still) in America as fast as it is possible to one qui se fiche6 to such an extent of arithmetic! Believe me, dear Miss Paget, yours most truly, HENRY JAMES] 1 See List of Correspondents: Henry James. 2 Lee’s Hauntings was published in 1890. The dedication reads: “To Flora Priestley and Arthur Lemon are dedicated Dionea, Amour Dure and these pages of introduction and apology.” 3 The Tragic Muse was published in London at the end of May 1890 in three volumes, 758 pages, and in New York on 7 June 1890 in two volumes. 4 See List of Correspondents: Lady Louisa Wolseley. 5 Sir Garnet (later Viscount) Wolseley was at the head of the British forces at the Battle of Tel-ElKebir, near Cairo, Egypt, on 13 September 1882, an important British victory. 6 In French in the text: who doesn’t care for.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896

12. Percy William Bunting May 23, [1890] Florence, Italy University of Chicago Library, Special Collections IL PALMERINO, FIRENZE PER MAIANO Il palmerino Maiano Florence May 23rd Dear Mr Bunting – I have been able to begin, and I hope perhaps to be able to finish (I say perhaps because I have become superstitious about expressing any belief in being stronger) a story; and I feel bound to give you the first offer of it, although I don’t feel at all sure that it would suit you. You see, I should be sorry that you should see a piece of work of mine in some other paper before I had resumed working for you; at least I would give you the choice of having it yourself, and the knowledge that I haven’t neglected you. I hope later on to put together another dialogue, which would be for you, if you wanted it; but for the moment the story is easier to manage & I require it to complete a volume. If you cared to have it I would keep the dialogue for someone else. The story is one with a kind of moral: a good young man with advanced ideas encourages a girl with no education & the habit of fast surroundings, but he hasn’t the courage to believe that she is better than her surroundings and leaves her ultimately to perish morally & intellectually in them.1 But it is a story like any other & nothing more. I want to tell you, what is rather difficult to say, namely, that I want you, if you can, to raise my pay. The New Review has given me, without demurring, £40 for twenty pages (or about) and it doesn’t seem fair to make them pay more than other people. Besides, I not only find that my writing can command more, but also that I require more. This I submit to you, adding however that if you cannot. I would rather stay on the Contemporary with less pay than go elsewhere with more. Let me have a postcard. Yrs sincerely V. Paget 1 “A Worldly Woman,” Contemporary Review, no. 58 (October–November 1890). Lee’s characters are Leonard Greenleaf and Miss Valentine (Val) Flodden, afterward Mrs Hermann Strüwe. She

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 is modeled after Clementina Anstruther-Thomson. Both characters draw inspiration from Henry James’s Princess Casamassima, Miss Flodden from Christina Light and her counterpart and wouldbe Pygmalion from Hyacynth Robinson.

13. Percy William Bunting [July 9, 1890] Florence, Italy University of Chicago Library, Special Collections IL PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE My Dear Mr Bunting, Here is the story. If you don’t want it, will you kindly send it to my friend Miss Evelyn Wimbush, Court House, North Finchley N. It is very long – even with curtailing would not go into less than 2 numbers – and it is a story and no doubt of it. To risk it would mean to open up a new line in the Contemporary, that of the story with a moral. I mean the story bearing upon some question of the day. This, I think, would be in no way below its dignity; but then I am the author of a story bearing on a question of the day. The question is, the real moral & educational condition of that the upper classes; because, although all the upper class is not of the fast sort, yet the whole life scheme of life, the whole scheme of expenditure & education of all the upper class depends upon the unavowed fact that the set of Marlborough House1 is the object of admiration & imitation. Society tends thither, & until society get a more respectable ideal, all our moralesness will have but little effect. I doubt whether any review save one like yrs, a serious one, would have the courage to print this; for I have tried to do a little Ibsen in narrative. The mags, also, appeal to readers incapable of understanding the standpoint of a puritan & a socialist like the hero. So, if you take it, I shall naturally be very glad. I haven’t been able to put my hand to a dialogue. And now I am starting on a driving tour for my health. Send me back those church notes if you dislike them. Please write to me here, whatever yr decision. My letters will be forwarded at once. Yrs truly V Paget 1 Marlborough House was the London residence of the Prince and Princess of Wales, Edward and Alexandra. It was a kind of rival court to that of Queen Victoria and attracted the leading men and women of business, industry and entertainment.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896

14. Matilda Paget [July 22, 1890] Panzano, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Panzano, Tuesday morning 9 [o’clock] Dearest Mamma – we had a nice journey here, no rain & no dust, & arrived at 9.30. Kit was a little tired, but is well. I walked up the hills, which were many. This is a delightful farmhouse, with such kind people. They gave us an excellent dinner in a great dark room with a huge chimney, & vinsanto & vermouth in quantity. Excellent beds. We leave at 3 & arrive at Siena at 8. So much love 15. Matilda Paget1 July 23, [1890] Siena, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 19 Via Sallustio Bandini Siena Wed. 23 July Dearest Mamma – We are very comfortable here, with 2 good rooms, and arrived not tired yesterday 8.30 p.m. The drive from Panzano hither was very beautiful. The people at Panzano were so kind, not merely while we were there treating us splendidly, but giving us wine to take with us, and the Factor [facteur]2 riding quite a long way with us where we had to ford a river. It was quite cool in the some [in some] of the villages we passed, & here it is not hot. Luggage arrived 1 On the recto of the postcard, Matilda Paget has written: “Baby’s address at Siena: Pensione Tognazzi / Via Sallustio Bandini / Siena.” 2 Lee’s neologism. In French, a facteur is a postman.

16. Matilda Paget July 26, 1890 Siena, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896

Siena 26 July. Sat. [1890] So many thanks for kind postcards & sending letter. So sorry suffering from heat. Here it has been 30 in the shade, but I shd never have guessed it, the temperature of early June rather, & the town cool. We have had 2 lovely drives & the pony is improving. Kit is now quite well, but still apt to get tired. The money for the coachman was to pay for a straw hat for her in Porta Rossa at Orsacci’s. Please send on the English paper. How is Papa getting on? A tremendous storm this afternoon. So much love 17. Matilda Paget July 30, [1890] Siena, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Siena 30 July Dearest Mamma – Many thanks for letters. I am so sorry for the dog. If he goes on he had better go & live a little at the coachman’s. You never say a word about Papa. Isn’t he going to Vallombrosa? It is hotter, but very endurable; but I have a little of Kit’s neuralgic complaint now. There is however a primitive douche, which I shall take. The number & variety of drives, when we can push far enough, is wonderful. Bandini1 now inhabits the Villa in person. So much love 1 This may be Icilio Bandini (1843–1911), lawyer and influential statesman in Siena.

18. Matilda Paget August 1, [1890] Siena, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Siena 1st August I am so vexed about Cecconi1 and wrote off to him at once. Only in his note he says he is that moment leaving Florence, so I hope the poor puppy won’t fall between two stools & come to some ill end. I think it might be well to enquire of

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896

the porter of Cecconi’s studio. It is one of some new ones, inside a wall in Via dei Robbia Pa Pinti, immediately behind Società Artistica. It’s too bad of Cecconi. The letter was from A. [Adele] Alfieri. So much love 1 Eugenio Cecconi (1842–1903), Italian painter known for his scenes from nature. He was close with Italian painter Telemaco Signorini, another friend of Lee’s. He began to show more widely at exhibitions throughout Italy in the 1880s and became a regular contributor to the Magazine of Art and the Art Journal when Lee and Eugene Lee-Hamilton began writing for them. Lee may be referring to a dog being lost.

19. Matilda Paget August 7, [1890] Siena, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 7th Aug. A thousand thanks for the white frock. I forgot to tell you that Mary [Darmesteter]1 tells me Bourget has announced his marriage with a catholic jeune personne,2 daughter of a ruined Jew financerer, penniless.3 Have you seen that Ld Wolseley is appointed Commandt in Ireland? It has turned cooler, thank heaven: I hope you also find it more supportable.4 It seems that the case of E. Wimbush’s brother is quite serious. I begin to hope Cecconi’s xxxxx may have been a Maremma man who has taken the dog back. So much love 1 Lee’s former romantic friend Mary Darmesteter, née Robinson, later Duclaux. See List of Correspondents: Mary Frances (Agnes) Robinson, née Darmesteter. 2 In French in the text: young lady. 3 On 21 August 1890, exactly one month after their official engagement, Paul Bourget married Julia Louise Amélie “Minnie” David, a converted Jew and the daughter of John David, a ruined shipowner from Antwerp, and his wife, Emma née Meticke. Minnie met Paul at the home of Louise de Morpurgo, a friend of her mother’s and the wife of Louis Cahen d’Anvers. Morpurgo held a salon with the Ephrussis, a Jewish banking dynasty. See Marie-Gracieuse Martin-Gistucci, Paul et Minnie Bourget, journaux croisés (Italie, 1901), Chambéry, Centre d’études franco-italien, Université de Turin et de Savoie, 1978. Minnie was 22 and Paul was 38. She preferred to marry him over the Belgian financier Henri Bamberger (1826–1910), who also proposed to her. Their wedding witnesses were François Coppée, of the Académie Française, composer Albert Cahen, Jules Ephrussi and Eugene Beyens, adviser to the Belgian Legation. Minnie was fluent in Italian, and in 1898, she translated Paese di Cuccagna, the masterpiece of Paul’s close friend Matilde Serao (Pierre de Montera, Luigi Gualdo, Rome, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, “Quaderni di cultura francese,” 1983 [notice BnF no FRBNF36611612], p. 58). 4 In French in the text: bearable.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896

20. Matilda Paget August 10, [1890] Siena, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE 19 Via Sallustio Bandini Siena – Aug 10. Sunday Dearest Mamma I have been feeling bad these last days, & hence have not written. It seems impossible to get up my strength, although it isn’t hot. I have to take quantities of Brand [brandy] and vin santo to get me along. Luckily the food here is very simple and nourishing, roast meat every day and very good soups, and no warmed up things of any kind, so that I have suffered much less from indigestion. What is the matter, I fancy, is that I am not yet strong enough to walk about in the morning, & here one can’t take out the horse more than once a day, nor sit out in the open air, so walk one must. Harry Quitter,1 a cad who edits the Universal Review wrote to ask whether he might call & ask for some work. When he was told that owing to my engagements with the Fortnightly & Contemporary I could at present give him only fiction, he said he could take fiction only from well known writers; then I had the satisfaction of telling him that his terms were only half of what I got elsewhere, so we parted. He has the audacity to wear on his hat a Guard’s Brigade ribbon: I asked him when he had been in the Guards, & he mumbled that it wasn’t a brigade ribbon, only like one; but he didn’t explain what it was. I fancy he must do it to impress stray tourists. Would you very kindly get, pay for, & cause to be sent the things of which I enclose a list? Of the Brand [brandy] particularly I am in want. As they always confuse the two sorts at the Stores, would you see that it is not the sort with the green sash round its waist. That villainous poney stamped on Kit’s foot yesterday, so she has to hobble and stay in doors till the evening. She was awfully kind the day I was so bad. The races are on the 16th & 17[th], extra fine because of the presence of the young duke of Aosta. On the 18th, we start for someplace near Abetone. Not Abetone itself because from all accounts it is too bad unless one goes to the 12 fr. Pension. Mrs French is looking for rooms somewhere high up for us. We shall drive from here to S. Gimignano, 2nd night Volterra; 3rd Pontedera, 4th Lucca (I have written to Sanminiato) for 2 nights,: 5th Bagni, 6th S. Marcello, The driving seems to do me more good than anything else. 21

SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896

As we must be ready packed by the 17th, I am anxious to get the things as soon as possible. So much love. How is Papa? V. Beg Miss Goodban2 to collect such flower seeds (all she can) as are ripe (poppies & sweet peas certainly) and put them into envelopes with names on each. 1 Not Quilter (unlike Irene Cooper Willis). Harry Quitter (1851–1907) was an art critic and popular reviewer in several periodicals. He was a conservative critic and often opposed avant-garde movements like aestheticism and impressionism. 2 Miss Goodban: either Beatrice or Eva, whom the Pagets hired as Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s secretary, daughters of Edward and Rosanna Sarah Goodban. “Goodban’s was a mecca for foreign travellers, selling Newman’s watercolours, artists’ supplies, Alinari photograph, prints, maps and guidebooks in German, French and English. He also kept lists of English-speaking instructors in painting, drawing, music and Italian, as well as governesses, for the benefit of his tourist clientele.” See John Murray, Handbook of Florence and Its Environs (London: John Murray, 1867), p. 8; Temma Balducci and Heather Belnap Jensen (eds.), Women, Femininity and Public Space in European Visual Culture, 1789–1914 (Farnham, UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014), p. 76n17. “The patriarch is Thomas Goodban, music teacher in Canterbury. His middle son, Edward Goodban, was an engraver and music teacher in Canterbury, Kent, and then, by 1856, bookseller in Florence, mentioned in Susan Horner’s Diary, 1862, ‘Called at Goodban’s to inquire if he had a copy of Mrs Barbauld’s hymns in Italian,’ and his business was still going strong in 1885, according to W.D. Howells’ An Indian Summer” (The Protestant Cemetery in Florence, www.florin.ms/cemetery2.html).

21. Matilda Paget August 12, 1890 Siena, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 12 Aug 90 Tuesday. A thousand thanks for postcards & 2 letters. K’s [Kit’s] foot much better, thanks to Packer’s fluid – Fear I am in for a little relapse, getting weaker & some of my old symptoms I had in Spain. I have written to know whether I could have 15 days hydropathic treatment at the Hastreiters’ in Piedmont. Perhaps I ought to do something of the sort, & Mme Resse1 told me the place is cool & well arranged. But it would be a great expense & I couldn’t take the pony. I don’t like plunging into an unknown place. All my plans are upset & I am rather depressed. So glad about Papa Much love. Yrs V. 1 Elizabeth Woodbridge Phelps Pearsall (ca. 1838–1924), American-born composer, philanthropist and feminist. She was the wife of book lover, collector and philanthropist Count Pio Resse of Rome.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896

22. Matilda Paget August 13, [1890] Siena, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Siena 13th. Wed. Dearest Mamma. A thousand thanks for the box. I shall send, before my departure ben p hence, a dress & some books which I have no room for. Plans still vague. But I am a little better. Saw 1st trial of the races today: pretty.1 I am awfully vexed Eugene should have written Cecconi a stinger. After all he was not solely to blame. E. [Eugene] should not have done it behind my back, after making me write 2 letters. That was surely expression of feeling enough. C. has never answered, no wonder. Which Gambas sent the faire part?2 The postmark wd tell. 1 The races at Siena. See Lee to Matilda Paget, August 17, 1890. 2 In French in the text: announcement.

23. Matilda Paget August 14, [1890] Siena, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College [Aug 14 Thursday] Siena, Dearest Mamma – I must thank you at once for your very generous offer, which touches me more than I can say. It is awfully good of you. I have 400 frs with me still, and E. [Eugene] has in his charge £20 of Kit’s which I may ask you later to have cashed for me & send me in Italian money. So you must not send me money. If the Hastreiter answer that her husband could take me into their hydropathic for a fortnight, it may be worthwhile to go, unless the high Apennine air do me so much good as to render it unnecessary. The difficulty under which I find myself about going to a hydropathic (and the nearest ones are far off) is that I don’t like letting Kit spending her few pennies on living expensively at a place which can be of no pleasure or profit to her. Of course as she goes there to look after me, she ought to let me pay, but rather than do that she will leave me in the lurch altogether. 23

SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896

I had intended, as she is necessary to my getting about at all, paying (which I could afford) her expenses here & wherever else we go as not as guests. But she wouldn’t hear of it, and insisted upon my taking that £20 which is in E’s [Eugene’s] hands, and which, I truly believe, is all the money she had got until goodness knows when, for her father has got into the scrapes which don’t allow him to pay her her portion of the mother’s money.1 She lent him the capital of her mother’s inheritance to pull through a semi bankruptcy, but he is now unable to give her capi the capital & very irregular in giving her anything at all, so she has to live off the interest of some railway shares, of which I fancy these £20 are a good slice. You understand from this how unwilling I am to use more than necessary of her pennies, & particularly upon keeping me in company in a dreary hydropathic. She wanted very much to go to Venice for a little before going to Maria Pasolini, and she herself suggested, with giving that up & going to the hydropathic instead, & pretends she will be quite as well amused in the one as in the other. I must try and squeeze in at least a few days at Venice for her afterwards. Please do not mention any of this to anyone, even Eugene, as she would dislike its being known immensely. I tell it you so that you may understand my difficulty, and that you may, later on (now would be too obvious) tell her that she need not hesitate about coming to the Palmerino in the winter. Flora Priestley2 is going to have her at their villa for a month sometime, & Mrs French has asked her up to Villa Rondinelli; and as she will have spent so much of her money on looking after me in the summer, I don’t want her to feel that she must just return to England & beg perhaps not very willing hospitality of her sister in law,3 simply because she doesn’t know where to go. What has been & is the matter with me is a return of the great fatigue, depression & restlessness I had in Spain, & the great difficulty in sleeping. It isn’t the heat now, for it isn’t hot any longer. I believe it is one of the usual relapses due to writing & generally doing too much. I am as weak as water & in a sort of fever part of the day & half the night. I see that I am still very far from recovered. If you can really afford the 500 frs, which I doubt, rather put them by for me, as they will relieve me of the horrid feeling I frequently have that I must write at once in order not to have to sell the pony. The Contemporary & Fortnightly both want articles, but I seem quite unable to write, or even think of anything. If I could finish another story I might have a volume ready by Easter, and get £100 for that, but at present I can’t write. Unfortunately, during my illness, I have sold all the ready work I had, & must therefore write if I want money. That Packer stuff cured Kit’s foot in two days. You make compresses of it, & change them frequently. I have not yet heard whether Mrs French has got us rooms somewhere high up. 24

SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896

So very many thanks, dearest Mamma. Yrs V. 1 From “for her father has got” to “the mother’s money” is not in Irene Cooper Willis. The debt was apparently never repaid, and their inheritance was in limbo for some time. On 17 June 1891, Clementina Anstruther-Thomson’s father, John Anstruther-Thomson, married Isobel Bruce (1859–1918), daughter of Lieutenant General Robert Bruce of Glendouglie. They had a baby, Rachel Anstruther-Thomson (1892–1968), later Rachel Jean Gordon-Cumming, born on 19 October 1892. Clementina Anstruther-Thomson and her siblings were disinherited until their stepmother’s death. 2 Flora Priestley (1859–1944) was a longtime family friend of Lee and the Sargent family. She was the daughter of Augusta Le Poer Trench and the Reverend William Henry Priestley, Chaplain of the English Church, Nice, France. She is featured in a number of Sargent’s paintings of the late 1880s, including her own portrait and one of her and Violet Sargent. 3 Clementina Anstruther-Thomson’s sister-in-law was Agnes Anstruther, wife of Charles St. Clair Anstruther. In 1896, she joined the West London Ethical Society, of which Clementina AnstrutherThomson also became a member in 1910.

24. Matilda Paget August 17, 1890 Siena, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 1890 IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE Siena 17th Aug Sunday1 Dearest Mamma – A thousand thanks for yr very kind letter. Kit is very anxious I should go to the hydropathic (I have not yet had an answer about it); but, as I imagined she won’t hear of not paying for herself while there. It makes it very difficult for me, and the only thing is, when her money is spent, to insist upon taking her to Venice for a week. Many thanks – a thousand – for again wishing to send me money. The best will be to send me (in order not to cash unnecessarily) as much of Kit’s as is in Italian money – I think it is 200 or 250 by Vaglia Presso il Barone French San Marcello Pistoiese.2 I have been paying for her this month, & have the management of her money for her. It is very generous & good of you. 25

SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896

The MS contained proof of my new story,3 the acceptance of which by the Contemporary is very unexpected and a great relief. As to the MS returned by Olive, it is of no consequence whatever. The races have been raging for three days, & there will be more tonight.4 The procession is much finer than I remembered it; and there were fireworks the night before last quite magnificent in the big piazza. In the cathedral we met John’s friend Miss Popert,5 the one who was whisked all over the Turkish bath by the arm of a negro (do you remember) [;] she had painted some of the flag wav waving people some years ago, so she was able to take Kit everywhere to see them exercising in private, & had got the winning jockey to sit for her. Yesterday we all went & had wine & water & macarroons with the jockey & the heads of the Contrada, the Dragon. Unfortunately a rival jockey’s horse started before the signal, caught in the rope, threw the man & rolled over & over him. The man was carried over ‸off‸ for dead, but they say he is merely badly hurt. The horse was started riderless, and allowed to race with the others – a curious sight. Barzelotti6 also turned up. And the Marchesa Chigi7 whom I have never met, but who is the daughter of that awful Mrs Elliott, ferreted us out & asked us to her window as Mrs E. isn’t there we are going. We start tomorrow afternoon & sleep at S. Gimignano. The second night at Volterra and the 3d at Pontedera between Pisa & Empoli. As I don’t know the name of the inn in either place, telegraph in case of anything Ferma in Posta [fermo posta]8 & I will enquire. The 4th night – Thursday Hotel Croce di Malta at Saminiato’s Scuderia, Lucca. We shall stay there two days. We hope to be at S. Marcello the 24 – presso il9 Barone French – whither all letters had best be sent. At S. Marcello we shall decide where to go. Ask Miss Goodban to put some of everybody’s cards – there are some of mine in the top of drawers of my writing table – with some Italian phrase of condolence, into two envelopes – one addressed Contessa Eufrosina Gamba Sesto Fiorentino per Settimello The other Conte Pietro Gamba, deputato al Parlamento, Ravenna.10 so no one can be offended. I am taking in the middle of the day a very cold sitz bath with quantities of tar soap, having discovered that Packer is tar. It seems to unfever one & to make one sleep better. It also cures flea & mosquito bites, & keeps off the beasts. It isn’t at all nasty. Kit’s foot is cured. So much love. I will answer E. later about Mary.11 Yr V. 1 Lee later added this word with a blue pencil. 2 Lee later underlined the address with a blue pencil.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 3 “A Seeker of Pagan Perfection: Being the Life of Domenico Neroni, Pictor Sacrilegus” appeared in The Contemporary Review in 1890. 4 The races at Siena. Clementina Anstruther-Thomson drew sketches of the races, and Lee published one of these in Art and Man: Essays and Fragments, the collection of Anstruther-Thomson’s writings edited by Lee. It contained twenty illustrations and an introduction by Lee paying tribute to Anstruther-Thomson and providing a detailed explanation of the evolution of Lee and AnstrutherThomson’s theories on psychological aesthetics; see “The Races at Siena,” from a pen-and-ink drawing by Clementina Anstruther-Thomson, 1890, in C. Anstruther-Thomson, Art and Man: Essays and Fragments, with twenty illustrations and introduction by Vernon Lee (London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1924), p. 24. 5 Charlotte (Carlotta) Ida Popert (1848–1922), German-born artist and printmaker whom Sargent had known for many years. She studied and most often exhibited her works in Paris and Rome. 6 Giacomo Barzellotti (1844–1917), philosopher who held various positions at universities in Italy. He served as senator of Italy from 1908 to 1917. Lee had known him for many years at the time of writing. See Lee to Matilda Paget, 7–10 July 1881, Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. I. 7 Frances Geils, daughter of the author Frances Minto Elliot (1820–1898), was married to Marchese Chigi, an archeologist and historian from the Roman branch of the family (Frances Minto Elliot, Roman Gossip [Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1896] p. 300). 8 In Italian in the text: poste restante. 9 In Italian in the text: care of. 10 Piero Gamba, whose father, Count Pietro Gamba (1801–1827), was an Italian nobleman, a friend of Byron’s and the brother of Countess Teresa Guiccioli, one of Byron’s mistresses. “He travelled to Greece with Byron to fight in the war for Greek independence, and his Narrative of Lord Byron’s Last Journey to Greece (1825) was published shortly after Byron’s death” (Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle, New York Public Library Archives and Manuscripts, http://archives.nypl.org/cps/23442). See Leslie A. Marchand (ed.), Byron’s Letters and Journals: ‘Between Two Worlds’ (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977), p. 272. Gamba’s wife, Maria Gamba, came to be a longtime friend of Lee’s and was a popular figure among Lee’s acquaintances in Florence. In Art and Man (1924), Lee mentions that Maria Gamba was the daughter of Charlotte Marliani (1790–1850), who had been a friend and correspondent of George Sand and Eugène Delacroix and hosted a well attended salon (p. 23). Charlotte’s husband, Emanuele Marliani, was the Consul of Spain in Paris. The couple separated in 1847. It is unknown whether Maria was the illegitimate child of poet Giuseppe Giusti and Charlotte Marliani, as was rumored. Her sister was Eufrosina Gamba. In his letters, Henry James, who met Maria Gamba in 1887, described her in the following terms: “I saw also something of a very clever, natural, exuberant Countess Gamba, who is one of the figures of the place – niece by her husband of Byron’s Guiccioli (she has a lot of his letters to the G. which she declares shocking and unprintable – she took upon herself to burn one of them!) a putative natural daughter of Giuseppe Giusti, the satiric Tuscan poet. (Her mother was some fine Florentine lady to whom G. was much devoted, and she – the ‘Euphrosyne’ – is said much to resemble him. She was the most of a ‘nature’ of anyone I ever saw” (“Henry James to Grace Norton, Palazzino Alvisi, Venice, 27 February 1887,” in Leon Edel [ed.], Henry James, Letters, Volume III, 1883–1895 [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980], pp. 165–166). For more about Lee’s acquaintance with the Gambas, see Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II. 11 This sentence is not in Irene Cooper Willis.

25. Matilda Paget August 19, [1890] S. Gimignano, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College S. Gimignano 19th Aug. 27

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Dearest Mamma. Arrived here 9 p.m. yesterday after 4 hours drive from Siena, walking up the steep hill. Leave for Volterra at 3 today. Please send the whole of K’s money, cashed, c/o Baron French, S. Marcello. The Hastreiter shut up shop so early in Sept. it seems scarcely worth while to take the long journey. Angelica recommends a hydropathic in the Apennines near Bologna, Castiglione dei Pepoli. If information satisfactory, shall go there, as it isn’t far from S. Marcello, & we could drive the whole way. At Mme Chigi’s we met Mrs Jack Gardener,1 a pleasant American who once gave me some casts of coins . . . 1 Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924) was a major American connoisseur, collector of art, patron of artists and philanthropist. Her circle in Venice, named after the Palazzo Barbaro, included Vernon Lee, Henry James, Robert Browning, John Addington Symonds, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Edith Wharton and Franck Duveneck among many others. In 1894, through C.E. Norton, Bernard Berenson met the wealthy Boston patron and collector who, turning from Norton’s former guidance, decided to collect old Masters (B. Berenson’s specialty) instead. She funded his travels to study art and architecture in London and Paris and thanks to his expertise, she collected and acquired major Italian Renaissance works, and later founded the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, which was inspired by her Palazzo Barbaro in Venice. It was designed to house her significant collection of Renaissance art and opened in 1903. See Rosella Mamoli Zorzi, Anne McCauly and Erica Hirshler (eds.), Gondola Days: Isabella Stewart Gardner and the Palazzo Barbaro Circle, Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2004. Also see Lee to Isabella Stewart Gardner, 16 December 1886, in Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II, for information about the gift of coins she sent Lee.

26. Matilda Paget August 20, [1890] Volterra, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Volterra Aug 20. Wed. We are going to stay on here tonight, as yesterday was a great pull for the poney – 5 hours all uptown hill, and we have a very long journey, though a downhill one, tomorrow to Pontedera. The poney is quite well & could go on, but it is a precaution. The inn here is quite clean & good, & the air cool, & it is a strange Etruscan place, on the top of a hill to which Siena is a child’s play. I never saw such a climb. At Lucca I hope to have details about the hydropathic. So much love 27. Matilda Paget August 22, [1890] Pontedera, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 28

SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896

Pontedera (Valley of the Arno) Thursday We arrived in this manufacturing hole after 30 miles gallantly done by Stellino. We stopped 5 hours at a roadside inn, halfway from Volterra, very clean & good. Tomorrow morning we proceed to Lucca. I am much better for the journey; but it is horribly hot in the plain. So much love 28. Percy William Bunting August 22, [1890] Lucca, Italy University of Chicago Library, Special Collections (address always) PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE. Lucca Aug 22 Dear Mr Bunting, Yr letter & cheque have followed me hither; many thanks. I will shorten the story, but I should like to know by how much: not that I ‸one‸ can shorten it anything ever as much as an Editor wishes, but in order to know what I’d aim at. I will take out those cows in the revise, since they offend you. I do not know in the least what innuendo anyone could possibly attach to the subject, but from yr words I judge that you know better than I (the cows were a random shot) unless indeed, like myself, you are afraid of finding somebody who would put a meaning into the unintelligible. I received the proofs. I have been correcting them in wayside inns in the dreadful baking hours between proceeding on a driving tour. A friend of mine & myself – the Lady Althea of an old dialogue of mine1 – have driven from Florence to Siena and thence to Volterra hither in a pony cart; and are driving up into the Apennines now. We have driven ninety miles & more, but who can drive quick or long enough to catch ‸up‸ health on the road? Yrs sincerely V. Paget 1 Lady Althea in Lee’s eponymous book of dialogues is modeled after Clementina Anstruther-Thomson.

29. Matilda Paget August 23, [1890] Lucca, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Lucca + di Malta1 Friday 29

SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896

So many thanks, and for sending on all those letters. The Hydropathic is quite innaccesible [inaccessible] from this side of the world, it would imply driving almost down to Bologna, abou then 40 kil. up with a broken bit. The Dr is my authority so it is true. We have therefore given it up & asked Mrs French to take us part of a cottage near the Abetone. I will get sea baths at Venice. It is beautiful but very hot here. We stay till Saturday evening & arrive S. Marcello Monday. 1 The cross sign [i.e. the Maltese cross] is in Lee’s original letter.

30. Matilda Paget August 24, [1890] Lucca, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Lucca Sunday. We leave this evening sleeping at the Bagni & arriving at S. Marcello tomorrow afternoon. We shall stay with the French till Thursday, when we go up higher, to where she has taken us rooms. For the moment address S. Marcello. It is much cooler here, altho’ it ought to be a much hotter place, so I hope it is a general fall of temperature by which you have benefited. Bunting sent me £20 on account, so I shall have plenty. Will answer Pauline’s.1 We are anxious to lighten the carriage for the pony. So much love. V. 1 Lee and Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s first cousin Pauline MacPherson Abadam (Adams; 1849–?) was the daughter of Matilda’s brother, William MacPherson Abadam (Adams; 1814–1851), and his wife, Agnes Snow Shakespeare MacPherson Abadam (Adams; 1806–1866). William and Agnes lived almost exclusively in southern France, and their children were born there. For a time in the early 1850s, Matilda and Eugene lived at the Château de Bizanos, near Pau, where William’s family lived and where he died and was buried in 1851. Their elder brother Edward had sued William, claiming Pauline was illegitimate and should therefore be disinherited from their shared family fortune. In 1870, Pauline married Charles de Cargouët (1841–1871), and they had a daughter, Jeanne Pauline Marie “Bichette” de Cargouët (1871–?), but Charles died shortly after. In 1876, Pauline married Charles’s brother Théophile de Cargouët (1847–1907), and they had three children together: Marcelle Pauline Charlotte de Cargouët (1877–1954), Charles Alfred “Carlot” Théophile de Cargouët (1880–?) and Pauline Anne Hélène de Cargouët (1887). See Lee to Matilda Paget, 25 August 1887. Lee and Eugene were close with Pauline and her sister Alice throughout their lives. See Lee’s letters to Matilda Paget and Mary Robinson from August 1881, when she was visiting her cousins in France (Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. I; P. Gunn, Vernon Lee, Violet Paget, 1856–1935 [London: Oxford University Press, 1964], pp. 14–16). See Sally Blackburn-Daniels, ‘The Scholar’s Copy Book’ and the ‘Blotting-Book Mind’: Stratigraphic Approaches to Interdisciplinary Reading and Writing in the Work of Vernon Lee, unpublished PhD dissertation (University of Liverpool, 2018), p. 189: “Both Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s The New Medusa and Vernon Lee’s Ottilie are perhaps informed by Eugene’s infatuation with his cousin Pauline. Both Linda Villari’s obituary for Eugene, and Peter Gunn note this fact, and Pauline’s spurning of Eugene for a French lover.” See also Linda Villari, “A Master of the Sonnet: Eugene Lee-Hamilton, Born 1845. Died September 7, 1907”, The Albany Review, 3 (April–September 1908), pp. 182–191; and Gunn,

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 Vernon Lee: Violet Paget, 1856–1935, p. 16. About Lee’s 1887 visit to the de Cargouëts in Sainte Mélaine, Brittany, see Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II.

31. Matilda Paget August 28, [1890] S. Marcello Pistoiese, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College S. Marcello Monday A thousand thanks for yr kind letter & for the vaglia.1 We slept at the Bagni last night, at the Hotel Londres al Ponte. The place crammed. Arrived here about 10 a.m. having taken an extra horse uphill. A tremendous storm, & now quite cold. The little house Elena has taken for us is about 2 hours off; we shall settle about it tomorrow, & I will write you the address, which I don’t know. Cini is away, & her house locked up. So much love Yrs V. 1 In Italian in the text: money order.

32. Matilda Paget August 30, [1890] Prataccio, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College PALMERINO (MAIANO) FLORENCE [1890] Sat. Prataccio [Aug 30 ?] Dearest Mamma – I am so enormously relieved at hearing that E. [Eugene] is better: anything of that sort immediately makes one anxious. But I am very much grieved at the bad news of Papa. Please give him my love. Contessa Spalletti,1 a very agreeable woman whom I knew at Rome, came up to see us from S. Marcello the day before yesterday. She offered to keep the poney in her stable near Modena while we were at Venice, but and asked us to come & stay with her either going or returning. They are very nice & have a very fine place, I believe. But we think that if I can get Maria to keep the poney for us at Imola or Ravenna it would be more convenient, as the road from here to Modena is longer than that to Bologna. We cannot decide yet until we hear from Maria, who is near Verona at present. 31

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We have lots of money, as Mr French cashed £20 for me which the Contemporary sent. Thank you so very much for yr kind offer, dear Mamma. We are very well, as the air here is most excellent; and the woman luckily works quite well. There is one very beautiful drive up to some beechwoods, whence one sees the whole plain of Florence for miles & miles. But it is so cold that we really could not stand it much longer. We leave Thursday either for Bologna or Modena. I will telegraph you – but telegram to be sent on by post – when we actually start. We are in treaty for rooms which the Symonds had at Venice,2 but fear they will be too expensive. So much love Yr V. A poor wretched man here, who got fever down in the Maremma from being soused in a storm, & who has been crippled ever since, tells me that that awful German female Doctor of Art, Clara Schubert, was so very kind to him. I wish we hadn’t made fun of her. He also told me she was married & had gone to Berlin. 1 Countess Gabriella Spalletti Rasponi (1853–1931), Italian feminist and philanthropist. She supported a number of charities that benefited the rights and livelihoods of women. She founded an embroidery school in Tuscany that revived an interest in the craft and provided employment for female artisans. She was also the first president of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Donne Italiane who supported voting rights for women. See Anne Cova, “Women, Religion and Associativism: The Aristocratic Origins of the National Council of Italian Women, 1903–1908,” Women’s History Review (2022), DOI: 10.1080/09612025.2022.2100567. 2 The family of John Addington Symonds (1840–1893).

33. Matilda Paget September 1, [1890] Piteglio, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Piteglio sur Prataccio 1st Sept. Dearest Mamma. Letter & packet from Contemporary received. Most anxious about E. [Eugene]. Shall I come? Remember this is only 3 hours drive from Pistoia, whence 1 hour rail to Florence. Tell me whether you or he would wish us to come when our stay here is up, i.e. Thursday week. The Légende des Siècles1 was long since returned to Nencioni. Bitterly cold here. Yrs V.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 1 La Légende des Siècles [The Legend of the Ages] is a collection of epic poems by Victor Hugo. They were published in three successive series in 1859, 1877 and 1883. Composed during Hugo’s exile, they depict the dreaming poet’s visions of historical and symbolic scenes that are emblematic of the evolution of mankind from Adam and Eve to the twentieth century.

34. Matilda Paget September 4, [1890] Piteglio, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Wed [4 Sept] So glad E. [Eugene] a little better. Very cold; but am much stronger. Could you kindly send by post a pound of tea and four soup tablets – 2 pea & 2 potato from the English Baker? We find them a great resource in this wilderness. So much love 35. Matilda Paget September 14, [1890] Bologna, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Bologna Sunday [Sept 14] Dearest Mamma. Many thanks for the things sent on. Kit is much better, after having been very ill: I think she was half poisoned at that infernal inn, where I scarcely attempted to eat. The P’s [Pasolinis’] groom fetched the pony to Imola yesterday, & tomorrow we go to Venice. Address La Calcina, alle Zattere. This place is frightfully noisy, owing to innumerable trams. Melle Melegari lent me that article on Mary at S. Marcello.1 It is very prettily done; but how Mary can endure such a piece of impertinence, passes me. She must have utterly ceased to be an Englishwoman. I have not answered her letter. So much love 1 A favourable critical review of Mary Robinson’s work in the Débats, sent by the Italian bilingual novelist Dora (Dorette Marie) Melegari (1849–1924), a friend of Lee’s. For more about her, see Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II.

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36. Matilda Paget September 16, [1890] Venice, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College La Calcina Le Zattere. Venice Sept 16. Dearest Mamma – How very, very kind of you to think of welcoming me here with yr postcard. We are most agreeably surprised in this lodging, which is very cheap – 35 frs a week with service. It consists of three goodsized rooms & box room. With lovely view on the wide canal of the Giudecca from all the numerous windows. A charwoman serves us, & our breakfast is sent up from a little café below. Our other meals we must get out of doors. We dined at Quadri’s al at S. Mark’s yesterday, but it was ruinous – 3 frs ahead [a head]. So today we are trying to find something cheap. We have hitherto been able, even while travelling, to live prodigiously cheaply. I believe our arriving in the cart made them take us for a sort of beggars. The Débats were sent by Mary herself. She wrote to tell me she wd, and seemed much pleased with it all. I feel I could should stifle in the atmosphere she now lives in. But ever since Bourget, she had got strangely avid of even the most fulsome & impertinent personal flattery.1 Have you or E. [Eugene] ever thought of having over, to correct his MSS and be secretary for a month or so at Xmas, Clementina Black?2 She is such a nice, modest woman, so thoroughly business like and a holiday in Italy would be a perfect charity to her. I foresee E. [Eugene] will be wretched unless he have somebody of the Craigmyle-Little3 description to work for him in the winter. I haven’t mentioned it to him. I fancy he doesn’t know what a nice woman Miss Black is. We must go and hunt for restaurants. Kit is better, but very white. I fear this summer in Italy has done her more harm than me.4 I am quite well. So much love Yrs V. 1 This whole paragraph, from “The Débats were sent by Mary herself” to “flattery,” is not in Irene Cooper Willis. 2 Clementina Black (1853–1922), political activist and writer, was a longtime friend of Lee’s. See Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vols. I and II. She was close friends with the Marx family and a proponent of a consumers’ league, a consortium of consumers who purchase goods only from companies that pay decent wages.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 3 Miss Craigmyle and Miss Little were Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s secretaries. Elizabeth Mary Little (1864–1909) was an Irish poet. She lived and wrote in Rostrevor, County Down, and died in Bray in 1909. Her sister Isabella Richardson produced a posthumous volume of her poetry that same year. Little wrote two collections: Persephone and Other Poems in 1884, and Wild Myrtle in 1897. Persephone was dedicated “To all who love me,” and included an ode to the Princess of Wales’s opening of Alexandra College on 20 February 1879. That year marked the Royal University of Ireland Act, which marked the first time in Ireland that women could take university degrees. Also in Persephone was a poem dedicated to Mrs Ann Jellicoe, a Quaker educationalist who was a founder of Alexandra College and a pioneer of women’s education, and another poem condemning the fatal stabbings of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Henry Burke in Phoenix Park, Dublin, in 1882. Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s Sonnets of the Wingless Hours (London: Elliot Stock, 1894) is dedicated to “Lizzie Mary Little.” We are grateful to Sally Blackburn-Daniels for this note. 4 Lee and Kit were spending that summer in Italy. This was unusual in Lee’s life, as she usually went north to England and Scotland during the hot summer months.

37. Matilda Paget September 18, [1890] Venice, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College La Calcina – Zattere Venice. 18 Sept. Dearest Mamma. Yesterday I took my first seabath, & today I am going again. It is a long business, as I go at 11 & am not back at Venice till 1. But it did me good. We have now made a system by which we can get lunch at 1.50 & dinner 2 frs a head at the restaurant. We are very economical & have not yet had a gondola. How is E. [Eugene]? So much love Yrs V. 38. Matilda Paget September 20, [1890] Venice, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College La Calcina – Zattere Venezia. Sat. Dearest Mamma. Yesterday I took my 3rd seabath & 2d swimming lesson. I think I shall learn quite soon. Claude Phillips1 and Schuster turned up; the latter has hired a palace where he is entertaining a lot of people.2 They took us for a row to an island. That is the only time we have had a gondola, except coming from the station, we are so

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economical. Kit continues knocked up & is, I fear, getting very weak with constant cold & fatigue. I am rather anxious. So much love. 1 Claude Phillips (1846–1924) was an influential English art critic and writer. He contributed to the Daily Telegraph and Manchester Guardian and was an English correspondent for the Gazette des Beaux-Arts (Paris). 2 German-born music lover and patron Leo Frank Schuster (1852–1927) lived in London at 22 Old Queen Street. His home was a meeting place for artists, writers and musicians. Among his friends were Siegfried Sassoon, John Singer Sargent, Walter Sickert, Sir Edward Elgar and Sir Adrian Boult. He lent particular support to Elgar and Gabriel Fauré, whom he made famous in England (Jean-Michel Nectoux, Gabriel Fauré: les voix du clair-obscur (Paris, Flammarion, coll. “Harmoniques,” 1990). His home at Wimbledon, Cannizaro, staged Lady Archie’s productions. See Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II, for more on those productions. His daughter, Adela Schuster, was of great assistance to Oscar Wilde during his 1895 trial. She gave his family £1000 for their expenses and campaigned for his release after his conviction (Ashley H. Robins, Oscar Wilde: The Great Drama of His Life [Sussex: Sussex Academic Press, 2011], p. 86).

39. Matilda Paget September 21,1 [1890] Venice, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Venice – Sunday Dearest Mamma – Wd you kindly send on that journal which Pareto2 sent as I must answer it. If the Contemporary shd come, don’t trouble to send it on. Mrs Bronson3 has very kindly asked us to go with her for a few days after the 7th to a house she has got at Asolo in the hills. Asolo is the place in Browning’s last book4 & very pretty. The Spallettis can’t have us yet, so it’s convenient. Have you thought about Miss Black? E. [Eugene] must have someone if I go away in the winter. So much love 1 The place (Volterra) is wrong at Vernon Lee Archive. 2 Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto, born Wilfried Fritz Pareto (1848–1923), was a major Italian economist and social theorist. The Pareto theory, named after him – also called the 80/20 rule (80 percent of the land owned by 20 percent of the people) or the law of the vital few – describes economic inequity and is based on his observation of the unequal distribution of wealth in his and other countries. Lee consulted him on political economy. See Lee to Mary Robinson, 20 February 1886, Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II. 3 Katherine Bronson, née De Kay (1834–1901), married Arthur Bronson (1824–1885). They had a daughter, Edith, later Countess Rucellai. “From the time of their marriage the Bronsons spent much of their time travelling all over Europe. In 1876, they settled permanently in Venice and soon held a

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 central position in Venetian society. In 1879–80, James Whistler, along with Robert Browning, John Singer Sargent and Henry James, enjoyed Bronson’s hospitality at the Ca’Alvisi, the family home situated at the mouth of the Grand Canal opposite Santa Maria della Salute” (K. de K. Bronson, “Browning in Asolo,” Century Magazine, no. 59 [April 1900], pp. 920–931; K. de K. Bronson, “Browning in Venice,” Century Magazine, no. 63 [February 1902], pp. 572–584). Also see “The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler,” University of Glasgow, www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/ correspondence/people/biog/?bid=Bron_Mrs&initial=B. 4 Robert Browning (1812–1889), eminent Victorian poet and playwright. His final volume of poetry, Asolando: Fancies and Facts (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1890) published shortly before his death, was influenced by his final years at Asolo, where Mrs Bronson hosted him. About this time, she wrote “Browning at Asolo” and “Browning in Venice” (see previous note). Robert Browning and his sister Sarianna were friends of Lee’s. He refers to Lee in the last lines of “Inapprehensiveness” in Asolando (1889), in which a man stands beside a woman he loves as they admire the landscape. Their discussion of books on aesthetics is a pretext for the speaker’s musings on his passion for the woman: “‘No, the book/ Which noticed how the wall-growths wave,’ said she,/‘Was not by Ruskin.’/I said, ‘Vernon Lee.’” See Lee’s letters to R. Browning, Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vols. I and II.

40. Matilda Paget September 21, [1890] Venice, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College PALMERINO (MAIANO) FLORENCE La Calcina Zattere Venice 22 21 Sept. Sunday Dearest Mamma – To my immense surprise I received this morning your very, very kind present. I fear that what I said about the dearness of the Restaurant at St Mark’s may have made you think we were either starving or getting ruined, & that you may therefore have deprived yrself. If you can really spare the money apart from such a belief (otherwise you must let me return it you later) I accept it with gratitude as a birthday present. It will enable us to stay an additional week in Venice, which I want to do greatly partly because Maria P. [Pasolini] won’t be at Monterico till Oct. 15, partly because the seabaths are doing me so much good; & partly also because, so far as Kit is concerned, this past week has been utterly wasted. I can’t conceive what has caused it, for the heat at Siena didn’t seem to hurt her. But ever since we went up into the cold she has been getting ill. Mrs French was horrified by the look of her. She is awfully thin & white, eats next to nothing, and complains of constant weariness of body & brain. She hasn’t at all got over that dreadful fit of nausea & pain on the journey to Bologna, & lives only only

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on boiled eggs, a little soup & fish. She doesn’t own to being so bad, & insists on going about. But now she has got a very bad throat & loss of voice. I am very much alarmed, as her eldest brother, whom she resembles so much, died of consumption, & her second brother has been threatened by it;1 and she herself was supposed to be going that way when a young girl. Unfortunately she is too feeble to take seabaths, which might do her good. I ply her with quinine & stoo Vinsanto. We have found a cheap restaurant & live at the following rates, very cheap considering we have two bedrooms & a large sittingroom & a terrace: A day for 2 persons Lodging & service Breakfast, candles, oil & ferryboat Dinner & lunch

frs 5 2 7 _____ 14

or 7 a head. My Lido baths cost 2 franks including journey & swimming lesson. I believe I should learn quickly, if only I had more muscle in my legs: as it is, I can barely keep up any movement for more than a minute or two. I find that Amy Turton really taught me a lot at that tank of theirs. We have not yet been in a gondola! except from the Station & with Schuster, for I don’t count the penny ferry over the canal. But this evening, in honour of your munificence, we will have a real row, as people have a drink. It will do poor Kit good. So much love Yr V. 1 John St Clair Anstruther-Thomson (1853–1873). He was twenty years old; Clementina AnstrutherThomson was sixteen when he passed away.

41. Matilda Paget September 25, [1890] Venice, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College La Calcina – Zattere V. [Venice] Thursday I am horrified about the accident1 & particularly to hear that poor Bergeest2 was one of its victims. Please send cards to his house (Lungo Mugnone, a pretty low corner house with porch) & if still in time, some flowers. Kit is a little better a present, but never strong as formerly. I have [a] swimming lesson every day altho’ it is rough. I think you like me too, don’t you? 38

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Mrs Bronson has been so kind. We lunch with Mr Peto3 today. So much love V. 1 On 23 September 1890, Italy’s first electric tram, on its way from Florence to Fiesole, had a derailment at the turn of Bencistà, killing five people. We are grateful to Federica Parretti for this information. According to Angelo Uleri, Le tranvie a vapore della Toscana, Alinea editrice, 1999, “On Friday, 19 September 1890, the first electric tramway in Italy began.” Fabrizio Pettinelli goes on: “At 9.50 in the morning six cars full of guests departed from Piazza San Marco and crossed the line. / The success was enormous and by 24 September it was expected that King Umberto and Queen Margherita, visiting Florence, would reach Fiesole using the new medium. On 23 September, the car left Fiesole at 11.40 am and derailed at the bend after Villa San Michele and in the accident five people died and many others were injured The service was immediately suspended and in the investigation that followed the responsibility was attributed to an inexperienced operator who was also accused of being drunk (Firenze in tranvai. Breve cronistoria del trasporto pubblico, Firenze, AIDA editore, 2008, p. 52, 53). 2 Not Bergust, as in Irene Cooper Willis. Dr Bergeest was a German doctor and longtime resident in Florence at Via de’ Serragli 3 and at Lungo il Mugnone 5. See K. Baedeker, Italy: Northern Italy, Including Leghorn, Florence, Ravenna, the Island of Corsica, and Routes through France, Switzerland, and Austria, 8th ed. (Leipzig: K. Baedeker, 1889). His private hospital is lauded in an anonymous letter to the editor of The Woman’s Gazette, October 1878: “The doctor speaks English perfectly, and I cannot express my gratitude to him for the skill with which he treated me. The directress also speaks English well, and of course both Dr Bergeest and ‘Sister Madelain’ speak French and Italian as well as their native German. To make this place known to the English travelling public would be to save many from much unnecessary suffering and unnecessary expense” (“Change and Rest for the Sick and Weary,” The Woman’s Gazette; Or, News about Work [London: Hatchards, 1878], p. 156). Matilda Paget probably met him in 1881. See Lee to Matilda Paget, 10 August, [1881], Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. I. 3 Harold Ainsworth Peto (1854–1933) was a British architect, landscape architect, and garden designer who worked in Britain and Provence, France. He never married. His sisters were Emily Lydia and Edith (Mrs Mitchell); see Archivio Contemporaneo “Alessandro Bonsanti,” Fondo Angelica Pasolini dall’Onda, Firenze: Ilaria Spadolini, 2004 www.vieusseux.it/inventari/pasolinidallonda.pdf.

42. Countess Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi September 25, [1890] Venice, Italy Gabinetto Vieusseux Biblioteca IL PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE. La Calcina Zattere Venezia 25 Sept My dear Angelica, I hear you are back at Fontallerta, and I am anxious to hear that you are much much better. 39

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I can’t conceive how it is I haven’t written to you for so long: perhaps from the sense of neighbourship, of being always within reach, & if you will allow me to say so, of our now understanding each other so well that we can afford sometimes to be silent. Someone has probably kept you acquainted with our movements much more accurately than they deserved. We didn’t go to Castiglione dei Pepoli (thank you a thousand times for your kind business likeness in answering about it) because it can be reached conveniently only from the Bologna side, & going would have entailed driving over the same 40 kilometers of the earth’s very uneven surface three times over. Dear me, how hideous that Bolognese side of the Apennines is; we travelled two days through it, and its memory has remained a nightmare. Poor Kit was horribly ill the whole time; we spent a night at an inn the architecture of which was calculated entirely for cherubs, although the inhabitants rather cultivated the habits of swine; and just as we were approaching Bologna, the pony took fright (the first time in his life, brute!) at a bullock lying on the road, & shied right into a cart, with a portion of whose wheel we exchanged for some of ours. Here I may note that the inhabitants of that portion of the world speak a language entirely devoid of any Latin or other known element, and derived without intermediate bother from the chimpanzee. And now we are very happy here, after having been very miserable, as Kit was ill for an age after that particular inn. Poor Kit – she seems to have got so weak, so easily upset, this summer. I hope awfully she won’t go back North, as she gets a horrid consumptive sounding cough (and her eldest brother died of consumption) on the slightest provocation. My mother has asked her to pass the winter at the Palmerino, but with her ideas of moderation quand même1 I am sure she will go to Greenland rather than do it. When you see her, do impress upon her that she is really doing us all a charity in staying, & that to me it makes the difference of being looked after or no. By the way, I want you to mention to people, if you can, that Miss Wimbush is setting up some classes next winter for five or six boys & girls from 8 to 12 years. She is bringing out with her a first rate Cambridge woman to help. She is so wise in all her ideas of what children ought to be taught & how, & particularly what they ought not to be taught, and she has such a charming, delicate, human feeling of respect for everything young, that I am sure her classes would be a pleasure as well as an immense advantage for any intelligent child. So if you know of any parents who might want such a thing, do mention it. She is so oppressed, poor woman, with the sense of her uselessness in the world, that she wants also to help anyone to read Political Economy who seriously wishes it & who doesn’t know much. Would you like me to try & get her to come & read with Kit & you once or twice a week – she likes coming out to us when we can put her up. What a horrible, horrible accident, this – and how wrong to have exposed so many people when the machinery was evidently not yet understood properly.2 A poor man I knew, & you probably and Dr Bourget, was killed on the spot, leaving a pretty, young, & I should imagine, poor wife & two young girls. Do you 40

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notice how often such terrible tragedies happen to quite insignificant, harmless little people, just those for ‸to‸ whom no one could grudge their little bit of life & happiness? We have a charming little apartment here on the water, with masts & rigging before all our windows. On the 7th or 8th we go, I believe, for a few days to Mme Spalletti and then to the solitude & state of yr paternal palace at Ravenna, until Maria flashes back from England. Kit wants me to hug you for her; and hopes you have not degenerated on the subject of supply & demand; etc. My love to the children please & a good handshake to Signor Geppe I am yr afft. Vernon Elena seemed flourishing. 1 In French in the text: notwithstanding. 2 See Lee to Matilda Paget, September 25, 1890.

43. Matilda Paget September 26, [1890] Venice, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College La Calcina, Zattere, Venice. Friday Dearest Mamma, So many thanks, many, many. Kit is better, I am glad to say. Css Marcello1 has asked us to go & see her on the mainland, & so has Mme Pisani.2 Mrs Bronson is in very deep mourning, but has been so kind. The Curtises icy, perhaps from V. business. I am sorry for the matter, because they were always so kind before. Symonds expected next door on the 1st if not ill, as reported. We now have a cold dinner at home, which is less fatiguing. So much love 1 Countess Andriana Zon Marcello (1839–1893), wealthy countess and philanthropist who kept a well-attended salon. She was also instrumental in the early 1870s in establishing the Lace School at Burano, which helped to reinvigorate the lace trade on the island. In Francesco Protonotari’s Nuova Antologia, constant references are made to her salon: “Nel suo palazzo di città, nella sua villa di Mogliano, la contessa Andriana Marcello accolse con squisita ospitalità molti dei personaggi più notevoli del suo tempo, letterati, artisti, uomini politici, ecclesiastici, dal suo vecchio professore Giacomo Zanella a Fedele Lampertico, dall’Aleardi al Bonghi e al Massari, dal Bourget al Nigra al Villari a Mons. Bonomelli.” We are grateful to Stefano Vincieri for this information. See “Andriana Zon Marcello (1839–1893),” Fiore e Tombolo, Encyclopedia del merletto, www.fioretombolo.net/ marcelloandriana.htm

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 2 Evelina, Countess Pisani, née Teresa Evelina Berengaria van Millingen (1831–1900), was born in Constantinople. Her father was the English doctor, writer and archeologist Julius Michael Millingen (1800–1878), known for attending Lord Byron on his deathbed at Missolonghi. Evelina’s mother was his first wife, Marie Dejean Millingen, a Frenchwoman later called “Melek Hanum,” who had been raised in the harem of the Great Sultan of the Turks in Topkapi. Evelina was educated by her grandmother in Rome. Her appearance in oriental dress at the Fenice Theatre brought much admiration . . . In 1852 Evelina married Almoro III Pisani (1815–1880), last descendant of the Santo Stefano Pisani family, and divided her life between the Villa Pisani in Vescovana, where she normally lived, and the Barbaro Palace in Venice, where she resided on the first floor. The Venetian living room of the Curtis family, wealthy Americans who had purchased the second floor of the historical Barbaro Palace, became the base for intellectuals, AngloAmerican artists and royal visitors. Here Evelina met illustrious people who later came and stayed at the Villa in Vescovana. Among these was Henry James, who often visited the Curtis family. Another guest at the Villa Pisani was young writer Margaret Symonds, daughter of J.A. Symonds; “after having experienced the aristocratic informality of the Doge’s farm,” Symonds wrote the book Days Spent on a Doge’s Farm (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1893). See “The Garden, Villa Pisani, Bolognesi Scalabrin,” https://villapisani.it/. Lee’s strong impressions from Countess Pisani and her family story provided the source for her fantastic tales “Voix Maudite,” (illust. A. Lynch, Les Lettres et les Arts, Revue Illustrée [VII], 2, no. 3 [1 August 1887], pp. 125–153) and “A Wicked Voice” (Hauntings: Fantastic Stories [London: W. Heinemann, 1890]). About Lee’s acquaintance with her and her Villa Vescovana, see Lee to Matilda Paget, September 13, [1886], Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II.

44. Matilda Paget September 30,1 [1890] Venice, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Tuesday (30 Sept.) Dearest Mama. In answer to E’s [Eugene] suggestion; the Cs. [Curtises] have twice called & have been quite correctly polite, asking us to be sure to come & see them before we leave. It is the matter ‸manner‸, & the absence of any show of hospitality, so different from the Past, which makes me feel there has been mischief; in connexion either (I imagine) with the V. [Villari] business, or with that story “Two Novels” which Mme V. [Villari] saw in proof, & which may have been represented as a skit on all Venetian society.2 But the C’s [Curtises’] behaviour is not such as to call for or admit of, any explanation. Weather lovely hitherto but I fear breaking up. So much love. V. P.S. Just received notes. A thousand, thousand thanks. But it makes me miserable to think you may be inconvenienced. 1 This letter is not available in MS. This is taken from Irene Cooper Willis, Letters Home, pp. 323–334.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 2 On the “V. business” of Pasquale Villari, see Lee to Mary Robinson, 14 September 1885, Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II, for more about the controversy surrounding the sale of Lord Ashburham’s Italian manuscripts to the Italian government, a sale that Pasquale Villari helped to procure. “Two Novels” (“Deux romans”) was the initial title for Lee’s story “Lady Tal” in Vanitas: Polite Stories (London: Heinemann, 1892; New York: Lovell Coryell, ca. 1892). In September 1885, Lee imagined a story whose main characters, Atalanta “Tal” Walkenshaw and Jervase Marion, were closely modeled after Alice Callander and Henry James, respectively. The story was published in 1889 in French in Les Lettres et les Arts, revue illustrée (XVI [1 December 1889], pp. 289–352), with five illustrations by Albert Lynch. This issue, the last of its series, included texts by James’s friend Paul Bourget. It is likely that James read it in French, a language in which he was proficient, as early as December 1889 or early 1890 – long before 1892, when the English version, “Lady Tal,” was published in Lee’s collection Vanitas. Not only were Henry and William James incensed, but so were their friends, including the Curtises. About this affair, see Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II. The volume was dedicated “Alla Baronessa E. French-Cini, Pistoia per Igno,” dated “Chelsea, October 1891.” For round these sketches of frivolous women, there have gathered some of the least frivolous thoughts, heaven knows, that have ever come into my head; or rather, such thoughts have condensed and taken body in these stories . . .. For surely it is a misfortune not merely to waste the nobler qualities one has, but to have little inkling of the sense of brotherhood and duty which changes one, from a blind dweller in caves, to an inmate of the real world of storms and sunshine and serene night and exhilarating morning. . . . there is the utter pity of the thing, that frivolous living means not merely waste, but in many cases martyrdom. (Lee, Dedication “Alla Baronessa E. French-Cini.” Vanitas: Polite Stories [London: W. Heinemann, 1892], p. 5)

45. Matilda Paget October 3, [1890] Venice, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Friday. Dearest Mamma. I am sure, on the contrary, that unless she were engaged by pressing work (and it is to guard against this that any invitation wd have to be made a long time previous) Miss Bl. [Black] would be immensely grateful for such a holiday, which she could not otherwise afford. She knows Florence & lots of people in it, so that one need not be afraid of her being lonesome. I think you would be doing a great kindness to one of the hardest worked women I know. I have not thanked you sufficiently for the money; but I keep wondering if you will not be inconvenienced at this time of year, by the want of it. Remember to sell any of my bonds any moment you may want. I don’t know Miss Bl.’s [Black’s] address, but Evelyn Wimbush does, & she is going to the Newmans1 here the day after tomorrow. Yesterday we went to the Layards,2 who were civil. I hope the dog is less of a curse. So much love 1 Henry Roderick Newman (1843–1917) was an American painter who settled permanently in Florence in 1870. His watercolors of landscapes and architecture were greatly admired by Ruskin, who

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 championed his work and toured Italian cities with him. For nearly fifty years, Newman was a prominent member of the English-speaking community of artists and writers in Florence. He was friendly with Robert Browning, Henry James, William Wetmore Story and Nathaniel Hawthorne (K. Ahrens, “Pioneer Abroad, Henry R. Newman [1843–1917]: Watercolorist and Friend of Ruskin,” American Art Journal [November 1976], pp. 85–98). 2 Lady Layard, born Mary Enid Evelyn Guest (1843–1912), in 1869 married her sixty-one-year-old cousin, archeologist, diplomat and politician Austen Henry Layard. He bought Palazzo Cappello Layard in Venice between 1874 and 1878. In 1875, he shipped his great collection of Italian Renaissance paintings to Venice, where he died in 1894. See Michael M. Gorman (ed.), Mary Berenson, Diaries, 1891–1900, The Berenson Digital Archive, www.mmgorman.it/bernard-berenson/. Lady Layard’s journal covers fifty-one years; it has been digitised and is accessible at www.browningguide.org/lady-layards-journal/.

46. Matilda Paget October 6, [1890] Venice, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Venice. Monday. [Oct 6] Dearest Mamma. Mrs B. [Bronson] is unwell & in sorrow about her mother, so Asolo has had to be given up. It is a great disappointment. Css P. [Pisani] is in Venice, so no Vescovana; and the Spallettis won’t be at home till the 17th. So we go straight, or rather crooked, for it takes 8 mortal hours when it might be done in three, to Ravenna, to await Maria’s return from Paris. We leave Wednesday morning. Please address Palazzo Pasolini, Ravenna. I am sure someone must have done mischief here, otherwise the alteration in people is inconceivable. The weather is gradually breaking up. K. [Kit] is very low again. So much love Yr V. 47. Matilda Paget October 8, [1890] Venice, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Venice Th. [Oct]1 6. Dearest Mamma. Don’t let Bozzi begin reshaping carriage. 2. Kit says independent of E’s [Eugene’s] machine susceptible of better distribution of pull. 3. Shaking & weight on horse can be diminished. 4. She could explain. 5. Has no persicala (preserved peach) come from Brescia? Sent off this day week. 6. If not (nor at station) let me know at once. So much love V 1 The day Lee has written is wrong, as Th (Thursday) was the 9th, but the postmark shows “8 Oct.”

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48. Matilda Paget October 9, [1890] Ravenna, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College PALMERINO (MAIANO) FLORENCE Casa Pasolini Ravenna Oct 9. Thursday Dearest Mamma, We didn’t dislike the long journey half as much as we expected; it consisted mainly of waiting at stations, and so was much less jolly & fatiguing. At Ferrara we had an hour & rushed in a cab to the cathedral. We found dear old Zucchino, the Pasolini’s homme d’affaires,1 waiting for us at the station here, and two charming rooms ready, & the whole of this great big house to run about.2 It seems so odd to be here without Maria. She is in Paris but will be back in a few days. I find the pony here, looking very well. As the head groom rides x one of the Pasolini horses everyday, I want to go out with him, for you remember the pony goes all right in company. I also want to ride with the children at Mte Ricco. They have quite a good side saddle here, which used to be Angelica’s. Would you therefore cause Rosa to make a parcel at once & send me my x riding clothes & Kit’s? I enclose a line for her which tells her exactly what to send. And in the parcel, would you send me a pot of toothpaste? You will find several pots in one of the hid secret drawers behind the column of the chest of drawers in Kit’s room. Doesn’t this sound mysterious? You give the column a little jerk & it turns aside & discovers 3 little drawers. The toothpaste is behind the column nearest the door of the room. I have got Miss Black’s address. It is Miss Clementina Black 24 John St Bedford Row, W.C. Evelyn W. [Wimbush] thinks she has already taken her holiday, but perhaps she has not. E. [Eugene] wrote me a postcard saying he would much rather have a Miss Goodban3 during my absence (if I make any absence, which is by no means certain) and that when I am at home he finds it just as difficult to do without a secretary. For some reason Kit seems to paralyse him in dictation: perhaps it is that she ought to be drawing as much as possible, since she may eventually make money by it. Olive is going to Germany, Miss Little4 I fancy couldn’t come again as soon. So really [it] would be well to have Miss Black for a month if feasible. E. [Eugene] naturally depends immensely nowadays upon having a new audience, 45

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now that he can speak but scarcely be spoken to. So you might perhaps ask Miss B. [Black] at random, saying that I may or may not be there. I am dreadfully concerned about Kit. Evelyn has just sent me a written from Venice letting me know how awfully shocked she was at her appearance. “You must do something to get her better. She looks so wretched & is tired to death. She needs lots of feeding up & care. She is such a big woman to get down to this in so few months, and it will not be easy to get her round quickly.” I don’t know what to do. She denies being ill herself. I believe all this time there is some frightful family worry in the background, which is constantly pressing upon her, or & and that she hasn’t recovered from the cold & of Scotland last year & the horrible worries at home. What it all is I don’t know nor should ever dream of asking her, as she is awfully sensitive about her family affairs. Flora Priestley has written to say they expect her to stay at their Villa after Xmas; I am glad, as it will prevent her rushing north. Maria Gamba is here & has asked us to dinner. Someone at Venice has evidently been making mischief about me. Mrs Curtis & Mme Pisani, both living in the same house, were not frigid by a mere coincidence. Mme Pisani, when I called upon her vertually [virtually], tho’ perfectly politely, withdrew her invitation to Vescovana. So much love Yr V. 1 In French in the text: business manager. 2 The Pasolini dall’Onda estate of Montericco, is presented here: http://pasolinidallonda.simplywebspace.it/montericco/?page_id=99&lang=en 3 See Lee to Matilda Paget, August 10, 1890. 4 Olive Thomson and Elizabeth Mary Little were Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s secretaries.

49. Matilda Paget October 11, [1890] Ravenna, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Ravenna Oct 11. Dearest Mamma – A thousand thanks for the clothes, which arrived today, long before I expected them. Also for the Speaker. We find it very restful here, after the sightseeing & feeding out of Venice. The servant Lears gives us lunch & dinner, very good, for 5 francs for both. The pony is in capital condition, & I shall go out with the groom on Monday. Maria will be back I suppose in a week. If only Kit looked better. I am so glad to hear of E’s [Eugene] new system for his feet. Do beg him to turn his attention to the question of his door. It is too odious having either not to play or to disturb him. 46

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50. Matilda Paget October 14, [1890] Ravenna, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Ravenna 14th Dearest Mamma. This is my birthday, so I must write to thank for having been brought into a world which is most often tolerable & occasionally good. We are going to lunch in the pinewood with Maria Gamba & her mother. M. G. has sent me such lovely flowers in a brass Japanese pot. Yesterday I went out on the pony with the groom & had a delightful ride. If I can get some riding it will do me much good. I think it would be well to have all the rugs taken out & put in the sun while there still is sun, also to disinfect them. So much love V. 51. Matilda Paget October 18, [1890] Ravenna, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Saty Ravenna 18th. Dearest Mamma – The two rolls of matting ought to serve “per il corridoio dal salotto alla stanza da pranzo” and “per il corridoio che va dalla porta della signora fino all scale, girando intorno alla camera della signorina”1 upstairs. Please do not have my old red carpet laid down, it is too filthy, but send it kindly to be died dyed the darkest possible green. Will you tell me if this is feasible ? 1 In Italian in the text: For the corridor from the living room to the dining room and for the corridor that goes from the ladies’ door to the stairs, turning around the ladies’ room.

52. Matilda Paget October 19, [1890] Ravenna, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Sunday Ravenna 19th – Dearest Mamma – I am awfully sorry to be such a plague, but I am beginning to suffer so awfully from [the] cold, I send, that I must beg for some more clothes, particularly as it be freezing 47

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driving over the Apennine. I send the key (I have a duplicate, so keep it) of the basket I sent. Would you please have it carefully unpacked (it contains some very breakable glass) & the following objects put in, filling up loosely with paper. ‸my black jersey‸ 2 pair thick flannel combies. My fur coat. Kit’s trimmed with feathers. My thick jacket. Kit’s gaiter (guetre) they sent mine on mistake.1 And my old black knockabout hat. All by grande vitesse.2 But only emptiness besides. Please try to forgive me this plague. So much love3 1 The crossed out passage is not in Irene Cooper Willis. 2 In French in the text: high speed. 3 From “Please forgive” to Lee’s valediction is not in Irene Cooper Willis.

53. Matilda Paget October 21, [1890] Ravenna, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Ravenna. Tuesday 21 Oct Dearest Mamma – I am so sorry yr horse is still lame. I am trying to find another one here for myself, & have seen a grey pony. The groom, who is a first rate man, tried to ride Stellino alone, & had a most awful scene, culminating in a fit of rearing during which the horse caught his front leg in a wire fence & fell down, groom & all. It is awfully cold. No definite plan from Maria yet. Perhaps we shall go to the Spallettis. Can my carpet be put down with the black side upwards. So much love 54. Matilda Paget October 24, [1890] Ravenna, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College PALMERINO (MAIANO) FLORENCE Ravenna ‸Friday‸ Oct 24. Thursday Dearest Mamma. The clothes have just come; thank you a thousand times. Maria Gamba kindly lent me her sealskin yesterday, but it was short & narrow, and it was bitterly 48

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cold. Today I have been seedy, got up with great chill & headache, so Kit has kept me indoors, all the more that it snowed. I am now much better & shall go out tomorrow. The library in which we sit is a charming room, but our bedrooms are frightfully cold, & the rest of this big house, on account of being uninhabited. Maria will be at Coccolia this day week. She has been in England! She is not going to Montericco, because people there are still in a panic about that case of kidnapping three months ago;1 threatening letters have been received & no clue yet to the evildoers. And it would be worth a million perhaps to kidnap one of the P. [Pasolini] children, with all that rich Ponti family behind them. I think we shall go Monday till Thursday to Mme Spalletti. The address is Villa Spalletti, Rubiera Emilia. But I shall tell you further. Then we shall go to Maria for a little. I have found just the pony to suit me, half arab, charming, and will develop (for he is only 4 and a half) into an excellent one. But the man asks a ridiculous amount over & above the exchange, so I have given him up. I shall try and get one from the Rasponis’ place. I wrote a letter to Mary begging her to cease writing to me, as it puts me into a disagreeable position. But she goes on writing as if I had never said anything. She is very longsuffering. I wish E. [Eugene] would write & explain that he can receive letters. She evidently has never got his second one.2 I should like the rest of the matting to be made into one large mat for my bedroom, not to cover the whole floor, but removable like a rug. I have taken a horror to carpets that can’t be cleaned, & would rather have nothing under my bed, bath or in the corners. The red carpet can be unsewn, & the strips will make an excellent guida3 for the passage. Thanks & so much love. Yrs V. Extract from Mary’s letter. I will write to Eugene as soon as my neuralgia is quite gone. I did not answer his letter because I fancied he could bear nothing read to him. But I told you in a letter (*) how fine I thought the extract from his poem and also that I no longer met or saw Dr Henri Worms. My dear Mme Paris was the link between us. Please give my love to yr mother & Eugene4 (*) I have no recollection of any sentence about E.’s [Eugene] poem V.P.5 P.S. I supplicate E. [Eugene] to see about the door to his room. I have a musical article in my head,6 and shall require to read lots of music & sing every evening as soon as I am back. So please urge him. Unless he have a sufficient door, I dare not do anything. I would like to know whether one of the Goodbans would be available for 2 or 3 days in December. My reason is that we don’t want to break our word to Mrs French who is very anxious to show us her new house at Pistoia. We had intended taking her on the way back, but there is a much directer way from Faenza straight 49

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to Florence. Only if I return straight home I should like to promise to go to her for a day or two later. 1 No news of a kidnapping has been found. This may refer to the fact that in Cerisola, near the Montericco estate, two women were killed and many others injured on Labor Day, leading to a popular uprising suppressed by the police in 1890. Letter of Stefano Vincieri to the editors. 2 From “I wrote a letter to Mary” to “his second one” is not in Irene Cooper Willis. 3 In Italian in the text: guide. 4 “The italic text” is an extract from Mary Darmesteter’s note, which Lee inserted here. It is not in Irene Cooper Willis. 5 From “Extract from Mary’s letter” to “any sentence about E.’s poem V.P.” is not in Irene Cooper Willis. 6 Perhaps “An Eighteenth-Century Singer: An Imaginary Portrait of Antonio Vivarelli,” Fortnightly Review, 50 (December 1891), pp. 842–880.

55. Matilda Paget October 26, [1890] Ravenna, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Ravenna Sunday. Dearest Mamma. We go tomorrow to Contessa Spalletti, Rubiera, Emilia. We shall be at Coccolia (Forli per) Thursday night. On the way, I shall try & see Dr Mer Murri at Bologna.1 It is he who did Placci so very much good; he is the first Dr of north Italy. I want to consult him about diet, as, although I seem better of nerves, I continue to suffer much from indigestion & exhaustion. I am sure that my food does not normally nourish me, & may be made easier of digestion. So much love V. 1 Professor Augusto Murri (1841–1932) was a famous Italian physician. He studied medicine at Camerino and Florence, where he qualified in 1864. After receiving post-graduate instruction in Paris, Berlin and Vienna, he returned to Italy, and after a period of private practice became assistant to Baccelli in the medical clinic at Bologna in 1871. Five years later he succeeded Baccelli as professor of medicine, and in spite of many tempting invitations from other Italian universities he remained at Bologna until the retiring age of seventy-five in 1916. His principal publications were devoted to the regulation of temperature, the theory of fever, the Cheyne-Stokes phenomenon, haemoglobinuria from cold, tumour of the cerebellum, clinical lectures, medico-legal reports, organotherapy and glandular insufficiency. In 1912 he was the recipient of a Festschrift. Selections from his works were published by Gnudi and Vedrani in 1919. He died at the advanced age of ninety-one, and on the day of his burial the city of Bologna founded an Augusto Murri prize in medicine. (Unsigned, “Augusto Murri [1841–1932],” Nature, volume 148, no. 282 [6 September 1941], p. 282).

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56. Matilda Paget October 28, [1890] Bologna, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Bologna Station Tuesday [Oct 28] 28. Dearest Mamma. Here we are on our way to the Spallettis, with 2 hours ¾ to wait here. Kit was seized with chill the night before last, so we had to stay at Ravenna another day. Today she is tolerably well. I am trying to sell my pony for 300 francs in order to buy the other one for 500 – a fearful loss, and which, I fear will not be enough. At this time of year there is no demand, & the one I want is rather a fancy beast, being half Arab. address to Coccolia after Wednesday 57. Matilda Paget November 1, [1890] Rubiera, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 1st Nov. Villa Spalletti Dearest Mamma – Kit has told you that the day before yesterday I had a very bad chill, probably got travelling here in bitter cold, & had to stay 24 hours in bed. Yesterday I was up & went out, & today, altho’ rather weak am all right. So I hope to be able to get to Coccolia tomorrow. How many days we stay there (I hope not long for I am anxious to get home) depends upon the weather permitting us to drive back by the Via Faentina, & also upon whether I succeed in selling my horse & buying the other. But of this there is small chance. I shall want some money, but hope Contemporary’s cheque will arrive soon. So much love. 58. Matilda Paget November 3, [1890] Coccolia, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Coccolia 3 Nov [1890]

‸Implore E. [Eugene] to devise some sane project for that door‸ Dearest Mamma

I find found here last night your two very, very kind postcards. Of course I could not let you pay anything for my horse while I can afford to do so myself. And 51

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beyond a certain sum, however much I may want the beast, it would be wrong to pay, as it would be simply letting oneself be robbed. The matter stands at present thus: the owner of the desired animal is willing to sell him for a reasonable sum, not more certainly than 500 francs, which is what I gave for the other. But the difficulty lies in selling Stellino. Nobody wants horses at this time of year, so it is exceedingly difficult to sell, unless like that man, one happens to possess the particular creature coveted by a particular person. In consideration of this fact I am willing to lose to the extent of selling my horse for 300, in order to buy the new one for 500. But the owner of the new one, who does not wish to exchange, but to sell, will not value mine at a penny more [than] a one hundred, as he says he doesn’t want to feed a horse etc. Now I am willing enough to buy a good horse for 500, but sell even a bad one for 100 I will not, even if I considered I had a right to throw money into the money fire. And so, unless some purchaser turn up for Stellino, the matter lapses. The advantage of this is that his shape is better than Stellino’s, in the same line, that, while perhaps less quiet when unprovoked, he is obviously infinitely more willing to move. And then, that he is scarcely more than a colt, consequently not debauched yet into letting himself be driven but not ridden. Also, that here I have the Pasolini influence to facilitate things and get me trials, and the flat grass, instead of the stony lanes and ditches of Maiano to give him his first lessons. I was taken very ill the second day at the Spallettis. I arrived ailing, having got wet & very cold on the journey. I had a fit of pure ague, not Roman fever,1 for I had neither headache nor nausea, but frightful chills & pretty high temperature, which kept me in bed 24 hours, & left me unable to eat, and almost to move for the following day. The fever has completely left me, & the very painful colic which followed it, but I am weak, weary & depressed, partly perhaps from having had to drench myself with chlorodyne2 etc. and lie in such horrible hot beds. The Spalletti’s [Spallettis’] house is very large & immensely luxurious, but ugly. They are a large family party with 2 grandmothers & 2 babys [babies] & 2 governesses, & two nice romping girls, one of them a guest merely, the Duke of Sermoneta’s daughter.3 Everyone is excessively cheerful & kind. But I am very glad to be here, with dear Maria. Dearest Mamma – yr other postcard has come. There was no hurry to send me yet the money, nor so much. Still, a thousand thanks. As soon as the Contemporary sends its cheque, I shall send it you to cash, & you will reimburse yrself the 500. The Cony must have sent 2 numbers, Oct & Nov. So you have now my story complete, which I hope you will do me the honour to read.4 As to the carpet. That particular carpet is my horror, & I would on no account have it under anything. My object is precisely to have something removable. So I should be awfully glad if it could be cut into strips for the passage round the outside of the rooms, & the matting sewed for me.

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So many, many thanks for your kind generosity & much love V. P.S. I had a good ride today with Pasolini and the groom. 1 Roman fever: malaria. “Malaria was once thought by the Romans to be spread by bad air, not mosquitoes: hence the name ‘malaria’” (J.P. Byrne [ed.], Encyclopedia of Pestilence, Pandemics and Plague, foreword by A.S. Fauci (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2008), p. 169). Malaria is caused by a onecelled parasite called a Plasmodium, transmitted by the bites of female Anopheles mosquitoes. 2 Invented in the nineteenth century by John Collins Browne (1819–?), a British army doctor in India, chlorodyne was a popular medicine made from laudanum, cannabis, chloroform, morphine, proof spirit, glycerin, capsicum and peppermint. It had been available since 1857 and was commonly used as a painkiller and a treatment against cholera, diarrhea and insomnia. It was indeed effective against cholera, but cases of addiction and deaths from overdoses led to a reduction in the amount of opiates included and the removal of the cannabis. Still, the dangers of addiction to chlorodyne were again described in the 1960s. Among the symptoms listed were “signs of peripheral neuropathy, mental deterioration and episodes of acute psychosis.” It was recommended that supplies of chlorodyne, now available without prescription, be restricted (R.R.J. Parker, P. Cobb, and P.H. Connell, “Chlorodyne Dependence,” The British Medical Journal, volume 1, no. 5905 [1974], pp. 427–429, www.jstor.org/stable/25422978). 3 Italian writer Vittoria Colonna, Duchess of Sermoneta (1880–1954), daughter of the Duke of Paliano Marcantonio VI Colonna. In 1901, she married Leone Catani, later Duke of Sermoneta and Prince of Teano. She published Things Past, with a foreword by Robert Hichens (London: Hutchinson, 1929). 4 “A Seeker of Pagan Perfection: Being the Life of Domenico Neroni, Pictor Sacrilegus” first appeared in The Contemporary Review (1891). The story exhibits the influence of Pater’s Portraits, with fictional evaluations of attempts at harmonising Christian values with pagan ideals; Lee’s Neroni wants to create pure form in his paintings. He is inspired by an ancient statue of Bacchus and meets a humanist scholar who teaches him about the pagan ideals. They perform secret rites in an old church that used to be a pagan temple so Neroni can learn the Greek sculptor’s secrets. He and the humanist are arrested and burned for being heretics. See also “An Eighteenth-Century Singer,” Fortnightly Review (December 1891), pp. 842–880.

59. Matilda Paget November 5, [1890] Coccolia, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Nov. 5. Dearest Mamma. The notes came yesterday & I immediately acknowledged them to Fioravanti. So very many thanks. I am still shaky but better. A Dr has turned up who seems to want my horse. But he offers only 200 for him. So much love That door! V.

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60. Matilda Paget November 8, [1890] Coccolia, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Coccolia Sat. Dearest Mamma. Having got rid of my fever, I am now almost speechless with a bad cold, & worried with chills, against which I dose myself with quinine. That blessed Dr can’t make up his mind yet, as my pony has taken it into his head to have a bad cold. I hope by Monday to know something definitive; if the Dr buys, I must see about getting the other one. So much love E. [Eugene] ought to write to Symonds. He is there already. 61. Percy William Bunting November 9, 1890 Forli, Italy University of Chicago Library, Special Collections IL PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE. Forli Nov 9 1890 Dear Mr Bunting, I hasten to thank you for the cheque for £26 which has just been forwarded me. I think I must be mistaken in supposing you to mean that it & the preceding cheque of £20 are intended as complete payments of my contribution to yr Oct. and Nov. numbers. I explained to you before the acceptance of my story that increase as the Fortnightly and New Review had raised my pay from one pound to two pounds a page, I was obliged to ask a similar increase from you. I added, however, that as I could not think of ceasing to write for you, I would rather continue to do so at the old rate if the Contemporary could not afford to pay the same prices as the other reviews; and I added that I was the less insisted all the less that because I know that a long story is more difficult to accept than a short article. It was therefore perfectly easy for you to have answered that you could not afford either such a rise in price, or any rise at all, without our old connexion being in the least endangered. But instead of such a refusal, you answered on the contrary that “you would be happy to increase my pay” or words to that effect. 54

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This led me to expect that the whole story would bring me in £80 from £60 to £80 according as you were able to afford it. Instead of this I have so far received £46, in the cheque of £20 & £26. The number of pages being 42, this makes an addition of £4 on the total sum which I should have received at the old rate of one pound a page. In the face of my having asked, if you could afford it, a rise from £1 to £2, I cannot imagine that that one and ten pence per page above the original rate of a pound can be the increase in pay which you kindly consented to make, or indeed anything save a purely accidental combination. I can therefore only imagine that I have misinterpreted your words “making £46 in all” – and that this second cheque is only a second ins like its predecessor a payment on account. Should this not be the case, and should you be unable to pay me more than 1.1.10 a page, please tell me so; and I shall still try, for many reasons, to write for the Contemporary as much as I can afford to do so; for if the Contemporary is not as rich as I thought, I am a great deal less rich ‸even‸ than that. Believe me, dear Mr Bunting Yours sincerely, V. Paget 62. Matilda Paget November 9, [1890] Coccolia, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Coccolia 9 Nov [1890] Dearest Mamma – I enclose you herewith a cheque with a note for Fioravanti, desiring him to send me the £6 and pay you 500 frs [francs] which you kindly advanced to me. Thank you at the same time a thousand times for yr kindness & promptitude. That brute Bunting, on my telling him that the Fortnightly & New Review were willing to raise my pay from £1 to £2 a page, wrote that he also “would be happy to raise my pay” – he has done so by paying me £4 more than usual on 42 pages, i.e. increased to the extent of 1/10 d [dimes]1 a page! I have written to expostulate.2 I am much vexed at being detained here by the business of the horse (but the Dr is quite right to insist upon waiting till mine is quite cured). Everyone is exquisitely kind, and I have a sittingroom to myself with a fire all day long. But I am fid restless to get home & settled to my work. I find that if my nervousness does not allow of my staying long at home without getting the fidgets, it allows still less of my staying away from home. A thousand thanks about the ru mat. I think that the yellow chintz housses3 of the diningroom chairs are very dirty & rumpled. They ought to be washed & starched, otherwise they will be dirty in a week again. 55

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Mme Gordigiani, wife of the painter,4 xx has asked Kit & me, through Placci, to come to their villa on our way home across the Apennines. But I don’t think the weather will allow us to drive at all. So much love Yrs V. 1 2 3 4

One dime was ten pennies. Not “I haven’t written to expostulate,” as in Irene Cooper Willis. In French in the text: cover. This word (housses) is not in Irene Cooper Willis. Michele Gordigiani (1835–1909) was a celebrated Italian portrait painter. He painted a portrait of Clementina Anstruther-Thomson in 1896.

63. Matilda Paget November 12, [1890] Coccolia, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College PALMERINO (MAIANO) FLORENCE Coccolia 12 Nov [1890] Dearest MammaMany thanks for going to Fioravanti. Tell Eugene that the letter was from Walter Scott, Felling, Northumberland, former proprietor of the Art Journal. It was to send back some drawings of Kit’s, which had got lost “during Mr Mavor’s absence” and it informed me that the Art Journal has ceased to appear.1 I don’t think therefore that there is any chance of E. [Eugene] getting paid for his sonnets, nor was there ever much. One of the letters you sent on was from Canon Creighton,2 introducing Lady Lyttelton & her daughter,3 who are also recommended by Miss Val Ferguson.4 These ladies have idiotically sent Creighton’s letter without their own address, so I can take no notice of it. Please tell me if any cards from them should come. The Dr has declared that he won’t buy a horse that has had a cold. Another individual is looming, but so long as the horse coughs, he can be shown to noone. At any rate, I expect nothing from it, and am at present looking out for a peasant to take Stellino & the cart over the Apennine as soon as he is recovered, for I dare not risk myself, after the fever, in that snow & rain. As soon as I have seen him off, Kit & I will start by rail & come home, staying at most 3 days at Pistoia with Mrs French on the way. I am very anxious to be back.

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If I succeed in selling Stellino at Florence, I think I shall send for the grey pony from Ravenna. So much love Yrs V. 1 The short-lived The Art Review (January to July 1890; not Art Journal) was a successor to the Scottish Art Review (1888–1890). Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s sonnet “On the Statue of Nike Apteros, Commonly Called the Venus of Milo” was published in the June issue (The Art Review [June 1890], p. 192). The Walter Scott Publishing House in Newcastle-on-Tyne was the printer. Walter Scott was also the eventual publisher of Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s collection Dramatic Sonnets, Poems and Ballads (1903) and his supernatural story The Lord of the Dark Red Star (Newcastle-on-Tyne: Walter Scott Publishing Co., 1903), as well as A Garden of Spinsters by Annie E. Holdsworth, Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s wife after 1898. James Mavor (1854–1925), professor at Glasgow University and Edinburgh University, was an editor for the Scottish Art Review. (The Art Review [London: Walter Scott Publishing Co., 1890], https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/102310102; J.R. Turner, The Walter Scott Publishing Company: A Bibliography [Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press], 1997). 2 Mandell Creighton (1843–1901), English historian and bishop of London. In 1872, he married Louise von Glehn, author of several successful books of history and a friend of Lee’s. In 1886, he founded the English Historical Review, of which he was editor for five years. His works include History of the Papacy during the Period of the Reformation, 5 vols. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1882–1894); History of the Papacy from the Great Schism to the Sack of Rome, 6 vols. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1897–1903); The Early Renaissance in England: The Rede Lecture Delivered at Senate House on June 13, 1895 (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1895); Cardinal Wolsey (London: Macmillan, 1888); Life of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester (London: Rivingtons, 1876); Queen Elizabeth (London: Boussod, Valadon et Cie, 1896). 3 British activist, editor and writer Mary Kathleen Lyttelton, née Clive (1856–1907). She married the Honorable Arthur Lyttelton and had three children. The daughter mentioned here, Margaret Lucy Lyttelton, was born in 1882. In about 1890 she founded, with Louise Creighton, the Ladies Dining society . . . Lyttelton devoted much of her life to fighting for the improvement of women’s lives in general, and for the extension. Mrs Lyttelton also sat on the executive committee of the Central Society for Women’s Suffrage, formed in 1888 when the women’s movement split over its relationship with the main political parties, before it reformed in 1897 as the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. Three years after the formation of the National Union of Women Workers (NUWW) in 1895 she was among the vice-presidents; she also served on the executive committee before taking over the post of president of the NUWW. Mrs Lyttelton’s views were succinctly set out in her book Women and their Work, which she published in 1901. Including chapters on “the family,” “the household,” and “philanthropic and social work,” “the book was a manual advising women on modes of behaviour, duties, and goals. . . . A considerable student of literature” (The Times, 15 Jan 1907), she worked for many years as a journalist, writing reviews and eventually becoming editor of the women’s section of the high-church paper, The Guardian, for which in 1904 she commissioned the first published work by Virginia Stephen (later Woolf). Serena Kelly, “Lyttelton [née Clive], (Mary) Kathleen,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/50712 4 Emma Valentine Munro-Ferguson (1863–1897), sister of Ronald Munro-Ferguson, 1st Viscount Novar (1860–1934). Ronald Munro-Ferguson was a Liberal MP during these years and, later, Governor-General of Australia (1914–1920). He married Helen Hermione Temple-Blackwood

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 (1865–1941) in 1889. Lee had met the Fergusons in 1888, through Kit, and visited them at their homes in Kirkcaldy (Fife, Scotland) and London in the 1890s (see Lee to Matilda Paget, 7 October 1888, Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II). In March 1890, Emma Valentine Munro-Ferguson became engaged to Viscount Richard Burton Haldane, philosopher, lawyer and British MP, but abruptly broke her engagement. “Why Valentine Munro Ferguson called off the wedding, no one will ever know. Perhaps as he hinted in his letter, there was ‘some physical cause’ to which only Valentine was privy. In any event, she died unmarried 7 years later” (Frederick Vaughan, Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, Viscount Haldane: “The Wicked Step-Father of the Canadian Constitution” [Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2010], p. 77). Two years later, her onevolume novel, Betsy, published by Osgood McIlvaine in 1892, was favourably reviewed as “a capital story” in The Publishers’ Weekly (“Review of E.V. Munro-Ferguson, Betsy (Osgood McIlvaine, 1892),” The Publishers’ Weekly, volume 42 (July–December 1892), p. 146) and The Bookman (volumes 1–2 [July 1892], p. 104), reported, “The maiden effort of Miss Munro-Ferguson of Novar . . . ‘V.,’ the initial under which she wrote, stands presumably for her own name, Valentine. Miss Munro-Ferguson has hitherto, it is said, lived a somewhat retired life. If this be so, she has looked out on the world very watchfully.”

64. Matilda Paget November 17, [1890] Coccolia, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Coccolia. Monday Dearest Mamma – I was immensely surprised & touched by the contents of yr envelope this morning. Really, really, you must not. I have upwards of 600, which will more than cover my debt to these kind people for the keep of my pony, & the price of an exchange, if I make it. Another chance of sale has offered. But I am determined to leave on Friday at the lastest. I will write Fioravanti[.]1 So many, many thanks. 1 This name (Fioravanti) is not in Irene Cooper Willis.

65. Matilda Paget November 18, [1890] Coccolia, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Cocolia 18th [Nov 1890] Dearest Mamma – Many thanks for your very kind card. You must certainly send me no more money. I have plenty, even if I buy the pony, which is less and less probable between this & Saturday, when I intend leaving. And I shall beg you to deduct the hundred you so very kindly sent me yesterday from my next dress allowance. I 58

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have not yet heard from Bunting; but I have been asked for an article by the New Review, which pays well, so that if only I can get to work at Florence, I shall be in no want of money. I have been putting off for ever so long, but can do so no longer, p writing to you on a subject which must be very odious to you, and is therefore very odious to myself. But I should hate to spoil my return home by broaching it, and it is of too great practical importance to be deferred when once I am back. I believe I am now very nearly cured of my cerebral weakness, but I have got well in this matter only to find that I have not got cured of what was one half of my trouble. I find that my digestion is quite ruined, and that, as it evidently does not depend, as I had hoped, upon my other symptoms, I must take the parti1 of being an invalid so far as it is concerned. I suppose that I inherit a bad digestion from Papa, and that my illness has been the opportunity for it to declare itself. Not only is digestion is an intolerably long and weary, & often painful process, but my food does not nourish me as it should. I eat more than Kit or Maria, women so much stronger than I, and yet I am never feel sufficiently nourished; and I have for several hours a day a horrid feeling of oppression & exhaustion combined, as if I had eaten too much and at the same time not enough. I shall try on my way through Bologna, to hear what Dr Murri can say on the subject. But But it is evident that my case is not one for medicines, but for diet. I depend enormously upon the quality of what I eat. I don’t care for nice food food, & often know it from bad only by the results; and2 I eat the filthy stuff at the Venice restaurant as willingly as the dishes of the French cook here. But the difference is that at Venice I was always in spasms of indigestion, & here I am comparatively, th though only comparatively, better. I don’t feel the horrible heaviness, heat and at the same time exhaustion as that I suffered from at Venice & at Prataccio, where the food was bad. Now – and here I come to a point which only the consideration of my health would make me approach after so much experience of your aversion to my housekeeping – it is impossible for me to have the right sort of food at the Palmerino unless you let me order it myself. A large amount of caprice probably enters into the matter, but it is the caprice of my stomach, & no amount of reasoning can alter it. Such cooking as I require can be got, only be unless much money be was spent, ‸ only‸ by a great deal of interest & time being given to the subject; and that can be done only by the person most interested. It is necessary for instance to order meat in winter three or four days beforehand; to have all the various ingredients necessary to make a dish palatable to a half ill person always ready & getable. It is necessary that every recipe be carefully carried out, be omitting nothing. Above all it is necessary that the person to superintend the food should be the person who eats it. Now you do not eat the same food that we do, or eat ‸it‸ only very partially. You have your dinner before ours, & do not touch lunch. It is therefore absurd & unfair to expect you to give as much time & trouble to the matter as, with the cheap cooks3 we have, is absolutely 59

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indispensable; and you simply do not give it. You say very justly that one ‸you‸ can’t be bored about giving out this or that, or ordering it. But since you do not eat the food, please, please, give the direction of it back into the hands of the person who does it eat it, and whose digestion depends on it. Do not imagine that I have been spoilt by Maria’s French cook. I was perfectly satisfied with the food at Tognazzi’s, a pension at 5 frs. I only ask to have food as good as at the Duffys[’], the Childers[’],4 and at Evelyn’s; half as good as at the Frenchs[’]. The Childers, last winter, were much poorer than we, spent much less, but always had excellent food, merely because they were [were] very e ready to take a lot of trouble about it. This trouble it is now my absolute interest, with a view to my health, to take. I should think 6 months spent in learning to cook a very good investment of my time. I do not say that I am not capricious; I am capricious about my food, because my digestion is bad; & the only result of thwarting my caprice is to make my digestion much worse. I do not pretend that I could do the cooking as cheaply as you do, for I believe you do it marvellously cheap. But I undertake to do it very economically. You have now less to pay in the way of rent, so you could afford more upon cooking. And I must remind you that before I plagued you into getting rid of Valentino & his system, you were going on paying 14 frs a day wages & food alone, without fire & without a guest. You kindly offered to buy me a horse. No horse can do me half the good that eating the things suitable could do me. Will you not therefore give me this extra money, & let me try to satisfy myself? Forgive this long & boring letter. So much love V. P.S. As it is, during the last winter, I had always to se help Eugene with the lists which of for dinner which you made him suggest. 1 In French in the text: parti (not “the part” as in Irene Cooper Willis). “I have to resign myself to being an invalid.” 2 The word “and” is not in Irene Cooper Willis. 3 Not “cook,” as in Irene Cooper Willis. 4 Perhaps British author and politician Robert Erskine Childers (1870–1922) and his wife, Mary “Molly” Alden, née Osgood (1875–1964). His uncle, Canon Charles Childers, had married the widowed Mrs Priestley, mother of Flora Priestley (1859–1944), painter and model of John Singer Sargent. “This week-end we have had staying with us Flora Priestley, a dear old friend. She is the aunt of that Erskine Childers who married Mollie Osgood” (from Rollin Van N. Hadley (ed.), The Letters of Bernard Berenson and Isabella Stewart Gardner, 1887–1924: With Correspondence by Mary Berenson [Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1987], p. 653). Or Lee may be referring to the British painter Milly Childers (Emily Maria Eardley Childers, 1866–1922) and her family. Her father was politician and cabinet minister Hugh Culling Eardley Childers (1827–1896). Milly Childers exhibited at the Royal Society of Arts from 1894 to 1904. A portrait she did of her father is in the National Portrait Gallery, collection NPG 1631. Her 1889 self-portrait features among her best-known works.

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66. Matilda Paget November 21, [1890] Coccolia, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Coccolia 21st Dearest Mamma I have not been able to write because hitherto I have been quite vague about my movements. All I know is that the pony will be despatched to Florence by means of a man, whom I shall pre-pay. He might be given a glass of wine when he comes. I am now waiting for an answer from the Dr at Bologna to know whether we shall start tomorrow or Monday morning. We shall stay a couple of days with Mrs French. So much love 67. Matilda Paget November 23, [1890] Coccolia, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Coccolia Sunday 23rd [1890] Dearest Mamma, I cannot tell you with how much pleasure & gratitude I read your kind, kind letter; nor how much touched I am by the graciousness readiness with which you give in to a request I scarcely ventured to make, & not much hoped to see realised. I thank you with all my heart. You will be the gladder to have granted it, when I tell you that Dr Murri, who is certainly the first Dr in Italy, and a man who has had the gift of hitting the right nail on the head in the case of both Placci & Mrs French, says that I am still very far from recovered, & suffering from nervous dyspepsia which requires the greatest care & humouring. He says that the action of my heart is very unsatisfactory,1 not from any organic fault or fault in the quality of the blood, but from insufficiency in its actual quality. This tends to give me anaemia of the brain, and this anaemia reacts upon the digestion by diminishing the nervous power. There is not nourishment enough for the brain and the rest of the system; and the bad digestion not merely exhausts the nervous system (whence the somnolence) but also prevents my getting the proper sustenance from the food I eat, but do not assimilate. He says I must go on treating myself for nervous brain exhaustion with douches2 whenever convenient, and he has given me a nerve tonic; he also says I must refrain from all violent exercise or fatigue. But all this would be useless unless the Digestion be improved. He tells me to eat as little as possible at a time, as one half of the food I take merely prevents the digestion of the other; but to eat very 61

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nourishing things & well cooked. And he makes me take a dilution of hydrochloric3 and which does helps out the gastric juice. He says that people in my state of health are full of whims about their food; but that however unreasonably they may dislike it, they cannot digest it if they do so. He says that a great variety of tasty food is necessary. I went yesterday with Maria to Bologna to consult him. I found it would be impossible to do so between 2 trains. The poney & cart were started today in the charge of one of these peasants. He will probably arrive Tuesday at the Palmerino; so would you kindly bid Giuseppe have all in readiness. The man is completely paid; but if he arrives late, it would be a charity to have him given some bread & cheese & at all events a good glass of wine. I hope we shall be home Friday. Mrs French was unable to have us till Tuesday, when we shall arrive at her villa near Pistoia. Would you kindly send any letters on there Presso il Barone French Piazza per Igno Vicino Pistoia I hope you have some of the wine that I like, from Mme Tadini’s. I am so faddy that I can’t drink the Pasolini’s [Pasolinis’] red wine even; and I suppose they haven’t bad wine. I think you used to give me 10 frs a day without the cook’s salary. There are more of us now in the house (since there are both Kit & Melle)4 but I will do my very best to be economical; and I will lock up everything. I always wear my keys on a chain on me now, so there will be no leaving of keys about. Thank you again & again. & so much love Yrs V. I quite understand your wish to economise, particularly after this terrible smash.5 1 This may be the very first symptom of Lee’s heart disease. 2 Not “douche,” as Irene Cooper Willis. 3 “The risks of morbid fermentation will also be diminished and digestion promoted by giving a few grains of pepsin, with 10 to 20 minims of dilute hydrochloric acid, as well as after each meal containing albuminous food. This will supply the defect of hydrochloric acid and of digestive activity in the gastric juice of such patients, and enable them to digest small quantities of pounded meat, eggs, fish, etc.” I.B. Yeo, A Manual of Medical Treatment or Clinical Therapeutics (London: Cassell & Company, 1895), p. 90. 4 Melle or Mademoiselle: Miss. Lee is referring to Eugene’s French-speaking secretary without naming her. 5 The expense due to the “poney business.”

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68. Matilda Paget November 24, [1890] Coccolia, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Coccolia Monday [Nov 24, 1890] Dearest Mamma, I have just had a telegram from Mrs French saying she is unable to leave S. Marcello, where she has had to go for some family business, & consequently to be at Igno till Thursday. Now Maria leaves for Rome that day, & we cannot possibly stay on here a day longer. So we shall arrive at Florence Tomorrow ‸afternoon‸ 4.30 We shall have had lunch at Bologna & shall want only tea on arrival. And we shall have some cold provisions with us & there is plenty of Brand [brandy] & potted meat in the big basket I sent some time ago. As the pony will probably turn up tomorrow afternoon, you had better not send Giovanni to the station, as either the coachman or he ought to be ready to receive the animal. I hope this sudden arrival will not inconvenience you & that you will be glad to have us? Kit has a bad cold. May she have a fire in her room? I am so glad to be back!1 So much love V. The cart will be necessary for the luggage.

1 Lee had been away from Palmerino for four months, since 22 July 1890.

69. Richard Garnett1 December 9, 1890 Florence, Italy Harry Ransom Research Center, University of Texas at Austin PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE. Dec 9. 1890 My dear Dr Garnett,

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Might I ask you to do me a great favour, which will also confer a lasting obligation on my friend Commendatore Guglielmo Berchet,2 a very distinguished Venetian harem slipper. This gentleman forms part of the R. Commission for the publication of documents concerning Columbus. He has heard that there appeared in an English periodical an article questioning the authenticity of the “Travels of Girolamo Benzoni”3 – who is in some way connected with the discovery of America. This attack was considered sufficiently important for the Hakluyt Society, at whose expense the Travels of Benzoni were published by the late Admiral Smyth,4 to feel bound to make an answer. But, on Sig. Berchet’s applying to the Hakluyt Society to know in what periodical the attack was published & what the defence consisted in, the secretary declined to give any information. I do not mean to bother about the Hakluyt Society, which is evidently a set of curmudgeons. But would it not be possible, in the Museum, to consult the index of the journals mostly likely to have reviewed the work & thus to discover the article? Once the article [is] discovered, Comm: Berchet would have it copied at his expense. But the difficulty is in finding it. The Travels of G. Benzoni were published by the Hakluyt Society with the Editorship of the late Admiral Smyth in 1857. I have sought through the Edinbro’ & Quarterly of that year & the two following in vain. I have such a belief in your magical wand that I beg you to wave it at least once over G. Benzoni’s Travels, dear Dr. Garnett! I hope you received a copy of a vol. of stories – Hauntings, which I bade my publisher send as a tribute to the author of the Twilight of the Gods.5 Are no more delightful stories of yrs forthcoming? Do, please, write some more; the world is so beastly dull. I am in better health, tho’ not yet cured, & hope to be able to resume regular work. I hope also to be able to get to England next year. Till then, believe me Yrs sincerely V. Paget 1 British scholar, librarian, biographer and poet Richard Garnett (1835–1906). See List of Correspondents: Richard Garnett. 2 Guglielmo Berchet (1833–1913), Venetian military officer, politician and historian. He, along with colleagues such as Nicolò Barozzi, published several important histories of Venice that made use of important archival documents for the first time. These publications shed new light on the city’s history. At this time in 1890, he was working on one of his most important publications, Fonti italiane per la storia delle scoperte del Nuovo Mondo (1892–1893), about Italians’ travels and contributions to the New World and researched extensively in Italy’s archival collections. His work (Nicolò Barozzi and Guglielmo Berchet [eds.], Le Relazioni degli stati Europei, lette al Senato dagli ambasciatori veneti nel secolo decimosettimo, Series 5: Turkey, 2 vols. [Venice: P. Naratovich, 1871–1872]) might account for Lee’s bold characterisation as “harem slipper,” as it contained “reports (relazioni) of Venetian ambassadors [about harems] Paolo Contarini (1583), 3:234; Gianfrancesco Morosini (1585), 3:284; Giovanni Moro (1590), 3:328; Lorenzo Bernardo (1592), 2:359, Matteo Zane (1594), 3:439, and of Agostino Nani (ca. 1603), in Barozzi and Berchet, Le relazioni, 1:39” (Leslie P. Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire [Oxford: Oxford University Press,

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 1993], p. 309, note 16). See also Betül Ipsirli Argit, Life after the Harem: Female Palace Slaves, Patronage and the Imperial Ottoman Court (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). 3 Girolamo Benzoni (ca. 1519–1572), Milanese merchant who spent fifteen years living in the New World and published his account of his travels, Historia del Mondo Nuovo, in 1565, with several subsequent editions following. His account was one of the first to describe the Spanish colonisers’ abusive treatment of the native population. 4 Admiral William Smyth (1788–1865) published the first English translation of Benzoni’s Historia del Mondo Nuovo in 1857, with support from the Hakluyt Society, a society that publishes scholarly editions of primary sources of historic voyages. 5 Garnett’s The Twilight of the Gods and Other Tales (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1888), his popular collection of fantasy short stories.

70. Lady Louisa Wolseley December 14, 1890 Florence, Italy Hove Central Library, Wolseley Collection IL PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE. Dec 14 1890 My dear Lady Wolseley, I was pleased on my return here three weeks ago, to recognise your handwriting on a number of the Review of Reviews which had awaited me. I had been wondering for a long while whether I had lost any letters from you, or whether perhaps my publisher had neglected to send you a little vol. of mine. Whether, most likely of all, my old prophecy had come right, and you had forgotten all about me. No; I don’t mean forgotten. I don’t think people really forget each other but they let each other drop for so long that it is afterwards too late to enter again into communication; they forget their existence in the present, and when they meet once more, it is impossible to joggle along with only the past in common. My illness, which has forced me to neglect so many friends, & has given others an opportunity of forgetting me, has already given me quite a bevy of friends who are friends only by virtue of the past. I do should prefer if you didn’t forget me; but I always feel shy of writing unbidden to people of the world, who always have a thousand more things to look after & worry about than me; who drudge for a few hours only & are then free, ever seem to guess. Were you sorry to leave yr beautiful newly arranged house, and yr Robinson’d1 garden? I was very sorry to hear of the change, because it means that I have less chance than before of seeing you. This summer I remained in Italy, which on the whole has proved a good plan, as I was not yet fit for seeing people in England or in any way profiting by going there (you know my mania; worse than an American’s, for 65

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seeing English ways & habits); and my health has benefitted very much by constant change of scene & a great deal of driving about. Miss Anstruther-Thomson, whom you remember, & I drove about 250 miles in two months, stopping at Siena & Lucca & Bologna and in the high Apennines, and seeing S. Gimignano, Volterra & lots of beautiful country. It was a delightfully independent way of getting about, as we took luggage enough for a week, sending the rest by rail, & drove our beast quite alone. It wasn’t very squalid either. The autumn & early winter we spent at Venice, in a little apartment on the Zattere, delicious, where Mr Ruskin foolishly let himself be driven by the noise of steam cranes; and then in the empty palace, lent us, of some friends at Ravenna, & finally in the country, in Romagna. I am now straight & hope to be able to work a little. I have read & re-read the gardening book you gave me, first hopefully & actually believing I should have a garden myself; afterwards mournfully & to console myself with a vision of the impossible. After an infinite amount of digging, draining, mulching, pulvarising, manuring & whatever else these fruitless or rather flowerless operations may be called, I saw, most of my seeds ‸plants‸ (those that didn’t remain entirely & everlastingly hidden from view underground) eaten by unknown nefariousness & the rest burrowed up by a maremma pup. What remained was speedily consigned to pots. I see that Nature has decreed that Tuscan gardens should consist entirely of pots, when they don’t consist entirely of hedges, paved walks & plaster ornaments, and it is allowed to thwart nature, which intends only sunflowers & pumpkins to grow in the ground. Even the violets onto which Landor once threw his cook,2 have now been potted, and thrive much better. It is very sad, particularly as a kind friend has presented me with a packet of vegetable seeds, and I can scarcely grow sea kale & cabbage in pots. Do you notion, by the way that even Boccaccio’s & Keats’ Isabella was so impelled by the measliness of Tuscan soil, that she had to bury her lover’s head not in the ground but in a pot?3 I believe the apples of the Hesperides were planted in green boxes. Goodbye, you were so good to me when I was so miserable a creature, that I can’t just let you forget me, you know. My love – may I send love surely at my ripe age – to the General & to Frances, who is now I suppose beginning to get a little younger. Always, dear Lady Wolseley Yrs sincerely V. Paget 4 I hope Mme Patricot flourishes. But she is of the sort that flourishes always. 1 Horticulturist William Robinson (1838–1935). 2 An oft-quoted anecdote of poet Walter Savage Landor, in which, disapproving of a meal, he threw his cook out the window. He then felt regret, but only for the damage to the flowers below: “Good God, I forgot the violets!” 3 See John Keats’s poem “Isabella, or the Pot of Basil; A Story from Boccaccio” (in Isabella, or the Pot of Basil [London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1898]), which tells a story adapted from Boccacio’s Decameron. Upon learning of her lover’s murder at the hands of her brothers, Isabella exhumes the body and buries the head in a pot of basil. Several Pre-Raphaelites depicted the scene in paintings during the mid-nineteenth century. Lee had a similar idea for a story:

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 Mr Lemon . . . has a dream of going to put rose leaves into a majolica pot, & finding a head in it. This put into my head a sort of story, which came while I was half asleep, of some Renaissance potter carrying home the head of a man he has murdered to escape detection, and hiding it by forming a pot round it & having it baked & painted to escape suspicion; & at last the pot, being broken discovering not the head, which the baking & time have reduced to a few ashes, but the impress concave of the murdered man’s face on the inside of the pot. See Lee to Matilda Paget, 15 July 1882, Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. I. 4 French artist Auguste François Jean Patricot (1865–1928) studied at the Villa Medicis from 1887 to 1890. A painter and lithographer, he was awarded the Prix de Rome in 1890. In 1891, he married Harriet Henriette Budford (1867–1934). Lee probably means his mother, Euphrosyne Gely (1835–1893).

1891 1. Telemaco Signorini [January 22, 1891] Florence, Italy Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, C.V. 70, 149 Envelope: Illmo/Signor Telemaco Signorini / 12 Santa Croce/Città IL PALMERINO, MAIANO Giovedì Caro Sig. Signorini Sarà Ella allo studio domani in giornata? Permettendolo il tempo e lo stato delle strade – per ora abbiamo venti centimetri di neve – verrei allo studio con Miss Thomson domani verso le 3 pom. Se Ella non ci sarà, non vuol dire Dev. V. Paget 2. [Telemaco Signorini1 [January 22, 1891] Florence, Italy Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, C.V. 70, 149 Envelope: Illmo/Signor Telemaco Signorini / 12 Santa Croce/Città IL PALMERINO, MAIANO Thursday Dear Sig. Signorini Will you be at the studio tomorrow during the day? 67

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Weather permitting, and the state of the roads – right now we have 20 centimetres of snow – I would like to come to the studio with Miss Thomson tomorrow around 3 in the afternoon. If you will not be there, do not respond. Devotedly, V. Paget]

1 See List of Correspondents: Telemaco Signorini.

3. Telemaco Signorini [January 30, 1891] Florence, Italy Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, C.V. 70, 149 Envelope: Ill.mo Sig./T. Signorini / 12 Santa Croce/Città IL PALMERINO, MAIANO Gentilissimo Sig. Signorini Tante scuse per non averle scritto prima. Quel giorno, come avrà capito, non si potè venire, cagione il tempo. Più tardi sono stata pregata da una Signora di mia conoscenza, indisposta addesso [adesso], di diferire fin che potesse anch’essa venire allo studio suo, essendo molto bramosa di farlo. Le riscriverò. Sua dev. V. Paget 4. [Telemaco Signorini [January 30, 1891] Florence, Italy Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, C.V. 70, 149 Envelope: Ill.mo Sig./T. Signorini / 12 Santa Croce/Città IL PALMERINO, MAIANO Kindest Sig. Signorini Excuse me for not having written earlier. That day, as you will have understood, it was impossible to come because of the weather. Later I was asked by a lady I know, indisposed right now, to defer until she could also come to your studio, being very keen to do it. I will write to you again. Your devoted, V. Paget] 68

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5. Matilda Paget March 5, [1891] Nervi, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Thursday Nervi Thursday 5th March This is a most lovely place. Melle met us at the station & very kindly took up us at once to her house. We have been sitting under palms in the garden, which runs to the sea. It is like May here. Kits Kit leaves this afternoon at 6. So much love 6. Matilda Paget March 5, [1891] Nervi, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 5th March Nervi Thursday evening Dearest Mamma. Just heard from Alice [Abadam?] who accepts with joy & gratitude. She cannot leave till the middle of April. Kit has just left . . .. I feel rather blue. So much love Yr V. 7. Matilda Paget March 10, [1891] Nervi, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Nervi Tuesday. Dearest Mamma. Sannini answers that the Resses will probably give the long lease, & that he expects to draw in the contract in a few days.1 Today we went to have lunch with Maria Pasolini’s sister in law;2 an hour by rail, & I’m awfully weary in consequence.

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Yesterday we drove into Genoa. I seem unable to pick up any strength. I shall return Saturday. If my train arrives late, I shall go to Evelyn’s So much love V. 1 Count Pio Resse and his wife, Elizabeth Woodbridge Phelps Pearsall (ca. 1838–1924), bought Villa del Salviatino – including Villa Il Palmerino (Maiano, Florence) – and, between 1882 and 1885, had a castle built in Vallombrosa by architect Corinto Corinti. The Pagets leased Villa Il Palmerino beginning in spring 1889. All their property, including furnishing, was sold at auction in 1891. The most important items from their collection of musical scores and books were purchased by the Newberry Library between 1888 and 1889. “After the Resse family’s sudden departure from Florence, the Palmerino was sold at auction to Oreste Loni, and Loni in turn sold the property to Lee in 1906 (ACP Contratti 876).” See Stefano Vincieri and Crystal Hall, “‘Isolated from Any Village’: Vernon Lee’s Florence and Villa Il Palmerino,” Open Inquiry Archive, volume 3, no. 1 (2014), p. 3, http://openinquiryarchive.net 2 Maria Ponti (1856–1938), prominently active in social and educational work for women’s emancipation, married historian and politician Pier Desiderio Pasolini of Ravenna (1844–1920). Lee dedicated Renaissance Fancies and Studies: A Sequel to “Euphorion” (London: Smith, Elder, 1895) to her “dear friends Maria and Pier Desiderio Pasolini” and ascribes to him the idea for her short story “The Doll.” The story was first published as “The Image,” dedicated “To Mme Louis Ormond” (Violet Sargent’s mother-in-law, née Marie Marguerite Renet, 1847–1923), in Cornhill Magazine, volume XXVI (May 1896), pp. 516–523. It was later collected in For Maurice: Five Unlikely Stories (London: John Lane, 1927), pp. xlvi–li.

8. Percy William Bunting May 7, 1891 Florence, Italy University of Chicago Library, Special Collections IL PALMERINO. MAIANO FLORENCE May 7 1891 Dear Mr Bunting, I send you at last the ‘Imaginary Portrait’ of which I have so often told you, that of the man of the Renaissance who sees the beauty of antique art.1 I began first to write it when I was eighteen, & this is by no means the only version since that one. I hope it has been worth all this much hatching. At all events it embodies a great deal of very sound knowledge – sounder than that of Euphorion. As it is long – two numbers – you shall pay me only 30/ a page. I am better for the moment – I never now dare say more than that; and hope to spend the summer in England, & Nov. in London. You will be able to tell me about a great many movements in which I am interested; my illness has made me

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lose touch with so much. But I am bound to say that you were right in saying it might make me “find my soul” – at least in the sense of my soul being more my own now. Yrs sincerely V Paget P.S. I want to add, in case you shd find my anatomical page at all fantastically spelt, that it was made very carefully for me by an artist well versed in anatomy, but possessing a very illegible hand. As I have no manual by me I dare say half the names of muscles are copied wrong, but I will get a manual by which to correct the proofs. 1 Lee’s humanist imaginary portrait, “A Seeker of Pagan Perfection: Being the Life of Domenico Neroni, Pictor Sacrilegus.”

9. Matilda Paget June 24, [1891] Montericco (near Imola), Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Montericco Wed. Morning Dearest Mamma – I arrived not at all tired at 7.15, & found M. [Maria] at the Station. 2. at Florence I found the Gamba girl and her father had come to see me off, very kind. 3. At Pistoia who should get in but the Magneders! into my carriage. We travelled as far as Bologna. 4. At Bologna I found Gennaro Placci,1 going to Ravenna, & travelled with him as far as this. 5. Tomorrow shall go into Bologna to see the Dr.2 6. Cool and delightful here. I number sentences so that E. [Eugene] may get one at a time. So much love Yrs V. 1 Gennaro Placci: Carlo Placci’s father. He was a banker from Faenza. Carlo’s mother, Maria Guadalupe Ruiz Villegras, was Mexican. See List of Correspondents: Carlo Placci. 2 Dr Murri: see Lee to Matilda Paget, October 26, 1890.

10. Matilda Paget June 25, [1891] Montericco (near Imola), Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Montericco Thursday 26 25

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Dearest Mamma! Dr Murri is away from Bologna, so we have stayed quietly here. 2. Tomorrow early I go to the Spallettis, arriving 2.40. 3. I stay an hour expressly at Modena to see it. 4. I hope to hear from you at the Spallettis[’]. 5. I hope the women have begun mending the rug. So much love Yrs V. 11. Matilda Paget June 27, [1891] S. Domenico, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College S. Domenico. 27th 1. Left Imola early yesterday. 2. Hot 3 hours visiting Modena – 4. Arrived here 2.30. 5. Letters awaiting me; so many thanks. 6. Delightful drive in the evening. 7. Such kind people. 8. Tomorrow afternoon Milan. 9. Melle Gropallo1 meets me at the station. 10. Don’t know what hotel. 11. Didn’t see Murri. 12. But advised quinine against influenza in London by Imola Dr who dined. 1 Laura Serra (1869–1897) married Marchese Luigi Gropallo (1866–1919), whose parents were Marchese Marcello Gropallo (1840–1898) and Contessa Maria Teresa Rocca Saporiti (1847–1931). Laura died young, after the birth of her son Marcello Gropallo della Sforzesca, Marchese della Sforzesca (1897–1970).

12. Matilda Paget June 28, [1891] Milan, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Milan Sunday – Letter Postcards – Many thanks – 2. A boiling journey 3 ½ hours from Spallettis – 3. Melle G. [Gropallo] met me at the station. 4. A decent little room in an inn near her – 5. Dine there & lunch with Placci’s friend tomorrow. 6. Better let Ducci1 send for piano at once by calling. 7. Letter from Mary2 here. 8. Shall just catch her, as she leaves the 3rd. Much love V. 1 Carlo Ducci (1837–1900) was a talented pianist and composer and the founding editor of the Gazzetta musicale in Florence. In 1831, the Ducci family had started publishing musical scores and cartographic maps in Florence, and brothers Antonio and Michelangelo manufactured organs and pianos that won the praise of Rossini and other musicians – among them Franz Liszt. See “Liszt’s Italian Upright Piano,” The Cobbe Collection Trust, www.cobbecollection.co.uk/collection/36liszts-italian-upright-piano/. After completing his studies at the Conservatoire de Musique in Paris, Carlo Ducci succeeded his father upon the latter’s death in 1852 in the shop in Piazza degli

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 Antinori. He worked with his uncle Michelangelo until the latter’s death in 1871 and sold the shop in 1881 to two classmates, Giorgio Ceccherini and Filippo Torrigiani. The partnership created by that arrangement was known as Casa Musicale G. Ceccherini e Compagni, Successori Ducci. 2 See List of Correspondents: Mary (Robinson) Darmesteter. Also see Lee to Matilda Paget, August 7, 1890, for more on their relationship.

13. Matilda Paget July 2, [1891] Paris, France Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE Fri Thursday 2 July [1891] Hotel du Palais Cours [de] La Reine Paris Received proofs Dearest Mamma – I hope Flora wrote you yesterday that, in consequence of her journey, I had a very bad headache & had to take antipyrine which left me half stunned till it was Placci called to make [take]1 me to Mary.2 Today I am all right, as it is much cooler. I am going to number the rest of this letter, so that when you have read it you can put in Miss Goodban’s hands to give the news in small numbered particles to Eugene.3 1. The evening after our arrival we went to see the Sargents, close by here.4 2. The fiancé M. Francis Ormond was there – goodlooking, quite French. Much in love.5 3. He ran away from S. Remo as a boy, and has b endured rough life & hardships all over the world.6 4. The young people will have £4000 a year, & think of doing agriculture. 5. But evidently a lovematch all the same. 6. John took Flora & Placci & me to the new Salon7 yesterday morning. 7. Meanwhile the excellent Panniers arrived to tell me they were leaving Paris & I must dine tonight. Cordial creatures.8 8. Placci fetched me at five to go to Mary. She had intimated that I had better not come alone. 9. Pretty p tiny apartment, very elegant: Mary in a lovely dress, surrounded by ill dressed littérateurs9 standing like storks & speaking singly. She sitting & making long & elaborate speeches. Sister in law10 pouring out tea silently. 73

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10. Darmesteter entered, very clean, most frigid, I thought miserable, probably on my account. 11. Carl We ‸I‸ stayed, as arranged, to dinner, Carlo faithfully staying, the situation being anything but cheerful. 12. Mary marvellously changed. Utterly spoilt. Talks only shop & society; and to make effects. Apparently no interest beyond herself. 13. And her house, and her housekeeping, and her visiting lists, & her books and her husband whom she calls Jamette mon enfant!11 14. Perfectly natural & simple with me, but as if I had arrived the previous week with letter of introduction. 15. Not the faintest interest in me, my thoughts, words or health. Curious! 16. Placci was dreadfully impressed. 17. and to cheer ourselves, after this funereal feast, he took me to a café chantant!12 18. What a dear, kind creature he is.13 19. I am still here, because Pauline14 is so uncertain of her movements. 20. Even if she do come tomorrow, I shall stay on, as I cannot repack to go to the Rue Bonaparte15 now. 21. I can’t tell you how awfully kind Donna Laura Gropallo was to me at Milan, & her sister too. She pet me & saw me off. And Mme Ponti, Maria Pasolini’s mother, was also most kind. Address 12 Earl’s Terrace Kensington W. c/o Miss Pater16 I go there on Monday 6th & shall stay a few days, as Kit is not quite ready for me. So much love How is Papa ? Yrs V. P.S. The Sargents have just turned up to ask Flora & me to go & stay with them in their big new apartment 4 Rue Presbourg Arc de Triomphe & Mary has just been in, kind & garrulous.17 1 Irene Cooper Willis corrects Lee’s “make.” 2 This was Lee and Mary’s first meeting in the Darmesteters’ home since her marriage. For more about Lee’s dislike of and reaction to Mary Robinson’s engagement to French orientalist James Darmesteter in 1887 and their marriage in 1888, see Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II. 3 Vernon Lee is beginning to number items of information in her letters home to make it easier for Eugene to follow her. 4 Since 1875, Sargent had been sharing a rented studio on the Left Bank, rue Notre Dame des Champs, near the Luxembourg Gardens and the Gare Montparnasse, with the American artist James Carroll Beckwith (1852–1917). Although some sources mention no. 73, no. 77 is the

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 address Vernon Lee persistently indicates as being John Singer Sargent’s studio in Paris. “The rue Notre Dame des Champs was much favoured by artists, Whistler, Carolus-Duran, Gérôme, Camille Claudel and Saint-Gaudens all having studios there at one time or another” (David Charles Rose, Oscar Wilde’s Elegant Republic: Transformation, Dislocation and Fantasy in Fin-de-Siècle Paris [Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015], p. 451, note 317). The Sargents here included John Singer Sargent’s mother, Mary Newbold Sargent, and his two surviving sisters. After Dr Sargent’s death in 1889, Emily Sargent (1857–1936), a year younger than John, lived with her mother and settled “in Chelsea, at 10, Carlyle Mansions, which was conveniently close to JSS’s Tite Street studio. Emily was her mother’s companion and nurse until the latter’s death in 1906. She then lived independently though her life revolved around her brother. . . . she painted in watercolours herself” (William H. Gerdts, Elaine Kilmurray, Warren Adelson, Richard Ormond, and Rosella Mamoli Zorzi, Sargent’s Venice [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006], p. 211). She never married and was devoted to John for most of her life. “She was injured as an infant when her nurse dropped her. The accident resulted in a painful spinal deformity that was aggravated by an incorrect treatment” (Lucia Miller and Lucia Fairchild, “John Singer Sargent in the Diaries of Lucia Fairchild 1890 and 1891,” Archives of American Art Journal, volume 26, no. 4, [1986], pp. 2–16, www.jstor. org/stable/1557205). Violet Sargent, John’s youngest sister (1870–1955) and his junior by fourteen years, was Lee’s godchild. 5 Louis Francis Ormond (1866–1948) was born in Switzerland. His father, Michel Louis Ormond (1828–1901), was a cigar manufacturer, and his mother, Marie Marguerite Renet (1847–1923), the daughter of a French banker. Violet Sargent and Louis Francis Ormond married on 17 August 1891, in Paris. They had six children, three sons and three daughters: Marguerite Ormond (1892), Rose-Marie Ormond (1893–1918), Jean-Louis Ormond (1894–1986), Guillaume Francis Ormond (1896–1971), Reine Violet Ormond (1898–1971), and Henri Eric Conrad Ormond (1898–1979). According to Michael Anesko, Henry James and Queer Filiation: Hardened Bachelors of the Edwardian Era (Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2018), “after fathering six children, [Louis Francis Ormond] abandoned his family to indulge his homosexual proclivity in foreign parts. Writing of her sister, Emily Sargent told Vernon Lee, ‘she says she has long since accepted the fact that he is abnormal, & she thinks he has too, now.’” See Emily Sargent to Vernon Lee, 14 March [?1907] Vernon Lee Papers, Somerville College, Archives, Oxford University; Karen Corsano and Daniel Williman, John Singer Sargent and His Muse: Painting Love and Loss (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), p. 42. 6 John Singer Sargent objected to his sister’s choice and tried to discourage Violet’s plan to marry Louis Francis Ormond, a charming friend in Paris whom the Sargents considered literally flighty. . . . Louis Francis Ormond had run away from home to Canada as a youth and had eschewed his responsibility to the family cigar business. . . . Once married, Ormond and Violet remained on the move (Majorca, Barcelona, London, Tunis). Ormond left Violet and their children for the South Seas for a time in the 1920s. However, Richard Ormond, their grandson, testified that “the marriage lasted nearly 60 years and was a love match to the end.” (Richard Ormond to Lucia Miller, 18 March 1986, Lucia Fairchild Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.) See Stanley Olson, John Singer Sargent: His Portrait (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1986), p. 170; and Lucia Miller and Lucia Fairchild, “John Singer Sargent in the Diaries of Lucia Fairchild 1890 and 1891,” Archives of American Art Journal, 26, no. 4 (1986), pp. 2–16, including footnotes 1 and 3, www.jstor.org/stable/1557205 7 Salon de la Société des Artistes Français. Antonin Proust, Le Salon de 1891, Cent planches en photogravure [The Salon of 1891, One Hundred Photo Engraved Plates], par Goupil & Co., Paris, Boussot, Valladon et Cie, éditeurs, 1891. “Je crains bien que M. Sargent, qui nous envoie cette

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 année, d’Amérique, un Portrait de jeune garçon, ne soit tenté d’abuser de la facilité qu’a toujours eu son grand talent” (pp. 74–75). 8 Ernest Pannier and his wife. Pannier was a French doctor of law, lawyer at the court of appeal of Paris, winner of the Faculty Best Bachelor Competition, and author of academic works on debt, including Des conséquences juridiques de la déconfiture (Paris: Maresq, 1875). His article “Le syllogisme et la connaissance” was published in Théodule Ribot’s Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger, N° 14, Paris: Germer, Baillère et Cie, July 1882, pp. 292–309. In 1889, he published his work Attribution des indemnités d’assurances et de quelques autres indemnités; Commentaire des articles de la loi du 19 février 1889, Paris: Marchal et Billard, 1889, reviewed by M.V. Teissier in the Revue générale du droit, de la législation et de la jurisprudence, volume 14 (Paris: Ernest Thorin, 1890), p. 574. The Panniers were close friends of Mary Robinson’s, later Mrs Darmesteter, in Paris. Mary probably met the Panniers through archivist-paleographer Léopold Charles Augustin Pannier (1842–1875), who had been a student of Gaston Paris’s at the Ecole des Chartes and worked in the manuscript department at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris. They became friends with Lee. The Panniers, my dear, are perfectly divine. . . . They are people to be thankful to have seen. Seriously, this little apartment, with the charming, so wellbred, liberal minded, quiet young woman, & the delightful clean, strong, idealising, practical young man, evidently so happy with their babies, their art recollections, the books they get indignant over & the music they déchiffrer [déchiffrent], is something delightful, strengthening, consoling. (Lee to Mary Robinson, 4 June 1887, Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II) 9 In French in the text: scribbler. 10 Helena Darmesteter, née Hartog (1854–1923), was a British portrait painter. She married James Darmesteter’s elder brother, Arsène Darmesteter (1846–1888), who was a distinguished French philologist and a major scholar of Old French. He died in November 1888. See Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II. 11 In French in the text: Jamette my child. 12 In French in the text: a type of café in which performers sang popular tunes for the customers. 13 Items number 8 to 18 are not in Irene Cooper Willis. 14 Pauline MacPherson Abadam; see Lee to Matilda Paget, August 24, 1890. 15 When in Paris in 1888 and 1889, Lee occasionally stayed at Hotel St Georges, Rue Bonaparte, in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. 16 In 1885, Walter Pater and his sisters Hester (“Tothie”) and Clara moved from Oxford to 12 Earl’s Terrace, London, which was close to the Robinsons, who had moved from 84 Gower Street to 20 Earl’s Terrace. See Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II. 17 From “Address” to “garrulous” is not in Irene Cooper Willis.

14. Matilda Paget July 4, [1891] Paris, France Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 4 Rue de Presbourg. Paris, July 4 My dearest Mamma. I have been rushing about so much that I have only a minute before dinner to write you.

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1. I moved here yesterday, a beautiful 2nd floor opposite the Arc de Triomphe, hired for V’s [Violet’s] marriage. 2. Her young [man] is really a delightful creature. He has travelled & suffered hardships in various parts of the world, been a workman & cook in the far West, and wandered without water in the Algerian Sahara. Yet quite young and modest. 3. John is going to paint two great symbolic pictures for Boston Library – the new & old Testament with Egyptians, Assyrians & God Almighty. 4. I shall try and send Eugène a photograph of some marvellous monsters of stone which are on Notre Dame Towers. Charlie [Placci] took me to see them. 5. Saw Mme Blanc today, delightful.1 She may be coming to Italy; and she would be delighted to have to stay. 6. Went to say goodbye to Mary yesterday. Same impression as before. 7. The Panniers & Melle Read2 say she is quite changed; they say he has turned her to prose. She seems to have neglected them rather.3 Address c/o Kit 12 Chelsea Gardens S.W. I shan’t stay very long at 12, Earl’s Terrace. So much love, V. Would E. [Eugene] send a Fountain of Youth to D. [Donna] Laura Gropallo at Nervi.4 Placci has talked to her about it a great deal; I will pay for it. 1 This may be Lee and Blanc’s (“Th. Bentzon”) first meeting, though they had corresponded earlier. See List of Correspondents: Marie-Thérèse Blanc, née von Solms, and Lee to Blanc, 24 February 1889, Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II. 2 Lee met Mademoiselle Read in Paris in June 1887. Louise Read (1845–1928) was a writer and the secretary of Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly. After his death in 1889, she remained close to his friends and stayed in his apartment, 25 Rue Rousselet, Paris. See “Louise Read (1845–1928),” Bibliothèque Nationale de France, http://data.bnf.fr/13542053/louise_read/. She “chaperoned” Mary Robinson and Vernon Lee during their stay in Paris, according to Hungarian writer Justh Zsigmond (1863– 1894), who writes about “Mademoiselle Robinson and Mrs Vernon Lee, the two English writers whom she recommended to Bourget and she chaperoned for several weeks in Paris” [El van ragadtatva miss Robinsontól és mrs. Vernon Lee-től, e két angol írónőtől, kiket Bourget ajánlott hozzá, s akiket Párizsban több hétig chaperonírozott.] (entry dated 6 January 1888, “Párizsi napló 1888” [Paris Journal 1888], in Justh Zsigmond Mühelyében, Naploya és Levelei [Justh Zsigmond in His Workshop: Journal and Letters], https://mek.oszk.hu/05600/05631/html/01.htm#1). 3 “7. The Panniers & Melle Read say she is quite changed; they say he has turned her to prose. She seems to have neglected them rather.” This is not in Irene Cooper Willis. 4 Eugene Lee-Hamilton, The Fountain of Youth: A Fantastic Tragedy in Five Acts (London: Elliot Stock, 1891). Dedicated “To Vernon Lee with her brother’s love.” This tragedy-in-verse, based on the story of Juan Ponce de Léon’s quest for the mythical Fountain of Youth in the early sixteenth century, was developed from Lee-Hamilton’s poem “Ponce de Léon to the Fountain of Youth (AD 1520)” (Imaginary Sonnets [London: Elliot Stock, 1888], pp. 43–77). His source of

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 inspiration may have been Lee’s translations of extracts from Spanish books, which she sent him during her travels to Spain and Morocco between December 1888 and January 1889. This marked Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s “resurrection.” See Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II, Lee to Matilda Paget, [21 May] 1889. About Lee and her half-brother’s creative literary bond, see Catherine Maxwell, Second Sight: The Visionary Imagination in Late Victorian Literature (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), pp. 114–165.

15. Matilda Paget July 7, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 12 Earl’s Terrace. 7th July 1. Kit brought yr letters – so kind – to the station to me. 2. Had a bad crossing, at least I got a chill & was bad. 3. Shall stay till Friday or Sat. 4. 16 frs is all right for the piano – 8 each time. 5. Wd you forward me some printed matter which will arrive from America? They won’t have my vol. of stories there. 6. The Sargents were delightfully kind, & the young man is charming. Won’t you write a line to Mrs Sargent1 about the marriage, 4 Rue Presbourg, Arc de de l’Etoile ? – 5. I am very tired & hate this black hideous place, & wish I were back in Italy. Continue addressing 12 Chelsea Gardens S.W. So much love Yrs V. 1 Mrs Fitzwilliam Sargent, née Mary Newbold Singer (1826–1906), mother of John Singer, Emily and Violet Sargent.

16. Matilda Paget July 9, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 12 Earl’s Terrace but address to Kit Thursday. 1. Arriving here I found a letter from Harris,1 requesting my criticism of a story of his in the Fortnightly which he sent! – 2. Wrote to say there was another story I must criticise first, viz. his treatment of me. 3. Last night official letter from Chapman2 promising me £40 on insertion!! – 4. Sorry to hear poor little Miss Cobden very ill in her head.3 5. Called on Robinsons. House very lifeless I thought. Friendly but depressed. 6. M. [Mabel]4 told me history of Irish split – melancholy mismanagement & folly, which will throw back things ever so long. 7. I paid Bozzi – the receipt is in my large Bill drawer to the left[.] 1 Frank Harris (1856–1931), Irish-American author who was a contributor and sometimes editor of the Fortnightly.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 2 Frederic Chapman (1823–1895), publisher of the Fortnightly. 3 Lucy Elizabeth Margaret Cobden (1861–1891), daughter of Richard and Catherine Cobden. The Cobden siblings were active in liberal politics and reform movements, and the sisters were especially involved in the suffrage movement. Lucy (called Margaret) was the youngest, and Lee had known the family since the early 1880s. Margaret died in October 1891. See Lee to Matilda Paget, October 5, 1891. 4 Mary’s sister, Mabel Robinson, author (under the pseudonym of William Stephenson Gregg) of Irish History for English Readers: From the Earliest Times to the Close of the Year 1885 (New York: Harper & Bros., 1886).

17. Matilda Paget July 11, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Sat. 11. – Dearest Mamma 1. I am going this morning to Kit’s. 2. I lunch at Miss Ferguson’s. 3. These days have been unwell, seen only Robinsons & Mrs Barstow.1 4. It’s a bad business about poor little Mar-t C-den2 5. She got gradually crazy & since March is quite out of her mind, doubtless the deafness was a symptom. 6. The family accuse Miss T- of having indulged in Florence about money matters, apparently falsely. 7. She answers that they have spirited M-t [Margaret] away illegally – a fearful business. 8. Saw Bella.3 Is coming to Florence in autumn, then America with her unknown cousin. So much love V. 1 Nina Barstow, an author who lived in Florence and introduced Lee to various artists and writers, including Telemaco Signorini, was the daughter of painter Blanche Strahan Lemon (ca. 1851–1887), who passed away in January 1887, and painter Arthur Lemon (1850–1912), both friends of Lee’s. 2 Because this is a postcard, Lee wrote dots to disguise the name: Margaret Cobden. 3 Bella (Arabella) Duffy (ca. 1850–1926) was a close friend of Lee’s from 1878 to her death in 1926. The daughter of an Irish doctor, she was a scholar, an author and a translator whom Lee met in Florence in 1878, after Duffy had made the city her semi-permanent home. Her works include a novel, Winifred Power (1883), a translation of Richard Semon’s Mnemic Psychology (1892), The Tuscan Republics (1893) and a biography, Madame de Staël (1887) which she was commissioned to write for the Eminent Women Series, inaugurated by J.H. Ingram and published by W.H. Allen. Eugene Lee-Hamilton dedicated his 1884 collection of poetry, Apollo and Marsyas to Duffy, and Lee dedicated her book Proteus or the Future of Intelligence (1925) to her “with thanks for a lifetime of intelligent talk.”

18. Matilda Paget July 14, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 12 Chelsea Gardens SW. Monda Tuesday 14th 79

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1. The housework is not at all fatiguing – I do half & there is no charwoman – but as yet occupies considerable time. 2. I like it, as otherwise I should be fidgetting. 3. Sunday evening went to hear Socialists at Hammersmith, in an outhouse of Morris1 – 4. Poor stuff, poorer even than the Pope’s Encyclical2 which they were discussing; very abusive. 5. Yesterday Miss Arnold3 called; her sister Mrs Ward is at present working 9 hours a day at another Robert Elsemere!4 6. Miss Wakefield5 called & asked us. 7. Also Miss Black, very intelligent, organises strike among laundresses. Will write tomorrow. Love 1 The Hammersmith Socialists was a group that was founded by Robert Morris and met at his home, Kelmscott House, Hammersmith, on Sundays to discuss matters related to socialism and labor reform. 2 Pope Leo XIII’s first encyclical of 1891, “Rerum Novarum,” or “Of New Things,” addressed the worsening labor conditions in industrialised cities and the rise of socialist reform movements. 3 Ethel Arnold (1865–1930), author and women’s rights campaigner. She was the daughter of Tom Arnold and the sister of Mary Augusta Ward and Julia Huxley. 4 Mary Augusta Ward (1851–1920), also known as Mrs Humphry Ward, was a novelist, political activist, and niece to Matthew Arnold. Her most popular book was Robert Elsmere (London and New York: Macmillan and Co., 1888), but she authored several successful novels, including The History of David Grieve, 3 vols. (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1892), referenced here. 5 The singer Mary Wakefield (1853–1910), whom Lee had known since 1882. See Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II. Lee’s story “A Wicked Voice” was dedicated to Wakefield: “To M. W. / In remembrance of the last song at Palazzo Barbaro, / Chi ha inteso, intenda” [Whoever has understood, let him understand].

19. Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) [July 17, ?1891] London, England Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Paris1 12, CHELSEA GARDENS, S.W. Friday My dear Madame Blanc, It is very sad we should have been out when you came this afternoon; and still more so that yo you should be gone when we return from the country on Thursday. But it has been a very, very great pleasure seeing as much of you as we have been able; and, so far as myself am concerned, I trust you will not see that our friendship be kept alive by coming to us in Italy. Let me know yr plans for winter & autumn ‸Spring‸, for, as we have only two spare rooms, we have to fit in our guests in a kind of mosaic.

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A very delightful Italian friend of mine, Countess Pasolini, is going to Paris at the end of September. May I send her to you? ‸Please give me your address‸ You will love her. Her husband is a great original, & talks a lot of nonsense, not always amusing, but he is an excellent fellow, knows a lot of Renaissance history & is delightful when you get him on his own subjects. Here are my three stories: they will be greatly honoured by yr reading them. Believe me, dear Mme Blanc, Yrs affte V. Paget 1 Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits – Violet Paget / Lettres à Mme Th. Blanc / NAF 12993 – Don 7203.

20. Matilda Paget July 17, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 12 Chelsea Gardens S.W. 17th. Thursday. 1. The housework is getting much easier, & I enjoy it; by 11 we have always done it all. 2. Old Maitland1 wants to see me. 3. Lunched today with old Sir Chs [Charles] Newton,2 rapidly dying, but charming. 4. Dorothy Blomfield3 appreciates E’s [Eugene’s] play so much. 5. Probably go to Austins4 beginning of next month for a few days to meet Mme Blanc. 6. Shall try & interview Knowles5 about Aïdé.6 7. Hope piano sent back. Bozzi’s bill was 70 I think So much love 1 Edward Maitland (1824–1894), husband of influential theosophist, vegetarian, anti-vivisectionist and feminist Anna Kingsford, née Bonus (1846–1888). Together they wrote the occultist book The Perfect Way, or, the Finding of Christ (London: Hamilton, Adams & Co., 1882), a collection of Kingsford and Edward Maitland’s spiritual revelations. She became president of the British Theosophical Society, where “controversy over her focus on Christian text, as opposed to Hinduism and Buddhism, as well as her conflict with Alfred Percy Sinnett [led] to her split with the group and the formation of the Hermetic Society in 1884.” Maitland published her biography, Life of Anna Kingsford: Her Life, Letters, Diary and Work (London: George Redway, 1896) in 1896. Kingsford was one of the first English women to earn a degree in medicine (in Paris). She was interested in the benefits of vegetarianism on one’s health and wrote The Perfect Way in Diet: A Treatise Advocating a Return to the Natural and Ancient Food of Our Race (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1881). See Jennifer Burgess, “A Brief Biography of Dr. Anna Kingsford,” The Victorian Web, www. victorianweb.org/religion/kingsford1.html 2 Archeologist Sir Charles Thomas Newton (1816–1894) had been keeper of the Department of Antiquities for over twenty years and greatly enhanced the British Museum’s collection of antiquities. Lee often visited and consulted him. See Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 3 English poet and hymn-writer Dorothy Frances Blomfield (1858–1932). She wrote the hymn “O Perfect Love,” which was a popular choice for wedding ceremonies in the late nineteenth century, and the oft-quoted “God’s Garden.” She was also the author of a number of volumes of poetry and was friends with many in Lee’s circle. She had a close, possibly romantic, relationship with poet Amy Levy, whom she may have met through Lee in 1886. She was also attracted to Mary Robinson, and Lee was the embarrassed witness to her physical relationship with Mary Wakefield when they stayed together in Venice (see Lee to Mary Robinson, 8 September 1886, Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. I). Blomfield married Anglican minister Gerald Gurney in 1897, and in 1919, they both converted to Roman Catholicism, a controversial break from the Anglican Church (Linda Hunt Beckman, Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters [Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000]). 4 Poet Alfred Austin (1835–1913) was co-editor, with William John Courthope, of the Conservative journal the National Review. He and his wife, Hester Jane Homan-Mulock (1842–1929), lived at Ashford. 5 Sir James Thomas Knowles (1831–1908), founder and editor of the popular and influential magazine The Nineteenth Century. 6 Hamilton Aïdé (1826–1906), novelist and poet, fluent in French and English. His novels were generally light romances, Rita (1856) being the most popular. He was a longtime friend of Vernon Lee’s.

21. Matilda Paget July 18, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 12 Chelsea Gardens 18th July 1. Aide called yesterday, back from America. 2. Mrs Stanley1 sometimes had to shake hands with 2.000 people in one afternoon there!! 3. Lunched with Miss Wakefield, who invited me to the North, but don’t care to accept. 4. Housework getting quite easy & natural like supplementary cleaning & dressing of oneself. 5. Have sent Unwin my three stories to decide about, reserving American rights.2 6. Position of this house with only river, park & gardens in front quite charming & so airy. 7. Harris’ private secretary writes I shall get £50; Chapman wrote £40; a pretty muddle! Loves 1 Lady Dorothy Stanley, née Tennant (1855–1926) was a successful painter and married the explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley (1841–1904). She was the daughter of society hostess Gertrude Barbara Rich Tennant (1819–1918) and landowner and politician Charles Tennant (1796–1873). 2 The three stories, “Lady Tal,” “A Worldly Woman,” and “The Legend of Madame Krasinska,” were not published by Unwin. They were collected in the volume Vanitas. The collection is dedicated “Alla Baronessa E. French-Cini, Pistoia per Igno, dated Chelsea, October 1891.”

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22. Matilda Paget July 20, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 12 Chelsea Gardens SW 20th July – Dearest Mamma – Wd you kindly send me the cheque, crossed for £20? 1. called yesterday on Lady Wolseley, leaving for Dublin. No mention made of my going; I’m as well pleased. 2. Kit’s little brother, now grown up, called; such a nice lad.1 3. Been a good deal with Kit’s friends the Fergusons,2 nice people. 4. Yesterday Miss Black brought Champion3 the socialist, nice, gentlemanly creature. Yr V. So much love 1 Arthur St Clair Anstruther-Thomson (1872–1904), then nineteen, gained the rank of Lieutenant in the 1st Fife Light Horse Volunteer (“Arthur St. Clair Anstruther-Thomson,” The Peerage, www.thepeerage.com/p19844.htm#c198439.1). Kit took care of him, and he is mentioned in the Althea dialogues. 2 Ronald Munro-Ferguson (1860–1934) and his wife, Helen Hermione Temple-Blackwood (1865– 1941). See Lee to Matilda Paget, October 7, 1888, Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II, and Lee to Matilda Paget, November 12, 1890. 3 Henry Hyde Champion (1859–1928). Lee met him in 1887 (see Lee to Matilda Paget, 13 June 1887, Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II). She was favourably impressed: “a tall, young looking man, very beautifully dressed with a Carnation in his buttonhole; with a very impassive straight featured, alarming face. A sort of St Just le Vertueux with a head ripe for the guillotine. He was moderate, & altho’ longwinded, interesting.” He owned the paper Common Sense and was one of the proprietors of the Modern Press (Elizabeth Carolyn Miller, Slow Print: Literary Radicalism and Late Victorian Print Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013).

23. Matilda Paget July 25, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Sat. 25 July. Dearest Mamma 1. That wretch Unwin impudently offers me £20 for two of the stories of my volume, taking for granted I accept. Of course I don’t. 2. Saw Maitland the other day, most curious. Story growing. 3. Going now with a friend of Kit’s to see Polo played. 4. See a good deal of the nice Fergusons. 5. Bella D. probably chaperons unknown American cousin’s girl to Rome. 5. [6] Have been seedy & see that I must not see many people. 7. Please send recipe for Gnocchi Fritti. 8. The piano should1 be reserved for the winter. So much love 1

Not “shall be,” as ICW.

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24. Matilda Paget July 28, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College July 28. Dearest Mamma A thousand thanks for the delightful leaves & flowers, & also for the ch. [cheque] 2. I am sending my three tales to Balestier,1 without much hope. 3. Coming back from Hurlingham I met Lalla;2 we tried to arrange to meet, but she leaves town. 4. Bella D. [Duffy] says she will never settle in Florence, but probably in London; to me inexplicable. 5. Yesterday Miss Ferguson took me to see Lucas Malet, Kingsley’s daughter,3 very clever & youngish woman. 6. Please send me Mrs Webster’s address. 7. We go for 3 or 4 days to Austins on the 5th; address here. 8. I have to take much care of myself, scarcely read or write. How is the Dog? So much love 1 The American journalist Wolcott Balestier (1861–1891) “came to London in December 1888 as the agent of the American publisher Lovell. He had two sisters, who took it in turns to come over from America to keep house for him. The elder, Caroline, was to become Kipling’s wife” (Philip Holberton, “Kipling and Wolcott Balestier,” The Kipling Society, www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/readersguide/rg_dedication_brb_holb.htm). 2 Eliza “Lalla” Dickson, daughter of Eliza Dickson (1815–1885), widow of Dr Samuel Dickson (1802–1869). The family were longtime friends, and perhaps relatives, of the Pagets. See Lee to Matilda Paget, 25 July 1885, Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II. Dr Dickson had been a wellknown but divisive physician. The family lived at Hyde Park Gate South, and Lee visited them often. Lee was especially close with Lalla Dickson. See Lee to Matilda Paget, 16–17 June 1881 and 19–23 July 1881, Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. I (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; 1881 England Census, Class RG11; Piece 22; Folio 73; Page 4; GSU rol11341005; Ancestry.com, 2014). 3 Influential novelist Mary St Leger Kingsley (1852–1931), who published her novels as “Lucas Malet.” She was the daughter of novelist Charles Kingsley (1819–1875), author of the Water Babies. Her first novel, Mrs Lorimer: A Sketch in Black and White (London: Macmillan & Co., 1882) attracted the attention of Marie-Thérèse Blanc (Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II). In 1891, at the time of her meeting with Lee, she published The Wages of Sin (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1891).

25. Matilda Paget July 30, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College

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30th July. Dearest Mamma Day before yesterday went to a party at Mrs Graham Tomson[’], rising young poetess1 – Such scrubs Lord, 2. Shall order E. Stock to send her E’s [Eugene’s] play,2 for she gives me her last book. 3. In consequence of my contempt, Unwin sends me official statement of sales 4. Baldwin & Juvenilia virtually out of print – 123 of 2nd ed. of Euphorion remain. Please [have copied] send me the agreements for these 3. books [5.]3 In a packet in littlest drawer. 5. Dining Paters tonight. 6. First half of article out in Contemporary So much love Please Miss Little’s address. 1 Graham R. Thomson was the penname of Rosamund Marriott Watson (1860–1911). Her collection The Bird-Bride: A Volume of Ballads and Sonnets (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1889) was reviewed by Richard le Gallienne (Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century, A.H. Miles [ed.], [London: George Routledge, 1907]): Weird Scots ballads after the manner just then revived by Mr. Swinburne, imitations of the Greek anthology, poems on pictures, bookish poems, vers de société in Mr. Dobson’s metres, reminiscences of Herrick, ballades, rondeaus and villanelles, folk-songs, “marches,” translations from Provençal poets; all these common interests Mrs. Thomson managed to vivify with a touch of her own individuality. Her second volume, A Summer Night and Other Poems (London: Methuen, 1891), was equally successful. 2 Eugene Lee-Hamilton, The Fountain of Youth: A Fantastic Tragedy (1891). 3 The number “5” is written in this place, though it interrupts the sentence. Lee may have been writing quickly, misnumbering her statements.

26. Matilda Paget August I, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 1st August. Dearest Mamma 1. On examination I don’t find Unwin’s statement so satisfactory. 2. None of my books has sold as much as 1200 America included. 3. What this means is shown by Pater’s Marius being in the 6th thousand. I am decidedly an unsuccessful author, well known but not read. 4. I should like my mattress, bolster & pillow to be cleaned. 5. But I expect it is even more urgent to recover the mattress in Miss G’s [Goodban’s] room: it was going to pieces just as Pa’s was. 6. Please tell me

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whether it wd be agreeable to you & useful to E. [Eugene] if Olive were to come before my return. It would greatly relieve my mind. Give my love to Papa. We shall be at Austins Wed. to Sat. So much love 27. Matilda Paget August 7, [1891] Ashford, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Ashford 7th Aug. Dearest Mamma. Came here Wednesday till Monday next; charming. 2. But weather hitherto frightful. 3. and have been very low in health & spirits, scarcely able to come at all. 4. Today better. 5. Tell Papa intended writing but felt too ill, 6. quantities of things to answer always, and head bad. 7. Mme Blanc expected here today. 8. Answer please about Olive. 9. Miss Chittenden will return to Florence. 10. We go Wednesday for two days to Aïdé’s at Ascot. 11. Kit’s people next week. So much love. 28. Matilda Paget August 8, [1891] Ashford, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Ashford Aug 8. Dearest Mamma – Many thanks for sending the agreements with V; I suppose, being registered, they are awaiting me in London. Could you kindly send me a book – Giovanni can get it at any big bookstall – which Mr Austin very much wants to have (addressing A.A. [Alfred Austin] Swin. [Swinford] Near Ashford) namely Fantasia by Matilde Serao?1 I should be so grateful. So much love V. 1 Matilde Serao (1856–1927) was a Greek-born Italian journalist and author of a number of novels and short stories. She was hugely successful during her lifetime and was nominated more than once for the Nobel Prize for Literature. She co-founded the short-lived journal Il Corriere di Roma with her husband, Edoardo Scarfoglio (1860–1917), as well as solely founding the more successful journals La Settimana and Il Giorna in Naples. Enrico Nencioni was a colleague of hers and reviewed her works for the Antologia. She married Edoardo Scarfoglio sometime in 1884 or 1885, and their marriage was a tumultuous one. They remained married for some years and had four children

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29. Matilda Paget August 11, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 11. Aug. Found documents & letters; a thousand thanks. Kit has been overdoing herself with housework a little, but now we have a child for 3 hours a day to help. She was afraid of boring you, but had begun several letters. 1. will return E.’s [Eugene’s] sonnets, curious. 2. Have asked Mrs Graham Thomson to send the book to him. 3. Balestier offers £50 & a royalty; have asked for £75. 4. Unwin ex evidently wants to get back Juvenilia, the rights of which have come to me. 5. Shall try & extract some money from him. 6. ‸Contemp‸ continues. given £28.10 first half of my article. 7. Am going to see Mary, in London for a day. 8. Tomorrow we go to Aïdé’s till Sat. Written to Paters. So much love. 30. Matilda Paget August 13, [1891] Ascot, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College ASCOT WOOD COTTAGE ASCOT BERKS Aug. 13. Dearest Mamma – A thousand thanks for yr very, very kind thought in sending me the cheque. I do not really want it, for the Contemporary has just sent me £28 for the first half of my article, and I suppose I shall get £22 more for the second. And I suppose, eventually Harris will print & pay me. But I shall ke cash yr cheque all the same, as it will enable me to make a deposit at Kit’s bank, on which I can draw, instead of carrying my money about, which I dislike very much. I have written to Unwin, for I find that by the fact of 750 copies having sold off, Juvenilia is now mine once more; & he seems to wish to publish a selection of essays from it & Belcaro. The latter is unluckily his out & out, as he bought it from Satchell, to whom I gave it for nothing. I have asked him £25 for the right of publishing a selection. I am more & more convinced he is dishonest, though I don’t think his statement of sales could be falsified.

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I saw Mary for half an hour the day before yesterday; she goes back to Paris today. My impression is not altered. She is vain, imm frightfully selfcentered, affected and distraite1 in fact, in all save her person, there is nothing or little of the old Mary left. We came here last night & return on Saturday. Here are E’s sonnets back. Again a thousand thanks for the cheque; how good of you. I have had to buy boots & flannels. So much love. V 1

In French in the text: absent-minded.

31. Matilda Paget August 15, [1891] Ascot, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Ascot 15th Aug. Sat. Dearest Mamma – We are going back to town this afternoon, after a very pleasant stay here. 2. A review of E’s [Eugene’s] book in the Athenaeum, under heading Drama.1 3. Very stupid & poor. 4. It now appears that my last book of stories was also a loss to Heinemann.2 5. Am giving new one for £50 for American & foreign rights & a royalty.3 6. glad to get even that; Heard from Papa, please thank him. So much love V. 1 The Fountain of Youth: A Tragedy in Five Acts, by Eugene Lee-Hamilton (Stock) – Mr Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s “The Fountain of Youth,” which he aptly describes as a “Fantastic tragedy,” has an originality and imaginativeness in its story that make it striking. The dramatic form in which the semi-fabulous, semi-natural history is told does exceedingly well for the telling, and the blank verse, though too often dragged down passages of prose cut to measure, has poetic quality, and, though rarely of musical flow, is always metrical. As a drama the book would be open to much fault-finding; but it is not a drama. It is a romance developed in scenic chapters. As such its construction is clever and appropriate. The reader’s interest is well-kept up to the ending, even although the nature of the ending is long foreseen. With different treatment the pathos of Ponce de Leon’s soul-destroying delusion might easily have lost its due prominence and left him ludicrous and hateful; and it was true artistic prudence to let the clasping and swallowing of the almost martyr daughter by the man-devouring monster flower be a mere suggestion of the horror to the reader as she quietly passes to her death, instead of following the strange sacrifice to a point of dramatic emphasis. There might have been gain to the poetic force and grace of the “Fountain of Youth” if Mr Eugene Lee-Hamilton had been able to revise it with a view to choice of simpler and more expressive words. His lyrics, in particular, suffer from want of such choice. But the book, though so far from perfect, will repay several re-readings. (The Athenaeum [8 August 1891], p. 203) 2 Hauntings: Fantastic Stories (London: Heinemann, 1890). 3 Vanitas (1892).

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32. Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) August 17, [1891] London, England Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Paris [The original of this letter is in French] [This letter is not extant] 12, CHELSEA GARDENS, S.W. Ce mardi ‸lundi‸ 17 août Chère Madame Blanc, Nous partons Samedi à la campagne, dont nous ne retournerons que pour bien peu de jours, et probablement après votre départ. Essayez donc, je vous en prie, de nous donner quelques heures le plus tôt possible. Vous serait-il agréable de prendre le thé avec nous demain mardi pour rencontrer cette Miss Black dont nous avons parlé et qui vous plaira, je crois, beaucoup? Et pourriez-vous déjeuner avec nous au Grand Hotel Mercredi, après un tour dans la National Gallery? Nous voudrions vous amener à 11.30. Malheureusement nous ne serons libres ni Jeudi ni Vendredi dans la journée. Je désire vous dire quelques mots, et cela au sujet de la jeune personne que vous cherchez pour Mme Dreyfus. J’ai J’avais songé immédiatement à la personne qu’il vous faudrait, du moins si j’ai bien compris que votre amie cherche plutôt un jeune chaperon p [pour] ellemême qu’une véritable institutrice p [pour] ses enfants. Il m’a semblé, d’après l’expérience que j’ai fait faire à mon amie Mme Pasolini qui désirait p [pour] ses garçons l’influence d’un jeune anglais en, qu’il que votre amie ferait bien de commencer, au moins, par prendre une personne du vrai monde, même au risque de ne la garder que peu de temps, au lieu d’essayer de s’acclimater immédiatement avec une véritable institutrice; mon amie italienne a eu la chance de recevoir dans sa maison un jeune homme très distingué, n’ayant aucune idée de xxx qui désirait étudier les langues p [pour] la carrière diplomatique, et dont la présence, même de quelques mois seulement, a frayé le chemin p [pour] un véritable tutor qu’elle a pris depuis. Si Mme Dreyfus désirait faire un essai dans ce genre, je lui proposerais donc cette personne à laquelle j’ai pensé immédiatement, mais dont il fallait le consentement avant que je vous en parlasse. Cette personne n’est autre qu’Olive, soeur cadette de Miss Thomson, jeune fille de 21 ou 22 ans, que je connais très intimement et que ‸à laquelle‸ les circonstances actuelles de sa famille – un nouveau mariage de son père – rendraient très agréable un séjour prolongé à l’étranger. Olive Anstruther-Thomson, qui a été chez nous en visite pendant deux mois en Italie, où j’ai pu l’observer dans ses rapports avec les étrangers mes amis comme je l’avais auparavant connue dans ses rapports avec les hôtes de son père en Ecosse, est une des plus sympathiques jeunes filles que je connaisse, et de d’une figure agréable quoique sans beauté, d’un excellent cœur, douce, patiente, 89

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absolument sans les les prétentions à l’admiration ou à la jouissance de la vie de la plupart des filles de son âge, b gaie, facile à se plaire où elle rencontre de la bonté et de l’intelligence; au reste d’une intelligence très remarquable quoique sans culture régulière, sans shyness, ayant les belles manières de sa sœur aînée, et surtout un savoir vivre, un tact excessivement rare à son âge, et malheureusement peu commun même chez les personnes beaucoup plus âgées. Elle a été, depuis son enfance presque, la véritable maîtresse de maison chez son père, à cause des absences prolongées de ses sœurs aînées, et elle a vécu constamment dans le meilleur monde. Du reste vous savez que sa famille représente la branche cadette d’un des meilleurs noms de l’Ecosse, et que ces ses deux frères appartiennent à ces ce xxx la maison militaire de la Reine, ce qui, dans ce pays par trop aristocratique, donne un cachet tout particulier – le même que la diplomatie – à la famille. Olive Venue Grandie d au milieu de débâcle financier [de la débâcle financière] de sa famille, Olive a les gouts [goûts] très simples, et ne demande qu’à trouver de la sympathie et à pouvoir cultiver son esprit. Elle adore la conversation des personnes cultivées, et c’est une des raisons qui lui font désirer d’aller à Paris. Du reste elle a eu quelque expérience avec les enfants, qu’elle aime beaucoup, puisque sa belle-sœur lui a confié plus d’une fois les siens pendant les voyages de plusieurs mois qu’elle faisait avec son mari. J’ai pu observer, avec les enfants d’une de mes voisines florentines, qu’elle est beaucoup aimée par les enfants. Elle a beaucoup de facilité p [pour] les langues, et aime beaucoup les étrangers, qui – a en juger p [pour] les italiens – l’apprécient beaucoup. J’ai prié Kit de me permettre de vous écrire à sa place, parce que j’aime infiniment sa sœur et que, sous quelques rapports, je puis juger mieux qu’elle-même de ses aptitudes. Miss Olive Anstruther-Thomson irait volontiers à Paris dès Octobre; et si votre amie consentait à l’indemnifier [indemniser] de ses frais de voyage, elle aimerait à faire un essai mutuel d’un mois ou deux. Quant au salaire, dont elle ne m’a pas encore parlé, je m’imagine que ce serait quelque chose comme cent livres sterling. Envoyez, si bon vous semble, 33. [Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) August 17, [1891] London, England Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Paris [The original of this letter is in French] [This letter is not extant] 12, CHELSEA GARDENS, S.W. Today Monday, August 17 Dear Madame Blanc, We are leaving on Saturday for the countryside, returning for a few days only, and probably after you had left. Please, try and give us a few hours 90

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as soon as possible. Would you like to have tea with us tomorrow Tuesday to meet this Miss Black who we talked about and whom you will like very much, I believe? And could you have lunch with us at the Grand Hotel on Wednesday, after a tour at the National Gallery? We would like to take you there at 11.30. Unfortunately, we are free neither on Thursday nor on Friday during the day. I wish to say a few words to you, about the young lady you are looking for for Mme Dreyfus.1 I immediately thought about the right person for you to have, if, as I understood correctly, your friend is looking for a young chaperon for herself rather than a real school teacher for her children. It seemed to me, from the experiment I suggested to my friend Mme Pasolini who wished her boys to benefit from a young Englishman’s influence, that your friend would better, to begin with, hire a person of the real world, even at the risk of keeping him or her for a short time only, instead of trying to immediately become acclimated to a real school teacher; my Italian friend was fortunate enough to receive in her house a highly distinguished young man, who wanted to study languages with a view to a diplomat’s career,2 and whose presence, however brief it was, opened the way for a real tutor3 she has hired since. Should Mme Dreyfus wish to make a test of this kind, I would then suggest the person I immediately had in mind, but whose consent was necessary before I let you know about her. This person is no other than Olive, Miss Thomson’s younger sister, 21 or 22 years old, a young lady to whom I am very closely acquainted and whose family’s present circumstances – her father’s remarriage – would turn her extended stay abroad into a pleasurable plan. Olive AnstrutherThomson, who stayed with us for a two-month visit in Italy, where I could witness her relationship with foreigners in the same way as I had done with her relations with her father’s guests in Scotland, is one of the most friendly young ladies I know, she has a pleasant though shapeless figure, a great heart, she is kind, patient, absolutely devoid of the claims to admiration or to life’s pleasures of most girls of her age, cheerful, easy to please where she can find kindness and intelligence; besides, she is remarkably clever, even though she has no regular culture, and she is devoid of shyness,4 having her elder sister’s good manners, and above all a savoir vivre, a tactfulness that is exceedingly rare at her age, and unfortunately uncommon even in older people. From infancy almost, she has been her father’s true lady of the house, owing to her elder sisters’ long absences, and she has always lived in high society. Besides, you know that her family represents the younger branch of one of the best names in Scotland, and that her two brothers belong to the Queen’s military house, which, in this overly aristocratic country, endows the family with a very special aura – the same as diplomacy does. Having grown up in the midst of her family’s financial debacle, Olive has very simple tastes, and asks for nothing more than kindness and the opportunity of cultivating her mind. She loves cultured people’s conversation, and this is one of the reasons why she wishes to go to Paris. 91

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Besides, she has had some experience with children and loves them, as her sister in law entrusted her own children to her care more than once whenever she went on her travels with her husband for several months at a time.5 I could observe, with the children of one of my neighbours in Florence, that children love her. She has a gift for languages, loves foreigners, who also – judging from Italian people – like her very much. I begged Kit to allow me to write to you on her behalf, because I like her sister immensely and, somehow, I can be a better judge of her abilities than she is. Miss Olive Anstruther-Thomson would be willing to go to Paris as early as October; and if your friend accepted to compensate for her travel expenses, she would be happy to do a mutual test for a month or two. As to her wages, which she has not mentioned yet, I imagine they would amount approximately to a hundred sterling pounds. Please send, if this seems correct [This letter is not extant] 1 Mrs Dreyfus: Henriette Obermayer (1837–1929), the daughter of a rich Viennese banker. In 1864, she married the French connoisseur and art collector Gustave Louis Dreyfus (1837–1914), of a family of textile merchants from Alsace. The Dreyfuses’ collection, mostly Renaissance Italian art, medals and plaquettes, was displayed in the family apartment on the Boulevard Malesherbes, and Gustave was a model public benefactor, serving on many committees and assisting his beloved museums with numerous acquisitions, including a great number of works from his own collections. Letters between Berenson and his wife, Mary Smith-Costelloe, give perhaps the best sense of Dreyfus as a leading figure in the Paris art world, to whom the door of every fellow collector was always open. They had four daughters – Félicie Dreyfus (1865–1947), Léontine Dreyfus (1867–1945), Elisa Dreyfus (1868–1942) and Inès Dreyfus (1873–1967; in around 1900 she married engineer Paul Goldsmidt [1869–1934]) – and a son, Carle Dreyfus (1875–1952). See Alice Legé, Gustave Dreyfus: Collectionneur et mécène dans le Paris de la Belle Epoque, Officina Libraria, 2019; J. Warren, “Book Review: Gustave Dreyfus: Collectionneur et Mécène dans le Paris de la Belle Epoque. By Alice Silvia Legé,” The Burlington Magazine, no. 163 (February 2021), pp. 187–188. Gustave Dreyfus’s friend, painter Léon Bonnat (1833–1922), painted a portrait of Carle Dreyfus as a child in 1879 (oil on canvas). Carle Dreyfus spent much of his career at the Louvre, becoming an expert on sculpture, objects d’art, and French furniture. A meticulous researcher, he published several books on the museum’s collection of objects, including Le Mobilier Francais. Epoque de Louis XIV et de Louis XV (1921) and Musée du Louvre: Les Objets d’art du XVIIIe siècle (1923). One of the first of its kind, Tabatières, Boites et Etuis. Orfèvreries de Paris, XVIIIe Siècle et Début du XIXe, des Collections du Musée du Louvre (1930) is a critical description of the 163 snuffboxes in the Louvre’s collection, including detailed explanations of the goldsmiths’ markings and an index of featured artists. / In 1933 Carle Dreyfus was promoted to Curator of the Department of Objects d’Art. He was removed from his post in 1940, a consequence of anti-Jewish legislation enacted by the Vichy France government depriving Jews of the right to hold public office. Ousted and in danger, Dreyfus went into hiding with the help of his colleagues, who protected him. Following the liberation of Paris, Dreyfus was called upon as a respected advisor to the Commission de Récupération Artistique (French Commission for Art Recovery). As Conservateur Honoraire

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 des Musées Nationaux, Dreyfus participated in plans for the restitution of works of art stolen from France. In December 1945 he made an official trip to Munich alongside Monuments Man Albert Henraux, the Commission’s President. / Dreyfus later resumed his work at the Louvre, where he remained until his death in 1952. (“Carle Dreyfus [1875–1952],” Monuments Men and Women Foundation, www.monumentsmenandwomenfnd.org/dreyfus-carle; Arch. PPo. 303, rapport du 6 juin 1938. – Geneanet. – Catalogue de l’exposition Collections Carle Dreyfus léguées aux Musées nationaux et au Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris, Musée du Louvre, 1953) 2 Francesco Papafava dei Carraresi (1864–1912) was an Italian economist and philosopher. His father was Count Alberto Papafava (1832–1929). Lee portrayed him as “most anxious to study & to get to know the poor. Extremely ignorant & very timid, a sort of Parzival trying to find out how to seek for the Holy Grail” (Lee to Mary Robinson, 20 February 1886), and she introduced him to the Irish socialist historian Alice Stopford Green (1847–1929): This handsome & amiable creature is moreover historically interesting as being descended from the family of that Francesco da Carrara whom the Venetians drove out of Padua & did to death; the survivors were obliged to take the ridiculous name of Papafava (Twelfth Knight King, Roi de la Fève) and only at the fall of the Republic took back the name of Carraresi. (Lee to Alice Stopford Green, 20 February 1887; Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II) 3 In English in the text. 4 In English in the text. 5 Agnes Dorothea Anstruther, née Guthrie (1860–1941), married Charles St. Clair Anstruther (1855– 1925), and they had two children, Margaret Grizel St Clair Bonde, née Anstruther (1882–1970), and John Arnold St Clair Anstruther-Thomson (1888–1914). John Singer Sargent painted her portrait in 1898.

34. Matilda Paget August 18, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 12 CHELSEA GARDENS, S.W. Dearest Mamma, 1. The enclosed absurd cutting may amuse you & Eugene. 2. I send you the Contemp. and a Review of Review [Reviews], which, being headed in detail, may be useful to E. [Eugene] 3. Lady Campbell, Kit’s great friend,1 has kindly invited me with her from the 4th to the 11th Sept. 4. She has a shooting box in Argyllshire, very beautiful. 5. After that Kit goes to her brothers in Mull,2 & I probably to the Fergusons in Rossshire.

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6. I am delighted. 7. Saturday till Tuesday we go to her relations the Arbuthnots (fat Miss A.’s brother) near Guildford. 8. For a day then to Mrs Hoare at Maidenhead. 9. Then a week in lodgings at Chelmsford in Essex. 10. Kit’s little brother is at an Electric factory there. 11. There is some question of Olive going to Paris as female lad to a friend of Marie-Thérèse (“Th. Bentzon”).3 12. Charming letter from Gamba girl. 13. Maria Gamba has had a girl baby. I have no notion where Flora is, but letters are sent on from Elmfield Kingston on Thames. 13. [14.] The Paters will be in Florence for two days next Monday & Tuesday. 14. As they have been so exquisite to me, I want to be civil. 15. Would you cause a little present to be sent them to the Hotel de Rome S. Maria Novella consisting in: 16. Some nice (looking) grapes, peaches & little melons. 17. some tuberoses ‸oleanders‸ & olea fragrans & other smelling flowers from Villa Landor. And 18. a small flask (half one of our flasks) of our red wine labelled Panzano=Chianti 19. and ditto of Vin Santo. I should be so grateful, and Miss Goodban will kindly see to flowers & labels. 20. I am sure they would awfully like to come to tea with you, but you must not be bothered. 21. Address Miss Hester Pater. 22. Giovanni must get a little coarse basket to put it all in. 23. Thank Eugene for his letter. 24. Why should Ezzelino be stopped? This is such a lot of little sentences I fear it may make him ill like one of mine in ‸from‸ Paris. Would you kindly when you have read it, put it in his hands – Then he can let Miss Goodban give him a sentence at a time in the course of three or four days. How awfully kind you are, dear Mamma. I am thinking about the money you sent me. So much love Yrs V. 94

SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 1 Janey Sevilla Campbell, Lady Archibald Campbell “Lady Archie” (1846–1923) was a theatre producer known for her productions of pastoral plays at Coombe Woods, initiated in 1884. She and her husband, Lord Archibald Campbell (1846–1913), were both also interested in the occult, and she published some work, including Rainbow-Music, or, The Philosophy of Harmony in Colour Grouping (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1886), a book on harmonic analogies between color and music. Alice Callander (1855–1922) was related by marriage to Lady Archie, through whom Vernon Lee met Clementina Anstruther-Thomson at Susan (Maia) Muir-Mackenzie’s home in Effingham, Surrey, on 24 July 1887. About Lee’s fascination with the eccentric Lady Archie’s personality and theatrical productions at Coombe, see Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II. The character of Alice Oke in “Oke of Okehurst” is modeled after her. 2 Isle of Mull. 3 Mme Dreyfus’s boy: Carle Dreyfus, future curator of the Louvre Museum. See Lee to Mme Blanc, August 17, 1891.

35. Matilda Paget August 22, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 22 Aug. Sat. Chelsea Dearest Mamma. 1. 2. 3. 4.

We go today till Tuesday to Kit’s sister in law’s mother1 near Guildford – Then till Thursday to her friend Mrs Hoare at Maidenhead. Day before yesterday lunched with a cousin of hers at Hampton Court. Mrs Graham Thomson is under thirty (?)2 tall, very dark, very preRaphaelite Mrs Morris get up, handsome. 5. Divorced first husband I believe. 6. Last night Emily Ford3 turned up. 7. Went to Museum with Miss Sellers,4 like her so much. 8. Please, answer about Miss Little’s plans with a view to beating up other people for E. [Eugene] So very much love. V.

1 Ellinor Guthrie née Stirling (1838–1911), married James Alexander Guthrie, 4th Baron of Craigie (1823–1873). 2 Lee’s original punctuation. 3 Emily Ford (1850–1930), painter and social activist; she and her sisters, Isabella (1855–1924) and Bessie (1848–1919), were raised as Quakers by their parents, solicitor Robert Lawson Ford (1809–1878) and Hannah, née Pease (1814–1886). An active member of the Leeds Ladies’ Educational Association from 1873 to 1881, Ford founded the Leeds Girls’ High School. A member of the Manchester Society of Women Painters, she kept a studio in Chelsea, London. She was also an active member of both the Leeds Suffrage Society and the Leeds Socialist Society, which addressed the plight of working class women, among other social concerns. The Fords’ home, Adel Grange, outside Leeds, became a gathering place for socialists and activists throughout the 1880s and 1890s, and Lee visited there often (E. Crawford [ed.], The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866–1928 [London: Routledge, 1999], pp. 225–226). See also Janet Douglas, “The Forgotten Sister of the Woman Who Brought Kropotkin the Anarchist to Leeds’ Poshest Suburb,” The Guardian, 15 January 2013. Ford had become interested in spiritualism and joined the Society for Psychical Research in the early 1880s.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 4 Eugenie Sellers (Mrs Arthur Strong; 1860–1943), wife of the librarian of the House of Lords, friend and colleague of Lee’s. She was an archaeologist and art historian. One of her contributions to the field was her edition of Furtwängler’s Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture, as well as an introduction and commentary to Elder Pliny’s Chapters on the History of Art (E. Sellers [ed. and trans.] [London: Macmillan & Co., 1896]). According to Gunn, she was then working at identifying the sculptures mentioned in Pausanias’s Description of Greece (Gunn, Vernon Lee: Violet Paget, 1856–1935, [London: Oxford University Press, 1964], pp. 148–149). After the death of her husband in 1904, she became his successor as librarian of the collections at Chatsworth House. Then, in 1909, she became the assistant director of the British School at Rome.

36. Matilda Paget August 24, [1891] Guildford, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Upperhouse, Guildford Aug. 24. Dearest Mamma, 1. We arrived day before yesterday. 2. Fine place & nice people. 3. Tomorrow Maidenhead for a day & 2 nights, then London. 4. Friday or Saturday for 4 days to Chelmsford, Essex, where Kit’s little brother is. 5. Then return London to pack for Scotland 6. Do let me know whether all zinias [zinnias] have perished. 7. Also nasturtiums & pumpkins? 8. Am anxious for several maccaroni [macaroni] recipes. 9. Not very strong in health. Much love 37. Countess Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi August 26, [1891] Maidenhead, England Gabinetto Vieusseux Biblioteca Maidenhead Aug 26 My dear Angelica, I have had so little time, and so nessuna inclination to write letters; but I want you to write to me. I talk to you a great deal mentally, asking you what you think about this thing & the other; but it’s dull always talking without an answer. Maria I suppose has told you that I am tolerably flourishing, although I find I can’t consort yet with human beings in the way of dinners & parties. What I like here, & what amuses me is what is just now the case, that Kit & I are staying about for [a] day or two at a time in country houses. Particularly when, as today, the people of the house are Kit’s friends not mine. It is delightful, for then I sit quietly by, looking on at their antics & absorbing knowledge of the world at every pore! I suppose 96

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Carmilla Gropallo would make big eyes & growl out “Lei ci sta mettendo in un romanzo”1 – fortunately English people of the sort it amuses me to observe do not even conceive that a novel has a human being for an author (much less one they wd invite) but vaguely feel that it is fabricated by machinery or appears ready made in the book seller’s window. We went this afternoon on the river. The River in this country means the Thames. You would like it very much, the great full stream, woods of well pellinated [pollinated] trees coming down to the edge, and swans flo sailing about. It has, however, that well groomed air, suggestive of infinite money & trouble which nature seems to furnish (desirous to please human taste) to all things in this country save the inhabitants. Next month we are going to Scotland, and how I look forward to the comparative unkempt appearance of things beyond the Tweed! I was not born in England, nor for England. Our hostess there is a woman who would interest you & Maria: the wife of a young millionaire brewer, with political radical aspirations in a mild way.2 She is ‸a ‸ born political woman, with a face like a wedge, and an odd, restless contemptuous manner. Her fashionable friends call her a failure, because she hasn’t got into the Prince of Wales’s set (the only desideration in the world), without seeing that the creature is a force of nature in the political line. In Italy she would have a court of Senators & deputies like Maria, here she is merely an eccentric failure – Maria has told you of Kit & my exploits as housemaids? Kit is much better in health & spirits. The final catastrophe of her father’s marriage, the fulfillment of the worst, has taken a strain, a weight off her.3 But she will never see that old man again alive, or I am much mistaken. There is an odd quiet ferocity at the bottom of her; for all her gentleness to weak things. She has none for weak characters. Goodbye dearest Angelica, remember me to Sig. Geppe & many kisses to the children. My love to Maria & family. Kit’s best love. Yrs Vernon 1 In Italian in the text: She is putting us in a novel. 2 Hugh Edward Hoare (1854–1929) and his wife, Elizabeth Wolfe Hoare, née Murray (1857–1905). The family business was the brewery Hoare and Company. Hugh Hoare was elected a Liberal MP for the Chesterton Division of Cambridgeshire in 1892 but failed to retain his seat in subsequent elections. 3 On 17 June 1891, Kit’s father, John Anstruther-Thomson, married Isobel Bruce (1859–1918), daughter of Lieutenant General Robert Bruce (1821–1891) of Glendouglie. They had a baby, Rachel Anstruther-Thomson (1892–1968). Kit’s father left his substantial fortune to his second wife, disinheriting his children until she died.

38. Matilda Paget August 28, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 12 Chelsea Gardens SW Aug. 28. Dearest Mamma. 97

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I am very disappointed at finding nothing from you on my return yesterday. It is so long since I heard – 1. Today we go to Chelmsford till Tuesday. 2. Mrs Hoare is a political woman, very bright 3. Husband rich brewer, standing for Parliament 4. Sort of equistry of Duke of Edimbro’ there, radical also. 5. Went on the Thames, but rained. 6. Today better weather. 7. Settled to go to the Fergusons at Assynt after Lady C’s. [Campbell’s] 8. Very pleased, want Scotland for background. 9. Received letter from Pauline1 of 22 June, from S. Donnino [?Domingo]; had been to Haiti! Much love. V. 1 Lee’s first cousin, Pauline MacPherson Abadam (Adams; 1849–?) was the daughter of Matilda Paget’s brother, William MacPherson Abadam (Adams; 1814–1851), and his wife, Agnes Snow Jump Shakespeare MacPherson Abadam (1806–1866). William and Agnes lived almost exclusively in southern France, and their children were born there. For a time in the early 1850s, Matilda and Eugene lived at the Château de Bizanos, near Pau, where William’s family lived. Matilda and William’s elder brother Edward had started a lawsuit against William, claiming that his daughter Pauline was illegitimate. In 1870, Pauline married Charles de Cargouët (1841–1871), but he died just a year later. In 1876, she married Charles’s brother Théophile de Cargouët (1847–1907). Lee and Eugene were close with Pauline and her sister Alice throughout their lives. See Lee’s letters to Matilda Paget and to Mary Robinson in August 1881, when she was visiting her cousins in France (Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. I; Gunn, Vernon Lee: Violet Paget, 1856–1935, 1964, pp. 14–16). See also Blackburn-Daniels, ‘The Scholar’s Copy Book’ and the ‘Blotting-Book Mind’ (2018), p. 189.

39. Matilda Paget September 3, [1891] Crarae, Scotland Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College CRARAE, INVERARY. N. B. Sept 3rd Thursday [1891] Dearest Mamma T So many thanks for your letter; I am so pleased you like my story: I shall send you the continuation in a few days. 1. I am awfull [awfully] sorry about the garden. 2. Kit & I left London last night at 9.15, arrived at Greenock in the morning and here at one. 3. This is a small house shooting box merely. 4. Lady Campbell’s big place is near Glasgow, called Garscube. 5. This is on the narrow inlet of the sea or salt lake called Loch Tyne Tyne. 6. You steam 4 hours up from Greenock on the Clyde. 7. low hills and islands covered with heather on each side. 8. On the whole not half as beautiful as I expected. 9. Inverary is an hour higher up. 10. This house is on the edge of the lake, which has a tide; the moor hills run up behind. 98

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11. Lady Campbell is about fifty, very kind and pleasant. 12. the house is empty, but people are coming. 13. The air is excellent, and after so long a journey I am not a bit tired. 14. Before starting from London John Sargent took us to dine at the Restaurant; Emily is with him for a few days. 15. The weather is quite fine; but I am told it rains usually, and the moors are an awful sop. 16. I have had to provide myself with an s a waterproof skirt. Dinner bell. So goodbye & so much love Yrs V. 40. Matilda Paget September 6, [1891] Crarae, Scotland Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Sept 6. Ca Crarae, Inverary Yesterday received yr dear letter, & the Review. 2. I must say it seems to me idiotic. 3. These English have no more imagination than pint pots. 4. Much rain, but I walk out nevertheless. 5. Beautiful country. 6. I have had to order a waterproof cape. 7. Will you give it me for my birthday ? 8. On the 11th I go to Assynt. 9. Are the Resses smashing ?1 So much love Yrs V. 1 “Are the Resses smashing ?” is not in Irene Cooper Willis.

41. Matilda Paget September 8, [1891] Crarae, Scotland Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Crarae 8 Sept. Dearest Mamma 1. find it will take 2 days to get to Assynt. I shall probably be there a week, meeting Kit at Glasgow on the way South. 2. If the Fords can’t have us I shall try and take lodgings in Surrey, as London disagrees with me and it’s [no] use being there till people come back. 3. I want to be in London for a little while to see a few people, particularly Buddhists with a view to a story1 4. But I want to know how soon you will require me back, as of course everything must bend to that 5. I can say nothing about Olive yet, because she may got to Paris for that place 6. Miss Little writes she will go to you for Xmas certainly. 7. Kit would like to come about that time or shortly after 8. I think I shd take advantage of Miss Little’s presence to go to Rome for a week, which I positively must some time next winter 9. Mme 99

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Blanc, a most charming woman, could perhaps be got in the spring 10. Please ask Miss G. [Goodban] to measure how much chintz is required to cover all the armchairs & sopha in her room. Also how much in the diningroom curtains. 1 Lee’s “story about Buddhists” is “The Legend of Madame Krasinska,” published in Vanitas (1892).

42. Matilda Paget September 10, [1891] Crarae, Scotland Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Crarae. 10 Sept. Dearest Mamma – I leave this sleeping tomorrow at Oban, where Kit & I part 2. I shall be at Assynt a week, 3. perhaps two or three days then with Mrs Taylor1 near Newcastle, & shall meet Kit at Leeds between the 21st & 24th. 4. Address thither, Adel Grange. 5. I am most sorry to leave this lovely place and most kind hostess. 6. Mrs Graham T. [Thomson] has a husband & (I think) children. 7. Handsome certainly but rather Athenaeumy. I will cultivate her. 8. I have been stung by a midge in the foot, and am absolutely lame, & great loss. 9. Tell E. [Eugene] I also think mud in the gallery horrid. 10. Please send measurements of sofa & chairs. So much love Yrs V. 1 Mona Taylor and her husband, Thomas Taylor, of Chipchase Castle, Northumberland, were friends of Lee’s, with whom she became close in the 1890s. A small group of letters to Mona are in the Vernon Lee Archive, mostly about Lee’s break with Thomson (see Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. IV). Both Mona and Thomas Taylor were activists; he “founded the Newcastle and District Women Suffrage Society” (C. Zorn and H. Sieberg [eds.], The Anglo-German Correspondence of Vernon Lee and Irene Forbes-Mosse during World War I: Women Writers’ Friendship Transcending Enemy Lines, foreword P. Mannocchi (Lewiston/Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2014) p. 181, footnote 4). In 1914, they travelled together to Sestri Levante on the Gulf of Genoa, and the picture of Lee on the cover of Vineta Colby’s Vernon Lee: A Literary Biography (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2003) was taken during this trip. At the Taylors’ home, Lee was to meet Irene Cooper-Willis, who would become her secretary and executrix.

43. Matilda Paget September 12, [1891] Caledonian Canal, Scotland Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Steamer on Caledonian Canal Sept. 12 1. We had a lovely journey from Crarae, driving through moors & woods from Inverary to Dalmaly. 2. Slept at Oban, a lovely place. 3. By boat left at 6 a.m.; Kit’s at 12 for Mull. 4. She got up at 4.30 to see me off. 5. The sea & sea lakes near Oban are too

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beautiful, like photographs of Greece. 6. This canal runs between moors and forests. 7. I arrive at Inverness at 6.30 p.m. and then an hour’s train to the Fergusons station. 8. I can give no idea of the kindness of Lady Campbell. 9. I shall probably meet Kit at the Fords’ the 21st. I am very tired, so can only send much love. 44. Matilda Paget September 14, [1891] Assynt, Scotland Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Assynt, Novar1 Sept. 14 Dearest Mama [Mamma] 1. I arrived here Saturday night after xxx. 15 hours journey! 3. [2.] It is most beautiful here, but not real highlands. 4. [3] It is Loch of Inverness. 5. [4.] They are most charming to me. 5. Mme Cantagalli’s sister2 has asked me to come to Edimbro’ 6. Perhaps I shall go from Sat. till Monday, then 2 days to Mrs Taylor at Newcastle. My plans depend on Kit. So much love. Write to Chelsea 1 Novar House is an eighteenth-century manor house and estate near Evanton, Scotland, built by Sir Hector Munro (1726–1805) on his 1765 return from India, where he served as an officer in the British Army. See “History,” Novar Estate, www.novarestate.co.uk/Novar-Estate/History. aspx 2 Lee’s longtime friend Margaret Cantagalli, née Tod (1852–1930), of Scottish descent, had a sister, Anne, and three brothers, Thomas, Robert and George. In 1880, she married the famous Italian potter Ulisse Cantagalli (1878–1901), who had opened his factory in Florence in 1878. It manufactured artistic majolica and imitations of early Italian majolica – similar to pieces from Urbino, Faenza, Gubbio and Deruta and from the Della Robbia workshop – and decorative tableware was among its original products (S. and A. Bagdade, Warman’s English & Continental Pottery & Porcelain: Identification & Price Guide [Iola, WI: Krause Publications, 2004], p. 138). Ulisse Cantagalli’s brother, Romeo Lorenzo Cantagalli (1838–1905), was an Italian plenipotentiary minister in Tangiers (1888–1895) at the time of Lee’s travel to Morocco, from December 1888 to January 1889. See Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II.

45. Matilda Paget September 17, [1891] Assynt, Scotland Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Assynt, Novar. 1. I think I shall go to the Tod’s [Tods’], near Edinburgh, Sunday or Monday for a day & night. 2. I must see a nurse for Mme Spalletti at Edinbro’. 3. Then perhaps for a day or two to Mrs Taylor[’s] in Northumberland. 4. I shall

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certainly be back by the 15th Nov. Unless I can send out Olive at once. 5. Yesterday we went to pony races at Inverness. I saw a grand gathering of kilts. 6. I love this house. 7. Only other guests American Senatoress & daughter. – 8. Knowles of 19th century [has] written very affably. So much love 46. Matilda Paget September 19, [1891] Assynt, Scotland Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Assynt. Sat. 19. Dearest Mamma 1. I cannot go to Mrs Taylor[’s] after all, as it wd involve travelling tomorrow Sunday. 2. I arrive at Edinbro’ Monday evening & go for two days to Mme Cantagalli’s sister; joining Kit at the Ford’s [Fords’] on Thursday. 3. Tell Eugene I shall send him through Evelyn W. [Wimbush] 4. yards of homespun & heatherdyed tweed for a cape and cap; it is very pretty and warm. 4. I shall look up Mrs Graham T. [Thomson] and Mrs Webster as soon as I am in London. 5. Probably Kit & I will go for a day or two to Miss McKenzie[’s].1 She has been very ill. So much love Yrs V. 1 Susan Annie Eliza Muir Mackenzie (1839–1908), painter. One of the nine children of Sir John William Pitt Muir Mackenzie, 2nd Baronet of Delvine, Perthshire (1806–1855), and his wife, Sophia Matilda Johnstone (1814–1900). Her oldest sister was traveler and writer Georgina Mary Muir Mackenzie (1833–1874), later Mary Sebright, Lady Sebright. Their cousin was Lady Victoria Welby (1837–1912). The Vernon Lee Archive holds five letters from Susan Muir Mackenzie to Violet Paget, written between 1887 and 1893. Lee met her in 1887.

47. Matilda Paget September 22, [1891] Corstophine, Scotland Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Corstophine near Edinbro’ 22 Sept. Dearest Mamma. I arrived here last evening after a long & tiring journey 2. Miss Tod met me at the station, charming. 3. This is about 4 miles out, next door to the long let Cramond. 4. Passed over Forth Bridge. 5. Today drove in Edinbro’ 6. Must meet Kit day after tomorrow going to Leeds. 7. Mme Cantagalli is in Florence. So much love V.

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48. Matilda Paget September 25, [1891] Chipchase Castle, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Chip Chase Castle Wark on Tyne. Sept 25. 1. after all I have come here a day, having delayed the Fords till tomorrow & waylaid Kit at Edinbro’ station yesterday. 2. Miss Tod is so nice, intelligent & pleasant. 3. The old man delightful and excellent. 4. We went to see the Forth Bridge. A marvellous & very beautiful monument. 5. This is a beautiful 16th century house built up against a border fortress tower. 6. So delighted about Miss Chittenden. Give her my love. Yrs V. 49. Matilda Paget September 27, [1891] Leeds, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Adel. Leeds. Sept 27 Dearest Mamma. I found yr very kind card here last night. 1. ChipChase was delightful. 2. Staying there was a Mr Charleton, formerly of the diplomatic service, owner of a neighbouring castle. 3. In it is the pair of spurs which used to be served up for breakfast whenever the larder was empty. 4. By the way, Napier1 has been 1st Secretary in Japan, but chucked it up because some disagreeable [disagreement].2 5. I am writing to the Creightons whether they will have me on my way. Anyhow we shall be at Chelsea by Wednesday. So much love

1 W.G. Napier. According to Sir Hugh Cortazzi, “Hugh Fraser,” Embassies of Asia Series, Vol. I: British Envoys in Japan, 1859–1972 (Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2004), in March 1889, “shortly before Hugh Fraser took up his post as Minister to Japan,” “the Hon. W.J.H. Napier, the new Secretary of Legation, assumed the post” (p. 73). As Minister to Japan from 1889 to 1894, Hugh Fraser (1837–1894) headed the British Legation in Tokyo as “Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary” in the final stages of the negotiations, which led up to the signature on 16 July 1894, of the revised treaty between Great Britain and Japan. . . . His period of service in Japan was thus a crucial one concerning the relations between the two countries. Hugh Fraser is much less well known than his wife Mary Crawford Fraser whose book A Diplomatist’s Wife in Japan: Letters from Home to

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 Home! [London: Hutchinson, 1899] was deservedly popular with its sensitive depiction of the Japanese scene. (Hugh Cortazzi, “Hugh Fraser,” Embassies of Asia Series, Vol. I: British Envoys in Japan, 1859–1972 [Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2004], p. 42) [I]t seems likely that his austere personality and uncertain temper may have made his relations with his diplomatic secretaries difficult. The Japan Weekly Mail dated 27 December 1890 suggests “there may have been problems between Hugh Fraser and the Honourable W. G. Napier, his diplomatic first secretary. The Mail reported that M. W.G. de Bunsen, another diplomat without expertise, had been appointed to succeed M. Napier whose departure was described as “somewhat sudden,” his term of office not having expired.” (Cortazzi, “Hugh Fraser,” p. 50)

2 Lee did write disagreeable, not disagreement, as Irene Cooper Willis.

50. Matilda Paget September 29, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 12 CHELSEA GARDENS SW 29 Sept. Wednesday Dearest Mamma – We got here yesterday at two. 2. In the middle of our cleaning, up came Henry James. 3. He is going in deliberately for playwriting, as novels don’t pay1 & he has always felt the “scenic gift.”2 4. He has given us stalls for this evening for his play, T’ is his old story “The American” dramatised.3 5. I am much better in health than I have been for years; pray heaven it may last: 6. Mme Spalletti will be in Florence a month. Shall I ask her to go to see E. [Eugene] ? So much love

1 “Under the lash of necessity,” Henry James felt he must produce “half a dozen – a dozen, five dozen – plays for the sake of my pocket, my material future. Of how little money the novel makes for me I needn’t discourse here” (Henry James, 12 May 1889, in F.O. Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock (eds.), The Notebooks of Henry James [New York: Oxford University Press, 1947], p. 99). 2 Henry James had always dreamt of writing for the stage, perhaps ever since his school days, when French actor Coquelin was his schoolmate at the Collège Communal in Boulogne (see H. James, A Small Boy and Others [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913]). In his “summing up” of 1881 he spoke of working for the stage as “the most cherished of all my projects,” and of “the dramatic form” as “the most beautiful thing possible.” But not until ten years later, after he had produced a fairly successful acting version of The American, did he settle to that project in earnest. He then composed four comedies

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 which failed to reach the stage, and Guy Domville, which was a failure. He found himself hampered and harried by the demands of the current commercial theatre, and even while making every effort to meet them, he often dipped his pen for solace “into the other ink – the sacred fluid of fiction.” (Matthiessen and Murdock [eds.], The Notebooks of Henry James, p. xvii). 3 James’s novel The American, which he initially considered entitling The Californian, was published serially in 1876 in The Atlantic Monthly and in book form a year later (Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1877). At the request of actor-manager Edward Compton, it was produced as a four-act play in 1891, much to James’s excitement. The novel was his first developing “the international theme,” or the confrontation between the New World, embodied by a young, self-made American man, Christopher Newman, and the Old Continent, represented by the Bellegardes, the aristocratic Parisian family of the young widow Newman wishes to marry, Claire de Cintré. In his Notebooks, in the entry dated 34 De Vere Gardens, 12 May 1889, James wrote: I must extract the simplest, strongest, baldest, most rudimentary, at once most humorous and most touching one, in a form whose main souci shall be pure situation and pure point combined with pure brevity. Oh, how it must not be too good and how very bad it must be! A moi, Scribe; à moi, Sardou, à moi, Dennery! . . . The American is the history of a plain man who is at the same time a fine fellow, who becomes engaged to the daughter of a patrician house, being accepted by her people on acct. of his wealth, and is then thrown over (by them) for a better match: after which he turns upon them to recover his betrothed (they have bullied her out of it), through the possession of a family secret which is disgraceful to them, dangerous to them, and which he holds over them as an instrument of compulsion and vengeance. They are frightened – they feel the screw: they dread exposure; but in the novel the daughter is already lost to the hero – she is swept away by the tragedy, takes refuge in a convent, breaks off her other threatened match, renounces the world, disappears. The hero, injured, outraged, resentful, feels the strong temptation to punish the Bellegardes, and for a day almost yields to it. Then he does the characteristically magnanimous thing – the characteristically good-natured thing – throws away his opportunity – lets them “off” – lets them go. In the play he must do this – but get his wife. (Matthiessen and Murdock [eds.], The Notebooks of Henry James [1947], pp. 99–100) With Edward Compton in the role of Christopher Newman, and his wife, Virginia Bateman, in that of Claire de Cintré, it went through a promising tour in the provinces. It came to London in the autumn of 1891 for only a moderate success – a two-months’ run – with Elizabeth Robins as Claire. (Matthiessen and Murdock [eds.], The Notebooks of Henry James [1947], p. 100). See also L. Edel, Henry James: les années dramatiques [Paris: Jouve et Cie, éditeurs, 1931].

51. Matilda Paget October 2, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 12 CHELSEA GARDENS SW Oct 2. Dearest Mamma –

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1. The day before yesterday we went to hear H.J.’s American. 2. A great deal that seems to me unnecessary concession to a vulgar public. 3. But unexpected pathos, passion & interest. 4. Reception by papers unfavourable on the whole. 5. Have written to Mrs Webster & Mrs G.T. [Graham Thomson] 6. Tell E. [Eugene] Flora is bringing him frieze for a coat; my tweed best for cape. 7. Olive most anxious to go to Italy. Could you have her end of the month; poor Olive, position very cruel! 8. She is at Charleton, Colinsburgh Fife. So much love. 1 Please send me at once the proof sheets of the Worldly Woman. They must be in my Bureau2 1 Lee’s “A Worldly Woman” (based on Alice Callander and Henry James’s imaginary romance). 2 In French in the text: Office.

52. From Henry James to Vernon Lee October 2, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College (manuscript autograph letter) And University of McGill (typescript) 34, De Vere Gardens. W. October 2d [1891] Dear Miss Paget. Many thanks for your very interesting note – or rather your generous and glowing letter – of the subject of which we shall have more to say when we next meet. To your emphatic “why’s” I have plenty of “Becauses,” which, however, are too copious to enter here (I am moreover terribly sick and weary just now of the theme) and are resident and inherent in the very essence of the task I accepted, the conditions I had to meet, the nature of the thing called a play (a nature of which – permit me to say – vous ne paraissez guère vous douter)1 and fifty other elements besides. I was not working in the easy void and the illimitable space (you might be talking of a story), but in the very straight jacket of an acceptance of the book and of certain conventions made the best of (sifted down to the least of evils), in order to realise representation at all. Yes, the public is vulgar and vile, yes, a first play is a mere getting one’s foot into the stirrup; yes, one must be in the saddle, in order to go. The American has put me in the saddle and now I shall go – and in a direction of which it gives no foretaste. Exquisitely difficult is it to write a play even as bad as The American – and exquisitely irresponsible is all criticism of it which doesn’t conceive both the general and the particular character of the task, in the milieu I have had to accept to be heard at all: the particular character being the abominable stiff job of at once abiding by a book2 never conceived for the stage and yet recasting it so as to be utterly of the stage. A thousand thanks for your delightful good words. But wait – ah, wait – this is nothing. Wait till I begin to ride! 106

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Ever yours Henry James 1 In French in the text: you seem to be totally unaware of. 2 James, The American (1877).

53. Countess Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi October 2, 1891 London, England Gabinetto Vieusseux Biblioteca IL PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE. 12 Chelsea Gardens London SW Oct 2. My dear Angelica, I answer your kind & welcome letter at once, on account of yr sentence about a governess for yr children. If you are really looking out for one, I have two to propose. The first is a Miss von Besser, a very nice girl (quite young) of very good family, who is with a woman I know, as governess companion to her daughters. She seems intelligent, agreeable, is absolutely a lady and speaks English well. They are most anxious to recommend her & she wants to go to Italy. I mention her because you once said that it was time for Rezia1 to have a person of a superior sort. The second proposal is no other than our friend Olive A. T. The poor child can no longer stay at home, & all her friends, even the most straight laced, urge her to get some sort of place. She hates depending on friends and wants work seriously, although, as she has a tiny little penny of her own, she would be satisfied with comparatively little. I have not mentioned to her that I have suggested her to you, nor shall I; but I want you, independently of yr own plan, to try & help me to get her some sort of work. You know she is the only educated member of that family, writes very nicely & loves study & being quiet. She is tremendously well brought up – rather by nature than people – scrupulous, delicate, refined in the same way as Kit. She has had the responsibility of a bankrupt house & of her sister in law’s babies, so she isn’t a helpless child. If anyone in Italy wanted a female lad, a nice, wholesome, intelligent, rather exquisite creature to be a model for children, Olive is the person. She knows German rather well, perhaps not enough for yr purposes. To me her value is that she wd make children, as she made her little brother, gentle & refined, while giving them the example of a fine horsewoman & a woman of the 107

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world. Will you think of this, dear Angelica, & do yr best? Olive is coming to the Palmerino, any how, I think at the end of this month. She would like Italy of all things. You said once you wd have her to stay with you for a few days. If a friend of my brother’s, who is coming for Xmas holidays, were still there when Kit arrives after New Year, could Olive go to you for a day or two? About the horse. If he is going [to be] very cheap, I should certainly wish to buy him. Only I shan’t be back till about the 20th November, and I cannot keep him for a month ‸& a half‸, as it costs me 100 frs a month. If Signor Geppe thinks that the actual price asked & the 150 frs for the 6 weeks would be the equivalent of the normal price of such a beast, I should beg him to buy him at once. But I would rather if the people could keep him (even if I had to pay something in consideration) because he wouldn’t get any exercise in my absence. Will you put this to Sig Geppe with my best thanks & greetings? Answer me at once about Olive & Miss von Besser. Goodbye dear Angelica. Kit’s love – & believe in the affection of Yrs Vernon 1 Angelica Rasponi’s daughter, Lucrezia Rasponi (1879–1971).

54. Matilda Paget October 4, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 12 CHELSEA GARDENS SW Oct 3 4. Dearest Mamma 1. Henry J., writes very cockily in answer to my criticisms – “Wait till I ride” –1 He considers this as merely a foot in the stirrup.2 3. Yesterday we went to see the Daly company, Americans, considered the best comedians in English. 4. So vulgar and lachrymose, 5. I would not ride such a public as this!3 6. It is very fine & warm, looking more like summer than anything we’ve had yet. So much love. V. Don’t bother about those proofs. I have got a duplicate. 1 There is not an entry for this exact usage in the Oxford English Dictionary. The closest is ride, v., def. 10a: “To rest or turn on or upon something of the nature of a pivot, axle, or protuberance. Also Jig.” James and Lee may mean to ride the public taste, in the sense of satisfying the needs of the public and what they want to see. 2 “By the time of the production James had also completed four other plays, Tenants, Disengaged, The Album and The Reprobate, though none of these reached the stage. But he was still full of hopes, and wrote to William James: ‘I feel at last as if I had found my real form, which I am capable of carrying far.’ But as Granville-Barker has remarked, it was too bad that James knew as his model

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 the French theatre at one of its worst periods” (Matthiessen and Murdock [eds.], The Notebooks of Henry James [1947], p. 100). 3 Like Lee, James was aware of such difficulties. Overcome by the vulgarity, the brutality, the baseness of the condition of the Englishspeaking theatre today. . . . my plan is to try with a settled resolution – that is, with a full determination to return repeatedly to the charge, overriding, annihilating, despising the boundless discouragements, disgusts, écoeurements. One should use such things – grind them to powder. (Matthiessen and Murdock [eds.], The Notebooks of Henry James [1947], p. 99) On 22 October 1891, he wrote from 34 De Vere Gardens, “I am emerging a little from all the déboires and distresses consequent on the production of The American by Edward Compton” (Matthiessen and Murdock [eds.], The Notebooks of Henry James [1947], p. 111).

55. Matilda Paget October 5, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 12 Chelsea Gardens SW.2 5 Oct. Dearest Mamma. So glad E. [Eugene] is writing sonnets. 2. You will be sorry to hear that poor little Margaret C1 [Cobden] is dead. It happened last week. 3. Her friends learned it from the Times 4. No information as to how or why. Poor little thing. 5. Yesterday Mrs Clifford’s. 6. Literary house strikes me as more odious, than ever, 7. I am in search of Buddhists & spiritualists for a story. So much love. V. Please send immediately the measure of coachman’s gloves. 1 Because this is a postcard and the Cobdens were prominent public figures, Lee wrote dots to disguise the name. It was Lucy Elizabeth Margaret “Maggie” Cobden (1861–1891), daughter of the British radical Anti-Corn Law League politician Richard Cobden (1804–1865), and Catherine Anne “Kate” Williams and named after Mrs Lucy Moffatt, who was her godmother. Her sisters – Katie Cobden (1845–1916), who married barrister Richard Chester Fisher (1840–1928) in 1866; Julia Sarah Anne “Annie” Cobden (1853–1926), later Mrs Cobden-Sanderson; Emma Jane Catherine “Catherine” Cobden (1859–1947), later Mrs Unwin; and Ellen Millicent “Melicent” or “Nellie” Cobden (1848–1914), who married Walter Sickert (1860–1942) in 1885 – were friends of Lee’s, suffragettes and socialist activists. See Lee to Matilda Paget, July 9, 1891. Maggie’s “membership card for the Ladies Irish National Land League (1881) suggests she shared her sisters’enthusiasm for progressive liberal causes” (Anthony Howe and Simon Morgan [eds.] and Gordon Nannerman [assist. ed.], The Letters of Richard Cobden, by Richard Cobden, edited with notes and an introduction [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015], p. 224, footnote 1). She may be the “Miss Cobden” whose portrait was painted by Henry Scott Tuke (Cicely Robinson [ed.], Henry Scott Tuke [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021], p. 137). Her correspondence is accessible at ADD MSS/6042, National Archives, West Sussex Record Office; see http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ details/r/d6113689-cbf4-4ce0-950a-ea33902496c0. Her death certificate is at the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin, Richard Cobden Collection, MS-0833. About Nelly, see Ann Hurley, “Social Justice and Art Devotee: Ellen Melicent Cobden (1848–1914),” Hurley Skidmore History, www. hurleyskidmorehistory.com.au/_files/ugd/a0424a_3748b14be05a4626be162ea4480d6e9b.pdf?index=true

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56. Percy William Bunting October 7, [1891] London, England University of Chicago Library, Special Collections IL PALMERINO. MAIANO FLORENCE 12 Chelsea Gardens SW 7 Oct. My dear Mr Bunting, On going to the Bank on my return from Scotland, I found that you had paid me £23 for the second part of Pictor. Very best thanks. Would you tell me some day next week when I might come & see Mrs Bunting – provided always it was not in the evening, as my health keeps me at home then. And may I bring with me my hostess, Miss Anstruther-Thomson, a young painter extremely interested in the social etc. questions on which she has had the pleasure of hearing you speak? May I remind you of my wish to know Miss Wedgwood?1 With best compliments to Mrs Bunting I am yrs sincerely V Paget 1 English feminist writer, philosopher, historian and literary critic Frances Julia Wedgewood (1833– 1913).

57. Matilda Paget October 8, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE Oct 8. 12 Chelsea Gardens SW Dearest Mamma, I am so sorry to hear E. [Eugene] is feeling bad, but glad he can at least write xx so successfully. 2. Excuse if I write nonsense, I have been seized with the most awful fit of tiredness in my head, & don’t know what I am writing. 3. Should I get no better, 110

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I think I may have to come home earlier. I enclose two poems which Miss Ferguson wrote when she was very young. 3. They may interest Eugene. 4. Mrs Graham Thomson is in the country for two months 5. she has written me a kind letter saying how pleased she is with E’s [Eugene’s] photo. 6. Mrs Webster also is away. It appears poor Margaret Cobden had lost her mind utterly, recognising no one, & died proximately of bronchitis. 7. There will probably be a lawsuit over the 2 wills, the one of before her madness, & the one after. The Cobdens invalidate the first as under the influence of Miss T.; Miss T. invalidates the second as insane of mind. Would you kindly have my window curtains washed at once ? I am going to see some Theosophists this evening, but am too tired to enjoy it. So much love. Excuse this scrawl, dearest Mama. Yr V. 58. Matilda Paget October 9, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Oct 9. Dearest Mamma I am very much better; a hot theatre had done for me.1 2. Tell E. [Eugene] to have returned biography to Stuttgart 3. Mrs Childers has the stuff for him, she will be at 4 S. Felice xx Eona by now. 4. The Half the edition of Hauntings was burnt accidentally [;] a new cheap one will come out. Please send number of coachman’s glove. So much love Can’t bring glass; it is better to get the shade from Maison Cluny 1 Perhaps on going to see Henry James’s play The American.

59. Matilda Paget October 11, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 12 CHELSEA GARDENS SW Sunday Dearest Mamma – I am much better. 2. Tell E. [Eugene] the accounts of Mrs G.T. [Graham Thomson] personally are not very pleasing. 3. A delightful girl, Mrs Ward’s sister1 (much 111

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more intelligent) would I think like to come to Palmerino. 4. Tell me whether I may ask her. 4. [5.] And on better acquaintance I like Miss Sellers very much. 5. [6.] Mme Blanc can’t come this year. 6. [7.] I have been among Buddhists!2 7. Paters loved the flowers. Very much love V.

1 British scholar Julia Huxley, née Arnold (1862–1908). She studied at Somerville College, Oxford, and was awarded a prize in literature in 1882. In 1885, she married Leonard Huxley (1860–1933), and they had four children, Julian Sorrell Huxley (1887–1975), Noel Trevenen (or Trevelyan) Huxley (1889–1914), the novelist Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894–1963), and Margaret Arnold Huxley (1899–1981). Julia founded Prior’s Field School in Godalming, Surrey, in 1902. 2 This encounter will inspire Lee’s “Legend of Madame Krasinska.”

60. Matilda Paget October 14, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 14 Oct. Dearest Mamma. This is my birthday & I cannot let it pass without writing to you. 2. I am better, & it is luckily not cold, tho’ rainy. 3. Yesterday we had dinner at Toynbee Hall & I spoke to the Travellers Club 4. I have had a charming note from Lady Archie & am going down to Coombe for the day. 5. Nineteenth Century has returned my article, but begging for another; I have none So much love Yr V. Melle B. de Bury [Blaze de Bury]1 coming tomorrow

1 Yetta Blaze de Bury (1845–1902), literary critic who, in 1885, had published two studies of Shakespeare: Le roi Lear; analyse & commentaire du drame de Shakespeare, as “Jane Brown” (Paris: Librairie C. Delagrave, 1884) and Répertoire de Shakespeare, lectures et commentaires (Paris: É. Perrin, 1885). Her lectures on French novelists were published by Archibald Constable & Co. See Yetta Blaze de Bury, “French Literature of Today,” The Spectator (4 November 1899), pp. 11–12. Her younger sister Fernande (1854–1931) was also a writer (as “F. Dickberry”). They were the daughters of Baron Ange Henri Blaze de Bury (1813–1888), French diplomat, poet, writer, playwright, literary critic, musicologist, translator (of Goethe’s Faust and Mozart’s Don Giovanni), and composer. He used various pseudonyms – F. de Lagenevais, Henri Blaze, Hans Werner, H.W. – and was an important collaborator on the Revue de Paris and the Revue des Deux Mondes. In 1844, he married the British writer and political activist Marie Pauline Rose Stuart (1813–1894), Baroness Blaze de Bury, who was rumored to be Lord Brougham’s illegitimate daughter (J. Sutherland, Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction [Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990], p. 71). She wrote short stories and novels under her own name or as “Arthur Dudley,” “Hamilton Murray,” or “A.A.A.” A contributor to the Revue des Deux Mondes and

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 the Revue de Paris, she also wrote for British periodicals such as Blackwood’s Magazine, the Edinburgh Review, the North British Review and the Quarterly Review.

61. Matilda Paget October 15, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 12 CHELSEA GARDENS SW. 15 Oct. Dearest Mamma – Returning from dining with Mrs Barstow I found yr very kind card & E’s letter. How awfully good of you to give me so much! 2. It is a great relief, especially as Rasponi has a pony in view now. Thank you a thousand times. 3. Tell E. [Eugene] seeds must be smuggled, so I will give them to Olive. 4. Also the knives, 6 small steelblades 5. Silver blades are very expensive. So ours had best be used up! 6. No carpets for any of the 3 rooms. There are rugs for Kit’s & mine, best put down at the last moment. 7. I have got a large rug for Miss Goodban’s room. So much love V. 62. Percy William Bunting October 15, [1891] London, England University of Chicago Library, Special Collections IL PALMERINO. MAIANO FLORENCE 12 Chelsea Gardens SW My dear Mr Bunting, I see that I mistook your address, or I fear you perhaps never got my letter of last week, asking when I might call on Mrs Bunting. I shall be out for the day in the country several times next week; but perhaps the week after that I might come? I send you a dialogue of mine, short, which I hope you will like. I sent it you so soon after my Pictor not from a desire to cram the Contemporary in an outrageous way, but because it is simpler sending it at once than from Italy. I thought I might have had the pleasure of meeting you at Toynbee Hall the other evening. The Worldly Woman is going to appear in a volume which you will have. Yr sincerely V Paget

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P.S. I have just received yr letter, and am so sorry you have been ill. Tomorrow, unluckily, I am engaged. I am still able to do so little & see so few people that my days, although empty, are virtually disposed of. 63. Matilda Paget October 17, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 12 CHELSEA GARDENS SW. Oct. 18. Dearest Mamma – I have got the knives and will send them by Olive. 2. Melle B. de B. [Blaze de Bury] called; very much Melegari type,1 sentimental, elderly, se but slatternly!!! 3. Only novel pays in France, she says. 4. Yesterday dined Dunhams, young American sisters2 with Venetian fiddler in tow. 5. Received Eugene’s cape stuff ? So much love V.

1 Dorette Marie “Dora” Melegari (1849–1924), historian and prolific novelist, born in Switzerland, wrote in French and Italian. Her father, Italian politician Luigi Amedeo Melegari (1805– 1881), was close to Mazzini, and she published Mazzini’s letters (Lettres intimes de Joseph Mazzini, avec une introduction et une préface [Paris: Perrin et Cie, 1895]) and later published an edition of their correspondence (La Giovine Italia e la Giovine Europa, dal carteggio inedito di Giuseppe Mazzini & Luigi Amedeo Melegari [Milan: 1906]). About her first novels, ghost-written by Octave Mirbeau, see P. Michel, Quand Mirbeau faisait le ‘nègre’; cinq romans d’Octave Mirbeau publiés sous les pseudonymes d’Alain Bauquenne et de Forsan; Textes présentés et annotés par Pierre Michel (Angers: Société Octave Mirbeau, Editions du Boucher, 2004), p. 818. But she published many other novels, and, from 1887, contributed to A. De Gubernatis’s Revue internationale, under the pseudonym “Thomas Emery” (Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 73 [Rome: Societa Grafica Romana, Istituto della Enciclopedia, 1960+ (2009)]). In 1895, she edited Journal intime de Benjamin Constant et lettres à sa famille et à ses amis, précédés d’une introduction par D. Melegari (Paris: Paul Ollendorff, éditeur, 1895). 2 Helen Bliss Dunham (1868–1937), later Mrs Spicer, and Harriet “Etta” Lathrop Dunham (1864– 1939), later Mrs Etta de Viti de Marco, daughters of James H. Dunham (?–1901) of New York were friends of John Singer Sargent’s sisters’ and lifelong friends of Vernon Lee’s. According to Jane Sweeney, their father commissioned Sargent for their portraits, “at a time when Sargent was concentrating almost exclusively on his mural projects.” See Jane Sweeney, Richard A. Manoogian, Detroit Institute of Arts, and Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City), American Paintings from the Manoogian Collection (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1989). Helen Dunham’s portrait was done in 1892, Etta’s portrait, around 1895. Helen Dunham married William Thomas Holmes Spicer (1860–1935), British ophthalmic surgeon and widower. There were no children by either marriage (“Spicer, William Thomas Holmes [1860–1935],” Plarr’s Lives of the Fellows, Royal College of Surgeons of England, https://livesonline.rcseng.

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64. Matilda Paget October 22, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 12 CHELSEA GARDENS SW. Dearest Mama – We went today to see some schools in the East End. 2. Miss Black’s sister, Mrs Mahomed,1 conducting us. I am tired!! 3. Mrs Childers has Eugène’s tweed. 4. Contemporary has taken article refused by 19th Century. 5. Have got stuff for covering Miss G’s [Goodban’s] rooms sopha & chairs. 6. Mrs Robinson was ill, but not dangerously. They aren’t back yet. So much love 1 “Emmie Black (1860–1931) became a painter and married a Church of England clergyman, Kerriman Deen Mahomed, whose father had opened Turkish baths at Brighton” (L. Glage, Clementina Black: A Study in Social History and Literature [Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1981]).

65. Countess Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi October 22, 1891 London, England Gabinetto Vieusseux Biblioteca IL PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE. 12 CHELSEA GARDENS SW. 22 Oct. Dearest Angelica, I scratch back a line at once in answer. A thousand thanks for Olive – you will see her at the Palmerino in about 10 days. As to Frl [Fraulein]1 von Besser – She is from Dresden, very good family, hears good pronunciation. No music. English quite good enough. Salary I fancy moderate. Is penniless, hence journey would have to be paid (about 200 frs). Age I shd think 25 or 26. You had better write to her friend Mrs Orr Ewing2

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℅ Lady Campbell Garscube Glasgow. Think of my horse! In hurry but with best love Yrs V. 1 In German in the text: Miss. 2 Elizabeth Lindsay Orr-Ewing, née Reid (1831–1915), wife of Sir Archibald Orr-Ewing (1818– 1893), first Baronet of Ballikinrain in Scotland.

66. Matilda Paget October 23, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 12 CHELSEA GARDENS SW Oct 23 Dearest Mamma – 1. No post card remaining. 2. Am off for night to Miss Mackenzie. 3. Kit very bad cold. 4. Much troubled about her for later. 5. Awfully draughty rooms & bad for her chest. 5. As yet warm, but when cold! 6. I am well, quite. 7. I am worried about Kit. So much love V. And again thanks for yr generous present 67. Matilda Paget October 25, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 25 Oct. Dearest Mama I stayed at Miss Mc [Mackenzie’s] till too late for Sat’s [Saturday’s] post. 2. Kit is better. 3. Yesterday called on Stephens, Mrs Clifford and Robinsons, latter didn’t see. 4. Should like you to invite allow me to invite Miss Sellers for May. 5. Like her so much. 6 Had She’s had such a hard fight for life. 7. Miss McK [Mackenzie] built a new house near Effingham. 8. Olive looking out for escort, 116

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probably go without one this day week. 9. Mrs Childers will take E’s [Eugene] tweed to the Forms if asked. So much love 68. Matilda Paget October 28, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 28 Oct. Dearest Mamma, Yesterday lunched at Coombe with Lady A. [Archibald Campbell] and curious, eccentric young daughter.1 2. Today National [Gallery] with Melle B. de B. [Blaze de Bury]. 3. Poor, kindly, battered, incredibly out at finge glove ends creature. 4. Robinsons have asked Kit & me to dinner. Perhaps we may go for a few days to Norfolk to a cousin of Kit. So very sorry about poor Moffats! Much love V. 1 Janey Sevilla Campbell, Lady Archibald Campbell “Lady Archie” (1846–1923). About Lee’s infatuation with the “very clever, delightful, fantastic wayward” Lady Archie and modeling the character of Alice Oke in Oke of Okehurst after her, see Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II.

69. Matilda Paget October 31, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Saturday. Dearest Mamma Olive is here, & intends leaving Monday, arriving Florence Wed. [November 4] about 6.30 p.m. 2. Mrs Sargent is in Florence Hotel de l’Europe. 3. Vi & husband at Majorca. 4. I am off to a lecture of Miss Sellers at British M. [Museum]. 5. This afternoon tea at Paters. 6. Lunch Sir Charles Newton. 7. Very cold, regret fur coat! Must buy a wrap. 8. Garden will require riversand mixed in all the beds. So much love 70. Matilda Paget November 2, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 12 Chelsea Gardens SW 2 Nov. Dearest Mamma How very kind of you to think of my clothes. I shall try to do without, but may have to get a cloak to travel in. 2. But I have lots of money with me, so never 117

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send a cheque. 3. We saw Olive off this morning. She will arrive Wednesday ‸evening‸. 4. I feel much tempted to follow at once; but being here (& perhaps next year I shan’t afford it) I had better stay to see a few people, as Olive will entertain E. [Eugene] 5. Called on the Garnets today. 6 Probably Norfolk Monday. So much love 71. Matilda Paget November 5, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 5 Nov. Dearest Mamma Hope Olive arrived safe. 2. Mrs Taylor of Chip Chase turned up; 3. Took us to concert & tonight to “As you like it.” 4. Been good deal at Museum; Miss Sellers’ lectures.1 5. Much interested again [in] Greek sculpture. 6. Perhaps shall write about it. 7. Impossible [to] bring lampshades, too breakable, no room! So much love V, 1

See Lee to Matilda Paget, 13 August 1885, footnote 1.

72. Matilda Paget November 7, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Nov 7. Sat. Dearest Mamma Have been rather unwell these two days; suppose overdone. 2. Went to theatre with Mrs Taylor 3. No [Not] As you like it, but American again! Didn’t like it this time. 4. The Clerkes,1 quite unchanged, including mother. 5. The first edition of A. [Amy] Levy’s first book sells so high, not Plane Tree.2 6. Wish E. [Eugene] would write to Pauline, & ought So much love 1 The family of Agnes (1842–1907) and Ellen (1840–1906) Clerke, both friends and colleagues of Lee’s. Agnes was a science writer, mostly on astronomy, who achieved great success as a scholar in the field and authored standard works on the subject (e.g. A Popular History of Astronomy during the Nineteenth Century [Edinburgh: A. & C. Black, 1885]). Her articles at this time appeared mostly in the Edinburgh Review. Ellen also wrote scientific articles, as well as reviews, translations of Italian works, and some fiction. The Clerke family lived in Florence throughout the 1870s, but settled in London after 1880.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 2 Amy Judith Levy (1861–1889), poet and novelist. She was the second Jewish woman to attend Cambridge and the first at Newnham College, which she entered in 1879. In 1881, she published her first volume of poetry, Xantippe and Other Verse (Cambridge: E. Johnson, 1881). She was friends with others in Lee’s circle, such as Mary Robinson, Clementina Black, Dorothy Blomfield and Eleanor Marx, and she frequented the British Museum’s reading room. She suffered from depression throughout her life, and in an attempt to recover from a recent episode, she passed the winter of 1886 in Florence and spent a great deal of time with Lee. The love poems she later sent to Lee (“To Vernon Lee” and “New Love, New Life”) reveal how important this visit was to her, though Lee did not return her romantic feelings. In letters to Lee, Levy expressed her admiration for her: “You are something of an electric battery to me . . . & I am getting faint from lack of contact!” (letter dated February 1887, Vernon Lee Archive). Over the course of her short career, she published three volumes of poetry, three novels and a number of articles and short stories. Her depression took strong hold of her in 1889, and she committed suicide by asphyxiation on 10 September 1889, at her home in London (Linda Hunt Beckman, Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters [Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000]). See Lee to Matilda Paget, 8 September and 18 September 1889, Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II. Levy’s three novels were The Romance of a Shop (Boston: Cupples and Hurd, 1889), to which Lee probably refers here, Reuben Sachs: A Sketch (London: Macmillan and Co., 1888), and Miss Meredith (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1889). Levy wanted her novel Reuben Sachs to be cremated with her. “It was perceived as an attack on the Jewish community largely because of the materialism and ruthless ambition of some of its characters and the social world they inhabit” (Linda Hunt Beckman, “Leaving ‘The Tribal Duckpond’: Amy Levy, Jewish Self-Hatred, and Jewish Identity,” Victorian Literature and Culture, volume 27, no. 1 [1999], pp. 185–201, www.jstor. org/stable/25058445). Oscar Wilde praised Levy’s talent in his obituary for her in A Woman’s World (3 November 1889). A London Plane-Tree and Other Verse (London: T. Fisher & Unwin, 1889), dedicated to Clementina Black, was her last book.

73. Matilda Paget November 9, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Nov. 9. Dearest Mamma Just got card. So glad Olive safe. 2. I have been thinking about lecturing 3. It might be a mode of influence & moneymaking 4. Not this year, of course! 5. To ascertain whether I can, I shall lecture the Toynbees in their Room.1 6. This will perhaps keep me a few days longer here – had intended leaving 21st. 7. Dull dinner Raffalovich:2 actresses. Marie Corelli,3 philanthropists. Oh so dull! 8. We are off to see Ld Mayor’s Show from Coutts, So much love. 1 Toynbee Hall, in the East End’s University Settlement, was named for Arnold Toynbee (1852– 1883), social reformer and political economist. It was founded in 1885 and offered lectures, adult education classes, and a free library for the public. See Lee to Matilda Paget, August 26, 1893. Lee’s notes for her lectures, dated 1890, are at the Vernon Lee Archive. “I put before yr president a scheme of lectures showing the importance of Rome in the history of civilization.” This “scheme” is eleven pages long and includes Vernon Lee’s views on tourism, as opposed to popular education, which she endorsed.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 2 Marc-André Raffalovich (1864–1934), writer of Russian, French and Jewish origins who lived most of his life in England. He wrote five collections of poetry (e.g. Cyril and Lionel and Other Poems: A Volume of Sentimental Studies [London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1884]) and two novels and befriended Walter Pater, Algernon Swinburne and Oscar Wilde. His dramatic works contained some allusions to male homosexuality, and he later wrote articles on sexual inversion for academic and scientific publications, though most of these could only be published in France. He is best known today for his patronage of the arts and lifelong relationship with the poet John Gray. For Lee’s dislike of him, see Lee to Matilda Paget, 6 June [1886]. 3 Best-selling British writer Mary McKay (1855–1924), who wrote melodramatic, esoteric novels under the nom de plume Marie Corelli. Her first novel was A Romance of Two Worlds (London: Richard Bentley, 1886).

74. Matilda Paget November 11, [1891] Thetford, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Shadwell Court, Thetford Nov 11. Olive will tell you all about it. 2. Country most lovely but frightful gales. 3. Shall stay a day few hours at Cambridge on the way back Friday. 4. Miss Gladstone1 unluckily away, & Fred Myers2 likewise. 5. Thinking more & more about lecturing. 6. Love to Olive. So very much love. Yrs V. 1 Helen Gladstone (1849–1925) was the youngest daughter of the Liberal Prime Minister, William E. Gladstone and his wife Catherine, née Glynne. She came to Newnham as a student in 1877 and stayed on as Principal’s Secretary. Subsequently she became Vice-Principal in charge of the Hall that is now known as Sidgwick Hall. . . . In the course of the 1890s, Helen, taking turns with her siblings had to spend time as the “daughter at home,” at the beck and call of her now ageing and increasingly frail parents; and at the beginning of 1896, with great regret, decided she had to move home for what remained of their lives. (https://newn.cam.ac.uk/about/history/biographies/) 2 Frederick William Henry Myers (1843–1901), one of the founding fathers of the London Society for Psychical Research in 1882, with Edmund Gurney and Henry Sidgwick, a lecturer in moral science at Cambridge University. Other members included Arthur Balfour, William Fletcher Barrett, Tennyson, Lewis Carroll and John Ruskin. His 1891 theory of hysteria as “a disease of the hypnotic stratum” was corroborated by Binet and Janet in France (W. James, “Frederic Myers’s Service to Psychology,” Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research [London], Vol. 17, part 42 [May 1901]; rpt. in W. James et al., William James on Psychical Research [New York: Viking Press, 1960], pp. 213–225, 220).

75. Matilda Paget November 14, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 120

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Chelsea – Sat. Dearest Mamma – Returned here last night after 3 very pleasant days out. 2. Stayed a few hours at Cambridge on way back. 3. Miss Gladstone was away, also Myers unluckily. 4. Just back from old Newtons. 5. Shall lecture Toynbees next Friday. 6. Thank Olive very much. 7. Will send Gioconda photo Monday. So much love V. 76. Matilda Paget November 16, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Monday. Dearest Mamma. 1. Miss Sellers tells me that the University Extension asked about my lecturing now at once. 2. The mechanism of lecturing is: 3. You get abou from £10 to 20 each time & repeat your barrel organ lecture as often as wanted in the provinces at the same price. 4. You then publish it & get paid again. 5. I have a splendid subject: the Greek art as a standard of all art. 6. We shall see whether I break down Friday! 7. That is not the Gioconda. No getting photo here, as it’s the Louvre. Brogi probably has it, or could get it. It’s called sometimes Monna Lisa.1 1 Probably the most famous painting in the world. Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Florentine gentilhomme Francesco del Giocondo (1460–1539), also called “La Gioconda,” “La Joconde” or “Monna Lisa” (ca. 1503/1519, oil on wood, 79.4 cm × 53.4 cm) by Leonardo di Ser Piero da Vinci, or Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519). See G. Vasari, The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (London: Henry George Bohn, 1850–1851) and W.H. Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance (London: Macmillan and Co., 1873). The painting was acquired by French king François I in 1516 from Da Vinci’s friend Salai. It was transferred to the Grand Gallery of the Louvre in 1804.

77. Matilda Paget November 18, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 12 CHELSEA GARDENS SW. 19 No 18 Nov. Dearest Mamma. I give my Toynbee lecture 20th 2. And will return as soon as I can get my things together. 3. Unless there seems immediate chance of repeating lecture. 4. T’is a pity, for people are only back now, & I seem physically able to do a little again. 5. But 121

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if you want me, of course I shall come at once. 6. Eugene had better take Titian’s Lady in Sacred Love, or with the Mirrors (a roll of photos in libreria1 small drawer) 1 In Italian in the text: bookcase.

78. Matilda Paget November 21, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Sat 21. Dearest Mamma – A thousand thanks for the telegram – I am awaiting anxiously a letter. 2. Lecture at Toynbee went off well, except miscalculated length. 3. had to cut down end. 4. Not nervous or tired. 5. about 100 people. 6. Certainly a thing to do. 7. But when? 8. Lecturing season is winter. 9. All preliminaries necessarily very slow. Much love. V 79. Matilda Paget November 22, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 12 CHELSEA GARDENS SW 22 Nov. Dearest Mamma – I am a little consoled, but very anxious about yr bother with the coachman. 2. So I shall come as soon as I can lay hold of the nurse I have promised to bring to Mme Spalletti, Olive will tell you about her, I forgot to tell you. 3. Yesterday I asked Colvin about lecturing – 4. Lecturing season is from 20 Oct [October] to Easter, excepting Royal Institution dragging out to June. 5. Arrangements always made long before. 6. Shall try, before going, to lecture Toynbees again for practice. So much love V 80. Matilda Paget November 29, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Sunday. Dearest Mamma. I leave, if possible, next Wednesday; I spend night and day at Paris 50 Avenue d’Jena [Iena] with Flora, and arrive at Nervi Casa Gropallo Friday night. 3. If 122

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possible I should wish to rest there two or three days 4. I shall be tired out & unable to do anything immediately after long journey. 5. Also to liberate myself from going in winter. 6. No question returning here, far too tiring & expensive 7. Perhaps in June. 8. Shall try lecturing Rome at Easter. 8. [9] Went off well yesterday, no fatigue. Am bringing gloves, impossible to send. So much love 81. Matilda Paget December 1, [1891] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Tuesday Dearest Mamma I leave tomorrow. Have ordered Spectator to be sent to E. [Eugene]. None to be had at once. Will send coachman’s gloves from Nervi. Miss Sellers can’t come. So much love 82. Matilda Paget December 3, [1891] Paris, France Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Paris – 3d Thursday Dearest Mamma – I arrived here last night pension Flora is staying at – Good passage – Mme Spalletti little nurse doing maid for me. – Leave tonight p.m. Arriving Nervi tomorrow 7 p.m. Lunched Mme Blanc, had tea with Mary. Much love 83. Matilda Paget December 5, [1891] Nervi, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Nervi Sat. Dearest Mamma – A thousand thanks for card. Am rather broken by journey. May I stay till Monday or Tuesday ? If wanted will come at once. 123

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As I ought to see at once about possibly wanted new coachman & cook, I shall require my cart. I am writing to Olive to beg her to hire me a beast for a fortnight from Nannucci. I can’t do trams & walks – I am lame. So much love. V. 84. Matilda Paget December 7, [1891] Nervi, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Nervi Monday Dearest Mamma – Thanks so much for yr postcard. I shall arrive Wednesday evening by 6.30 (?)1 Genoa train – I have delayed till then, because I’m rather seedy; & had rather be here where I can rest than at home where I could not resist the temptation of running about. Am so glad Olive is riding. Has Geppe R. [Rasponi] no horse for me ? I hope Olive will go to Nannucci. So much love 1 Lee’s original question mark.

85. Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) December 29, 1891 Florence, Italy Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Paris [The original of this letter is in French] IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE Ce 29 décembre 91 Chère Madame Blanc Ne pourriez-vous passer chez nous la qu seconde quinzaine de mars – ou jusqu’au 8 avril? Je serai obligée de passer du 7 avril au 1er Mai à Rome, peut-être même davantage. S’il vous était absolument impossible de venir en Mars, pourriez-vous venir la première quinzaine de Mai ? Dans ce cas, je j’irai à Rome huit jours plus tôt pour en revenir de même, et je remettrai Miss Arnold à la seconde quinzaine de Mai. Seulement, il faudrait que vous pussiez me donner quelque certitude. Nous tenons tellement à vous avoir dans notre maison, chère amie, que nous méritons que vous fassiez un effort pour venir! Je vois bien que ce mois d’Avril passé à Rome va me coûter beaucoup d’ennuis; d’autre part, j’ai entrepris d’y faire une conférence; et, du moment que je m’y rends, il faut bien que je revoie le plus possible quelques-uns de mes meilleurs amis qui s’y trouvent. 124

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Voyez-vous quelquefois la nouvelle Mme Gaston Paris? Je voudrais obtenir d’elle la permission de d’unir son admirable traduction d’Amour Dure à celle que j’ai fait moi-même de Voix maudite, et celle de deux autres nouvelles faites par M. Bernard Derosne. Ce monsieur a fait lui-même la traduction d’Amour dure; mais puisqu’il en existe déjà une si belle, j’aimerais bien mieux m’en servir; d’autant plus que ses talents de traduction ne m’inspirent que peu de confiance. Le bonhomme, qui a pour lui la modestie, se déclare prêt à substituer la traduction de Mme Savary à la sienne. Seulement, il faudrait savoir bientôt à quoi s’en tenir là-dessus. C’est M. Masson qui fera l’avant-propos. J’ignore pour le moment le nom de l’éditeur. Ce M. Bernard Derosne voudrait réunir entre ses mains le droit de traduire, si bon lui semble, de toute mon œuvre – pardonnez [a page may be missing here or has been misplaced] chaque volume. Je ne me rappelles [rappelle] plus si, dans le temps, je n’ai pas autorisé Mme Savary à faire quelques traductions qu’il faudrait par conséquent excepter de l’arrangement avec M. B=D [Bernard-Derosne]. Je ne sais [pas] non plus si M. Paris ne voudrait pas se servir des traductions faites par sa première femme (en supposant qu’elles existent toujours) et que celle-ci [a page may be missing here] d’essais avec des morceaux tirés d’un ouvrage historique. Voilà bien des ennuis que je vous donne; mais ne vous en occupez, chère amie, qu’au point nécessaire pour m’absoudre, s’il le fallait, aux yeux de Mme Savary et de Mr Paris, dont je désire respecter les droits pourvu qu’il me les rappellent [rappelle] à ‸temps‸. C’est, du reste, un brave homme, bon, serviable. Et qui n’a de mauvais que sa personnalité exquise. Adieu chère amie. Puissiez-vous avoir moins de chagrin l’année prochaine que celle-ci! Dites, je vous prie, bien des choses de ma part à Melle B. [Blaze] de Bury; et rappelez-moi à M. votre fils. Ecrivez-moi quand vous en aurez le temps, n’est-ce-pas ? J’ai un doigt couvert de taffetas gomme, ce qui rend encore plus mauvaise ma mauvaise écriture. Votre dévouée V. Paget 86. [Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) December 29, 1891 Florence, Italy Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Paris [The original of this letter is in French] IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE Today December 29, 91 125

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Dear Madame Blanc Couldn’t you come and see us during the second fortnight of March – or until April 8th?1 I shall have to stay in Rome from April 7th to May 1st, perhaps even longer. Should it be absolutely impossible for you to come in March, could you come the second fortnight of May ? In that case, I would go to Rome eight days earlier and come back ditto, and I would postpone Miss Arnold till the second fortnight of May. We are so eager to have you in our home, dear friend, that we deserve your efforts to come to us! I see clearly that staying that month of April in Rome will cost me a lot of trouble; on the other hand, I have undertaken to give a lecture there;2 and, as long as I go there, I must see as many of some of my best friends there. Do you sometimes come across the new Mme Gaston Paris ?3 I would like to request her permission to unite her admirable translation of Amour Dure with my own translation of Voix maudite, and that of two other short stories done by M. Bernard Derosne.4 This gentleman has done his own translation of Amour Dure; but since there is already such a beautiful one, I would rather use that one; all the more so as I do not trust his talents as a translator much. The man, who is duly modest, declares he is ready to substitute Mme Savary’s translation to his own. Only, we have to know where we stand. M. Masson will write the foreword.5 I don’t know the publisher’s name. This M. Bernard Derosne would like to gather in his hands the right to translate, if he sees fit, my entire work – forgive [a page may be missing here] each volume. I can’t remember whether, in the past, I haven’t permitted Mme Savary to do some translations, which would consequently need to be excepted from M. B=D’s arrangement. I do not know either if M. Paris wouldn’t want to use his first wife’s translations6 (supposing they still exist) and she herself [a page may be missing here or has been misplaced] essays with pieces taken from a historical work.7 That’s a lot of trouble I’m giving you; but dear friend, deal with them only for the sake of my absolution in the eyes of Mme Savary and Mr Paris, whose rights I am eager to respect provided they remind me of them on time. He is, moreover, a good man, kind hearted and helpful. And his only fault is his exquisite character. Farewell, dear friend. May next year be less sorrowful than this one! Please, remember me to Melle B. [Blaze] de Bury and remind me to your distinguished son.8 Write to me when you have time for it, will you ? My finger is wrapped in gummed taffeta, which makes my bad handwriting even worse. Your devoted V. Paget

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 1 Lee wrote 7, then superscribed 8. 2 Lee planned to lecture in Rome at Easter of that year. 3 Marguerite Savary, née Mahou, whom he married that year on September 10, after her former husband, French politician and journalist Charles Savary (1845–1889), died. Under her masculine pseudonym “Robert de Cerisy,” Marguerite Paris published numerous translations of English authors. Her French translation of Lee’s short story “Amour Dure” was published in France in two installments as “Fragments du Journal du Professeur Spiridion Trepka” in the Revue Bleue, Revue Politique et Littéraire, 18 August 1888, pp. 208–216, and 25 August 1888, pp. 242–248. Marguerite Savary also translated a heavily edited version of Miss Brown (London: W. Blackwood and Sons, 1884), published in Paris by Calmann-Lévy in 1889, the second edition with a preface by Paul Bourget. “Amour Dure” was printed with “Oke of Okehurst” in Hauntings: Fantastic Stories (1890). 4 French man of letters and translator Charles François Bernard-Derosne (1825–1904) was an officer of the Imperial Army and the husband of the famed French actress Judith (1827–1912). He translated British authors like Charles Dickens, Mary Elisabeth Braddon, Wilkie Collins, Francis Marion Crawford, Edward Frederic Benson, Maria S. Cummins, John Russell Russell, Edward Bulwer Lytton, George Alfred Lawrence, George John Whyte Melville, George Augustus Sala and Théophile Gautier. He authored La sorcière des bruyères (2 vols., Paris: H. Geffroy, 1894) and, as “Camille de Cendrey,” L’Ange des frontières (2 vols., Paris: Didier & Mericant, n.d.). He translated Lee’s “Dionea” for the volume referred to here. 5 Frédéric Masson wrote, On reconnaîtra peut-être en les lisant qu’ils ont été traduits de l’anglais par des mains différentes: un n’a point été traduit; il a été écrit en français et ce n’est point une médiocre curiosité de voir comme un auteur anglais, maître de son style en sa langue maternelle, sait manier la nôtre et en tirer des effets inattendus. . . . Ecrivant en français, elle pense en français et se sert d’un instrument qu’elle a forgé à son usage, souple et ferme en même temps, au point qu’il n’en est guère de plus parfait. Ecrivant en anglais, elle pense en anglais, et à moins qu’on n’ait pris la tâche de traduire une de ses nouvelles, de la transmuer d’une langue dans l’autre en lui conservant son caractère, son mouvement, l’inattendu d’un mot, le brisement sec de la phrase, on ne saurait imaginer quelles difficultés on rencontre. (Preface, Au Pays de Vénus [Paris: Dentu, 1894], pp. xvi–xvii) 6 Marie Julie Françoise (Marie) Talbot (1842–1889), widow of Philippe-Grégoire Delaroche-Vernet (born Delaroche, entitled to the name Delaroche-Vernet on 29 May 1875 (1841–1882). She married Gaston Paris on 20 July 1885, when he was forty-six. She died four years later, and he married Marguerite Savary, née Mahou, on 10 September 1891. 7 Au Pays de Vénus, translated by “R. de Cerisy” (Madame Gaston Paris) and “Camille de Cendrey” (Charles Bernard-Derosne), preface by F. Masson (Paris: Dentu, 1894). Contents: Préface; Première partie: Hallucinations: “Dionea,” “Voix maudite,” [originally in French in Les Lettres et les arts. Août 1887, 125–153], “Oke de Okehurst”; “Amour qui dure” [sic]; Deuxième partie: Varia: “Le Prince aux cent soupes. Représentation de marionnettes en récit”; “La Nativité”; “Ottilie.” 8 Mme Blanc’s son by her husband, Joseph Louis Alexandre Blanc (1834–?), whom she had married on 26 January 1857, was the engineer, geographer and explorer Louis Edouard Blanc (1858– 1923).

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1892 1. Clementina Anstruther-Thomson January 15, 1892 London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE Jan. 15. 92 My dear Kit – The Fenzi business has been much worse than the worst anticipations; utter bankruptcy complicated with fraudulent affairs, & what is worse, robbery of all the bonds etc. left in trust. Poor Alice Hall appears to have lost all her capital;1 her mother has something; but they aren’t on good terms. At first no one knew the extent of the damage, there was a good deal of sympathy with Emanuelino Fenzi,2 who was a nice in many ways: even Alice Hall went to console with him [console him], little guessing that he had never replaced her poor little money. It seems to have been a sort of panic & debâcle3 of many years standing. When Emanuelino succeeded, a cashier had recently robbed the bank of a large proportion; Emmanuelino who knew nothing of banking, & was sole partner, wanted to liquidate, but was prevented by the family; since then he has been trying one dodge after another for replacing the deficit, and finally the immense spendings of the trams,4 of which half of the shares remained a dead loss on his hands. He appears to have been absolutely incompetent and to have become utterly feeble latterly, losing his head & asking advice of every one, without a clear sense either of his ruin or of the guiltiness of his practices. Finally he has run away. It is curious how, watching such a thing as it develops or rather as the knowledge of its various details finally gradually comes out, one loses the sense of this man being that different sort of creature called a criminal; or rather how, looking at the thing en bloc,5 the details all squashed together, one is surprised at becoming aware of him being one. I had a very nice letter from Nina Barstow a few days ago. She implores me to give up all thought of lecturing, & says all my London friends are of her way of thinking. I don’t blame her for having been one of the persons who first put lecturing into my head, because one doesn’t see both sides of a question at once; & it is something to see the drawbacks in time. Her letter has a good deal shattered my intention, which (from not having thought anymore about it) had got hazy. She evidently attaches something ignominious to the notion of lecturing, because & explains this impression by the shoddiness of the audience. This She forgets that could a writer see his readers, he would be aware of just as great shoddiness; t’is one of Bastiat’s famous cases of what is & what isn’t seen.6 You know that I have no illusions about my readers; & that it is no affectation if I hate people talking about my books, but merely my 128

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expectation of another instance of slovenliness & stupidity even in intelligent people; du reste,7 I am just such a reader myself, doubtless. So if it’s worthwhile writing for shoddies, it’s also worthwhile lecturing; and perhaps – I always have that vague hope – the personal contact might enable one to get at their less shoddy part. But if the ignominy is of some other sort –, if there’s failure, or favour to be apprehended, I am in the dull state at present when it is easier to desist than to do; besides, you know, I have no initiative ever. Will you try and find out how things stand in people’s opinion? And may I warn you that you are far more gullible about people liking my work than I am myself, because you like my work more than I do. Lord! They don’t care a fig about my 18th singer,8 why should they? I, who am interested in him, don’t; how can they? It’s merely the line of least resistance for them to talk like that; it’s because English people have nothing to talk about ever. I trust foreigners more, because their brains don’t stop working merely because they have to speak, which is the real English phenomenon, believe me. Can you nail Miss Sellers? She or perhaps people who shilly-shally in their opinions are not worth nailing. I am much in want of some subsidiary means of gaining money, because on the one hand the idea of being hard up puts me into a state of nerves; & secondly because I see more & more that my work is worthless if I force it. I am out of conceit with the world’s judgements, as you see; lately Miss Duffy wrote me to comfort me to do history, because essay writing was only journalism after all. It puts one into a frenzy to hear a clever woman putting down Emerson & Lamb, Ste Beuve & Pater, as only journalism, let alone Montaigne. Here I am to be made to speak; they won’t hear of reading, & I think they are right. Dear Kit, will you try to squeeze some inform decision out of the general vagueness? You see, I shall have to go on yr opinion. I wish I knew what John thought or wd think; I utterly mistrust all these wretched women. I wrote to the secretary, South K. on New Years Day, but no answer. The influenza has left me very weak; t’is a pity, I was so well before. It has poured for six weeks, everything is rotting, including oneself. My mother is much aged & very weak. I am longing to have you; I seem to be cretinising. Poor Antonio French has become quite unable to walk; they have had to give up Villa R, & take a horrid new house near the train. Dear Kit, I am ill & troubled in my mind, forgive. Yrs V. 1 Alice Hall is listed among the bank’s most important creditors, with 248,000 lire (“Banca Fenzi E C,” Rivista economica e bollettino finanziario settimanale Si pubblica la domenica, Torino, 17 Gennaio 1892, p. 9). 2 Lee is referring to the younger Cavaliere Emanuele Orazio Fenzi (1843–1924) of the Fenzi banking family and the scandal concerning the firm’s failure. “The failure is announced of the old banking firm of Em. Fenzi and Co., Florence, and the absconding of its chief, who has lost some 3,000,000 lire of the funds entrusted to him. Some years ago the firm was shaken by the embezzlement of 2,000,000 lire by its cashier” (Bankers’ Magazine, Journal of the Money Market and Commercial Digest, volume 53 [January–June 1892], p. 754, notes. 3 In French in the text.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 4 The failure of the Fenzi Bank was expected to include the Tram Society. La catastrofe Fenzi produrrà partroppo anche quella della Società del Tram deli Colli fiorentini. Infatti con la fine del mese scorso sono state protestate sette cambiali pel valore di 100.000 lire. Del resto, astrazione del mancato pagamento delle cambiali, quella Società, parte infelice della Ditta Fenzi, non potrà durare a lungo, giacchè la linea non e completa, e se non sopravvengono degli altri capitalisti a traria dall’imbarazzo in cui si trova, difficilmente si potrà superare una crisi che potrà aggraversi, ma giammai diminuire col tempo. [The Fenzi disaster will also produce that of the Società del Tram deli Colli fiorentini. In fact, at the end of last month, seven bills worth 100,000 lire were rejected. Moreover, apart from the non-payment of bills of exchange, that Society, an unhappy part of the Fenzi Company, will not last long, because the line is not complete, and if other capitalists do not emerge from the embarrassment in which it finds itself, it is difficult to overcome a crisis that may aggravate, but never diminish over time.] (“Banca Fenzi E C,” Rivista economica e bollettino finanziario settimanale Si pubblica la domenica, Torino, 17 Gennaio 1892, p. 9) 5 In French in the text: as a whole. 6 Frédéric Bastiat (1801–1850), French politician, economist and lawyer, considered a pioneer of free trade. Lee refers to his pamphlet “Ce qu’on voit et ce qu’on ne voit pas” [what you can see and what you can’t see], published in July 1850. It is a series of cases; the best known is the case of the broken window (La vitre cassée), in which Mr X’s window has been broken. What you can see is that the money Mr X spent to repair his broken window will be profitable for the glazier, allowing the latter to spend this money, which in turn will be profitable for others. What you can’t see here is that, had Mr X’s window not be broken, his money would have been spent otherwise. The broken window merely diverted his money to different costs (Frédéric Bastiat, “Ce que l’on voit et ce que l’on ne voit pas.” Tiré de Œuvres complètes de Frédéric Bastiat, mises en ordre, revues et annotées d’après les manuscrits de l’auteur (Paris: Guillaumin et Cie, 1862–1864), 7 volumes, Tome cinquième, pp. 336–393). 7 In French in the text: besides. 8 “An Eighteenth-Century Singer,” Fortnightly Review (December 1891), pp. 842–880.

2. Guido Biagi January 21, [1892] Florence, Italy Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, Biagi.G.78 [The original of this letter is in Italian] IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE li 21 Gennaio Caro Signor Biagi, In risposta alla sua a nome di questa Società di Pubbliche Letture, mi affretto are dirle che, salvo una grave malattia che possa impedirmelo, mi terrò impegnata a fare la conferenza il giorno 30 marzo. L’argomento, come già stabilito fra noi, sarebbe La scultura del Rinascimento o, più precisamente, la posizione della scultura nell’arte del Rinascimento. Fin qui benissimo. Ma mi accorgo che parla 130

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della consegna di un manoscritto. Ora, non ci sarà mai manoscritto da consegnare. Quando il comune nostro amico Placci mi fece cenno dell’onore che mi voleva fare cotesta Società delle Conferenze, mi as disse assai chiaramente che per avere potere poi pubblicare la mia conferenza, loro signori penserebbero a impiegare uno stenografo; mentre io non dovevo pensare che alla conferenza. Intendo certamente di scrivere la sù per quì quello che mi verrà fatta di dire facendo la conferenza, ma sarà in inglese ed in una forma modificata per le esigenze diverse di quel mio pubblico. insomma non avrà Se dovessi fornire una conferenza italiana scritta, già non mi azzarderei, perchè come vede scrivo più che alla buona peggio; e poi sarei costretta a chiedere non 200, ma più vicino alle 1000 o 1200 lire. Credo però che l’avere parlato della consegna del manoscritto sarà probabilmente una semplice svista, giacchè vedo che la sua lettera è una circolare, destinata a persone che fa scrivendo naturalmente in italiano, avranno naturalmente un manoscritto da consegnare; e spero quindi che staremo alle condizioni fattomi per mezzo di Placci. Del resto, sarò felice di riguardare e ritoccare il lavoro dello stenografo, a tempo per la pubblicazione, che sarà, come Ella mi fece accertare, non prima del Gennaio 1893. Mi mandi una rigo di risposta, e quando potrà, venga a vedermi. Sua dev. V. Paget (Vernon Lee) 3. Guido Biagi1 January 21, [1892] Florence, Italy Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, Biagi.G.78 [The original of this letter is in Italian] IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE January 21 Dear Signor Biagi, In response to your letter regarding this Society of Public Lectures, I hurry are to tell you that, barring a grave malady that could stop me from doing it, I will consider myself obliged to hold the conference on the day of March 30. The topic, as has already been established between us, would be sculpture in the Renaissance, or, more precisely, the place of sculpture in Renaissance art. So far, so good. But I realise that you are speaking about the submission of a manuscript. Now, there will never be a manuscript to submit. When our common friend Placci gave me an indication of the honour that this Society of 131

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Conferences wanted to bestow on me, he said to me rather clearly that to have be able to publish my conference afterwards, you sirs would think about hiring a stenographer, while I would have to think of nothing but the conference. I certainly intend to write up here that which will come to my mind to say in creating the conference, but it will be in English and in a modified form for the different needs of that audience of mine. Therefore it will not have If you were to provide a written Italian conference, I would not dare to do so, because as you can see I write less than good poorly and I would then be forced to ask not for 200, but for closer to 1000 or 1200 lire. I believe however that having spoken about the submission of a manuscript must have been an oversight, since I see that your letter is a circular, destined for people writing naturally in Italian, who will naturally have a manuscript to submit, and I hope therefore that we will remain with the conditions offered to me by means of Placci. For the rest, I will be happy to take a look at and edit the work of the stenographer, in time for publication, which will be, as you assured me, not before January 1893. Send me a line of response, and when you can, come to visit me. Your devoted V. Paget (Vernon Lee)] 1 See List of Correspondents: Guido Biagi.

4. Matilda Paget April 12, [1892] Orvieto, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Orvieto Friday 12 – Arrived very comfortably not too tired at 10.30 p.m. and have been enjoying seeing things this morning. We start at 2 & get to Rome at 6.40 So much love V. 5. Matilda Paget April 14, [1892] Rome, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Rome. 74 S.S. Apostoli 132

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Dearest Mamma. We arrived yesterday in time for dinner. Maria met us at the station. Kit is comfortable & happy at the Spallettis[‘]. And I am well. Give my love to Miss Little. Take care of yrself. So much love 6. Matilda Paget April 28, [1892] Rome, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Friday. Just back from half day at Frascati, delightful. 2. yesterday Bourgets to dinner. 3. She charming, delicate, pretty, peacock madonna, intelligent.1 4. He cordial, thickened, without charm. 5. Talks price of books tremendously. 6. Purpose returning Sat (tomorrow week) evening. 7. Hope so much you are keeping well, dearest Mamma. 8. Read Erb carefully. Much love V. 1 “Minnie” Bourget, née David: see Lee to Matilda Paget, August 10, [1890].

7. Matilda Paget April 28, [1892] Rome, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Thursday Received postcards. But start all the same tomorrow morning. Please send to station (also contadino) Pisa train 6.40 p.m. Much love 8. Matilda Paget June 16, [1892] Paris, France Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Hotel St Georges Rue Bonaparte ‸till 24‸ Thursday. Dearest Mamma. So many thanks for yr dear note. 2. Did not write from Milan because eye badly inflamed, all right now. 3. Kit tired, but well. 4. Night journey perfectly restful in sleeping car. 5. The Pontis were away; so we 133

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dined with D. Vittoria Cima,1 Placci’s friend. 6. Pratesi called, much aged.2 7. Very comfortable here, little apartment, 2 bedrooms & sitting room & passage, all for 4 frs a head. 8. Eat at little restaurant next door, dinner, wine included, xx 1 fr 60. Mme Blanc away. Will call on Mary [Darmesteter]3 & Panniers. So much love V. 1 Countess Vittoria Cima (1834–1930) was born in Milan to the Cima della Scala family and studied in Paris. A pianist and an intellectual, she held a renowned salon in Milan from 1860 to World War I, frequented, among others, by Giuseppe Giacosa, Luigi Gualdo, Federico De Roberto, industrialists De Angeli and Pirelli, and Torelli Viollier, founder of the Corriere della Sera (Dizionario biografico delle donne lombarde, a cura di R. Farina, Milano, Baldini & Castoldi, 1995, pp. 307–308). 2 Lee’s friend Mario Pratesi (1842–1921) Italian writer of novels, essays and poetry as well as a respected critic. Aside from his writing, he spent much of his life earning a living as a teacher at schools outside Florence and in Milan. However, from an early age, he began to suffer from severe depression and would battle the illness, which affected his writing, for most of his life. Lee met Pratesi around 1880. She and many of his Italian friends championed his work. For example, Lee introduced him to the Barbèra publishing company, which went on to publish two of his books. He in turn gave Lee invaluable assistance with her work on The Countess of Albany (1884), which he helped her to research in archives in Milan. Other figures that befriended him and promoted his work include Giacomo Barzellotti, Alessandro Gherardi, Cesare Guasti, Niccolò Tommaseo, Angelo De Gubernatis and Jessie Hillebrand. 3 Lee’s former romantic friend, Mary Frances Robinson, now Mme Darmesteter. About this relationship see Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vols. I and II. She was a poet and literary critic well regarded in both English and French literary circles. See List of Correspondents: Mary Robinson (Darmesteter, later Duclaux).

9. Matilda Paget June 17, [1892] Paris, France Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College H. [Hotel] St George – Friday. Dearest Mama. The letter forwarded was for Olive, an O on it. 2. Kit is better but very feeble. 3. I called on Mary yesterday, found Miss Poynter1 staying there. 4. Same impression only more so. 5. Wanted me to stay [for] dinner, but wouldn’t. 6. Has asked Kit & me to lunch tomorrow to meet Gaston Paris, can’t refuse. 7. Mornings at the Louvre. 8. Placci’s sister2 & Panniers have asked us to dinner. 9. Called on Melle Read today. 10. Mary much worldly prosperity. So much love 1 Eleanor Frances Poynter (1840–1929), whose father was architect Ambrose Poynter (1796–1886);siblings included translator Clara Bell (1834–1927), painter Sir Edward John Poynter (1836–1919), and author Harrietta May Poynter (1851–1932). The family enjoyed a large circle of artistic and literary figures, and she was friends with J. A. Symonds. Poynter began

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 writing fiction in the 1870s with the novel My Little Lady (1871) and produced several more. In addition, she translated a few French and German works. She never married and died in 1929 a few days short of her ninetieth birthday. (Troy J. Bassett, “Author: Eleanor Frances Poynter,” At the Circulating Library: A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837–1901, www.victorianresearch.org/ atcl/show_author.php?aid=857) Her novel An Exquisite Fool (New York: Harper and Bros., 1892) was published that year. 2 Placci’s sister: Maria del Carmen Placci (1853–1920), born in Mexico, married Albert Sancholle Henraux (1881–1953) in Florence in 1873. The couple had four sons and a daughter. Albert Sancholle Henraux was one of the most influential figures in French culture of the twentieth century. Born in Seravezza, Italy on June 12, 1881, his family returned to France in time for him to attend the École des Langues Orientales Vivantes (School of Oriental Languages). Following service in the French Army during World War I, Henraux began a career in museums which included appointments as President of the Arts Council of National Museums, President of the Friends of the Louvre, Vice President of the Central Union of Decorative Arts, and Vice President of the Technical Board for the Museums of France. / In November 1944 Henraux was elected President of the Commission de Récupération Artistique (French Commission for Art Recovery), the group most responsible for investigating works of art stolen from France by the Nazis. As part of his duties, Henraux oversaw the activities of the French Restitution Officers working tirelessly in Germany to locate, identify, and arrange transport back to France, tens of thousands of French-owned art objects. Henraux and the Commission selected some of France’s most motivated art scholars and curators for this task, including Monuments Officers Capt. Rose Valland and Capt. Hubert de Brye. Henraux then served as Director of the Art Receiving Collecting Point at the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris, the processing centre for all restituted objects returned from MFAA collecting points in Germany. / Henraux served as President of the Commission until June 1946. In the following years before his death in 1953, Henraux became curator of the Musée Condé in Chantilly and Chairman of the Arts Council of National Museums. (Monuments Men and Women Foundation, “Albert Sancholle Henraux”, www.monumentsmenandwomenfnd.org/henraux-albert-s)

10. Matilda Paget June 19, [1892] Paris, France Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Sunday. Dearest Mamma. Perhaps we may stay beyond the 24 – I will write in time. Leaving [Living] here is so very cheap & comfortable. 2. Yesterday called on Mme Bl. de B. [Blaze de Bury] infinitely untidy & poor, but very genial & enthusiastic. 3. asked much after E. 4. Left Carlo Placci’s letter for Mme de Montebello.1 5. Lunched with Mary; won’t again. 6. Gaston Paris was there, shall call on his wife today. 7. Masson called, no commission. 7. Melle Read here. So much love V. 135

SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 1 Marchioness Madeleine Lannes de Montebello, née Guillemin (1853–1930). She was the granddaughter of Anne Véronique Hortense Cheuvreux (1807–1893), née Girard, and the daughter of Jean Arnault François Guillemin (1782–1834), the French Consul Général in Havana. In 1873, she married senator and diplomat Maréchal Gustave Lannes de Montebello (1838–1907), Maréchal Lannes’s grandson. In 1890, her husband was appointed French ambassador to Saint Petersburg. In 1901, Tsar Nicolas II became the godfather of their grandson Nicolas, recorded in Proust’s La Recherche du temps perdu. At the Montebellos’ Château de Stors, they held important receptions with guests like Adolphe Thiers, Felix Faure, J.J. Ampère and Alexis de Tocqueville.

11. Matilda Paget June 21, [1892] Paris, France Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Tuesday 21. Dearest Mamma. 1. No answer yet from Paters. 2. Kit seems quite well again, & so grateful for yr enquiries. 3. Yesterday went to see Mr Müntz, Directeur des Beaux Arts.1 4. Then Mme de Montebello. 5. Very agreeable intelligent woman, beautiful house in Faubourg. 6. Modern liberal catholicism. 7. Dined with Placci’s sister. 8. We live for incredibly little. 9. Everyone nearly gone, that’s the worst. So much love. 1 Louis Frédéric Eugène Müntz (1845–1902), art historian, director of the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, renowned specialist of the arts and architecture of the Italian Renaissance, especially Rome and Florence, and in the Middle Ages in France and in Italy. His publications include Les arts à la cour des papes pendant les XVe et XVIe siècles, recueil de documents inédits tirés des archives et des bibliothèques romaines (Paris: E. Thorin, 1878–1882); Histoire de l’art pendant la Renaissance. I. Italie. Les primitifs, II. Italie. L’âge d’or, III. Italie. Fin de la Renaissance. Michel-Ange. Le Corrège (Paris: Firmin-Didot, Hachette, 1889–1895). He was a member of the French Ecole du Louvre and of a number of Académies (Académie royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique [Bruxelles], Accademia nazionale dei Lincei [Rome], Pontificia Accademia di Archeologia [Rome], Accademia della Crusca [Florence], Accademia di Scienze, Lettere, Arti [Milan] and Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften [Munich], to name but a few). See P. Berger, “Éloge funèbre de M. Eugène Müntz, membre de l’Académie,” in Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, no. 5, 1902. pp. 555–559.

12. Matilda Paget June 22, [1892] Paris, France Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College H. [Hotel] St Georges Wed. Dearest Mamma. 1. Arranged with the Paters to go there the 27th (Monday) instead of 24th. 2. Today rushing to see private galleries. 3. Dined Panniers. 4. Mary became sore 136

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subject. 5. Several books on decadence of French youth attract attention. 6. Damp here & been cold. So much love V. Do tell me about bed curtain 13. Matilda Paget June 24, [1892] Paris, France Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Paris Friday. Dearest Mamma. Had to see Mme [?Kraft]1 for a little swelling (nothing at all it appeared) – 2. She examined me & told me I should probably get much stronger, after my indigestions diminished. 3. Mme de Montebello proved delightful. 4. That brute Knowles sent me twelve pounds for 22 pages. 5. Returned cheque taking for granted that it was for someone else. 6. Was it? We cross Monday. Address, 12 Earl’s Terrace, Kensington So much love V. 1 Perhaps a relative of Mme Kraft, Lee’s “good daily governess,” whom she fondly recollects in “Marsyas and Mme Kraft,” her introduction to the “Second Unlikely Story,” in her collection of fantastic stories dedicated to Maurice Baring, For Maurice, Five Unlikely Stories (1927), pp. xiii–xvi. Mme Kraft taught her “the graces and horrors of the French language” in her “Cours de Dictées,” using the textbook by Mme Noël and Chapsal, enlivened by picturesque stories like that of Tadolini and “the sprightly charm of her voice, and mien” (p. xiv).

14. Matilda Paget June 26, [1892] Paris, France Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Paris Sunday 26. Dearest Mamma – 1. Received very amiable letter from Knowles with new cheque. 2. Eye bad again, but not so bad. 3. Tell Papa I shall write to him from the Paters, where I shall have leisure; here I am dog tired. 4. Kit half deaf with neuralgia. 5. Violet Ormond’s baby all right – a girl.1 6. Called today on Burys & Mary & leave tomorrow 10 a.m. 8. Weather rough[.] So much love V. 137

SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 1 Marguerite Ormond: she was the first child of Violet Sargent and Francis Ormond and died in 1892, the year she was born. The couple had five other children.

15. Matilda Paget June 28, 1892 London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 12 Earl’s Terrace – Kensington Tuesday 28 June Dearest Mamma – Arrived yesterday for dinner after a good crossing. 2. Stifling heat & fog here. 3. Am going now to lunch with Miss Dunham at her hotel to meet John S. [Sargent] & Placci. 4. Expect to be at Kit’s by [the] end of [the] week, so address there. 5. England uninviting. 6. Cannot conceive why I’ve come! 7. All right in health. 8. Eye had got into trick of swelling, but now better. So much love. 9. Is the bead curtain up? Yrs V. 16. Matilda Paget June 30, 1892 London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Paters[’]. June 30. Thursday Dearest Mamma. 1. Am staying here till Monday as Kit can’t get flat in order. 2. Yesterday lunched with Mrs Taylor & Miss Ferguson. 3. Saw Bella, flourishing. 4. Met Mrs Lang1 & had tea with her. 5. Kept awake by awful storm, and am tired. 6. Mrs Creighton has written to invite me. 7. Just called on Robinsons. 8. Much wear & tear, but little amusement. So much love Yr V. 1 Leonora “Nora” Blanche Alleyne Lang (1851–1933), who married Andrew Lang (1844–1912), anthropologist, classicist, historian and poet. Lee met her in 1885 at the Robinsons’. “She is a charming young woman, pretty, prettily dressed, intelligent & thank goodness not at all Wardish or Cliffordian. She was at school with Mme Meyer, & fond of her. Isn’t it curious” (Lee to Matilda Paget, 25 July 1885, Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II).

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17. Matilda Paget July 2, 1892 London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Dearest Mamma. The amount of 19th century ch. was £24, Longman £10. 2. I am so very glad Miss Nebel can stay on. 3. I should like to be remembered kindly to her. 4. I am lunching today with Mr Watts.1 5. Tomorrow with Bella Duffy. 6. Monday I go to Kit’s. So much love. How is Papa? Sat. July 2.

1 Theodore Watts-Dunton (1832–1914) was a writer and poet who wrote anonymous reviews for The Athenaeum during the 1880s and 1890s. He was close friends with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne; he lived with and cared for the latter during the poet’s declining years. About Lee’s relationship with him, see Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II.

18. Matilda Paget July 5, 1892 London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 12 Chelsea Gardens SW. Tuesday. Dearest Mamma. I found yr dear card here on coming yesterday evening. 2. Kit is no better. 3. All seems grimy & horrible. 4. and I am awfully feeble & depressed with the usual London depression. 5. I am lunching with the Fergusons, close by. 6. Nothing of smallest interest. 7. Town very empty owing to elections.1 8. Would write to Papa today, but utterly tired out, & no news. So much love. Yrs V.

1 The general election in the United Kingdom took place from 4 to 26 July 1892. The Conservatives, led by Lord Salisbury, again won the greatest number of seats, but lost the majority. William Ewart Gladstone’s Liberals won eighty more seats than it had in the 1886 general election.

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19. Matilda Paget July 7, 1892 London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 12 Chelsea Gardens Thursday 7th Dearest Mamma. Many thanks for yr kind postcard & forwarding 2 letters. 1. The Italian one was from L. Gropallo. 3. Xxx Macmillan’s cheque £6. 4. Kit’s ear still very bad, & I tired. 5. Have left some cards & written to Wards, Gosses1 etc. 6. Everyone engaged in Elections, small liberal majority expected. 7. No news whatever. 8. Am studying at National Gallery. Much love. I have not news enough to write to Papa. Wolseleys in Ireland. Yrs V.

1 Edmund Gosse (1849–1928) was appointed Clark Lecturer at Cambridge University in 1884. A compilation of his lectures, From Shakespeare to Pope: An Inquiry into the Causes and Phenomena of the Rise of Classical Poetry in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1885), was reviewed by his one-time friend John Churton Collins in the October 1886 issue of the Quarterly Review. The review was long and unrelenting. Collins pointed out every factual error in it and challenged Gosse’s critical analyses of the early English poets, drawing into question his post as Clark Lecturer. It became viewed as an attack by an Oxford-educated man wanting to raise the prominence of English literature in the university curriculum against a self-educated man he considered an inferior scholar. Lee’s educational background was similar to Gosse’s, which may be one reason that she took his side. Gosse was embarrassed after the review and wrote a short defense of his book for the Quarterly. His friends Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Matthew Arnold and Thomas Hardy stood by him, however, and so did Cambridge. Gosse remained as lecturer until 1889, when he decided not to run for reelection.

20. Matilda Paget July 10, 1892 London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 10 July. Dearest Mamma. 1. Went to see Bunting yesterday; just been defeated by Jewish conservative.1 2. Dined with Miss Dunham yesterday. 3. Going next week for afternoon in the country with Mrs Ward. 4. Now lunch at Cyril Flowers.2 5. Busy about Pasolinis[’] new tutor. 6. Kit still very bad. 7. French Govt bought John’s dancing woman.3 So much love V.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 1 Islington (Middlesex) East: Benjamin Louis Cohen (Conservative) had 3975 votes vs P.W. Bunting (Liberal), who had 3510 (Debrett’s Illustrated House of Commons, and the Judicial Bench [London: Dean & Son, 1896]). 2 Constance Flower, née de Rothschild (1843–1931), and her husband, Cyril Flower, 1st Baron of Battersea (1843–1907), were wealthy patrons of the arts. They also established charities for the benefit of the working classes, particularly women and children, including the Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls, Women and Children. Lee met her in 1886. See Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II. 3 In 1892, the French government bought John Singer Sargent’s The Spanish Dance [La Carmencita] (ca. 1890, oil on canvas, H. 229.0; L. 140.0 cm), for the Luxembourg Museum, where it stayed until 1922. It went to the Jeu de Paume Museum until 1946, followed by the Musée National d’Art Moderne (1946–1973), the Louvre (1973–1982), and, finally, the Musée d’Orsay, where it has remained since 1982.

21. Matilda Paget July 13, [1892] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Thursday 13. Dearest Mamma – Had to see Dr yesterday about my eye. 2. Only draught and swelling of lid, but very painful. 3. Says all hangs together with my tendency to lurching, result of momentary weakness. 4. Am going for [a] few days to Miss Mackenzie. 5. Dr says Kit very seriously run down. 6. What flowers have you ? So much love Beg Papa read this 22. Matilda Paget July 17, [1892] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Sat. 17th. Dearest Mamma. Eye much better, but not quite cured. 2. am going Monday for a week to Miss Mackenzie’s at Ranmore, Dorking. 3. Continue writing there. 4. Kit remains 5. Am going mainly to leave her alone here, diminishing her trouble & allowing her to have a bed instead of hamock [hammock]. 6. Dr says she is awfully run down. 7. Both ears now ill, & very weak & tired. 8. Insisted on staying in London. 9. Yes, got Emily’s letter. 10. So many thanks for myrtles 11. Tell Amy [Turton] am so pleased about pony. So much love. Salute Papa. Yrs V. 23. Matilda Paget July 18, [1892]

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London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College [lost seed of laurus]1 Sat Monday. Dearest Mamma. So many thanks about the bag. 2. Am going today to Miss Mackenzie[’s]. 3. Eye nearly cured. 4. Kit better. 5. Like Venice for E. [Eugene]. 6. Will try and go there for one or two days on way back & ascertain. 7. Dined Fergusons last night. 8. Had intended asking Miss Little to lunch & play, but to [too] ill. 9. Wrote to me, & I explained. 1 This was added in pencil; the shaky handwriting suggests Matilda’s hand.

24. Matilda Paget July 19, [1892] Ranmore, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College The Hermitage Ranmore, Dorking 19 July. Tuesday. Dearest Mamma – Only to tell you that I already feel better since being here. 2. Have taken two longish walks & slept a great deal. 3. shall stay a week or ten days. 4. Address to Chelsea. Miss M. Mc [Muir Mackenzie] very kind So much love. 25. Matilda Paget July 22, [1892] Ranmore, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 22 July. Friday. Dearest Mamma. I am better, that’s all my news. 2. I may go to Flora’s cousins in Scotland & to Dryburgh Abbey in august, if London knocks me up again. 3. But I wd rather avoid the fatigue & expense. 4. Aïdé has asked me to Ascot for a few days, that may suffice. 5. Have to conclude a paper left unfinished. So much love – Tell Papa I’m still shaky & very tired V. 142

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26. Matilda Paget July 25, [1892] Ranmore, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 25 July. Monday. Ranmore. Dearest Mamma. 1. Am getting on well. 2. Have resumed writing. Kit I hear continues very bad. 3. Some Americans, friends of the Sargents, have asked me for two days to Loseley Hall,1 near here. 4. A magnificent Elizabethan house, saw it with the Wolseleys years ago. 5. Shall perhaps go from next Saturday till Monday, ti before returning to London. 6. Has my harness been given to Talamucci? It ought to. 7. I hope some apricot jam will be made, & flower seeds collected! So much love. V. 1 The Palmers (see Lee to Matilda Paget, August 12, 1892). They were probably renting it on a shortterm basis. The Tudor manor house can be seen here: www.loseleypark.co.uk/house/. John Singer Sargent painted the portrait of seventeen-year-old Miss Elsie Palmer between 1889 and 1890, one of his best-known works.

27. Matilda Paget July 28, [1892] Ranmore, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Ranmore. 28. Thursday Dearest Mamma. 1. I return to town Sat. [Saturday] as Kit is really ill & unable to leave the house. 2. It is that abominable pain in the ears. 3. Perhaps I shall take her somewhere to change air. 4. But she won’t be well till we get back to Italy I fear. 5. Miss Me [Mackenzie] has let me have two delightful rides on her pony thro’ beautiful woods. So much love 28. Matilda Paget July 30, [1892] Ranmore, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Sat. [Saturday] Dearest Mamma. I return to town today. Kit seems worse. 143

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2. Much upset, probably, by news of stepmother’s coming baby.1 3. Will write E. [Eugene] all political news from town. 3. am well to [&] hope to keep well in town. 5. Probably Aïde’s for a few days [.] 6. Has my saddle been lined since Amy has asked it? 7. the coachman understands. So much love V. 1 On 17 June 1891, Clementina Anstruther-Thomson’s father, John Anstruther-Thomson, married Isobel Bruce (1859–1918), daughter of Lieutenant General Robert Bruce of Glendouglie. They had a baby, Rachel Anstruther-Thomson (1892–1968), later Rachel Jean Gordon-Cumming, born on 19 October 1892.

29. Countess Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi July 30, [1892] Ranmore, England Gabinetto Vieusseux Biblioteca 12 Chelsea Gardens1 London SW. July 30 Dearest Angelica, I am very anxious to have news of you, & also of Elena, whose long silence makes me fear new complications about Antonio.2 Perhaps Olive has told you that Kit & my coming to England has been rather a failure, as we both got ill on arrival, she with very bad consequences of influenza (it appears it was influenza at the Palmerino) and I with ghastly depression & excitement, a result, I suppose of the too fatiguing life. I have now been in the country a fortnight & am better; but Kit is very bad with inflammation & pain in both ears & neck, & incapable of going out. Isn’t it sad? I am awfully looking forward to being back in Italy, which seems to me a panacea for all woes & miseries. If Kit is well enough we shall start South the 1st of September, and go about a little in Lombardy & Venetia, & for a few days in Venice. Anyhow, I want to be back at home by the 15 September. I saw Placci often. He is a dear, kind, faithful creature to give me so much of his time when he was running & talking all day long, for he was studying musical society, Italian paupers at Whitehall, English elections and every conceivable thing. I am much impressed by the real friendliness & friendship of you dear Italians: the way once friends, always friends. Speaking of friends I saw Miss Emily Peto at the stores, looking very ill, fat & depressed. The beautiful brother also has been very ill.3 Poor Kit! She has just had, and in a horrid, gossipy way, the news that her step-mother is going to have a baby. You know how fearfully she took this second marriage to heart as a horrid stain on her father. I think the birth of this child – what sort of brother or sister 35 years younger than oneself! – brings home to her the disgustingness of the marriage 144

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between a man of 75 & a girl of 29. Doesn’t it seem as if, in the order of nature, marriage, having children, is allowable, aesthetic, only when people are young? As the natural result of the perfection of growth & vigour of the animal? I see that my little Vi Sargent with her baby and her young husband make a charming picture;4 but surely children ought to be the result of the attraction of youth & beauty & health, not of the attraction of sex, lasting into the very when youth, beauty, health have long departed. This, I believe, is one of my immoral & antisocial sentiments; at least people seem to find me gross for not thinking octogenarian babies desirable. What will become of Olive? She never divulges her plans beyond going to Siena & Venice. Kit’s young brother is coming to us at Xmas, so we cannot have her. I think also she ought not to protract her wandering life much longer, delightful and improving as you dear people have made it for her. You know her really better than I. Do you think she can retain buckles to any sort of work on her return to England? Dear, this is a hideous & dull letter. It is pouring, my trunk is packed to return to town & my brain congested. Only remember my great affection. Yrs Vernon 1 Lee was still at Ranmore waiting to depart for London, but she gives the Chelsea Gardens as the address for Pasolini to write to her in London. 2 Elena Cini French’s husband, Antonio French. 3 About Harold Ainsworth Peto, British architect, landscape architect and garden designer, and his sisters Emily, Lydia and Edith (Mrs Mitchell), see Lee to Matilda Paget, September 25, 1890. 4 Violet Sargent, John Singer Sargent’s younger sister, married Louis Francis Ormond in August 1891. Their first child was Marguerite Ormond, born in 1892. See Lee to Matilda Paget, July 2, 1891.

30. Countess Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi [August n.d., 1892] London, England Gabinetto Vieusseux Biblioteca Cara – We have got a former servant of ours, who has turned cook. So will you let the little black woman know? She refused to leave an address. I have mentioned her to a friend of mine. Dear, don’t think me a bore, but I think it isn’t good or dignified for Olive to dangle so long. The Hildebrands1 are, after all, human not divine, & can therefore understand that there is no possibility of fitting concatenations of governesses. Olive ought to have an answer. Shall I go to Mme Hildebrand? You see the child’s plans are all vague on account of it. In haste yrs afft Vernon 1 The family of sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand (1847–1921). Lee had known them for many years, since the time he had lived in Italy in the 1870s and early 1880s. He returned to his native Germany in 1884, but he and his family often visited Italy after that.

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31. Matilda Paget August 1, [1892] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 1st August. Chelsea. Dearest Mamma. 1. Find Kit really very low, though able to get about on her legs. 2. But weak, in pain, absolutely wasted. 3. Insists on going to Psychological Congress today! 4. I am better and shall set to Greek sculpture studying. 5. Yesterday to St Paul’s, very fine. 6. This is Bank Holiday, awful day. 7. Will find out about Gladstone from Fergusons. 8. Any commissions? So much love V. 32. Matilda Paget August 2, [1892] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 2 August – Dearest Mamma, Kit is better. 2. Been twice to Psychological Congress, 3. Helmholtz was there, Sully, Bain, Galton etc. Also (as listener) Stanley,1 4. Strange, impassive like Roman Emperor, not a 19 century mortal. 5. Most interesting hypnotic experiment by Dr Bramwell. 6. Remarkable new lights on suggestion in functional diseases. 7. Going again tomorrow to see more 8. Liebeault, Charcot’s rival there also.2 8. Will write more. Love to Papa – Yrs V. 1 Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894), physicist and psychologist; James Sully (1841–1925), philosopher and psychologist; Alexander Bain (1818–1903), scientific empiricist; Francis Galton (1822–1911), experimental psychologist who laid the foundations for differential psychology; G. Stanley Hall (1844– 1924), American psychologist sometimes credited with founding child psychology. 2 Amboise-Auguste Liebeault (1823–1904) founded an institute based on the theory that hypnosis was suggestive. The neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893) used hypnosis as a way to study and cure hysteria. His experiments at the Salpêtrière in Paris were famous and drew large audiences.

33. Matilda Paget August 5, [1892] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 146

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Aug 5. Dearest Mamma, I went again to the Psychological Congress & saw some more. Most curious experiments of suggestion. 2. They might suggest poems to E. [Eugene], so I will treasure them. 3. Also much interested in the new developments of the theory of nervous diseases & hyperaesthetic states. 4. For instance, possibility of storing up impressions & suggestions received in a morbid condition to act on them long after in a non-morbid state. So much love V. 34. Matilda Paget August 7, [1892] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Aug 7. Monday. Dearest Mamma. Spent yesterday with the Robinsons & Mary at Epsom, & as he kept out of the way enjoyed it. 2. Kit is decidedly seriously bad, tho’ today a little better. 3. Will probably have to go to her cousins for change of air 4. So I shall go either to Lady Welby1 or Aïdé. 4. But address hither. 5. Kit thinks there is no chance of being able to travel the 1st Sept, everything tires her so. 6. I am well. So much love Yrs V. 1 Lady Victoria Welby (1837–1912) was a philosopher who wrote on semiotics, publishing some influential articles and books on the topic at the turn of the century, including What Is Meaning? Studies in the Development of Significance (New York: Macmillan, 1903). See Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II.

35. Matilda Paget August 10, [1892] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Aug 9 10. Wed. Dearest Mamma. Kit goes tomorrow I hope for a week to some cousins near Epsom. 2. She can’t get well here. 3. Unluckily neither Aïdé nor Lady Welby can have me at this moment. 4. So I shall stay in the flat, with the good little servant. 5. A very nice Miss Plowden, on the same landing, will give me dinner during Kit’s absence. 4. I am working at the Museum & National Gallery. So much love 36. Countess Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi [August 10 or 17, 1892] London, England Gabinetto Vieusseux Biblioteca Wednesday

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My dear Angelica, Your letter, though perfectly kind – perhaps kinder than my impatient note deserved – makes me fear that I have given you a wrong impression about Olive’s business, or that she perhaps may have said things that led to such a wrong impression. Olive is not in the least in our way; quite the contrary, it is a pleasure & a service she does usually staying. We particularly wish her to be with us during part of Kit’s stay, as it [is] good for both that they should have an opportunity of being together. In the area, when we may have another guest, she can go to her aunt in Rome, who wants to have her; and she can come back here, if she likes, in April. So my hurry has nothing to to do with her whereabouts. My reason for hurrying, or trying to hurry her is that it seems to me bad for Olive, morally, to remain in a state of indecision about her proximate future; she is already getting depressed & half hearted about everything. You know her sufficiently to understand that, although she has shown much courage in determining to earn her living, she had one of those energetic, indolent natures, without natural passion for anything in particular, which absolutely requires the discipline of regularity & certainty, unless they are to slip into undignified dependence on others. She herself tells me that she has been brought up to take people’s favours without a thought of return, to “make them a convenience” and she has the very bad example of Rosie,1 who lives off her popularity, turns her friends houses into hotels & has all her clothes given to her. At Olive’s age it is a touch & go business whether she shall become a parasite like Rosie or an independent woman like Kit; it is a question, with her pliable nature, which a few months may decide. The poor child has shown so much pluck that surely we ought all to help her to become independent & methodical. Personally, I feel rather that I have care of souls in her case. Do you see, dear Angelica? You are most awfully kind & sweet to the child, & awfully hospitable; but you see, she must depend as little as possible upon people’s kindness. That is why I am anxious she should have an answer. It was I who told her to tell you that she need not enter a place at once, or for a few months even; but what is wanted is the certainty that she is going, at some fixed date, to do so. The Hildebrands, dear, did ask for someone, since, before you mentioned them, Olive had already heard of their place from Miss Robarto. My dear Angelica, please do not take my over cassant2 manner as a sign of ingratitude. You have shown a kindness & helpfulness in a thousand things to me, where I have never been able to do you the smallest service; above all, you have kept me warm & happy with the sense of your kindness. If therefore I bother you, do not think it is from stupid ingratitude. You see I am worried about this child, the more so that my own hands seem to be tied. Forgive my crustiness, dear. Yrs V.

1 Kit and Olive’s sister, Rosia Mary Anstruther-Thomson (1862–1956). 2 In French in the text: curt, or harsh.

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37. Matilda Paget August 12, [1892] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Sat. 12 Aug. Dearest Mamma. I am going tomorrow till Monday to the Palmers[’] at Loseley1 near Guildford. 2. Sleep here Monday & go Tuesday to the Austins at Ashford for as long as Kit remains away. 3. She ought to remain long. 4. But at the best there is little chance of her being able to travel before the 2d week in Sept. [September] & consequently of our getting to Florence before October, I fear. I renounce the driving home as she is too weak. 1 See Lee to Matilda Paget, July 25, 1892.

38. Matilda Paget August 15, [1892] Guildford, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Losely Su Monday August Dearest Mamma. Have greatly engaged myself in this beautiful old house with these nice people. 2. Kit writes she is very weak. 3. am going back to town for tonight, and hope Austins tomorrow. 3. Address Chelsea. 4. Should like to go to some bracing place, say on Gothard, before coming South. 5. Am suffering from palpitations again, other mischief remedied. 6. Queen Elisabeth stayed here three times. 7. Also once a year ghosts give a grand party. So much love V 39. Matilda Paget August 17, [1892] Ashford, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Swinford Aug. 17. Dearest Mamma. 1. Miss Dunham has invited Kit to St Moritz, the very place for her. 2. Kit has telegraphed me she will go next week. 3. I shall take her there of course. 4. If not too expensive, shall stay there too. 5. If expensive join Placci near there or Maria 149

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P. [Pasolini] near Trent. 6. As soon as I know definite dates I will let you know. 7. Meanwhile don’t write any more. 8. Delighted to be here meanwhile. So much love V. 40. Matilda Paget August 18, [1892] Ashford, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Swinford, Ashford Thursday. Dearest Mamma. Kit wants to leave end of next week. 2. I shall stay here & got to London to pack, sleeping at Mrs Moffatt’s. 3. Kit wd much rather not have me in the flat. 4. Perhaps I didn’t apply the hypnotic things to E. [Eugene] particularly. 5. Will write more tomorrow. So much love 41. Matilda Paget August 20, [1892] Ashford, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Sat. 20. Dearest Mama. It is arranged that Kit & I should both go to Miss Dunham’s at St Moritz. 3. We hope to leave Wednesday & arrive Saturday. 4. Address Poste restante, St Moritz, Engadine. 5. I go up to London on Monday. So much love V. 42. Matilda Paget August 23, [1892] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Tuesday 23. At Mrs Moffatt’s Dearest Mamma. Came up to Chelsea yesterday & found Kit not looking satisfactory. Slept here. Leave London tomorrow 11 a.m., sleeping car to Bâle, where arrive fad 7 a.m. Thursday. Proceed to Coire and by diligence 6 hours to Tiefencastel. Next day proceed by diligence to St Moritz. This house is outside London, a way off. Mrs M. [Moffatt] is so very kind. Am going to Chelsea to pack. So much love 150

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43. Matilda Paget August 27, [1892] St Moritz, Switzerland Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Villa Languard St Moritz. Saturday. Dearest Mamma. Found yr card at the Post Office. 2. arrived here – sort of apartments – yesterday 7 p.m. 3. Magnificent drive over high pass. 4. Very wonderful & beautiful scenery here, lake outside window & snow not at all far. 5. Temperature: the same as Nervi last December! But brilliant sun & delightful air. 6. Miss Dunham most kind. 7. Placci a mile off. 8. Kit already better. Much love 44. Matilda Paget August 29, [1892] St Moritz, Switzerland Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Villa Languard St Moritz 30 August1 Dearest Mamma – We are enjoying ourselves so much. 2. Taking such beautiful drives and in such lovely air. 3. Kit is already better and is beginning douches.2 4. Miss Sellers leaves today, so I become Miss Dunham’s guest. 5. A long drive with Placci yesterday. 6. Maria’s sister Contessa Suardi3 has asked Kit & me to stay at Bergamo with her. 7. We shall be here till the 8th. So much love. 1 Lee’s mistake. Postmark is dated 29 Aug., so this must be 29 August. 2 Lee consistently used the French word for shower when referring to hydrotherapy. 3 Maria Ponti (1856–1938); her sister was Contessa Antonia Ponti Suardi (1860–1938). See Lee to Matilda Paget, March 10, 1891.

45. Matilda Paget August 31, [1892] St Moritz, Switzerland Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Villa Languard St Moritz.

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Dearest Mamma. A thousand thanks for having that curtain mended so expeditiously. 2. We shall want the mosquito curtains as soon as we get into Italy, and, in a day or two, I shall be able to give an address. 3. This place is delightfully stimulating & full of strange beauty. 4. a flat widish valley formed by defunct glaciers & filled with a chain of tiny lakes. 5. Mountains surrounding (owing to our already being much higher than Splügen top) moderately high, but full of large glaciers. 6. Some within a drive. 7. no trees save huge larches. 8. Prosperous 17th century little town – built by mercenaries. 9. We drive every day & often see Placci[.] 10. Kit is less well again. 11. I walk splendidly So much love V. 46. Matilda Paget September 1, [1892] St Moritz, Switzerland Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Villa Languard. St Moritz 1st Sept. Dearest Mamma 1. Found another sister of Maria P. here, Mme Esengrini,1 very nice. 2. Has asked us to go to her at Mon Monza. 3. It was the brother of Maria P’s [Pasolini’s] sister in law who was recently captured by brigands in Sicily, had to pay 50 000 frs & had the house sacked.2 4. As soon as Miss D. [Dunham] is well, intend climbing an Alp on donkeys! 5. Titian’s Magdalen is in the Pitti. 6. the Flora in Uffizi and the Femme au miroir3 long called Violante, daughter of Palma, Titian’s mistress. 7. Seems to have been Laura dei Dianti.4 8. any amount of golden hair So much love V. 1 Mrs Ester Esengrini Ponti (1858–1933) had married Luigi Esengrini. 2 Maria Ponti Pasolini’s sister-in-law: Countess Angelica Rasponi, née Pasolini dell’Onda (1854– 1919), belonged to an ancient noble family of Ravenna. Her father was the renowned Ravenna philanthropist Giuseppe Pasolini dell’Onda (1815–1876), who, in the nineteenth century, initiated civil and secular health service hitherto run by religious institutions; her mother was Countess Antonietta Pasolini, née Bassi (1825–1873). Angelica Pasolini dell’Onda married Giuseppe “Geppe” Rasponi dalle Teste (1852–1941). Lee visited them at the beautiful Villa Fontallerta, crowning a hill above Florence, at their homes in Ravenna in Rome, and even, according to P. Gunn, “From 1888 Vernon Lee usually spent a month in Rome, staying either with the Pasolinis or the Gambas” (Gunn, Violet Paget, p. 146). Angelica Rasponi translated Lee’s Ariadne in Mantua: A Romance in Five Acts (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Company, 1903) into Italian. Her brother was Pier Desiderio Pasolini of Ravenna (1844–1920). 3 Woman with a Mirror is a painting by Titian, ca. 1515. 4 Laura dei Dianti (ca. 1480–1573), also known as Eustachia, mistress and possible third wife of Alfonso I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara (1476–1534), after the death of his wife Lucrezia Borgia. Titian painted her portrait ca. 1520–1525.

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47. Matilda Paget September 4, [1892] St Moritz, Switzerland Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College St Moritz 4 Sept. Dearest Mama [Mamma]. Snowed hard all morning[.] 2. Temperature at window 40 Fahrenheit! 3. Took long walk in snow. 4. Miss D. [Dunham] doesn’t like staying here long alone, so shall stay with her till about 12 or 13. 5. Going Venice on purpose for E’s [Eugene’s] gondola plans. 6. Then Maria P. [Pasolini] at Montericco. 7. Am anxious to see Lombardy having postings 8. Drive hopeless on account of Kit’s health. 9. Still no strength & recurring of neuralgia. So much love 48. Matilda Paget September 6, [1892] St Moritz, Switzerland Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Sept 6. Dearest Mamma Hope you’ve received cheque. 2. It has snowed on and off three days, temperature in my room, stove burning, barely 40 – 3. Most beautiful effects 4. Suffer acutely in morning. 5. But air seems so vivifying. 5. Shall probably leave 13th or 14th, when address Hotel Regina Olga, Cernobbio, presso Como. 6. Made acquaintance charming local magnate, von Planta,1 sort of feudal sovereign of these valleys. So much love 1 Probably Alfred von Planta (1857–1922), Swiss lawyer, politician, industrialist, diplomat and president of the Swiss National Council (1913–1914). The von Plantas are an ancient, powerful Swiss noble family from Upper Engadin. See Marcel Godet, et al., Dictionnaire historique & biographique de la Suisse: publié avec la recommandation de la Société générale suisse d’histoire et sous la direction de Marcel Godet, Henri Türler [et] Victor Attinger avec de nombreux collaborateurs de tous les cantons (Neuchâtel: Administration du Dictionnaire historique et biographique de la Suisse, 1921).

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49. Matilda Paget September 8, [1892] St Moritz, Switzerland Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College St Moritz. Thursday 8 Dearest Mamma – Caught this afterwards in immense snowstorm. 2. Drove two hours in it. 3. Still snowing 4. But wide open window. 5. We leave the 15th, sleeping at Promontogno 6. to avoid over rapid change of climate. 7. Next night at Cernobbio. 6. I should like to offer Mrs French a drive twice a week with my cart when Giov. or Giuseppe exercise poney. So much love 50. Matilda Paget September 10, [1892] St Moritz, Switzerland Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College St Moritz 10. Dearest Mamma A thousand thanks for kind cards. 2. Kit is better & we both leave the 15th 6. at present program as follows: 7. 15th sleep at Promontogno four hours hence. 16, 17, 18 at Como. 19 Monza (Casa Esengrini – 20th 21st 22d Pavia or Cremona 23 (for an article) 23d Bergamo (pressa i Conti Suardi) 24. 25. 26th Verona, 27th 28th or 29 Asolo Veneto, Mrs Bronson’s then Venice. Yesterday 3 inches of snow, temperature at window freezing p one. So much love V. 51. Enrico Nencioni September 10, 1892 St. Moritz, Switzerland Biblioteca Marucelliana, Carteggio Nencioni II 228.1–13_33–34 Envelope: Italien/Prof. Nencioni/15017 Via Caldaie/Presso S. Spirito/Firenze [The original of this letter is in Italian] St. Moritz dorf. Caro Nencioni. Le scrivo in fretta e furia da questa fittissima neve p[er] dirle che Pater e in Firenze colle sorelle. Sta all’albergo Roma. Ci voli, gli parli, rompa il ghiaccio della sua timidezza, gli faccia godere un po’di sole morale italiano. È una cara persona. Saluti affettuosi a Lei e alla Signora Talia dalla sua Vernon Lee. 154

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52. Enrico Nencioni1 September 10, 1892 St. Moritz, Switzerland Biblioteca Marucelliana, Carteggio Nencioni II 228.1–13_33–34 Envelope: Italien/Prof. Nencioni/15017 Via Caldaie/Presso S. Spirito/Firenze [The original of this letter is in Italian] Village of St. Moritz Dear Nencioni. I write in haste and hurry from the depths of this snow to tell you that Pater is in Florence with his sisters. He is at the Hotel Roma. Fly there, talk to him, break the ice of his shyness, make him enjoy a bit of moral Italian sun. He is a dear person. Kind greetings to you and to Mrs. Talia from your Vernon Lee. 1 Enrico Nencioni (1837–1896) was a poet, critic, journalist, lecturer and close friend and mentor of Lee’s. See List of Correspondents: Enrico Nencioni.

53. Matilda Paget September 13, [1892] St Moritz, Switzerland Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College1 St Moritz 13 Sept. Dearest Mamma. 1. We leave the day after tomorrow. 2. Miss D. [Dunham] goes with us as far as Promontogno, where we sleep. 3. Will you kindly cause to be sent by Pacco Postale to the Locanda Regina Olga, Cernobbio presso Como, the following: 4. Two mosquito nets and my little black flat air cushion with little flowers on it. 5. It is probably in the box by Giov’s [Giovanni’s] door. 6. I have given my usual one to Miss D. [Dunham], who is ill. 7. If by any chance the Muratore2 be about, am anxious to wall up the door behind curtain in Miss Goodban’s room, between hers & Kit’s. 8. Salut to Miss Goodban. So much love V. 1 On the address side, Matilda Paget has made sums (allowances for Eugene and for Violet). 2 In Italian in the text: Mason.

54. Matilda Paget September 15, [1892] 155

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Promontogno, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Promontogno Val Bregaglia 15 Sept. Dearest Mamma. We are just arrived here in Miss D’s [Dunham’s] carriage. 2. No pass into Italy this way, only an immense descent, the Engadine standing to Italy like the roof to an 8 story house. 3. Descent about an hour to this place; and already chestnuts here! 4. Fantastic prehistoric tale of Rosny1 for Eugene. 5. Tomorrow 8 p.m. Cernobbio. Much love V. 1 J.-H. Rosny was the penname of the Belgian-born writing duo Joseph Henri Honoré Boex (1856–1940), called J.-H. Rosny aîné, and his brother Séraphin Justin François Boex (1859– 1948), called J.-H. Rosny jeune, authors of “La Guerre du feu,” Je sais tout, nos. 54–57 (15 July to 15 October 1909), which Lee read in French and admired. They are considered the founding fathers of science fiction in the twentieth century. In her Commonplace Book VIII, entries dated Swinford, 21 August 1892, Lee analyzes Rosny’s Le Termite, roman de mœurs littéraires (Paris: Albert Savine, 1890) and Le Bilatéral, mœurs révolutionnaires parisiennes (Paris: Albert Savine, 1895). She expanded these notes into an essay, “Rosny and the French Analytical Novel,” written from 25 May to 15 June 1895 and published in Gospels of Anarchy (1908).

55. Matilda Paget September 17, [1892] Cernobbio, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College1 Cernobbio 17. Dearest Mamma Found parcel on arrival – a thousand thanks for kind promptness. 2. Parted from Miss Dunham at Promontogno halfway down to Italy. 3. Stayed 4 hours at Cadenabbia, lovely place on lake. 5. Arriving here found Laura Gropallo on the pier to meet us quite unexpected. 6. Unluckily lost my bag containing spunges, brushes, books & some MS. 7. May perhaps get it back. 8. Will you send to Grande Velocità2 to fetch a basket of plates I sent off yesterday. 9. I also posted some books to myself wh. needn’t be opened. Address, if at once c/o Esengrine Monza. Then to Contessa Suardi, Bergamo. So much love V. 1 Postcard. Illustration: Hotel Cernobbio Reine Olga, Cernobbio. Image: Lago di Como. 2 In Italian in the text: High speed.

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56. Matilda Paget September 19, [1892] Monza, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Monza Casa Esengrini S. Monday. Dearest Mamma. I was too depressed to write during the loss of my bag. 2. I got it back this morning after 3 days. 3. It contained MSS, cheque book, all my spunges, brushes & water proofs, cigarette case etc. 3. I enclose a cheque for Fioravanti and card with instructions. 4. In case the card get lost I want him to send amount in Italian notes c/o Count Suardi, Bergamo. 5. The lake was delightful, though the loss of my bag spoilt it. 6. We had meals with the nice lame Donna Vittoria Cima in a pavillion [pavilion] on the lake. 7. Laura Gropallo took us to Como. 8. Her cousin, Duchessa Visconti, asked us to lunch & dinner, but we couldn’t go. 9. arrived here last dinner. 10. Mme Esengrini a timid copy of Maria P. [Ponti Pasolini],1 very kind. 11. Beautiful house next the Kery’s Park 10. [12] Shall stay till day after tomorrow, address Contessa Suardi, Bergamo. 11. [13] Saw in the cathedral, in silver frames, some little common wicker hand baskets, like fi small fishbaskets in which Crusaders brought back relics; very pathetic. So much love. Yr V. 1 Ester Ponti Esengrini was Maria Ponti Pasolini’s sister.

57. Matilda Paget September 20, [1892] Monza, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Monza Tuesday Dearest Mamma – A thousand thanks for letters & postcards. 2. We stay here till tomorrow evening or next morning. 3. Then Bergamo. 3. [4] Yesterday afternoon drove to see a lot of villas. Again today 4. [5] Sent you yesterday cheque for Fioravanti. So much love V. 157

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58. Matilda Paget September 21, [1892] Monza, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Monza Wed. Dearest Mamma. We are staying on with these delightful kind people till Friday afternoon, when we go to Bergamo[.] 2. Yesterday went to see some charming relations of theirs & a lot of splendid villas. 3. Kit much better since being in this warmth. So much love 59. Matilda Paget September 22, [1892] Monza, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College1 Monza Thursday Dearest Mamma I am sending a heap of Engadine photos (Papa may care to see them) wh. [which] Miss Dunham gave Kit & me. They are too heavy for my box. 2. Wd Miss Goodban kindly collect Bas & Sutton’s Flower catalogues (under Narcissus) & xxx & address them to Mme Esengrini, Monza ? So much love V. 1 On the address side, Matilda Paget has written in pencil, “Present to Kit & Baby from Miss Dunham.”

60. Matilda Paget September 24, [1892] Bergamo, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Bergamo Sat. Dearest Mamma Do not write yet to Verona. We may have to give it up in order to get to Mme Marcello. I will write as soon as I have any certain address. We shall be here till Tuesday. So much love V. 158

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61. Matilda Paget September 24, [1892] Bergamo, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Bergamo Sat. Dearest Mamma Found here your card, Fioravanti’s packet, & sent on letters. 2. So pleased E’s [Eugene’s] drive. 3. Left Monza yesterday alone; only 2 hours to this place. 4. This is hilly, rather like Perugia or Siena. 5. May all the pieces of crockery be kept ? 6. Can’t Giovanni mend or get mended some plates ? 7. We stay till Tuesday afternoon when we go to Verona for a day address Poste Restante there 8. Countess Marcello has asked us to near Treviso – don’t know whether practicable[.] So much love V. 62. Matilda Paget September 27, [1892] Bergamo, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Bergamo Tuesday Dearest Mamma. Haven’t been able to give address because waiting for answers. 2. We leave tomorrow staying a few hours en roûte [en route] at Brescia, arriving at 6.45 p.m. at Contessa Marcello’s, Mogliano Veneto presso Treviso. 3. Anything by return of post will reach us there as we stay all Thursday, leaving Friday morning for Le Mura, Asolo Veneto, where we shall be a few days with Mrs Bronson. 4. Have had to suppress Verona for lack of time. 5. Enjoyed immensely this lovely mountainous country. 6. Received letters yesterday. So much love. Tell E. [Eugene] small good mushrooms 63. Matilda Paget September 29, [1892] Mogliano, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Mogliano near Treviso 159

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29 Sept. W I write only a line, having [a] very bad headache. 2. Mme Suardi accompanied us to Brescia, where we stayed some hours to see pictures. 3. arrived here at 7 p.m. Very nice. 4. This time lost trunks; but have recovered. 5. Tomorrow Mrs Bronson’s, Asolo Veneto. 6. I sent off a large box of Brescia Peach sweetmeat. 7. Eat what is in papers. 8. The rest [I] keep in [a] cool place but not damp. 9. Please buy lots of those pears. They are excellent to cook. So much love 64. Matilda Paget October 1, [1892] Asolo, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Le Mura. Asolo Veneto Dearest Mamma. Am still a little weak from sunstroke, but well. 2. Marcellos charming people. 3. Left yesterday morning & spent some time at Treviso & Lasnefranco, where Mrs B’s [Bronson’s] carriage fetched us. 4. This is delightful little town or village high up & cool. 5. We go to Venice Tuesday probably, but don’t know yet where address letters & Eugene’s carrying stretcher presso la Signora Bronson Casa Alvisi S. Moisè Veneti with da aspetta il il suo arrivo a Venezia1 So much love 1 In Italian in the text: expecting his arrival at Venice.

65. Matilda Paget October 4, [1892] Asolo, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College1 Asolo 4 Oct. Dearest Mamma, The Calcina has played us false, so we have taken rooms at the Beau Rivage, Riva dei Schiavoni. 2. This is the most beautiful place in the world. 3. The other day saw great thunder storm over the castle of Romano, Eccelino’s. 4. We shall be at Venice tomorrow afternoon. 5. Miss Dunham will probably be sending some crockery to replace what was broken. So much love V. 1 On the address side, Matilda Paget has written, “Baby, Kit / Beau Rivage / Rivage dei Schiavoni / Venezia.”

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66. Matilda Paget October 6, [1892] Venice, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Venice. Beau Rivage 6th Friday. Dearest Mamma. Have not yet been to see for letters & at Mrs B’s [Bronson’s] & the Calcina. 2. Arrived here yesterday evening. 3 hours 1/2 from Asolo. 3. Raining! 4. Hope to find E’s [Eugene’s] stretcher. 5. Will study step question. 7. [6] Hope to be with with [sic] 16th! 6. [7] Want to take Kit to Murri1 at Bologna as ear not yet satisfactory. 7. [8] So much love V. 1 Dr Murri: see Lee to Matilda Paget, October 26, 1890.

67. Matilda Paget October 9, [1892] Venice, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College [On the address side, Vernon Lee has written in pencil]: “Angelica for dead leaves/Preserved Peach/From Brescia sent off this day week” Sunday. Dearest Mamma. Have seen possible rooms so far as E. [Eugene] is concerned. 2. Only one groundfloor in Venice! 3. Yesterday saw Mrs Eden’s garden.1 4. Her experience in favour of pots & hardy annuals. 5. Lots of trellises stuck about. 6. Vines, bay trees, oleanders, tods of ivy, japanese medlars. 7. Pots, vegetables & hardy plants between. 8. E. [Eugene] must order at once 4 cartloads river sand. 9. and beg Angelica for dead leaves. Arrive the 16th evening Florence. So glad, I have money. Don’t send. V.

1 Carolyne Eden (1837–1928) and her husband, Frederic Eden (1828–1916), developed a famous garden, the “Garden of Eden,” on the island of the Guidecca in the lagoon of Venice beginning in 1884. They published A Garden of Eden (London: George Newnes, 1903).

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68. Eugene Lee-Hamilton2 [October 12, 1892] Montericco, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College [12 Oct. 92] Montericco Wednesday Dearest Eugene 1. I am obliged to use an envelope because of enclosed. 2. Lettiga1 went as passenger’s luggage. 3. So send for it at once. 4. The shape of Lettiga is impossible for Venice. 5. arrived here in time for dinner; very pleased. 6. I shall try and take Kit to Bologna to see Murri on Friday. 7. I see it’s impossible on the way to Florence. 8. If Kit is well we shall be back Sunday. 9. Beg Mamma to let us know if that day is inconvenient because of servants. 10. Beg Mamma to excuse my writing to her today. 11. I am tired myself, & Maria leaves me no time. Dearest love to Mamma. 12. Dress allowance for Sept. Oct. Nov. is already paid. So much love V. 2 See List of Correspondents: Eugene Lee-Hamilton. 1 In Italian in the text: Stretcher.

69. Matilda Paget October 14, [1892] Montericco, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Montericco Friday evening. Dearest Mamma. E. [Eugene] writes that our returning on a Sunday would be inconvenient. 2. I was hurrying back on his account, & will gladly stay till Monday 3. We are just back from long days at Bologna. 4. Murri says it’s only influenza effects hanging about Kit & will gradually pass off. 5. Kit has an idea for arranging Lettiga1 without altering shape. So much love V. 1 In Italian in the text: Stretcher.

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70. Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) October 22, 1892 Florence, Italy Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Paris IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE Oct [October] 22 1892 My dear Madame Blanc, Your letter reached me while I was moving about from place to place, and changing from the house of one acquaintance to another. After a little of this sort of life, I find I am no longer absolutely myself – in the literal sense I do not possess my soul in peace; and it is impossible to s f write to my true friends I ought to. So I put off answering you till I was back at home, and, in a way, back with myself. Dear friend, I am deeply touched by your reception of my banal, but very sincere words of affection, and by the way in which you tell me the grief & losses of your spirit. I knew that your life had begun to be full of pain & trials at an age when other women’s life has not begun at all; and the knowledge gave a greater weight to your incomparable kindly hopefulness in about men and things. Your the pain that has been in your life seemed a root, deeper and more vigorous, for your wisdom & gentleness; wisdom & gentleness which strike me as rather ephemereal when they exist in a person who has always been happy; an unjust feeling perhaps on my part. Of course it is perfectly impossible ever to know the resp comparative reality of one’s own troubles and of those of others; but I think I am right in imagining that my own life has been singularly without grief or troubles; those that have come to me being either unreal compared to those of others, or perceived by a temper too abstract to feel realities very strongly. The result of this knowledge has been to make me feel a certain shyness, as of one uninitiated, in the presence of such of my friends as have had real griefs: I remember when I was young and stupid, treating their griefs, which were the very nerve & muscle of them, as things easily to be shifted; and the recollection of such odious presumptuous ignorance makes me afraid to touch with unskilled fingers the wounds to of which I have myself so little experience. On the whole it is this consciousness of not possessing the real experience of life which keeps me of from any fresh attempt at the novel; and it is this which makes me very proud that you should mention any tiren pain you may have to me. So far from it being wonderful that you should awaken affection in a woman of my age (but you forget I am not young, either) it is rather wonderful to me that a I, who have 163

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remained very undeveloped on certain sides of my character, should have any interest, save a purely intellectual one for a woman like you. Kit kept getting worse and worse in England, & we didn’t know what to do, when a very rich young American lady, whom we scarcely knew, hearing of Kit’s illness, asked us to stay with her at St Moritz – which neither of us could have afforded staying at, as it is one of the most expensive places in the world. Three weeks in that wonderful air quite pulled Kit round, and she has mended quite quickly in the course of a month’s visiting in North Italy. She has accepted to be my brother’s secretary for six months; which makes it possible to her pride to stay with us as we wish her. I fancy her illness ‸condition‸ was not improved by the very unexpected news that a child xx has been born of her father’s wretched marriage; a child who is evidently a pauper. I think you will like to think of the great service thus rendered to us by an almost complete stranger; an act of generosity the more charming in a ver mere girl, to whom money troubles are a mere word. I believe my new book of stories is out.1 I will send it to you. I find my writings no longer pay in England, & I am rather embarrassed how to make money enough to travel. I sometimes think of writing in French or for France again; but there is nothing to replace Les Lettres et les Arts. I have recently read a disgusting story by Rosny, L’Immolation, & a very fine one, Les Xipherus.2 Kit would send her love if she knew I was writing. Do tell me you could not come to us this winter ? Yours afftely V. Paget

1 The book was praised by Mary Darmesteter. In a long warm-hearted letter to “Dearest Vernon” addressed from 18, Bd de Latour-Maubourg (Paris), and dated 9 December 1892, recalling her fond memories of Lee’s Tuscan environment and regretting Lee’s missed visit because the latter “did not know [her] address,” Mary Darmesteter wrote, Luckily I have got both your letter and your book without delay – and remember, “Collège de France” is always a safe & sure direction! / I have been meaning to unite with you for ages, but I have been much troubled with my eyes. . . . How I wish you could come stalking in, in your famous white ulster, a bouquet of straw & withered plane leaves in your arms (there are no other flowers out of doors in this snowy weather and I can’t imagine you without your arms full of weeds of some sort) – we would order the tea & set round the woodfire in my silvery, shimmering, summary little parlour – and talk, talk, talk of no end of things. / . . . I often think of your kind mother, of Eugène and you all. It is an excellent plan for Miss Thomson to be Eugène’s secretary: a great consolation for him, & for her a good practical reason for making her real life with you. . . . / I want to talk to you about Madame Krasinska. I knew her before, but I like her more and more. She is certainly the pearl of your Etui de nacre [In French in the text: Mother-of-pearl casket]; because she is not only as delicately, as brilliantly portrayed as a portrait of Sargent – but she enshrines a moral idea worthy of dear old Bishop Berkeley. Lady Tal, which you have placed first, seems

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 to me the least satisfactory – but that is perhaps because the woman’s person is so repugnant to me – a coarse insolent brass pitcher your poor pettifogging Marian takes for silver-gilt. – Val Flodden is a very superior creature, in real life it would be she, not the odious Atalanta, who would renounce the vices of Vanitas. – How well you have described the commonplace English country house – life – you have made it as delicate & brilliant as an xxx & Watteau &, while altering nothing, have managed to suggest to your reader that that also is the life of an Ancien Régime unconscious of a xxx Revolution ahead. (Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Anglais 243, Correspondance de Mary Robinson IV, Lettres de Mary Robinson à Vernon Lee (Violet Paget) 1887–1933, 247ff, ff. 23 to 28)

In the same, letter. Mary Darmesteter also wrote, I am going to send you one of my most interesting friends – M. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu. I expect you have read his Russia [La France, la Russie et l’Europe [(Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1888)] & his series on antisemitism in the Revue des Deux Mondes. He is not only a brilliant, an acute, but a scrupulously conscientious mind. His series and lectures on antisemitism were collected in his seminal book Les Juifs et l’antisémitisme; Israël chez les nations (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1893). 2 The short story “Les Xipéhuz,” by J.-H. Rosny aîné, published in the collection L’Immolation (Paris: Albert Savine, 1888), is considered to be one of the first science fiction stories.

1893 1. Carlo Placci January 3, 1893 Florence, Italy Biblioteca Marucelliana, Carteggio Placci, 017–028 My dear Charlino, I am staying in this morning, & feel impelled to write to you about yr story,1 for I see that I was unable last night to make my impressions clear to myself; & therefore must have given you bad advice. Bad in the sense of wrong values. I laid too much stress upon construction, style, in a actual writing, because I did not speak of the rest. I think a novel or tale may live entirely through intelligence & style, that is to say, give a great deal of pleasure. But it is the pleasure obtainable from a proposition of Euclid plus the pleasure obtainable from a well made saddle or portmanteau, at best plus the pleasure obtainable from a Paris bonnet. And, when the human subject enters into play, higher, wider, warmer, more lasting satisfaction than these can be obtained; & when they are obtained, we are in the presence of a great novelist, as distinguished from a great observer & analyser, & a clever craftsman or artist. I ask myself about your Nozze d’Argento: why does Povèra Marchesa strike me as distinguished, & this one as in a sort of way common ? Povera Marchesa contains less observation, it is about people aesthetically less 165

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graceful, & (mainly) morally quite as graceless. Yet Povera Marchesa is is well bred, do you understand ? I think the difference lies in the fact that Povera Marchesa has a moral atmosphere, and Nozze d’Argento has none. When one ends P. M. one feels that one has been in contact with a rather exceptional & charming human being (one doesn’t require to feel distinctly that this is the author) whereas with N. d’A. one has merely been pelted with a lot of facts, collected & thrown at one without a human agency. Now I feel sure that the human being – at least the human being who is sensitive and sympathetic enough to make a good novel reader – requires the presence of human feeling, of a sort of synthetic pervading impression, quite as much as the aesthetic creature requires schemes of colours & arrangements of line. Mere facts, however correct, are vulgar, unless perceived in the philosophically or sympathetically. You will answer that life is never vulgar: Nor is it. But life is exactly not a heap of facts; it is, quite as much, a projection of interests – rational, sympathetic (i.e. moral) or aesthetic on the part of him who perceives it. It is this lack of interest, of scheme, atmosphere, call it what you like, which makes N. d’A. common; it is this lack of tenderness which gives a lack of tenderness, of gentleness, of sternness, irony, bitterness, for any of these are human ways of viewing life. The Chartreuse de Parme is xxx carried along by a great breath of admiration & cordiality on the author’s part; Rouge et Noir lives in his sense of hopelessness & is ironically felt a sadness; Tolstoy’s & Bjornson’s2 novels are made into wholes by love, tenderness, indulgence or fervent hopefulness. Balzac’s novels are mainly heaps of facts, pigeonholed, neat heaps, but heaps all the same, & they leave an intolerable sense of caddishness, of repulsion to this broker’s intrusion on life. All this is utterly remote from any conception of the novel as a predica.3 We don’t want from our inherent constitution, want to be preached at, on the contrary, we mostly hate it; but being human creatures, we we require the contact of other human beings. As distinguished from facts about human beings. In N. d’A. I feel sure you could not have dwelt for instance on the odious moment of the husband pulling off his clothes in the way you did, merely repulsively, if you had felt chivalrously to the heroine. But you didn’t feel chivalrously towards her; you merely recognised her as phenomenon A.B. I don’t mean that you need necessarily have felt chivalrously; you might have felt cynically; but you ought to have felt something.4 This leads me to synthesise what I have for some time felt vaguely about you, if you will allow me to say so, my dear Carlo. You cannot yet be a good or tolerable novelist xxx xxxx because you b still look upon life as so much material, as something for you to employ, as distinguished from something to employ you, to fill your heart and mind with some problems. It is the emotional perception of the great ?s and x of existence which makes the great novelist. Now you seem to me never to let yourself go to life. You find it interesting; but not absorbing. I think the zerstreutkeit [zerstreut keit]5 of your life, your absence of competition with 166

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struggle, your cosmopolitanism, your constant moving about, your constantly seeking and surrendering to new impressions and influences, all that makes you intelligent and lively, is a great danger for you. Your greatest danger is a tendency to say this or that bores me. It is when you have rooted out of yourself the last traces of dilettantism that you will become a true novelist, a novelist for people who live and feel, not for dilettantes. Why was Povera Marchesa good ? Because in it one felt the warmth of your kind spirit, of all the exquisite kindness & generosity of your family. That little story has, at ‸as‸ it were, a pe moral pedigree; it roots deep somewhere in a reality, in one of the greatest & most important of all realities; human kindness. Nozze d’Argento, like the Furto, roots nowhere; t’is a thing stuck into a heap of casual observations. I think, when all is said & done, that we shall one day discover that even in aesthetic matters, all sense of distinction, of nobility, is due to the presence of some moral, human value’s ca lovingness, austerity, even lesser moral qualities like patience, self control, carefulness. Without these we remain, & shall remain, in the chilly world of mere line & curve & colour; or (in literature) in the dreadful desert of mere barren fact. All this is, of course, flying in the face of the modern co conception of Art for Art’s sake. But Art for art’s sake is like saying food for food’s sake; t’is a cutting down of the problem, making it manageable for certain manipulations, but leaving out the essential. The essential about food is man’s need for of a sustenance; the essential about art is man’s soul, and the soul’s clamouring for greater clearness, greater unity, greater moral warmth than reality supplies it with.6 Forgive this immense & perhaps most mystical letter, in consideration of the friendship & belief in you of Yr affly V.P.

1 Carlo Placci’s short story Nozze d’Argento [Silver Wedding]. 2 Norwegian novelist, playwright and poet Bjørnstjerne Martinius Bjørnson (1832–1910), one of the greatest novelists of Norway, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1903. Like Zola, he was a staunch defender of Alfred Dreyfus. According to her Commonplace Book VI, dated 25 February 1891 to 14 January 1892, Lee read Bjørnson’s novel In God’s Way (Edmund Gosse [ed.], trans. Elizabeth Carmichael [London: William Heinemann, 1891]), either when it was issued monthly beginning in February 1890 or in the book published by William Heinemann in 1891. In the same notebook, she also records reading Leo Tolstoy’s short story “Marchez tant que vous avez la lumière” [“Ходите в свете, пока есть свет”], published in 1891 in tome XIII of his Oeuvres complètes du Comte Léon Tolstoï (Paris: P.V. Stock, 1902–1923), “Les Fruits de la science,” “Ivan l’imbécile,” among many others. 3 In Italian in the text: a sermon. 4 Compare with Mary Darmesteter: I received the other day an interesting novel by Carlo Placci – It really interested me. One of my husband’s pupils did the same thing – that mixture of hypochondria, scruple, & the attraction of the Alps is very subtle, very loving & very well rendered – I don’t think Paul Desjardins reads Italian but I will talk to him about the book & offer it to him – Also it came to me in a thousand pieces after the use of Italian brochures, &

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 doesn’t look so tempting as it is. Please tell all this to Carlino – because I can write so little. (Letter to Vernon Lee, 9 December 1892, f. 27r. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Anglais 243, Correspondance de Mary Robinson IV, Lettres de Mary Robinson à Vernon Lee (Violet Paget) 1887–1933) 5 In German in the text: your disjointed, rambling life. 6 See Lee’s “The Use of the Soul” in Althea.

2. Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) January 4, 1893 Florence, Italy Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Paris IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE January 4 1893 My dear Madame Blanc, I have again to thank you for much more kindness than I should ever ask of anyone; & which, freely given by a busy woman like you, is doubly precious. Let me answer you. I should be too delighted if Vanitas could be translated into French, and not by that awful Bernard-Derosne, who evidently is a translation agent or sweater, for the same human being cannot have produced the quite tolerable pages and the incredible strings of nonsense which diversified (before I corrected them) the French Hauntings. Vanitas I can make over to whomever I choose; and how willingly to anyone you should choose! Only – for of course there is an only – Monsieur Masson’s translation of Lady Tal, which originally appeared in Les Lettres et les arts, is so absolutely perfect, that I should have to make use of it, if he would give it me.1 A Worldly Woman must be difficult to translate, as, like Lady Tal, its it requires a complete habit of the fashionable jargon of the hour to for the dialogue – in fact, the language of Gyp.2 I should be too proud and pleased to write in the Revue; and if M. Buloz will have it, will give him a story – but in English – whenever an idea for a story comes to me. And there is the difficulty. None of my detractors certainly, who abuse me for my over facility; and none of my friends, I really think, can guess how terribly difficult it is for me to write anything that can be published. My brain is so décousu3 since my illness – (or perhaps since my illness I recognise how incapable of effort it has always been) that I have immense difficulty in following out & defining any literary idea, as distinguished from a mere thought suggested by a book or an event; so that everything remains chaos and projects merely; I have ideas for two 168

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or three stories knocking about, but every time I look at them carefully, something, something which means organic life, a sort of fecundating cell, is missing. And my mode of life, my isolation from other people who work, my surrounding of dear friends who are utterly without mental or artistic discipline, who think I ought to help them, and never guess that I may want help myself, does not make things easier. I don’t know why I bore you with these lamentations, dear Madame Blanc, except that you are kind; and that I should benefit enormously by being in your company if only for a month – the month you are always promising us & never giving! Bene When I think of my literary future, I am very sad; but, being of a cheerful nature, & enjoying life when I am well quite enough, I think of it very little. Perhaps too little? I suppose one has duties towards one’s own faculties; and that the absence of ambition may tempt one to neglect some. It is very difficult. On one the one hand, I feel I am right in holding aloof from the Scramble of literary production, in writing only to please myself & in training myself to be difficult to please; I think I am right in considering that literature, like all life, should xx aim only after essentials, that its sweetness, dignity and usefulness depend upon t a rigorous refusal to do or say things except because they one’s better soul insists on doing them. On the other hand I see that this leads to a dangerous epicureanism, to becoming a mere Amiel, incapable of struggling with those larger forms and concatenations in which seem necessary for conveying one’s impressions & feelings to others; and, as a matter of fact, the writing of an article, a dialogue is becoming daily more wearisome to me, the writing of a story more apparently impossible, all large work seems fatally full of w weakness & vulgarity (I mean my own) and I am able to enjoy only writing down stray thoughts in my note book. These thoughts of course tend to converge, & by making my reading methodical, they can be made to converge still further, so that can sew them together tant bien que mal.4 But that is not real form. The question is, shall I let myself go to my Amiel nature, deciding that only the spontaneous is good; or shall I struggle at a novel, an essay, deciding that effort is always necessary? But effort means strength, and I have so little! And as to stories, I feel daily more & more that life is a mystery to me, that I have never lived; & that my most intimate friends are walking riddles. Dear Mme Blanc, forgive this long epistle, which, although it may bore you, is a sign of the affection of yr grateful friend V. P. Kit receives yr remembrance with pleasure & honour. She is well.

1 “Lady Tal” was first published in Frédéric Masson’s French translation as “Deux romans” in les Lettres et les Arts, 12 (1889), richly illustrated by Albert Lynch. See Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II. 2 Playwright, novelist, journalist and painter Sibylle Riquetti de Mirabeau (1849–1932), Countess Roger de Martel de Janville after her marriage, was Mirabeau’s great-grandniece, better-known

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 under her penname “Gyp.” “Her deliberately ungendered nom-de-plume was taken from Jip, Dora’s dog in David Copperfield. Belloc 1943, p. 218” (Rose, Oscar Wilde’s Elegant Republic, 2015, p. 470, note 667). A prolific, popular author, she contributed articles in La Vie parisienne and the Revue des Deux Mondes, and 120 novels, the first in 1880, most of them successful owing to her sense of rhythm and repartee. At this time, she had published L’Éducation d’un prince (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1890), Une passionette (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1891), Ohé! la grande vie (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1891), and Une élection à Tigre-sur-mer (Paris: Edition du Gaulois, 1890). Her famous salon in Neuilly drew figures like Robert de Montesquiou, Marcel Proust, Edgar Degas, Maurice Barrès, Anatole France, Paul Valéry and Alphonse Daudet. One of her friends was Virginie Gautreau, née Avégno, whose portrait John Singer Sargent painted as “Madame X.” See also Willa Z. Silverman, Gyp: The Notorious Life of Gyp, Right-Wing Anarchist in Fin-de-Siècle France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). 3 In French in the text: disjointed. 4 In French in the text: somehow.

3. Carlo Placci January 9, [1893]1 Florence, Italy Biblioteca Marucelliana, Carteggio Placci, 001–005 IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE My dear Carlo, I want to tell you how delighted I am with yr Convalescenza. It is what I knew you would feel & write, some day: it is full of the higher, mature perception which is, after all, the only fruitful one in literature, a thing not studied, but felt and the unflinching, even crude truthfulness makes this all the more conspicuous. There is something very unusual in the idealism, the peculiar religious quality arising out of this most uncompromising truthfulness; & I find in the latter part some of the charm we experience in meeting a faux brutal, the immense relief that there is no sensiblerie & no asking for impossibilities. I should like to talk the thing over with you, because I suspect it would could be improved in construction: at present it is a little heterogeneous, & the Reader, having been given no hint of the author’s view which constitutes gives unity to the whole thing, is apt to feel that stadio2 3° may after all be succeeded by stadio 4°, by something equally disconnected. Also, I think that, as it is, after all, not absolutely realistic (for the épisode of the listening mother & the son’s speeches (in themselves admirable) are evidently there to point the moral & adorn the tale, it requires something more subjective, essaylike, in fact an indication of the Writer’s personality, to be indicated as enveloping it all from the first. I think that speech of the son is so good; & the idea of the terrible convalescence of the Poor is perfectly new to me. I cannot help thinking that you may have drawn far more interesting field before you than the mere objective novel, which has, I think, absorbed all the talent & time it deserved, & perhaps more. 170

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With a more intellectual philosophy, more intellectual because science is giving a basis such as it never had before to our spiritual sides, some new form must arise. I thought of your Poors as I read Bleak House last night to my mother when she was very bad – for she had a bad fit again & the amusement seemed to relieve her. If the Ranee3 lunches with you, ask me. Yr afft V.P. 1 As the letterhead indicates Il Palmerino, to which the Pagets moved in 1889, the date (“before Baldwin” [i.e. before 1886], footnote 39) is wrong (F. Billiani and S. Evangelista, “Carlo Placci and Vernon Lee: The Aesthetics and Ethics of Cosmopolitanism in Fin-de-Siècle Florence,” Comparative Critical Studies, 10, no. 2 (June 2013), pp. 141–161. 2 In Italian in the text: stage. 3 Ranee of Sarawak (Margaret Brooke; 1849–1936), a longtime friend of Lee’s. She was the wife of Sir Charles Brooke, maharajah of Borneo (1829–1917).

4. Matilda Paget January 31, 1893 Nervi, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Nervi. Tuesday morning The journey was long & rather tiring, but I feel better for the change of air. It is like spring here, warm, beautiful. Miss Sellers would like to come to us for 2 nights on her way to Rome after our return. So much love V. 5. Matilda Paget February 2, 1893 Nervi, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Postcard: Italy, Mrs Paget, II Palmerino, Maiano, Firenze Nervi – Thursday Dearest Mamma Many thanks for letters. It is delightfully warm here, even when it rains. Today magnificent sun. Yesterday I finished my dialogue for Harris. It is the first fruit of all that wearisome political economy reading, so I am very pleased.1 Would Miss Goodban kindly find Walden by Thoreau2 a small red book in the drawing room among the Henry Jameses & send it to Miss Krahnstover at Mrs French’s – So much love V.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 1 “A May-Day Dialogue: Economic, Not Pastoral,” Part I, Contemporary Review, 63 (May 1893), pp. 650–662; Part II, Contemporary Review, 64 (July 1893), pp. 90–107, rpt. in Althea (1894) as “About the Social Question.” 2 Henry David Thoreau’s Walden: Or, Life in the Woods (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1854) was his treatise on transcendental philosophy. It gives his observations living in relative isolation on Walden Pond in Massachusetts.

6. Matilda Paget February 5, [1893] Nervi, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Nervi. Sunday. Dearest Mamma Yesterday we went to Genoa; &, what with correcting my article, I missed the post. Mme Henraux, Placci’s x sister, has very kindly asked us to stay in her empty house at Serravezza on our way home, to see the Carrara marble works, which interest me very much. So we shall go there on Wednesday & be home at Florence I think Saturday. Address Casa Henraux/ Serravezza, Toscana. So much love Yr V. 7. Matilda Paget February 6, [1893] Nervi, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Nervi – Monday. Dearest Mamma. So delighted Papa is better. Eugene must not mind being bad, tho’ I am most sorry he should be, because Dr Erb told me it was impossible for him now to be ever permanently the worse for a relapse, as it is now a mere matter of hyperaesthesia. Miss Sellers wants to come for 3 days from Sunday morning next. We shall be back at Florence Saturday afternoon for dinner. I sent off my dialogue to Harris this morning. This place has made me quite strong. So much love V. 8. Matilda Paget February 28, [1893] Rome, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College

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Palazzo Sciarra. Tuesday morning. I arrived not at all tired & found M. [Maria] & her sister at the station. The latest news of Miss A.T. [Anstruther-Thomson]1 at 7 pm yesterday was bad. I am going to see this morning. So much love V. 1 Jean St Clair Anstruther was the sister of John Anstruther-Thomson, Clementina Anstruther-Thomson’s father. She died on 28 February 1893 and was buried in the non-Catholic cemetery in Rome. Kit and Lee visited the tomb on 4 March, and Lee wrote, I was right, I think, when I wrote the other day that it would be easier for us to face the thought of danger, death, change, here in Rome than elsewhere. K. told me she felt it when we met at the Cemetery at her poor old aunt’s grave. To die here might seem, one would think, more like re-entering into the world’s outer existence, returning, as Epictetus has it, where one is wanted. The cypresses of the graveyard, there under the city walls, among the ruins, do not seem to unite folk with the terrible unity Death, so much as with the everlasting life of the centuries. (4 March 1893, see Alexander Booth, Friends of the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome Newsletter, winter 2011, p. 3. https://www. cemeteryrome.it/press/webnewsletter-eng/ no17-2011.pdf)

9. Matilda Paget February 29, [1893] Rome, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Tuesday noon. Poor Miss A.T. [Anstruther-Thomson] died last night. I have seen Kit. She is very busy, sad & fagged. She had become very much attached to her aunt, who was very brave & calm. So much love V. 10. Matilda Paget March 3, [1893] Rome, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Friday. Dearest Mamma. Many thanks for the letters sent out & for E’s [Eugene’s] as well as for yr kind card # I went to Miss J. A.T. [Anstruther-Thomson’s] funeral, altho’ Kit forbade it. Kit had got greatly attached to her. Oddly enough it appears this aunt

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had previously made up her mind to see more of Kit, & had, by an odd will, left her a little money. The business will keep her here for a little while yet, as she has to settle things for the chief heir. I have called on Maria G. [Gamba]. So much love Please, please; send me my ombrella da sole1 It is in my armoire2 1 In Italian in the text: sun umbrella. 2 In French in the text: cupboard.

11. Matilda Paget March 6, [1893] Rome, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Palazzo Sciarra. Dearest Mamma. This is a great disappointment about Harris; it means £15 less than I counted on. Please send me the MS. at once; there I am most vexed at having lost even 2 days. Kit is entirely in the hands of lawyers & can fix nothing. E. [Eugene] must get someone for May at all events. But I will be back by the 15th. Only I am no use. E. [Eugene] must be independent of Kit. Shall I write Dorothy Blomfield for him for May ? So much love 12. Matilda Paget March 7, [1893] Rome, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College2 IL PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE. Dearest Mamma I am very anxious you should explain to Eugene that Kit cannot fix the day of her return. I don’t understand how or why, but she is [in] business nearly the whole day long, most often unable to leave the house because of lawyers, experts & sales or auctioneers w for whom she has to wait. All the old lady’s furniture, collections & books must be sold off before Kit can leave, & it is impossible to say the exact day when that can be done, as the auctioneers are so busy. Poor Kit is leading a 174

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dog’s life. She may have finished off by the end of next week, but she may quite as probably not have done so. Of course if Eugene consent to use me as secretary I will be delighted to return the day Miss G. [Goodban] leaves. But – and this is what seems to me important – if I am of no use, Eugene had better take this opportunity perhaps of trying for a week anybody who may be coming later. It would have been much better if Miss Nebel had been tried beforehand! Kit will not be able to remain indefinitely, as she has business in England, and then Eugene may be glad enough to have found someone. Moreover, I hear that Lady Campbell, who has been like a mother to Kit, is very, very ill. Who knows whether Kit may not have to go off to her ? All this is to urge Eugene to come into communication with Miss Chittenden1 or anyone else who may find him a secretary. Kit is wretchedly sorry to have to disappoint Eugene. So much love Yrs V. Shall we invite Dorothy Blomfield to be E’s [Eugene’s] secretary in May ? Not that I have any reason to suppose that she wd or could accept. 2 In Matilda Paget’s hand, at the top of Lee’s letter: “Tuesday – Received Wednesday Florence March 8.” 1 She may be Caroline E. Chittenden, cited for the year 1893: “For Foochow, China, Miss C. E. Chittenden of Oberlin embarked that month from San Francisco, to sustain Miss Newton and Miss Garretson in the growing work of their prosperous school” (S.J. Humphrey [ed.], Three Decades of Woman’s Work for Woman, 1868–1898 [Chicago, IL: The Woman’s Board of Missions of the Interior, 1898], p. 72).

13. Matilda Paget March 8, [1893] Rome, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Po [Palazzo] Sciarra Wed. I have written to D. [Dorothy] Blomfield about being secretary. Kit wants to stay on longer at the Palmerino to make up for lost time. Don’t refuse her, she might be xx hurt. She has settled with the auctioneer, so she very likely may be ready before the 20th. But a trial week with someone might be organised, as proposed. So much love V. 14. Matilda Paget March 9, [1893] Rome, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 175

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Thursday. 9th March Dearest Mamma. I have answered E. [Eugene] I am well, & very busy. I dined the night before last with the Stillmans. Aïdé was there, so pleasant. Last night there was a big dinner here, the Russian Amb. [Ambassador], Martini, the Venosas, Primoli. Tomorrow I lunch with M. Gamba. We are going to the meet [meeting] this morning. I ride with Maria on Saturday. How is Papa ? You never tell me a word ? So much love to him V. 15. Matilda Paget March 10, [1893] Rome, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Friday evening 10 March Dearest Mama. The sale is fixed for Friday & Sat. of next week, so Kit thinks she will be able to come with me on the following Monday ‸(20th)‸. I shall come at any rate the 20th So much love V. 16. Matilda Paget March 12, [1893] Rome, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Sunday. Dearest Mamma. Kit was so grateful for yr message. She hopes to be ready Monday. Maria wants to give her a ride on one of her horses, which might cure her sore throat etc. So will you be so very kind as to send at once Kit’s habits1 & boots. I am writing to Rosa about it. Send them to me. Yesterday I had a delightful ride with Maria. Yrs V. 1

Lee had written “habits,” then crossed out the plural.

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17. Matilda Paget [March 13, 1893] Rome, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Monday [13th March ’93] Dearest Mamma Miss Sellers’ address is 152 Via Rassella Rome. Kit’s auctioneer has put her off another day. But she hopes to come Tuesday night or Wednesday. I shall come this day week. So much love V. 18. Matilda Paget March 16, 1893 Rome, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Thursday. Dearest Mamma It seems pretty certain that Kit will return on Tuesday, I on Monday. The Queen seems to wish to see me, but I don’t know whether it will be possible to arrange it, as I have no clothes, among other difficulties. I have met here a young Css Gleichen, a sculptor, nice. Dorothy Blomfield is going to Canada but is most anxious to come another year. So much love. V 19. Matilda Paget March 18, 1893 Rome, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College IL PALMERINO, MAIANO, FLORENCE Saturday

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Dearest Mamma, Will you have me fetched at the station Monday evening at 9? Roman train? Kit will not be able to come till Wednesday, as the auctioneer has played her false. I think it is a good idea to try Miss Jordan, of whom I have heard with so much pleasure, but she must not be given Kit’s room as Kit may return Tuesday. Also I think it is a mistake to make a trial while Kit & I are in the house. It would not be a trial, for it would give a totally wrong impression. If you had let me know earlier I might have stayed away longer. I think I would make the trial just before Kit’s departure & immediately after it, as like that Miss J. would not be interfered with & would get a better idea. Remember that we must ask Bella Duffy to come for a few days & also Emily Sargent, even if neither can come. After all the Sargents’ hospitality it would be shocking not to ask Emily. To resume. I think I should make May the trial for the Summer, not make a trial now for May. I wrote Eugene that Dorothy Blomfield cannot come. I shall be delighted to read to Eugene until Kit’s return. The sale has been going on for two days, so it must be over by Monday. Kit has been put to very great expenses by this business, & will not get anything for about a year (why I cannot conceive) so do not throw cold water on her staying longer with us than had been settled upon. For lack of time we have given up going to the Queen; none of Maria’s clothes fitted me, & I could not have got any made by in time. Do not forward any more letters. I am so happy to hear that Papa seems all right. I am very weary, having been at a party at Pss Venosa’s last night. So much love V. Kit’s address is now: Albergo Campidoglio Corso My trunk can go on the back of the cart; but if you could send the big carriage after your own drive it might be more convenient. No contadino required [At the back of the enveloppe, Vernon Lee has written:] Maria says she can keep me a day or two longer. Till Wednesday evening if you would like it. But I shall come Monday unless you telegraph the contrary. 20. Matilda Paget March 21, 1893 Rome, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 21st March ’93 178

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Dearest Mama In case my card should not have reached you I write to say that both Kit & I are arriving tomorrow at 9. p.m. By all means send my cart if more convenient, but the contadino must come with his cart also for the luggage. So much love V. 21. Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) March 25, 1893 Florence, Italy Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Paris IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE March 25 1893 My dear Madame Blanc, Is there a probability of your being in Paris in the first fortnight or three weeks of June? I want, if I can, to come then; but if you were away, half of my inducement would be away also. I have just returned from Rome. Miss Anstruther-Thomson, who is now back with us, was called suddenly to Rome to nurse an old aunt of hers. The poor old lady died almost immediately, but Kit had to remain a long time doing tiresome & melancholy business: writing to friends, destroying old letters & photographs, selling furniture & squabbling with proprietors and auctioneers, not to speak of the heirs, who apparently sent contradictory directions every other day. I took the opportunity of being in Rome too, with my friends, and fell more entirely under Rome’s charm than I have ever done since my childhood, when Rome was my passion. B Being in a capital, even so small & dead a one as Rome, and seeing my friends’ friends, has brought home to me with redoubled strength what I have long been suspecting, that life here in the country, though admirable for reading & writing, and quite advisable to my mind, is having a very bad effect on me; and that I must make an effort to come into contact with the world and the world of letters to meet people who ‸will not‸ out of friendship or weakness, will not merely allow me to pontificate, to play cock cock of the walk as I do here. I must meet people who instead of listening to me, will make me listen. I daresay you will feel inclined, at first, to laugh at this confession of mine; but really it is not an exaggeration. It is this very strong feeling which makes me wish to come to Paris. I think that, in a short time, I could get much more intellectual 179

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contact in Paris than in London. In fact, I find it very difficult to get any in England, either because English people do not like me, or because English people are too shy to talk about the things they care about. My idea, if I have money enough, would be to go to Paris at the beginning of June, to the little hotel Kit goes to. But I should be alone, as Kit will have to be in England by that time. And I feel that if you were in Paris, besides the immense pleasure and profit of seeing you, I should feel as less alone. And you can’t imagine how frightened I am, since my illness, of the sensation of being alone. Dear Madame Blanc, if it does not bore you, will you tell me a little about your plans? I am yr affte friend V. Paget 22. Enrico Nencioni May 7, 1893 Florence, Italy Biblioteca Marucelliana, Carteggio Nencioni I 12.1–5_08–12.1–5_10 [The original of this letter is in Italian] IL PALMERINO, MAIANO, FLORENCE 7 maggio Caro Nencioni, Ho saputo dal giornale che Lei, caro amico, è stato vittima di una di quelle brutalità che (solo forse in Firenze) cerca impedire. Non faccio il torto nè a Lei nè a me di farle delle condoleanze: [sic] pur troppo si conosce che l’ignoranza e la brutalità dei poveri dev’essere il risultato dell’ignoranza e della brutalità – brutalità morale se non fisica – di ricchi, anzi è maraviglia [sic] che l’effetto sia tanto minore alla della causa. Ma voglio sperare che questo doloroso incidente non ha abbia avuto cattivo risultato per i suoi nervi; e poi vorrei che sapesse che appena seppi la cosa, ne sentì accendere vieppiù la vecchia mia ammirazione e amicizia per Lei. Addio, cerchi a venire a trovarmi un giorno. O vuole che facciamo un giro in legno? Sua aff. V. Paget 23. Enrico Nencioni May 7, 1893 Florence, Italy1 180

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Biblioteca Marucelliana, Carteggio Nencioni I 12.1–5_08–12.1–5_10 [The original of this letter is in Italian] IL PALMERINO, MAIANO, FLORENCE MAY 7 Dear Nencioni, I learned yesterday from the newspaper that you, dear friend, were a victim of one of those brutalities that (perhaps only in Florence) you are trying to prevent. I will not do injustice to neither you nor myself to send condolences: unfortunately it is known that the ignorance and brutality of the poor must be a result of the ignorance and brutality – moral brutality if not physical – of the rich. In fact it is a miracle that the effect is so much less to than the cause. But I want to hope that this painful incident did not ha have a bad outcome for your nerves; and also I would like you to know that as soon as I heard of the thing, I felt rising in me all the more my old admiration and friendship for you. Good-bye, come to find me one day. Or do you want us to make a trip in the carriage? Yours affectionately, V. Paget] 1 Addressed: Prof. Enrico Nencioni / 17 via delle Caldaie / Città.

24. Matilda Paget June 8, [1893] Ashford, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Swinford, Ashford. Thursday evening Just arrived after a good & easy journey from Amiens. The night journey over the Gothard was also very good. But yesterday was appallingly long & tiring. Miss S. [Sargent?] & friend elected to go on, so I stayed at Amiens over night & had a very pleasant morning in the cathedral. My hosts are out, having had no notion of the hour of my train. So much love V. 25. Matilda Paget June 9, [1893] Ashford, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Friday Swinford June 9. 181

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Dearest Mamma – Only to say that I am leaving this day week Friday and going then till Monday 19th to Mrs Moffatt’s, Stanly [Stanley] Lodge Muswell Hill London N. On the 19. Till 28 to c/o Miss Price Pembroke College Oxford. I am feeling very much better. Please tell me how E. is. So much love. V. 26. Matilda Paget June 11, [1893] Ashford, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Swinford – Sunday June 11 Dearest Mama – Only to say that I am well, really very well & to ask for news of you all. The letter you enclosed was from Pratesi. I am very happy he has received the place of Provveditore1 at Belluno. It means much less work, no teaching & a decent salary. So much love V. Tell me about the garden 1 In Italian in the text: Superintendent.

27. Matilda Paget June 14, [1893] Ashford, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Swinford Wed. 14 June Dearest Mamma, I have forwarded Miss S’s [Sargent’s?] letter. Am much distressed at E’s [Eugene’s] health. Kit is at Charleton. 182

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If you have dry weather I hope the mattress washing1 will be taken in hand. Do tell me about the garden. No news! Address now to Oxford. So much love V. 1 Irene Cooper Willis reads (wrongly) “the mattress & washing.”

28. Matilda Paget June 17, [1893] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Muswell Hill. Sat. 17 June Dearest Mamma. Yr dear card came this morning. Yes, I got all yours at Swinford, many thanks. Kit has, to my vexation, returned to town two days earlier, & is coming here tomorrow to see me. I came up early yesterday from Ashford, & Mrs Moffatt very kindly met me at Charing X. I did some shopping in Regent Street & came up here – an hour from the Gt Northern Station. But cool & airy, almost the country. I shall go to Pembroke Coll. Oxford early on Monday morning. I have written to propose coming to Lady Ponsonby.1 I shall not see the Sargents till my return from Oxford. So much love

1 Mary Elizabeth Ponsonby (1832–1916) was the eldest daughter of John Crocker Bulteel (1743– 1843), Whig MP from 1832 to 1835, and Elizabeth, née Grey (1798–1880), daughter of Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845), and prime minister. She was maid of honor to Queen Victoria from 1853 to 1861, then she married Henry Frederick Ponsonby (1825–1895) on 30 April 1861. When he was appointed private secretary to the queen in 1870, the couple took up residence in the Norman Tower, Windsor Castle. In 1895, Mary Ponsonby was appointed Extra Woman of the Bedchamber. A courtier and an advocate of women’s advancement, she sat on the committee that planned the foundation of Girton College, Cambridge, and became a member of the college in 1872. Her political opinions, informed by wide reading in philosophy, became increasingly liberal; . . . She wrote extensively for Nineteenth Century and other periodicals. Her liberalism . . . made her position at court uneasy: Victoria suspected her (rightly) of both “cleverness” and “advanced views,” and (wrongly) of unduly influencing her husband’s opinions . . . Mary Ponsonby found a more sympathetic character and friend in the queen’s eldest daughter, the Empress Frederick of Germany, who shared her intellectual interests. In later years, her close friends included the composer Ethel Smyth and A. C.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 Benson. Her progressive views were a profound influence on her children, particularly Arthur Ponsonby, who was later a Labour MP, and her daughter Magdalen. (H.C.G. Matthew, “Ponsonby, Sir Henry Frederick,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/22497) Two of their five children, Magdalen Ponsonby (1864–1934) and Arthur Ponsonby (1871–1946), were correspondents and friends of Vernon Lee’s. In 1893, Mary Ponsonby spent spring in Florence and formed “a new culte,” as she described it to Ethel Smyth, for Vernon Lee. Lee met Ethel Smyth through her, as well as Maurice Baring, Mary Ponsonby’s young nephew via her sister’s marriage to Lord Revelstoke (Gunn, Violet Paget, p. 131). According to Ethel Smyth, Lee was equally impressed by Mary Ponsonby: “It was easy to see that she was completely under the charm of Lady Ponsonby” (quoted in Gunn, p. 133). See also Magdalen Ponsonby, Idle Women: A Study in Futility in One Act and Two Scenes (London: Arthur L. Humphreys, 1914) and her edition of her mother’s correspondence and diaries, A Lady in Waiting to Queen Victoria: Some Letters and a Journal by Lady Ponsonby (New York: John Murray, 1927).

29. Matilda Paget June 19, [1893] Oxford, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Pembroke Coll. Oxford 19. June Monday. I came up this morning to this delightful house & these delightful people. But it is sickeningly hot. Kit Anstruther-Thomson came to supper last night at the Moffatts’ – looking very well & prosperous. You remember I go from 28 to 3d to the Paters, 12 Earl’s Terrace, Kensington? Mrs Playfair was here, very nice. Now we are going onto the river. So much love V. 30. Matilda Paget June 22, [1893] Oxford, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Oxford 22 June. Dearest Mamma. Will you address to 12 Earl’s Terrace, Kensington, now? So many thanks for telling me about the flowers. The Maniscalco bill is quite correct. Yesterday was Commemoration. They took me to the Theatre. Ld Rosebery1 was given a degree: strange, shyly impassive. Then a great lunch at xx All Souls – beautiful sight. I sat between the President of Trinity & Master of University, whose gowns almost buried me. 184

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This is a delightful family. So much love 1 Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery and 1st Earl of Midlothian (1847–1929). See Lee to Matilda Paget, 8 September [1887], Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II.

31. Matilda Paget June 29, [1893] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 12 Earl’s Terrace. 29 June Dearest Mamma – I found yr kind card on arrival here. Kit met me at the station & took me to tea at the New Gallery1 before coming on here. John has some magnificent portraits, & is the great man of the season.2 I was most sorry to quit Oxford, and that delightful family, so very unlike any other. The oldest daughter, the one who came to Florence, is an extremely nice woman of whom I want to see as much as possible. London has had its usual effect of depressing and disgusting me. It is rainy. Address Kensington Square All Mansions Young Street, W. V. 1 “The New Gallery was an art gallery at 121 Regent Street, London founded by J. Comyns Carr and Charles Edward Halle in 1888. Carr and Halle had previously been directors of the Grosvenor Gallery but after a disagreement with its owner, Sir Coutts Lindsay, they left to set up the New Gallery, taking with them many of the former galleries artists such as Burne-Jones, George Frederic Watts and Lord Leighton” (“New Gallery (Regent Street, London),” RA Collection: People and Organisations, www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/organisation/new-gallery-regent-streetlondon). 2 In 1893, Sargent’s portraits of Mrs Hugh Hammersley (1892, oil on canvas, 205.7 cm × 115.6 cm) and Mrs Lewis (1892, oil on canvas, 136 cm × 77.5 cm) were shown at the New Gallery, and Lady Agnew of Lochnaw (1892, oil on canvas, 127 cm × 101 cm) at the Academy. About John Singer Sargent’s triumph, Clementina Anstruther-Thomson wrote to Lee, “As to Mr Sargent London is at his feet, Mrs Hammersley and Mrs Lewis are at the New Gallery, Lady Agnew at the Academy. There can be no two opinions this year. He has had a cracking success” (quoted in Stephanie L. Herdrich, Helene Barbara Weinberg, and Marjorie Shelley, American Drawings and Watercolors in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: John Singer Sargent [New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000], p. 207). When Sargent was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in January 1894, the Sunday Times suggested the relative roles of the two portraits in assuring his election: “His brilliant portrait of Mrs Hammersley at the New Gallery last May showed the Carolus Duran influence pure and simple. The famous picture of Lady Agnew which appeared on the line at the Academy in 1893 may be said to have made the election of

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32. Matilda Paget July 4, [1893] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College II PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE 4. July 9 Kensington Sq. Mansions Young Street W Dearest Mamma – The good news in Eugene’s card has made me so happy.1 Mrs Moffat is sending him at my request some papers about the loss of the Victoria.2 I came here yesterday and am very comfortable. I have the use of a large drawing room, but prefer to write in a very nice, tidy little bedroom overlooking the Gardens of Kensington Square & miles of misty London. It is much cooler & less noisy than at the Paters[’], where the cabs on the Kensington Road ceased at 2. A.M. only to be replaced by the market carts. Miss Sellers is a very nice woman to be with, as she is busy & businesslike. I am to divide all expenses save rent. We have two good maids. Yesterday Miss Newcomb,3 a friend of the Robinsons[’], made me meet Bernard Shaw, a young socialist, who despite (I think) his socialism, is one of the most really brilliant writers & thinkers we have, paradoxical wrong headed & perhaps a little caddish, but original. He has written a little book on Ibsen,4 round whom a little group of young thinkers are doing some very subversive but very useful thinking, getting rid of much cant, pharisaism & false morality which has remained from more theological times: thinkers decidedly exaggerated, but in a necessary direction. By the way Eugene ought to read a play by Ibsen – say Ghosts – There is a little red volume of him I think in the big drawing room shelves. Kit & I dined with the Paters, where Cotton5 was dining also. The Placcis I find have been in terrible grief: Mme Ybarrando6 has been at the point of death. Mme Placci & Carlo have come over to Liverpool to look after her. An American-English publisher called Macllvaine has taken my new volume of Dialogues, sequel to Baldwin. It will be called Althea from the principal speaker.7 He gives me £50 & American royalties. I cannot nowadays exact more. I find I must write a sort of final dialogue in summing up; the scene will be Oxford. This will take 186

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all my time & energy: So you must forgive my not writing often. It is so much more satisfactory writing letters than postcards, but I cannot write them so often. Lady Wolseley wanted to take me to the Duse8 who is having a wild success; but I must carefully eschew evening entertainments, for altho’ well, I must be careful. I am dining on Sunday with Claude Phillips & his sister,9 because it is early. I did not succeed in getting to the Ranee on Sunday: trains were against me. Best love to Papa & kind greetings to Miss Jourdan. Kit was so delighted at E’s [Eugene’s] better news. Yrs V.

1 The beginning of Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s recovery from his paralysis. 2 The collision of the Victoria with the Camperdown on 22 June 1893, while the British Mediterranean Fleet was anchored in formation off the coast of Tripoli. Almost 400 men were lost. 3 Bertha Newcombe (1857–1947) was a British landscape painter who had studied at the Slade School and was later an active participant in the women’s suffrage movement. 4 George Bernard Shaw, Quintessence of lbsenism (London: Walter Scott, 1891). 5 James Sutherland Cotton (1847–1918), editor of The Academy. 6 Domingo de Ybarrondo (1843–1909) lived in Aigburth, Liverpool, with his wife. He ran the Liverpool Meter Company Limited and the Street Lighting Company Limited. 7 Althea (1894). 8 Eleanora Duse (1858–1924), Italian actress and rival of Sarah Bernhardt, especially in the casting of lead roles for plays by Gabriele d’Annunzio and George Bernard Shaw. See George Bernard Shaw, “Duse and Bernhardt,” The Saturday Review (June 15, 1895), rpt. George Bernard Shaw, Plays and Players, introduction by A.C. Ward (London: Oxford University Press, 1952). 9 Claude Phillips (1846–1924), influential English art critic and writer. He contributed to the Daily Telegraph and the Manchester Guardian and was an English correspondent for the Gazette des Beaux-Arts (Paris).

33. Lady Louisa Wolseley [July 5, 1893] London, England Hove Central Library, Wolseley Collection IL PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE. Kensington Sq Mansions Young Street W. Wed: Dear Lady Wolseley, So many thanks for yr kind thought about the Duse. 187

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Alas, I am still too feeble to be able to go anywhere of an evening, unless I am willing to be good for nothing the whole of the next day, which during a hustled stay in England I cannot afford to be. I fear my telegram may not have made it sufficiently plain that I hope you will find a moment to receive me before you leave for Ireland. Believe me, dear Lady Wolseley always yr gratefully V. Paget 34. Eugene Lee-Hamilton [after July 4, 1893] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College II PALMERINO, MAIANO, FLORENCE. Pater’s Address 9 Kensington Square Mansions Young Street W, Dear Eugene I am sending you a cutting about the loss of the Victoria; I think it is wonderfully magnificent & tragic.1 Yesterday Mrs Robinson & Mabel took me to call on Mrs Rossetti; I was glad of a rapprochement.2 Then the Paters had people to tea, 24 women & no man! Except Pater. The Ranee Brooke was one of the 24. She is very charming and nice. I am going to spend the afternoon at Wimbledon with her tomorrow. Then Kit & I dined with the dear Dunhams; John was there. This evening we are going with the Sargents to see some Dahomey people War dance at the Crystal Palace.3 On Monday I settle at Miss Sellers[’]. Best love to Mamma & Papa, & kind remembrances to Miss Jourdan. Yrs V. 1 See Lee to Matilda Paget, July 4, 1893. 2 In French in the text: reconciliation. Lee had not been on very friendly terms with the Rossettis since the publication of Miss Brown, because they thought they had been caricatured in it. 3 “The promotional material, which featured heavily in the July, August, and September 1893 timetables of the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway, noted that the Dahomey were to be exhibited alongside ‘Prandi’s Royal Italian Marionettes’ as ‘The Greatest Novelty in Europe.’ . . . The

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 regiment performing at the Crystal Palace was a predominantly female militia, from the kingdom of Dahomey in Western Africa, now Southern Benin.” Sally Blackburn-Daniels shows that “the figure of the warrior woman’s performance of violence within the exhibition space and the ritualistic and spiritual origins of these performances suggested the artistic form for Lee’s The Ballet of the Nations.” Blackburn-Daniels further draws “a line of influence from Dahomey, via the Ballet Russes and the Grand-Guignol theatre in Paris, to The Ballet of the Nations, illustrating the ways in which Lee is particularly interested in violence enacted by women – notably women presenting in a masculine way” (“From Crystal Palace to the Grand Guignol: Vernon Lee and the First World War,” Volupté, Interdisciplinary Journal of Decadence Studies, 5, no. 2, [Autumn/Winter 2022], pp. 40–62, DOI: 10.25602/GOLD.v.v5i2.1676.g1789).

35. Matilda Paget July 7, [1893] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College [contains a slip from a bookshop:] Tigri, Canti Popolari Toscani- épuisé [sold out]1 9 Kensington Sq. Mans. Young St. 7th July Dearest Mamma – I shall enclose you a cheque wherewith to pay Giuseppe (15 fcs ‸francs‸ due the 11th of each month) then Manescalco [Maniscalco] & Nannucci, if you will be so good. I am frightfully busy, as, although I stay in most mornings, answering notes takes up what time remains from my work. But so far I am well. The other day a friend of Kit’s – a Miss Hay who does silver work, drove me from here to her house at Putney; and in the street there, scudding along, I saw a shambling, seedy redhaired creature shuffling quickly along, in whom I instantly recognised Swinburne.2 I have been seeing & attempting to see various socialists, and am going down for a day to a sort of university settlement some of them have got near the Docks. Yesterday I saw Bella Duffy. She has fallen on her staircase & badly sprained her lame foot. Luckily a fellow lodger of hers has [is] a surgical nurse; but it will be a long & painful business. It would be kind of Eugene to write to her. Yesterday was the royal wedding,3 & the main streets were decorated & illuminated. It appears there have been curious bad omens about the marriage of this young lady with the brother of her scarce cold fiancé – the Victoria (her name is Victoria it appears) had on board her wedding gift from the fleet; and when the Prince of Wales drove, two days before, the pair of horses which was to convey her after the wedding to the station, one of them dropped stone dead. I daresay it’s not true, but it is picturesque. Has Eugene ever heard of E Watson the poet?4 Austin knows him & (wh. doesn’t tell in his favour) thinks him a good poet. He struck up acquaintance by asking for money[.] 189

SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 1 G. Tigri, Canti Popolari Toscani raccolti e annotate da G. Tigri, 2nd ed. (Firenze: Barbèra, Bianchi e Comp., 1860). It was a favourite of Mary Robinson’s, and she quoted from it. See Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II. About Lee’s lifelong interest in Italian popular culture, see her collection Tuscan Fairy Tales: Taken Down from the Mouths of the People (London: W. Satchell, 1880), Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy (London: W. Satchell, 1880), and her analysis of the Maggio. 2 English poet Algernon Swinburne (1837–1909). He began to propound his doctrine of art for art’s sake in a Spectator review of Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal (Paris: Poulet-Malassis et de Broise, 1857). 3 Prince George, Duke of York, later George V (1865–1936), and Princess Victoria Mary of Teck (1867–1943) were married on 6 July 1893, at the Chapel Royal, St. James’s Palace, in London. Her mother was Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, Duchess of Teck (1833–1897), and her father was Prince Francis, Duke of Teck (1837–1900), whom Lee met in Florence when the couple and their family travelled there in 1883. Lee to Mary Robinson, 12 December 1883, Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. I. 4 Prolific English poet and contributor to The Yellow Book William Watson (1858–1935). Lee may have read his first book, The Prince’s Quest (1880), which was reissued that year. Grant Allen’s “A New Poet” (The Fortnightly Review, 50 [August 1891], pp. 196–202) established Watson’s reputation, and he was almost chosen as poet laureate, but Alfred Austin was elected instead.

36. Lady Louisa Wolseley [July 8, 1893] London, England Hove Central Library, Wolseley Collection IL PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE. 9 Kensington Square Mansions Young Street W. Sat. My dear Lady Wolseley, I hope so much that I may be in time to see you before you get back to yr Island. Do let me know if I may come & see you some time at the end of next week. I know from Mrs Austin how very busy you are now. But if it is true that one likes not the people she who have been kind to one, but the people to whom one has been kind, I venture to hope that you will not have really forgotten Yrs sincerely V. Paget 37. Matilda Paget July 11, [1893] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 190

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9 Kensington Sq. Mansion July 11. Dearest Mamma. I am frightfully busy as I am hurried about my book. Yesterday dull party at Aïdé’s. Sat. dined with Claude Phillips & sister. These things don’t amuse me. Spent an afternoon with Ranee at Wimbledon & met Mrs. Ritchie, Thackeray’s daughter.1 Lunched at Playfairs. Dr. P. [Playfair]2 is the English Erb, but what a difference! How fine & subtle Erb is! Met Cunningham Graham, socialist member, delightful man, & delightful mother, Kit’s 12th cousins.3 Will write tomorrow. V.

1 Novelist Anne Isabella Thackeray (1837–1919) was William Makepeace Thackeray’s eldest daughter and, later, the step-aunt of Virginia Woolf. She and her younger sister, Harriet Marian “Minnie” Thackeray Stephen (1840–1875), were significant intellectual figures in their time. Anne married Richmond Ritchie (1854–1912) in 1877, becoming Lady Ritchie. Lee met Thackeray by 1882. See Lee to Matilda Paget, 21 June 1882, Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. I. 2 The Playfair family was prominent in St Andrews. Their archives are held at the University of St Andrews. “Dr P.” is probably Lyon, 1st Baron Playfair of St Andrews (1818–1898), second son of surgeon general George Playfair and elder brother of Sir Robert Lamber Playfair. Lyon Playfair’s remarkable career combined devotion to science with a rare dedication to public welfare. He was educated at the University of St Andrews, studying subsequently under Professor Graham at the Andersonian in Glasgow and at University College, London and then under the renowned German chemist Justus von Liebig (1803– 1873), at the University of Giessen, attaining a high reputation as a chemist in the process. Whilst honorary professor of chemistry at the Royal Institution in Manchester, he was appointed to a Royal Commission enquiring into the state of health in towns, with special responsibility for Lancashire; following this, over the years, with appointments to commissions inquiring into the condition of Buckingham Palace and Eton College, the most suitable coal for naval use, the Jarrow coal mine disaster, the Irish potato famine of 1845, the herring industry, the control of foot and mouth disease in 1867, Civil Service reform in 1875 and the aged poor in 1893–95. He was special commissioner for organizing the Great Exhibition of 1851, the 1862 Exhibition and the 1867 Paris Exhibition. As joint Permanent Secretary of the Department of Science and Art (1853–8), he helped to establish the Royal College of Science at South Kensington. Appointed Professor of Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh in 1858, he did much to improve teaching standards there, became President of the Chemical Society and, in 1868, Liberal member of parliament for the newly created Scottish University seat of St Andrews and Edinburgh. In 1873, under Gladstone, he became Postmaster General and a Privy Councillor and, subsequently, Deputy Speaker and chairman of the Ways and Means committee (1880–3). About to lose his Scottish parliamentary seat to the Tory candidate in 1885, he transferred to a radical, working class constituency of South Leeds which he held until his elevation to the peerage as Baron Playfair of St Andrews in 1892. He remained much involved in public life and acted as conciliator in the dispute between Britain and the United States over the Guyana-Venezuela border in 1895–6. He was appointed a Gentleman

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 Usher to Prince Albert in 1851, made Lord in Waiting to Queen Victoria in 1895 and appointed GCB. (“Papers of Robert Lambert Playfair and Other Playfair Family Members,” Collections, University of St Andrews, https://collections. st-andrews.ac.uk/collection/papers-of-robert-lambert-playfair-andother-playfair-family-members/2071118) 3 Cunningham Graham (1852–1936) was a close friend of Joseph Conrad. He helped Conrad with research for Nostromo (London: Harper & Bros., 1904), as he had spent many years of his life in the novel’s setting, South America.

38. Matilda Paget July 13, [1893] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 9 Kensington Sq. Mansions Young Street W July 13. Dearest MammaIf you saw the heap of notes I have to write every morning you wd understand why I have not written; particularly as Mcllvaine presses me for the end of the book. Please tell Eugene how awfully glad I am at all he tells me. He seems to understand his own case perfectly now, and understanding, he ought to be able, with patience & determination, to dominate it. The new book is called “Althea, a second series of dialogues on aspirations & duties” – Althea is one of the speakers. There are to be 6 dialogues – the 6th is the one I am at now. They are – I. II. III. IV. V. VI.

The Value of the individual (with Fife background) Orpheus in Rome (on the moral value of art) On Friendship (with S. Terenzo background) May Day (Roman background) The Spiritual Life (Fiesole in Winter) To what purpose? (summing up. Oxford background)

It is far the most important book I have so far written, and a great, immeasurable advance on Baldwin.1 It all comes out of notes I have kept for myself during the last 6 years;2and there is no special pleading in it. The various views subjects are based upon a conception which I call the Spiritual Life, and the new dialogue must trace them back to it. It is a study study, on the whole, not of everybody’s duty, but of the duties of those who have spiritual conceptions & compensations, & on the being freer than others from the ties of the world (desire for pleasure, 192

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prosperity, ambition, vanity) ought to act as pioneers for those who far more numerous persons whom circumstances & temper render less free. The book is treats openly only of such persons as the Gospel calls the Salt of the Earth; the question is, how are they not to lose their savour, or as little of it as possible? So of course it will be financially & otherwise a dead failure. By the way could Eugene look out for me in the Gospel the exact quotation about the Salt of the Earth?3 I want it for a quotation, & I don’t believe there’s a bible, except a Greek testament, in this very Hellenic house. I want Miss Jourdan kindly to get me two photos which Clara Pater wants. They are (unmounted), two of the prettiest of the Robbia Wickel Kindchen of the Annunziata. Miss Pater already has the little boy who has got loose from his swaddlings4 & stands stark naked in the middle of flying ribbons. She wants 2 others as companions. The size is the regular 8 or 10 inch. Miss Sellers is doing such very interesting work: editing the portions of Pliny which refer to antique sculpture, & trying to identify as many as possible of the statues he mentions. She is applying to antique sculpture the method lately invented by Morelli5 for painting, namely accurate & minute study of the single forms & methods of representation of each master. A man gets dominated by certain forms, or manners of vision, quite as mush as by a technique, and it becomes an infallible means6 of identification, Thus, Polyclete & Myron see & represent hair in quite a different way. The Oxford boat race had long taken place. Most of the men had left before Commem. [Commemoration], That is why I had little to tell. I saw the procession of lights, saluting the Magdalen eight which has won; that was all. There are some rather wonderful South Sea stories in Stevenson’s Island Nights Entertainments.7 Perhaps Eugene might get it from Vieusseux.8 I am very anxious to understand exactly the new iniquitous regulation by which no books can no longer be sent to Italy by book post, and are, when new, to made to pay duty. Here the P.O. seems most vague. Does a book pay duty if it is cut and has a name inside it? Could you ascertain? The poppy grass ought to be cut away at once, to liberate the other things, & only seed heads kept till dry. So much love to Papa Yrs V. 1 For a discussion and critique of the book, see Gunn, Violet Paget, pp. 120–122. 2 Lee’s Commonplace Books are at the Vernon Lee Archive. 3 Matthew 5:13: “Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.” 4 Children in swaddling clothes. 5 This may be the beginning of Lee’s interest in connoisseurship and attribution. 6 Method. 7 Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850–1894), the noted Scottish essayist, novelist and travel writer was born in Edinburgh and died at Vailima (Samoa) where he had settled in 1890 owing to respiratory illness. He was friends with Henry James and John Singer Sargent and it is through them that Lee

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 first wrote to him on 6 October 1885 on behalf of Sofia Santarelli (famed translator of H. Spencer, of J. R. Green’s history and of J. A. Symonds’s Fine Arts) who wished to translate the collection he had published in 1885 with his wife, American writer Frances (Fanny) Matilda née Van de Grift Osbourne (1840–1914), More New Arabian Nights: The Dynamiter for Italian readers. In 1886, Lee read Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Stevenson published the historical novel Kidnapped, or the Lad with the Silver Button (about real events in eighteenth-century Scotland after the Highlanders’ rebellion against the English) and in 1887 a biography of his friend and teacher, engineer and scientist, inventor of the telegraph Fleeming Jenkin (Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin) with Scribner. Lee sent him her own Prince of the Hundred Soups and Oke of Okehurst and sent him Edward Arnold’s invitation to write a story for his new magazine (10 August 1886). In her Commonplace Book IV, July 4, 1888, p. 122, she wrote laudatory comments on Treasure Island, or the Mutiny of the Hispaniola (publ. as “Captain George North” in book form in 1883) and on The Master of Ballantrae: A Winter’s Tale (1889), his novel about the Jacobite risings of 1745. In 1888 he published another historical novel: The Black Arrow: A Tale of Two Roses (as “Capt George North”). In 1905 were published his Essays in the Art of Writing (London: Chatto & Windus) which Lee may have wished to emulate in her own study of his narrative Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879), a book she thought Eugene Lee-Hamilton might translate. Her detailed stylistic study of it in The Handling of Words (1923) includes close readings of excerpts and concludes with her verdict: “A humane, many-sided, well-compacted, singularly active, willing and unegoistic personality: a creature in whose company our soul loves to dwell, because we receive much, and are made to give more and better than usual.” About Lee and Stevenson’s opposed views on the Young Pretender, see Lesley Graham, “An Unpublished Letter from Stevenson to Violet Paget,” The New Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, https://edrls.wordpress.com/2019/10/06/an-unpublished-letterfrom-stevenson-to-violet-paget-vernon-lee-1885/. Robert Louis Stevenson’s Island Nights’ Entertainments (London: Cassell & Co., 1893) had been recently published in 1893. About Lee and Stevenson’s relationship, see Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II. 8 Gabinetto Vieusseux lending Library in Florence.

39. Matilda Paget July 16, [1893] [London, England] Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 16 July Dearest Mamma – Things seem to get more & more difficult to do as every day goes on. Not being able to go out in the evening, & staying in all morning to work perfectly chokes the afternoon and leaves me very tired. Yet, if I were to tell you, you wd think I did very little, because many of the people I see are without much interest, and the time goes mainly in cabs & omnibuses. There is a talk of my going early in September with Helen Dunham to her friend Lady Agnew, a very pretty woman whom John Sargent has just made into a society celebrity by a very ravishing portrait.1 If I did this (Lady Agnew lives in Wigtownshire) I should probably claim an old aeg invitation from a certain Mrs Orr Ewing at Dryburgh Abbey on the Tweed, & go with Kit to some people called Hay at Melrose. They are friends of the Scotts of Villa Capponi, have a rather beautiful 194

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old house at Putney and are disgustingly rich. One of the girls, quite young, has an extraordinary talent for sculpture in metals, does small silver figures & ornaments wonderfully with scarcely any teaching, & is therefore rather interesting. Tomorrow I go for a night to the Wards at a place in Hertfordshire. On From Friday to Monday go to Windsor Castle to Lady Ponsonby & on the 28 or 29th to the Ranee at Wimbledon. The day before yesterday I called on the very nice woman who last year was Mrs Cyril Flower, née de Rothschild of Paris, a name she has exchanged for the frightful name of Lady Battersea.2 Doesn’t it sound like the Queen of the Washerwomen? She has a very gorgeous & lovely house opposite the Marble Arch, but these gorgeous & lovely houses merely sicken me now. As we were going there, right in front of the house, on a bench in the park, we saw a couple of vagrants dead asleep – a ragged man thrown back, with a top hat on, a ragged woman collapsed forward, her bonneted head over her knees; Kit said – “they are probably as asleep because they are drunk, & drank because food is too dear” – and I dare say she was right. After that the Batterseas’ house seemed only a limbo of Hell. Lady Brooke is coming to fetch me to go to John’s, so I must stop. So much love Yrs V. Could you kindly get a “Tigri – Canto Popolari Toscani” and send it from me to Miss Rose Price Cathedral Gardens Gloucester 1 Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, whose portrait (oil on canvas) John Singer Sargent made ca. 1892–1893. 2 Cyril Flower, 1st Baron of Battersea, and his wife Constance, née Rothschild, wealthy patrons of the arts. Flower’s family had earned their wealth through the West Indian merchant trade, but it is possible he was also related to the founders of the Flower’s Brewery in Stratford-on-Avon. Lee met them in 1884. See Lee to Matilda Paget, 16 July 1884, Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. I.

40. Matilda Paget July 21, [1893] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Kensington Sq. Mansions July 21 Dearest Mamma – I need not say how happy E’s [Eugene] letter, with the confirmation of his definitive victory over his illness, had made me. 195

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I am off to the Ponsonbys, whence I shall write. But I don’t want perhaps to miss the Saturday’s post. So I scratch off a line. On the 1st August Kit & I are going for 10 days into the country, somewhere (not yet decided) in Sussex, taking as our guests Flora Priestley and Miss Price1 with whom I was at Oxford. I ought to explain that I have made great friends of with Miss Price. I greatly hope she may come to us, if you will ask her, in the winter. She is a very remarkable woman, rather strange to look at, with a lilac face and bright orange hair, at least so Sargent would paint her, very clever, cultured & kind, & rather unlike other people. Flora has known her a long time in Paris, where she has studied painting, and Kit likes her immensely. This exodus will alter my arrangements with the Ranee, to whom I shall go later in August. Yesterday ‸Kit‸ took me & Berenson, that little art critic who appears destined to become famous,2 to see the Velazquezes at Apsley House. The people were gone. Such a hideous house. One immense room full of glass cases with all the swords of honour, decorations & snuff boxes given to the Iron Duke:3 cartloads. On, or rather under the rather mean staircase is a copy of Canova’s colossal naked Napoleon. Not very good taste on the Iron Duke’s part? Yesterday also I called on Countess Feo Gleichen,4 whom I had met in Rome. She is a sort of niece or cousin of the Queen & lives & has a studio in St James’ Palace. She is a clever, bright little person, much distressed at her royalty and at having, in order to afford sculpture at all, to make pot boiler statues of the Queen. It is a funny mixture of royalty & Bohemia. She is going to the Ponsonbys also. I am keeping extraordinarily well, altho’ what with writing & seeing people, I do a great deal. Miss Sellers is a delightful person to deal with. And I cannot tell you the kindness of Kit. She comes every day from Chelsea – a long way – to look after me & take me about. I read her E’s [Eugene’s] letter yesterday; she was so delighted. The day before yesterday we went to Ham Common to see Mrs Scott & her daughters. We thought them delightful & wondered why we didn’t cultivate them in Florence. So much love V. The photos have come, many thanks, Oh Mrs Sargent is so delighted & touched with yr letter. They have actually taken a top flat on Chelsea Embankment close to John’s. 1 Lee’s longtime friend Mabel F.M. Price, daughter of the Rev. Bartholomew Price (1818–1898), master of Pembroke College, Oxford. She had studied painting in Paris at the Académie Julian with Flora Priestley. 2 Bernard Berenson joined Lee and Clementina Anstruther-Thomson in their tours of galleries in Italy, often taking just Kit on these visits, lecturing her on his theory of tactile values. He was indeed to be recognised as a leading expert and connoisseur.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 In 1898, despite the rivalry between Berenson and the two Nortons (Charles Eliot and Richard, his son who, in 1896 had prepared to become the Director of the American School of Classical Studies in Rome), B. Berenson’s supremacy was unquestionable. [As Samuels reports:] Even Henry James, back in London, acknowledged it to Hendrick Andersen, who told it to Mary [who then reported it to B. Berenson]: “Thee was the only living authority on Italian pictures. There is absolutely no other, [James] repeated.” (Samuels 316). BB’s [acute sense of his] supremacy entailed a series of violent quarrels with Obrist, Vernon Lee, Charles Loeser and even, in 1895, “Michael Field.” (S. Geoffroy-Menoux, “Henry James and Family: Eleven Unpublished Letters,” Sources [Spring 2003], p. 86) See List of Correspondents: Bernard Berenson. 3 Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington (1769–1852). 4 Lady Feodora Georgina Maud Gleichen (1861–1922), sculptor who was the eldest daughter of Admiral Prince Victor Ferdinand Franz Eugen Adolf Constantin Friedrich of Hohenlohe-Langenburg (1833–1891), a naval officer and, from 1866, a sculptor, the son of Prince Ernest of Hohenlohe-Langenburg and Queen Victoria’s half-sister Feodora. Her mother was Laura Williamina, youngest daughter of Sir George Francis Seymour, admiral of the fleet. Feodora’s father assumed the family title Gleichen following his morganatic marriage in 1861 and used it until 1885. (“Gleichen, Lady Feodora Georgina Maud,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/33423)

41. Henry Ferguson Paget July 22, [1893] Windsor, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College July 22. Norman Tower Windsor Castle1 Dearest Papa – I was so pleased that you were pleased to hear from me. But I wish I might hear of yr having gone to some coole cool place. I think you really should, & there is no earthly reason against it. I came here yesterday to the Ponsonbys. He is away at Osborne with the Court, and only the mother & daughter are here,2 both delightful women. There are also one or two people staying; Ld Ronald Gower, who seems a nice man & knows about pictures;3 the little Countess Feo Gleichen, who is very nice, and last, but very far from least, Miss Ethel Smyth,4 a young woman who is, by competent persons, supposed to be the composer, & who astonished Florence considerably some years back by her eccentricity; as she must astonish everyone by her cleverness & the greatest expression of forcibleness I have ever seen in any woman.

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The Court being away, one can ramble about freely. This room is the topmost floor of a circular tower in the innermost line circle of walls, with a magnificent view up over the red roofed, picturesque little town, with Eton Chapel opposite, and the higher reaches of the river, covered with boats. At one time this tower was used as [a] state prison, and in a the Ponsonbys have uncovered, by removing the plaster, a lot of signatures & coats of arms carved on the stone by cavaliers locked up here by Cromwell. The p The whole castle has been refaced with a very ugly arrangement of small stones set in black putty & flint, which makes it look absurdly Toyish; and it is all very new & scraped, except near the chapel, where there are trees & little lawns & charming pieces of sequestered yard & cloisters like Oxford. Yesterday we went over the Queen’s apartments, which are frightfully vulgar & dull, like a big hotel with occasional fine pictures & tapestries about; the whole impression very German. There is an extraordinary want of stateliness & appearance of age about the whole thing, just the reverse of Oxford or Cambridge. But seen from the valley the mass of towers & circles of walls are very imposing & picturesque; & the view down into the valley from the terraces & battlements, & best of all, from the loopholes of my room, is quite lovely. I must dress for dinner – So goodbye, dear Papa, you will show this to Mamma, with my love, won’t you? Yrs V. 1 Written on the back of the second page in Lee’s handwriting: “To Papa – from Windsor Castle 22nd July.” Lee had worked on cataloguing her letters at some point. Her father died just over a year after this letter was written, in November 1894, after a severe asthma attack. 2 Lady Mary Ponsonby (1832–1916) and her daughter Magdalen (1864–1934). See Lee to Matilda Paget, June 17, 1893. 3 British sculptor and Liberal MP Sir Ronald Charles Sutherland-Leveson-Gower (1845–1916), best known for his statues of Shakespeare and Shakespeare’s characters in Stratford-upon-Avon and his biographies of Marie Antoinette and Joan of Arc. In 1890, he was involved in the Cleveland street scandal. His lifelong companion was the journalist Franck Hird (1837–1937). 4 Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944), composer, writer and suffragette, well known for her vivacity and independent nature. Her longtime friend and later romantic companion was Harry Brewster, another friend of Lee’s, whom she met in Florence at the Berensons’ residence (see List of Correspondents: Harry Brewster, and Lee to Harry Brewster, 3 May 1896, and 26 September 1902). Ethel Smyth’s sister, Violet Hippisley (1864–1923), was also a friend of Lee’s. Smyth composed an opera in French in three acts, Les Naufrageurs [The Wreckers], based on Lee’s novel Penelope Brandling: A Tale of the Welsh Coast in the Eighteenth Century (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1903) and a libretto in French by Henry Brewster. It premiered in a German translation by John Bernhoff, under the title of Strandrecht, at the Neues Theater, Leipzig, 11 November 1906.

42. Matilda Paget July 27, [1893] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 27 July. K. Sq. Mansions 198

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Dearest Mamma At last this morning I have finished that last chapter, but heaven knows how much revision it will take. It is arranged that next Tuesday Kit, Flora, Miss Price & I are to go down for 10 days to the country, but where the lord only knows, as the lodgings I had settled on have been let; & my life is made hideous by writing notes about rooms in all directions. Do not bother about Tigri, it is too dear.1 I enjoyed myself quite immensely at Windsor. The Ponsonbys are dear delightful, friendly, intelligent people, and she particularly is quite unique for largeness & kindliness of mind. That very clever and rather disagreeable Miss Smyth (her music must be very good if it is at all up to her conversation) has asked me to come & stay with her, (her father is general in command at Aldershot) but I fear I can’t make it fit in. I have been seeing socialists – Mr Podmore,2 a conspicuous one, at the Moffats[’], and the very beautiful Mr Cunninghame Graham3 at his mothers [mother’s] – He looks like a hidalgo by Velazquez and is partly Spanish. These socialists disclaim any idea of sudden or violent action, and utterly pooh pooh the possibility of a program for the future; but consider that the gradual assumption of various kinds of production & distribution by the state will be a result of the natural progress of things, and of the gradual perception, by the working class (which they are trying to organise into an independent party like the Irish one) that only by state undertakings can they escape the profit making of entrepreneurs and capitalists, which profit making (according to a socialist postulate to which I can’t agree) is merely to every body’s disadvantage and without any corresponding good result to the community. Podmore & C. [Cunninghame] Graham tell me this is the now prevalent German view of socialists; but all this vagueness, evolution & absence of program, sounds to me singularly English. I find that being in better health I am really getting in England what I always hoped to get there, a thorough shaking about of all my ideas, very necessary after the stagnation of Florence. You see the ideas which are merely coming up are not yet represented by any literature one is likely, unaided, to come across; so one may quite well miss them, To come to more mundane things. It I hope so much the servants[‘] mattresses have been washed & beaten & added to. I have just come across, here in London, a rather terrible though comic instance of what may result from not having servants[‘] bedding looked to very often. It is no saving to have to burn it, wholesale, occasionally, for want of looking after. I am off to lunch with Mrs Green, the historian’s widow4 – So much love. Yrs V

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 1 Tigri’s Canti Popolari Toscani raccolti e annotate da G. Tigri is the book she ordered. This sentence is not in Irene Cooper Willis. 2 Frank Podmore (1856–1910), socialist and psychical researcher. He was co-founder of the Fellowship of the New Life in 1883, and then the Fabian Society in 1884, with Sidney Webb. Like his friend and colleague Edmund Gurney, Podmore was interested in stories of apparitions. He co-edited a book with Gurney, Phantasms of the Living (2 vols. [London: Trübner and Co., 1886]). Most of his career following this was devoted to psychical studies and involvement with the Fabian Society. 3 Robert Bontine Cunninghame-Graham (1852–1936) was a Scottish politician and writer. He was a socialist and was elected as a Liberal MP in 1886, with socialist initiatives. He was also co-founder of the Scottish Labour Party and, later, the National Party of Scotland. He was a distant cousin of Clementina Anstruther-Thomson’s. 4 Alice Sophia Amelia Stopford Green, née Stopford (1848–1929) was an Irish nationalist political activist and historian. In 1877, she married the Oxford historian John Richard Green (1837–1883) and their home was a renowned salon. She published her first history book, Henry the Second, in 1888 as part of John Morley’s “English Statesmen” series. From Town Life in the Fifteenth Century (1894), to Irish Nationality [ca. 1911] and to her major historical work A History of the Irish State to 1014 (1925), her historical work demonstrated the existence and the worth of early Irish history, Irish traditions and nationality. She advocated Home Rule, opposed British imperialist colonisation of South Africa and, after supporting the Treaty of December 1921, became one of the first Irish – and one of the four women – members of the first Seanad Éireann (Irish Senate) from 1922 to her death in 1929. See Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II.

43. Matilda Paget July 29, [1893] Paddington, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Sat. Just a line[.] So glad about May Day. Kit & I go to Lady Brooke’s tomorrow to meet Placci. On Wednesday we go for 10 days to Bushey, an hour from Euston, where Miss Price & Flora join us. Kit is threatened with her bad ear again[.] Both want change of air. So much love V. 44. Eugene Lee-Hamilton July 30, [1893] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 9 K. [Kensington] Sq. [Square] Mansions. July 30 Dear Eugene, People are beginning to go away, so I have little news. Kit & I have spent the afternoon, being Sunday, at Wimbledon with the Ranee, who is really a very kind & delightful woman. I am lucky in this that the three houses I have added this year in England are on the whole far the nicest I have here: hers, the Ponsonbys & dear Prices at Oxford. Placci was there & Esmé Howard,1 who has become really a 200

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nice, interesting fellow. We sat a long time in with the Ranee’s boy, the one with the bad spine,2 who has had another operation & who is more or less the centre of the house, as his mother takes everyone to him; they made music, & all of us, including the sick boy in his bed, shot at a target! Swinburne is very kind to him. He comes three times a week from Putney to read Dickens & Thackeray to the boy, and also quantities of acrostics in verse, of which he is very proud, and which nearly all turn upon his own scrapes and canings at school! I am going to send you, as soon as I can get it, Huxley’s Oxford lecture on Ethics & Evolution. You won’t agree with all of it, but you will find many interesting questions stated very briefly in clear form. I think you might read some short first rate books of philosophy when you are sure of not overtiring yourself; easy ones of course; for instance Mill’s Liberty, which is in the house (by the way a copy you stole from a man in Paris). I told you, did I not, of the great raging Spencer-Weissman controversy whether acquired characters are hereditary?3 I want lots of peach & apricot jam to be made, as I forgot to ask Tonino to make the usual raspberry, and we may be short of jam this winter. Have any of the anemones, hollyhocks & mallows come up? I hope you cut the poppy leaves down as I advised you. Remind Giovanni to take gera carnation cuttings in due course. Of course this letter & all my love to Mamma. I hope Papa is going to Vallombrosa. How are Neve & Sariana?4 Salute them. So much love. V.

1 Esmé William Howard, 1st Baron Howard of Penrith (1863–1939), was an influential British diplomat during the early twentieth century. 2 Bertram Willes Dayrell Brooke, Tuan Muda of Sarawak (1876–1965). He was injured in a football accident: “He was violently kicked in the back, and this resulted in severe injuries to the spine, so that he was laid up for four years of his young life” (Margaret Brooke, Good Morning and Good Night [London: Constable, 1934], p. 215). Lady Margaret Brooke, Ranee of Sarawak, née Margaret Alice Lili de Windt, and her husband, the Second White Rajah of Sarawak, Charles Anthony Johnson Brooke (1829–1917), had seven children, three of whom survived infancy. As she recalls in her memoir, My Life in Sarawak (London: Methuen & Co., 1913), one child was stillborn owing to a fall (p. 133), and three children – Dayang Ghita Brooke (1870–1873) and twins James Harry Brooke and Charles Clayton Brooke (1872–1873) – died “within a week of one another and were buried in the Red Sea.” Three other sons were born to the couple: Sir Charles Vyner de Windt Brooke (1874–1963), Bertram Willes Dayrell Brooke (1876–1965) and Harry Keppel Brooke (1879–1926). 3 “The subject . . . is that apple of discord of modern biology, the existence of an inheritance of acquired characters, and in necessary association with that, the extent of the operation of natural selection. . . . In the present controversy, Spencer maintains that the weight of evidence and argument in favour of the inheritance of acquired characters is so great that ‘unless there has been inheritance of acquired characters there has been no evolution.’ Weismann believes that there are insuperable difficulties in the way; that there is no evidence for such an inheritance; that natural selection is an all-sufficing cause.” P. Mitchell, Abstract, “The Spencer-Weismann Controversy,”

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 Nature, 49 (15 February 1894), pp. 373–374, https://doi.org/10.1038/049373b0/. P. Mitchell cites Herbert Spencer, “The Inadequacy of Natural Selection,” Contemporary Review (February 1893 and March 1893); “Professor Weismann’s Theories,” Contemporary Review (May 1893); and “A Rejoinder to Professor Weismann,” Contemporary Review (December 1893). 4 Lee’s pony, whom she named after Sarianna Browning (1814–1903), Robert Browning’s sister and a friend of Lee’s. See List of Correspondents: Robert Browning.

45. Matilda Paget August 1, [1893] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Tuesday. Dearest Mamma. Kit & I are going tomorrow till 9th to Otterstone Cottage, Bushey, Herts. Miss Price & Flora will join us. Wd it be desirable if I looked out for someone for October & Nov.? I had thought of Miss Price, but she can’t. There is a rather nice painter woman might perhaps. Tell me. So much love. V. 46. Matilda Paget August 4, [1893] Bushey, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Otterstone Cottage. Bushey. 4 Aug. Dearest Mamma. Flora & Miss Price joined us here yesterday. I am awfully pleased to be here, as the air of London was beginning to tire me. I have been walking a good deal & am rather tired, but wanted to give you my new address. I have finished my dialogues1& shall soon send it to press. So much love V. 1 Althea (1894).

47. Matilda Page August 7, [1893] Bushey, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Bushey 7th Aug.

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Dearest Mamma. I am so glad to have yr postcard. I suppose owing to my change of address it seems so long since I have heard from you. Since we came here I have spent most of the day out of doors, as I was very much in want of good air. This is an old fashioned little village only 16 miles from London, but which, from the look of it, might be a hundred miles off. A rather bad painter with an undeserved reputation, Herkomer,2who does the cheap sentimental art which catches the British public, has established an art school here, with workshops for iron & metal & wood work, studios, a theatre3 etc, constituting altogether a rather ludicrous & melancholy kingdom of proud & busy mediocrity. The youths and maidens of his subjects are away on holidays, which enables us to have cheap, quite good lodgings and a studio in which to sit after dinner. It is delightful being in the country & being with Flora & Miss Price, who is quite one of the nicest women I know. But unluckily poor Kit’s ear is very bad, and she is feeling very weak. I hope so much we may be able to get to Scotland for a little next month. The Ranee Brooke is so very kind & nice, nice & willing to have me at any time. This helps my plans, which are made uncertain by the health of Lady Agnew, to whom the Dunhams want to take me; &, on the other hand, too certain by the fact that on the 30th I must bundle out of the Dr Miss Sellers’ flat, because the lawful owner returns. I find it wd be usef useless to go to Lombardy the 1st Sept. as no one wd be back yet. Miss Price is making me read out loud a long philosophical poem of Browning which I didn’t know – Fifine at the Fair.4I do It is full of magnificent things. I don’t think Eugene would appreciate it yet. But someday he must read it; & although parts will always be distasteful to him, it may suggest a widening out of his own style. But it wd be a pity to embark prematurely on reading an obscure, difficult thing. It is again hot with this sickening English heat. I am bus busy correcting my MS. Write to K. Sq. Mansions. Kit & I return to London on Monday. So much love Yrs V.

2 Sir Herbert von Herkomer (1848–1914), painter, illustrator, influenced by German realism. Many of his paintings are of German scenes. He was also a successful portrait painter and exhibited annually at the Royal Academy after 1869. 3 This word is not in Irene Cooper Willis. 4 Poem in Alexandrine couplets by Robert Browning, published in 1872.

48. Matilda Paget August 11, [1893] Bushey, England 203

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Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Bushey. 11 Aug. Dearest Mamma. Please thank Miss J. [Jourdan] for her nice letter. I am out in the fields here nearly all day (it has done me much good) [and] have difficulty in writing. Kit & I go to London on Monday. On the 18th I have my lecture at Cambridge. All my Sept. plans are still utterly vague. Lady Jeune1 has asked me to go to her near Reading, & the Ranee is most kind. It is bakingly hot. So much love V. 1 Susan Jeune (later St Helier) was a well-known society hostess in London and was active in charity work with the poor. Her social and political circle of friends was wide, and Lee may have benefited from it by acquiring connections with the elite classes. See Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance (New York: Scribner, 1933) for anecdotes about her. Recent scholarship by William A. Davis, Jr., has shown that Jeune must be credited with the invention of the expression “new woman” (lower case) in her article “Women of To-Day, Yesterday, and Tomorrow” (The National Review [December 1889], pp. 547–561); in the United States, Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, 51 (January–June 1890), pp. 177–185). It was taken up and circulated by Sarah Grand five years later, then Ouida turned it into an upper-case “label that stuck” (William A. Davis, Jr., “A New Date for the Victorian New Woman,” Notes and Queries, 61, no. 4 [2014], pp. 577–580; Kevin A. Morrison [ed.], Companion to Victorian Popular Fiction [Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2018], pp. 167–168).

49. Matilda Paget August 15, [1893] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 9 Kens. Sq. Mans. Aug. 15 Dearest Mamma – Yesterday Kit & I returned from Bushey. The open air had done us much good, and the pleasant company. Miss Price is a very remarkable person, not entirely unlike what Emily Ford used to be in person, but immensely strong & not nervous. She has a curious view, although incapable of putting pen to paper, of a sort of poetical, lyric view of life and things, getting at the inner reality by quicker methods than mere agreement. I think, if Eugene can get accustomed to a certain absence of logical manner, to an impossibility of answering step by step in argument, she may be very useful for him to know. She has made me understand Browning so very much better, all the things which constitute his real greatness 204

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as distinguished from his Talent; and has made me understand that the chief value of poetry lies in its symbolical quality, in its getting hold of fact, passion, thought, reality in so high & rare a condition that every man will read into the poet’s words his own experience & comprehension, & receive back not merely an artistic perception, but the poet’s immensely greater fervour & strength of soul, like a greater breath blowing into the individual’s small note.1 Miss Price will be coming to Italy in the spring with her people; there is no question of her in the autumn. On the other hand I doubt whether Kit can come much before Xmas, as she wants to settle Arthur2 in London when he leaves Manchester, Miss Ponsonby I shd like to ask for a week late in October. I want very much to have Laura Gropallo for some time. I have been thinking a good deal about my writing, & I recognise that, now I have the strength again, I must set to some consecutive study to cure myself of the desultoriness & incapacity for steady application which seems to grow every day. I find I have a facility for mental science; & as it may be useful to me later, I shall, I think, try & work at that. As Laura knows a good deal about it, I want her to start me. Shall I try and get for October or Nov. [November] someone from England to do secretary for E. [Eugene]? Please answer. There is a woman, a Miss Cruttwell,3 paints, has written in the Saturday, clever, rather decadent aesthete, who might come. My plans are still quite vague. I am waiting to learn whether Lady Agnew is well enough to have me in September. I think I shall go to the Ranee on return from Cambridge on the 21st. None of the Pontis will be in Lombardy till Sept [September] 20th. On the other hand Miss Etta Dunham wants me to join her at St Moritz for a day or two & then go to the Wagner operas at Munich. I am quite adrift. And vague about money, as the Fortnightly, after leading me on, has again refused a thing, & so has the 19th Century. So much love V 1 See Lee’s pamphlet The Poet’s Eye: Notes on Some Differences between Verse and Prose (London: The Hogarth Press, 1926), p. 13: The world of verse is one of intrinsic values, and its relations are directed to our feelings. And our feelings get enclosed by the symmetrical occurrence of stress and sound in a charmed circle wherein nothing need connect with anything else and all becomes important in its own right. Meanwhile, once enclosed on the magic maze of verse as verse, our spirit moves in that verse’s motions, in modes as much more definite and continuous as dancing compared with walking. 2 Clementina Anstruther-Thomson’s younger brother. 3 Maud Alice Wilson Cruttwell (1860–1939). Historian of Italian Renaissance artists and close friend of the Berensons. When they rented two villa apartments in San Domenico, near Fiesole, Italy, in 1894 Cruttwell agreed to be their housekeeper. She worked closely with Bernard . . . Cruttwell

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 was a fairly open lesbian . . . Cruttwell left the Berensons when she was asked in 1899 by the editor of George Bell Publishers, George Charles Williamson (1858–1942), to write a volume on Luca Signorelli for their Great Masters series. In 1900 she acted as witness to Berenson’s marriage. In 1904, Cruttwell published her volume on Andrea Verrocchio. . . . She was commissioned by the Bodley Head to write the series of books on Renaissance artists. . . . In her later years she wrote biographies of women, such as her Madame de Maintenon of 1930. . . . Cruttwell was a connoisseur-style historian with a particularly sharp eye. (Lee Sorensen [ed.], “Cruttwell, Maud,” Dictionary of Art Historians, www.arthistorians.info/cruttwellm)

50. Matilda Paget August 17, [1893] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Aug. 17. Kensington. Dearest Mamma. All my plans are per aria owing to Lady Agnew being too ill, & other Scotch invitations vague; the Pontis & others, on the other hand, to whom I was to go in Lombardy, away till Sept 20. I am unwilling to return to Italy & face the heat, which even here is making me sick, but I may have to do so, as it is useless staying on in London. Tomorrow I go to Cambridge till Monday. I think Miss Cruttwell wd come as secretary for Oct. & perhaps November. So much love Yrs V. 51. Matilda Paget August 20, [1893] Cambridge, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College [At the top of the first, Matilda Paget has written:Her lecture] Cambridge Aug 20. Dearest Mamma – Yr dear little postcard about the Sentimental Journey followed me here.1 The day Kit & I came up was the hottest I have ever felt in England – 91 in the shade, & for two nights at Kensington I had slept very badly. The lecture room was not very big, crowded, & stifling.2 I could scarcely see through my glasses for the heat, & had to stop & fan myself. But I found it quite easy to read, and I am told everyone heard all right, although my voice was very weak from the heat. The audience, as 206

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you know, were not at all university people, but a sort of vast intellectual pilgrimage called University Extension meeting, which come together here & at Oxford every summer for a sort of fortnight’s debauch [débauche]3 of lectures on every imaginable subject. I believe it is useful, though of course their heads must be in a fine muddle by the end. They are, I should think, mainly of the class of school teachers; also Americans & people desirous of disconnected culture. I like being in Cambridge so much. We are in lodgings with Evelyn Wimbush & the Chittendens, who are very nice. There are very lovely things here, & the most beautiful green lawns & bowery trees; but it is far less complete & picturesque than Oxford. Tomorrow I go for two days to the Humphry Wards4 in Hertfordshire & thence to London. It is still possible I may go to Scotland, but uncertain. The Lecturer ladies of Newnham5 asked us to lunch yesterday. The place is nearly empty, & all the students remaining are gathered, during the long vacation, in one hall of the three. The houses are beautiful, & have a fine garden; & the young women look quite nice. But there is something woefully amateurish, modern, without charm, compared to a man’s college. Afterwards we went to tea with the Pertzes, who are setl settled here as Dora P. [Pertz] is doing botanical research very seriously with Frank Darwin.6 Mr Sidgwick7 was there, a very beautiful looking old man. It is rather sad that one of the finest minds in England, a great writer on Political Economy & Ethics, shd give any of his time to collecting spurious ghost stories. But I suppose I am prejudiced, & that even spurious ghost stories ought to be investigated in a critical & scientific spirit. Now we are going to lunch with Mr Ward, prof. of mental science; and in the evening, Mr Berry, the secretary for the lectures, will take us on the river. Kit has been very bad, but is better since the heat has diminished. It is a horrid affliction, this ear of hers. Let me send several Illustrated papers to choose from before you decide which to subscribe to. And when you do subscribe, let me do it through my Gower Street bookseller, cheaper & more punctual than Clay. So much love. How is Papa? What flowers? How are the zinnias & the various Esengrini plants? Yr V

1 Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768), of which new editions had been printed in 1892. 2 Lee’s lecture at the Cambridge University extension. 3 In French in the text: orgy. 4 See List of Correspondents: Mary Ward (known as Mrs Humphry Ward). 5 Newnham College, Cambridge, was the second women’s college founded at Cambridge, after Girton College. It was founded in 1871 by Henry Sidgwick, Millicent Garrett Fawcett and other progressive-minded intellectuals as a venue for Lectures for Ladies.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 6 Dora Pertz: British botanist Dorothea Frances Matilda Pertz (1859–1939), daughter of Georg Heinrich Pertz (1796–1876) and his second wife, Leonora Horner (1818–1908), daughter of Leonard Horner (1785–1864). See “Collezione Horner,” the British Institute of Florence, www.britishinstitute.it/it/archivio/archivio/collezione-horner. Dora Pertz co-authored five papers with Charles Darwin and Emma Wedgewood’s third son, Franck Darwin (1848–1925). She was a fellow of the Linnean Society. 7 Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900), political economist and founder of the Society for Psychical Research, his attempt to legitimise psychic proceedings. His major philosophical work was The Method of Ethics (London: Macmillan & Co., 1874). His wife, physics researcher Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick, née Balfour (1845–1936), was the principal of the college at that time and an assistant to Lord Rayleigh.

52. Matilda Paget August 21, 1893 London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 21 Aug. STOCKS, TRING. Dearest Mamma, Here I is a letter just received from the woman I mentioned as willing to come & do secretary. I know her only slightly: she is very intelligent & well mannered & has evidently read a great deal. I know she knows quantities of French books. But as she seems to consider her lack of French an obstacle, I put it to you & Eugene. Will you send me an answer for her at once to Kit’s address? It wd be for Oct 1. 53. Matilda Paget August 24, [1893] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Aug. 24 Kensington Dearest Mamma, I found Eugene’s two letters and your and Miss Jourdan’s post cards on my return last evening from Mrs Ward’s. I was ‸am‸ so taken by utter surprise & joy at the news referred to in the 2d letter, which I happened to read first, that the question of Eugene’s eye trouble seems very trifling. Kit came in and I gave her the letters to read, and she was delighted; and kept repeating “that’s what it is to be so intelligent! Hewit makes things possible!” As to Eugene’s eyes, of course he must take the very greatest care. Besides, he might get headaches from the unusual strain. 208

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I have told Miss Cruttwell that I forwarded her letter to you, as I would not be responsible for the absence of French. But I should think that, particularly if he is beginning to read to himself, Eugene might be satisfied with English for the time.1 I do not wish, if possible, to withdraw from Miss Cruttwell, as she seems so anxious to go, and, at the moment, it seemed so desirable to have someone. She would come as real secretary, and I have told her that I should probably be away sometimes, as I want to go to see Maria Pasolini & the Princess Rospigliosi2 in October. My idea is to return on or about the 10th I liked w being at the Wards so much more than I anticipated. He, who is rather a blundering, bumptious snob, was luckily away; and she is really an extremely nice woman, really modest, and serious at bottom. It is he, with his absurd swagger, talking as if she were writing the Tables of Stone at the very least, saying, “of course Robert Elsemere virtually destroyed Christianity” and so forth, has made her ridiculous. But And she, unluckily, has neither keen literary sense to make her perceive her own mediocrity, nor sense of humour – not a shadow of it – to see that the sort of prophetic – hereditary (Arnold) prophetic position – which her husband makes for her is ludicrous. But she does not sell herself; and if she has made more money by her novels than anyone since George Eliot, and now has a beautiful country house and a shooting for her husband, it isn’t because she has written down to the public, but because, writing her own very serious and excellent, but mediocre views of religion etc, she has happened to meet the wants of the majority. Next time I write I will tell you what she advises me to do. I think my plans stand thus. Sept 1st to 4th. with Kit to the Foster Arbuthnots near Guildford – 4th to 12. with the Ranee at Wimbledon (perhaps complicated with Miss Smyth at Farnboro’) 12 13 to 16. the Welbys at Denton 17 to 16 to 18th Mrs. Taylor at Chip Chase 18th meet Kit (who will have been with Lady Campbell who is ill) at the Hays at Melrose, and then go on to the Orr Ewings at Dryburgh Abbey, also on the Tweed. Return South the 25, perhaps go to Peterbro’ en route. I suppose you could get a Goodban for a day or two if need be? I hope so much my curtains & Kit’s have been washed. So much love V.

1 Owing to the family’s travels and international network, Eugene Lee-Hamilton, like his sister, was fluent in French, English, German and Italian. As a child, after his father, Captain James Frederick Lee-Hamilton, died in 1852, he and his mother lived in France, staying in the Castle of Bizanos, near Pau in the French Pyrenees, with the family of Matilda’s younger brother William MacPherson Abadam. Then, after William’s death in 1851, they stayed with William’s widow, Agnes Snow Jump Shakespeare (1806–1866), and Eugene and Violet’s two young cousins Alice (1847–1922) and Pauline (1849–?), both of whom married French men and settled in France in later years.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 Henry Hippolyte Ferguson Paget (1823–1894), the tutor whom Matilda engaged for seven-yearold Eugene at the time of her widowhood – and married in Dresden on 13 October 1855 – was an émigré French aristocrat raised in Poland who probably tutored Eugene in French. As a young man, after his studies at Oriel College, Oxford, Eugene Lee-Hamilton worked as attaché at the British Embassy in Paris as translator and interpreter, serving during the crises of the Franco-Prussian war, through the Siege of Paris and the Commune of Paris (1870–1871). A year later, he was sent to Geneva to assist Lord Tenterden in the arbitration of the “Alabama” dispute between Great Britain and the United States. Paris and Geneva were to be his sole missions: he collapsed on receiving orders to locate to Lisbon, and wasn’t to rise again until 1896. See S. Geoffroy, “C’est un monde qui s’écroule: Eugene Lee-Hamilton et la Commune de Paris,” The Sibyl, A Journal of Vernon Lee Studies, https://thesibylblog.com/cest-un-monde-qui-secroule-eugene-lee-hamilton-et-la-commune-de-paris-lettres-a-sa-famille-31-aout-1870-9-juin-1871/. During his illness, most of his secretaries were French-speaking. Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s literary translations include translations of Dante from Italian into English and of Lee’s stories “The Virgin of the Seven Daggers” (for the Journal des débats) and “Pope Jacynth” [“Le Pape Jacinthe”] (for the Figaro Illustré). She would often point out interesting texts for him to translate, e.g. “the 3 Angels” from Bayard Taylor’s Faust (Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. IV) and Stevenson’s “Donkey in the Cévennes” (Lee to Matilda Paget, January 31, 1895). 2 Princess Maria Carolina Rospigliosi Pallavicini, sister-in-law of Count Primoli’s friend Teresa Boncompagni.

54. Matilda Paget August 26, [1893] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Kensington Aug. 26 (address c/o Kit) Dearest Mamma Kit has just shown me a letter of which we both think that the end is in E’s [Eugene’s] own writing! What a thing!1 I don’t send E. [Eugene] either the new sort of stylograph, (tho’ I will bring him one) nor the movable blue lead pencil, because both of these, from my experience, require owing to the particular sort of pressure, an amount of attention & of grip which would be very bad for him at present. Kit suggests that he should ask Miss Jourdan to get him a very good drawing pencil to begin with. If he use a pen, a new quill (not a quill nib) will be the best. Later he had better have a little invalid writing board made, of the sort Mrs French uses, but wider. The inkstand is in a socket, and paper, blotter etc all kept in place by straps, so one can put the board at any inclination. Perhaps E. [Eugene] might find the invalid dinner tray with little legs, which is in the dining room near the clock, useful as a writing table or to hold heavy books. Later he had better have one of those movable adjustable book desks to screw on his sofa, as, in his position, holding a book must be difficult. Last night & this morning Kit & I spent at a sort of new Toynbee Hall on a smaller scale called Mansfield House, in Canning Town, the extreme eastern most 210

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part of London where the new docks are.2 It is an offshoot of the new nonconformist college, Mansfield, at Oxford;3 and has an affiliated woman’s residence, where we slept. We had tea & dinner &, the young men who were there (for it is vacation) took us through the streets of that very poor quarter, mainly inhabited by dockers, & over the docks. They have wo an admirable workman’s club, 2d4 a week subs, with reading room, coffee house, billiard & chess, a lecture room & concert room (turned sometimes into a gymnasium) & a work shop with tools etc. for mending chairs, crockery etc. etc. and they get up all sorts of lectures & musical entertainments. They also keep a lawyer who can be consulted at a very low fee or gratuitously: the poor people suffer horribly, from the expensiveness of legal advice, which, in a country without a code, implies ignorance of all their rights & legal duties. These young men also run a large lodging house, which we went over, where a man can get a very clean bed, a locker, hot water & means of washing clothes, gas & cooking fire, & use of two large common rooms for 2/ a 2 shillings a week. The dormitories are bare, but perfectly clean & airy, whereas all the other lodging houses in the district are, I believe, perfectly appalling. On the whole I think Miss Clementina Black is quite right in saying that Mansfield House does more real work than Toynbee Hall. The head is a Mr Alden, a Balliol [man] comically like Placci, & extremely nice. They are nearly all socialists, of one sort or another, and all of them actively employed in forming a parliamentary labour party and organising trades unions. Mr Alden is also on the County Council. One of the men we saw, a journalist, is an odd Tolstoian mystic, “an anarchical communist.” He believes in the abolition of all legal interference & of all forcible action, & in the voluntary shaking down of mankind into a state of cooperation as a consequence. He is a very strange, sympathetic dreamer. The others are all more or less state socialists: of course the anarchists want the abolition of the state; still they live in peace together. They were all most simple & amiable, & we had a most interesting evening with them. At night the chief streets, very wide, of Canning Town, look deceptively cheerful & foreign, as they are full of open air shops & barrows, all brilliantly illuminated; the people lounging about, & buying, & children playing about, & sounds of banjos & harps from public houses. It was so gay & not English, made me understand the attraction of London for country folk. But between these main streets are awful slums, almost pitch dark & inconceivably grimy & foul. This morning we walked about a mile along the new docks. It is very picturesque, from the rows & rows of shuxx ships unloading, the eastern bales sewed up in matting, and the Lascar sails all about. At each dockgate, there is a g a crowd of men waiting for employment; the average that get none is about a thousand a day in that set of docks alone. You can imagine the misery. The pay is a shilling ‸6d.‸ an hour, but at best it is most intermittent work. Mr Alden has a scheme for draining off the superfluous dock hands (always pouring in) and who a end with being very badly & badly supported by public charity, into agricultural – spadework – colonies in Essex. Land has got so cheap that Govt could buy to advantage, & Mr Alden thinks these colonies could be made self supporting, 211

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I know all this will interest you after Germinal,5 I agree exactly in all Eugene says about the latter. I must stop, for I am very tired. So much love. Yrs V. 1 Up to that date (26 August 1893), all of Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s letters had been dictated. 2 Social settlements and university extension movements were extremely popular in England at the turn of the century. Largely due to the influence of the Christian socialist and positivist movements, those who ran them (e.g. Congregationalist ministers, middle-class socialist activists) intended to provide health care and education that had previously only been available to the rich. Canning Town Women’s Settlement was founded in 1892 and offered health and welfare services to women and children, as well as adult education classes. Mansfield House was started to aid the very poor and those out of work. 3 Mansfield was the first nonconformist college at Oxford, founded in 1886 after the passage of the 1871 Act of Parliament that abolished religious tests for non-theological degrees at Oxford. 4 tuppence/two pence. 5 Germinal (Paris: G. Charpentier et Cie, éditeurs, 1885), Emile Zola’s realistic novel about an 1860s coal miners’ strike. The book was a favourite of Lee’s. See Commonplace Book V.

55. Eugene Lee-Hamilton August 31, [1893] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College1 Kensington Aug. 31 Address St. Brendans Wimbledon Dearest Eugene – How wonderful to get a whole letter in your handwriting. It is still quite familiar, but has got a little italianised, a little like Angelica’s. What a wonderful thing! You will find the sort of purple pencil which purports to be indelible but is not, anywhere in Florence, at the Stores or any good stationer’s. It isn’t worth sending. On the other hand all the stylograph & antistylograph tribe pencils are very delicate & liable to crushing. I will bring you one. I am very interested in your criticism of Dionea, which is even too favourable in some ways. I am so pleased you like the last piece.2 As regards obscurity in the narrative, I think that if you read it three months hence that would not strike you; for you will regain a habit of twigging and suggestions and of easily following tortuosities of narrative which is the result of the habit of consecutive reading. You will then, I think, agree with me that such a story requires to appear & reappear & disappear, to be baffling, in order to acquire its supernatural quality. You see there is no real story; once assert the identity of Dionea with Venus; once show 212

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her clearly, & no charm remains. The Vénus d’llle of Prosper Mérimée3 (there are improper passages, so read it to yourself) by far the finest story of the Dionea sort, is quite as obscure & baffling, at least I think so in remembering it. The sort of straight on end mystery as in Gauthier’s Avatar & Morte Amoureuse4 is very boring. I think stories in which adventure preponderates, like Stevensons[’s], cannot be too clear in narrative, & stories of the supernatural too allusive. I don’t think it is my obscurity which prevents my being popular, but my habit & determination to write only to please myself, irrespective of readers, and by this means reach the only readers to whom I can give pleasure or profit, those who stand, naturally, in want of exactly the writer I am. It is a question of personal equation. Of course I have played my cards as badly as I could have done with regard to securing a public; but I have written, for the last ten years, with the determination never to write a thing which did not happen to interest me at the moment, and with the desire to prevent myself from getting into intellectual ruts. At thirty seven I have no public, but on the other hand, I am singularly far from being played out & crystallised, as I see most writers become even before this age, You see I happen to be absolutely unambitious, I dislike people talking to me about my writings, & popularity does not attract, but rather repels me. On the other hand I consider that in a world where so many clever people (especially in England) have to write to suit the public from sheer lack of money, it would be shocking for me, who could lack at most, only luxuries, to do such a thing. Of course it would be a bore if my writing ceased to bring in anything at all; but I think it better to restrict my expenditure than to increase my income. Mrs Ward was talking to me the other day about my literary prospects. She thinks I ought to have a position like Matthew Arnold’s or Ste Beauve’s [Sainte Beuve’s]. She wants me to engage to furnish, say every two months, a paper to some big review, so as to get a clear identity before the public. The advice is excellent & I have pondered over it. But I find that I should have to write on actualities, new books or new editions, at the choice of the Editor. Now, with my very small powers of reading (I get tired if I read two hours a day & always shall) I cannot sacrifice all intellectual private life to reading up for articles. As a human being I feel bound to get information on a great many subjects, & the subjects increase the more I know. So I am determined I will not read a book unless it conduces to my education as a human being or to my pleasure, which comes to the same. What I write must be the outcome of what I think as a human being. So I can go on only as I am going on. Again, I could perhaps swing into notice, with the right kind of novel. But I feel every day more & more that I don’t know enough of life to write a novel I should care to read. Life is too serious to be misrepresented as in Miss Brown. I can write lots of stories on the rare occasions of knowing some side of life well. At sixty I will write a novel. So I am bound to be unpopular, & you must just put up with it. And so must Mamma. So much love V.

1 Addressed: Italy / Eugene Lee Hamilton Esq / II Palmerino / Maiano / Firenze. 2 Stories in Hauntings (1890): “Dionea” and “A Wicked Voice.”

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 3 Mérimée’s “La Vénus d’Ille,” in which a young man is crushed to death on his wedding night by the statue of Venus on which he had placed his wedding ring. See Lee to William Blackwood, 25 July 1885, footnote 2, Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II. 4 Works of Théophile Gautier (1811–1872), French Romantic author, though his works bordered on the French Decadent period of literature. “Avatar” is a novella, published in twelve instalments in Le Moniteur universel from 29 February to 3 April 1856. Octave de Saville confesses to Dr Cherbonneau that he is dying for the love of a married woman he met in Florence, Countess Prascovie Labinska, who loves her husband, Count Olaf, and rejects Octave. The doctor proposes to migrate Octave’s soul into Count Olaf’s body. “La Morte Amoureuse” (La Chronique de Paris [23 and 26 June 1836]) is a supernatural tale of a priest visited by a female vampire.

56. Matilda Paget September 5, [1893] Weybridge, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Bridge House – Weybridge Sept. 5. Dearest Mamma – I came here for 24 hours yesterday to stay with some friends of the Sargents & of Flora’s who had kindly asked me, & shall go on to the Ranee’s this afternoon. ‘Tis half an hour’s journey & it was the same from Guildford. Upper House was very nice. Mrs Arbuthnot is the mother of Kit’s sister in law, an odd, handsome, foreign woman with a dash of the Tarbrush & atrocious tho’ kind manners;1 he is a nice kind gruff orientalist & a cousin of poor Annie Meyer. He took us some beautiful drives across the heather & through the pinewoods, to see Somerset Beaumont and the Macmillans. It appears no trace was ever found of that poor half mad Malcolm Macmillan we used to know, who disappeared on Mount Olympus.2 His poor old father would not believe for months that he was dead; and whenever a cab stopped used to say – “Listen, I think that must be Malcolm” – Lady Burton, the widow of the traveller, came to Upper House an hour before I left. She is a tremendous poseuse & her book seems a marvellous revelation of egoism. But she is very impressive & picturesque; a sort of huge nut-cracker caricature of Mrs Callander,3 with a grand manner beautiful voice, wonderfully got up in widow’s weeds making her look like a Venetian Senator. You will find her history in the review of reviews. Her dramatic moment was the burning of her husband’s translation of an obscene Oriental poem, which he had worked at for 4 years in order to constitute her a fortune after his death, and the destruction of which cost her several thousand pounds. The Mr Arbuthnot’s story is that some priest (she is a catholic) got a sight of it after Burton’s death & told her that unless she burned ‸destroyed‸ it Burton’s soul would remain in Purgatory. Anyhow burn it she did. But she seems to be drawing a large income from his translation of the Arabian Nights,4 whose immense sale is due mainly (can be due only in fact) to its containing a literal translation of the indecencies omitted in every other version. 214

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She gave me a Baron Münchhausen impression. Talking of the heat this summer, she related that either at Goa or Damascus, I forget which, she had once left a jar of water on a terrace exposed to the sun. Casually going out onto the terrace she found the water boiling; so she rushed & fetched a raw egg, and had the satisfaction of eating it, perfectly cooked, the right number of minutes later!! Kit has remained at Upper House. I shall join her in Scotland but she will probably come to lunch at the Ranee’s. Did I tell you I had a delightful evening at the Ponsonbys at St James’s Palace? They were passing through from Osborne to Baltimore [.] These people, called Trower,5are a sort of rich aesthetic, but with moderation & good taste. The garden, which is very lovely with flowers & big beech trees, runs down to the river Wey, on which we have been several times. He is also, somehow, a Socialist. I say somehow. I have ordered Review of Reviews & Speaker as a present for Eugene. Goodbye & so much love V.

1 Ellinor Arbuthnot, née Stirling (1838–1911), was born in Perth, Western Australia, in 1838, the daughter of Admiral Sir James Stirling (1791–1865) and Ellen Mangles (1807–1874). In 1856, she married first James Alexander Guthrie (1823–1873) of Craigie, Forfarshire. They had nine children. After Guthrie’s death, she married Indian-born orientalist and translator Forster (sometimes Foster) Fitzgerald Arbuthnot (1833–1901), born in Mumbai. 2 Publisher and author Malcolm Kingsley Macmillan (1852–1889). He was the eldest son of publisher Alexander Macmillan. He disappeared on 11 July 1889 while climbing Mount Olympus in Greece (see the Times, 26 July 1889). His historical novel Dagonet the Jester was published in 1886 (Troy J. Bassett, “Author: Malcolm Kingsley Macmillan,” At the Circulating Library: A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837–1901, 15 December 2022, www.victorianresearch.org/atcl/show_author. php?aid=3860). 3 Alice Louisa Callander, née Craigie-Halkett (1855–1922) was a longtime friend of Lee’s. Her parents were John Cornelius Craigie-Halkett and Matilda Justinia née Davidson and her family came from Scotland. In 1876, she married George Frederick William Callander, 17th and last Laird of Ardkinglas and Craigforth; the couple had no children. She was a relative of Lady Archibald Campbell (“Lady Archie”), another friend of Lee’s. She was also a companion and caretaker to Annie Meyer (née Fitzgerald) in Florence when the latter’s health was failing in 1883. See Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. I. Also see M. C. Rintoul [ed.], Dictionary of Real People and Places in Fiction (Abingdon: Routledge, 1993). For a portrait of Alice Callander, and about her romantic friendship with Annie Meyer, see Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II, pp. xxix–xxxi. 4 His friend explorer and scholar Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) was highly appreciative of his scholarly knowledge of oriental texts and dedicated the fourth volume of his Arabian Nights (10 vols. [London: Royal Shasta Society, 1888]) to him. “At their seaside residence at Bandra, the Arbuthnots entertained the explorer and scholar Sir Richard Francis Burton and his wife in 1876. . . . Shortly after his return to England Arbuthnot associated himself with Burton in founding the Kama Shastra Society, a fictitious device to issue unexpurgated translations of oriental classics,” including erotica: the Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana (trans. F.F. Arbuthnot and F. Burton, preface and introduction by Richard Burton, for the Kama Shastra Society of London and Benares, for private circulation only, 1883), the Ananga Ranga (for the Kama Shastra Society of London and Benares, for private circulation only, 1885) and later Sex Mythology, Including an Account of the Masculine Cross (London: privately printed, 1898). 5 Christopher James Walter Trower was admitted as a lawyer in 1892. He was Stanley’s solicitor; their correspondence is in the Henry Morton Stanley Archive, Africa Museum.

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57. Matilda Paget September 9, [1893] Wimbledon, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Sat: Sept 9. Wimbledon Dearest Mamma – I was so pleased to get yr postcards; & particularly to know yr opinion about Germinal. Did you read my paper on Zola in the Contemporary?1 It must be somewhere at the Palmerino. I am sorry about Eugene’s eyes; I shouldn’t wonder if he required some sort of light glass for the moment; and I wish he’d see Meyer – the address is Via dei Malcontenti, behind S. Croce.2 It’s no good trifling with one’s eyes. I like being here very much. I don’t see a creature till 1.30, as I have lunch and coffee in my room & the Ranee is busy all morning. I like her so much: she is such a very good, kind, sincere simple creature, besides having great charm of manner & personality. She is typewriting a lot of Borneo superstitions & legends for Eugene: I thought they might interest him. I wonder whether Eugene will feel the sort of emptiness in Faust which always bores me; with the exception of course of the Margaret episode and of two or three magnificent passages. It seems to me so awfully about nothing at all; or, if it is no about anything at all (always excluding the Margaret portions) a sort of 18th century vagueness & generality of expression turns it into something which doesn’t matter much. It seems full of rhetoric, doesn’t it? Browning’s Paracelsus3 is obscure enough to make one commit suicide; but all through the inky obscurity one feels thought & feeling crowding and jostling: Faust is lucid comparatively, but isn’t it empty also? Tell Eugene I am going through Dante very slowly. I read a page of it every night out loud when I’m going to bed, reading very carefully. It seems to me so full of magnificent, sober compressed imagination, so much a poem for all times & all men, not for cultured Germans of the 19th century. I am beginning to correct the proofs of my new book of dialogues,4 and to feel it is so awfully bad. It is a mistake printing things after several years have passed, at least things of thought & opinion: they seem, after a lapse of time either false or platitudinous. Perhaps you had better sell out one ‸of my‸ smallest bonds to pay Nannucci. I haven’t money enough to send a cheque. Will you kindly pay Giuseppe his 15 francs a month? Or have you done so? I am rather hard up; have money enough for this month & for getting back, but not more. I go on Tuesday for two days to Miss Smyth, ˇ(Frimhurst, Farnboro)ˇ that very original composer or rather very original woman – for perhaps her compositions aren’t as original as she. We talk Ibsen and anarchy till we are black in the face. 216

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Thence I go to Lady Welby. You had better address to Chipchase Castle, Warkon-Tyne, Northumberland. I shall be there the 16th & 17th. On the 18th I go to Garscube, Maryhill, Glasgow. But this is a secret, it appears. So much love. How is Papa? Yrs V. 1 “The Moral Teaching of Zola,” Contemporary Review, 63 (February 1893), pp. 196–212. Lee was a great admirer of Zola’s. 2 He was an ophthalmologist in Florence. “Oculiste, le Dr Ad. Meyer, via Malcontenti, 9.” Karl Baedeker, Italie septentrionale jusqu’à Livourne, Florence et Ravenne et routes menant de France, de Suisse et d’Autriche en Italie. Manuel du voyageur (Paris: Paul Ollendorff, & Leipzig: Karl Baedeker, 1892). 3 Paracelsus (London: Effingham Wilson, 1835) was one of Browning’s early poems. Like Sordello (London: Edward Moxon, 1840) it is dense and difficult for the uninitiated reader. 4 Althea (1894).

58. Matilda Paget September 13–14, [1893] Farnborough, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Frimhurst. Farnborough Sept. 13 Dearest Mamma. I write from Miss Smyth’s, whither I came yesterday coming, to leave again, for Lady Welby’s tomorrow. I am sorry, both for the cause & the effect, that Lady Campbell has got so much worse that Kit & I cannot go to Garscube. This may upset all my Scotch plans, & result in my return to Italy somewhat earlier. I do so hope you won’t hate Miss Cruttwell; I fear I am beginning, most unreasonably, to do so. She has a complexion like certain peaches, insufficiently sleek for a human being, furry. Also a voice which is dulcet and an Oxford accent. But she is very intelligent & extremely willing, & seems to have read every mortal thing. I was very sad at leaving the dear Ranee, who is quite enchantingly good, kind, amusing and delightful in a sort of French or Italian Angelica-ish way.1 My reason was the sudden arrival (or expected arrival) of the Rajah, (the King as he is called) with whom she is on bad terms, & who does not even announce his visits to England. I spent a night at Eugénie Sellers, whom I appreciate all the more as we are not house-keeping together; her house-keeping is of the most sketchy, and consists less of ordering food than of general complaints of the heartlessness of servants. Miss Smyth was returning from the Continent, & we met by appointment at Waterloo. On arrival here it appeared that none of her letters had been attended to: no carriage met us at the station, the house was discovered shut up, the family 217

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absent; and with some difficulty some chops were cooked. It was very funny, and her perfect composure funniest. 14th Yesterday she borrowed a pony & cart from the Empress Eugénie,2 and drove me there to tea. I should explain that the Empress lives at Farnboro’, in a ‸big‸ house originally built by the Publisher Longman, & profusely d covered with the sailing ship of that firm. She is very fond of Miss Smyth, has her to stay in various parts of the world & to yacht, & has done her a variety of good turns. I fancy that this young lady’s enormous energy & ambition must be an interest in her empty life. The Empress was seated in a small room, with M. Pietri (fils),3 her Lectrice and a young Bonapartist girl who is a Venitian (?)4 Except that one occasionally m thirdperson’d & majesty’d her, and that she ended the visit by walking out instead of our doing so, nothing could be more like the a visit to anybody else. Miss Smyth cheerfully contradicted & interrupted her. We stayed about an hour & a half. The conversation very soon ceased to be small talk, & went onto the condition of Germany, whence Miss S. [Smyth] is just returned, the German Emperor, Bavaria, Munich & the mad King,5 & the character of the English. I was immensely surprised that the Empress was very far from stupid; in fact decidedly able, racy, and with a charming humorous turn, & an admirable f hostess. She said nothing that was in the least conventional or vapid; & I had the feeling that all the immense interests among which her life has been spent had really given her a weight & reality of views. She got very excited, slapping her thigh & gesticulating, about the magnificent d behaviour of the officers of the Victoria & the Camperdown on trial, where none attempted to shift responsibility on anyone, & least of all on the poor dead Tryon.6 She is a very handsome elderly woman, with a fine, large presence, not in the least like her picture; & gives the idea of a very strong, southern, carré,7 loyal, impulsive character. I thought this wd interest you, hence prolixity. I shall hear on passing thro’ London what plans Kit has made; but I tend to think I may return to Italy in abou less not a few days. Goodbye & so much love Yrs V. 1 Reminding her of her friend Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi. 2 Empress Eugénie: María Eugenia Ignacia Agustina de Palafox y Kirkpatrick, 19th Countess of Teba, 16th Marchioness of Ardales (Eugénie de Montijo, 1826–1920). She was born in Granada to a prominent noble family, and was educated in France, Spain and England. She became Empress of France following her marriage to Emperor Napoleon III on 30 January 1853, and remained so until 4 September 1870, when he was deposed. She was an influential intellectual figure and an important patron of the arts. After her husband, Napoleon III, was defeated by the Prussians in 1870, Empress Eugénie was forced to flee France. . . . [she] lived just a few miles from the Smyth’s family

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3 4 5 6

7

In Impressions That Remained (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1919) Smyth wrote, “I was to owe to the Empress . . . the demolishment of some of the barriers that block an unknown artist’s road into the open” (p. 468). Empress Eugénie helped Smyth to pay for the printing of her compositions, from her Mass in D, Fantasio, Der Wald (1902) to The Wreckers [Les Naufrageurs]: A Cornish Drama in Three Acts, by H.B. Brewster, Set to Music by Ethel Smyth (London: G. Mitchell, 1909). In 1891, at the empress’s own home, Eugénie presented Smyth to Queen Victoria. This encounter led to the promotion of Smyth’s Mass both by the empress and Queen Victoria and its performance in London. “In March 1893, Smyth’s Mass in D was placed on a program alongside Haydn’s Creation” (Erica Fedor, Transnational Smyth: Suffrage, Cosmopolitanism, Networks, unpublished doctoral thesis [University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2018], p. 34). She was a lifelong friend of Lee’s. See Colby, Vernon Lee, about Lee’s relationship with her. Eugénie’s secretary, Jean-Baptiste “Tito” Franceschini-Pietri (1834–1915). He was from Corsica and had been Napoleon III’s private secretary. Lee’s original punctuation. Ludwig Otto Friedrich Wilhelm, Ludwig II (1845–1886), King of Bavaria from 1864 to 1886. British vice-admiral Sir George Tryon (1832–1893) drowned on 22 June 1893 when his ship, the Victoria, collided with the Camperdown during maneuvers off Tripoli. “250 of the crew were saved. The Camperdown was seriously injured by the collision. Later the Victoria . . . sank in 15 minutes . . . The total number on board the Victoria was 660. Of these 255 were saved, and the rest, 405 in all, were drowned” (“A Terrible Naval Disaster,” The Argus, Trove, 24 June 1893). In French in the text: square.

59. Matilda Paget September 15, [1893] Grantham, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Denton, Grantham Sept 15 Friday Have given up Scotland to return to London tomorrow. It is possible I may start for Florence on Thursday or Friday, bringing Miss C. [Cruttwell]. I hope Kit’s room is all in order. All depends on when Miss Price is coming from Scotland. Will keep you acquainted. Much love V. 60. Matilda Paget September 17, [1893] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College London, Sunday 17 Sept.

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Dearest Mamma. I have taken a room close to Kit, with whom I shall have meals, at Sloane Gardens House, Chelsea SW (address there). It is cheap. Miss Price cannot come till the 26, & I want to see her. So I have arranged with Miss Cruttwell to leave the 30. This will bring us to Florence the 4th or 5th, as I shall have to stay a night at Mrs French[’s] who is very depressed. So much love V. 61. Matilda Paget September 19, [1893] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Sloane Gardens House1 Sept. 19. Chelsea. S.W. Dearest Mamma – I am established quite comfortably here, in a top room with a big window. This is a weird place. It is inhabited l entirely by women, or rather by ladies, for they aren’t the same thing. There are great stone corridors marked A.B.C.D. and a lift (but it seems to be perpetually carrying coals) and bathrooms which open by putting a penny in the slot (I had to put two pennies, which was a swindle, this morning) and coupons for having one’s boots cleaned. It makes one think of the coming delights of socialised existence. However it is clean, cheap, has a decent restaurant, &, is in a very good position, close to Sloane Square. If I return next summer I shall come here; it’s more independent & on the whole cheaper than lodgings; it is also close to Kit’s. I have arranged to leave the 29th or 30th, spend a day in Paris, one at Monza with the Esengrinis and then one if possible with poor Mrs French, who seems in a state of great depression about her husband. The advantage of this will be that Miss Nebel will have cleared off. I should like Miss Cruttwell to have her room, for I should like to keep Kit’s for Laura Gropallo or Miss Ponsonby. But not unless there had been ample time to clean, wash windows etc. etc. That particular room, from its colour, always looks dirty. I want the orange coloured chair & sopha [sofa] housses to be nicely washed & starched; they belong to that room & diminish its grimy tendency. I found Lady Welby much better in health and comparatively sane.2 She has wonderful flashes of philosophic genius, which now may possibly be turned to some use. Whereas when I knew her years ago, they always got metamorphosed into something absolutely unintelligible: she had discovered a metaphysical system which was spoken of as It; but I at all events never had the faintest notion what it

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was; and I shall always believe it was a sort of yawning hole in her consciousness, round which her thoughts circled in an absolutely hopeless way. Even now she rambles off into mere words & perpetual clauses about nothing at all “you see my dear friend if etc. if etc. if etc.” But I think she has got hold of an important idea: namely, that owing to human language having evolved for purely practical uses, and in times which had very different notions from ours, it is not an adequate vehicle for philosophic thought; & is, moreover, perpetually betraying us, by the metaphors engrained in it & due to old fallacies, into absolutely wrong notions. I quite agree with her, & I think that sooner or later language must both expand & contract, become richer and more precise. But – here comes in the semi-mad part of the woman – instead of writing a book about it, like any rational creature, she enters into voluminous correspondence with every writer she can lay hold of, & bombards him or her with extracts, pamphlets etc etc. until he or she is willing, in a for peace’s sake, to assert3 that anything or everything is the matter with language. It is the procedure of people having the mania of persecution or the mania of organisation applied to philosophy. It’s odd, in isn’t it? She comes, I fancy, of a cracky clever family, the Stuart Wortleys (Wharncliff), and was left in the desert some days after her mother & father’s death there, when she was very young. She has had the mania of organising: a great school of art needle work, a society for purifying society by excluding fashionable people of too rapid morals, etc. Then she has been religious; now she has philosophy; and certainly she knows a great deal about it and has original ideas. She is rather a dear – beautiful, with burning brown eyes & a diaphanous face & white hair, & a funny, ghostlike, flitting movement, and a rapid unintelligible ghostly mumble. She is loveable all the same; & her family, quite commonplace people who look on aghast, seem to love her. I am working hard here at the galleries. Also I am going to see some more slumsettlements. Saturday we are going to a ballad concert at the people’s palace with the dear Ranee. How is Papa? Tell him I have got wrinkles about soil from the gardener of the Duke of Rutland. It appears we must burn leaves etc. to improve it. So much love V.

1 Settlement house for women, built in 1889. 2 Lady Victoria Welby (1837–1912), who was a goddaughter of the young Queen Victoria and a granddaughter of the 5th Duke of Rutland, was a cousin of Susan Annie Eliza Muir Mackenzie (1839–1908), painter. One of the nine children of Sir John William Pitt Muir Mackenzie, 2nd Baronet of Delvine, Perthshire (1806–1855), and his wife, Sophia Matilda Johnstone (1814–1900). Her oldest sister was traveler and writer Georgina Mary Muir Mackenzie, later Mary Sebright, Lady Sebright (1833–1874). A theologian, writer, and philosopher of language, she contributed to the founding of the science of semiotics. 3 Lee first underlined, then suppressed the underlining, of this word.

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62. Matilda Paget September 22, [1893] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Sloane Gardens House Chelsea SW Sept 22 Friday. Dearest Mamma – I shall leave this Sat: 30, stay 1st in Paris, arrive evening of 2d and stay 3rd at Esengrinis at Monza, and arriving Florence the 5th. I shall spend a day & night at Mrs French’s at Igno near Pistoia. She lets me bring Miss Cruttwell. Miss C. will spend at Milan the day I shall be at Monza. Her address is Scarsdale Studios, Stratford Rd, Kensington W. I am well but very busy. Will write at greater length. V. 63. Matilda Paget September 29, [1893] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Friday I am leaving tomorrow by Calais. Shall be in Paris all Sunday proceeding overnight and hope to be at Casa Esengrini Monza Monday evening. Stay Tuesday. Wednesday evening Pistoia per Igno Villa French. Much love 64. Matilda Paget October 3, [1893] Monza, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Monza Tuesday morning. Dearest Mamma. A thousand thanks for yr kind card. We had a good & easy journey from Paris. Miss C. [Cruttwell] is really very nice; despite appearance, & has beautiful clothes. We shall sleep tomorrow night at Mrs French’s at Igno, and arrive, unless I telegraph to the contrary, at Florence Thursday evening at 6. 5. Will you send contadino & Sariana? The train is likely to be very late, so don’t come yrself, please! V.

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65. Matilda Paget October 26, [1893] Igno, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Igno, Thursday morn. Dearest Mamma – Do not send on letters to Villa Rospigliosi. It is uncertain whether Mrs French will be well enough to go there at all. I will write as soon as I know anything for certain. It is very lovely here, but I arrived with a bad head, owing to the atrocious heat in the train. So much love. Yrs V. P.S. We shall certainly not go to the Rospigliosis till Monday Sunday afternoon. So letters can be forwarded here till Saturday inclusive. 66. Matilda Paget November 26, [1893] Ravenna, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Ravenna Sunday Dearest Mamma. I didn’t arrive here till last night, but the journey wasn’t tiring & in part wonderfully beautiful. I travelled with two ladies from Forli and a young priest who had been to Florence to hear Lohengrin, who showed us (unpacking his cloaks on purpose) his secular clothes for going to the play, & offered us all massala [masala] & biscuits, & sang a great deal. M. [Maria] met me at the station. I am very glad to be here. V. 67. Matilda Paget November 29, [1893] Ravenna, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Ravenna 29 Nov. 1893

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Dearest Mamma – Many thanks for the letters sent on. I am very well & enjoying myself immensely, altho’ it is bitterly cold. We have been twice in the wonderful pine wood & once at the sea. Angelica is busy doing up an apartment of her immense 17th century palace with wonderful things found in the lumber room. I return at 6 p.m. Faenza line So much love. V. 68. Giovanni Battista Gigliucci1 December 5, 1893 Florence, Italy Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle, The New York Public Library2 II Palmerino, Maiano Florence. Dec 5 1893 Dear Count Gigliucci, I have just torn up some basketfulls [basketfuls] of MSS; and I should like, if possible, to give them honourable sepulture in the machines of the Accatonaggio [Accattonaggio].3 But Angelica Rasponi tells me she believes that the Accatonaggio [Accattonaggio] has ceased its beautiful hecatombs of waste paper. Is this true? Or shall I send my torn up works? And if so, to whom? Please tell me. Best greetings to Css Gigliucci4 Yrs truly V. Paget 1 See List of Correspondents: Count Giovanni Gigliucci. 2 Addressed: Conte Giovanni Gigliucci / Via del Mandorlo / Città. 3 In Italian in the text: Begging. Lee is asking Gigliucci if her manuscripts must be pulped (begging machines) or must be begged (accattare also refers to trying to obtain something as a gift or loan). It is probably a request for a contact for a publication, albeit in an ironic way, given that there didn’t seem to be separate waste cans at that time. We are grateful to Stefano Vincieri for this information. 4 Css: Clara Anastasia Gigliucci, née Novello (1818–1908), was a soprano singer and the daughter of the music publisher Vincent Novello (1781–1861). Born in London, she studied in Paris and made her public debut at the Theatre Royal, Windsor, in 1832. In 1843, she married Count Giovanni Baptista Gigliucci (1815–1893) and put her career on hold to raise a family and assist her husband in the fight for Italian independence. However, when Count Gigliucci lost his property in the 1848 uprisings, Novello returned to the stage, performing both in the United Kingdom and on the continent. Still popular, Novello retired in 1860 to live with Count Gigliucci in Rome and Fermo. See Victoria L.

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69. Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) [December 1893–January 1894] Florence, Italy Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Paris [The original of this letter is in French] [The complete letter is not extant] IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE Laure [Laura] Gropallo, a viendra passer une quinzaine avec nous; or, elle ne peut venir que la première quinzaine de Mars ou la seconde d’Avril (attendu puisque moi-même je serai absente du 15 Mars au 15 Avril). Je lui ai expliqué la chose, et elle vous prie de faire votre choix et de lui permettre de savoir, par mon xx Si si elle doit faire ses arrangements pour Mars ou Avril; le choix n’a pas d’importance pour elle; seulement, comme elle reçoit beaucoup de monde à Nervi, elle se trouve elle-même obligée de donner des réponses à ses parents et amis. Pardonnezmoi [pardonnez-moi] si je vous ennuie pr [pour] une si petite chose: c’est que je ne voudrais pour rien au monde que vous fussiez à Florence sans venir chez nous. Une lettre de M. Bernard Derosne, dont j’avais complètement oublié l’existence, m’apprend que Hauntings paraîtra en Février ou Mars sous le tître [titre] français Au Pays de Vénus et avec une préface de M. Masson. C’est à vous, chère amie, que je dois indirectement cet [This letter is not extant] 70. Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) [December 1893–January 1894] Florence, Italy Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Paris [The original of this letter is in French] IL PALMERINO1 MAIANO FLORENCE Laure [Laura] Gropallo will spend a fortnight with us; now, she can come only during the first two weeks of March or last two weeks of April (since I’ll be away myself from 15 March to 15 April). I’ve explained it to her, and she begs you to make your choice and let her know when she is to make her own arrangements for March or for April; either time is convenient for her; only, as she has many guests at Nervi, she finds herself obliged to let her parents 225

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and friends know about it. Forgive me for bothering you about such a trivial thing: it’s because for nothing in the world would I have you come to Florence without coming to us. A letter from Mr. Bernard Derosne, whose existence I had completely forgotten, tells me that Hauntings will be published in France in February or March with the French title Au Pays de Vénus, with a preface by Mr. Masson.2 It is to you, dear friend, that I indirectly owe this [this letter is not extant]

1 The first pages are missing. This begins at page 3. 2 Au Pays de Vénus (Paris: Dentu, 1894).

71. Mary Darmesteter to Vernon Lee1 December 25, 1893 Paris, France Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Anglais 243 18, BD DE LATOUR-MAUBOURG Xmas Eve 93 Dearest Vernon This is not a letter – I have too many things to say, to write them in the bustle of Christmas week. But only, one bare line of Christmas greeting that you may know I shall be lovingly thinking of you when the New Year sets in. The dear sprigs of olive and ilex and spicewood came this morning. They stand in my bedroom in a blue bracken jar and remind me of the January posies you used to bring me from your drives in the Cascine, when you came, all keen outer air & crisp green things, into the salon where I would be reading German Mystics over the fire or feebly trying to entertain some politico-economical young lady, all athirst for you. They also remind me of Orpheus and Carlo Placci and an argumentative cocksure person, in face much like a certain Condottiere of the Renaissance, who used to exist not a hundred miles from Florence and in whose demise I shall never properly believe. But I will write to you another day about your book. I think I like best (but I like them all) Orpheus and the Social Question. I wonder if you would write for the Revue de Paris – I must tell you about that also etc etc – can you imagine the Mouse as Madame la Directrice?2 I refuse to do so [.] A great packet of my poor foolish sad little old letters, so young, so senties,3 poor little unhappy things, was left at the door one day by a nameless young woman. I have only just now dared to glance at them – for one must not glance at Eurydice in Hades. When you know of some very discreet, honourable & yet good natured person who could take charge of your packet, let me know and she shall have it.4 226

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Dear me, how prudent you are! All my letters to dear Mr Symonds are at Davos – I should never dream of asking for them back!5Give my love to your dear mother, and my affectionate remembrance to Mr Paget & to Eugène of whom I am so glad to hear happier news – Ever your loving old friend Molly

1894 1 Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Anglais 243, Correspondance de Mary Robinson IV, Lettres de Mary Robinson à Vernon Lee (Violet Paget) 1887–1933. 2 “The Mouse” was Lee’s name for Mary Robinson when they were young. Her husband, James Darmesteter, was the director of the Revue de Paris. 3 In French in the text: emotional. 4 Mary Robinson’s letters to Vernon Lee are now held at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Paris. 5 John Addington Symonds (1840–1893), who had been Mary Robinson’s mentor in her early years, died on 19 April 1893. See Lee to Matilda Paget, August 30, 1890.

1. Bernard Berenson1 January 8, [1894] Florence, Italy Villa I Tatti: Harvard University Centre for Italian Renaissance Studies II Palmerino, Maiano, Florence Jan. [January] 8. Dear Mr Berenson, I have read yr paper on Renaissance churches;2 many thanks for lending it to me. This paper, or more strictly, its contents, bring home to me the impression in which all our talks about art have been confirming me more & more, namely that you have very rare powers & that you ought to further very greatly several important intellectual missions. I am not speaking of what, for want of a better word, I must call picture expertise, the branch which you have inherited from Morelli & share with Richter & Costa;3 for I am utterly incompetent to judge you in this line, & accept your verdicts as I should accept the special facts alleged by a physiologist or chemist. What I am alluding to as a mission is twofold. First, the mission of bringing the essential, pleasure-giving qualities of art within the reach of a greater number of persons whose nature would permit them to enjoy if only time & effort were saved for them by special charms of the Intellectual ground. And secondly, the mission of bringing art, both historically & aesthetically, within the domain of scientific hypothesis, & thus enormously enriching psychology. Either, or both, 227

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of these missions ought to be yours, for you have a very unusual combination of exact vision with power of generalisation, of aestheticoemotional expression (nearly always absent in scientific minds) with logical processes – excuse the pedantry of this exposition. Now what I want to say is that, in order that these powers of yours should be made as useful as possible, it seems to me most desirable that you should give greater attention than this paper testifies to your ever having done to the question of literary exposition. I am not alluding to the construction of sentences etc,4 but to that which Latins are more or less taught from their childhood, while we Anglo-Saxons are left tediously & often abortively to puzzle it out for ourselves: composition.5 You may answer you have no intention of being a man of letters, that your aims are purely scientific. But I am speaking of that portion of the literary craft which is not pleasure-giving, but trouble-saving; which is not remarked as a delightful quality, but the absence of which is felt, however unconsciously, as so much discomfort, and paid for by so much loss of efficacy. It is a question of guiding the reader’s mind along the lines of your own thought, instead of starting him off, or allowing him to divagate, onto other lines; a question of selecting which effects you had better produce, and eliminating or subordinating other effects; a question in fact of knowing what not to do. The present article is full of ingenious & even important ideas; but these ideas are not merely disconnected, unprepared by one another, but actually put to flight by other ideas of an irrelevant nature; moreover, the whole style of thinking as well as of writing, is perpetually swaying between the rigorously scientific and the popular so that, the mind is utterly dérouté6 and knows not which attitude to assume; the scientific portions requiring careful attention entirely prevent the popular ones from producing an effect of ease & pleasantness; while, on the other hand, the popular passages are likely to stick in the mind & leave no room for the more difficult scientific ones. I do not know to what public you wish to appeal eventually; I hope to two kinds, the intelligent lay public & the special one, turn about. But whichever public it may be, it must be treated in a consistent manner; and the rules of such consistent manipulation of the reader’s intelligence and attention are the rules of what I call composition. These rules are very few and very simple (once one knows them!) for they are negative for the most part. But Anglo Saxons are obliged to learn them at their own expense, or rather at the expense of the reader, since no English-speaking creature is ever taught to make even the rudimentary literary analysis which French & Italian children are put through obliged to learn. I have learned these rules in the course of many years – quite twenty – of constant writing; and I think I could teach them in twenty minutes! Would you like to come and read over yr paper with me, and let me show you where it is all wrong & where it is all right? I am so persuaded of yr future as a critic that I should be delighted to take a hundred times more trouble than this would imply. I suggest this because I imagine that the paper in question is recently written and represents your present literary difficulties; but of course it is possible that it may represent only yr past literary 228

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difficulties, and that you have taught yourself since then the two or three items I should otherwise be delighted to teach you, in return for much you have taught me. Be it as it may, please let me help you if ever I be able to do so. I am, dear Mr Berenson, Yours sincerely V. Paget 1 For more, see “Bernard Berenson,” The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, https://itatti.harvard.edu/bernard-berenson. 2 This may reference Berenson’s first article, “Vasari in the Light of Recent Publications” (The Nation [April 1893]) or a draft of The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance: With an Index to their Works (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1894), written in collaboration with Mary, published in London and New York in 1894 and reprinted in 1895 and 1897. Berenson’s four-volume Italian Painters of the Renaissance, with Indices to Their Works (New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons, 1896), which included Italian Pictures of the Renaissance (1896) Florentine Painters of the Renaissance (1896), Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance (1897), and North Italian Painters of the Renaissance (1907), followed. 3 Giovanni Morelli (1816–1891) was an influential art critic whom Bernard Berenson met in 1890. He developed a process for identifying the characteristic formal techniques of painters, for example, identifying a master’s work by how a figure’s hands are painted. He greatly influenced Bernard Berenson’s scholarship and his technique for attributing Renaissance works. Critics Jean-Paul Richter (1847–1937) and Enrico Costa (1867–1911) were also followers of Morelli’s method. 4 Bernard Berenson’s first language was German. He mastered a number of languages, including Hebrew, Sanskrit, Arabic, Latin, and Greek. 5 “B. Berenson was always touchy about his literary style, though he sometimes submitted to criticism and emendations from various friends, such as V. Lee and Bob Trevelyan, as well as Mary. English was not even his birthright tongue, though he was a brilliant linguist and claimed to have known twenty-six languages, and he was aware that his own use of it was sometimes less than perfect.” He called his dislike for writing his “penshyness,” and “he claimed that his nature was that of a ‘talker’” (Barbara Strachey, Remarkable Relations: The Story of the Pearsall Smith Family (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1980), p. 172). “Berenson often visited Lee at Il Palmerino, although each visit, according to Mary’s notes, was a trial: ‘V. Lee fearfully down on BB’s book – she says it is an inferior kind of Symonds’ (31 March 1894); ‘she tried to Vernonize him. He came home sick’ (9 May 1894)” (Sophie Geoffroy-Menoux, “Henry James and Family,” p. 82). Berenson wrote in 1889: “Vernon Lee not only looked at me thro’ the wrong end of a telescope but what is even more disagreeable almost made me regard myself in the same way” (Ernest Samuels, The Making of a Connoisseur [Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1979] p. 89). 6 In French in the text: Baffl+ed

2. Bernard Berenson January 25, [1894] Florence, Italy Villa I Tatti: Harvard University Centre for Italian Renaissance Studies Palmerino 25 Jan. My dear Mr Berenson – I fear you will find I have dealt very roughly with your Lotto.1 But it really must not stand like that. If you appeal to a public of specialists, a great deal of what you repeat & 229

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repeat over again is absolute truism to them; and you must not make them wade through that for the sake of two or three new items. If, on the other hand, you are appealing to the general cultured public (which yr style & choice of publisher makes me suppose) you must not – excuse my crudeness – perplex, bother and bore them by presenting your meaning in the fashion least calculated for its apprehension. Your introduction is virtually a mere onslaught on archivists & documentary criticism, and on shallow criticism generally; and, while it entirely fails to make the reader feel the immense gifts he is to receive from the new school of criticism (a thing to make him feel, rather than to tell him), it indisposes him horribly towards the author, as everyone is always indisposed by a display of abusiveness, in literature or out of it, and whether or not the abuse be deserved.2 The abusiveness, the gross exaggeration of expression, the attempt to make opponents grotesque; so dreadful in Morelli’s books must certainly militate against Morelli’s being taken as seriously as he deserves. This abusiveness, cocksureness etc in Morelli is, I really think, less a fault of the man’s character than a result of his inability to express himself: he emballes3 on anything he finds easy to say (and fault finding is always easy), he makes epigrams and blurts out paradoxes just as people make faces and twitch their shoulders when they don’t know how to sing: the energy which hasn’t been trained to flow in literary channels, vents itself in bad manners. I mention Morelli because, as he is in some things your master, he ought in others to be your scarecrow: a constant object teacher of what not to do. Now Morelli’s scarecrow quality is due to his having disdained to take in explaining himself the hundredth part of the trouble he expected the reader to take in judging between him & his opponents. That is why I want you to learn to write. You do not do justice to yourself. Your conversation; your demonstrations in the gallery, are full of suggestiveness and grip; your writings are almost empty of them, Your chapter on Lotto’s genius does not, I feel sure, contain a thousandth part of what you think about him; and instead it is full of what I must call Symonds twaddle & truism, repetition of assertion of vague & doubtful postulates,4 of repetition of things which vary between the truism and the gratuitous assumption; all things which I believe have no organic connexion with your own mind, but are mere tricks of awkwardness & shyness. You must therefore accustom yourself to express your thoughts, not only your & to restrict yourself to your thoughts. You can have no better exercise than rewriting the two chapters, I have just read, never trying hard to put into them as much matter as possible (they are at present empty) in as clear & unparenthetic a style as you can force yourself to. It strikes me that you have not defined for yourself the difference between the scientific & the literary treatment of art. The literary appeals to everyone, and aims at increasing aesthetic enjoyment5 by explaining what enjoyable qualities can be found in a work & in what interesting relations it can be thought of. The scientific treats art phenomena, personal historical, or emotional, as so much material towards evolutionary or psychological hypothesis; it addresses itself to the scientific reader. You must choose between the two, not for your whole career, but for each work, otherwise you will bore and disappoint each class of readers. As you have 230

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no literary gift as such (though I trust you will give yourself literary training) your most valuable work is sure to be of the scientific sort; and, the more purely scientific, the better. Such scientific work requires a careful elimination of vague, literary statements, however impressive they might be in their right place. It requires that your method be, as far as possible, the translation into words of the process of demonstration wh. you would employ in the presence of the pictures. You must learn to describe a picture as a physiologist describes a brain, and to describe your way of examining and isolating and reconnecting its qualities as a preparation or an experiment is described in a handbook. Then only will you be able accurately to define and classify, and build up hypotheses piece by piece. The question of: the exact relation of the work of art to the other works of art of the same master & of contemporary masters; the exact relation of the form to the foregoing form; of the mind of the individual artist to the form, & of the mind of the time to the mind of the artist, is the great objective art problem; and, so far as I can see, you ought to do more than any other man to solve it with regard to painting. But to do so, you must be rigidly scientific, you must entirely discard subjective, emotional, literary processes, intended to please the reader, not to solve a problem. You seem to me to be getting very near a law of form transmission; how can you obscure your enquiry by mixing up the old, unproven, story of the artist’s character expression & milieu expression? When you have found out the relation in time of form to form, the relation of charac individual & milieu expression will necessarily remain as a residuum, which you can then tackle as a separate, scientifically treated problem. You must however try to make your reader look as carefully as you do even when you are writing for a merely literary audience. You must use a book merely as a means for diffusing the sort of demonstration of a picture’s charms which you give so admirably viva voce. For the moment my advice would be: learn clear, precise writing, and avoid all literary effects like the plague. Literature is the ultimate flowering out into a separate highly emotional art of the humble useful thing called writing. First secure that; otherwise, though you will hold the pen, & your mind think the thoughts, what will appear on the paper will be mere old vague statements of other writers, imitated unconsciously like any trick of manner. I enclose some notes in the MS. The end of the Lotto chapter is very much better than the beginning; in fact, as you have at last calmed down to your own thoughts, it is the interesting, the only interesting part. And it needs very little correcting. Only, of course, the winding up must be brought into logical symmetry with the beginning, whatever that new beginning may be. Overpage [is] a diagram of what is a good, simple, tightly packed construction for say, an introduction; you note that there are no breaks in the convolutions, & that the end & beginning cross each other, The diagram of yr present introduction is full of breaks, new directions & shows that the movement leads nowhere in particular. I am, dear Mr Berenson Your sincere friend V Paget Beginning[a simple drawing of a Spiralling circle] 231

SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 1 A draft of Bernard Berenson’s monograph Lorenzo Lotto: An Essay in Constructive Art Criticism (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1895), which he had sent her; he dutifully submitted his first papers to her, and thanked Lee in the preface for her suggestions. Yet, Berenson never forgot the shame Lee made him feel with her condescending tone about “dry as dust scientists . . .,” especially as these nasty comments were often repeated to third parties”: “you will recall what you said of him to Mrs Gardner in Venice (which was repeated to him the next day) . . . he cannot consider your attitude to him as in any way a friendly one” (Mary Berenson’s unpublished letter to V. Lee, cited in Burdett Gardner, The Lesbian Imagination, Victorian Style: A Psychological and Critical Study of “Vernon Lee”(New York: Garland, 1987), p. 238). 2 In the context of intense competition over European art treasures between American billionaires, B. Berenson’s efforts to remodel critical terminology and his expertise at debunking mistaken attributions came up against other art connoisseurs’ influence. Among them, Charles Eliot Norton resented Berenson, his former disciple at Harvard, when Isabella Stewart Gardner turned to Old Masters and Berenson’s guidance to endow her collections. Norton wrote stinging criticism of Berenson’s Venetian Painters and Lorenzo Lotto: An Essay in Constructive Art Criticism. For more, see Geoffroy-Menoux, “Henry James and Family,” p. 81. 3 In French in the text: Elaborates unnecessarily 4 Lee and Symonds disagreed in their approaches to writing about art. Symonds did not appreciate Lee’s “effusive” personal impressions of art and considered her writing convoluted, whereas Lee thought his approaches to Renaissance art were not grounded in any kind of real aesthetic appreciation, but were mere historical and cultural generalisations. J.A. Symonds’ letters to Lee (1880–1884) are at the Bristol University Library Archives, but her letters to him have not been found, except for one (1925), now at University of Texas at Austin: Harry Ransom Research Center. 5 As S. Geoffroy-Menoux has shown, Bernard Berenson’s “tactile values,” which were to become “a catch phrase for more than a generation” and were first presented in Berenson’s second book of the series on the Italian painters (Florentine Painters of the Renaissance [New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1896]), were inspired by Gurney’s The Power of Sound (London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1880), and W. James’s Principles of Psychology (Volume I [New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1890]) triggered his interest in applied psychology. See Geoffroy-Menoux, “Henry James and Family,” p. 84.). Tellingly, one of his sisters, Rachel Berenson (1880–1933), married Ralph Barton Perry (1876–1957), the chief authority on William James’s life and philosophy. Berenson’s theory of art as “life-heightening” and “life-enhancing” was also inspired from Pater’s writings: “To define beauty, not in the most abstract but in the most concrete terms possible . . . is the aim of the true student of aesthetics. . . . What effect does it really produce on me?” (Walter Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance, [London: Macmillan, 1873]). Pater’s books (especially Marius the Epicurian, Volume I [London: Macmillan, 1885] and Studies in the History of the Renaissance) and personality fascinated Berenson and influenced him to the point of his conversion to Catholicism on 22 November 1885. But he never met Pater, whose track he followed all his life, and who died on 30 July 1894. See Samuels (cited in Geoffroy-Menoux, “Henry James and Family,” p. 85): “He had vainly dreamed of meeting Pater at Oxford on his Grand Tour in 1887. But there was no commendation from Norton, and Pater made himself unavailable,” even refusing to admit him to his courses. “In spite of their apparent theoretical sympathies, neither W. James nor Norton liked Pater’s Renaissance, which B. Berenson had lent them. Norton, Samuels writes, never forgave this ‘lapse from virtue’” (Geoffroy-Menoux, “Henry James and Family,” p. 85).

3. Matilda Paget April 15, 1894 Rome, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 232

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Sunday. Dearest Mamma I haven’t written because holding the paper is so very tiring and troublesome. My hand seems to be going on all right, & I am very well & happy. I am most anxious to know how you are & whether you are being good about eating. Will you send me a line? Please Love to Papa Yrs V. 4. Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) May 7, [1894] Florence, Italy Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Paris IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE May 7 Dearest Mme Blanc, I answer yr very kind letter, introducing the two delightful American ladies, by bothering you with my affairs. Would you kindly hand this to Mme Gaston Paris? It is too bad that after all the trouble I took put her to about the right of using his charming translation of Amour Dure, this old cuss of a Bernard-Derosne should want to have her autorisation écrite.1 The fact is that although I made him promise to use her translation, he has just had the audacity of sending me in proof sheet one of his own, hoping, I suppose, that I should not compare the two, & that his version would receive my corrections as being hers. I instantly answered I would only use her translation, adding to it the translation of passages she had omitted or curtailed. This is his answer. The best would be, perhaps, if you would send for him. He seems a very slippery person. I have tried to get him to state in black & white which of my books he considers he has a right to translate, & I can never get an answer. Neither will he tell me who is the publisher. The reason that I want to know what books he has a right to, is that he has taken up & abandoned several in five or six years of pourparlers,2 so I don’t know. He is at present translating a sort of pseudo-mediaeval legend about an imaginary Pope, which I have just written.3 It is not very unlike some of Mary Darmesteter’s old French stories,4 except that it has a supernat fantastic element & God & the Devil & miracles. Do you think you could place the French translation version (inédit)5 for me? Would the Revue take it or the Débats or some other paper that

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published Mme Darmesteter’s things? I cannot ask Mary Darmesteter to help me in this matter, because I feel sure she would drag her husband into it, and I should dislike that very much.6 The story is about ten pages print, and would illustrate beautifully. Would the Illustrated Figaro do, do you think? I have not heard from Monsieur Masson for ages, and as I believe my transl ‸the‸ French version of my Hauntings is waiting for his preface,7 I am unwilling to write to him. I have lost some money by the failure of the American firm which published Vanitas,8 and have got very little for my new book of dialogues. And, although I spend very little on myself – except keeping a horse which is a matter of health, I do want to have a little money; On if only to enable me to travel. Forgive my boring you about this. Was it you who caused me to receive last spring an extraordinary play called Christ, by Sadakichi Hartmann?9 There was a quotation from a review by you in the flyleaf. Do tell me all about him. I agree with you that there is grandeur & beauty, something Elizabethan & at the same time Whitmanian, in the play. The author I suppose is mad? He is certainly a megalomaniac; and no amount of parti pris10 can explain such obscenity of situation and language on the part of a man who is apparently very virtuously inclined. I hope soon to send you my new book of dialogues. It is better than Baldwin, at least I hope so. Will you read it? I want so much that you should. I am very much better in health, and, in consequence, happy & serene; and I feel as if I had found one of the secrets of life. Does that make you laugh? But yr laugh will be indulgent to yr affte friend V. Paget Kit is coming next month 1 2 3 4 5 6

7

In French in the text: written permission. In French in the text: discussions, negotiations. “Pope Jacynth” [“Le Pape Jacinthe”], trans. Eugene Lee-Hamilton, Figaro Illustré (December 1894), with beautiful illustrations by Albert Lynch. Mary Darmesteter, Marguerites du temps passé (Paris: A. Colin et Cie., 1891). In French in the text: unpublished. Perhaps because, on top of Lee’s dislike for James Darmesteter as a man and as Mary’s husband, in April or May 1894, Anatole France’s Le Lys rouge [The Red Lily] had been published in the Revue de Paris under his editorship. It was published in book form that same year by Calmann Lévy. Much to Mary’s embarrassment, Vernon Lee and Mary Robinson were actually named in the novel. See Colby, Vernon Lee, p. 132. Frédéric Masson did write a humbly explanatory and very detailed preface, but did not send it to her before the book (Au Pays de Vénus) was published: Il y a neuf ans déjà . . . je fus contraint d’assumer la direction de cette Revue si singulièrement fastueuse qui, officiellement, se nommait Les Lettres et les Arts, officieusement La Belle Revue et généralement La Revue à Trois Cents Francs. J’étais étrangement neuf en ce métier. . . Sous les auspices de mes amis qui sont les siens [Paul Bourget et Th. Bentzon], j’entrai en correspondance avec Vernon Lee. . . . [de ses livres] j’en lus assez pour être convaincu que, entre tous les auteurs anglais, celui-là devait le premier être présenté au public français,

234

SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 peut-être parce qu’il est, de nature, le moins britannique. / . . . A peine depuis huit ans nous sommes-nous rencontrés deux fois. . . . Bien que destinées à paraître en tête d’un de ses livres, ces pages, avant d’être imprimées, n’auront point été vues par elle et il me plaît de penser qu’elle y trouvera ainsi le salut non attendu de ma respectueuse admiration. 8

Vanitas: Polite Stories (New York: Lovell, Coryell and Co., 1892). The Lovell, Coryell Co. was founded at 43–47 East Tenth Street in 1892 by Mr. [John] Lovell with the idea of publishing well made books. Having moved in May 1893 to the offices of the United States Book Company at 5–7 East Sixteenth Street, Lovell, Coryell and Company was forced to move again in February 1894 upon the bankruptcy of the parent company. (“Lovell, Coryell & Company: New York, 1892–1897,” The LUCILE Project, University of Iowa Libraries, http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/lucile/ publishers/lovellcc/Lovellcc.htm)

9

Carl Sadakichi Hartmann (1867–1920) was born in Nagasaki in 1867, grew up in Germany, and arrived in America in 1882, becoming an American citizen in 1894. He was friends with Stéphane Mallarmé, Walt Whitman and Ezra Pound and wrote haikus and symbolist poems. He was also an art and photography critic. Christ: A Dramatic Poem in Three Acts (Boston: author’s edition, 1893) was the first of his series of religious symbolist dramas, followed by Buddha: A Drama in Twelve Scenes (New York: author’s edition, 1897), written between 1891 and 1895; Confucius: A Drama in Two Acts (Los Angeles: privately printed, 1923), written between 1894 and 1916 and between 1920 and 1922; and Mohammed (1924) Unpublished MS. He later (between 1917 and 1918) wrote The Last Thirty Days of Christ, privately printed in New York in 1920. 10 In French in the text: bias.

5. Matilda Paget May 31, 1894 Milan, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 31st May ’94 Milan Thursday morning. Dearest Mamma. We had an excellent journey with Maria Pasolini. At the station we met Placci, Melle Alfieri and the Papafavas, come to salute us. Laura G. [Gropallo] met us here last night. We shall dine with her & lunch with Mme Esengrini. & continue at 10 p.m. to Bâle & Paris. The St Georges hasn’t the necessary rooms, so we go there only one night. Address Henraux. So much love 6. Matilda Paget June 2, 1894 Paris, France Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 235

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IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE Sat. 2 June [2 June 1894] Hotel d’Isly Rue Jacob Dearest Mamma – Here we are installed, unless bugs, of whom I confess to having a vague fear, shd turn us out; on this account, till further news, write to c/o of Mme Henraux. We have 2 microscopic rooms & a salon with 3 windows on the corner of Rue Jacob & R. Bonaparte. It is cheaper than Hotel St Georges, & also more convenient. Everybody was so very kind at Milan: we lunched with the Esengrinis, dined with Mme Ponti & went about all day with Laura G. [Gropallo] We had a very good night in the sleeping cars, & travelled yesterday with Flora [Priestley], who is gone to stay with the Miss Horners. Of course as yet we have seen no one, & not even got our letters. At Bâle an old peasant man with a chin beard & an old woman got in, going to Paris; speaking only the most unintelligible Swiss. They had never travelled before & were Flora too going to their daughter who was married in Paris: their chief luggage appeared to consist in su dry apples cut in snips. Flora contrived to get into & their confidence, but for her I don’t know what would have become of them. They were ravenous but afraid to get out & unable to ask for provisions; she got them some; then they were thirsty, & the train had to be stopped at Chaumont because the old man couldn’t run quick enough back from the pump, Flora waving madly to him. At Paris, we put them into a cab. They turned out to be Swiss grave the guardians of a Swiss cemetery & their son in law, to whom they drove off, was the grave-digger of Père Lachaise!1 Such a meeting would have been impossible but for Flora’s presence. Now we are going out. Please tell me exactly how Papa is & how you are. So much love V. 1 Named after Louis XIV’s confessor, the Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris (20th arrondissement) is one of the largest cemeteries in the city and the most visited necropolis in the world. Honoré de Balzac, Frédéric Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust, Maria Callas, Isadora Duncan, Sarah Bernhardt, Colette, Rosa Bonheur, Marie Laurencin, Hubertine Auclert, Gertrude Stein and Edith Piaf, to name but a few, are buried there.

7. Matilda Paget June 3, 1894 Paris, France Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Sunday 3rd June ’94 236

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Hotel d’Isly Rue Jacob – Sunday It is quite clean & comfortable here so we shall stay on. So much love. We dine at the Panniers[’] tonight. V. 8. Matilda Paget June 9, 1894 Paris, France Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE Sat. 9 June [1894] Dearest Mamma – I have been too busy & too tired to write, but I must scratch off a line to thank [you] for yr very dear little card. Also E’s [Eugene’s] letter of yesterday & forwarded letters. Will you address hence forward to c /o Miss Price Pembroke Coll. Oxford ? – The Paters cannot have me. I shall go straight to Oxford next Thursday. I have secured my room at Sloane Gardens House, & shall go there the 25th or 26th. I have seen Mary twice, but briefly & badly. She is staying in the country. I fetched her from the Taines[’]. Mme & Melle Taine were very nice & seem rather delightful people.1 I went there Wednesday evening, but altho’ there were academicians etc. about found it very dull & bourgeois. There seems something almost bureaucratic in this atmosphere. Mary is much changed, not in appearance but manner & thoughts, I think. She is frightfully worldly – officially frivolous it struck me, & not interested in real things. She wants me to go for a day & night to her in the country, but I have no time & less inclination.2 We have seen dear Mme Blanc several times, & yesterday Mme de Montebello; she is very brilliant, & as well turned af out intellectually as physically, but not sympathetic. We are to meet Rosny tomorrow at the Blancs[’]. I am keeping well though all this running about & seeing people & pictures is too much. Mme Ormond, Violet’s mother in law, a very agreeable woman, has asked me to go to her at S. Remo in the winter. I like Paris so much better than London, & (though always official & up to their chins in weddings & enterrements)3 I like these people better too. So much love. Yrs V. I paid Cantagalli 237

SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 1 Hippolyte Adolphe Taine (1828–1893) died on 5 March 1893. His widow was Thérèse Denuelle (1846–1905), daughter of French painter and architect Alexandre Denuelle (1818–1879), and they had two children, Geneviève Paul-Dubois, née Taine (1869–1911), wife of historian and councilor Louis François Alphonse Paul-Dubois (1868–1938); and Émile Alexandre Taine (1873–?). The Taines were close friends of Mary’s. Indeed, through Hippolyte Taine, Ernest Renan, Gaston Paris, Anatole France, Michel Bréal, Arsène Darmesteter and Max Müller, she was well connected to the French intelligentsia at the most prestigious institutions (Collège de France, Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Ecole des Chartes, Académie Française). Taine was an influential French philosopher, literary critic and historian, best-known for his History of English Literature (trans. H. Van Laun [New York: Holt & Williams, 1872]). His two-volume De l’Intelligence (2 vols. [Paris: Hachette, 1870]), published in 1870, was a major work in psychology. His historicist and sociological approach to literature had a deep impact on French naturalism, especially on the works of Zola, Bourget, and Maupassant. See Lee’s critique: “Taine’s Philosophy of Art,” British Quarterly Review, 68 (1 July 1878), pp. 1–30. 2 This part is not in Irene Cooper Willis’ edition. 3 In French in the text: funerals.

9. Matilda Paget June 12, 1894 Paris, France Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE Paris June 12 Dearest Mamma – You will have guessed that I have been running about a great deal, & very tired between whiles. We leave the day after tomorrow 10.20 a.m. & I hope to get to Oxford by 9.28 p.m.; the weather promises a bad passage, so I cannot hope to catch an earlier train from Charing X. I have seen a lot of people. Mme Blanc, her son & daughter in law are those I prefer. The son is a great traveller, has been in unvisited parts of central Asia, where people wear crusaders’ coats of mail and one cuts ruby crystals out of stones by the roadside.1 At young Mme Blanc’s2 I met Rosny:3 a strange ill dressed, black, bristling person, with wrinkles like those of a statue intended to be seen from behind, but an infinitely gentle manner & a curious naïf, imaginative pleasure in the world. He sc is given up to scientific studies with a younger brother, has a number of strange hypotheses & semi-romances of the kind of the Xipéhuz, and thinks that the borderland of science – its still unascertained fields – will furnish that natural field for personal fancy & emotion hitherto supplied by theology: one will create one’s fairy land there. I have also seen Whistler,4 whom I do not like: a mean, nagging, spiteful sniggling little black thing, giving no indication of genius; and Tissot,5 a painter with 238

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next to no talent, but whose set of illustrations of the Life of Christ draws daily dense crowds, merely because he is a devout believer & has tried to realise the whole thing in Palestine. Also twice Mme de Montebello, who is certainly very good company, but not very sympathetic. Mme Ormond took me to a lecture of Desjardins at the Union Morale association, held in a tiny studio at the end of Vaugirard.6 Intellectually it wasn’t worth much, but the man has the most fascinating kindliness & enthusiasm. Also, by Mme Blanc’s advice, I went to the Revue des 2 Mondes & saw Brunetière,7 who seems much inclined to take [?Ὀρφεύς]8 Certainly people here are much easier to get at than in London, & better worth it when got at. I haven’t been able to find time to go to Mary at Maisons Laffitte; but I shall see her tomorrow at the Ganderaxes, co-editors of the R. de Paris,9 who have asked me to lunch. Meanwhile Kit & I have been working hard at seeing pictures. Today I am going to see Mme Taine. I am very sorry the floor business shd have proved such a pest; but the cleanliness & health of the house will gain, as well as the appearance. So much love. Do you eat enough, dear Mamma, I wonder ? Yrs V.

1 French explorer, geographer, engineer and photographer Edouard Blanc. At this time, he had published L’hydrographie du bassin de l’ancien Oxus (Paris: Sté de Géographie, 1892); Note sur la position de l’ancienne ville de Thigès (Paris: Motteroz (s.d.) for the Congress of the Société de Géographie in 1894; L’Exposition géographique de Moscou en 1892 (Paris: Société de géographie, 1893); Sur une cause d’erreur dans les levés topographiques faits dans les régions de montagnes et particulièrement en Asie centrale (Paris: impr. de Chaix, 1893) for the Association française pour l’avancement des sciences. Congrès de Pau. 1892; “La Culture du coton en Asie centrale et en Algérie” (Paris: impr. de Chamerot et Renouard, 1894) for the Société d’Agriculture de France. 2 at young Mme Blanc’s: refers to Mme Blanc’s daughter-in-law, Jeanne. 3 Joseph-Henri Rosny (1856–1940). His real name is Boex, and in fact most of the novels which bear the name “J.H. Rosny” have been written by the two brothers Boex in collaboration. . . . From Belgium Boex migrated to Paris, and began to write novels of the naturalistic school. His first story dealt with an English Salvation Army girl (Nell Horn, 1885). He was more or less influenced by Tolstoi, and was repelled by Zola’s conception of naturalist art; and about 1890 he turned to social idealism and entered into collaboration (under a single name) with his brother Justin-François. / . . . In the words of the Grande Encyclopédie: “They constantly mingle a fine, vague, and very . . . anthropological mythology with their Agnostic cosmogony.” . . . He is an Officer of the Legion of Honour and a member of the Académie des Goncourts, the Société Astronomique de France, and the Société des Gens de Lettres. (Joseph McCabe, “Rosny, Joseph Henri, French Novelist,” A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists [London: Watts & Co., 1920], pp. 680–681)

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4 5 6

7

8

9

After La Guerre du feu and “The Xipéhuz” ([“Les Xipéhuz”], in L’Immolation [Paris: Albert Savine, 1888]), a novella, set in prehistoric times, in which a sort of sentient crystal threatens humanity, Rosny and his brother published Renouveau (Paris: E. Plon, Nourrit et Cie, 1894). American painter James James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834–1903). About Lee and Whistler, see Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vols. I and II. French painter Jacques Joseph “James” Tissot (1836–1902). This is Vernon Lee’s first encounter with Paul Desjardins (1859–1940), professor at the Sèvres Ecole Normale Supérieure de Jeunes Filles, and his circle at the Union Morale. In 1892, Desjardins founded the Union de l’Action Morale, which became L’Union pour la Vérité (1904–1940). He bought the Pontigny cistercian abbey in 1905, where the “Décades de Pontigny” – international summer gatherings of intellectuals, writers and scientists held over several days to freely discuss literary, scientific, social or political topics – were held from 1910 to 1914 and from 1922 to 1939. Lee was a member of the founding committee of the Décades. See Anne Heurgon-Desjardins, Paul Desjardins et les Décades de Pontigny (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1964); François Chaubet, Paul Desjardins et les Décades de Pontigny (Lille: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2000); Claire Paulhan (dir.), De Pontigny à Cerisy. Un siècle de rencontres intellectuelles, IMEC, 2002; François Chaubet, “L’Union pour l’action morale et le spiritualisme républicain (1892– 1905),” In: Mil neuf cent, n°17, 1999. “Intellectuels dans la République.” pp. 67–89; DOI: https:// doi.org/10.3406/mcm.1999.1203 About the debates between Vernon Lee, Paul Desjardins, and Daniel Halévy, see Sophie Geoffroy, “Vernon Lee, Paul Desjardins, Daniel Halévy and Romain Rolland,” in S. Geoffroy (dir.), Les femmes et la pensée politique: Vernon Lee et les cercles radicaux/Women and Political Theory: Vernon Lee and Radical Circles, Paris: Michel Houdiard, 2017, pp. 113–131. Ferdinand Brunetière (1849–1906), professor at the Ecole Normale Supérieure beginning in 1886, editor of the Revue des Deux Mondes beginning in 1893. He was regarded by Maurice Baring as “the last of the great critics of the period” (French Literature [London: Ernest Benn, 1927], p. 75) and described by Edmund Gosse as “a man of extraordinary force of character. He resisted the idea that literature was merely an entertainment or pastime. He asserted that it was the crown and apex of a virile education . . . its aim . . . the maintenance and progress of humanity” (Aspects and Impressions [London: Cassell and Co., 1922], pp. 203–204). Both Gosse and Baring cited in Rose, Oscar Wilde’s Elegant Republic. Ancient Greek for Orpheus. The Revue des Deux Mondes published Lee’s “Orphée à Rome” (no. 132 [1 November 1895], pp. 66–95), translated by Marie-Thérèse Blanc from Lee’s “Orpheus in Rome: Irrelevant Talks on the Use of the Beautiful,” The Contemporary Review (June 1889), pp. 828–849. Man of letters and journalist Charles Étienne Louis Ganderax (1855–1940) co-edited the Revue de Paris with Henri Meilhac (1830–1897) and was a collaborator to Le Figaro and the Revue Bleue. In 1888, he married Genoa-born Countess Emilie “Nina” Vimercati (1855–1920) after her divorce from Alexandre de Girardin (1839–1911).

10. Matilda Paget June 15, 1894 Oxford, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE Pembroke Coll. Oxford 15 June

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Dearest Mamma. I arrived here yesterday at half past nine, not at all too tired, & after a good passage. Kit left me at Charing X, where I was met by Miss Cruttwell, who put me in the Oxford train. Sarah Bernhardt1 was in the same boat with us: & there was a great concourse at the station to see her off: dames femmes du monde2 bringing immense bouquets, & come, as Kit says, “to see what sort of clothes one ought to travel in”. I saw Mary once more at a lunch at the Ganderaxes, an appalling ceremony. Ganderax is the literary editor of the Rev. de Paris, has married an Italian & is apparently rich; but I am again (as at the Foulon de Vaulx[’])3 impressed by the awful bourgeois’ness of these sort of French people, & the hideous shrilliness of the women. Ganderax gave me four or five numbers of the Rev. [Revue] de Paris, which I shall send you presently. I am more & more impressed by the way in which Mary has been coloured & moulded by her surroundings: she has xx in no way lost her looks, but it would be difficult, I think, to find any charm in her manner, & she seems steeped in bourgeois Parisian interests, & a sort of official literary shoppiness. I fancy that the presence of such a mechanism as the Academy merely adds an ele bureaucratic element to her shoppy one apparently natural to writers everywhere.4 At dear Mme Blanc’s we met Desjardins, with whose charming personality I am delighted. He will spend Sept. in Florence, & I have asked him to call on Eugene. The Prices has [have] taken their terrible misfortune with a pluckiness wh. is the highest decorum, living as if all were as always, & speaking of poor Rose as if she were still alive. It is cool, but not more so than Paris. Write here for the moment please. I am anxious to know how the garden is looking. So much love V. Is Papa still away ?

1 Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923) was a remarkably popular and talented actress during her time. Her career began in France but became international by 1879, after she premiered in London and, later, travelled throughout Europe and America. 2 In French in the text: society ladies. 3 Alice Foulon de Vaulx, née Devaulx (1852–1926), and her husband, Belgian industrialist and collectionneur Henri Louis Joseph Foulon (1844–1929). See List of Correspondents: Alice Foulon de Vaulx. 4 From “I’m more and more impressed” to “natural to writers everywhere”: not in Irene Cooper Willis’ edition of Vernon Lee’s Letters Home.

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11. Matilda Paget June 23, 1894 Oxford, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College II Palmerino Maiano Florence Oxford 23 June [1894] Dearest Mamma. A thousand thanks for your second dear little letter. I have been so busy & worried preparing my lecture[s], and rea measuring the length of their various pieces (un it is almost worse than actually writing it throughout) that I have been unable to write either to you or to Eugene. A great part of each day we have been on the river, which I know does me more good than anything, especially as, these two last occasions, I have tried rowing again – I used to row a little with the Sargents on the Avon at Fladbury,1 you know. I find my hand is quite mended as far as using it is concerned. The bone projects a little & there is a sort of lump over the knuckles, but they tell me this is because the muscles across the hand have not yet grown back thoroughly. I am going up to London Tuesday evening, & lecture Wednesday at 3. Will you address henceforth Sloane Gardens House Chelsea SW. or to Kit’s. I am immeasurably vexed and surprised about Eugene’s chair. I cannot understand why it shd seem cumbersome or require any alteration. Kit & I both steered ourselves about in it & with only the smallest pressure; I even did it when I had only one hand here & I showed them everything. I must post this – So very much love Yrs V. Ask Eugene to forward me to London the photographs from Suiso’s. 1 From 27 July to 15 August 1889. See Lee to Matilda Paget, 27 July 1889, Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II.

12. Matilda Paget June 28, 1894 London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 242

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Sloane Gardens House Chelsea SW 28 June. The 1st lecture went off tolerably yesterday: tolerable audience, but (except Hector Ferguson!)1 all women & mostly smart. Perhaps 40 – but nearly all single tickets, so the 2nd & 3rd are sure to be much emptier. I am not at all tired, but greatly disheartened. I speak badly; no doubt about it. London is vile. So much love V 1 Maybe Hector Munro Ferguson (1867–1951) of Kirkcaldy, matriculated at the University of St Andrews in 1891–1892 and 1892–1893. See R.M. Fergusson (ed.), Supplement to the First Volume of the Records of the Clan and Name Fergusson, Ferguson and Fergus (1895), edited for the Clan Fergus(s)on Society by Robert Menzies Fergusson (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1899), p. 203.

13. Matilda Paget June 30, 1894 London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Sloane Gardens House Chelsea Sat. Only a word to say how delighted I am with E’s [Eugene’s] good news, I am bu as this is Saturday I will write this evening, being busy at present with my lectures. So much love V. 14. Matilda Paget July 3–4, [1894] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College II PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE Sloane Gardens House Chelsea 3 July Dearest Mamma – I have only written postcards so far because I have had neither time nor strength for more. Kit has very wisely persuaded me to write all my lecture, & that has taken 243

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time. I found on the 1st occasion that I have no faculty for keeping my subject in hand, I am clear, I believe & I think (& one or two people seem to agree) more impressive when I speak. But I am literally improvising much beyond the words – the i new ideas come up & I cannot restrain myself from going after them, with the result of confusing and spoiling the proportions of the whole. This writing out of what can never be printed – for I maintain that a lecture shd not be an essay – has been odious work; but good discipline at a time when I daresay I have taken to writing too exclusively for myself without regard for any concrete reader. I have sworn & fought against Kit & made her life a burden; but now I am heartily glad she has given me no quarter. I have seen so far only Mrs Green, who is delightfully subtle, the Dear Ranee, some of Kit’s cousins, Mrs Taylor1 and the Sargents. Yesterday I dined with Mrs S. [Sargent] & John; Emily was out of town. They have a high flat on Chelsea Embankment, with a breezy, quiet view over reaches of the Thames & Battersea park, trees & distant hills; the only place in London where life seems otherwise than a dirty grimy, empty scuffle. 4th July – As usual, interrupted – I have now got all my lecture on paper, not as I should write it (for a w read thing out loud thing ought surely to be different from one read with the eye) but as I should have liked to speak it. I hope they will like it! I am going immediately afterwards for two days to Hertfordshire with Miss Edith Simcox,2one of the last survivors of the George Eliot set, whom I knew a little years ago, and met at my last lecture. I can’t now tell you about John’s wonderful decorations for Boston library – It is a sort of Peuple d’lsraël (with Salambô additions) and Origines du Christianisme in great symbolical ceiling, vault & wall paintings.3 I am so happy about Eugene. Implore him to write to Erb.4 I am reading on Darwinism. I wish Eugene would take up natural science, formation of mountains, growth of plants & creatures & tell me all about it. It is so fascinating. Yesterday we lunched at Playfairs, then had tea with Mr Watts, who is really a Michelangelo come in the wrong century. Goodbye dearest Mamma, I must pack up some things in a bag now. So much love V.

1 Mona Taylor and her husband, Thomas Taylor, of Chipchase Castle, Northumberland, were friends of Lee’s, with whom she became close in the 1890s. A small group of letters to Mona are in Vernon Lee Archive, mostly about Lee’s break with Clementina Anstruther-Thomson (see Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. IV, forthcoming). Both Mona and Thomas Taylor were activists. In 1914, they travelled together to Sestri Levante on the Gulf of Genoa, and the picture of Lee on the cover of VLLB was taken during this trip. At the Taylors’ home, Lee was to meet Irene Cooper-Willis, who would become her secretary and executrix.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 2 Edith Simcox (1844–1901) was an anthropologist and political activist who was often published in many of the leading periodicals at this time. See Lee to Matilda Paget, 13 June [1887], Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II. 3 John Singer Sargent’s mural in the Boston Public Library, a cycle entitled The Triumph of Religion, was completed between 1890 and 1919. Lee here refers to the panel Sargent worked on in 1894, a depiction of Astarte. He was inspired by a description of the goddess in Gustave Flaubert’s novel Salâmmbo (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1862), as well as Ernest Renan’s (1823–1892) five-volume Histoire du peuple d’Israël (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1887–1893) and eight-volume Histoire des origines du Christianisme (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1863–1883). Joseph Ernest Renan died on 7 October 1892. The famed French orientalist had left his studies in the Catholic seminary because he was pulled toward the work of the German Protestant philosophers. He later became interested in Semitic philology. “Renan’s funeral (7th October 1892) was boycotted by the Nuncio and the ambassadors of Catholic countries” (Rose, Oscar Wilde’s Elegant Republic, p. 470, note 655, citing Thomas Jefferson Coolidge, “The Funeral of Ernest Renan,” in An Autobiography [Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1923], p. 183. 4 Dr Erb: the doctor from Heidelberg who helped to bring about Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s recovery.

15. Matilda Paget July 6, [1894] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College II PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE. Sloane Gardens House Chelsea SW 6 July. Dearest Mamma – I am sending E. [Eugene] that Rev. [Review] of Rev. [Reviews]; please thank him for his letter; & thank you a 1000 times for yrs which I found this morning on return. It is tremendously hot, stormy & ‸I‸ am very headachy, so you must forgive [this] stupid letter. I am told the 2nd lecture was a great success: people are evidently very different from me, to prefer dull reading out loud to speaking. However, as they paid me I was bound to please them. They clapped, Mrs Ward was very amiable & they seemed interested. I tried to make it as little like reading as I could, & it was no trouble, but rather good practice putting down my thoughts in the order in which I shd have wished to speak them. As to printing, it will serve as material but certainly not as form. After the lecture several smart bonnets came up to me – Margot Tennant, the famous Dodo, now married to Asquith,1 and a lady unknown, who asked me “how she could learn to know the strength of adjectives” – it was rather pathetic!

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The room was full – I suppose 40 people. Each person, for the set of lectures, represents a guinea; but as there will be advertisement & chairs to pay for, & free seats to deduct, that does not represent what I shall get at all. I liked being with Miss Simcox in a very lovely village in Buckinghamshire: such delicious air & splendid beechwoods, about half way to Oxford. She is a writer on Ethics & Political Economy, a very nice woman who was one of George Eliot’s great friends. How much I love the English country & detest London! I had to return earlier than I wished, because John wanted me to receive some ladies for him whom we both knew; & as I am very anxious to influence John to prevent his doing a thing I hate in his Boston Library decoration, I have, I feel, to humour him. You will be sorry to hear (& let it go no further) that Colonel AnstrutherThomson has embezzled the legacy of Kit’s aunt, & that Kit is very badly off in consequence. She had, thinking herself rich, most generously given me a lot of money because she pretends (wh. [which] isn’t true) that I kept her going some years ago. Of course I am returning it, the lectures making that quite easy. The shame at the business – which touches others besides herself – has made her quite ill. Macmillan has taken my Ravenna paper.2 The Ponsonbys asked me to Windsor Sunday, but I am not free. So much love V. 1 Margot Tennant, Lady Asquith (1864–1945), married to Home Secretary Herbert Henry Asquith (1852–1928), was a political hostess and popular in literary circles. She was the inspiration behind E.F. Benson’s Dodo (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1894). Oscar Wilde dedicated “The Star Child” to her (Rose, Oscar Wilde’s Elegant Republic, p. 447, note 276). 2 “Ravenna and Her Ghosts,” Macmillan’s Magazine, 70 (September 1894), pp. 380–389; rpt. in Limbo (1897) and in Pope Jacynth and Other Romantic Inventions, Tauchnitz, 1906; later rpt. in Pope Jacynth and More Supernatural Tales: Excursions into Fantasy (1956).

16. Alice Foulon de Vaulx1 July 12, [1894] London, England Correspondance de Mme Blanc, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Paris 12 Chelsea Gardens London SW. July 12. My dear Mme Foulon de Vaulx Could you say the 29th for our meeting? It will be next to impossible for me to be in Paris before the evening of the 28th. Please let me know. 246

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I venture to enclose a letter which please read & send or take to M. Brunetière. Brunetière has had for months a paper of mine on Nordau,2 which I now think I can place now more advantageously in England; and which I am most anxious to get back. The dialogue you are good enough to translate could take its place, if, as I feel sure, Brunetière has not yet got the Nordau translated. Nothing would make me happier than to see my Orpheus in your translation, in the Revue, particularly if our dear Mme Blanc would prelude it by a few words. Brunetière might be induced by telling him that as the Dialogue has already appeared, I should want no money for it, while I should want a great deal of money for the unpublished Nordau. Please, please, dear friend, do me this service. Get Nordau at once out of Brunetière’s clutches & promise him Orpheus instead. My dear love to Mme Blanc. Shall write to her tomorrow. Yrs sincerely V. Paget 1 See List of Correspondents: Alice Foulon de Vaulx. 2 Austrian born physician Max Nordau (1849–1923), Degeneration [Entartung], 1892–1893), trans. H. Fertig (London: William Heinemann, 1892). Lee’s essay was published as “Deterioration of Soul,” Fortnightly Review, 65 (June 1896), pp. 928–943, and later rpt. in Gospels of Anarchy and Other Contemporary Studies (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1908), pp. 73–101. “The author of the now famous volumes on Degeneracy is himself a Degenerate”; we have all of us heard, and nearly all of us passed, that obvious criticism on Max Nordau. Eccentricity, Suspiciousness of Evil, Egotism, Idées Fixes, Obsession by the Thought of Impurity, Lack of Human Sympathy, Confusion of Categories, Unbridled Violence of Hatred, Indiscriminate Destructiveness; he has taught us to recognise all these as the stigmata of degeneracy, and we have recognised them all in himself. As a result, and following his own method towards every contemporary writer, from Tolstoi to Zola, from Ruskin to Ibsen, and from Whitman to Rossetti, we may be tempted to destroy Max Nordau’s books as pestilent rubbish, and forget his theories as insane ravings. But it is better that Nordau’s absurdities and furies should serve rather as a deterrent than an example; that our abhorrence of his ways should teach the discrimination and justice of which he is incapable; and, if we wish to be more reasonable than he, that we should examine and profit by what reasonableness there may be even in him. / As regards myself, I find that Nordau’s book has inspired me with a salutary terror. (Richard Dellamora, “Productive Decadence: ‘The Queer Comradeship of Outlawed Thought’: Vernon Lee, Max Nordau, and Oscar Wilde,” New Literary History, 35 [2005], pp. 1–18)

17. Matilda Paget July 13, 18941 London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Sloane Gardens House Chelsea 13 July

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Dearest Mamma – I was so ill the day of my last lecture having barely the strength to read it x intelligibly that I begged Kit to let you know of its event. I think the people were pleased. And I made, all expense deducted, £ 5 £35 on the whole affair. As the lectures are still disposable of as articles (always supposing any one wants them) this is quite good. I don’t know what had gone wrong, a sort of torpor and brain sickness kept me on my bed all the morning, & Kit got me round only by dosing me with champagne. As I never drink this from sumptuary motives at dinner parties, it has retained its medical powers, & pulled me round. Whatever was the matter was evidently the result of accumulated fatigue; perhaps bad nights from the noise in the street (I am going to change my room); at all events I am better now than I was before; & I hope that two days at Windsor (I go tomorrow to the Ponsonbys[’]) will set me up. Next Friday Kit & I are going for three days to Richmond to Lady Ross,2who has been very kind. Yesterday evening we went to the Pioneer’s (Women’s) Club to hear Bernard Shaw. He was very personal & caddish, but delightfully suggestive, like his book. Did I tell you I met Oscar W. [Wilde] the other day in Piccadilly, & he stopped me & asked very much after Eugene, & took down his address to send him a book3 – I think he is quite kind, whatever else he may be. I am going tonight to dine with the Sargents, & must break off, for I have some business letters So much love V. 1 On the envelope, Matilda has written, “3rd Lecture.” 2 The English biographer, historian and author of Tuscan cookbooks Janet Ann Ross (1842–1927), daughter of Alexander Duff-Gordon (1811–1872) and Lucie Duff-Gordon, née Austin (1821–1869), called Lucie Gordon (John Sharpe [ed.], Peerage of the British Empire Exhibiting Its Present State and Deducing the Existing Descents from the Ancient Nobility of England, Scotland and Ireland, Volume 1 [London: J. Sharpe, 1833]). 3 As Vineta Colby writes, In May 1894, Oscar Wilde accompanied Mary Costelloe (later Mrs Bernard Berenson) to the Casa Paget to meet Eugene Lee-Hamilton, whose poetry he admired. According to Mary’s account, the meeting “was a great success. Oscar talked like an angel, and they all fell in love with him – even Vernon, who had hated him almost as bitterly as he had hated her. He, on his part, was charmed with her . . . when he met her before he found her restless and self-assertive. But yesterday he admitted that she had grown less strenuous.” (Colby, Vernon Lee, p. 106)

18. Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) [July ?14, 1894] London, England Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Paris [The original of this letter is in French] [This letter is not extant] 248

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Sydenham Xxx Devonshire Combien je souhaite vous avoir chez moi. Il est rare que de mes deux chambres d’amis, une ne soit pas toujours vide et à votre disposition. Mais pour nous assurer de n’avoir aucun accroc, essayez de me préciser le moment où nous pourrons, Kit et moi, vous attendre. Je vous préviens qu’il est probable que nous passions quelques jours près de Gênes en Février, et que j’attends mon amie juivre [juive] Mme A. Salvador en Janvier. A part cela il n’y aura que ma quinzaine habituelle à Rome, que je prendrai probablement en Avril. J’ai été bien désolée de [ne] pas voir vos amis. Mme Brunhes m’a écrit une bien charmante lettre, à laquelle dans l’ahurissement où me mettent mes affaires, je n’ai pas encore répondu. Je suis si peu faite pour les questions d’argent, que je me trouve, trois fois par semaine, dans l’attente alternative d’une richesse sup surabondante et d’une misère décente misère. Ma philosophie, à part toute arithmétique, me fait croire plutôt à cette dernière! Adieu bien chère amie. L’été prochain je ferai j’arrangerai tous mes projets pour pouvoir [this letter is not extant] 19. Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) [July ?14, 1894] London, England Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Paris [The original of this letter is in French] [This letter is not extant] Sydenham Xxx Devonshire How I wish I had you here with me. It very seldom happens that none of my two guest rooms should be vacant and at your disposal. But to make sure there’ll be no hitch, try and let us know precisely when we, Kit and I, are to expect you. Let me warn you that we shall probably spend a few days near Genoa in February and that I am expecting my Jewish friend, Mme A. Salvador,1 in January. Apart from this, there will be only my usual fortnight in Rome, which I’ll probably take in April. I was very sorry not to see your friends. Mme Brunhes2 sent me a truly charming letter I have not answered yet, in the bewildered state of mind my current affairs are plunging me into. I am so little meant for money matters that I find myself expecting alternately superabundant wealth and decent misery three times 249

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a week. My philosophy, let alone sheer arithmetics, make me believe rather in the latter! Farewell, dearest friend. Next summer, I shall arrange my plans so as to be able to [this letter is not extant] 1 French philanthropist and feminist activist Gabrielle Alphen-Salvador (1856–1920). She founded the Association pour le Développement de l’Assistance aux Malades (ADAM), also known as the École de la rue Amyot, which served as a school for nurses in Paris. Her sister, also a feminist activist, was the woman of letters Marguerite Brandon-Salvador (1846–1925). They were the daughters of Col. Gabriel Salvador and Adamine Crémieux. Their great-uncle was the philosopher Joseph Salvador (1796–1873), author of Paris, Rome, Jérusalem ou la question religieuse au XIXe siècle (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1860). Marguerite Brandon-Salvador could speak four languages. “Idéaliste, enthousiaste, à la fois primesautière et réfléchie, au jugement avisé et délié, à la sensibilité fine, ardente, vibrante, elle se passionnait pour toutes les hautes questions de l’art, de la science, des lettres, de la philosophie, de la religion, des disciplines économiques et sociales.” Article nécrologique (Obituary), Le Rayon, 15 août-septembre 1925, p. 3. Cited in Poujol, p. 71. Her husband was Jules Brandon, teacher at the Ecole Polytechnique and brother of painter Edouard Brandon; he died during the Commune de Paris in 1871. She never remarried. She was close to André Gide’s mother and welcomed him in Saint-Raphaël. He portrays her as a staunch Dreyfusard. She was a patron of the Université Populaire Juive in Paris, along with other donors like Baron Edmond de Rothschild and Rabbi Zadoc Kahn (1839–1905). At her property, the Commanderie – in Ballan-Miré near Tours, France, where her parents had founded a home for destitute people in 1882 – Marguerite Brandon-Salvador founded a convalescence home for “overworked women,” L’Hospitalité. See Catherine Poujol, “Pour une spiritualité juive moderne: l’Union Libérale Israélite et ses fondatrices, Marguerite Brandon-Salvador et Clarisse Eugène Simon,” Archives juives, Revue d’histoire des Juifs de France, Les Belles Lettres, 2009/1, 42, pp. 69–83, www.cairn.info/revuearchives-juives1-2009-1-page-69.htm 2 Henriette Hoskier-Brunhes (1872–1914), who married French geographer Jean Brunhes (1869– 1930), disciple of Vidal de La Blache (1845–1918) and Friedrich Ratzel (1844–1904), founding fathers of human geography. A professor of human geography at the Collège de France, she was the author of La Géographie humaine (Paris: Alcan, 1910). She later created the Ligue sociale d’acheteurs (1894–1925) and acted as general secretary to the Ligue de Paris, which was similar to the consumers’ leagues in England or America, usually led by women. Their papers are held at the Archives Nationales, Fonds Jean Brunhes et Mariel Jean-Brunhes (1810– 1993). Cote 615AP/1–615AP/150. There are thirteen letters from Jean Brunhes to Vernon Lee at Somerville College, Oxford.

20. Matilda Paget July 16, 1894 Windsor, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE Windsor Castle 16 July

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Dearest Mamma. I have been here since Sat., & remain till tomorrow; for I have had a threat of bad sore throat (now passed over) and have had to give up dining, as I ought to have done, with the Pollocks1 tonight. These people are so very kind. Lady Lytton2 & youngest daughter3have been staying here. It appears Ld Lytton speculated, & left them almost penniless. They have a cottage in Hertfordshire, & do all for themselves; & the girl does journalism! They are very brave & cheerful. It is wonderful with how good a grace people have learned nowadays to be what they call “stonebroke” – one would really be tempted to think that people are beginning to feel the weight of luxuries & possessions. Personally, I face bankruptcy with less equanimity than these Ex-Ambassadresses & Ex-Vice-Queens – for, face it I must, since all my articles are now always refused, even those written on commission! I have 5 on my hands! I was less accustomed to refusals of the sort f sixteen years ago, far; at least now I expect them as a matter of course. I am very anxious a certain piece of work (about which I spoke vainly to Giovanni 3 months ago) should no longer be put off. I mean bricking up the door between the bathroom & the closet attached to the spare room (Miss Nebel’s) I am sure that in summer, when the water supply is short, the communication between the two places is anything but healthy, while in case of any infection it would be distinctly dangerous. And at any rate, it is rather disgusting. So I hope very much the muratore4may be sent for as soon as possible. Also, in answer to Eugene’s question, no, I did not pay Gilardi’s bill. The paper is for the use of everyone except me, who use another sort; so it ought to fall under the head of household expenses. I find I can live (almost including very short journeys) at the rate of two pounds a week; but it is rather a grind, as it means never taking cabs except to stations; and means (living at Sloane Gardens House) doing a good deal of dusting & brushing. How much I envy women like Mabel Price, who are really strong enough (for Kit is not) to enjoy doing things for themselves! Give so much love to Papa. Yrs V. 1 Walter Herries Pollock (1850–1926) was a writer, lecturer and journalist who edited the Saturday Review from 1884 to 1894. He came from an aristocratic background and was educated at Cambridge. His writing was a mix of literary criticism, translations and fiction, including one of the first critical studies of Jane Austen, Jane Austen: Her Contemporaries and Herself: An Essay in Criticism (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1899). His wife, whom he married in 1876, was Emma Jane Pepon (1876–1922) (Who’s Who 1907: An Annual Biographical Dictionary [London: A&C Black, 1907], p. 1412). 2 Lady Lytton: Edith Bulwer-Lytton, née Villiers (1841–1936), daughter of the Hon. Edward Villiers (1806–1843) and niece of George Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon (1800–1870). Lord Lytton: diplomat and poet Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton (1831–1891).

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 3 Constance Georgina Bulwer-Lytton (1869–1923), called Constance Lytton, was twenty-five years old at the time. She was the great-granddaughter of the early nineteenth-century feminist Anna Wheeler. Her paternal grandfather, Edward, first Baron Lytton, was a prominent Victorian man of letters. Her childhood was spent in Vienna, Paris, Lisbon, and India, and at the family seat at Knebworth, Hertfordshire. . . . She was connected by kinship and marriage to a wide range of aristocratic, artistic, and literary circles; one sister married Gerald Balfour (later 2nd earl of Balfour), brother of the future prime minister, and another married the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens. / From 1887 to 1891 Lady Constance lived in Paris, where her father was ambassador. In 1892 she went with her mother on a visit to South Africa, where she met the feminist Olive Schreiner and fell traumatically in love with an unmarriageable man. She never married. From an early age she had a strong dislike for conventional aristocratic “society.” (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography) Lee’s testimony here seems to contradict the following statements: After the death of her father in 1891 she withdrew entirely into private life, devoting herself almost obsessively to the care of her mother, even though the latter soon came out of retirement to become a lady-in-waiting to the queen. . . . Her family and friends made many attempts to draw her into public life, including offering the subeditorship of a literary magazine, but these were all rejected. John Morley described her as “cultivated and original, and witty and talented, and [yet] she considered herself quite giftless.” (E. Neill Raymond, Victorian Viceroy: The Life of Robert, the First Earl of Lytton [London: Regency Press, 1980], p. 308) See “Lytton, Lady Constance Georgina Bulwer (1869–1923),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb9780198614128-e-37705;jsessionid=A5C7C2C146083630694BEAB621640388. Constance Lytton later became a prominent feminist activist and campaigner for women’s votes, birth control and prison reform. 4 In Italian in the text: mason.

21. Matilda Paget July 21, [1894] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Sloane Gardens House Chelsea SW July 21 Dearest Mamma – Thank you so much for yr dear card. And thank E. [Eugene] for his letter about Miss Witzen. I have been very unwell. That headache & sickness before my last lecture was the beginning of it. I merely got worse at Windsor; & had to go to the Dr on my return. He says said it was relaxed sore throat & general slight smash due to (probably) never getting proper sleep from the noise. Kit exchanged with

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me & let me sleep in her flat till I could get into this room, which is on the back, looking towards Chelsea Hospital, & quite quiet. I am taking a tonic & am better, all except my throat; but that will get all right at Richmond, where we are going today till Tuesday. On Thursday next I shall go to Mrs Costelloe1at Haslemere, where the air is excellent; & that will finish setting me up. There are no National Library books in the house, to my knowledge. Tell Eugene I agree in principle about the improvised lecture. But, good Heavens, where should I have been if I had had to improvise the day I was ill? Also, I don’t snuffle; and I do add things as I go along – alter considerably. There is a question of the 19th Century taking the Lectures – But I always doubt. Later I shall try & make them into a sort of primer on Writing.2 Forgive the stupidity of this letter; I am still very weak. Give my love to Papa, please. The weather is cold & damp. Yrs V. 1 See List of Correspondents: Mary (Costelloe) Berenson. 2 The lectures subsequently formed the basis of The Handling of Words and Other Studies on Literary Psychology (London: John Lane, 1923). See also The Handling of Words and Other Studies in Literary Psychology, Royal A. Gettman (ed.) (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1968); and The Handling of Words and Other Studies in Literary Psychology, David Seed (ed.) (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1993).

22. Matilda Paget July 24, 1894 Richmond, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College II PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE. Richmond July 24 ’94 Dearest Mamma, Thank you so much for yr kind letter. Indeed, you must not give me more money: if I do not succeed in making the two ends meet I shall ask you later, to advance the part of my October dress allowance. I must learn to restrict my expenditure, that’s all. As regards publishing, all luck is against me. I find that, both of Hauntings & of Vanitas only half the copies printed have as yet sold. The Fortnightly is distinctly no good. The 19th Century now decides that it won’t have my lectures. The excuse is the presence of one or two (certainly not more) newspaper reporters, although no one has been able to find any report in any newspaper.

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It is nice here, & Lady Ross is really kind & simple. The river is at the bottom of the garden, & I have been able to row a little, which I like. But it rains much & is dreadfully damp; and although I am better & cough less, I cannot get rid of the oppression in my head yet. Tomorrow we go up to town, & on Thursday I go for a week to Haslemere to Mrs Costelloe & her mother.1 Mrs Costelloe says she will treat me as an invalid, & the Haslemere and air – Surrey down air – is very good & dry. The worst of staying with people is that, like Tommy Tucker,2 one has to, not sing, but talk, for one’s supper. Sunday Lady Ross took us to tea at Ham House, a very beautiful old house by the river, belonging to Ld Dysart,3a very curious gibbering sort of musical maniac who used to frighten Flora when she was a child. I am feeling unwell & depressed, so I must break off. Perhaps a walk in the fog may do me good. So much love Yrs V. 1 See List of Correspondents: Hannah Whitall Smith (Mrs Pearsall Smith). 2 “Little Tommy Tucker” is a popular nursery rhyme. “Little Tommy Tucker / Sings for his supper. / What shall we give him? / White bread and butter. / How shall he cut it / Without a knife? / How will he be married / Without a wife?” (Iona Margaret Balfour Opie and Peter Mason Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, 2nd ed. [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997], pp. 416–417). 3 William John Manners Tollemache, 9th Earl of Dysart (1859–1935). He had a passionate interest in German operas, was president of the London Wagner Society (1884–1895) and attended the annual Bayreuth Festival. The biography of Wagner he had commissioned from Ferdinand Praeger was published in 1892.

23. Matilda Paget July 24, 1894 Richmond, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Richmond Wed. 24 July [1894] Dearest Mamma. Yr cheque has just come, so I write a line before going up to town to thank you a thousand, thousand times. As I wrote you yesterday, I don’t think I shall at all need it. But I shall put its amount in the bank, as representing half my October dress allowance. And, please, please remember that you must ask me back for it if you want it. I am better, but still have a bad cough at night – only at night, so I suppose merely nervous. I am very sorry to leave this kind & very original woman; & the river, which I like. 254

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Helen Dunham has asked me to go to Whitley in Yorkshire. The air is good, but the journey long & expensive; so, if I can get well without, I shan’t go. And Maud Cruttwell wants me to go on a house boat somewhere near Oxford with her. But it might be over damp. So much love Yrs V. 24. Matilda Paget July 28, [1894] Haslemere, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Haslemere July 28 I came here on Thursday with Mrs Costelloe, and am staying with her delightful family in a house really in the woods, in such good air. I am for the first time again able to ride with any pleasure, & feeling better altho’ my legs are still very weak. I go to town on Thursday & then from Sat. to Monday to the Wards[’] in Hertfordshire. So much love V. 25. Matilda Paget July 30, [1894] Haslemere, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College II PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE. Haslemere 30 July Dearest Mamma – I was so very grat glad to get the good news of E’s [Eugene’s] walking. But I am very sorry about the coachman. I am better, but I cannot get up any strength; & I believe that in London I shd be ill again. So I am going on Sat. [Saturday] to the Wards[’] & thence on to Miss Simcox[’s], who is in their neighbourhood & who says that very good dry air up there – but where can it be dry when it rains all day every other day? – will set me up. I like these people quite immensely & life is much more homelike than in any other house I have been in. The family consists of Mrs Costelloe’s father, mother, brother, young sister, and at present, future brother in law, a young grandson of Ld John Russell. They are very well off but live in extremely modest style, quite without show or 255

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luxuries. Mr Pearsall Smith and his wife, who is a delightful woman, have both been famous lay-preachers, & he founded a sort of sect which claims that Christ redeemed the world not from hell but from the necessity of sin; which seems to have taken an incredible load off ever so many people’s souls [souls]. He used to preach to thousands of people; & in Berlin the old Emperor lent him a large church where he preached through an interpreter! He is now old & exhausted. But his wife is full of zeal for every sort of good work, & often humorous cheerfulness & shrewdness which appears so often to have characterised the great saints. Indeed she is most fully aware of the absurdities & dangers of mysticism, while being a mystic herself. These people are absolutely tolerant, all their children being atheists quite openly; and indeed they profess to care only for the essence of religion, which they say is the same in all, & really the same wherever there is earnestness & goodwill. I never saw so united, independent & cheerful a family. The report is rife that Oscar Wilde has got into terrible hot water & left England.1 The Dunhams want me to go later to Whitby in Yorkshire, & if I get no stronger, I must. But my nerves are quiet, & I am no longer depressed; only, of course, it is desirable to recover from the weakness which may any day again result in nervous collapse. Writing rather tires me, so forgive my closing. So much love YrV. 1 The beginning of events that led to Wilde’s imprisonment and eventual self-exile in France after he was found guilty of acts of “sodomy” under England’s Criminal Law Amendment Act (1885). His tragedy Salome was first performed in France (in French) in 1896. It was banned in England and did not premiere there until 1931.

26. Matilda Paget August 8, 1894 Buckinghamshire, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE at the Simcoxes, between Windsor & Aylesbury, Bucks Aug 8 Dearest Mamma. Many thanks for both yr cards, & for yr very kind offer of keeping my poney during the summer; but can you really afford it? I left some money with Eugene to 256

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pay Nannucci & the coachman; the latter I paid last up to June 11. I hope Eugene has paid Bozzi his 50, & made him look to all the screws and buttons & put a new pedanxx,1 all of which was to be included. While I am on the subject of business, I & think it would be desirable not to delay having the servants’ mattresses looked to while the weather is hot, they require beating certainly, & probably cleaning f – also Kit’s & mine, & the blankets. I alwa also am anxious that the dining room curtains should be wasted, but they must be very carefully done by Assunta, as it will be the first time. I am so glad you have a coachman, & can drive again. But, if poor old Giuseppe fail completely, I strongly dissuade you from getting a man from Nannucci, as he will be in league with him. Rather write to Geppe Rasponi, who is most competent and conscientious. Also, remember that if ever a new permanent coachman be engaged, we must not renew the absurd plan of letting him have the straw: it is never done, & Rasponi tells me one ought almost to get clean straw for dirty from peasants; besides, it creates an interest to waste straw; & straw is being wasted. In case of a new coachman I think we must try for some more economic principle about the fodder also; for we are certainly paying more than we should. I am getting on tolerably thanks to rest & air. But I am very dreary in the evening with dull people. I shall see whether with prudence I can stand London for the week beginning the 13th. I think writing the lectures only tired me (if it did, wh. I doubt) because I was getting no sleep; and that something at Oxford must have hurt me. Of course the 8 or ten refusals from publishers in the last 6 weeks, & the bad accounts of my books have worried me very much, tho’ I have thought about them as little as possible. I hope that having a quiet and airy room in London will make a difference. I am glad Miss Little is going to you. But till when? For I am extremely anxious you should invite Miss Cruttwell. She hasn’t her house for another couple of months, so it wd be a kindness; & I can think of no one else to travel to Italy with me, and I am not fit to travel alone. If the Alfieris and Pontis are in villa by the 15th Sept I want to go to see them a little, staying a few days in Paris. But if they don’t return till October, I shall be back at home earlier. For I have nothing to do now in England save await coolness in Italy. None of the people in Scotland or the North have reinvited me; so it is sheer waste of time. On the other hand I know Pauline’s miserable disorder & discomfort sufficiently not to go, in my present condition, to Brittany.2 Alas, I don’t want to waste money for nothing. I have now only Miss Smyth and the Ranee to go to; unless I go to Whitby, but it is far, & leav living with the Dunhams is expensive. So it is quite possible you may see me by Sept. 15; & in this case I should wish to bring Miss Cruttwell. But it needn’t interfere with Miss Little? Only, I think a new little maid ought to be looked for, for Rosa alone will certainly no longer suffice when I am back. It is awfully rainy & gloomy. But this is a very pretty country, & these people are very kind. So much love Yrs V. 257

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I would write to Papa, but writing even this much tires me; & I have no cheerful or amusing news.

1 The last letters of this word are illegible due to folded paper. 2 Lee and Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s first cousin, Pauline de Cargoüet, née MacPherson Abadam.

27. Carlo Placci August 9, [1894] Buckinghamshire, England Biblioteca Marucelliana, Carteggio Placci, 037–045 Sloane Gardens House, Chelsea SW IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE Aug. 9 My dear Carlo, Your letter has just followed me to this quiet, philosophic house among the chalk downs & beech woods of Buckinghamshire, where I have come to convalesce. How sorry of I am for you, my dear friend; and how keenly I sympathise with yr days of misery & distress! I find that most of my compatriots are very severe on us (on themselves often!) poor invalids of the more vital, less visceral sort. Perhaps they are right, and perhaps there is something destructive in our tendency to self pity; certainly this system of disregarding these sort of semi spiritual ailments results in a great deal more apparent activity and efficiency; but whether such denies activity & efficiency, is is not a little mechanical, obtuse & therefore less really useful I can’t tell. It seems to me that we should pity ourselves less if others pitied us more; or rather that we should be better able to help ourselves if others would lend us a more helping hand. It is absurd to think that all efficient movement must come from within: surely all mechanics are there to disprove it. How much we gain by a little kind impulsion from without! I am still in a relapse, though getting through it, that is still in the valley of depression; and I cannot say that the indifference that my most of my friends manifest on the subject (in funny contrast with their sympathy about my broken finger which, after the first ten minutes, I did not feel at all) has helped me very much. I now see that one should try to get to know oneself, (since others don’t take the trouble) and particularly to know one’s history and evolution, that is, the one’s parents and one[’s] own childhood. I recognise now that my

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family is, x on one side, acutely neuropathic & hysterical, & that my e earlier years were admirably calculated, by an alternation of indiscipline & terrorism, by excessive overwork & absolute solitude, to develop these characteristics. Had I known this at 22 or 23, instead of learning it nearer 40, I should now be a good deal sounder and happier. How immense a part of education it will become to teach the individual to know his own private aptitudes & dangers, instead of learning only about general virtues & vices! But how wonderfully the education of children is already changing for the better, how much happier they are and will be & will make others! As regards us people with the nervous advantages & drawbacks, I think we may, to a certain extent, use even some of our suffering medicinally. I must explain. I take it, by the way, that one of our worst sufferings is the sense of isolation, of being left behind, like shipwrecked people, by the great moving bulk of activity; the sudden, dreadful sense that so much which we took to be life-in-common, sympathy in the genuine sense, was merely community of interests, nay mere mechanical propinquity in the race forwards, so that once that common work stopped, that pr juxtaposition over, we are really all alone & comparatively helpless. But we may extract some good from this, for it lies with us, sometimes to be refined instead of merely enervated by such experiences. I find that it is only since my long nervous illness that I have learned what it is I really care for in the world, what it is I personally value & aim at, that I have found myself. As long as we are sound, we are apt to rush along, from mere exuberance of energy, with the other sound ones, accepting the aims & notions of the majority, wasting our efforts in things we can neither do nor enjoy; missing ourselves in the crowd. I think one sees this so much in an energetic people ‸race‸ like the English. I feel sure half the things on which each individual spends his energy is foreign to his p nature, is neither useful nor enjoyable: hence the fearful struggle for worthless things by worthy people, the lack of serenity and true gaiety. Illness of body ‸viscera‸ may make me stoical; surely illness of nerves should make one, in the best & noblest sense, epicurean. And speaking of Epicureanism, what a terrible, terrible loss is not that of Pater!1 He had achieved that splendid evolution from the cheap aestheticism of the Renaissance & Marius, to the aestheticism, which is ethical like all the highest, of his Plato; and he should have given us so much more priceless advice & experience. Although he gave himself so little in conversation, I feel a great satisfaction in having had his friendship & witnessed his kind, & in a way (being an invalid) bravely serene life. Goodbye, my dear Carlo. Get well. I hope yr mother2 is all right. I shall return early in Sept., where will you be? My love to Ady Yrs afft V.P.

1 Walter Pater died on 30 July 1894. 2 Placci’s mother was Maria Guadalupe Ruiz Villegras.

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28. Mary Ward (Mrs Humphry Ward) August 10, [1894] Tring, England University of Texas, Harry Ransom Research Center ELLESBOROUGH HOUSE, TRING Telegrams, Butler’s Cross Aug. 10 My dear Mrs Ward, I am returning you the book I borrowed with a great many thanks; and at the same time I want also to thank you for yr kind hospitality & friendship. I am rather anxious to know whether you were not over tired by your Bank Holiday (is that rightly spelt? I seem suddenly smitten with spelling aphasia) visitors. I am very much interested by yr views in yr lecture on Unitarianism: I had no idea that you were in favour of retaining so much. Personally I fear we must throw a great deal away which is precious: tradition, symbolic communion with others, aesthetic satisfaction, nay even sympathetic satisfaction, and live for a long while in misery without, until new & better things of the same sort arise as a recompense & a result of our self sacrifice after all, how much does the mass really appreciate & make its own of those beautiful rites and words which, to unbelievers like myself, are fraught with the highest & most consoling poetry? I have looked at sometimes watched the faithful – the priests canons in Siena cathedral & St Marks, and the officiating clergy congregation in English churches, & seeing those dull, rayless, self satisfied faces, and listening to those official, undiscriminating, unmoved voices, wondered whether I kept had not got hold of the poetry & sentiment of the thing because I had found it out for myself, while they had got only the prose, because they had received these things as a routine. Surely, to get the good, the essence of anything, we must be able to separate and throw away the bad, the adulteration? I am, dear Mrs Ward, Yrs sincerely V. Paget 29. Matilda Paget August 13, 1894 London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College August ’94

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Sloane Gardens House Chelsea Monday 13 August Dearest Mamma – I came up this morning from Miss Simcox’s & I have been at the National Gallery, & do not at all feel tired, so I really believe I am better. I am very thankful there is no one in town to call on. It has suddenly struck me, & Kit says I may be right, that what has been the matter with me all this time has been influenza. I have heard of several people having it badly at present. The numbness & sickness, followed by 3 days fever and acute sore throat, & the frightful lassitude & depression may quite well explain it. I wish I might believe it, for the idea of a nervous breakdown merely because of the noise in the street and because I wrote 2 hours a day for 10 days is appalling & has done much to keep me ill. Have you heard that Mme Placci has been almost at death’s door in Florence, & Carlo has had two attacks of throat abcess [abscess] at Bayreuth & the Tyrol, & has grown wretchedly weak? Eugene ought to write to him 7 Via Alfieri, for he is terribly depressed about himself. I am perfectly sure that Eugene feels the heat more, so he will also feel the cold infinitely more. So I urge for everybody’s sake that another door, that between Giovanni’s room & the dressing room, should be bricked up. I hope the mattresses & blankets will be seen to. I have no news, except that I am better. So much love Yrs V. I hope jam – apricot & peaches – is being made. 30. Matilda Paget August 16, 1894 London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Sl. G. H. [Sloane Gardens House] Chelsea 16 Aug Dearest Mamma – I am sure you will be glad to hear that through the help of the publisher Heinemann I have recovered the long lost “Virgin of the Seven Daggers” – I have exchanged it for my lectures, & the New Review is profuse in apologies.1 I am getting on well. Tuesday we go for 2 days to Mrs Scott at Ham. So much love. V.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 1 About the delayed publication of this fantastic story, see Lee to Matilda Paget, 8 January [1889], Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II: Vernon Lee’s “Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows,” begun on 8 January and completed on 29 August 1889, is a distant echo of Mary’s “Our Lady of the Broken Heart” (in Songs, Ballads, and a Garden Play [London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1888]). It was first published in French as “La Madone aux sept glaives” in Feuilleton du journal des débats du Samedi on 8, 9, 11, 12, and 14 February 1896. The English translation was published later, in two parts in the January and February 1909 issues of The English Review (1908–1909), January issue pp. 223–233; February issue 453–465, rpt. in For Maurice: Five Unlikely Stories (London: John Lane, 1927), rpt. in Supernatural Tales, Irene Cooper Willis (ed.) (London: Peter Owen, 1987). Lee dedicated “The Virgin of the Seven Daggers” to Spanish writer, diplomat and art curator José Fernandez Gimenez (1832–1903) when it was reprinted in her collection For Maurice (1927). See C. Maxwell and P. Pulham (eds.), Hauntings and Other Fantastic Tales: Vernon Lee (Ontario: Broadview Press, 2006), pp. 247, 249. “The Virgin of the Seven Daggers” was not to be published before 1909. “After a considerable gap – which again highlights the considerable vacuum left by the demise of The Yellow Book and The New Review – she published ‘The Virgin of the Seven Daggers’ in the second issue of The English Review in 1909” (Ford Madox Hueffer [ed.], The English Review, Part I [1 January 1909], pp. 223–233), along with texts by Joseph Conrad, Leo Tolstoï, Anatole France and H.G. Wells. The “Conclusion” appeared in the February issue, pp. 453–465, along with texts by W.B. Yeats, Walter de la Mare, John Galsworthy, Joseph Conrad and Granville Barker (Christoph Ehland and Cornela Wächter [eds.], Middlebrow and Gender, 1890–1945 [Leiden: Brill, Rodopi, 2016], p. 29).

31. William Blackwood1 August 21, [1894] London, England National Library of Scotland II PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE. Sloane Gardens House Chelsea Aug 21 Dear Mr Blackwood, I have just recovered, after five years total disappearance & many adventures, a story of mine in two parts, called The Virgin of the Seven Daggers. It is a story of ghostly adventure, a working out of the least known of the Don Juan legends which I learned many years ago from a friend from Granada – with enchanted princesses, wicked dons & the hero assisting at his own funeral. It strikes me as being in the tradition of your magazine, which has alone upheld, in these degenerate days, the good old ghost story. But, as I am very much hurried to fulfil a promise to the Revue des Deux Mondes, I do not want to lose time to no purpose, and would therefore be infinitely obliged if you could let me know whether it is worth while sending you the story in question or whether you have too much already of that sort of thing. It 262

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would be well suited to a Xmas number, if ghosts & Xmas are still connected. The first part is printed, so you could read it very quickly. I write chiefly because of a vague idea (perhaps a vision in connexion with my Phantom Lover which you published) that all the stories in yr Magazine must be put in yr Tales from Blackwoods.2 Now, as I want this story later to complete a volume of my own, I could only offer it you for insertion in the Magazine, keeping all rights for myself. Could you send me a line by return of post? I am, dear Mr Blackwood, Yrs faithfully V Paget

1 See List of Correspondents: William Blackwood. 2 Stories published in the Magazine were sometimes collected in book form for Tales from Blackwoods, if the company owned the rights.

32. Matilda Paget August 25, [1894] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College II PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE. Aug 25 Sl. G. H. [Sloane Gardens House] Chelsea Dearest Mamma – So many thanks for yr kind letters. I have not written before [as] I have been very busy preparing my two lectures to give over to Grove in return for the Virgin of the 7 Daggers, which I have sent to Blackwood.1 I am so sorry Eugene has hurt his foot so; but at the same time so glad at the marvellous fact of his having, so to speak, a foot again to hurt. I am much better. Kit & I had 2 very pleasant days with the Scotts, whom I am very glad to know better, for they are really nice & kind, & Mrs Scott’s dreadful Duchess-that-should-have-been manner hides a great deal of simplicity. They have a lovely big garden between Richmond & Kingston; & drove me to Hampton Court, which I thought more picturesque & beautiful than ever before. I fear my letters must needs be very dull. There is no one in town, & I only work in the galleries & read Psychology. I had such a charming letter, quite uncalled for, from D. [Dorothy] Blomfield. She has recently & tragically lost her fiancé.2 Kit & I are off to H. [Hamilton] Aïde’s for two days & perhaps then I may go on to Miss Smyth for a day or two. We are both going to the Ranee on the 4th. So much love, Yrs V. 263

SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 1 Blackwood did not take the story. Instead it appeared first in French as “La Madone aux sept glaives,” Journal des Débats du Samedi (8, 9, 11, and 14 February 1896). It was not published in English until 1909 (“The Virgin of the Seven Daggers,” English Review, 1 (January to February 1909); rpt. in For Maurice (1927). 2 Dorothy Frances Blomfield (1858–1932), poet and hymn writer. She wrote the hymn “O Perfect Love,” which was a popular choice for wedding ceremonies in the late nineteenth century, and the often-quoted “God’s Garden.” She was also the author of a number of volumes of poetry and was friends with many in Lee’s circle. She had a close, possibly romantic, relationship with Mary Wakefield in 1885 and with poet Amy Levy, whom she may have met through Lee in 1886. Blomfield remained single until 1897, when she married Anglican minister Gerald Gurney (1862–1939), and in 1919, they both converted to Roman Catholicism, a controversial break from the Anglican Church (Linda Hunt Beckman, Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters [Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000]). See Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II.

33. Matilda Paget August 28, [1894] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College II PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE. Sl. G. H. [Sloane Gardens House] From Miss Smyth’s, near Farnbrow ^Farnboro’^ Aug. 28 Dearest Mamma – Please thank Papa for his letter, with its good news of everything save the garden. It has been rather nice at Aïde’s, whence Kit returned yesterday to London while I carry on here. Harry Cust1 the editor of the Pall Mall was there; and Oswald Crawfurd,2 the former consul at Oporto & editor of sunday magazines, who is like Cecconi & most simpatico.3 He is now Chairman of Chapman & Hall’s & as Harris is being turned out, this change may perhaps re-open the Fortnightly to me. There was a grotesque fairy story element in my arrival at the station here, yesterday. Miss Smyth has no vehicle, so she made me tramp to the workman’s cottage she has bought (her father is has recently dead died),4 & fastened my small bag on her bicycle & said to the porter, pointing to my portmanteau “The Empress will call for that about five” – & accordingly the cart with the eagle harness came round with my effects. She took me last night to dine with some neighbours, Thornycroft,5 a sculptor I used to admire but now think pretty poor. She is very good company &, what surprises me, hearing I have been ill, very kind & thoughtful. She wants to teach me to bicycle. I return to town tomorrow. So much love V.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 1 Henry John Cockayne-Cust (1861–1917), poet, politician, editor, MP, rumored to be a womaniser. In 1892, he was invited by William Waldorf Astor to edit the Pall Mall Gazette. 2 Oswald John Frederick Crawfurd (1834–1909) served in the Foreign Office in Portugal for over twenty-four years, though he spent some months at a time in London. He was also a prolific writer of fiction, publishing under a number of pseudonyms, among them The World We Live In: A Novel (2 vols. [New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1884]). In 1890, he published Round the Calendar in Portugal (illust. Dorothy Tennant, Mrs. Arthur Walter, and the author [London: Chapman and Hall, 1890]). Crawfurd’s last two years (1890–1) in Portugal were of exceptional difficulty. An ultimatum from Lord Salisbury (Jan. 1890), the result of the occupation by Portuguese troops of British territory in East Africa, led to an outburst of anti-British feeling, more violent in Oporto than in other Portuguese towns. Crawfurd’s house was stoned, but he carried on his duties till the trouble subsided, and then on 17 June 1891 resigned. (“Crawfurd, Oswald Frederick,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/32620) Back in England, he founded Black and White in 1891 and was the editor of Chapman’s Magazine of Fiction beginning in 1895, as well as managing director of Chapman & Hall, Ltd. 3 In Italian in the text: nice. 4 Major General John Hall Smyth (1814–1894) died at Frimhurst on 31 March 1894 and was buried at St Peter’s on 4 April 1894. 5 Hamo Thornycroft (1850–1925) was just becoming one of England’s most popular sculptors when Lee first saw the Teucer statue, the work for which he was elected to the Royal Academy. But there is at the Academy a model for a statue of Teucer, erect, with stretched bow, rather like certain of the Aegina marbles in character, which quite enchanted me. It is the noblest piece of work, for pose & finish, & the most like a real antique, yet with a certain originality, I have ever seen, except one or two things by M. [Michael] Angelo. The sculptor, Hamo Thomycroft, is quite a young man. Mr Gosse, who is his friend, is trying to get me a photo of the statue. (Lee to Matilda Paget, 5 July [1881], Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II) His work, at one time more classical, moved toward realism, and he was a part of the New Sculpture movement at the end of the century.

34. Hannah Whitall Smith (Mrs Pearsall Smith) August 29, [1894] Dunster, Somerset, England London University: London School of Economics, The Women’s Library AL/2192 Aug. 29 DUNSTER CASTLE, DUNSTER, SOMERSET. My dear Mrs Smith, I must snatch this opportunity of thanking you for your very delightful hospitality and for your kind note.

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This opportunity – I thought was at Dunster yesterday – but after much despairing, I snatch it today in a long day’s journey. I have been traveling [travelling] between 11 a.m. and 8.30 p.m. I cannot exactly say whence, save vaguely in the West country, missing trains, waiting hours for them, crawling alone, and, I would think, without covering 50 miles of ground! Tell your son1 I have read the have read the French novel he lent me & am quite unable to discover whether it is a joke or earnest or both. Tell Mrs Costelloe there are no Titians at Dunster Castle! & thank her very warmly for her kind letter. Please give my best remembrance to Mr Smith and Mrs Russell & believe me Yrs gratefully, V. Paget 1 Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946), son of Robert Pearsall Smith (1827–1898) and Hannah Smith (1832–1911) and brother of Mary (Costelloe) Berenson. He attended William James’s course at Harvard. He became a polished, cosmopolitan witty writer known as an epigrammatist (Trivia, 1902), a critic, an essayist and short story writer (The Youth of Parnassus, 1895). He lived abroad after 1888, was a friend of Walt Whitman’s and William James’s, but above all of Henry James’s. Logan and Bernard Berenson became friends after they first met in Paris, soon after Bernard Berenson’s sister, Alys, married Bertrand Russell. Together with Bernard Berenson and Mary, he launched The Golden Urn, a privately issued magazine in Fiesole (May 1897) where he had settled near his sister. He became a British subject in 1913. (Geoffroy-Menoux, “Henry James and Family: Eleven Unpublished Letters,” Sources, n° 14, p. 74)

35. Matilda Paget September 1, [1894] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College II PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE. Sl. G. H. [Sloane Gardens House] Chelsea Sept 1. Sat. Dearest Mamma, Thank you so much for yr dear letter. Of course you know Dorothy Blomfield quite well. She never stayed at the Palmerino; but used to come continually to Via Garibaldi eight or nine years ago. Tell Eugene a very favourable review of

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his sonnets in the Academy – thank Papa so much for his letter. You will probably have me back the 22d. I have had to give up Paris, as the rooms Flora & Miss Price have, & their housekeeping etc. promised abundant discomfort. So I shall give up Miss Cassatt1 also & Mary, for I am good for no roughing of any sort or sea journeys (Miss Cassatt implies Dieppe) & come straight by Bâle. I shall try and leave Monday 10th. Stay 2 or three days at Monza with the Esengrinis, 3 or 4 with the Alfieris and a couple with Mrs French at Pistoia. Miss Cruttwell will tour about Lombardy, & when her money is out, if you have no objection, come on to the Palmerino – though probably I shall precede her. It is very good of her to give up Paris in order to conduct me, & I am really scarcely fit to go alone; the least thing knocks me up. Miss Smyth took me again to see the Empress,2 who charmed me even more than last year, for she was in a very enjouée3 mood & delightful. It is a curious note that she recounted to us the story of Maupassant’s Boule-de-Suif4 (ask Eugene to tell it you) at great length, & would on no account agree with me that it is utterly incredible that all the travellers in that diligence should have been such unacc unspeakable cads. “C’est bien la vie”5 – she said. The Ponsonbys have been here 2 days de passage6 & I have lunched & dined with them. They are coming to Florence in the spring. So very much love Yrs V. Kit, who has been unspeakably good & patient through my illness (consisting so largely of frightful bad temper) actually sold ‸(sold)‸ my old postage stamps for a pound, & we have bought James’ bigger psychology7 with the money.

1 Lee visited American painter Mary Cassatt in 1895. See Lee to Matilda Paget and Clementina Anstruther-Thomson, July 28, 1895. 2 Empress Eugénie. 3 In French in the text: merry, joyful. 4 “Boule-de-Suif” was the first short story published by Guy de Maupassant in Les soirées de Médan (Paris: G. Charpentier, April 15, 1880), a collection of stories published by his friends of “the group of Médan,” i.e. Emile Zola, J.K. Huysmans, Henry Céard, Léon Hennique and Paul Alexis. This first story earned him an important place in the naturalistic school, and Lee’s admiration for his art. Her Commonplace Book New Series VI registers her analysis of Maupassant’s Bel Ami (entry dated 31 October 1891) at a time (this commonplace book was “Begun Florence Feb. 25 1891 / Finished Florence Jan. 14 1892”) when she was reading Zola (Nana, Au Bonheur des Dames, La Terre, L’Argent, Pot Bouille), Flaubert (Madame Bovary), Bourget (Physiologie de l’amour), and other naturalistic authors and “truthful novelists,” including Tolstoy, George Eliot, Dostoyevsky and Stendhal. 5 In French in the text: That’s life 6 In French in the text: just passing. 7 The hugely influential book by William James (1842–1910), The Principles of Psychology, whose Volume I was published in New York (Henry Holt and Co., 1890).

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36. Matilda Paget September 8, [1894] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Dearest Mamma (Sat). I have had to put off going till Thursday next. Maud Cruttwell & I will spend a night in Paris, so address [phone] Hotel d’Isly Rue Jacob. The Esengrinis won’t be back at Monza, so I shall probably go straight to the Alfieris from Paris via Turin. Thank you so much for yr kind letter. I will let you know addresses as soon as I arrivare.1 So much love V.

1 In Italian in the text: arrive.

37. Hannah Withall Smith (Mrs Pearsall Smith) September 11, [1894] London, England London University: London School of Economics, The Women’s Library AL/1291 Sept. 11 IL PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE. Dear Mrs Pearsall Smith, Your daughter1 writes me that you will be so very kind as to forward the enclosed slips to your cousin Miss Thomas.2 I am ashamed to give you so much trouble, & should never have done so had Mrs Costelloe3 given me her address. But my book is passing through the press,4 and so, as I am rather remiss already in this business, I venture to accept your kind offer. Will you tell Miss Thomas how grateful a recollection I keep of her visit this Summer, & how much I hope to see her again? I will not take up more of your well employed time, save to give you my best thanks & beg you to believe me, dear Mrs Pearsall Smith, Yrs sincerely V. Paget

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 1 See List of Correspondents: Alyssa “Alys” Pearsall Smith. 2 Martha Carey Thomas (1857–1935) was an American educator, linguist, suffragist and the second president of Bryn Mawr College. Her brother was Bond Thomas, whose wife was Edith Thomas, née Carpenter, Mary Berenson’s cousin. 3 Mary Costelloe, later Berenson, was Alys Pearsall Smith’s sister. 4 Althea.

38. Matilda Paget September 12, [1894] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Sl. G. H. [Sloane Gardens House] Wed. [Wednesday]: Dearest Mamma – I start tomorrow 11 a.m. with M. [Maud] Cruttwell & get to Paris 7 p.m. We shall probably stay 2 nights at the Hotel d’Isly – at Turin we shall part, she going to Milan etc & I to Asti. I expect to be at Asti Sunday evening. Will you write & send me my mosquito net (or large piece of netting) to San Martino Tanaro presso Asti – Piemonte. So much love. 39. Matilda Paget September 14, [1894] Paris, France Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Hotel d’Isly – Paris 14 Sept Dearest Mamma, A thousand thanks for your dear little letter; & thank E. [Eugene] for his, & for the letters he has sent on. One of them, only imagine, is from the former Miss Crawford, who has been married 15 years! We shall stay here till Sunday evening, ˰& be at Asti Monday˰ as I see from E.’s [Eugene’s] letter to Miss Cruttwell that Miss L. [Little] (to whom please give my love) will be with you [tonight?]. Laura Gropallo is very anxious to come the 1st October. So much love V. 40. Matilda Paget [September 18, 1894] San Martino Alfieri, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Tuesday S. Martino Tanaro Asti

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Dearest Mamma – I arrived here yesterday at 5, having found Adele A. [Alfieri] waiting for me at Asti with Miss Hall, who is staying here. The journey from Paris was not long & quite comfortable, but poor Mrs Cruttwell was knocked up. We parted at Turin whence she proceeded to the Hotel Leon d’Oro at Milan. I shall leave this Friday morning & get at 5 to Pistoia; and stay with Miss French at Igno till Monday. Miss Cruttwell & I will meet at Pistoia (or at Florence station), & we shall arrive, I hope Monday by the Bologna express of 6.25 pm. It will be necessary to send the contadino as we have a good deal of luggage between us. I suppose if Miss Little is still with you Miss C. [Cruttwell] must be put in Kit’s room. I shall venture to order the piano in for Tuesday, as I want to establish at once the habit of being left in peace (& not talked to) in the evening after dinner. I want to get into regular habits as soon as possible, & I believe part of my having been ill has been due to being talked to too much! I am impatient to be back with you. I find it quite cool and not in the least like summer here. But everything is more burnt up than I could have believed. In Paris it was cold, & at Flora & Miss Price’s apartment, where I had my meals, there was always a fire. I received the mosquito net last night; a thousand thanks. There is only one post a day here, apparently at 10 p.m. So it is better to send me my letters to Igno ℅ Mrs French. Mabel Price took me in Paris to see the things from the palace of Artaxerxes Mnemon at Susa which the French have been discovering, mainly through the genius of that Mme Dieulafoy1 who goes to parties dressed in men’s clothes, & looking like her husband’s son. The great lion & friezes of coloured tile archers are tremendously impressive, much more than anything from Nineveh. I sent some books to the Palmerino at 2 goes, among them 2 vols. of Plato for which I had no room. I hope they arrived. That brute Unwin! I haven’t succeeded in getting more than £ 10 out of him for 400 additional copies of Euphorion, of which the rights had lapsed to me. So much love Yrs V. 1 The French archeologist, explorer and novelist Jane Henriette Dieulafoy, née Magre (1851–1916). She first put on men’s clothes so as to fight in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 with her husband, engineer, orientalist and archeologist Marcel-Auguste Dieulafoy (1844–1920), wearing the masculine garb ever after. Together, they excavated the ancient capital city of Persia, Susa, along with other major sites, and their finds were exhibited at the Louvre. Jane’s archeological diary was published in 1890. Les fouilles conduites principalement à l’emplacement du palais de Darius produisent de remarquables découvertes: un chapiteau colossal, la célèbre frise des archers – reconstituée avec acharnement par les fouilleurs –, trouvent leur place, deux ans plus tard, au musée du Louvre, dans deux salles inaugurées le 6 juin 1888, par le président de la République. (Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art www.inha.fr/fr/ressources/publications/ publications-numeriques/dictionnaire-critique-des-historiensde-l-art/dieulafoy-jane-et-marcel.html)

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 See M. Dieulafoy, L’Acropole de Suse d’après les fouilles exécutées en 1884, 1885, 1886, sous les auspices du Musée du Louvre (Paris: Hachette, 1890–1892).

41. Clementina Anstruther-Thomson September 19, [1894] San Martino, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Il Palmerino, Maiano Florence. Sept 19. S. Martino Dearest Kit – Your dear letter came last night, as we were finishing a grand game of bowls on the billiard table with the Visconti-Venosta nephews, and I had made such splendid angles! It is so funny to be back again in this atmosphere of simplicity & utter kindness; in this poor, poor country, which now, after four months drought, & here, with great hulks of colossal villas wrecked on every hill top, looks doubly poverty stricken. I am well, dearest; indeed I am bound to say that I was better as soon as I had crossed the channel; & that in the light air of Paris I was able to do twice as much as in London without weariness. The night journey from Paris, on Sunday, seemed quite short & easy: I have never felt – coming a long distance less. I am going on the day after tomorrow to Ingre; & expect to be in Florence Monday next. Miss Cruttwell is at Milan. I think am very glad I stayed on in Paris. It was, on the whole, a great pleasure; perhaps the best thing of it was recognising how mistaken we were about poor Flora,1 & how completely & over flowingly friendly she is. She was very seedy & I was with her a great deal; & I think she was at least as well pleased to see me as Mabel.2 We made it up together, she, I mean Mabel & I, after a scene in which she attacked me violently, & accused me of trifling with her; but she came round, rather astounded at my asserting myself. It is quite plain that anything she does or says can never hurt me again, & that I have completely broken the extraordinary sort of tyranny which she quite unwilling [unwillingly] exerted over me. I seem only the more able to perceive the curious charm she has, which is more like that of certain localities, do you understand, than of a human being; something whose essence seems to be that marvellous energy of nature which one rath perceives as a quality of air or of flame. I hope so much some day you may get to know her better; for there is something unique about her. We had several tearing discussions, in the course of which she displayed considerable ignorance & slovenliness; and in which there was little or no consecutive argument. But – & this is her fascination – what she said, rubbish tho’ it was in some illustrations & arguments – 271

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seemed to bear a much greater weight of truth than the quite accurate statements & arguments of other people – more than my own, I felt – because it was not a thing intellectually elaborated, made up of observation & strung together by logic, but, apparently a sort of spontaneous expression of her nature, a sort of sample of herself – Do you understand? It seemed to stand to her in the same relation as the movement of her face, the flaming of her eyes & hair & the vehemence of her voice. I tell you this, partly, because it seems to make me understand what the creative quality is in art (& I suppose in action) –: an absolute externalising of the very mode of existence of the creature, a sample of its whole organic life, not a reflexion or reconstruction of anything outside.3 Hence, altho’ most of her reasons seemed so poor, the actual assertions seemed so true; parts of reality, since parts of herself, & hence real. We went to see the Venus of Milo; & there she was, instantly, writhing in a sort of inarticulate disappointment & crying out “I can’t do with her – she isn’t really great – she can’t be a real original. There’s something thin & poor about her – she’s unsatisfactory – Think of the Theseus”4 – Of course, when I asked her how & why, she gave absurd improvised reasons; but there it was, something inside her had made her understand what it has taken the rest of us heaven knows how long to get at. It was just the same in the more abstract arguments we had: I knew I was talking sense, but she was talking, even when it seemed nonsense, reality. It is curious, isn’t it? Mabel is very touchingly charmed with you, dear, & with whatever you said or did that day you met her in London; and I appreciated that odd, altogether intuitive appreciation of hers. She told us she was very very anxious you should have a good opinion of her, & that you should believe that she was incapable of trifling with anyone. I think, in one sense, she is – absolutely so. I think all that is feeling & judgement in her is absolutely steady & admirable; & that only a sort of odd practical fringe of human relations is wrong. She struck me as so good & magnanimous & tender, & yet I know that at that very moment she was, by her odd forgetfulness & up & downness, hurting Maud Cruttwell, as she had hurt me & apparently hurts Flora. She said, rather pathetically – “you see I know nothing about human beings” – I think one must be utterly impersonal about her, & thus enjoy her charm & force. She is all If ever you have an opportunity of saying or writing a word to her, do so, that she may know I have done my commission. She is still very unhappy & fear very ill, with pains in her head & dreams ghastly sort of half waking dreams. She says she has always felt that her energy has merely hurt others, & kept them aloof from her. What she ought to have been is an explorer, or soldier or person of action of some sort: mere intellectual contemplative life seems to kill her. I am very, very sorry for her. I went to see the Benavente bronze head, which is extremely lovely. You must see it when you pass through. It is upstairs among the bronzes. On the whole the Louvre antiques are a poor lot. Also I went to see the Ecole de Pharmacie & those things seem finer & finer.5I was much interested in experimenting, so to speak, with Mabel as a sort of sensitive: she always feels at once the good, & the good 272

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points in the good. I think faultlessly, apparently without any act of reflexion. At the hotel they gave me a largish packet of things you had left behind. As I had no trunk & my bag was full to bursting, I ventured to have the parcel, addressed to you, with Mabel. She will be in Paris till Xmas Eve; & I suppose you will see her. Oh, she took me to see the columns & tile frieze of the temple palace of Artaxerxes Mnemon dug up by the Dieulafoys.6 I don’t think you know them, else you would have shown them me. Such splendid things, of a sort of selected, subdued, delicate barbaric quality, quite unlike the Ninevite things. You must see them. By the way the Visconti-Venostas are here, & will be charmed to show you their pictures when you pass through Milan. Yes; I wrote as kindly as I could in answer to that strange letter. Dearest Kit, you will write often, won’t you? Yrs Vernon

1 Flora Priestley (1859–1944) was the daughter of Augusta Le Poer Trench (ca. 1824–1914) and Reverend William Henry Priestley (1824–1861), chaplain of the English Church, Nice, France. After Reverend Priestley died in 1861, Flora’s mother married widower Reverend Charles Childers (1806–1896) in 1869. 2 Mabel Price, not Mabel Robinson, as Lee was more often in the company of Flora Priestley, Mabel Price and Clementina Anstruther-Thomson at this time. 3 In Beauty and Ugliness and Other Studies in Psychological Aesthetics (London: John Lane, 1912), co-authored with Clementina Anstruther-Thomson, variations of this theory are applied to the viewer’s appreciation of art. They claim there is an organic connection between the aesthetically intuitive viewer and the work of art, understood through his or her physical reactions to viewing it. The appreciation is innate, not learned. 4 Possibly refers to depictions of Theseus slaying the Minotaur in the Louvre collections. 5 According to a Baedeker guide printed during this time, there were statues and frescoes in the main corridor of the Ecole de Pharmacie. Lee was particularly fond of Besnard’s frescoes there. 6 Marcel-Auguste Dieulafoy (1844–1920) and his wife, Jane Henriette Dieulafoy (1851–1916), excavated the palaces of the ancient Persian kings in 1885. Their many Persian artefacts and palace remnants were given to the Louvre. They also erected there a restored model of the palace of Artaxerxes.

42. Matilda Paget September 20, [1894] San Martino Alfieri, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College San Martino Tanaro – 21 ‸20‸ Thursday – Dearest Mamma – Many thanks for letters, proofs & mosquito net. Tomorrow I go to Igno, & to Florence Monday. On Monday I shall bring Miss Cruttwell with me. I am well – any letters can go to Igno till Saturday. So much love V. 43. Matilda Paget September 21, [1894] 273

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San Martino Alfieri, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College San Martino 21 Sept. Dearest Mamma I got a telegram last night from Mrs French telling me they were detained at S. Marcello & couldn’t have me at Igno till Monday. As I greatly want to see her, & do not wish to go off again once I get home, I propose going to Igno from Monday to Wednesday. But Miss Cruttwell’s friends may very well likely not allow her these 2 additional days, so I have telegraphed her to let you know if she wants to go to Florence alone on Wednesday. So much love V. 44. Matilda Paget September 25, [1894] Igno, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College II PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE. Igno 25th Tuesday Dearest Mamma, At last I can say with certainty that I shall be with you (and how glad!) tomorrow. The train is due at 6.25. I send you the ticket for my luggage, which arrived at Florence (perhaps by the Turin-Genoa line instead of Bologna) yesterday, so that Giovanni may get it out before my arrival & I may get home at once. I presume, from a rather enigmatic letter received today, that Miss Cruttwell is with you already, though how I can have missed seeing her or she me, seeing she must have been in the same train all the way from Modena, & that we all got out at Bologna, I can’t conceive. I am so sorry she is ill. Will you tell her that what happened was this. 1st she wrote that she would be at Bergamo Wednesday evening for some days; 2d on Friday early, having heard from Mrs French that I must delay coming till Monday, I telegraphed to Miss Cruttwell at Bergamo, where I had already sent a letter; I told her & asked whether she wished to precede me to Florence? 3. Miss C. [Cruttwell] meanwhile stayed on at Milan, & without saying a word to me, suppressed going to Bergamo, neglected to enquire for letters etc there, and went on to Verona. 4. My telegram (which was lying at Bergamo unopened) receiving no answer, I telegraphed again Sunday evening, a duplicate to Bergamo & to Verona, telling

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her that, in accordance with my Friday’s telegram, I was going to stay at Pistoia & could not be in Florence till Wednesday. It occ never occurred to me, among all my suppositions, that she would not have either telegraphed her changed plans to San Martino when she still knew me to be there, or that she would not have sent for anything from Bergamo. ˰There is a letter there, tell her.˰ I should be miserable if she thought I had asked unkindly or cavalierly. On the other hand her letter is so worded that I do not feel sure that she actually did proceed to Florence yesterday. If she did not, & does not do so today, you had better take for granted that she will come on tomorrow & that we shall arrive together, & in that case, send the contadino & if possible, the big carriage. I fear she is very unwell. So much love V. 45. Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) October 5, 1894 Florence, Italy Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Paris [This letter is not extant] IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE Ce 5 Octobre1 [Today October 5] My dear Madame Blanc, What a great disappointment not to have seen you in Paris! Few things irritate me so much as this obstacle of place in one’s friendships; there are so few things one really wants in life, it seems so senseless that questions of milage mileage should come between oneself and the persons one feels most the want of. Will you never come to us in Italy, dear Lady? That would be such a joy. Before I forget, let me bother you with a tiresome question. Do you know of any French family who would take as boarders for a couple of months after Christmas my friend (and Kit’s cousin) Miss Muir Mackenzie & her adopted son, a young Oxford man of 19 or 20? She is very anxious he should learn French, as he is (in some mysterious way) of French extraction. Miss Mackenzie is a very accomplished, amusing but a little difficile2 old maid of fifty five or so; the boy is very nice. Will you give this a thought. I believe poor Melle B. de B. [Blaze de Bury] would take boarders, but I could not conceive anyone living with so horribly untidy a woman. Let me tell you how much I like your American articles; it really almost makes me wish to go to America; and you know I have always thought that doing so would turn me into a retrograde for the rest of my life. How much I appreciate 275

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your wise, wide, kindly view of the woman question in America!3 And, dear Lady, what a dreadful contrast to you are Mme Arvède Barine’s truly miserable articles.4 I cannot conceive that a Frenchwoman can be so utterly destitute of delicacy of perception as she seems. [A page may be missing or misplaced here] much to write something about my friend (& master in many ways) Walter Pater.5 He was never thoroughly appreciated in England (so much so that owing to his very early & immature book, the Renaissance, he passed as a sort of immoral aesthete) and the silence which has followed on his death shocks me terribly. I am sure the French would appreciate this most exquisite artist and delicate, austere moralist: the young men whom Desjardins and Vogüe appeal to6 would learn so much from Marius the Epicurian & the lovely book on Plato, by the whole evolution of this soul from love of the materially beautiful to longing for the morally sound pure and harmonious. Do write about him, will you? I have a whole list of passages & quotations I could send you. Have you seen a beautiful, passionate book by Mary Wilkins, Pembroke?7 Dear Mme Blanc, write to me sometimes. I feel so much the need for your kind, wise serenity of spirit. Best regards to yr son & charming daughter in law & granddaughter! Yrs afftly V. Paget 1 In French in the text. 2 In French in the text: difficult. 3 Marie-Thérèse Blanc visited America in 1893 and carried out a survey on the “woman question” there, resulting in the book The Condition of Women in the United States: A Traveller’s Notes (trans. Abby Langdon Alger [Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1895]; Les Américaines Chez Elles: Notes de Voyage, 2nd ed. [Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1896]). 4 Arvède Barine, née Louise-Cécile Bouffé (1840–1908), important French writer, historian and translator of Herbert Spencer and Leon Tolstoï, who was a close friend of Mme Blanc’s. She wrote as “Mme Charles Vincens,” about women and current political issues and produced travel essays and literary criticism (about Alfred de Musset, De Quincey, Edgar Allan Poe, E.T.A. Hoffmann and Gérard de Nerval). She contributed to the Revue bleue, the Revue des Deux Mondes, the Revue politique et littéraire, the Nouvelle Revue, the Journal des débats, the Figaro and the Revue de Paris. At that time, she had published Alfred de Musset (Paris: Hachette, 1893); L’œuvre de Jésus-ouvrier, les cercles catholiques, origines, organisation, action (Paris: G. Fischbacher, 1879); Portraits de femmes (Paris: Hachette, 1887); Essais et fantaisies (Paris: Hachette, 1888); Princesses et grandes dames (Paris: Hachette, 1890); and Bernardin de Saint Pierre (Paris: Hachette, 1891). 5 Walter Pater died on 30 July 1894. Lee’s tribute to “the master we have recently lost, . . . the master who, in the midst of æsthetical anarchy, taught us once more, and with subtle and solemn efficacy, the old Platonic and Goethian doctrine of the affinity between artistic beauty and human worthiness” can be found in “Valedictory,” the last chapter of her Renaissance Fancies and Studies. She praises “the teachings of Mr. Pater’s maturity – the insistence on scrupulously disciplined activity, on cleanness and clearness of thought and feeling, on the harmony attainable only through moderation, the intensity attainable only through effort,” his inborn affinity for refined wholesomeness. . . . Supreme craftsman as he was, it protected him from the craftsman’s delusion – rife under the inappropriate name of “art for art’s sake” in these uninstinctive, over-dextrous days – that subtle treatment can dignify

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 all subjects equally, and that expression, irrespective of the foregoing impression in the artist and the subsequent impression in the audience, is the aim of art. . . . he was utterly unable to turn his powers of perception and expression to idle and irresponsible exercises; and his conception of art, being the outcome of his whole personal mode of existence, was inevitably one of art, not for art’s sake, but of art for the sake of life – art as one of the harmonious functions of existence. (p. 258) Her views were close to Pater’s as expressed in his Marius the Epicurean: His Sensations and Ideas (Volume I [London: Macmillan, 1885], in which he developed a kind of morality based on classical value structures not rooted in religious dictum. “Lee was the only pupil Pater acknowledged, and she dedicated Euphorion affectionately to Pater” (Carl Markgraf, quoted in Talia Schaffer, The Forgotten Female Aesthetes: Literary Culture in Late-Victorian England [Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000] p. 62). He wrote to Lee 22 July 1883, after reading her article: “For, you know, I think that there is a fourth sort of religious phase possible for the modern mind, over and above those presented in your late admirable paper in the Contemporary, the conditions of which phase it is the main object of my design to convey” (Lawrence Evans [ed.], Letters of Walter Pater [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970], pp. 51–52). See Lee, “The Handling of Words: A Page of Walter Pater,” Life and Letters (September 1933), pp. 287–310. Lee dedicated Euphorion: Being Studies of the Antique and the Medieval in the Renaissance (2 vols. [London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1884]) to Walter Pater: “In appreciation of that which, in expounding the beautiful things of the past, he has added to the beautiful things of the present.” 6 Paul Desjardins. Viscount Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé (1848–1910), man of letters, diplomat and politician in favour of social conservatism and French colonialism, best-known for developing the reception of Russian literature in France (Le roman russe [Paris: Plon, 1886]). He was instrumental in the enactment of the alliance between France and Russia in 1891 and contributed to the Revue des Deux Mondes; the Journal des débats. About Paul Desjardins’ Union pour l’action morale, see François Chaubet, “L’Union pour l’action morale et le spiritualisme républicain (1892–1905).” In: Mil neuf cent, n° 17, 1999. “Intellectuels dans la République, pp. 67–89, www.persee.fr/doc/ mcm_1146-1225_1999_num_17_1_1203. 7 Pembroke: A Novel (New York: Harper & Bros., 1894) by American feminist writer Mary Eleanor Wilkins, née Mary Ella Freeman (1852–1930).

46. Enrico Nencioni October 5, [1894] Florence, Italy Biblioteca Marucelliana, Carteggio Nencioni I 12.1–5_12 & 12.1–5_13 [The original of this letter is in Italian] Il Palmerino, Maiano, Florence. 5 Ottobre Caro Nencioni, Che fa? Desidero tanto vederla. Non potrebbe venire giù a collazione o a pranzo (ora che le sere sono giornate sono sempre lunghe e i tram numerosi) – Il 10 deve arrivare D. Laura Gropallo, e so ch’ essa gradisce ogni occasione di trovarla. Senta caro Nencioni, desidero proprio che faccia un bellissimo articolo sul mio povero e illustre amico Pater. Credo che certi suoi scritti, Marius the Epicurean, ed il suo bellissimo ultimo studio su Platone farebbero un monte di bene ai giovani italiani. Che contravveleno ad un d’Annunzio, per esempio, non sarebbe la carriera spirituale, 277

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direi quasi il Pilgrim’s Progress, del Pater, cominciato col principiando dal morboso esteticismo [sic] del Swinburniano, i e appurandosi man mano nell’altissimo esteticismo [sic] morale di Platone; questo passo sviluppo del senso della bellezza finchè si estenda alle cose dello spirito, e riconosca nella bellezza fisica il simbolo organico del rigore, della pulizia morale, dell’armonia in tutto l’uomo! – Ci pensi, caro Nencioni. Sua dev. V. Paget 47. Enrico Nencioni October 5, [1894] Florence, Italy Biblioteca Marucelliana, Carteggio Nencioni I 12.1–5_12 & 12.1–5_131 [The original of this letter is in Italian] IL PALMERINO, MAIANO, FLORENCE. October 5 Dear Nencioni, What are you doing? I want so much to see you. Couldn’t you come down for breakfast or dinner (now that the evenings the days are getting longer and the trams more numerous) – Lady Laura Gropallo ought to arrive on the 10th and I know that she enjoys every occasion to see you. Listen, dear Nencioni, I really want you to write an excellent article on my poor and illustrious friend Pater. I believe that certain of his works, Marius the Epicurean, and his latest excellent study of Plato2 would do a world of good for young Italians. What an antidote to a d’Annunzio, for example, would be the spiritual career, I would say almost the Pilgrim’s Progress, of Pater, beginning with starting from Swinburne’s unhealthy aestheticism the and clearing up bit by bit in the highest moral aestheticism of Plato; this step development of the sense of beauty until it extends to spiritual things, and recognizes in physical beauty the organic symbol of rigour, of moral cleanliness, of the harmony in the entire man! – Think about it, dear Nencioni. Your devoted, V. Paget] 1 Addressed: Prof. Enrico Nencioni / 17 Via delle Caldaie / Città. 2 Walter Pater, Plato and Platonism (London: Macmillan, 1893).

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48. Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) October 14, [1894] Florence, Italy Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Paris IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE 14th October (my birthday, alas being 38 years old) [1893]1 Very dear Madame Blanc – I cannot tell you how much yr proposal of my writing about Pater has touched me; now is it you who always think of others? Alas, although I did want two months ago, to write about my illustrious friend, and although the idea of doing so is still a very great temptation, I feel I must not. I have got fairly well after my illness of this summer, but I find that a very little work tires me; and a paper on Pater would take my very best energies, which alas, I have not got at my beck & call, particularly at present?2 Will you tell Monsieur Brunetière, with my compliments, that he has made me very proud; but alas, I also require to be made very well! Since seeing him I have constantly been wanting to send something to the Revue, and never had health or energy to get it ready. If he would like it, I should like to offer him an a article on Nordau and Degeneration, which I could easily get into shape, if he could get it translated. The subject is not new, certainly, but it is one upon which I feel very strongly, for I think many of most of us nowadays can become degenerate if they wish to, & many think it fine to wish . . . Shall I write to M. Brunetière? I really am most anxious to get into the Revue.3 And this paper on Nordau offended English susceptibilities, for you know that our English practically makes us always prefer never to speak about mental or moral dangers. I am sending you, dear friend, a list of pages in Pater, because I do want you to write something about him. What you tell me about your domestic problem makes me very sad. Poor, poor young creature!4 Or rather, poor, poor people! But if she is of that energetic, unselfish stamp, she will still find plenty of sunshine in life, especially as she has a child. After all, does the sunshine of life come from outside? Is it not more our own individual vital heat? And if a creature has the supreme gift of unselfish loving, is not that bound to bring happiness? I am awfully sorry for you, dear friend, & greatly honoured by your confidence. I should like Mme Barine5 to know my opinion, because I think she has judged with cruel & almost guilty levity, judged a great, suffering movement, whose justification must be in the future, by the morality moral & aesthetic standards

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(which have proved so insufficient!) of the Past. Shall I write to Brunetière? Will you send me an answer, yes or no, on a postcard? Yr affte & grateful V. P. 1 The year added between brackets is wrong. Lee was born in 1856; she was thirty-eight years old in 1894, not 1893. 2 Lee’s original punctuation. 3 Mme Blanc was a contributor to the Revue des Deux Mondes, edited by F. Brunetière, and often served as a go-between for the publishing of Vernon Lee’s texts there and she contributed to Lee’s stories being translated into French, introducing translators to her and correcting those translations. 4 Mme Blanc’s granddaughter, Marie Olympe Christine Blanc was born on 6 August 1894. La venue de Melle Christine a dérangé mes projets. Sa mère nous a donné de grandes inquiétudes, elle a été très malade. Dieu merci ce mauvais xxx est passé. Il nous reste une grosse enfant superbe qui va se développer encore ici, à la campagne. Vous ai-je parlé de cette campagne, une petite maison de chasse appartenant à M. Blanc? Vous savez que lors du mariage de mon fils j’ai consenti à revoir un mari dont j’étais depuis trente ans séparée? Nous avons improvisé un semblant de vie de famille dont la petite nouvelle venue se trouvera bien j’espère. (Marie-Thérèse Blanc to Vernon Lee, La Ferté sous Jouarre, 8 October 1894, Vernon Lee Archive, Somerville College, Oxford) Mme Blanc’s son by her husband, Joseph Louis Alexandre Blanc, whom she had married on 26 January 1857, was the engineer, geographer and explorer Louis Edouard Blanc (1858–1923). He married Jeanne Marie Madeleine Leblanc (1862–1913) in Paris, on 12 October 1893. Their first child, Marie Olympe Christine, was born on 6 August 1894, and a year later, Charles Alexandre Michel Blanc (1895–1965) was born. The couple separated and got divorced in 1903. Joseph Louis Alexandre Blanc was a friend of Paul Nadar, explored Africa and Asia, and member of the Société de géographie and the Association française pour l’avancement des sciences. Jules Verne’s main character in the novel Claudius Bombarnac (Paris: Hetzel, 1892) was modeled after his adventures. See “Édouard Blanc (1858–1923),” Bibliothèque Nationale de France, https://data.bnf.fr/ fr/13756064/edouard_blanc/. 5 Arvède Barine. See Lee to Mme Blanc, 5 October 1894. Lee probably disagreed with Barine’s latest work on Alfred de Musset, a biography published by Hachette in 1893.

49. Clementina Anstruther-Thomson November 9–10, [1894] Florence, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Palmerino 9 Nov: Dearest Kit – Thanks so much for writing so soon; you are a dear. I want to tell you about Eugene. He is now perfectly recovered from his relapse: he looks perfectly well, is evidently not tired & is quite cheerful. You wd think therefore, if you did not allow for that damned auto-suggestion, that he would be 280

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at least resuming (or ha if he have not resumed at a go) the life he was leading when I arrived. Not a bit. He can’t stand even for a second, let alone walk, he can’t be spoken to after dinner, & can barely go out driving (he has been only twice this month, once that he was bent on buying a coat, & again today, that, owing to Papa having a cold, I bullied him into accompanying my mother). And And he says, quite composedly, that he it must take him two months or more to get well: If his theory is that he has set up an objectively bad state of the usual mysterious kind (no conceivable organs involved) & that any attempts to disregard this objective state & its pains will produce worse objective symptoms (he has had electric shocks & complains constantly of what he calls maiming of the arms) & then heaven knows what; it is this objective state which must last two months. At the same time he m admits that the all this is the result of auto-suggestion, he even explained yesterday that he had a funk (he used the expression) a given evening while playing whist (it was when whist had worn out its novelty, I remark). This funk, according to him, produced auto-suggestion, & auto-suggestion produced an objective & dangerous state. Now: 1st is it possible that auto-suggestion can produce an objective state? To my mind it can only produce symptoms, & mainly purely imaginary, that is exaggerated misinterpreted symptoms. Consider the reverse: can an a cessation of cerebral consciousness through chloroform, which is the equivalent of an auto-suggestion of no sensation, prevent a patient dying of nervous concussion after an operation? No; Amy [Turton] tells me such cases are common. Hence I decline to believe in his auto-suggestion, his fear of damage, producing anything that a contrary suggestion could not stop. 2d But Eugene never attempts ˰admits˰ that auto-suggestion can act remedially. He says it is useless to oppose to that funk a contrary movement of courage; he just sweeps the whole thing aside. The fact is that he has merely varied the conception of his illness from that of an organic illness – with organic symptoms – to that of a hysteric illness with organic symptoms (& organic cause & effect); and that he is back in the foils of auto-suggestion with the difference that he now calls it by its name & adds it to the inevitables previously believed in. This is a bad business, & I don’t know how to get him out of it. Will you write to him? The fact is that (probably owing to fatigue originally, but greatly owing to a most curious return to his character as it was before he fell ill) he has become this summer excessively intellectually sluggish. Except his recovery (which is now deferred to 2 months hence) he takes an interest in nothing, neither books nor conversation nor politics. You wouldn’t recognise him. Maud has had to throw one book aside after another; he cares for only sensational things, & even in those is perpetually interrupting & becoming inattentive. He never now makes plans or seems to look forward to any sort of work; & he talks of everything from the point of view of its amusing or boring him; he is much more like the ordinary sick man, & rather faddy & irritable. I don’t mind it except insofar as this torpor seems to affect his illness: I am sure that it reacts & makes him passive. You will have to shake him up when you come. Meanwhile, will you write, dearest, & tell him you disbelieve in the 2 months necessary relapse? 281

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10th. Last night my father had the most frightful fit of asthma, choking with a sort of death rattle. I had to stay with him a long time, & Giovanni to sleep, or rather wake (for Papa kept choking all night) in his room. Today he is much better, & I know from the Dr it isn’t actually a dangerous thing. I mention it in relation to my brother: I could barely get his attention to the mere fact, he expressed no sort of interest or regret, nor any thought for Giovanni getting to bed by day. It was very curious; & the more so that it was almost as bad when my mother alarmed us so much three weeks ago;1 Eugene scarcely took any notice. It may be that this self absorption strikes me more in a man sitting in a chair than in one lying on his back;2 but my own impression is that it is something new & against which we shall have to fight. He really seems to fill the whole horizon with the thought of himself; & heaven knows he never did before. I think he there is a sort of intellectual or quasi-intellectual illness connected with his power of auto-suggestion, a denseness to outer effects, perhaps due to his long reclusion. But we shall have to make not merely a well man, but a man of him. This has taken me awfully by surprise & worried me. I am on a course of hot water drinking, & so much better for it. Really very well & very happy, if only I weren’t always anxious about somebody. I ride only 2 a week, out of Epicureanism. Next week, if my father is well, I go to Ravenna. Arthur3 is in Rome with Guido, & they are enchanted with him. Dearest Kit, love me. Yrs Vernon. 1 Matilda’s alarming crisis: October 1894. She died two years later, on 8 March 1896. 2 On Dr Erb’s orders, Eugene Lee-Hamilton began to sit in a chair instead of lying in bed. 3 Clementina Anstruther-Thomson’s brother and the youngest son of John Anstruther-Thomson of Fife and Caroline Maria Agnes Robina Gray, Arthur St Clair Anstruther-Thomson (1872–1904), whom Kit raised and loved dearly, and who died at sea at the age of thirty-one. He was present during Lee and Clementina Anstruther-Thomson’s conversations in Scotland, and Lee lovingly recorded those moments in Althea: “Althea’s little brother hanging on to her arm, and the fox terrier running on in front. . . . whose mind was divided between this discussion, which delighted his schoolboy logic, and the desire to investigate into the rabbit-holes of the rough ground they were coming to” (p. 13); “the boy walking along his sister’s arm on his shoulder, like one of the little fauns who support a young god in some antique group” (p. 15).

50. Clementina Anstruther-Thomson November 17, [1894]1 Florence, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Nov. 17. Dearest Kit – Maud Cruttwell told me she was writing to you in the way she did, & couldn’t prevent her; but I want you to know that I am perfectly well, that I am in absolutely 282

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no apprehension (so far as one ever can be) about my mother, and that I don’t in the least require taking care of. I should be miserable if Maud’s kind em impulsiveness & tending to exaggerate resulted in yr making the smallest alteration in your plans. I want you to be as long as you should with yr people in Scotland, & also that you should do all yr business & see things & people in Paris. Of course I am wanting you, I always am, but not more now than usually, in fact less, because I have so much to look after & because I have to drive my mother & walk her about, and because, as I say, I happen to be quite unusually fit. Also my brother has roused himself & is behaving like a brick, & has even resumed walking a little.2 So you see, there isn’t anything to be anxious about or to inconvenience yourself for. Poor Papa suffered so frightfully in the last attack of asthma, which lasted four nights & three days, and he was so certain to have similar attacks every time the weather was damp or he caught a cold, that I think life was not worth keeping. And he did not know he was going to die, any more than we. He The asthma was a little better, & two mornings before he died he said he must take a sea voyage. The heart must have given way suddenly, for he went out, like a candle, with a little gasp, and Giovanni and I went on chafing his hands & giving brandy & hot bottles for some time, without suspecting it was more than a semi-swoon. I am very glad he had not even taken to his bed. He died while Giovanni was helping him to on with his coat, seated on his bed. I had been up with him once in the night, & Giovanni had called me, as he had done before, because a fit of asthma had returned. It could not have been more gentle & merciful for him or me or poor Giovanni. Mamma did not know for some hours. And I have been able to hide from her every single distressing detail subsequently. She has shown magnanimous courage & great intelligence, although she is evidently very unhappy & misses him frightfully. She never made it for one second difficult for me, or made me lose time (for I had none to lose, Beppe Rasponi being away, & Sommier3offering help too late) by having to look after her. She let Eugene take her a drive & regularly read to him; yesterday I took her out in the cart. She is such a great lady! But she misses him dreadfully (and for the matter of that, so do I, for we had become great friends lately) – She said such a pathetic thing “He would have liked so much to have stayed in the garden” – The nights of bad asthma, when he seemed to dream out loud Giovanni tells me it was always about plants & roots & going botanising. He was wonderfully good & patient. I hope that cremation is better conducted in England than here: I sh do not in the least wish quite as much to be cremated as ever, but I hope it may not be here until they are less barbarous as or if so, hope only a Dr may be present. I was alone, & am glad no one was with me; I was very plucky, and as they were perfectly kind & gentle in their intentions & manner, poor folk, I never let them guess how horrible I thought their stupid arrangements. Still, though I should be very sorry to expose anyone else to such a scene – (I had another in this house too first) because it might hap not happen that I c they bore it well, as I am did happen to bear be able to bear it, I am very glad I was with him the whole time in everything, & that I had the last sight of him. He looked very beautiful & natural & simple & not at 283

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all outraged in his white shirt & with his uncovered face. I feel as if any no one else almost could have gone through it, so to speak, as he did. On the whole now there remains no painful impression with me; all the horror of the details gone completely. It was a most radiant day, and nothing could surpass the glory of those high hills & deep valleys (I drove up in my cart) three miles above Florence; and the air was so pure & the sun so bright, & it all seemed to take place out of doors; & there were no mourners or creatures in black, only sort of workmen in shirt sleeves, like peasants, but perfectly gentle, & a kind old director. And I carried away an impression of as if Papa had really passed beyond into nature at once, beyond centuries & civilizations and almost as if I had been in the no=time, no=where, barbarous as in Homer, and but in no detail mean or conventional, & as if – in a way, I had witnessed some sort of symbolical entombment or deposition. I am very glad. He had such a simple, sportsman’s or naturalist’s temper; latterly I used to enjoy making him tell me how plants grew, and clouds & water moved; he seemed to know by a sort of intuitive affinity. Perhaps he would have been an explorer like Beccari or Wallace; but with his very few wants, his life has been quite happy; & I am so glad he had that chapter of action & adventure in the Polish & Hungarian insurrection, that he had not been merely a common-place place man of business or clubs. I am waiting for yr return to devise a little monument. I want an urn on brackets over the place Mamma has bought & had planted in the cemetery (she doesn’t know & mustn’t about his having written that he wanted to be burnt, she has a horror of it) – I want something like [Nina’s] little sarcophagus at Fiesole, & you must letter it4 – I shall have only the name & date on a scroll or label in Latin characters, & the words (I think M. Aurelius?) Neminem tristem fecit.5 Goodbye dear. Please believe that I am quite well. I am taking his rooms, & repainting etc. & furnishing them will give me work. Besides I think we must get rid of our old horse & get a sort of Stellino, & a lighter carriage instead. Goodbye dear Yrs V.

1 Henry Ferguson Paget, Lee’s father, probably died on 14 November 1894. Clementina AnstrutherThomson was at that time nursing her friend Mona Taylor in England. This was a blow to Lee, who cherished her father. Mr Paget was described by someone who knew him in the seventies’ and eighties’ as a good-looking man with a rather Russian expression, of middle-height, spare, thin featured with fierce blue eyes and black hair going white in streaks which he brushed back so smoothly as to resemble Tenniel’s drawings Alice in Through the Looking-Glass. He was most ceremonious in manner (a trait which he may have passed on to his daughter), somewhat incongruous and bantering in his compliments; yet he was amusing in company, which he never failed to entertain with a fund of anecdotes and stories, often of his own adventurous youth. He spent most of the time outdoors in pursuit of his sport,

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 gardening or sketching, or on long walks over the hills round Florence, when the family moved there. (Peter Gunn, Vernon Lee, Violet Paget, p. 13) Mary Darmesteter recalled Mr. Paget in Casa Paget as “a charming person . . . a great hunter, sportsman, walker, he was always out of doors” (quoted in Colby, Vernon Lee, p. 48). See List of Correspondents: Henry Ferguson Paget. 2 Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s indifference to his detested ex-tutor and stepfather’s death contrasted with his half sister’s grief. Indeed, Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s complete recovery started within hours after Mr. Paget’s death. By 1895 . . . he was walking, and immediately after Mrs Paget’s funeral [in 1896] he announced that he was leaving the Casa Paget. In a full recovery that would have seemed miraculous were it not for the obviously psychosomatic nature of his invalidism, Eugene Lee-Hamilton went forth into the world. He travelled, often by bicycle, in Italy and England and in 1897 ventured across the Atlantic to visit Canada and the United States. Edith Wharton, who entertained him at her home in Newport, remembered him as a delightful guest, “rejoicing in his recovered vigour, and keeping us and our guests in shouts of laughter by his high spirits and inimitable stories” (A Backward Glance 132). (Colby, Vernon Lee, pp. 147–148) In 1898, Eugene Lee-Hamilton married the American feminist novelist Annie E. Holdsworth (1860–1917), who used the penname “Max Beresford.” Their daughter, Persis Margaret, died in infancy in 1903. See also Linda Villari, “A Master of the Sonnet: Eugene Lee-Hamilton, Born 1845. Died September 7, 1907,” The Albany Review, 3 (April–September 1908), pp. 182–191: The first triumph came the day that the sick man discovered he could stand on his feet for two minutes. Then, still more gradually, with many throw-backs, power of movement returned, but it was only in 1894 that the miracle was completed, and LeeHamilton restored to the active world of men. Save for a very slight limp, there was no outer trace of invalidism. He seemed to have regained his lost youth at a bound, for he re-entered society with all the zest of an undergraduate. 3 Renowned botanist Stephen Sommier (1848–1922) at the Istituto Botanico di Firenze. The Sommier archive, Biblioteca Botanica-Dipartimento Biologia Vegetale, Università degli Studi Firenze, holds his correspondence with Fiske, Placci, Pratesi and Pio Resse. Vernon Lee asked for his advice, at the time gathering documents for her book Laurus Nobilis: Chapters on Art and Life (London: John Lane, 1909). See Lee to Sommier, 8 January 1901, Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. IV. 4 Clementina Anstruther-Thomson lettered Lee’s father’s name on his urn. 5 In Latin in the text: He made no one unhappy (from Pater, Marius the Epicurian).

51. Carlo Placci November 18, [1894] Florence, Italy Biblioteca Marucelliana, Carteggio Placci 029–036 IL PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE

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18 Nov. My dear Carlo, Many thanks for yr dear letter. You will be glad to know that my troubles for the moment are over, & that I am very well & not excited or smashed in any way. My mother is very brokenhearted, but she has shown, ‸the most splendid courage‸ from the very first moment of bearing the terrible un sudden blow – poor Papa died after 4 days asthma, the Dr not in the least alarmed, and while he was being dressed – Giovanni called me a minute or two before because he had such a bad fit of coughing, but both Giovanni & I thought for a long time that it was merely a fainting fit – Mamma I was luckily able, with the help of Eugene, who is well & of my kind friend Miss Cruttwell, but perhaps most of all thanks to the charming kind tactfulness of all these dear servants and peasants, to hide every detail of how & when & where from my mother. And she has shown the most magnanimous courage, & such intelligent effort to be serene & take all anxiety about herself off us – she let Eugene and me take her drives, read to E. regularly, and yesterday began to read Taine’s Ancien Régime quite hard to herself –! It is so touching and so splendid! What a beautiful & blessed thing is this old fashioned English tenue! And the kindness & tact of yr Italian poor people! Even the people at Trespiano, where poor Papa had left word we should have him cremated were so kind & reverent, even mere poor facchini1in shirt sleeves, obliged by the idiotic regulations, to do the most barbarous things before my eyes. Such kind brotherly people! I had to do everything all alone; and as it has done me no harm, & I was able to do it all without ceasing to be businesslike, I am very, very, glad I did it all myself & alone. It was all quite atrociously & needlessly barbarous, but t the proceedings of Moors or primitive Greeks! But at least there were no horrors of paid for crape & paid for parsons – It was all between my father, it seemed, & the great serene world of sunshine & hills & valleys & pure mountain air – On And even in coming down from there I felt there had been nothing degrading, the very barbarism simple, natural – and I have I feel as if I had been present at some very beautiful sort of deposition from the cross, or entombment, somewhere where there is no are no centuries & no civilisations – And, dear Carlo, how infinitely glad I am to think it is all over for him, that his life has really resolved itself back into the universal life of purity & fruitfulness, & only a very dear memory remains. I become [became] great friends with my father these last 2 years; and I used to like to hear him talk about how animals lived & plants grew & clouds & water moved: he seemed to know it all instinctively, with the very simple, austere character of a real sportsman & a naturalist. I am so glad he had that bit of romance & adventure too, of the Polish & Hungarian revolutions, & had not been merely a club or a businessman. He was extraordinarily fine & sort of Homeric – do you understand – when I saw him ‸last‸ – and I saw the very last. 286

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Goodbye dear Carlo – I shall be so glad to see you. Yr affectionate previous letter has given me much pleasure. I am very well. Yrs affly V.P. 1 In Italian in the text: porters.

52. Alys Pearsall Smith (Mrs Russell) [after December 13, 1894] London, England London University: London School of Economics, The Women’s Library AL/2193 Friday evening 6890 VICTORIA 24, SLOANE COURT, CHELSEA, S.W. 3 Dear Mrs Russell I will come Friday ‸Wednesday‸ with pleasure, delighted to find you recovered. I couldn’t answer before not knowing whether I was free. Herewith a book for your Brother.1 Yours truly V. Paget

1895 1 Logan Pearsall Smith. Perhaps a book by Eugene Lee-Hamilton, as the two men became friends.

1. Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) January 1, 1895 Florence, Italy Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Paris [This letter is not extant] IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE

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New Years Day 1895 My dear Mme Blanc, This will arrive rather late to give you my best wishes for the new year; but you know, dear friend, that you have them always. I was very sorry to hear from Kit that you were still worried & sad. But so very charming a young woman as yr daughter in law, & one so devoted & at the same time so spirited (I should say) is after all not vanquished so easily. I cannot but remember how much yr son seemed under her fascination, that evening that Kit & I dined with you; & how radiantly different he was from what he had seemed the year before. I am sorry, dear Mme Blanc, that you have this new source of unhappiness; but it must, after all, be a great gain to have that charming girl & her baby to love.1 Thanks for yr words of sympathy on the occasion of my Father’s death.2 He had led a life which, although absolutely friendly, was very much apart from ours; & there was no sympathy of ideas or habits between him & me. But [there] was (and daily increasing) the strange sympathy between two people very like in constitution, & I was very fond of him. He had been an engineer, a revolutionary in Russia, a great sportsman, much of a naturalist & a great deal of a mechanical genius; & I miss the atmosphere of reality, but a kind of open air, abstract reality (with such a restful absence of all human element!) in his talks. We suffer, all of us literary, psychological folk, so very much from insufficient intercourse with the active & mute side of creation: the side which neither suffers nor talks, but is. Don’t you sometimes feel that? The other day a man told me there was a mountain with ten or twelve miles of forest & herds of wild moufflons somewhere within a few hours drive of Florence; I felt as if so many cubic feet of oxygen had been suddenly introduced into the room & a large amount into my lungs! My mother has shown splendid courage & strength; but at eighty years old, & with a very feeble little body, she gives me a good deal of anxiety, especially in this great cold. I am also anxious for fear I may not be doing the right thing about my brother’s miraculous return to the normal life. You may have heard that after nearly twenty years’ illness on his back, he appears quite cured; and you will easily guess that after twenty years so spent, a man has [to] learn much once more, particularly that the world at [a page may be missing here or has been misplaced] to yr daughter in law, & best greetings to Mme Foulon de Vaulx. Kit says you will find her most affectionate homage at yr [your] feet. Be well & happy Yr affte V. Paget

1 Mme Blanc’s family worried after her return from America.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 Depuis mon retour d’Amérique tout a été lutte et souffrance pour moi. J’ai vu mon fils, marié à la meilleure des femmes, se tordre dans ces entraves du mariage pour lesquelles il n’était pas fait, j’ai vu un cher petit enfant qui n’aura que bien peu de chances de bonheur si une union plus intime ne s’établit entre ses parents, entrer dans la vie par la violence; un pauvre paquet de chair et de cris amené au bout des tenailles du chirurgien! Il faudrait tant aimer la femme qui a ainsi risqué sa vie et il y a si peu de raisons pour qu’un mariage d’amitié soit jamais autre chose qu’une très froide association! La pauvre Jeanne a cru pouvoir s’en contenter, elle a voulu avec les intentions les plus généreuses donner tout ce qu’il y a en elle de dévouement et de tendresse à un homme qui était fait pour vivre seul avec de certains enthousiasmes tout platoniques qui lui suffisaient. C’est un terrible drame, ma chère amie, j’y suis enveloppée avec de grosses responsabilités, des regrets, des remords ‸qu’il serait‸ trop long de vous dire. . . . Ma belle-fille, son enfant et moi nous formons en ce moment auprès de M. Blanc que j’ai revu, comme vous savez, après 30 ans de séparation, la plus curieuse des familles. (Marie-Thérèse Blanc to Lee, 8 October [1894], Vernon Lee Archive, Somerville College, Oxford) 2 About Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s indifference to his stepfather’s death and his incipient “miraculous” recovery, see Lee to Clementina Anstruther-Thomson, November 17, 1894.

2. Matilda Paget January 26, 1895 San Remo, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College S. Remo – Sat. Dearest Mamma I want so much to know how you are? Eugene forwarded a letter from Smith & Elder, who gives me £50 for 1000 copies of my new Renaissance volume & royalty on subsequent ones. Today we drove to Taggia, where Ruffini lived,1 in such a lovely country of oranges, olives & roses in bloom. This is a most lovely garden of palms & oranges & a beautiful house with such kind people. Vi & her children are so nice.2 We stay till Friday. So much love V. 1 Author Giovanni “John” Ruffini (1807–1881). Italian patriot and a friend of Henrietta Jenkins, “he was Cornelia Turner’s partner, all of them being friends of the Pagets” (see Lee to Henry Paget, 17 June 1870). About Ruffini and Turner, see Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. I. 2 Violet Sargent, now Mrs Ormond, and her children. Raised in Florence by her expatriate American parents, her image was rendered by her brother numerous times from early childhood on. Violet studied at Florence’s Accademia di Belle Arti and in 1889 joined John on a voyage to New York, the trip being undertaken at the instigation of Mrs. Sargent who disapproved of Violet’s attachment to Swiss Louis Francis Ormond and wished her to be introduced to some American men; the ruse failed, as Violet married Ormond and settled in England where she raised her eventual six children (several of whom, most notably Rose Marie, were painted by their uncle) and lived out her long life. (“Violet Sargent Ormond,” Find a Grave, https://fr.findagrave.com/ memorial/60679411/violet-ormond) Her six children were Marguerite Ormond (1892–1918), Rose Marie Ormond, later Michel (1893– 1918), Jean Louis Ormond (1894–1986), Guillaume Francis Ormond (1896–1971), Reine Violet

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3. Matilda Paget January 29, 1895 San Remo, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College S. Remo – Tuesday. Your dear little letter gave me so much, much pleasure. Yesterday we found everything covered with snow, & little icicles in all the beautiful big roses. But today it is sunny again. We went [on] an expedition to Bordighera the day before yesterday, very lovely, particularly from the profusion of palms. But not so lovely as Nervi, because the soil rocks are arid here, as at Nice. Do take care of yourself. So much love, & Kit’s grateful homage, V. 4. Matilda Paget January 31, 1895 San Remo, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College S. Remo Thursday, Dearest Mamma. Tomorrow at 1 we leave very regretfully & arrive at Nervi at 7. Today we lunched at the Del Castillos[’],1 who send many messages to you & E. [Eugene]. M. Del C. [Castillo] has become very old but charming, B. [Benjamin] likely to marry daughter of our former Piedmontese neighbour of Via Garibaldi!2 It is cold but very sunny & lovely, & I am stronger. Mme Ormond, having heard E. [Eugene] translated Pope Jacynth, says why not Stevenson – the Donkey in Cévennes for instance?3It would be a work of art. So much love V. 1 Benjamin Carlos Nunez del Castillo y Durel, VI Marqués de San Felipe y Santiago de Bejucal (1855– 1922), was a longtime friend of Sargent’s. His father was Rafaelle Maria Nunez del Castillo y Loyzaga (1820–?), of Spanish descent, but the family were naturalised Americans. In 1862, they had taken a house next to the Sargents in Nice, and therefore would have met the Pagets as well. Sargent and Ben del Castillo kept up a correspondence for many years and often travelled together. Castillo was also instrumental in bringing Sargent and Madame Pierre Gautreau together for the famous portrait Sargent painted of her in 1883 (Evan Charteris, John Sargent [New York: Scribner, 1927], pp. 5, 59–60). 2 Countess Laura Spinola Nunez del Castillo (1869–1942). They had a son, Raffaele Maria Nunez del Castillo (1897–?). 3 Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s translation of Lee’s “Pope Jacynth” into French as “Le Pape Jacinthe” was published in the Christmas issue of the Figaro Illustré, December 1894, with five beautiful color illustrations by Albert Lynch. Quand nous dirons que le numéro de Figaro illustré (Paris, gr. In-4, 26, rue Drouot; 3 fr.50) paru à l’occasion de Noël est une œuvre d’art achevée, nous ne surprendrons personne. L’illustration en couleurs est incomparable . . . La livraison débute par une sorte de légende d’un catholicisme étrange et d’un style quelque peu biblique: le Pape Jacinthe, par M. Vernon-Lee. Vient ensuite un récit de Guy de Maupassant:Après.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 (Polybiblion: Revue bibliographique universelle, année 1895, Paris: E. de Boccard, pp. 83–84, rpt. Pope Jacynth: To Which Is Added “Ariadne in Mantua”: and Other Romantic Inventions, Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz, 1906)

5. Matilda Paget February 1, 1895 Genoa, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Genoa Station 1st Feb. 6. p.m. We have an hour here before catching the train for Nervi, where we shall arrive barely for dinner. It has snowed heavily all night & all this morning, an unknown thing at S. Remo – all the roses & heliotropes under snow! I hope so much you are not suffering from cold? Will E. [Eugene] send me his copy of VS my story when finished. So much love V. 6. Matilda Paget February 3, 1895 Nervi, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Dearest Mamma – I hope you received some mandarins from the Ormond garden, which I sent you yesterday, & that you liked them. Also that you are not suffering from cold. Here, all yesterday, despite a bright sun, all was covered with snow, which today is quite hard frozen. Thank E. [Eugene] for sending me on letters & MS,1 & tell him one of them was an invitation to lunch at Miss Burke2 for him & me, for today. I have telegraphed an answer, but he ought to write or call, 79 Via Cavour 200 po. I am so glad his evening clothes are a success. I am very anxious, please tell him, that he should send me with his copy of the 2d part of his Virgin of the 7 Daggers the printed copy of the 1st part thereof. He will find it in the top most or middle left hand (I mean on one’s left hand) drawer (at the level of one’s knee) of my writing table. I feel much better here than at S. Remo but I enjoyed myself there very much. Mme Ormond is a very delightful woman, Violet has become most charming, & her husband, so far as I can judge, has got splendid qualities of manliness, simplicity & kindness, besides being very good looking. I am sure Mrs Sargent’s temper has been quite as much to blame as his; & that however violent he may be, there is at least lots of stuff in him, which Violet with her gentleness & perfect consistency (very surprising at her age) will probably make the best of. He is of a pioneer temper, & it is absurd to try and make a sedentary tower creature of him; besides Lord knows there are enough. This brings me to Ben Castillo. I never saw so lamentable a degeneration. 291

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For, a few years ago, at Fladbury, he was, though ill, by no means insupportable; he has a certain amount of brains & made very good studies. But now he is well & such a vapid, conceited creature, thinking only of social position, eating, visiting, & almanach de Gotha. Laura I am sorry to say is very far from well, has had bad neuralgia & is very weak. Besides the hospital she is trying to found gives her much worry. Yesterday we went to see a friend of the Ranee, Pss Salm,3 where I met a certain young Count [Steinburg]4 I already knew, a sort of madman, who expounded Nietzsche’s theories of the Right of the Stronger (& of aristocracies!) and insisted that in Germany Nietzsche has as great a following as Ibsen. By the way, would Mamma not be interested in some of Ibsen’s plays? This suggests to me that E. [Eugene] should read (from Vieusseux) Nordau’s Degeneration not for Nordau’s sake, but because he gives so immense a view of modern views ideas, degenerate or otherwise. So very much love. Yr V. 1 Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s manuscript of his translation of Lee’s “Pope Jacynth.” 2 American heiress Maude Alice Burke, later known as “Emerald” (1872–1948), who became Lady Cunard on her marriage to Sir Bache Cunard, 3rd Baronet (1851–1925), grandson of the founder of the Cunard steamship line, in April of that year (1895). Irish writer George Moore was her devoted friend and encouraged the writing of the couple’s daughter, political activist Nancy Clara Cunard (1896–1965). 3 Agnes Salm-Salm, née Agnes Elisabeth Winona Leclerc Joy (1844–1912), was born in Franklin, Vermont, to American general William Terrill Joy (1793–1872) and Julia Willard (1817– 1882). In 1862, she married Prince Felix Constantin Alexander Johann Nepomuk of Salm-Salm (1828–1870), a Prussian military officer of princely birth and a mercenary, and accompanied him on the battlefield in the American Civil War, Mexican Civil War and Franco-Prussian War. She was awarded the Cross of Merit for Women and Girls for war relief work. After her husband died, she lived in Switzerland and Italy and, in 1876, remarried British diplomat Charles Heneage, returned to America, then settled in Germany. She wrote her memoirs, Ten Years of My Life (2 vols. [London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1876]. See also David Coffey, Soldier Princess: The Life and Legend of Agnes Salm-Salm in North America, 1861–1867 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2002); Mary-Luise Frings, “Salm-Salm, Agnes Elisabeth Winona Leclercq Joy (1844–1912), Princess, Adventurer, and Wartime Humanitarian,” American National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), DOI: 10.1093/ anb/9780198606697.article.2000894. 4 Otto Kamillus Hugo Gabriel Count von Bray-Steinburg (1807–1899), Bavarian ambassador to St Petersburg, Berlin, and Vienna from 1866 to 1870. Formerly Bavarian minister of foreign affairs (1846–1849 and 1870–1871) (Chris Cook, Bob Moore, and Tim Kirk [eds.], Sources in European Political History: Volume 2: Diplomacy and International Affairs [London: Macmillan, 1989], p. 22). He was at that time Bavarian ambassador.

7. Matilda Paget February 5, 1895 Nervi, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Nervi – Tuesday – Dearest Mamma – 292

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So many, many thanks for yr kind note. It is bitterly cold here also, almost enough to spoil the place for one. The day after tomorrow we go to the Ranee’s, at the next village, which is a prolongation of this. Beg E. [Eugene] to address Villa Raffo Bogliasco presso Genoa, and to send on only letters. So much love Yr Vernon 8. Matilda Paget February 12, 1895 Bogliasco, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Bogliasco Tuesday – Dearest Mamma, We had intended returning Thursday; but the Ranee is very unwell, & as she has another guest on her hands, we are staying till Friday, arriving at Florence about 6. I am so glad you are well, dearest. It is now most lovely here, & I sit in a fireless room. In The front of the house opposite this one is covered with flowering heliotrope, & despite snow & frost, there are quantities of roses! So much love. Yrs V. 9. Matilda Paget March 19, 1895 Foligno, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Foligno – Tuesday. Dearest Mamma – We got here yesterday at 10, to a very good inn. Mme Ormond is unwell & has to stay till Friday, when we shall go to Citta di Castello, I think. She kindly gives us her carriage. Please send on tomorrow Wednesday’s post, but not more. I will let you know about our movements. I arrived with an awful cold & thought I too was in for influenza. But I am better. Please tell me how Eugene is & how you are. So much love V. 10. Matilda Paget March 23, 1895 Citta di Castello, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Citta di Castello Saturday Dearest Mamma – How is it I have never had one word from you or E [Eugene] all these days? We arrived in this beastly little hole after a lovely long drive from near Foligno. We shall sleep tomorrow night at Arezzo & arrive at Florence Monday at 2.30 Roman train. Please send my cart with rope for luggage. So much love. 293

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11. Matilda Paget May 3, 1895 Rome, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Po Sciarra. Friday – Had a pleasant enough journey with a strong minded nun who discussed theology with her companion. Was met by M. [Maria]. This morning have been to Gallery Doria & Pantheon, about which I care more & more. Had a philosophic discussion interspersed with dress matters with M. [Maria] after breakfast. So much love. 12. Matilda Paget May 5, 1895 Rome, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Sunday. Dearest Mamma. It has been very bad weather, so I haven’t been able to get about much; & Kit has had a little fever, but I hope we may do some work in the galleries still. I find they can keep us till next Sunday, so I think we shall stay on. Rome seems very empty already. Do let me know how you are, please. I hope E. [Eugene] is feeling a little better & less gloomy. So much love 13. Matilda Paget May 8, 1895 Rome, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Po Sc. [Palazzo Sciarra] Wed. Dearest Mamma. Among the letters you kindly sent was an invitation to tea & a recitation at Lady Paget’s1 for today, E. [Eugene] included. I am sorry he missed it. Yesterday I went to Dr Rossoni,2 Murri’s3 pupil here, about the symptoms I have had for the last 2 months. He says nothing gone wrong except extreme nervous exhaustion, & orders me phosphates & douches & that for some months I mustn’t work. This is a bore. He recommends a course of hydropathy at Schöneck4 but if I can go without I shall. There is no digestive trouble as such. So much love.

1 German-born diarist and intimate friend of Queen Victoria, Countess Walburga Ehrengarde Helena Paget, née von Hohenthal (1839–1929). The Queen visited Countess Paget at Bellosguardo in 1893. She was the wife of the diplomat Sir Augustus Berkeley Paget (1823–1896), promoted

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 vegetarianism (Walburga Ehrengarde Helena Paget, “Vegetable Diet,” in J. Knowles [ed.], The Nineteenth Century: A Monthly Review, 31 [April 1892], pp. 577–585), and later campaigned with Vernon Lee against the destruction of the historic city center of Florence. 2 Dr Rossoni’s research on hysterical anuria was reviewed in D.G. Brinton and Joseph F. Edwards (eds.), Quarterly Compendium of Medical Science: A Synopsis of the American and Foreign Literature of Medicine, Surgery, and Collateral Sciences, Volume 17 (Philadelphia, PA: Medical Publication Office, 1887), p. 194. Dr Rossoni was treasurer of the organising committee of the 7th Congress of Internal Medicine, together with Dr Baccelli (president), Drs Murri and De Renzi (vice-presidents), and Dr Maragliano (secretary) (“Rome [From our Correspondent],” T.H. Wakley and T. Wakley Jun [eds.], The Lancet, 2, no. 3767 [9 November 1895], p. 1196). 3 Dr Augusto Murri (1841–1932): see Lee to Matilda Paget, October 26, 1890. 4 Schoeneck, in Alsace, France.

14. Matilda Paget May 12, 1895 Viareggio, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 24 Via Manin – Viareggio – Sunday. Dearest Mamma. I find the sea air here so invigorating, & I am so anxious to have a couple of baths, that we shall stay till Wednesday, returning by the Geneva evening train. Will you kindly send the contadino to meet us? Did I tell you Carducci1came one evening to Po Sciarra & read a canto of Dante divinely? So much love V. 1

Italian poet Giosuè Carducci (1835–1905). He was a friend of Enrico Nencioni’s. Lee’s review of Carducci’s Lettere disperse e inedite di Pietro Metastasio (1883) appeared in The Academy, 17 November 1883. See Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. I.

15. Matilda Paget May 14, 1895 Viareggio, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Tuesday Viareggio Dearest Mamma. I find I am getting so much better here – I was unwell nearly all the time at Rome – & that the sea baths especially are so good, that we shall stay yet another day, till Thursday when we arrive by that 6.25 (?) train. I hope this change of plan is not inconvenient to you or to Eugene. Please ask him to invite Mrs Costelloe & Miss Cruttwell to dinner or lunch on Friday or Saturday. So much love V. 295

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16. Matilda Paget May 31, 1895 Basel, Switzerland Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Bâle – Friday – Dearest Mamma – The engine sprung a leak, some were more than an hour late at Milan. However got very good places in sleeping car, & good nights rest. This is such a pretty, prosperous place. We shall sleep here, & go straight to Paris tomorrow (H. [Hotel] d’Isly, R. [Rue] Jacob) as we find it will be more convenient taking Reims on the way to England. I hope so much you will have a nice drive today. I owe you 26 frs, tell E. [Eugene]. So much love V. 17. Matilda Paget June 2, 1895 Paris, France Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College H. d’Isly Rue Jacob – 2d June Dearest Mamma, We arrived not too tired last night & have decent rooms cheap. I found invitation from Mme Ormond & Mme Henraux, & a note from Mabel Robinson saying Mary [Darmesteter] would like to see me. We had a day at Bâle, which we liked very much, so much character & prosperity united. It was very hot travelling, with thunderstorms, & today it is raining. We are going out now to the Louvre & Notre Dame. So much love V. 18. Matilda Paget June 4, 1895 Paris, France Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Tuesday. Dearest Mama [Mamma], I saw Mary yesterday, very thin & altered, terribly, but cheerful at least apparently.1 She asked much after you & E. [Eugene]. Today I go to the Taines[’]. A sort of incubus however seems to me removed from M’s [Mary’s] side. Please address ℅ Miss Duffy, 176 High St Notting Hill Gate S.W.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 1 Mary was widowed after James Darmesteter, whom she had married in 1888, died on 19 October 1894. This had been a marriage of love and remained “a marriage of true minds” between the young British poetess and the famous orientalist, but Lee had disapproved of Mary’s choice, even though her bosom friend had actually proposed to the French scholar. See Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II. Mary remained in France after her husband died, and translated a collection of his essays, English Studies (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1896). She embraced the Dreyfus cause, and this is how she met Emile Duclaux (1840–1904), whom she married in 1901.

19. Matilda Paget June 7, 1895 Paris, France Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Friday. Dearest Mama [Mamma]I must thank you at once for your dear little note, full of flowers! We have been rather over much on the go, & I am tired; but we dine at the Besnards[’]. Besnard is in my opinion quite the greatest living painter.1 We find that owing to horrible trains, we shall probably be unable to spend Sunday at Reims, anyhow we shall be Monday in London. Will E. [Eugene] kindly send on the Cordoni to Pembroke Coll. [College] Oxford. I will send you more news tomorrow, & much, much love 1 Paul-Albert Besnard (1849–1934), French painter and printmaker. His wife, Charlotte-Gabrielle Dubray (1854–1931), the daughter of well-known sculptor Vital Gabriel Dubray, was a well-known sculptor in her own right and contributed actively to her husband’s career. The couple married in 1879 and had four children, Robert Besnard (1881–1914), painter; Germaine Besnard (1884–1975), sculptor and painter; Philippe Besnard (1885–1971), sculptor; and Jean Besnard (1889–1958), ceramic artist. First influenced by the academic painter Alexandre Cabanel (1823–1889), Albert Besnard won the Prix de Rome in 1874 and was one of the founders of the Société Nationale in 1890. “Throughout his career his style remained in between academic and impressionistic. During the last thirty years of his life he held important positions in the Académie de France in Rome, the Ecole des beaux-arts, the Académie française, the Académie de Saint Luc and the Royal Academy” (“Paul-Albert Besnard,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/334281). He painted frescoes at the Sorbonne, the Salle des Sciences at the Hôtel de Ville, the City Hall of the 1st arrondissement and the chapel of Berck. Those at the Ecole de Pharmacie in Paris were Lee’s favourites. In later years, she often visited him at Talloires (Haute-Savoie), in the French Alps.

20. Matilda Paget June 8, 1895 Paris, France Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE

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Dearest Mamma, I am unable to arrange trains to spend Sunday at Reims, & being unable also to travel on Monday on account of all the cads coming back from the Grand Prix1 (run tomorrow) we are obliged, much against our will, to go straight to London tomorrow. It will have the one advantage of allowing me to see the lecturing room beforehand, on Monday, but I am sorry, for I love being here, & I hate being in London. We have discovered such a good restaurant in the Palais Royal, besides a quite decent one close by; but we have lunched or dined out nearly every day, with the Ormonds, Henraux, Panniers, & yesterday the Besnards. I am sorry to hear you have had another earthquake;2 but, so far as I can make out from the papers & from Olive’s letter, insignificant. The fact of our house having stood that awful first shock is m a guarantee. Do write me all details, or by Eugene, & tell me whether you minded it. About the photos. They really are an order of Kit’s (a way of repaying Berenson for his teaching by getting him a photograph which D. [Donna] Laura has absolutely hitherto refused to have made) as I don’t want Kit to pay in gold, would E. [Eugene] send the 85 frs to Anderson & let Kit know at 12 Chelsea Gardens what it comes to per english cheque at the present rate of exchange. It will make a difference of 5 or 6 francs to her. Will Eugene kindly send the parcel registered to ˰Kit˰ me at Sloane Gardens House Chelsea SW, where Kit can fetch it – Kit’s house has no porter, so registered parcels are sometimes crammed at the same time as my Cordoni? I went to say goodbye to Mary today, but shall see her again tomorrow at the station, as Mabel is going to travel with us. She seemed much better & more lively today. Did I tell you that what with special government pensions, and a ˰life˰ pension from the whole Jewish community (a sort of thing founded in her husband’s honour) she is quite well off – She speaks with great affection of Eugene & with the very greatest of you; was full of interest about all details about you & him; so different from what she was while he was alive. She has even asked me to stay with her on my way back; & I think I shall, for I wish if possible to bring a little English to bear up on her, so she shd not now be merely a French writer. Mme Taine, whom I consulted, says that probably another year Mary would like to go to Italy, but that this one she is jealously French. So very much love. Please write to Oxford & then ℅ Kit. I am so glad about the flowers. It seems a great waste, tell E. [Eugene] to employ Cesare regularly for the gardens in summer, only a little weeding is possible. Cesare actively destroyed a lot of flowers when he cut the grass, being utterly ignorant. By the way, when the house painter comes, every room & passage must be retouched. I have asked Olive to ride Sariana once or twice a week. Will E. [Eugene] ask her to fix days. So much love V.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 1 The first automobile race from Paris to Bordeaux and back took place from 11 to 15 June 1895. The Automobile Club de France was founded a few months later, 12 November 1895. 2 On 18 May 1895 at 20:55, an important earthquake occurred (“Il Terremoto a Firenze; i disastri di Grassina e di Lappeggi,” La Nazione, Lunedi 20 Maggio 1895). This earthquake, with epicentral intensity of grade VIII on the Mercalli-Cancani-Sieberg scale and magnitude 5.4, caused very serious damage in an area about ten kilometres south of Florence. Collapses occurred in Sant’Andrea in Percussina, Impruneta, Bagno a Ripoli, Tavarnuzze, Croce a Varliano, Osteria Nuova, Pozzolatico and ai Falciani. In the Certosa del Galluzzo, the entire north-western side of the Great Cloister collapsed, destroying precious Della Robbia works. Even the historical-monumental and artistic heritage of Florence was seriously offended. (Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, “May 18, 1895 earthquake in Florence: 120 years later?” 18 May 2015, www.ingv.it/en/press-and-urp/ print/press-notes/May-18%2C-1895-earthquake-in-Florence-120-years-later) Contrary to Lee’s offhand reaction in this letter, witnesses gave more alarming reports. Our correspondent, describing the scenes in the streets of Florence on the night of the 18th, says that whole families passed the night in the squares. All along the Arno, from the crowded hotels, numbers of unprotected English females, bag and rugs in hand, sat, shivering and awed, asking in bad Italian “when another shock might be expected.” (“Scenes in Florence Earthquake,” New York Times, 8 June 1895 www.nytimes.com/1895/06/08/archives/scenes-in-florence-earthquake.html) Indeed, a second earthquake occurred on 7 June 1895, and the New York Times titled its report “Earthquakes Again in Italy; No Damage Done in Florence, but a Panic in All Tuscany” (June 7, 1895).

21. Matilda Paget June 10, 1895 London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Notting H. G. [Hill Gate] Monday. Dearest Mamma – I find E’s [Eugene’s] postcard; please thank him very much. We had a most beautiful sea. Mabel Robinson went with us, & I saw Mary, looking very well, at the station. Bella has given me a delightful room; but I find London very abominable: fine weather with thick grey fog, heat, chill wind, all combined. I am going now to see the Lecture Room. So much love V. 22. Matilda Paget June 11, 1895 London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College

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Notting Hill Gate. Tuesday 11. Dearest Mamma, So many thanks for Nazione. Lecture went well in a delightful room; but only about 13 or 14 people! Season & day unfortunate. Still, am personally quite satisfied. I am off to Oxford. Bella has been such a dear. If Vieusseux shd ask for Modern Painters the 4th vol. is transferred to Flora’s subs. & the 5th I will send back. So much love 23. Clementina Anstruther-Thomson June 13, 1895 [Oxford], England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Thursday. 13rd June Dearest Kit. I hope so much I shall hear from you today. I feel curiously at a loose end without you. I don’t think it’s merely a question of missing you, in the ordinary sense, for heaven knows I’ve done that often enough before. This is a sense of enforced silence & at the same time of a sort of deafness, which really comes, I feel sure, of the fact that so many of my thoughts & feelings nowadays are connected with yr discoveries, that your ideas have come to form a sort of living atmosphere for me: I find I cannot give my real reasons for so many things to others, & that life, which is so synthetic, seems all in bits. Yesterday I was frightfully tired – unluckily I let Mabel [Price] take me to see = coals and drawings all morning – and unwell myself means such misery & uselessness. On another point I am extremely cheered. I find I have succeeded completely in starving out the unreasonable affection I had for this nice woman; it has been a matter of persistent & intentional forgetfulness, till all habit has died out; & what pleases me is not merely this good result in itself, but the knowledge that I ha owe it not to accident & time but to deliberate intention: I have steadily prevented myself from looking forward to seeing her again or foreseeing any sort of pleasure or excitement connected with her; & the result has been that there have been neither. Indeed, on the whole, I am extremely dull here; & if there be i were any danger of my getting again into this engouement1 it wd be through the temptation to relieve the dullness by reviving some of my former feelings. But I have several interesting books & I intend enjoying myself prowling about alone. I must say, however, that I wish very much you could come, dear Kit, for a day; it would, I feel sure, secure this piece of work, which has been by no means easy. Could you not consider a day here (they wd be delighted to see you & give you lunch) as replacing our day at 300

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Reims? I think you would find it no waste, because of the Ruskin drawings, & also a splendid new museum of casts, with the Olympia figures, Eubouleus, Lemuria set up & quantities of Greek things you don’t know. Do come, dear, perhaps Monday? I am the more anxious to see this opportunity for entirely getting rid of the wretched delusion of last year, that I am persuaded that such a state of things really prevents all profitable friendship & makes one thoroughly unfair to the person. Now that I am indifferent, I seem to see so much better the creature in herself, independent of me, & to be much more able to profit by her & be profitable to her. And I am sure she is extremely relieved & pleased. The relation of pace,2 the mere ‸unmixed‸ aesthetic relation like that of a work of art, wh. makes certain human beings extremely powerful over one, is not legitimate except with works of art, because human beings have so very much more than this quality, because unlike works of art, they ought to be perpetually changing, & perpetually getting something from one. Do try & come. You will like to see those casts, I feel sure. And I want to see you so much. Do try & get Mrs Taylor to my 2d lecture. Ask Mrs K.W. for a presentation ticket for her. Goodbye dearest Yr V. 1 In French in the text: infatuation, passion. 2 In Italian in the text: peace.

24. Matilda Paget June 19, 1895 Oxford, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Oxford 19 June. Dearest Mamma. I am still here, as these kind people are keeping me till my last lecture on Monday, when I take possession of my room in Sloane Gardens House, Chelsea. I went up yesterday for the 2d lecture. There were one or two people more – Ernestine Fabbri,1 Evelyn W. [Wimbush], & Css Feo Gleichen2 among others – but still so few that, economically, it is a dead failure. But I am glad to do it nevertheless. Mrs S. [Sargent] is at Gibraltar & much better. So very much love. Am writing to E. [Eugene]. Yrs V. 1 Italian photographer and painter Ernestine Fabbri (1863–1941) was the daughter of Ernesto Giuseppe Fabbri (1830–1884) and Sarah Ann Randall Fabbri (1841–1933). She married Count Uberto Ludolf (1855–1897). Her brothers were Ernesto Fabbri, Jr. (1874–1943), Alessandro Fabbri (1877–1922), and artist, architect and collector Egisto Paolo Fabbri (1866–1933). Her sisters were Marie Fabbri von Ludolf (1864–?), Alice Luisa Fabbri De Piccolellis (1869–1939), Nathalie Fabbri Antinori (1870–1931) and poet Cornelia “Cora” Fabbri (1871–1892). 2 Sculptor Feodora Georgina Maud Gleichen (1861–1922). See Lee to Matilda Paget, July 21, 1893.

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25. Matilda Paget June 26, 1895 London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Sl. G. H. [Sloane Gardens House] Chelsea. 26 June Dearest Mamma, Please thank E. [Eugene] for his letter. I hear from Placci in Paris that he charmed everyone at [?Mme Midukin] I am well but worried at finding that I have my nice room only for a week. But continue addressing here, as I hope to get another. Repeat to E. [Eugene] that I can quite willingly be back the 1st Aug., or the 15th, but not easily between the two dates. So he must decide. Ernestine Fabbri is here. Her two married sisters1 are at Camaldoli at a delightful hydropathic above Vallombrosa. Does E. [Eugene] know of it? 1 They may be Marie Fabbri, who married Count Giuseppe Ludolf, brother of her sister Ernestine’s husband, Count Uberto Ludolf; Nathalie Fabbri (1870–1931), who married Piero Antinori (1864– ?); or Alice Luisa Fabbri De Piccolellis (1869–1939), who married Ottavio Antonio de Piccolellis (1861–1928) in 1891. Cora Fabbri died unmarried.

26. Matilda Paget June 28, 1895 London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Sl. G. H. [Sloane Gardens House] Chelsea 28 June Dearest Mamma – The net profit of my lectures, & it was more than I expected – has been £7–2–6! Undoubtedly the fact of Mrs Ward’s house constituted last year a potent attraction. Also I have had Ascot week against me. Still I am pleased. I am going from Saturday till Monday to the Simcoxes in Buckingre. I saw a certain number of people, not very interesting. My utter repugnance to dinner parties immensely chokes sociability. But I cannot stand them. The Débats have taken the Virgin of 7 Daggers.1 Could E. [Eugene] translate it by New Year? I shall have to find someone. Thanks so much for yr dear little cards. They are such a pleasure. 1 Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s translation of Lee’s “The Virgin of the Seven Daggers” into French for the Journal des débats.

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27. Matilda Paget July 3, 1895 London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 3 July – I now have a nice sitting room! Evelyn W. [Wimbush] has asked me to go to Norfolk for 3 days next week. Today interviewed very nice R. Smith of Smith & Elder. Will you make Rosa cut at once a pattern of my oldest black riding habit – the quite ragged one. I want to match the stuff. It must be therefore in my room sent as companion envelopes in a stationary box under table. So much love 28. Matilda Paget July 6, 1895 London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Sl. G. H. [Sloane Gardens House] 6 July. Dearest Mamma – I am so glad E. [Eugene] will be able to translate the Madonna1 – I have not yet settled about terms with the Débats, but hope they will write soon. I have been twice to see the Duse2 in Magda, a play by Sudermann called Heimat3 (E. [Eugene] perhaps knows it), she is wonderful & entrancing. The Ranee warned me there were most abominable & inhuman passages in B’s book, quite untranslatable. Please beg E. [Eugene], if he wants clothes or anything to let me know soon. I shall leave England the 24th. So much love V. 1 “The Virgin of the Seven Daggers” was first published in French, translated by Eugene Lee-Hamilton as “La Madone aux sept glaives,” in Journal des débats politiques et littéraires, “Feuilleton du journal des débats du Samedi” (8, 9, 11, 12, 14 Février 1896), p. 3. The original English text of “The Virgin of the Seven Daggers” appeared much later, in two parts in the January and February 1909 issues of The English Review (January 1909), pp. 223–233, and (February 1909), pp. 453–465; rpt. in For Maurice (1927); rpt. in I. Cooper-Willis (ed.), Supernatural Tales (1987). 2 Italian actress Eleonora Giulia Amalia Duse (1858–1924), one of the very best actresses of her time. 3 The 1893 play Heimat [Home] by German novelist and playwright Hermann Suderman (1857– 1928) was known by the heroine’s name, Magda, which was the title of the 1896 English translation.

29. Matilda Paget July 11, 1895 London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 11. July, Dearest Mamma – I am sorry the Débats has fallen thro’ as they are willing to pay only for the translation, not the original. I am going for Saturday till

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Monday to Maidenhead to E. [Ernestine] Fabbri & her brother. Today I met R. LeGallienne,1 a curious person got up with a 15th century head of hair. He bade me tell E. [Eugene] that his last book came to him at the time of his wife’s death, hence silence. So much love V. 1 English writer and poet Richard Thomas Gallienne [Le Gallienne] (1866–1947), contributor to The Yellow Book (1894–1897). His first wife was Mildred Lee, and they had a daughter, Hesper Joyce Gallienne. In 1894, Mildred and their baby Maria died during childbirth. In 1897 he married the Danish journalist Julie Nørregaard (1863–1942), and they had a daughter, Eva Gallienne (1899–1991).

30. Matilda Paget July 13, 1895 London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College July 13. Dearest Mamma – So many thanks for dear postcards. The 7 Daggers are on again with Débats as he allows me to publish contemporaneously in England. I am now off for 2 days to the Fabbri’s [Fabbris’] on the River. I will get E. [Eugene] the stuff, but it must come petite vitesse1 with my heavier clothes. I have been offered £100 for a series of lectures at Braemar College near Philadelphia!!! Could E. [Eugene] get for me a “Fioretti di S. Francesco”2 – Aug bookseller & send it to Mrs Kemp Welch,3 Red House, Campden Hill W. So much love 1 In French in the text: economy mail. 2 Or The Little Flowers of St Francis, an anonymous florilegium on the life of Saint Francis of Assisi, divided into fifty-three short chapters and composed at the end of the fourteenth century, probably by Ugolino Brunforte (ca. 1262–ca. 1348). See Lee to Mary Robinson, October 1880, Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. I. 3 British painter Lucy Kemp Welch (1869–1958).

31. Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) July 14, [1895] London, England Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Paris [The original of this letter is in French] Sloane Gardens House Chelsea Londres Ce 14 Juillet

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Chère Amie, Merci de votre affectueuse et charmante lettre, qui est venue me trouver presque à la veille de mon départ d’Angleterre. Je sais par Mme Foulon de Vaulx que vous êtes en ce moment à Paris; y serezvous toujours le 29 ou 30, jours que je compte passer chez Mary Darmesteter? Vous ne sauriez croire à quel point je désire vous voir, et quelle déception j’ai éprouvée en vous manquant il y a un mois environ, lors de mon passage par Paris. J’ai su décider mon frère, qui reprend avec sa santé miraculeusement retrouvée quelques-unes des caractéristiques les moins faciles du sexe masculin, à achever sa guérison dans une station thermale du Piémont ou de la Lombardie; et, à cet effet, je dois me trouver à Florence le 1er Août, pour y reprendre ma place auprès de ma mère. Ce retour précipité a un peu gâché mon été. Je quitterai l’Angleterre avec le sentiment de n’y pas avoir été, puisque car je n’appelle pas être en Angleterre être renfermée dans une chambre de troisième à Londres, et de plus, boîteuse, car je me suis fait horriblement mal à un genou en tombant de bicyclette! Plus je connais l’Angleterre et plus je sens que ce pays n’a fait de sa capitale qu’un vaste monceau de choses malpropres ou du moins inutiles – dust heap de toutes les misères et de toutes les banalités, grâce à l’existence du quel [duquel] le reste du pays a su garder ce charme si intime et si empoignant – mélange d’une nature souvent sauvage et d’un passé très doux, que vous savez. L’été prochain, si ma mère continue à se porter bien, je resterai en Italie jusqu’à la fin de Juillet, pour avoir l’automne en Angleterre – Q Combien j’aimerais de passer aussi quelques jours en France! Que votre description du séjour que vous venez de faire chez les Delzant me fait envie! Croyez-vous qu’un jour, par amour pour vous, vos amis de Gascogne voudront bien me connaître ? J’ai écr répondu sur le champ à Mme Foulon de Vaulx, en lui donnant de très grand cœur l’autorisation de traduire tout ce qu’elle voudra dans Althéa; et s’il est possible, l’ouvrage entier; vous savez que c’est celui d’entre tous mes livres, auquel je tiens le plus; j’allais dire le seul auquel j je tienne! J’ai fait plus: j’ai donné à Mme F de V. [Foulon de Vaulx] une lettre pour M. Brunetière, priant celui-ci de substituer, s’il ‸lui‸ est possible, la traduction d’Orphée à Rome que fera Mme F. de V. [Foulon de Vaulx] à un article sur Nordau qu’il a accepté depuis longtemps, et que je préfèrerais beaucoup faire paraître en Angleterre, où on commence (songez donc!) on commence à s’occuper de Nordau maintenant qu’on n’y songe plus ailleurs – J’ai la conviction que M. Brunetière a complètement jeté de côté cet article et qu’il sera aussi enchanté de s’en débarrasser que moi de l’avoir de nouveau. Le comble de mes voeux serait naturellement que vous fassiez précéder la traduction d’Orphée par quelques mots de vous. Ecrivez moi une carte pour me dire que je sache quand vous serez à Paris –

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Je vous écris en ‸dans une‸ barque amarrée près du Pont de Maidenhead; deux excellents amis américains m’y ont amenée pour deux jours – Je suis, tout en écrivant les évolutions des canots et les ébats des cygnes de la Tamise. Au revoir bien chère Amie. Votre dévouée V. Paget 32. Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) July 14, [1895] London, England Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Paris [The original of this letter is in French] Sloane Gardens House Chelsea London Today, July 14 Dear Friend, Thank you for your charming affectionate letter, which arrived almost on the day before my departure from England. I know from Mme Foulon de Vaulx that you are in Paris at the moment; will you still be there on the 29th or 30th, which I intend to spend at Mary Darmesteter’s ? You wouldn’t believe how eager I am to see you, and how disappointed I was a month ago or so, when I missed you during my stay in Paris. I could incite my brother, who, together with his good health, is recovering the least enjoyable traits of the male sex, to complete his healing at a spa in Piedmont or Lombardy; and, for him to do so, I need to be in Florence on August 1st, to take back my place with my mother there. That hasty return has almost ruined my summer. I shall leave England feeling I have hardly been there, for I do not call “being in England” the fact of being locked up in a third class room in London, and, to crown it all, being lame, for I hurt my knee horribly when I fell off my bike! The more I know England, the more I feel that this country has turned its capital city into a vast heap of unclean or at least useless things1 – dust heap2 of all the miseries and the trivialities thanks to which the rest of the country has been able to keep its so intimate and so gripping charm – a mixture of an often wild nature and a very sweet past, as you know. Next summer, if my mother continues to be well, I shall stay in Italy till the end of July, to spend autumn in England – How I wish I could spend a few days in France too! How eager to be there your description of your stay at the Delzants’ made me! Do you think that, one day, out of love for you, your friends in Gascony will wish to meet me?3 I answered Mme Foulon de Vaulx immediately, allowing her most willingly to translate everything she wants in Althéa; and if she can, the whole book; you know that, of all my books, this is the one that is dearest to my heart! I almost said 306

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the only one I care about at all! I did more than that; I gave to Mme F. de V. [Foulon de Vaulx] a letter for M. Brunetière, begging him to replace, if he can, Mme F. de V.’s [Foulon de Vaulx] future translation of Orphée à Rome with an article about Nordau which he accepted a long time ago, and which I’d rather publish in England, where people are beginning (just imagine!) to take an interest in him when nobody else does anywhere else. I am convinced M. Brunetière has completely set aside this article and will be as delighted to get rid of it as I shall be to have it back. The highest of my wishes would be naturally that you should introduce the translation of Orpheus with a few words by yourself. Send me a postcard to let me know when you are to be in Paris – I am writing in a boat moored near Maidenhead Bridge; two excellent American friends have driven me here for two days – I am writing while following about the movements of the canoes and the frolics of the Thames swans, and am Your devoted Goodbye dearest Friend]

1 This sentence is underlined with a green pencil. 2 “Dust heap” is in English in the original letter. 3 Mme Blanc introduced Vernon Lee to the Delzants. This was the starting point of Lee’s romantic relationship with Gabrielle Delzant (1854–1903). She was the wife of Alidor Delzant (1848–1905), biographer and editor of the journal La Revue Idealiste. Gabrielle’s literary work consisted mostly of personal writings and some biographical studies of important French figures. Delzant first wrote Lee after reading Juvenilia (1887), and Lee spent some time with Delzant in Paraÿs just before her death in 1903. Lee described those days with her in the preface to Hortus Vitae. The Vernon Lee Archive has seven letters in French from the Delzants to Lee. See “Paget in Paraÿs” by A.H. Biron, Colby Literary Quarterly, 25 (June 1960), pp. 123–127.

33. Eugene Lee-Hamilton July 16, 1895 London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Sl. G. H. [Sloane Gardens House] 16 July Dear Eugene – Many thanks for the lamp shade. I will get all the things you mention. I shall start the 24 & be with Mary the 28th & 29th. I shall probably go straight from Paris by Bâle to Milan. But if it be very hot I shall take the night train & arrive morning of the 2d at Palmerino. I presume you will travel by night – so we shall have 12 hours to settle things. Yrs V. 307

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34. Lady Louisa Wolseley July 17, [1895] London, England Hove Central Library, Wolseley Collection IL PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE. Sloane Gardens House Chelsea 17 July Dear Lady Wolseley, I have been in London but a short time this year, & mostly disabled by a bad fall. I am now within a week of my return to Italy; but, if you are in town, I must give myself a chance of seeing you again. During these years that you have been in Ireland, it is quite natural that I should have slipped out of your memory, for there is no reason why one should remember the people one has been good to. But it has been especially natural on my part that I should have been unable to forget your great friendship when I ‸was‸ so ill, & that I should have felt a little sore at never hearing from you & never really seeing you again. So, please, if you can, give me an opportunity of seeing you before the 23d. Remember me to Lord Wolseley & yr daughter & believe me Yrs always sincerely V. Paget 35. Matilda Paget July 20, 1895 London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 20th – am seeing about tricycles. Shall leave Wednesday & be in Florence 1st- ad address (I shall be) ℅ Miss Cassatt – Mesnil-Beaufresne par Fresneau Montchevreuil – Oise – between 25 & 27. Then ℅ Mary 18 Bd Latour Maubourg till 30th. So much love V. 36. Marie Belloc Lowndes1 July 21, 1895 London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College

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Sloane Gardens House Chelsea July 21 IL PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE. Dear Mrs Belloc, I had hoped so much to call on you & your mother2 before my departure. But my wretched lameness, of wh. I am not absolutely free even now, has accumulated all my business & necessary gallery going into these last days (I leave on Wednesday) & I foresee that I shall be unable to get to you. My friend Miss Anstruther-Thomson, whom you met here at dinner, is anxious to be allowed to call on you some Thursday. She will stay all Summer here, till she joins us in Italy as usual. You will find her a most uncommonly intelligent & original woman; and I think your mother will like her. She has many years been my most intimate comrade & helper in all my work. Will you remember to let me know whenever you would like a holiday in Italy? I am often away for a few weeks at a time, so it requires a little arrangement. I hope so much you will come. Remember me to your mother & believe me, dear Miss Belloc, Yrs sincerely V. Paget 1 See List of Correspondents: Marie Belloc Lowndes. Her father, Louis Marie Belloc (1830–1872), was a French barrister and her mother was the active British feminist Elizabeth (Bessie) Rayner Parkes (1829–1925). On 9 January 1896 she married Frederick Sawney Archibald Lowndes (1867– 1940), a staff writer on The Times; they had one son and two daughters. A prolific writer, she published over seventy books (biographies, romances and crime novels), two of them under the penname Philip Curtin and Elizabeth Rayner. She was friends with Constance and Oscar Wilde, Henry James, Rhoda Broughton, George Meredith and Margot Asquith and encouraged younger authors (e.g. Graham Greene, Hugh Walpole, Margaret Kennedy, E.M. Delafield and L.P. Hartley). A staunch supporter of women’s rights, she was president of the Women Writers’ Suffrage League in 1913. Her younger brother was Hilaire Pierre René Belloc (1870–1953), a poet and author who was a public, though unofficial, representative of Roman Catholics in England. She authored Where Love and Friendship Dwelt (London: Macmillan, 1943). 2 Elizabeth “Bessie” Rayner Parkes (1829–1925), former editor of the English Woman’s Journal and an active British feminist.

37. Matilda Paget July 24, 1895 London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College

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Wednesday 24. Dearest Mamma I am all packed & starting in an hour via Dieppe. Tell E. [Eugene] I got on to a tricycle, & altho’ my knee is still stiff & weak, found it quite light to move, & very easy to steer. But they are expensive & highly taxed. My accident, now cured, came from falling with a bicycle. So much love V. 38. Matilda Paget July 28, 1895 Mesnil-Beau Frêne, France Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Mesnil-Beaufresne July 28 Dear Mamma – The crossing was very rough, but I wasn’t sick & got a little sleep. At Dieppe after breakfast I took a walk from 4 a.m. to 5; the town was quite asleep, & in that morning light, & after England, seemed so pretty & picturesque. This is a charming Louis XVI house wh. Miss C. [Cassatt] and her mother have just bought. Yesterday we went to see a fine Château nearby, & today if it leave off raining we are going to Beauvais to see the cathedral, one of the finest. Tomorrow I get to Mary’s in time for dinner. I find it odd to know France so little, virtually not at all. So much love. V. 39. Matilda Paget July 28, 1895 Paris, France Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Paris 28 July Dearest Mamma I came up yesterday in time for dinner. Mary seems much better. I found a card from E. [Eugene] at Miss Cassatt’s, & am delighted he has decided on Adorno, as Amy writes me that it is a very nice place. And the V. [Visconti] Venosta are very nice people. So glad about the Eyres; but he will find F. di M. [Forte dei Marmi] dull. He must get them to take him to Seravezza close by. #

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I shall leave Tuesday morning & go straight to Milan. Please let me find a line at Albergo Leone & Svizzeri. It is nottish & stormy ‸24 ° centigrades‸ So much love V. 40. Clementina Anstruther-Thomson July 28, [1895]1 Paris, France Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE Paris 28 July Sunday Very dear Kit – I was so glad to find yr two letters here yesterday afternoon: thank you for seeing about the box. I liked immensely being at Mesnil. That highlying, monotonous, not at all beautiful French country, crude or dingy in colour, composed of blunt lines, without romance or suavity of village or old house, moreover apparently depopulate [depopulated], has yet a charm of breadth, of belonging to an endless continent – no island or semi island like England or Italy – there being enough land, & enough sky especially, leagues of cloud & air; a certain charm to me, of measurelesness, of a back of beyond, due to its lines leading nowhere (do you know what I mean?) – The complete scheme of the eternal story told by mountains & rivers, the story of watershed & sea, of perpetually bustling & going – And I liked her Louis XVI chateau, & the sort of white bareness of the rooms, making me feel almost like Coccolia. Poor old Mrs Cassatt is, I fear, ‸slowly‸ dying.2 Her daughter will probably write to you to find her an English nurse, for she seems to know no one in London, & I ventured to tell her she might. Miss Cassatt is very nice, simple, an odd mixture of a self recognized artist, with passionate appreciations in literature, & the almost childish garrulous American provincial. She wants to make art cheap, to bring it within reach of the comparative poor, & projects a series of coloured etchings, for wh. she wants me to write a little preface3 – she wants other artists to do something similar, suggested Sargent – do you think he would? She has most generously given me one of her new & most beautiful etchings, a mother & baby, green on green, quite lovely.4 By the way she wd very much like you to come to Mesnil on yr way thro’; she suffers from solitude & anxiety; also she does not hide that she wants to make an etching of you, for she is of among the admirers of yr 311

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dear splendid person – you must go: it is only an hour from Paris; & oh my dear it is worthwhile if only to see Beauvais cathedral. We were for an hour during a tremendous thunderstorm; the thunder like an organ round that gigantic apse (it is only an apse), so which looks, from a distance, as if part of itself must be a hill on which it rests. It is so very beautiful & perfect; gothic in the sense that the Ducal palace is. Mary [Darmesteter] is much better & cheerful; looks her old self. She has turned her salon into a bed-room for me; it’s like sleeping in a glorified sleeping car, rather. I cannot understand such a pitch of friendship! But I find her quite full of such simple, taking [taken] for granted friendliness, as if no cloud or barrier had ever come between us, as if it were all continuous. I find her charming & very sweet, but so far, so far off! Or rather myself so utterly, utterly far. I feel I could not say one thing that I think. I sometimes rub my eyes & wonder whether the illusion is in me instead of being in her? I have just read her preface to her husband’s posthumous works; excessively intimate, to British or Italian taste, but really quite dignified & delicate: is it possible I may have been totally mistaken, that I may have been blinded by a jealousy I was quite unaware of, & failed to recognise a very charming & powerful nature in the poor little dead man? If so, what a loss for me, & what stuff are we made of? Altogether being here makes me feel very salutarily unsettled in all my ideas. Have I perhaps, while thinking to preserve my think writer’s & thinker’s independence & dignity, turned into a mere squeamish & unsympathising dilettante? – Have these appearances, nay realities, of worldliness, officialism, push, vanity, of all I have abominated as shop, perhaps been mere trifles, scum under which there is more real movement, more wave, more current & true chemistry of soul, than in my aloofness? Chi sa?5 Anyhow; I suppose I can be only in virtue of my own laws of being; & I suppose that mine are to be offended by certain faults, to be perhaps blind to certain merits. But I ha feel a great ? in my mind. Good eve bye dearest Kit. Think of my [me] a little on my long dreary journey & let me feel yr thought welcoming me when I get home. Yrs Vernon Will you sell me & send to Miss Cassatt (it won’t be seen by anyone), from me, a copy of D. [Donna] Laura’s Lionardo?6

1 American painter and printmaker Mary Stevenson Cassatt (1844–1926). She lived in France beginning in 1866, was a friend of Edgar Degas and Camille Pissaro, and was acknowledged as an important impressionist painter alongside Berthe Morisot and Marie Bracquemond. Having played a major role in the impressionist movement Cassatt was at the peak of her most innovative period. She had invited Lee . . . to show her new coloured print series. She wanted her to write a critical preface to the innovative series. They talked at length about her coloured aquatints and Cassatt gave her the inscribed print, which represented a key element of her new series. She also sketched a small but penetrating water-colour study of Lee during her visit – the only time the two women met.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 (Peter Way, “Mary Cassatt & Vernon Lee: 1895,” Color and Copper [blog], 2 October 2012, http://colorandcopper.blogspot.com/2012/10/colorand-copper-mary-cassatt-vernon.html) This passage refers to a series of coloured aquatints inspired by the Japanese ukiyo-e wood-block prints which Mary Cassatt was working on at the time. In the Spring of 1891 she had exhibited a unique set of ten impressions en couleurs inspired by the urbane ukiyo-e prints. After executing a large mural series portraying the “Modern Woman” for the 1893 Chicago World’s fair Cassatt began work on an even more innovative coloured aquatint series focusing on intimate images of mother and child. With their idiosyncratic formalism and provocative psychological realism echoing the Japanese prints the coloured prints represented something strikingly new. It all began with an experimental series of soft-ground etchings and coloured aquatints she did of her mother in 1889–1890. (Way, “Mary Cassatt & Vernon Lee: 1895”) Cassatt lived with her mother in her Château de Beaufrêne, at Le Mesnil-Theribus (“Chronologie,” Les Amis de Mary Cassatt, https://cassatt-mesnil-theribus.org/node/14; “Mary Cassatt’s Chateau de Beaufresne,” American Girls Art Club In Paris . . . and Beyond, 25 November 2014, https:// americangirlsartclubinparis.com/2014/11/25/mary-cassatts-chateau-de-beaufresne/). 2 Mary Cassatt’s mother, born Katherine Kelso Johnston (ca. 1806–1895), died two months later, on 21 October 1895, aged about 89. 3 Lee records her writing of the preface in her Commonplace Book XII, dated 16 February to 10 December 1895: “Preface for Miss Cassat. 5 days. Finished 16 Aug. 15 [ps] pages.” This preface has not been found. 4 As Peter Way has established, The “green on green” coloured print which Cassatt gave to Lee surfaced for the first time at auction in Florence in 2010 inscribed and signed by Cassatt “To Miss Paget with sincerest regards – Mary Cassatt.” Young Thomas and His Mother by Mary Cassatt (Breeskin 159, tenth state) dated 1894–1895 is commonly known under the title Peasant Mother and Child. The colour print represents a drypoint and aquatint printed in colour with monotype inking and added touches of hand-colouring. It was printed and painted on laid paper with (ARC)HES watermark, measurements 298 × 243mm – alternate measurements 438 × 304mm. The finished and inscribed version belongs to a private collection in New York and is presently a part of a major exhibition of Cassatt’s colour prints entitled Mary Cassatt French-American Impressionist on Paper from 8 February–9 June 2018 in the Ordrupgaard museum in Copenhagen. (Way, “Mary Cassatt & Vernon Lee: 1895”) 5 In Italian in the text: Who knows? 6 The Donna Laura Minghetti Leonardo was “[a] painting once believed to be a Leonardo Da Vinci, that was likely created by one of his students” and was “granted in his will” by Giovanni Morelli (1816–1891) to Laura Minghetti, née Acton (1829–1915), the wife of his close friend, Prime Minister Marco Minghetti (1818–1886). When Morelli died in 1891, she inherited the painting. “She held the painting in her famous Roman Salon for her daughter, Maria.” This is where Vernon Lee saw it. “In 1898 the work was sold to Theodore Davis as an authentic Leonardo Da Vinci. However, a letter from a close friend [Lady Layard, 22 February 1899] about the transaction reveals Donna Laura was aware that Morelli had not attributed the painting as a Leonardo Da Vinci” (“Minghetti, Donna Laura,” The Emma B. Andrews Diary Project, www. emmabandrews.org/project/items/show/115; Claire Summa, “Lady Layard’s Letter,” The Emma B. Andrews Diary Project, www.emmabandrews.org/project/items/show/119; “Lady Layard’s

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 Journal,” The Brownings: A Research Guide, The Armstrong Browning Library of Baylor University, www.browningguide.org/lady-layards-journal/).

41. Clementina Anstruther-Thomson August 6, [1895] Florence, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE Dearest Kit, So many thanks for the tricycle & many things. I hope someone posted you the letter I dropped at the station. My dear, what we dared not fear has actually happened: Eugene has come a back from Andorno after 24 hours! He sees & states it all as most plausible: the place dismal, damp grass & trees & insufficient garden, & a temporary difficulty about the room; and he is quite cheerful & delighted with himself! He stated at once that he had gone despite himself, pus overridden by me, and that therefore it was my own fault if I returned to no purpose. This is true; & I always knew I had no hold over him; he was so voluble I couldn’t even make a scene, particularly as Mamma takes his part. I said at once that I would go away, & wrote off to Maria at Rimini; but he doesn’t care to have me or anyone here; he is simply overjoyed at being back & refuses to budge except to go to the Eyres for a few days at Forte dei Marmi in September. He is not willing to forego the carriage or any comfort for the sake of his health, & has a horror of hotels. Good Lord, I shall always have him on my hands, I fear. I don’t want to move myself; but I fear that 1st the situation alone with him may become oppressive; & 2nd that if I can get some sea baths at Rimini or mountain air at Elena’s, I ought to. I think he’d much better have that cheap tricycle: it will make him more willing to go away. He says he saw a tricycle, not Bozzi’s, in Via Tornabuoni. So I suppose it’s all right. I had luckily employed his 24 hours absence in seeing grooms & engaging one. He is a peasant of the Rasponis, a very nice creature & their coachman, under whom he has been, recommended him highly. We are inaugurating a new system of fodder, & shall make considerable savings, besides that on wages. By the way, the bay pony has become so strong & good looking! – trots like anything without a touch of the whip. I will write tomorrow to the Ranee. I am so glad about the “Piper” – I liked that letter of Mrs Taylor’s so much.

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Perhaps I am looking at things dismally: I am not suffering from the heat (the temperature is rather delicious) but from a wretched chill wh. made me spend last night with a hot bottle at 80 Fahrenheit! I see that E. [Eugene] must be left to his own blessed hash: he carries through, as he says, only what he invents (or thinks he invents) himself. Having got over the panic of this journey, & co had his own way, E. seems very cheerful, & although bad with nettle rash (the Dr at Andorno said it was weakness of the constrictors of the capillaries) & not able to walk much, he is not at all the sick man of before the journey. So far we have gained; & he is amiable & accommodating. I feel dazed & utterly idiotic . . . My cart, to improve matters, has got broken, & is at Bozzi’s for a month! So the evenings they go out, I can’t, unless I ride; & my chill won’t allow of that[.] Goodbye dearest Kit – write to me sometimes? You will, if you don’t object, let me have a Lionardo head for Miss Cassatt – Oh & please ask Colvin1 these questions. What do we know of the contemporary price & number of copies of 1st Japanese common coloured engravings 2d of the woodcut etc. of Dürer & his school, & the etchings of Rembrandt? I want it for the little paper for Miss Cassatt. Yr loving Vernon 1 Sidney Colvin (1845–1927) was a museum administrator and a fine art scholar with an emphasis on Italian art. As a critic, he wrote for the Pall Mall Gazette and The Fortnightly Review, among other journals. In 1884, he took over as the head of the Prints and Drawings Room at the British Museum. He was also the Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge. See Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. I.

42. Matilda Paget August 14, 1895 S. Marcello Pistoiese, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College San Marcello Pistoiese – Tuesday afternoon. Dearest Mamma – I had a very good journey, not at all hot; arriving a in the village at 9.30 & walking up here through Cini’s beautiful garden. I have a delightful cool room built since I was here last & all fitted with plain deal in wh. [which] with both windows open (but it looks North) the temp. is 70. I am now – 3.30 sitting in the wood above the house in a little patch of shade, the sun all round, but deliciously cool. Only everything is steep rather for goats than men. They are not very well, & he can only sit close to the house. It is very

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sad none of this delightfulness shd be for him. I hope you will have a cooler night. Thank E. [Eugene] for waking me. Yr V. 43. Matilda Paget August 15, 1895 San Marcello, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College S. Marcello – Thursday – Dearest Mamma – Please thank E. [Eugene] for sending letters & proofs. Did I explain that on hearing Ehrenheim’s opinion, I telegraphed Kit “suspend tricycle” – but E. must write to her if he prefer the hand machine. Mme Spalletti has written to invite me to Levanto; but the coming of Amy Turton on the 25, & the possible coming of Miss Price -arrangements due to the belief that E. would be away – make it impossible. I am very sorry. It is quite cool here. So much love. V. 44. Matilda Paget August 20, 1895 San Marcello, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College S. Marcello – Sunday Aug 20 ’95 Dearest Mamma. Will you kindly send Carlo to meet me by the late train (Eugene knows) on Tuesday? The man must be told where to stop, as he probably has never been to the station. So much love. V. 45. Matilda Paget August 20, 1895 Foligno, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Foligno Wednesday Dearest Mamma – Thank E. [Eugene] for forwarding a letter. Mme O. [?Ormond] still confined to her room, but I think we shall go on Saturday to Città del Castello. I will let you 316

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know tomorrow. My cold is very bad. Yesterday Mme O. sent us to Spello, one of these curious little hill towns, of which there are dozens all round. I am anxious for news of E. Please take care of yrself. V. 46. Clementina Anstruther-Thomson August 26, 1895 Florence, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Palmerino – 26 August. Dearest – your p card (-by the way you can’t, as in England, convert an ordinary card into a postcard by putting a stamp of postcard value) has just come from S. Marcello. Dear, will you always kindly open a MS. when it comes for me? I am not sure what this is. If it be, as I imagine, that everlasting 7 Daggers Madonna, will you be very, very kind & send it with the enclosed line to J. P. Watt Esq Hastings House, Norfolk Street, Strand – I am very well – indeed O Kit! I am beginning to suspect that great heat & drought suits me. I never feel tired except at night, & sleep an hour after lunch not from inclination but from duty. Still I have been taking long walks early, & this morning I galloped Sariana twice round the Campo di Marte. They have let her loo lose every sort of pace; she is perfectly stumbling in harness; not to speak of her being a mass of raw flesh from flies. I have cured all that, but E. [Eugene] ought to have prevented it. Pour comble,1 as he now hates driving, he allowed the new man, the very first time, to knock the bay pony down onto her side; the ginocchielli2 were wrenched off & she was frightfully damaged. However she is up & about. I shall be glad when he has only steel & wood to spoil: you see he is too weak to think about anything except himself, & horses are mere means of locomotion to him. I am working with delight at psychology. By the way will you buy & bring the Introd. [Introduction] to empirical psych. [psychology] in Scott’s Science Series?3 Laura G. [Gropallo] has written a play & is giving to superintend its rehearsal at Milan!4 Amy Turton is coming this evening for 2 days. Dear, forgive this meagre scrawl. Yrs Vernon 1 In French in the text: To crown it all. 2 In Italian in the text: knee pads. 3 The Walter Scott Publishing Co. was founded in 1882 by Walter Scott (1826–1910), a businessman and self-made engineer from Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The Contemporary Science Series included important works and was published in London and Felling-on-Tyne, and, in New York, by Charles Scribner’s Sons. The series editor was Havelock Ellis. There were six titles on psychology. See

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 John R. Turner, A History of the Walter Scott Publishing House, unpublished PhD thesis (University of Wales, Aberystwyth, 1995). 4 Laura Gropallo, Bivio: Dramma in un atto (Milano: Casa Editrice Galli di Chiesa, Omodei, & Guindani, 1896).

47. Enrico Nencioni September 2, 1895 Florence, Italy Biblioteca Marucelliana, Carteggio Nencioni II 228.1–13_35–36 [The original of this letter is in Italian] Lunedì IL PALMERINO, MAIANO, FLORENCE Caro Nencioni, Che gioia, avere così buone notizie da Lei! Io sarò a casa ogni la sera dalle 6 o poco dopo il Mercoledì e Giovedì, ma parmi peccato che venga a fare un così enorme viaggio con questo caldo. Piuttosto lasci venire me da Lei. Uno di questi giorni sul tardi, dovrò andare al Poggio a vedere i contadini di una mia amica. L’assisterò prima, e conterò su Lei per trovarsi a casa. Tante cose alla Sig.ra Talia. Sua affett. V Paget. 48. [Enrico Nencioni September 2, 1895 Florence, Italy Biblioteca Marucelliana, Carteggio Nencioni II 228.1–13_35–361 [The original of this letter is in Italian] Monday IL PALMERINO, MAIANO, FLORENCE Dear Nencioni, What joy, to have such good news from you! I will be at home every evenings from 6 or a little later on Wednesdays and Thursdays, but it seems to me a shame that you should make such an enormous trip in this heat. Rather, let me come to you. One of these days, late, I will have to come to Poggio to see the farmers of a friend of mine. I will attend to you first, and I will rely on you to find yourself at home 318

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Many greetings to Mrs. Talia. Yours affectionately, V. Paget] 1 Addressed: Chiarmo / Prof. Nencioni / Villa Piatti / Poggio Imperiale / (Via S. Leonardo) / Città.

49. Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) September 4, [1895] Florence, Italy Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Paris Sept. [September] 4 IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE Very dear Madame Blanc, I have so often wanted to write to you; I very nearly did so the day I had seen you in Paris. I cannot tell you how moved I was by the friendship which you had shown me that day, and through you, your kind friends the Foulon de Vaulxs. I want so much to come to France th next summer. Will you remember about the Delzants? It would be my dream to be with you in the country, in your own France. Meanwhile, can you never make up your mind to come to us? I am sure you would like the peace of this little valley. My brother rendered my early return to Italy quite useless by refusing to stay more than 24 hours at that water cure. But I am glad I came, for being alone with him I think I have a little tamed him, shown him that I am not hostile, as he had imagined. He is very weak & takes no interest except in household details. It is so sad. On the other hand I find my mother wonderfully well. She is now over eighty, & looks such a frail little tiny thing. But she is very alive. I found her today reading an article by Weissmann in a review; & everyday she makes me play Beethoven’s symphonies on the piano for her. I play at best atrociously, and she she makes me horribly nervous, listening with all her ears to the horrible charivari. I have good news of Kit, who is working hard at her art-theories. Some day she & I are going to do a book together, & you will see what a strength & originality of intelligence she has. But I know you have always guessed that. Most of my friends are inconceivably blind, however much they like Kit; because she has never what the world calls done anything, that is to say done anything which others have been asked to look at, mo most of them think of Kit as a sort of nice parrot who repeats what I say! It makes me so angry, & makes me laugh, also. Now I know you have always seen that she is quite a separate individual, perhaps

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even you have guessed that now, having learned what I could teach, she is the master & I the pupil. I have been reading some very beautiful short Scotch stories by Ian MacLaren, called Round the Bonnie Brier Bush.1 I wish you would make the readers of the Revue know them. They show the ideal strength & sweetness of the Scotch character: ex forte dulcedo.2 I believe Barrie’s stories are in the same style & very good also. I wish the Latin races could know what it is which has made our little Island great: the hidden, reserved ideality & sweetness. Speaking of the Revue,3 M. Brunetière will take two of my dialogues translated by Mme Foulon de Vaulx. I am so proud & pleased. I owe this, like all the kindness I have received in France to you, dear friend. I thought, when I saw you in Paris, that things must be going better in your family. You looked so much happier, I thought, & was so glad. Do not tire yourself writing; but remember how great a pleasure a few words from you are. And believe in my grateful affection Yrs Vernon 1 Ian MacLaren [Rev. John Watson], Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1894). 2 In Latin in the text: from strength comes sweetness. 3 The Revue des Deux Mondes.

50. Clementina Anstruther-Thomson September 10–12, 1895 Florence, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College1 Palmerino – 10 September Dearest Kit – I must at least begin a letter to you; it seems so long since I heard last. Eugene went up suddenly to the Abetone the day after Miss Price’s arrival; & I think Gianni Cini – at my instigation – is asking him to S. Marcello. It is sad to find his absence such a relief; not a relief from anything disagreeable, for he is quite good, but as if cotton wool were suddenly taken out of one’s ears or a cold in the head despatched. Life loses all resonance in his company. Miss Price is very satisfactory: quite human, pleased with things and gentle, and absurdly and pathetically grateful for the civilities that one gives every guest. She seems to like the formalities & thoughtfulness as a cat likes the sun, but to be puzzled unaccustomed & not know what they are. It is pathetic. I think her roughness & harshness come from having been roughly treated at home & having had 320

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no friends who weren’t afraid of her. And, in the intervals of things she looks so sad. I was very proud last night when she said hesitatingly that since knowing me she had lost so much of her terror of people, & had been able to enjoy their good points; “the sand has come out of the wheels”, she said. She can never be anything or do anything for one, at least for me; she must be taken as a very vivifying abstract presence; & one must try and give her what she likes in return: open air, liberty to talk freely and the certainty of being understood; she seems to have been starved of this daily bread. 11. Owing to the awful heat – greater than in August & wh. shows no sign of stopping – and to Miss Price having arranged to join Flora in the Germany early in October, our poor driving tour is knocked on the head. But I think we shall go later for 3 or 4 days to Lesavezzo by rail. I am almost glad the driving tour is at an end; I want to do it again with you, dear Kit. I have been writing a little paper on Limbo,2 taking that as the place which holds all the good things we foolish mortals waste; & I shall incorporate in it a very tiny précis of the story that was to be called the Pss Penelope, with all except the essentials & two figures left out.3 I do not think you will dislike it, & I am glad to have done it. # I shall be sending you Bains’ Emotions & Will.4 It is an old, but not at all superannuated book, easy, & containing so much in such clear form that I earnestly advise you to tackle its 600 odd pages rather than waste yrself on smaller books. It contains no physiological details, but a coherent theory of mind, sensation & emotion. Which you ought to grasp. Do you know that Miss Burne Murdoch is with the Infant Dunham for the winter, & that the Childers5 have taken a house on the Arno after all? I now play every day for ¾ of an hour to Mamma; it is a little bit of a corvée,6 as she wants always the same things over again; but I am delighted. It is so pathetic: fancy Rose7 tells me that one day lately when E. & I were both out, she went to the piano & began playing herself. She is very happy & read lots of review articles & has taken to believing in Mr Chamberlain & I fear in Crispi!!8 I hope to hear from you, dear. 12 Sept. I must send this off now, without delaying any longer. Have you heard, by way of further happy arrangements, that a Miss Garrard’s9 poor father has at last died, she is going to set up house with Flora’s little niece, thus (I hope) putting an end to one of Flora’s innumerable vicarious troubles. The Besnards have written to ask about pensions. They are coming in October. How much I wish you would be here! How I wish you would write: Little Vernon I am sick of the north, & long for you & mosquitoes but you won’t! Did I tell you that Miss Cassatt (I am now going to turn to her catalogue preface)10 speaks of Besnard as if he were the lowest of smudgers, without talent or a conscience? What a pity artists are such venomous bats; and she, mind, is a specially nice woman. [Experts’] criticism has done mischief by making painters also think only of the original addition which a man makes to the theory or practice of art. “Renoir has seen it long before a thousand times better” – Miss C. [Cassatt] 321

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kept furiously repeating. Yes; but what did he do with the it? The two pictures, the aniline rainbow children at the piano & the hydrangia [hydrangea] & Lafrance rose woman by the fire hand opposite each other! Yet these people can’t see. Goodbye very dear Kit. Do write to me. 1 2 3

4

Addressed: Miss Anstruther-Thomson / 12 Chelsea Gardens / London SW. “Limbo” in Limbo and Other Essays (1897). “The Princess Penelope”: unfinished novel manuscript by Vernon Lee based on Annie Meyer and Alice Callander’s romantic friendship. About Mrs Meyer’s sudden death and about Callander’s commissioning Lee to write a memoir, which she later retracted on grounds of privacy, see Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. I. Lee defines “Limbo” as “the Kingdom of What-MightHave-Been.” Lee’s unfinished manuscript is at the Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College. Alexander Bain, The Emotions and the Will (London: John W. Parker and Sons, 1859). In 1841 he was appointed assistant professor of moral philosophy. He lost the position, and failed to get another in Scotland, on account of his profession of Rationalism. Coming to London in 1848, he was in succession a civil servant, lecturer at Bedford College, and examiner to the London University. His Senses and the Intellect (I855) and The Emotions and the Will (1859) established his reputation, and in 1860 he was, in spite of strong religious opposition, appointed professor of logic and English at Aberdeen University. He retired in 1880, and was elected Lord Rector in 1882 and 1884. He, at his own expense, established the review Mind (1876), and he worked devotedly in the cause of education. Although Bain is often described as a Positivist, he was merely in general agreement with Comte in rejecting metaphysics and theology. (Joseph McCabe, “Bain, Alexander, Psychologist,” A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists (London: Watts & Co., 1920)

5 6 7 8

The Childers were longtime friends of Lee’s, and she often travelled with them across the continent. In French in the text: drudgery. Lee’s mistake, meaning Mabel, not Rose, who died in June 1894. Sicilian-born Italian statesman Francesco Crispi (1818–1901). With Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi, he contributed to the republican movement and the unification of Italy. In August 1887, he succeeded Depretis and held the positions of minister of the interior and minister of foreign affairs, as well as that of premier. His government was toppled in 1891, but in December 1893, Crispi regained his post as premier. While he greatly improved the economic situation, he became increasingly repressive, brutally crushing a socialist uprising in Sicily. He also embarked upon a disastrous foreign policy. He organised Italy’s few possessions on the Red Sea into Erithrea, and then he tried to turn Italy into a colonial power in Africa. The disastrous Italian defeat at the Battle of Adwa in 1896 at the hands of Emperor Menilek II of Ethiopia earned Crispi a vote of censure that caused him to resign in March of the same year. (“Francesco Crispi,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 30 September 2022, www.britannica.com/biography/Francesco-Crispi)

9

Violet Florence “Flo” Garrard (1865–1938), studied art at the Slade in Oxford and in London, then at the Académie Julian in Paris. As a child she had been an inmate of the house in Southsea where the Kipling children lodged while their parents were in India. In 1880 or thereabouts they encountered

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 each other in London and renewed their friendship. By 1890 she was sharing a studio with a Miss Mabel Price in Paris, where Kipling visited them. (M.C. Rintoul, Dictionary of Real People and Places in Fiction [London: Routledge, 1993], p. 437) “[Kipling’s] beloved Florence and her friend Mabel Price, transformed into Maisy and the strangely nameless red-haired girl in The Light That Failed ” (Rose, Oscar Wilde’s Elegant Republic, p. 36). “Flo Garrard and Mabel Price lived off the avenue d’Iéna, where they arranged amateur theatricals with Nigel Playfair, who went on to an acting career” (Rose, Oscar Wilde’s Elegant Republic, p. 449, footnote 291). According to Robert Hampson, “This became the basis for his novel The Light That Failed” (“Kipling and the Fin-de-Siècle,” in H.J. Booth [ed.], The Cambridge Companion to Rudyard Kipling [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011], pp. 7–22). She has been identified rightly or wrongly, with Violet Florence Garrard . . . by Professor [Charles] Carrington (R.E. Harbord [ed.] The Readers’ Guide to Rudyard Kipling’s Works, Sect. V, London: Kipling Society, p. 2157). The identification is commonly accepted. (Rintoul, Dictionary of Real People and Places in Fiction, p. 437) 10

The friendship between Lee and Cassatt was short-lived. She [Cassatt] avoided the circles that Edith Wharton, Henry James, and her houseguest of 1895, Vernon Lee, moved in when they came to Paris, although she knew all of them. . . . Her animosity toward this crowd extended now to Lee, for whom she had developed an intense dislike. She wrote again to Havemeyer, “Someone has just sent me Mrs . . . Whartons book on Italian Gardens dedicated to Vernon Lee, the latter once stayed with me, she never will again.” (Frederick A. Sweet, Miss Mary Cassatt: Impressionist from Pennsylvania [Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966], quoted in Nancy Mowll Mathews, Mary Cassatt: A Life [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998], pp. 218–251, https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300164886-008) As she notes in her Commonplace Book XII (16 February–10 December 1895), Lee did write a fifteen-page preface for Cassatt in five days, from 11 to 16 August 1895: “Preface for Miss Cassatt. 5 days. Finished 16 August. 15 ps.” This preface for Mary Cassatt’s catalogue has not been found.

51. Lady Louisa Wolseley September 16, 1895 Florence, Italy Hove Central Library, Wolseley Collection IL PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE. Sept. 16, 1895 My dear Lady Wolseley, May I congratulate you very sincerely – the m as I congratulate our country at the same time – for on the appointment of Lord Wolseley as Commander in Chief – 323

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Congratulations – in which, although there enters a great amount of grateful affection there is, coming as they do from an unwarlike Radical, the greatest sincerity. I am glad also of an opportunity for thanking you for a very kind letter which you wrote me from a German Bath & which I received as I was leaving England. I am now in Italy till next July. At which I wish there were a chance of your beginning your new reign by a preliminary holiday, & coming to Florence. Remember me, please, to the new Commander in Chief, & give my love to Frances, if she remembers me. I am, dear Lady Wolseley, Yrs always & gratefully V. Paget 52. Matilda Paget September 21, 1895 Igno, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Igno. Friday. Dearest Mamma – It was not at all too hot in the train. We stayed a nearly three hours at Pistoia, walking about: it is full of beautiful buildings, & very picturesque. We got here just before dinner. Mr French seems better. It is cooler than in Florence, & there is a large bassin1or fountain playing constantly under my window, which is delightful. I am most anxious about the tricycle. So much love V. 1 In French in the text: pool.

53. Matilda Paget September 26, 1895 Igno, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 26 Sept Igno Thursday morning Dearest Mamma – I was so grieved to hear of the difficulty of with the tricycle, but consoled by E’s [Eugene’s] second note. Miss Price says that until until one is quite expert with such a machine, one puts an amount of force which increases the weight instead of diminishing it. Certainly I have seen tricycles going up real hills. We are leaving 324

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this; but find that in order to drive to Seravezza, we must sleep at Lucca tonight. So we shall be at Seravezza tomorrow morning. So much love. V. 54. Matilda Paget September 27, 1895 Seravezza, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Casa Henraux. Seravezza. Friday. Dearest Mamma – We had a delightful half day at Lucca yesterday, & this morning drove here through most beautiful country. This is close to Viareggio. I am very anxious to climb & see some of the high quarries, as I was unable to do so in winter. I wish I knew how you are! I think we shall stay 3 or 4 days. So much love. V. 55. Matilda Paget September 29, 1895 Seravezza, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Seravezza Sunday, Dearest Mamma – Yrs & E’s [Eugene’s] card have just come. Emily [Sargent] has written to me, saying her mother is delighted with yr letter & going to write. I am surprised the tricycle had no multiples already. Of course it will be necessary. I telegraphed yesterday for my I frace own & Miss P.’s. [Price’s] riding garments (breeches only) as I find we can go up to the quarries on mules. This place is so delightful, & I find I can walk so well (tho’ I was unwell at Igno) that I want to stay a few days more. The [Henraux’s] servants are most kind to us. So much love, Yrs V. 56. Clementina Anstruther-Thomson September 29, 1895 Seravezza, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE Seravezza. Sept. 29 Dearest Kit.

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I must write to you from here. Oh why aren’t you here? It is so beautiful & delightful, & seems strange without you. Do you remember, it was raining & cold, the hill sides dripping, the mountains smoking, & I was very seedy & had to sit shivering over the fire reading Anna Karenine while you trudged in the mud; & instead now, it is lovely bright autumn weather, & I am so well, and can climb & spend hours on the hills, & yet, my dear, so things are so and I am so, that the very dear Serravezza will always be that wet wintry one. We came here the day before yesterday, after half a day at Lucca, whence we drove across most beautiful hills & through those great olive woods which you know from Viareggio; we must take that drive, Kit, it is so lovely. Yesterday we were driven that drive up the valley, do you remember, but instead of stopping short, we clambered up to a high, high village, with a dear little delicate marble church, full of charming carving & stuccoing, with the great peaks, & the big wooded mountains with thin diagonal bars of blue shadow, all round. And towards evening we walked for 3 hours in ^about^ that first quarry – you know opposite where the valley opens. You know I had never seen one near; I had no idea how wonderfully lovely it was: they had been blasting, and great blocks & gash were hanging in that sort of circular, amphitheatre quarry place cut out among the olives – immense blocks & gashes which, against that wonderful almost vermilion earth (I tried drawing with some, it is pure sanguine) looked glacier blue, brilliant, like folded brilliant satin – What a thing Besnard would make of such a place! I must try & get him here1 – They were ending their week’s work shooting blocks down into the valley; I had no notion how fine it was! One minimal block took twelve men to launch it on its wooden cradle & its wooden rollers or rails – You know what I mean – such splendid looking men – It started from under a trellise [trellis] by a sort of handsaw which looked like the things on Egyptian monuments. They got it up with levers & a sort of screw lever like a big cross bow, & ran it along those rollers, like a boat being run int from a boat house. Then they one by one removed the wood, except one beam which raised it, and with a touch, it seemed, of levers & hands, sent it over the brink – a run about a hundred & twenty feet, I should think. It ran slowly down, the hill shaking under us, and as it ran, it gathered what seemed a cloud of incandescent smoke out of ‸off‸ the red dusty ground, which continued rising, like as if an immense cannon had been fired, even after it had landed. The men seemed so interested & delighted. They say no two blocks are alike, which accounts for the interest. We came back through the olive woods above that great quarry, and missing our way in the dusk (the great storm clouds piled over the sea) we also came down a marble shoot, raising scarlet clouds of dust. This morning I have been sitting (I sent Mabel on heaven knows where, & she isn’t back yet) on a high hill above Serravezza – very high – There are olives like the San Remo ones, with grass below, & rocks covered with every delicious smelling thing – the unknown grey stuff like myrrh, wild rosemary, mint, myrtle – great ilexes & little wild firs grow in the clefts. We sat for a long time by a sheep house stacked full of delicious fodder of heathers & grass & delicate ferns, the sheep wa tinkling about & the great marsh, the sun, in wide 326

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bands across the pine ridges – I am sending you some of the stuff that grew there. I find I walk so much better than I guessed, & it is such a pleasure. It seems a sort of revelation – Kit dear, if I continue getting stronger, we must do this sort of thing – si wandering & sitting about for hours. It seems really life – one hasn’t that wretched feeling of hurry, of never getting enough, of a drive or the usual sort of walk. One really gets close to things, lives in them, not merely in front. I find Mabel very delightful as a companion – she seems to live it so; talking little & never about anything except the place one is in & the things one is looking at: one gets a sort of concentrated, rarefied ‸subtle‸ impression of really having lived those places & home. I have got to love her: she is, when you let hers her be herself, & don’t make her argue, like a delightful ghost by one’s side – unreal, looking like Burne Jones’s drawing of Paderewski,2 with aslant eyes which seem to see deeper into nature; silent but very gentle in her ghostlike, flitting sort of way, very right for the woods & hills, & seeming to take h her life from them & not from her our surroundings. We shall stay here three or four days more, as I want to see the quarries, & things to Florence by Pisa. Flora is coming to fetch Mabel away on the 7th. I know I shall not miss her any more than one misses the breeze or clouds when one goes into a house, but I dr dread the moment of doing so. I am very happy to have got to know her like this. I should like you to do so too. It would be nice if we could sometimes go together to places where one can ramble. I fancy we (I say we because I’m determined to learn) will find bicycles liberate one & enable one to see things more, Kit. I hope so, for I feel that, if I can get well, this sort of life is the most real one. By the way, Eugene is having difficulties with the tricycle. It refuses to go uphill, & he is going to have a multiplier. There seems a fatality about everything he tries: as if he inspired it with a belief that it won’t do what it ought to. Dearest Kit goodbye. Thanks for all yr [your] goodness to me in this house. Write to me at home. Yrs V. 1 See Mary Berenson’s diaries about Besnard’s stay in Florence in 1895 (Villi I Tiatti Archive, https:// itatti.harvard.edu/blog/blog/mary-berenson-diaries; Berenson Digital Archive, www.mmgorman.it/ bernard-berenson/). 2 Ignacy Jan Paderewski by Edward Burne-Jones, 1892. Drawing from the National Museum in Warsaw.

57. Matilda Paget October 14, 1895 Ravenna, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Ravenna – Monday – 327

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Dearest Mamma – We got here late last night but not too tired, and the delightful homme d’affaires1 of the Ps [Pasolinis] met us at the station. Maria is coming this evening; but I do not know what she intends doing, whether staying here or going back to Mte Ricco, when Miss P. [Price] and Flora [Priestley] are gone. Please address here. It is lovely but cold. I am delighted to see these lovely churches again. So much love. V. 1 In French in the text: business manager.

58. Matilda Paget October 26, 1895 Monte Ricco, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Mte Ricco Sat. Dearest Mamma – What will you think of my changing plans! Thanks to the indecision of my kind host, I missed the Faenza train today; then trying to go by Bologna, found that owing to the train tether being 25 late, I shd have missed the express to Florence, I have had to arrive in Florence at midnight after hours at Bologna. Back here M. [Maria] insists on taking me back for 2 days to Ravenna. D. Laura M. [Donna Laura Minghetti] is with her, & I think I am useful. So till Tuesday. Beg E. [Eugene] to invite to tea 4.30 Wed. to meet the Besnards, Angelica [Rasponi], Placci, Costelloe, Berenson, Mme [some words may be missing here] 59. Marie Belloc Lowndes November 4, 1895 Florence, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College Nov. 4 IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE My dear Mrs Lowndes, I feel horribly loth to trouble you, but I can’t help doing so, as you never gave me the address of your young publishing friend. The “copy” is now in the hands of my friend Mrs W. Moffatt, at 29 Cyril Mansions, Battersea Park.

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Would you let him know this, & ask him to enter into direct communication with my friend? The present name of the book is Limbo.1 I write no more for fear of boring you even worse. I do hope you are all right again. Yrs sincerely V. Paget

1 Limbo and Other Essays (1897). The volume includes Lee’s essays “Limbo,” “In Praise of Old Houses,” “The Lie of the Land,” “Tuscan Midsummer Magic,” “Of Modern Travelling,” “Old Italian Gardens,” and “About Leisure.”

60. Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) November 7, 1895 Florence, Italy Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Paris arrange trains IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE 7 Nov. 1895 My dear Mme Blanc, I must thank you at once for all I owe you in the matter of this translation.1 I have only just seen it; and it seems to me admirable. I feel rather a beast when I suspect that this admirable quality is owing to an amount of trouble on your part which, although I it it could not have been bestowed on a more grateful author, might have been bestowed on a much better piece of work. Oh dear Mme Blanc, that Orpheus is very thin! The people are dolls, and the arguments . . . so inconclusive & superficial. Does this mean that I shall do something better? I hope so. I am publishing in the Contemporary my lectures on Art & Life; I shall make a book of them.2 I think I see art & this in general now in a wider way. Perhaps that is delusion. But let me hope that some day I may do something in this line, for I see I shall never be able to write about human beings, whom I love so much. I am publishing a new book on Renaissance things: you shall have it. It contains a few pages on dear Mr Pater.3 But they are such as only Readers of his work would understand. My mother is so wonderfully well; I hope this winter will pass all right! And my brother, altho’ not in the least a companion, is getting very good & easy to live with. So I am happy. I hope you may be, dear friend. I don’t know whether Kit will be passing through Paris; I hope so, for I want news of you.

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My dear friend Css Pasolini, the Donna Maria of Orpheus,4 is anxious to know you; and also a most fascinating Neapolitan siren of 65, Donna Laura Minghetti, widow of the famous minister. If they come to Paris, may I give them letters? You will love Mme Pasolini. Goodbye very dear Mme Blanc. And thanks. Yrs affly Vernon5 1 Mme Blanc’s translation of Lee’s “Orpheus in Rome” as “Orphée à Rome,” just published in the Revue des Deux Mondes (no. 132 [1 November 1895]). 2 Lee published a series of essays, some of them drawn from her lectures, in The Contemporary Review: “Emerson, Transcendentalists and Utilitarians,” 67 (March 1895), pp. 345–420; “The Love of the Saints,” (April 1895), pp. 499–514; “On Literary Construction,” (September 1895), pp. 404– 419; “Life and Art I,” (May 1896), pp. 658–669; “Art and Life II,” (June 1896), pp. 813–824; “Art and Life III,” (July 1896), pp. 59–72; “A Patron of Leisure,” (December 1896), pp. 853–860. Afterwards, she collected some of them in The Handling of Words and Other Studies in Literary Psychology (London: John Lane, 1923). 3 Renaissance Fancies and Studies (1895). Includes “The Love of the Saints,” “The Imaginative Art of the Renaissance,” “Tuscan Sculpture,” “A Seeker of Pagan Perfection: Being the Life of Domenico Neroni, Pictor Sacrilegus.” The closing essay, “Valedictory,” is a tribute to her friend Walter Pater. 4 Donna Maria is one of the characters in the dialogue “Orpheus in Rome,” modeled after Maria Pasolini. 5 This is the first time she’s signing a letter to Mme Blanc “Vernon.”

61. Marie Belloc Lowndes December 31, 1895 Florence, Italy Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College [This letter is not extant] Dec. 31. 1895 IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE My dear Miss Belloc. You have been so awfully kind to about my Italian draughtsman, that I venture to draw another cheque on yr extraordinary good nature. I shall venture to introduce to you a friend of mine, Miss Violet Garrard,1 whom, if it be in any way possible, I implore you to introduce to Mr Stead2 or anyone else who is likelit likely to want a clever illustrator for newspapers. This poor girl, after having been brought up in rather absurd plenty – my dear she had hunters when she was seventeen – is suddenly left almost penniless. With but 330

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with much talent, a first rate Paris studio education & a tremendously plucky character. Of course I know that every man, woman & child wants to do illustrations for papers; but Miss Garrard has the advantage of being an athletic & horsey lady, who could be used where duffers would probably [This letter is not extant] 1 About Violet Florence “Flo” Garrard, see Lee to Matilda Paget, September 12, 1895. 2 William T. Stead, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette.

1896 1. Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) January 28, [1896] Florence, Italy Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Paris [The original of this letter is in French] IL PALMERINO – MAIANO FLORENCE Ce 28 Janvier Chère Madame Blanc – Je vous écris de la chambre de ma mère, dangereusement malades [malade] des suites d’une influenza qu’elle s’était ot obstinée à négliger. En l’écoutant respirer avec angoisse et déchirement, je songe à vous, chère amie, qui avez perdu tant en perdant votre mère. La mienne est très âgée, et depuis quelques années tout à fait en dehors de ma vie; tout en gardant beaucoup d’activité physique, elle s’est a peu à peu rétrécie, pour ainsi dire, dans tant [tant dans] la partie morale, au point que ‸dans‸ son état actuel ‸il‸ ne semble que le y avoir que de nouveau que la souffrance et la misère physique. Il s’agit de l’affaiblissement alarmant de l’action du cœur, faisant craindre de dangereuses syncopes. Chère amie, j’ai la tête un peu à l’envers; mais je ne sais de quel Il vous me parlez dans votre billet. Aurais-je perdu une lettre de vous, ou n’est-ce que le fil du fil de mes idée [idées] qui me manque ? Mme Gaston Paris a été très gentille. J’espère avoir bientôt Kit qui me sera d’un grand soulagement. Ma mère n’avait jamais été sérieusement malade, et je me sens d’une incapacité désespérante auprès d’elle. J’ai un bon médecin et une garde malade expérimentée; mais il est triste de devoir toujours regarder faire. Adieu chère amie, pardonnez-moi de vous envoyer un tel brouillon. Votre dévouée V. Paget 331

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2. [Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) January 28, [1896] Florence, Italy Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Paris [The original of this letter is in French] IL PALMERINO – MAIANO FLORENCE Today January 28 Dear Madame Blanc – I am writing from my mother’s bedroom, she is dangerously ill from the sequels of an influenza she had decided to ignore.1 Listening to her breathing is agonising and heartbreaking and I think of you, dear friend, who lost so much when you lost your mother.2 Mine is very old, and she has been quite out of my life for several years now; while remaining very active physically, she has gradually shrunk, as it were, morally too, so much so that in her present condition there doesn’t seem to be anything new except physical suffering and pain. The matter with her is an alarming weakening of her heart’s activity, which threatens her with dangerous cardiac arrests. Dear friend, my head is inside out; I do not know who is He you mention in your note. Have I lost a letter from you, or am I merely losing the thread of my thoughts ? Mme Gaston Paris has been very kind. I hope to have Kit soon here with me, she will be such a relief. My mother had never been seriously ill before, and I feel so desperately useless at her bedside. I have a good doctor and a well trained nursemaid; but it is sad to do nothing but watch other people taking care of her. Farewell dear friend, forgive me for sending you such a scrawl. Your devoted V. Paget 1 Matilda Paget died a few weeks later, on 8 March 1896. 2 Olympe Adrienne Bentzon, Countess d’Aure (1820–1887) died 14 October 1887. Mme Th. Bentzon crut que tout sombrait avec elle. La comtesse d’Aure s’était faite la gardienne de la santé, du travail et de l’indépendance de sa fille. . . . Cette mort ne fut donc pas seulement, pour elle, la perte d’une personne excellente qui lui avait consacré sa vie, c’était la perte de sa protectrice et de son soutien. (Gabrielle Delzant, Parays, 14 Octobre 1887, in Alidor Delzant, Lettres, souvenirs de Gabrielle Delzant, pp. 229–230)

3. Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) February 3, 1896 Florence, Italy Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Paris 332

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IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE 3 Feb. 1896 My dear Madame Blanc, I have not thanked you before for your delightful book on America,1 which has given me (& my brother) so many interesting ideas, because, this year again, my mother has been at death’s door. She has again recovered in a miraculous way. But for a half hour Kit Thomson & I thought every moment she she would draw her last breath: absolute weakness of the heart, which intermitted continually. It was very curious. The only thing which seemed to tie her to to life was being read to. At that worst moment Kit read to her Stevenson’s “Thrawn Janet” – and, as she listened, she seemed to take a grasp on life. You see I have a right to be a Writer! And indeed all I have ever learned of writing has been from my mother, who has never written a word! Now my mother seems stronger than ever, able to walk, drive out & go up & down stairs.2 But the illness & convalescence have been long, & I am only now beginning to be a little free. I hope so much M. Edouard3 got well quickly of [A page may be missing here or has been misplaced] Pater & Stevenson, & no one on the Continent suspects it. Where did d’Annunzio ever write a page as writing as fine as the description of the Villa & tombs & temper in Marius or the scenes by the sea shore in Catriona? Dear Madame Blanc, I must break off. I only wanted to tell you how much Kit & I hope that 1896 will be kind to you! & to assure you of my constant affection. Yrs V. Paget 1 2 3

The Condition of Women in the United States (1895); Les Américaines chez elles (1896). Matilda Paget died on March 8, 1896, a month after this letter. Edouard Blanc, Marie-Thérèse Blanc’s son.

4. Lady Susan Elizabeth (Mary) Constantine Jeune1 February 21, 1896 Florence, Italy Yale University, Beinecke Library II PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE. Feb 21 1896 333

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Dear Lady Jeune, Many thanks for giving me the pleasure of meeting yr friends. I found two villas for them to look at, but they have taken one at Pratolino, seven miles off in the Apennine. I am sorry, for I fear I shall not have many opportunities of seeing them. I have been trying to teach some clever young people how to write, that is to say how to put together books or articles a trifle less difficult to read than they wd otherwise have been; and I have been so struck, only my attention was drawn to it, with the marvellous lack of school – of all that can be taught & learned among living English writers, that I feel greatly tempted, when I come to London, to give a series of lectures on the art (or rather the craft) of writing. As I am totally in the dark where, when or by what means one does give lectures, I want you to be so very kind as to give me advice on the subject.2 As everybody who does anything comes to yr house, you are the very person to enlighten my ignorance. I wonder whether my new book Althea has come in yr way? There is a dialogue on the economic question which, I think, would chime in very well with the views expressed in yr papers on luxury in dress.3 I was sorry not to be able to come to you last summer. Will you give me a chance next summer? I hope to be in London by June. Believe me, dear Lady Jeune, Yrs truly V. Paget 1 See List of Correspondents: Susan Elizabeth “Mary” Constantine Jeune, afterwards Lady St Helier. 2 Lee had been lecturing, however, since 1894. She may have wanted to ask Lady Jeune’s assistance in order to expand the range of her audience. 3 See Lee’s “The Value of the Individual” and “About the Social Question” in Althea (1894). About Lady Jeune’s articles on luxury: in The Review of Reviews (7 [January to June 1893], p. 161), editor W.T. Stead reviews two articles on dress by Lady Jeune, “In Defence of the Crinoline” (from The New Review) and “Extravagance in Dress,” (from The National Review), both published in February 1893.

5. Harry Brewster1 May 3, 1896 Florence, Italy Brewster Archive (private), Florence2 II PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE May 3. Will you some day give me yr Anarchy & Law?3 334

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Dear Mr Brewster, I want to give myself the pleasure of at least imagining the delightful talks there could be between you & my friend Miss Eugenie Sellers.4 Will you call on her at the Hotel Beau Site, in the Quartiere Ludovisi? She is not only a genial archaeologist, in both senses of the word, but one of the most delightful of cosmopolitans. She is besides in the company of two members of an interesting little colony we have at Fiesole, Mrs Costelloe, a very delightful woman though a Kunstforscher,5 and her teacher Mr Berenson, who is really a very gifted man in many ways.6 I am reading with great pleasure & interest your Statuette.7 I think we should agree in the balance we should draw of the very ingenious & very delicately felt views of the opposite parties. But of this I hope we may talk on yr way through Florence. Believe me, dear Mr Brewster Yrs truly V. Paget 1 See List of Correspondents: Harry Brewster. For discussion of this correspondence, see Alison Brown, “Vernon Lee, Brewster and the Berensons in the 1890s,” (Dalla stanza accanto: Vernon Lee e Firenze settant’ anni dopo, Atti del convegno internazionale di studi Firenze 26–28, maggio 2005 [Articles from Vernon Lee Conference in Florence, Italy, 26–28 May 2005]). 2 Addressed: Henry Brewster / Palazzo Marignoli al Corso / Rome (forwarded) Naples. 3 Harry Brewster, The Theories of Anarchy and Law: A Midnight Debate (1887). 4 See Lee to Matilda Paget, 13 August 1885, ftn. l. See Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Vol. II 5 In German in the text: Kunstforscher, which literally means “investigator or researcher of art”; also a translation for “art historian.” 6 See List of Correspondents: Bernard Berenson; Mary (Costelloe) Berenson. 7 Harry Brewster, The Statuette and the Background (London: Williams and Norgate, 1896). The book is a series of letters between friends, about aesthetics, similar in this way to Lee’s dialogues.

6. Marie-Thérèse Blanc (“Th. Bentzon”) May 17, 1896 Florence, Italy Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Paris IL PALMERINO MAIANO FLORENCE May 17 1896 Very dear Mme Blanc, I need not tell you why I have not thanked you earlier for your very dear words of sympathy.1 You feel know the absolute lassitude of body & soul which follows a catastrophe; the sort of physical aching when months – almost years of watching & fearing & hoping have suddenly come to an end. 335

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Since then, I have had a lot of business, for my brother very happily decided to leave me & set up house alone in Florence. This means business, & reorganising this house, which I keep, with half the servants & half the money; not an easy thing. I hope in a few months to arrange my affairs in such a way as to be tolerably well off; and to be able to do offer my friends hospitality in this house, which is now so very much too big for me. Dear Kit will spend 6 months with me always, & will be joint mistress of this little establishment. Dear Mme Blanc, may we not hope to have you here next winter? I feel now that I have nothing remaining to me except my friends (since my long connexion with my brother has been completely broken by him)2 and I want so much, so very much, to tighten my hold over my friends. So please think about coming. Kit is going to England in a few days, & will pass thro’ Paris if possible.3 I shall stay here till the end of July ‸June‸, & not go to England till August. I want very much to see my French friends in the interval; but I fear you will have left Paris. I shall stay there in the second half of July with Mary Darmesteter. I am also going to stay in Brittany with my cousins & in Touraine. Please let me know your plans, & how you are, dear Mme Blanc. Will you, if you see Mme Foulon de Vaux, give her my love, & tell her to have patience if I do not write yet? My time goes in teaching servants & making inventories! Dear Mme Blanc, believe in the affection of Yr Vernon 1 After the death of Lee’s mother, Matilda Paget, on 8 March 1896. 2 Lee and Eugene Lee-Hamilton’s estrangement after Matilda’s death. “J’ignorais que la rupture avec votre frère fût venue ajouter tant de tracas variés à des peines déjà si lourdes” (Marie-Thérèse Blanc to Vernon Lee, Paraÿs, France, 27 May [1896], Vernon Lee Archive, Somerville College, Oxford). 3 But they will not meet, as Marie-Thérèse Blanc was staying at the Delzants’ for a few days: “j’ai le regret de penser que je ne verrai pas à son passage votre chère Kit!” (Marie-Thérèse Blanc to Vernon Lee, Paraÿs, France, May 27, [1896]. Vernon Lee Archive, Somerville College, Oxford).

7. Carlo Placci June n.d., [1896] Florence, Italy Biblioteca Marucelliana, Carteggio Placci, 050–055 3 OR 4 SUFFOLK STREET PALL MALL‸ II PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE Thursday.

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Dear Carlo, I shall be quite alone tomorrow, & shan’t go out until 4. Will you come to lunch? You needn’t [word illegible due to faded ink] Dear Carlo, we are all at sixes & sevens; & so, if you please, we won’t discuss the rights & wrongs, but talk, as good friends should, of our work & our difficulties, not of our views. I too believe in dignity. But, after 40, one doesn’t perhaps think of it in the same way. All I know is that the worst, most lamentable mistakes of my youth came from a misconception of it. Now, it seems to me that dignity is exactly commensurate with one’s earnest efforts to – well, in a way to be religious. It has nothing to do with chastising others for not thinking enough of one or not having the right manner; in fact, nothing is further from the intimate quality of dignity, which takes cognisance of one’s relation with the great things of the universe, than one’s relations with individuals, save where justice & kindness are concerned. Some day when you have lived, & suffered, &, God help me, struggled as much as I, you will learn that the “Salt of the Earth”1 of which Christ spoke were neither novelists nor critics nor any of the [word illegible due to faded ink] wh. the world measures, but steadfast men, bent upon reducing their activity to a higher law; and that there is no exaggeration in considering a kindly, an eminently truthful (for you are that) creature as Salt of the Earth, even if he do not believe in his works. I am fond of you because you are good, kind, faithful, because hitherto you have been eminently impersonal, without thoughts of what, alas, you now call dignity. That is what I meant by Salt of the Earth. I don’t believe in you as a writer; I have never hidden that. So don’t accuse me of fulsomeness. Dear Carlo, I say this because I don’t [want] to discuss this matter, convinced as I am that you will not see it as I do. We shall do no good in talking it over. I am sure that the i genius of kindness & truth which you share with some of your nation, will make you someday see this matter differently. I cannot discuss it with you. But let us meet as dear friends – as and take me as a friend who[,] however rough, has your real dignity, your seriousness, steadfastness, un-personality, very much [at] heart. Yours V. P. 1 See “The Use of the Soul” in Althea (1894). Althea (Clementina Anstruther-Thomson), Baldwin (Lee) and Philip (Carlo Placci) have a discussion about the soul, and Baldwin explains to a wide-eyed Philip what the Salt of the Earth means and why it is “in danger of losing some of its savour” (pp. 150–151): “‘You are speaking then,’ asked Philip, a vague hope coming into his eyes, ‘of what Christ called the Salt of the Earth?’ “‘The Salt of the Earth, which now, even more than then, is in danger of losing some of its savour. Sometimes the danger comes from cowardice or languor, from lack of intellectual keenness or intellectual training, from absolute ignorance of any life save the one which circumstances have chosen for one. Sometimes it is the fear of hurting the feelings, damaging the material prospects, of mother or child, wife

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 or father; sometimes the desire to abide by the letter of some law, which prevents these people being as large-minded and large hearted, as disinterested, truthful, and intrepid as their own nature warrants. There are many such. Nay, we are all of us, more or less, in one thing or another, among them: wretched creatures trying, if not in this way, then in that, to serve both God and Mammon, wasting our better possibilities in lazy or ignorant conformity to the world’s vain and stupid ways, in timid acceptance of the world’s obsolete and mischievous notions.’ “‘Are you not rather exaggerating the usefulness of the salt, and the loss of its savour ? Is it, after all, too bad a thing, as you say, to remain among the worldly ?’ asked Philip, his vague disgusted belief in the brutality of all human affairs uniting with his student’s ignorance of the ways of the servants of Mammon. “‘That is the use of the Salt of the Earth, to prevent the corruption of so much that is good.’ “‘Then, if I understand you,’ continued Philip, as they went towards home through the rustling avenue of lime trees, ‘the exceptional creatures who, through grace of character and circumstance, are already able to live as much in their sympathies and thoughts as in their vanities and wants, these spiritual people, are, so to speak, rehearsing what may become the great reality for all the world, the life which makes other lives easier and sweeter, instead of more difficult and bitter ?’”

8. Carlo Placci June 2, [1896] Bologna, Italy Biblioteca Marucelliana, Carteggio Placci, 056–061 Villa Minghetti Bologna June 2 Dear Charly – Don’t you see that it is all this tendency to discuss how you estimate yrself [yourself], how I estimate you, how others estimate you, how you estimate my esteem as manifested by my words, how you think I estimate you as seen throu’ [through] your words – don’t you understand, dear old friend, that it is this which – since we are talking of estimating – I venture to esteem as utter childish waste of time & energy, in two people past the mezzo del camin,1 & who have liked each other, helped each other, trusted in one another for nearly fifteen years? What does it matter what I think of you or you of me or somebody of anybody, whether too much or too little (& Good God what creature can ever talk about himself or anyone else?) so long as we feel in a kindly, helpful way one to another, are willing to unite in anything useful we may do & to disregard personal trifles? Dear Carlo, if you thought my words rude – & perhaps they were – had I not thought your action rude, very rude & disrespectful as from man to woman & guest to hostess; & if there has been a double rudeness, Good Lord, ought it not to have been forgotten – a balance struck on both accounts & the page thrown into the waste paper basket – at once? It was because I foresaw such a wretched discussion as this that I purposely avoided speaking of our ridiculous brouille.2 And, dear Carlo, after all these years, is ut is it necessary to explain to me that you don’t think I think you a great writer? 338

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I explained the Salt of the Earth because you taxed it as exaggeration; but as I do believe you to be most honest, not-vain & loving, I cannot see what could be lacking in your fitness to be Salt of the Earth. At all events, I happen to consider you as such – But O my dear friend, remember that “the salt loseth his savour” (etset.) [etc.] and surely vain personal discussions are a process of thus unsalting the salt. Do leave all this alone. I repeat, some day we shall quite naturally understand one another. But discussing at present is useless; Life is passing, every day quicker, everyday removing one of our friends. For Heavens[’] sake let us spend our time in kindly objective thought & effort, don’t let us, ephemeral creatures, discuss our ephemeral self. This [Thus] prays your weary but affte friend V.P. 1 In Italian in the text: The middle of the way, i.e. mid-life; from Dante’s opening line to Canto I of Inferno, La Divina Commedia: “Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, mi ritrovai per una selva oscura . . .” 2 In French in the text: quarrel.

9. Carlo Placci June 2, [1896] Bologna, Italy Biblioteca Marucelliana, Carteggio Placci, 062–067 IL PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE June 2. My dear Charlie, Nonsense. You, with the naïvest thoughtlessness (“cannot disappoint B & Piccollelies1 as they want so much etc.”) – and total lack of decent manners chucked the plans you yrself had made & confirmed at the 11th hour, putting me in the odious position of explaining to my guest that you great folk had found something to better to do than to meet her; you hadn’t even the decency to come when I pointed out that the plans were yours & must be abided by & that such behaviour wasn’t business (perhaps you don’t understand what that means? It means busin in not I playing the game according to the rules); you haven’t the sense to make an apology afterwards; & now, forsooth, you think it necessary to inform me that you are depriving me of your society because you – you – not I – you were angry! Do you know, I am sick of your childishness, surely because it implies such selfish, thoughtless touchiness & such a want of the substratum of friendship there ought to be between us. And only two years ago you were angry also. How often are you going to be angry, I wonder? 339

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I purposely let the matter drop though; had I acted as for yr benefit, I ought to have asked you for an excuse; but I didn’t want to be bored with a quarrel. I sent you no message yesterday. Calling on your mother I asked after you casually in order to mark that I was not angry. And all I get is yr beastly boude’ing2 childish card – on a visiting card too, because he has visiting cards for offending acquaintances, to whom he neither begins nor signs his notes! Look here. I am very fond of you. I am not angry & I refuse to quarrel with dear friends even when they behave like cross babies (let alone their sans gêne3 about engagements!) – Do not write: it bores me. Come & see me & put an end to this unkind tomfooling. Yr affte old friend V.P. 1 Bernard Berenson and the Piccolellis. Ottavio de Piccolellis (1861–1928), renowned Neapolitan cello master, began his musical studies at the Naples Conservatory of Music, and graduated after his family moved to Florence. He then attended musical specialisation courses at the Brussels Conservatory, where he was awarded a first prize and the Prix d’Excellence, allowing him to perform in London as a soloist and with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Until the early 1890s, he toured in Germany, the United States and Italy. In 1891, he married Alice Fabbri (1869–1939) and settled down in Florence, founding the Cherubini Symphonic Society in 1896, dedicated to the diffusion of the symphonic and chamber repertoire there. His home was a kind of cenacle for artists such as Odoardo Borrani, Telemaco Signorini, Silvestro Lega, Giuseppe Abbati and Giovanni Fattori to discuss art and perform chamber music. He was a great collector of musical instruments and paintings and authored a number of pieces for cello and two unpublished quartets. Ottavio’s daughter, Elisabetta de Piccolellis (1892–?) married Carlo Placci’s nephew Lucien Henraux (1877–1926). See Nicky Mariano’s recollections: “Elisabetta de Piccolellis, the widow of Placci’s nephew Lucien Henraux, returned to her hometown Florence. . . . Her father, Marchese Ottavio de Piccolellis, [was] a highly gifted musician and conductor” (Nicky Mariano, Forty Years with Berenson [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966], p. 215). 2 Sulking; Lee’s bilingual neologism from the French verb bouder, “to sulk.” 3 In French in the text: shamelessness.

10. Carlo Placci June 16, 1896 Florence, Italy Biblioteca Marucelliana, Carteggio Placci, 068–072 II PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE My dear Carlo, I am leaving on Saturday. I don’t suppose you will come to say goodbye, nor loosen me off (perhaps that wd be less awkward, Bol. 2.20 tr. [Bologna 2.20 340

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train]) because you have probably got stuck in the bog of ill will & false pride you unaccountably slipped into; you probably are feel the situation has got the better of you. If this be the case, I want you to know that however long you choose to keep up this sort of thing, I shall always receive you as a friend when you shake off the shyness or dignity or whatever it is. Few things seem to me more indecorous, almost indecent, than quarrelling with a friend for a personal motive; &, even if I were less fond of you & less grateful to you for xxx, less persuaded that (even when you temporarily “lose yr savour” –) you are of the Salt of the Earth, I should absolutely refuse to quarrel with you. I have never taken people lightly; and the events of the last two years have made life seem too good for ch too serious for unnecessary separations & estrangements.1 So, if you cannot do your friend’s duty by me this year – and it is a year when friends might have been more kindly & profitably employed towards me than in quarrelling –, if you do not come this year, remember I shall be willing & ready to see you next. All this seems rather sadly ridiculous, in the presence of poor Nencioni’s probable end.2 A good summer to you, dear Carlo. Yrs affty V. Paget 1 Lee lost both her parents and separated from her half-brother in the course of two years. 2 Enrico Nencioni died 25 August 1896 in Ardenza, two months after this.

11. Lady Charlotte Julia Blennerhassett1 July 11, 1896 Heidelberg, Germany Cambridge University Archives II PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE Heidelberg July 11. 1896 Dear Lady Blennerhassett, I have not yet had the pleasure of seeing yr friends, as our visits crossed, but I hope to find Frau Thorn at home today, as soon as a storm ceases raging about us. I must not delay any longer thanking you very warmly for your friendship towards me, which not only gave me the keenest personal pleasure (I shall always gratefully remember the delightful supper we had) but which has prevented my feeling that Germany is a closed country to me, & that I, alas, who was brought up in it as a child, have returned merely as a wretched tourist. But even tourists sometimes have amours de voyage;2 I have had one with your exquisite town 341

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of Augsburg. The 24 hours of utter solitude I spent there were warm with that communion with the past which passes all human friendship. Still, the Past is not enough, it is not good for one exclusively; so you must allow me, if I return to Germany, to cultivate the living friend you have permitted me to find in you. You have by this time, I hope, received the 18th Century in Italy & Mme d’Albany.3 Please remember that the first was finished before its author was 23, and forgive its childishness & exaggerations. I hope also you have had a satisfactory letter from Carlo Placci. I have also asked another great friend of mine, Baroness Elena French (nata4 Cini) who represents the other view of d’Annunzio to write to you.5 She will perhaps be too shy; but I have asked her at least to send you newspaper cuttings. The person who could have lent you the Elegie Roman6 is unluckily from home. Hugues Le Roux7 has been written to, & as soon as I get to my French friends (I am going to meet my old friend Mme Darmesteter whose husband was director of the R. [Revue de Paris]) I will find out about Rod.8 Tell me if I can serve you in any other way.9 I shall be, most of July at the Commanderie de Ballan. Indre et Loire.10After that London address is c/o Miss Anstruther-Thomson 12 Chelsea Gardens SW. I hope much to have a few days at Munich in the autumn. I have had the great pleasure here of being met by a long & very good review of my new Renaissance book by Carl Neumann.11 Believe me, dear Lady Blennerhassett Yrs sincerely V. Paget

1 2 3 4 5

6 7 8

See List of Correspondents: Lady Charlotte Julia Blennerhassett. In French in the text. This is a familiar phrase, but could also be a reference to Arthur Hugh Clough’s novel in verse, Amours de Voyage (1858). Lee’s Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy (London: W. Satchell, 1880); rpt. 2nd ed. (1887), and The Countess of Albany (London: W.H. Allen, 1884). In Italian in the text: née, or born. Baroness Elena French Cini and Gabriele d’Annunzio. Elena French was a lifelong friend of Lee’s, and d’Annunzio was a poet, journalist and dramatist. He was among Vernon Lee’s circle of acquaintances through his friendships with Enrico Nencioni and Carlo Placci. Goethe’s “Roman Elegies,” in Die Horen (Tubingen: Cotta Publishing, 1795). French writer Robert Charles Henri Le Roux [“Hugues Le Roux”] (1860–1925) had just published Mémoires d’un enfant (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1896). He was also a contributor to Le Figaro. Swiss writer Louis Edouard Rod’s (1857–1910) latest book, Dernier refuge (Paris: Perrin & Co., 1896). Rod went to Paris in 1884, and edited La Revue Contemporaine. He returned to Switzerland two years later, and from 1886 to 1893 he was a professor at Geneva University. From that time until his death he worked in France, and was regarded as one of the most distinguished novelists and men of letters. He wore the Cross of the Legion of Honour and the decoration of the Crown of Italy. Until about 1889, when he wrote a pamphlet in defence of Zola’s Assommoir, he belonged to the Naturalist and more boldly Rationalistic school. He then fell under the influence of Tolstoi, and joined what he called the Intuitionist school. His Sens de la vie (1888), which won the Prix de Jouy of the Academy, shows that he remained thoroughly sceptical. The section entitled “Religion” closes with a drastic piece of prose poetry which he calls an “Atheistic Hymn to the Lord.” His Idées morales du temps présent (1891) is also interesting in this respect.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 (Joseph McCabe, “Rod, Professor Louis Edouard, Swiss novelist,” A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists [London: Watts & Co., 1920], p. 671) 9

Blennerhassett may have requested information about some political issue for one of her books or articles. 10 Home of her friend Marguerite Brandon-Salvador and her sister Gabrielle Alphen-Salvador. 11 Dr Carl Neumann, University of Heidelberg, wrote a long review of Vernon Lee’s 1893 Renaissance Fancies and Studies, in the Deutsche Litteraturzeitung 4 Juli 1896. Nr. 27, pp. 856–859.

12. Countess Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi August 31, [1896] London, England Gabinetto Vieusseux Biblioteca IL PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE 12 Chelsea Gardens London SW 31 Aug. Dearest Angel – I learn this moment from Maria the terrible time you have had with poor Rezia.1 How glad I am to know it only when she is quite on the road to recovery. I should have hated to know your [you are] in such trouble at this great distance off. And I who had heard, only a week ago, that Geppe was in London! Give him my love: Maria tells me he has been so admirable. My dear, I feel positively ashamed to intrude such a matter as that of the enclosed upon you. But I know how foolishly these poor people believe in private recommendations and as it probably seems a matter of life & death to them, I enclose you Carlo’s letter, merely that I may assure him that I have done so.2 I hope Carlo’s family has not done anything disgraceful, I am longing to return to Italy; but I am afraid of being seized by a fit of sadness if I arrived at the Palmerino alone at the turn of the year, which is always so terribly sad in itself. So I shall probably stay till early in October and then come to Italy, to Maria’s family, until Kit can join me. Kit is well – or rather not really well – over worked I think & nervous. I wonder whether her very strange nature may not have been thrown a little off its balance by Colonel Thomson’s going to stay with Olive, and that terrible story being brought back to her mind? How little we know of the people we love best. What walls, what gulfs! All the more how we must cherish the open roads, the causeways made between us poor creatures by common abstract interests. Goodbye my dear. You know how very deeply I love you. My love to Rezia. Yrs Vernon 343

SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 1 Rasponi’s daughter, Lucrezia (1879–1971), must have been ill. 2 See Lee to Rasponi, early September 1896, later. This may involve a servant who had fallen into disfavour with Rasponi.

13. Countess Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi [early September 1896]1 London, England Gabinetto Vieusseux Biblioteca IL PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE 12 Chelsea Gardens London SW Dear Angel, I feel I am doing a quite unjustifiable, and at the same time quite useless thing in writing to you, particularly at this moment, about a matter of which I know positively nothing. Of course I know you & your husband are bound to be perfectly right in whatever you do with Carlo Rovai’s family. But the poor devil writes to me in such a heartbroken way to speak to you that I cannot refuse. “Potesse Pregono tanto” he says “se potesse parlare con la Signora Contessa Rasponi se potesse raffermarli per quest anno. Farebbe una gran carità perchè si trovano per la strada per motivo del soldato che è sotto le armi-” [“That she is able They much pray” he says “that she is able to speak with the Lady Countess Rasponi if she is able to re-engage them for this year. It would be a great act of charity because they find themselves in the street by reason of the soldier who is under arms-”] Dearest Angel, do not be angry with me. I think you, in my place, would do what I am doing. Don’t answer me, please. I should hate you to snub me, & in a way, I feel I deserve it. Your afft friend Vernon I Suoi auguri ‸mi sono‸ preziosi e carissimi; serbi sua benevolenza a me che già le debbo a chi ‸me che‸ le deve ‸debbo‸ la vita2 Sua Rebier [Your greetings are precious and very dear to me; may you keep your benevolence for me who already owes you for one who me who owe owes you his life Your Rebier] 1 It is uncertain if this letter was included with the 31 August letter to Rasponi or sent to her shortly after.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 2 From “I Suoi” to “la vita” is in another hand and perhaps written by the servant in question or someone associated with the situation. However, the name “Rebier” is not the name “Carlo Rovai” that Lee gives earlier.

14. Clementina Anstruther-Thomson September 12, 1896 Exmouth, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College II PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE 8 Louisa Terrace Exmouth Friday Sept. 11 Dearest Kit – I am so glad you have been having such a good time, & hope you may still be at Lyndhurst. You have struck me, since my coming over, as looking so fearfully fagged & jumpy, & I know I have only contributed to encrease [increase] it. I expect that you have been working too hard at it – at least too hard for the life you lead in London, the distances, people, & the very fatiguing fact of having meals out of doors – for I am sure one oughtn’t, if possible, to stir immediately before or immediately after eating. And I think I was the last not pound, but hundredweight on your back. I can say this frankly now that I find we can soon go away together, & that I therefore feel less defrauded at being in England & away from you. I shall take my rooms, if I can get them, at Sloane Gardens H. [House], but don’t know exactly when I shall be back. I want to go for a day or two on the moors next week, & Miss Price has asked me to go to Gloucester. The small pox is quite over, but for extra precaution I shall get vaccinated im before starting. If however you don’t want me to go, I won’t, dearest. Dearest Kit, if I thought I was any sort of pleasure to you at present, I would return tomorrow. This is a very dear little place; you probably know lots like it on this coast, if not this particular one. There is a beautiful aestuary [estuary], up what the tide comes like chariots & chariots of sea horses against a low bar of pink sand & grey grass – and there are, higher up, dear little 17th & 18th century Treasure-Islandish sea faring villages with fine bow windowed gabled houses, white washed & tarred, built by the companions of Drake & Raleigh – and there are wine coloured rocks with thick almost southern vegetation – as a fact that dreary Cornish coast is more beautiful, but this is gentle & liveable. Mabel’s aunt is a dear little old lady, & the house very [well] swept & garnished, like the Paters’ used to be.

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Mabel [Price] is wonderfully well again & cheerful & normal, and very kind, in a distant impersonal way (I am rather caput1 & sorry for myself today, & in the midst of her silent, evasive friendliness, am just longing to have you to hold onto my wrist & make me feel strong & say a kind silly word, dearest Kit) – She is very wonderful, physically & intellectually, radiant like a sort of archaic Apollo with red hair & inscrutable amused Aegina smile; and certainly the radiance is steadier, not in flashes as formerly, but a kind of constant high up lucidness. She knows a lot about architecture, wants some day to write about it historically. I wish you would speak with her about it, it wd refresh you after this idiocy. We will go up to Oxford in October, if you will, & see the drawings with her. Yes, let it be the 16th if possible, & do let us see Amiens & Reims. & S. Ambrogio. I will leave you at Venice, do the Papafavas & Maria & if need be go on to the Palmerino. I shan’t mind being there alone when I know you are coming. I am putting to [the] rights for you. Oh dearest Kit, how much, much, much, I long to begin life afresh with you! I shall be here till Wednesday in order to be vaccinated. I have bicycled a good deal – Mabel rides very high, like you, & is clamorous I should. But the pin! When will it be ready. I dare not raise the present one, it is already unsafe. I have been atrociously lame again, but I have spent a fortune on new strong boots, & hope to get cured. It [is] certainly bicycling that does it, probably because I am forced to grip the pedals too hard from being behind them. The Tremaynes were such dears.2 They wanted me to return, or to go to Heligan with them. Mrs Tremayne, though she seems silly, isn’t at all, & she appreciates you & thinks you so beautiful.3 That of course is a great pleasure for me. She very [much] wants you to come to Sydenham one day, & you must, it is the loveliest old Elizabethan house, most shapely & at the same time intime,4 a sort of English Igno. Write to me, please, dear. I feel a tiny bit lonesome with this dear Aegina woman. Yr. V. 1 In German in the text: exhausted. 2 The Tremaynes were a wealthy family of gardeners and politicians in Cornwall and Devon. Their seat was at Heligan, near St Austell in Cornwall. 3 The Honorable Mary Charlotte Martha Vivian (1842–1917) was the daughter of Charles Crepsigny Vivian, 2nd Baron Vivian (1808–1886), and his second wife, Mary Elizabeth Panton (1824–1907). In 1860, she married John Tremayne (1825–1901) of Heligan, Mevagissy, Cornwall. The couple had two sons, Perys Edmund Tremayne (1866–1867) and John Claude Lewis Tremayne (1869–?), and three daughters, Onera Mary Georgina Tremayne (1861–?), Harriet Maud Tremayne (1863–?) and Grace Damaris Tremayne (1864–?). 4 In French in the text: intimate, private.

15. Clementina Anstruther-Thomson September 15, 1896 Exmouth, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College 346

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II PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE Exmouth 15. Sept. Very dear Kit. Many many thanks for your letter. I We have given up Dartmoor, as the weather continues atrocious, & I am going tomorrow with Mabel [Price] to Gloucester. I have been vaccinated this minute – a much more disagreeable operation than having one’s knuckle set or, for the matter of it, broken – and I am sitting drying by a window! If you want more of France remember it would be perfectly convenient to stop at Laon, where there is a splendid cathedral, besides Amiens & Reims, & I should like it. It isn’t off the road at all. But I do insist on Amiens & Reims. I am so awfully relieved at yr having seen the Dr and at what he told you. Only why go on overdoing yourself – you will find out someday that one can’t work with one’s head & see people & bustle about & rough it all at the same time. I have quite decided to keep everything like work always for the Palmerino, & I hope the day may come when you will learn to do so also. One must have a very easy train-train1 for any work requiring consecutive thought, at least after one’s first youth & strength argone are gone I have taken 2 rooms at Sl. G. H. [Sloane Gardens House]. Can you lend me linen or hadn’t I better ask Mrs Moffatt? I think she would like to do it. Could you some day go & have a look at the bed-room – I have not seen it, & should much like it to be cleared out; & cleaned if at all musty like thos those of last year. I expect I shall be back Wednesday or Thursday week. Perhaps you will like to know how I have arranged my money. I find it isn’t worth while buying much annuity at my age; I have am buying annuities with £ 6000 and in buying debentures with 10.000. This will give me about £ 650 a year, quite an indecent amount for a woman alone, but I won’t suppose being alone, dearest. At present I am very well off, having £ 500 in the bank till the April dividends; so you must let me come & sit on my carpet & fly off to see Amiens & Reims & St Marks; & get any books you may need. Mabel is very anxious to take to architectural drawings. She is coming out to us in the spring, & will remain with me when, I fear, you will want to be gone in the summer; & she is going to travel about to Lucca, Pistoia etc to draw instead of going to Paris. I was much touched, & very much surprised, when she said last night, with considerable faultering [faltering], that she is unhappy about her relations with you; that she wants so much to know you really, but is so afraid of approaching you. I want more than anything that you should be friends, dearest Kit. She is very dear to me, & very important in my life, in fact, there’s no doubt about it after all these years second only to you; and I do want her t to be a part of my life not round the corner of my whole life, which is with you, but included in it. Do you remember how delightful it was at the Palmerino, before the awful 347

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débâcle2 of poor Rose’s death,3 when she used to read Plato to us & we all went out into the woods together? She & you breathe the same air, which is even more important than caring for the same things, & it would be a enriching both your lives, let alone infinitely enriching mine, if you would know & care for each other. And she knows you so much better than you guess, through Flora, who has been telling her all you were to her last winter. So, dearest, do your best. They will be back at Oxford the 1st October. Let us go together before we leave for Italy & see those drawings with her, & try, dearest Kit, to open yourself to her. She is such a wonderful[,] brave, radiant sort of creature, so different from even the best of your, & my friends, so much more like certain works of art or strains of music, that one ought to be thankful to have her. Will you, dearest Kit, do your best? You have always, after all, cared for my friends, Angel [Angelica], Elena, the Ranee, even Evelyn & Amy Turton, & this woman is, after all, the person I care for most in the world besides you. Will you write to me at Cathedral Gardens, Gloucester? Dear. I stupidly understood that you had ordered the bicycle pin from Brown. Will you do so, please, as I know I shall be subject to lameness until I can get straight above my pedals. Yrs V. I am glad about Brabazon.4 Has my bath turned up from the stores, I wonder? 1 2 3 4

In French in the text: humdrum daily life. In French in the text. Rose Price, Mabel’s sister. English painter Hercules Brabazon Brabazon (born Hercules Brabazon Sharpe) (1821–1906).

16. Eugene Lee-Hamilton September 28, [1896] London, England Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College1 Telling E.L.H. about my will, 18962 II PALMERINO, MAIANO FLORENCE Sloane Gardens House Chelsea SW Sept. 28.

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My dear Eugene, I hope you have seen about poor Neve.3 Please use my cart freely. Tell Carlo to buy it, if you want it. In a week or so I shall send it to Bozzi for the usual overhauling. Before leaving London I intend making my will, and I shall ask you to be my chief executor, naming Bella Duffy, if she consent, for the other. I think it was very clearly understood between us, (indeed you broached the idea) when first you spoke of buying an annuity, that each of us renounces absolutely to any succession in case of the death of the other. If you do not, within a certain number of years, marry, (which if you found a woman of your own age & with sufficient independent fortune, would seem to me a very excellent thing) – I hope you will sink all your capital in annuities so as to get every advantage & pleasure which money can give. For my part, you know I am buying only a small annuity at present, as the terms at my age are too poor. Whether I shall not be obliged to buy more later on, owing to the absolute cessation of all writing for money (a book of mine has just been offered in vain to 7 publishers!)4 I can’t say. But the residue of my capital, whatever it be, I intend as you suggested, leaving to Kit, who is extremely likely to be a pauper when her father dies, & who, after my death, must certainly have from me the equivalent at least of the little advantages I can give her during my life. Kit has no idea of this and I am leaving her under the impression that my residue capital will go to you, as she would otherwise leave me no peace till I had rescinded the will I am going to make. So please, do not let her know. Any legacies I may be able or wish to make, I shall make a private list of, to be deducted out of whatever I leave, & these you will, with Kit’s concurrency kindly carry out.5 I feel sure, dear Eugene, that you will concur in my views on the subject. I finally think of buying 3 annuities with £2000 each from three first rate companies. I really cannot afford the Govt rate, for I do not wish to speculate with my investments. And from all I can see the Palmerino, which is the only thing I care for in the world, will cost me, if I am in the least to make it useful to others, from £400 to £450. Now I want to give up writing for money, altogether. So I must have £600 at least a year. You see, I know from what Maria’s house has been to her in Rome, that the Palmerino might represent great pleasure & profit to people poorer than myself. That is one reason why I cling to it. Here is Mrs Moffatt so I must end Yrs, dearest Eugene V. I go to Oxford the 7th or 8th 1 Addressed: Italy / E. Lee Hamilton Esq / 6 Piazza d’Azeglio / Firenze. 2 Lee wrote this on the envelope some years after the letter’s original composition, another instance of her cataloguing her letters.

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 3 Lee’s dog. 4 Possibly Limbo and Other Essays (1897). It was eventually published by Grant Richards, a publisher she had never worked with before, in 1897. 5 As Lee survived both her brother and Kit, she later named Irene Forbes-Mosse, then in later years, her friend Irene Cooper-Willis, as her executor.

17. Gaetano Salvemini November 23, 1896 Florence, Italy Fondazione Rossi Salvemini Carte di Gaetano Salvemini, Scatola 85, 2 sheets [The original of this letter is in Italian] 23 Nov. 1896 IL PALMERINO, MAIANO, FLORENCE Caro Salvemini, Dalla nostra cara Signora Elena sento la notizia del suo così vantaggioso ed onorevole cambiamento di posto – vantaggioso poi se Le faciliterà il matrimonio così desiderato, ed ai suoi amici di Firenze, i quali profitteranno, lo spero, dalla prossimità di Faenza. Ho da chiederle un favore. Una mia amica, seriamente socialista e membro della Fabian Society, avrebbe bisogno, per alcune sue conferenze, di libri italiani sullae condizionei agrarie della Lombardìa, e sullae condizioni industriali della Sicilia. Essa si è già valsa del libro del Colajanni. La stessa amica mi chiede: titoli di alcuni libri italiani- se ve ne sono – originali (cioè non compilazioni) sull sul socialismo. Crede Lei che bisognerebbe indicarle quella del Loria? Io non l’ho letto. Mi risponda con una cartolina, chè so che il tempo Le è prezioso. Addio e conti sull’amicizia di sua dev. V. Paget 18. Gaetano Salvemini1 November 23, 1896 Florence, Italy Fondazione Rossi Salvemini Carte di Gaetano Salvemini, Scatola 85, 2 sheets [The original of this letter is in Italian] Nov. 23, 1896 IL PALMERINO, MAIANO, FLORENCE

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Dear Salvemini, From our dear friend Mrs. Elena2 I have heard the news of your quite advantageous and honourable change of position3 – all the more advantageous as it will make your much desired wedding easier for you, and your friends in Florence will also profit, I hope, from the proximity of Faenza. I have to ask a favour of you. A friend of mine, a serious socialist and member of the Fabian Society,4 would need, for some of her conferences, some Italian books on the agrarian conditions in Lombardy, and on the industrial conditions in Sicily. She has already made use of the book by Colajanni.5 The same friend asks from me: titles of some Italian books – if there are any – originals (that is, not compilations) on on socialism. Do you believe that it would be necessary to indicate to her the one by Loria?6 I have not read it. Reply to me by postcard, because I know that your time is precious. Farewell and rely on the friendship of your devoted,V. Paget 1 Lee’s friend, the Italian historian, socialist and editor of I’Unità, Gaetano Salvemini (1873–1957), was to become a prominent scholar and political figure, a leader of the Italian anti-fascist resistance. His first wife, whom he met in 1891 and married in 1897, was Maria Minervini. I am completely happy with my Maria. If you only knew how my character is now changed! Before getting married, I did nothing but torment myself: am I ready to start a family? What if I were fired by the government for my socialist convictions? . . . Now all those thoughts have been quieted, I no longer think of the future, or rather, I think of it with certainty. I feel strong; I am sure to win at life. Maria is so good, and she loves me so much, that it would be impossible for things to go badly. As far as socialism is concerned, as a married man, I am more of a socialist than I have ever been. I told myself: why have you had to wait so long to find this happiness? Because you were penniless, and if you hadn’t found someone to help you out of your troubles, you’d still be sighing at the moon. . . . So, down with society, and long live love! (Letter from Gaetano Salvemini to Carlo Placci, Faenza (Italy), cited in Filomena Fantarella, The Family of Gaetano Salvemini under Fascism: The Inimical Son, foreword David I. Kertzer [London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022], p. 13) Unfortunately, on 28 December 1908, a terrible earthquake razed the entire city of Messina to the ground in thirty-seven seconds, and Salvemini lost his wife, his five children and his sister Carmilla. He later married Fernande Dauriac (1873–1954), formerly Mrs Julien Luchaire. See List of Correspondents: Gaetano Salvemini. 2 Elena Cini French (1844–1922) philanthropist, president of the Associazione Donne Italiane di Firenze (Association of Italian Women of Florence). 3 In 1896, Salvemini, twenty-three years old at that time, published his doctoral dissertation (University of Florence), La dignità cavalleresca nel commune di Firenze, and was named Regent for the Chair of History and Geography from 1896 to 1898 at the Liceo Torricelli in Faenza. Salvemini had first moved from his native town, Molfetta, in Southern Italy, to Florence in 1890, barely sixteen years old, and encountered many difficulties. In 1894, the stress and pressure of studying led to a nervous breakdown so serious, Salvemini considered suicide. He studied with great sacrifice, both mental and physical, to retain his academic bursary and thanks to these

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SELECTED LETTERS OF VERNON LEE – VOLUME III 1890–1896 many deprivations, he was able to put together some money to send to his family in Molfetta. Such painful self-sacrifice did not go unnoticed by his professor Pasquale Villari, who was quite moved by it. Concerned with Salvemini’s health, Villari decided to refer him to his friend, Carlo Placci . . . ten years his senior. . . . Despite their political differences (he was conservative, Salvemini, a socialist), he became fond of the young Apulian, soon became his friend, and introduced him to all the most prestigious and cultured salons of Florence. It was thanks to Placci that Salvemini met the Art Historian Bernard Berenson, who became a dear friend he often visited in his villa in Fiesole. There, Salvemini met and befriended a number of women who later helped him with his troubles, including the writer Violet Paget and the noblewoman Elena French. French was particularly attached to Salvemini and offered her villa near Pistoia for his holiday use. Salvemini never forgot the help and attentions of Mrs French; in fact, as Enzo Tagliacozzo notes in his biographical essay, he kept a photo of her on his desk at Harvard. (Fantarella, The Family of Gaetano Salvemini under Fascism, pp. 12–13) 4 Salvemini joined the Italian Socialist Party in 1897. The Fabian Society was a socialist association in London in 1893 and 1894, centered around intellectuals such as George Bernard Shaw, Sidney Webb and H.G. Wells. Inspired by the temporising military tactics of Fabio Massimo, the Fabian Society was close to the elaborations of continental reformist socialism but also attached itself to a few treatises on English political thought, likewise having traces of Marxist influence. See G.B. Shaw [ed.], Fabian Essays in Socialism [London: Fabian Society, 1889]. A champion of clearly defined programs and a series of gradual reforms, the society was present at the Congresses of the Trade Unions and contributed to the formation of the Labour Party (1900), of which it constituted the largest center of strategic elaboration. Renewed in 1938 by B. Webb and G.D.H. Cole, yet having a limited number of members (a high of 8400 in 1946), it strongly nourished political debate and influenced public opinion. 5 Napoleone Colajanni (1847–1921) was a writer and radical deputy. In 1892, he made public the results of the scandal of the Bank of Rome. 6 Achille Loria (1857–1943) was an economist and senator of the kingdom. Lee probably is referring to the volume Problemi sociali contemporanei (Milano: 1896), translated into French in 1897.

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REFERENCES

Works by Vernon Lee Books Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy (London: W. Satchell, 1880). Tuscan Fairy Tales: Taken Down from the Mouths of the People (London: W. Satchell, 1880). Belcaro: Being Essays on Sundry Aesthetical Questions (London: W. Satchell, 1881). Ottilie: An Eighteenth-Century Idyl (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1883). The Prince of the Hundred Soups: A Puppet-Show in Narrative (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1883). The Countess of Albany, Eminent Women Series (London: W.H. Allen, 1884); rpt. Famous Women Series (Boston: Robert Bros., 1884), rpt. 1885; rpt. Famous Women Series, 2nd ed. (Boston: Robert Bros., 1888), rpt. 1897; rpt. Eminent Women Series, 2nd ed. (London and New York: John Lane, 1909); rpt. Eminent Women Series, 2nd ed., with portraits (London and New York: John Lane, 1910). Euphorion: Being Studies of the Antique and the Medieval in the Renaissance, 2 vols. (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1884); rpt. 2nd and revised ed. (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1885); rpt. 3rd ed. (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1895); rpt. 3rd ed. (Boston: Robert Bros., n.d.); rpt. 4th ed. (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1899). Miss Brown: A Novel, 3 vols. (Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood and Sons, 1884); rpt. (New York: Harper and Bros., 1885); rpt. (New York: George Munro, 1885); rpt. preface by P. Bourget, trans. R. de Cerisy [M. Savary] (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1889). Baldwin: Being Dialogues on Views and Aspirations (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1886); rpt. (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1886). Ottilie: An Eighteenth-Century Idyl (New York: Harper Bros., 1886); rpt. (New York: George Munro, 1886). A Phantom Lover: A Fantastic Story (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood and Sons, 1886; rpt. (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1886); rpt. (New York: J.W. Lovell, 1886). The Prince of the Hundred Soups: A Puppet-Show in Narrative (New York: J.W. Lovell, 1886). Belcaro: Being Essays on Sundry Aesthetical Questions: A New Edition (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1887). Juvenilia: Being a Second Series of Essays on Sundry Aesthetical Questions, 2 vols. (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1887). Includes: “The Immortality of the Maestro Galuppi,”

353

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“Perigot: Random Notes on the Dramatic and Undramatic,” “Lombard Colour Study,” “Don Juan (con Stenterello),” “Signor Curiazio: A Musical Medley,” “Christkindchen,” “Epilogue.” ———, 1 vol. (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1887). With an introduction: “Juvenilia: To my Friend Carlo Placci.” Contents are significantly augmented: “The Lake of Charlemagne: An Apology of Association,” “Botticelli at the Villa Lemmi,” “Rococo,” “Prosaic Music and Poetic Music,” “Apollo the Fiddler: A Chapter on Artistic Anachronism,” “The Immortality of the Maestro Galuppi,” “Perigot: Random Notes on the Dramatic and Undramatic,” “Lombard Colour Study; I. The Last Monk at the Certosa of Pavia, II. The Cage Tower at Piacenza,” “Don Juan (con Stenterello),” “Signor Curiazio: A Musical Medley,” “Christkindchen,” “Epilogue,” which is dated New Year’s Day 1887. Hauntings: Fantastic Stories (London: Heinemann, 1890); rpt. (London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1906). Vanitas: Polite Stories (London: Heinemann, 1892); rpt. (New York: Lovell Coryell, ca. 1892). Althea: A Second Book of Dialogues on Aspirations and Duties (London: Osgood McIlvaine, 1894). Au Pays de Vénus, preface by F. Masson, trans. R. de Cerisy [M. Savary] (Paris: Dentu, 1894). Contents: Frédéric Masson, “Préface”; Première partie: Hallucinations: “Dionea,” “Voix maudite,” “Oke de Okehurst,” “Amour qui dure” [sic]; Deuxième partie: Varia: “Le Prince aux Cent soupes,” “La Nativité,” “Ottilie.” Renaissance Studies and Fancies: Being a Sequel to Euphorion (London: Smith, Elder, 1895). Includes: “The Love of the Saints,” “The Imaginative Art of the Renaissance,” “Tuscan Sculpture,” “A Seeker of Pagan Perfection: Being the Life of Domenico Neroni, Pictor Sacrilegus.” The closing essay, “Valedictory,” is a tribute to her friend Walter Pater. Limbo and Other Essays (London: Grant Richards, 1897). Includes: “Limbo,” “In Praise of Old Houses,” “The Lie of the Land,” “Tuscan Midsummer Magic,” “Of Modern Travelling,” “Old Italian Gardens,” “About Leisure.” Genius Loci: Notes on Places (London: Grant Richards, 1899). Ariadne in Mantua: A Romance in Five Acts (Oxford: B.H. Blackwell, 1903); rpt. (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Company, 1903), rpt. 1907. Hortus Vitae: Essays on the Gardening of Life (London: John Lane, 1903). Includes: “Receiving Letters.” Penelope Brandling: A Tale of the Welsh Coast in the Eighteenth Century (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1903). Pope Jacynth and Other Fantastic Stories (London: Grant Richards, 1904). The Enchanted Woods: And Other Essays on the Genius of Places (London: John Lane, 1905). Sister Benvenuta and the Christ Child: An Eighteenth-Century Legend (New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1905); rpt. (London: Grant Richards, 1906). Genius Loci and the Enchanted Woods (Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz, 1906). Pope Jacynth: To Which Is Added “Ariadne in Mantua”: and Other Romantic Inventions (Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz, 1906). The Spirit of Rome: Leaves from a Diary (London: John Lane, 1906). Hortus Vitae and Limbo [rpt. of Limbo and Other Essays] (Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz, 1907). Gospels of Anarchy and Other Contemporary Studies (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1908). Includes: “Rosny and the French Analytical Novel.”

354

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Limbo and Other Essays: To Which Is Now Added Ariadne in Mantua (London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1908). The Sentimental Traveller: Notes on Places (London: John Lane, 1908). Laurus Nobilis: Chapters on Art and Life (London: John Lane, 1909). Beauty and Ugliness and Other Studies in Psychological Aesthetics, with C. AnstrutherThomson (London: John Lane, 1912). Vital Lies: Studies of Some Varieties of Recent Obscurantism (London: John Lane, 1912). The Beautiful: An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1913). Louis Norbert: A Two-Fold Romance (London: John Lane, 1914). The Tower of Mirrors and Other Essays on the Spirit of Places (London: John Lane, 1914). The Ballet of the Nation: A Present-Day Morality (London: Chatto and Windus, 1915). Satan the Waster: A Philanthropic War Trilogy (London: John Lane, 1920). The Handling of Words and Other Studies in Literary Psychology (London: John Lane, 1923) ———, R.A. Gettman (ed.) (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1968). ———, D. Seed (ed.) (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1993). Art and Man: Essays and Fragments, by C. Anstruther-Thomson, V. Lee (ed.), introduction by V. Lee (London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1924). The Golden Keys and Other Essays on the Genius Loci (London: John Lane, 1925). Proteus or the Future of Intelligence (London: Kegan Paul, 1925). The Poet’s Eye: Notes on Some Differences between Verse and Prose (London: The Hogarth Press, 1926). For Maurice: Five Unlikely Stories (London: John Lane, 1927). Music and Its Lovers: An Empirical Study of Emotional and Imaginative Responses to Music (London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1932). Limbo and Other Essays, ed. P. Willett, Victorian Women Writers Project (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998).

Texts published in periodicals cited in this volume “Biographie d’une monnaie” [Biography of a Coin] (as “Les aventures d’une pièce de monnaie” [The Adventures of a Coin]), La Famille (May, June and July 1870). “Tuscan Peasant Plays,” Fraser’s Magazine (February 1877). “Taine’s Philosophy of Art,” British Quarterly Review, 68 (July 1, 1878), pp. 1–30. “Comparative Aesthetics,” The Contemporary Review, 38 (August 1880), pp. 300–326. “A Culture Ghost, or, Winthrop’s Adventure,” Fraser’s Magazine (January 1881), pp. 1–29; rpt. in Appleton’s Journal, no. 10 (1881), pp. 330–345; rpt. (as “Winthrop’s Adventure: An Eighteenth-Century Singer”) in For Maurice (1927). “Book review of Carducci, Lettere disperse e inedite di Pietro Metastasio (1883),” The Academy, 1 (17 November 1883). “Symmetria Prisca,” in Euphorion (1884). “‘Ward on Belief’: A Review of The Wish to Believe by W. Ward,” The Academy, 27 (1885). “Pastorellerie Aristocratiche,” Fanfulla della Domenica (16 August 1885), p. 1. “A Dialogue on Novels,” The Contemporary Review, 48 (September 1885), pp. 378–401; rpt. in Living Age, 167 (1885); rpt. in The Eclectic Magazine, 105, no. 42 (1885); rpt. in Baldwin (1886)

355

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“The Value of the Ideal: A Conversation,” The National Review, 6 (September 1885), pp. 26–42; rpt. (as “On Novels”) in Baldwin (1886). “The Hidden Door,” in H. Norman (ed.), Unwin’s Annual, 1887: The Witching Time: Tales for the Year’s End (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1886). A Phantom Lover: A Fantastic Story [rpt. of “Oke of Okehurst: A Phantom Lover”] (London: Blackwood, 1886); rpt. in Hauntings (1890). “A Review of Sir Percival by J. Henry Shorthouse,” The Academy, 30 (1886). “Two Books on Social Evolution,” The Academy, 732 (15 May 1886), pp. 340–41. “Perigot: Random Notes on the Dramatic and Undramatic,” The Contemporary Review, 50 (August 1886), pp. 239–252; rpt. in The Eclectic Magazine, 107, no. 44 (1886); rpt. in Juvenilia, Volume 2 (1887). “Amour Dure: Passages from the Diary of Spiridion Trepka,” Murray’s Magazine, 1 (1887), pp. 49–65, 188–199. “Christkindchen,” in Juvenilia (1887). “Don Juan (con Stenterello),” in Juvenilia (1887). “Morison’s Service of Man,” The Academy, 31 (1887). “A Review of Sir Percival by J. Henry Shorthouse,” The Academy, 31 (1887), p. 86. “Festivities in Florence, 1887,” The Athenaeum, 1 (January–June 1887). “The Imaginative Art of the Renaissance,” The Contemporary Review, 51 (April 1887), pp. 507–30; rpt. in Living Age, 173 (1887); rpt. in Renaissance Fancies and Studies (1895) “Voix Maudite,” illust. A. Lynch, Les Lettres et les Arts, Revue Illustrée (VII), 2, no. 3 (1 August 1887), pp. 125–153. “A Letter by Vernon Lee,” from “Fine Passages in Verse and Prose: Selected by Living Men of Letters (No. II),” Fortnightly Review, 48, no. 42 (September 1887). “Le Coffre de mariage,” with illust., Les Lettres et les Arts, tome 2 (1 April 1888). “Dionéa,” trans. C. Bernard-Derosne [C. de Cendrey] Les Lettres et les Arts, tome 4 (1 December 1888). “The Value of the Individual,” The Contemporary Review, 53 (January 1888), pp. 94–115; rpt. in The Eclectic Magazine, 110, no. 47 (1888); rpt. in Althea (1894). “Amour dure” (as “Fragments du Journal du Professeur Spiridion Trepka,” trans. R. de Cerisy [M. Savary], Revue Bleue, Revue Politique et Littéraire, no. 7 (18 August 1888), pp. 208–216, and no. 8 (25 August 1888), pp. 242–248; rpt. in English (as “Amour Dure”) in Hauntings (1890). “Orpheus in Rome: Irrelevant Talks on the Use of the Beautiful,” The Contemporary Review, 55 (1889), pp. 828–49; rpt. in Althea (1894). “Deux romans” [Two Novels], illust. A. Lynch, Les Lettres et les Arts, Revue Illustrée, 16 (1 December 1889), pp. 289–352. “Dionea,” in Hauntings (1890); rpt. 1906. “Oke of Okehurst: A Phantom Lover,” in Hauntings (1890). “The Legend of Madame Krasinska,” Fortnightly Review, no. 53 (March 1890). “Sketches in Tangier,” New Review, 2 (March 1890), pp. 221–228. “A Worldly Woman,” Contemporary Review, 58 (October–November 1890). “A Seeker of Pagan Perfection: Being the Life of Domenico Neroni, Pictor Sacrilegus,” The Contemporary Review, 60 (August–September 1891), pp. 188–206, 372–387; rpt. in Renaissance Fancies and Studies (1895); rpt. in The Snake Lady and Other Stories (1956). “An Eighteenth-Century Singer: An Imaginary Portrait of Antonio Vivarelli,” Fortnightly Review, 50 (December 1891), pp. 842–880.

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“Lady Tal,” in Vanitas (1892); rpt. ca. 1892. “The Moral Teaching of Zola,” Contemporary Review, 63 (February 1893), pp. 196–212. “A May-Day Dialogue: Economic, Not Pastoral,” Part I, Contemporary Review, 63 (May 1893), p. 650–662; Part II, Contemporary Review, 64 (July 1893), pp. 90–107; rpt. in Althea (1894) as “About the Social Question.” “Ravenna and Her Ghosts.” Macmillan’s Magazine, 70 (September 1894), pp. 380–389; rpt. in Limbo (1897); rpt. in Pope Jacynth and Other Romantic Inventions (Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz, 1906); rpt. in Pope Jacynth and More Supernatural Tales (London: Peter Owen Limited, 1956). “Le Pape Jacinthe” [“Pope Jacynth”] trans. E. Lee-Hamilton, illust. A. Lynch, Le Figaro Illustré, no. 57 (Paris: Boussod, Valadon et Cie, December 1894). “Emerson, Transcendentalists and Utilitarians,” The Contemporary Review, 67 (March 1895), pp. 345–420; rpt. in D. Seed (ed.), The Handling of Words and Other Studies in Literary Psychology (1923), rpt. 1992. “The Love of the Saints,” The Contemporary Review, 67 (April 1895), pp. 499–514; rpt. in Renaissance Fancies (1895); rpt. in D. Seed (ed.), The Handling of Words and Other Studies in Literary Psychology (1923), rpt. 1992. “On Literary Construction,” The Contemporary Review, 68 (September 1895), pp. 404– 419; rpt. in D. Seed (ed.), The Handling of Words and Other Studies in Literary Psychology (1923), rpt. 1992. “Orphée à Rome,” trans. M.-T. Blanc, La Revue des Deux Mondes, no. 132 (1 November 1895). “The Image,” Cornhill Magazine, Volume 26 (London: John Murray, 1896), pp. 516–523; rpt. as “The Doll” in For Maurice (1927), pp. xlvi–li. “La Madone aux sept glaives,” in Journal des débats politiques et littéraires, “Feuilleton du journal des débats du Samedi” (8, 9, 11, 12, 14 Février 1896), p. 3); English translation as “The Virgin of the Seven Daggers” in two parts in The English Review, 1, no. 2 (January 1909), pp. 223–233, and The English Review, 1, no. 3 (February 1909), pp. 453–465; rpt. in For Maurice (1927); rpt. in I. Cooper-Willis (ed.), Supernatural Tales (1987). “Life and Art I,” The Contemporary Review, 69 (May 1896), pp. 658–669; rpt. in The Handling of Words and Other Studies in Literary Psychology (London: John Lane, 1923); rpt. D. Seed (ed.) (Lewiston: Edward Mellen Press, 1992). “Art and Life II,” The Contemporary Review, 70 (June 1896), pp. 813–824; rpt. in The Handling of Words and Other Studies in Literary Psychology (London: John Lane, 1923); rpt. D. Seed (ed.) (Lewiston: Edward Mellen Press, 1992). “Deterioration of Soul,” Fortnightly Review, 65 (June 1896), pp. 928–943; rpt. in Gospels of Anarchy (1908), pp. 73–101. “Art and Life III,” The Contemporary Review, 70 (July 1896), pp. 59–72; rpt. in The Handling of Words and Other Studies in Literary Psychology (London: John Lane, 1923); rpt. D. Seed (ed.) (Lewiston: Edward Mellen Press, 1992). “Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady,” The Yellow Book, 10 (July 1896). “A Patron of Leisure,” The Contemporary Review, no. 70 (December 1896), pp. 853–860; rpt. in D. Seed (ed.), The Handling of Words and Other Studies in Literary Psychology (1923), rpt. 1992. “The Need to Believe: An Agnostic’s Notes on Professor Wm. James,” Fortnightly Review, 72, no. 66 (November 1899), pp. 827–842. “L’Amoureux fantôme” [trans. from “Oke of Okehurst”], Le Matin: derniers télégrammes de la nuit (10 August, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, and 20 October 1900).

357

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“The Economic Dependence of Women,” The North American Review, 175, no. 548 (July 1902), pp. 71–90; rpt. (as “The Economic Parasitism of Women”) in Gospels of Anarchy (1908). “The Lady and Death,” in Pope Jacynth and Other Fantastic Tales (1904). “On Receiving Letters,” in Hortus Vitae (1904). “The Virgin of the Seven Daggers,” in F.M. Huefer (ed.), The English Review, Part I (London: Duckworth & Co., 1909), pp. 223–233; rpt. in For Maurice (1927). “The Religious and Moral Status of Wagner,” The Fortnightly Review, New Series, 89 (January–June 1911), pp. 868–885. “Review of Back to Methuselah by George Bernard Shaw,” The New Statesman, 17 (24 September 1921), pp. 674–676. “John Singer Sargent in Memoriam” in E. Charteris, John Singer Sargent (New York: Scribner, 1927), pp. 235–255. “The Magnasco Portraits,” in For Maurice (1927). “The House with the Loop-Holes,” Life and Letters, 5, no. 27 (1930), pp. 69–84.

Vernon Lee’s letters Cooper Willis, I. (ed.), Vernon Lee’s Letters Home, 1881–1894: With a Preface by Her Executor (London: privately printed, 1937). Gagel, A. (ed.) and S. Geoffroy (assoc. ed.), Selected Letters of Vernon Lee 1856–1935, Volume I 1865–1884, The Pickering Masters Series (London: Routledge, 2017). Geoffroy, S. (ed.) and A. Gagel (assoc. ed.), Selected Letters of Vernon Lee 1856–1935, Volume II 1885–1889, The Pickering Masters Series (London: Routledge, 2021). Sieberg, H. and C. Zorn (eds.), The Anglo-German Correspondence of Vernon Lee and Irene Forbes-Mosse during World War I: Women Writers’ Friendship Transcending Enemy Lines (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2014).

Works by Eugene Lee-Hamilton Poems and Transcripts (London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1878). Gods, Saints, and Men (London: W. Satchell & Co., 1880). Includes: “A Rival of Fallopius.” The New Medusa and Other Poems (London: Elliot Stock, 1882). Includes: “An Elegy on the Death of a Lady Who Died at Florence 29 Feb. 1880.” Apollo and Marsyas: And Other Poems (London: Elliot Stock, 1884). Includes: “Ipsissimus.” Imaginary Sonnets (London: Elliot Stock, 1888). Includes: “Latude to His Rats (AD 1750),” “Galileo to the Earth,” “Murat to His Whip,” “Manfred of Benevento to His Saracen Leech,” “Isaac Walton to River and Brook,” “Zara to His Love,” “Ponce de Léon to the Fountain of Youth (AD 1520).” “On the Statue of Nike Apteros, Commonly Called the Venus of Milo,” The Art Review (June 1890), p. 192. The Fountain of Youth: A Fantastic Tragedy in Five Acts (London: Elliot Stock, 1891). Sonnets of the Wingless Hours (London: Elliot Stock, 1894). Forest Notes, with A. Lee-Hamilton (Holdsworth) (London: Grant Richards, 1899). The Inferno of Dante, Translated with Plain Notes (London: Grant Richards, 1899). Dramatic Sonnets, Poems, and Ballads: Selections from the Poems of Eugene LeeHamilton, introduction by W. Sharp (London: Walter Scott, 1903). Includes: “The Grave of Omar Khayyam,” “Wine of Omar Khayyam.”

358

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The Lord of the Dark Red Star (Newcastle-on-Tyne: Walter Scott Publishing Co., 1903). The Romance of the Fountain (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905). “Mimma Bella: In Memory of a Little Life,” Fortnightly Review, 88 (November 1907), pp. 850–858; rpt. in A. Lee-Hamilton [Holdsworth] (ed.), Mimma Bella (London: William Heinemann, 1909).

Works by Agnes Frances Mary Robinson (Darmesteter) A Handful of Honeysuckle (London: C. Kegan Paul, 1878). The Crowned Hippolytus (London: C. Kegan Paul, 1881). Arden: A Novel (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1883). The New Arcadia and Other Poems (London: Ellis & White, 1884). “Remembrance,” The Athenaeum, no. 3030 (21 November 1885), p. 668. Flower of the Cypress: A Sequence of Song by A. Mary F. Robinson Set to Music by G.F. Hatton, by G.F. Hatton and M. Robinson (London: Augener & Co., ca. 1886); rpt. (Stuttgart: G.A. Zumsteeg, ca. 1886). An Italian Garden: A Book of Songs (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1886); rpt. (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1886). Includes: “Etruscan Tombs,” “Fireflies,” “Florentine May”; rpt. in Songs, Ballads, and a Garden Play (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1888). Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (London: W.H. Allen, 1886). “Vincent Hadding,” in H. Norman (ed.), Unwin’s Annual, The Witching Time: Tales for the Year’s End (New York: D. Appleton, 1887). “Our Lady of the Broken Heart,” in A.F. Mary Robinson, Songs, Ballads, and a Garden Play (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1888). Poésies de Miss Mary Robinson, traduites de l’anglais par M. James Darmesteter, trans. J. Darmesteter (Paris: A. Lemerre, 1888). Includes: “Le Bouc émissaire.” Songs, Ballads, and a Garden Play (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1888). The End of the Middle Ages: Essays and Questions in History (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1889). Includes: “The Beguines and the Weaving Brothers,” “The Convent of Helfta,” “The Attraction of the Abyss,” “The Claim of the House of Orléans to Milan,” “Valentine Visconti.” Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Boston: Robert Bros., 1890). Marguerites du temps passé [as M. Darmesteter] (Paris: A. Colin et Cie., 1891). Retrospect and Other Poems [as M. Darmesteter] (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1893). Includes: “The Bookworm.” English Studies, by J. Darmesteter, trans. M. Darmesteter (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1896). The Life of Ernest Renan (London: Methuen, 1897). “Goneril,” in Stories by English Authors: Italy (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898), pp. 71–99. La Vie d’Ernest Renan (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1898). La Reine de Navarre, Marguerite d’Angoulême (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1900). “In Casa Paget,” Country Life, 22 (28 December 1907), pp. 935–937. “Love without Wings and Semitones” in R. Hahn, Concertos et musique de chambre, mélodies, Volume 4 (Marly-le-Roi: Maguelone, 2019).

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Reference works 1881 England Census, Class RG11; Piece 22; Folio 73; Page 4; GSU rol11341005; Ancestry.com, 2014, www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/13115307:7572?_ phsrc=JKP1&_phstart=successSource&ml_rpos=7&queryId=7f48c2b879ac88d2e2686 21545e3ce4d. The Annual Index of Periodicals and Photographs for 1890 (London: Mowbray House, 1891). Bankers’ Magazine, Journal of the Money Market and Commercial Digest, 53 (January– June 1892). Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Volume 73 (Rome: Societa Grafica Romana, Istituto della Enciclopedia, 1960); rpt. 2009. Encyclopedia Britannica. England and Wales Civil Registration Indexes, Ancestry.com (London: General Register Office). Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Marne, France Births, 1501–1907. Marne, France Marriages, 1529–1907, Ancestry.com, 2014. The Oberlin Alumni Magazine, 14, no. 9 (June 1918). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, since 1885). Polybiblion: Revue bibliographique universelle, année 1895, Paris: E. de Boccard. Who’s Who, 1907: An Annual Biographical Dictionary (London: A&C Black, 1907). Bagdade, S. and A. Bagdade, Warman’s English & Continental Pottery & Porcelain: Identification & Price Guide (Iola, WI: Krause Publications, 2004). Byrne, J.P. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Pestilence, Pandemics and Plague, foreword A.S. Fauci (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2008). Edwards, D.H. (ed.), Modern Scottish Poets, with Biographical and Critical Notes (Brechin: D.H. Edwards, 1890). Farina, R. (ed.), Dizionario biografico delle donne lombarde (Milano: Baldini & Castoldi, 1995). Fergusson, R.M. (ed.) Supplement to the First Volume of the Records of the Clan and Name Fergusson, Ferguson and Fergus (1895), edited for the Clan Fergus(s)on Society (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1899). Holberton, P. “Kipling and Wolcott Balestier,” The Kipling Society, www.kiplingsociety. co.uk/readers-guide/rg_dedication_brb_holb.htm

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Mair, R.H. (ed.), Debrett’s Illustrated House of Commons, and the Judicial Bench (London: Dean & Son, 1896). Opie, I. and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951); 2nd ed. (1997). Ward, A.W., G.W. Prothero, S. Leathes (eds.), The Cambridge Modern History: An Account of Its Origins, Authorship and Production, Planned by Lord Acton, 14 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1902–1912, 1957–1979). Whitshaw, B. and E.M. Whitshaw, Arabic Spain, Sidelights on Her History and Art (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1912). ———, Illustrated Descriptive Account of the Museum of Andalucian Pottery and Lace, Antique and Modern: Together with Notes on Pre-Roman Seville and the Lost City of Tharsis (London: Smith, Elder, 1913).

Books Abdy-Williams, E.M., Two Ifs: A Novel, 3 vols. (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1884). ———, Forewarned! (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1885). ———, For His Friend, 3 vols. (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1885). ———, The World Below, 3 vols. (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1887). ———, My Spanish Year (London: Mills & Boon, 1914). ———, Atlantis in Andalucia: A Study of Folk Memory (London: Rider and Co., 1929). Aidé, C.H., Rita: An Autobiography: A Novel, 2 vols. (London: Bentley, 1858). Allbutt, T.C., System of Medicine, 11 vols. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1896–1911). ———, On the Use of the Ophthalmoscope in Diseases of the Nervous System and of the Kidneys (London: Macmillan and Co., 1871). Alphen-Salvador, G., Paris, Rome, Jérusalem ou la question religieuse au XIXème siècle (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1860). Amiel, H.-F., Journal Intime of Henri-Frederic Amiel, trans. M.A. Ward (London: Macmillan, 1885). Anesko, M., Henry James and Queer Filiation: Hardened Bachelors of the Edwardian Era (Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2018). Anstruther-Thomson, J., Eighty Years’ Reminiscences, 2 vols. (London: Longmans Green & Co., 1904). Argit, B.I., Life after the Harem: Female Palace Slaves, Patronage and the Imperial Ottoman Court (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). Austin, A., Prince Lucifer (London: Macmillan, 1887). ———, The Poetry of the Period (London: R. Bentley, 1870). Baedeker, K., Italy: Northern Italy, Including Leghorn, Florence, Ravenna, the Island of Corsica, and Routes through France, Switzerland, and Austria, 8th ed. (Leipzig: K. Baedeker, 1889). ———, Italie septentrionale jusqu’à Livourne, Florence et Ravenne et routes menant de France, de Suisse et d’Autriche en Italie. Manuel du voyageur (Paris: Paul Ollendorff, & Leipzig: Karl Baedeker, 1892). Bain, A., The Senses and the Intellect (London: John W. Parker and Sons, 1855). ———, The Emotions and the Will (London: John W. Parker and Sons, 1859). Balducci, T. and H. Belnap Jensen (eds.), Women, Femininity and Public Space in European Visual Culture, 1789–1914 (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014). Barine, A. [Mme C.E. Vincens], L’œuvre de Jésus-ouvrier, les cercles catholiques, origines, organisation, action (Paris: G. Fischbacher, 1879).

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Unsigned, “Terrible Naval Disaster,” The Argus (Melbourne), 24 June 1893, p. 9, https:// trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/8568833 Unsigned, “Th. Bentzon in New York,” The Critic, 20 (4 November 1893), p. 287. Unsigned, “The Garden, Villa Pisani, Bolognesi Scalabrin,” www.villapisani.it/ing/ ilgiardino.php?a=1 Unsigned, “Vernon Lee,” from “Our London Correspondent,” Glasgow Herald, 10 August 1888, p. 7. Vicinus, M., “‘A Legion of Ghosts’: Vernon Lee (1856–1935) and the Art of Nostalgia,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 10, no. 4 (2004), pp. 599–616. Villari, L., “A Master of the Sonnet: Eugene Lee-Hamilton, Born 1845. Died September 7, 1907”, The Albany Review, 3 (April–September 1908), pp. 182–191; rpt. in P. Gunn, Vernon Lee, Violet Paget, 1856–1935 (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 16. Vincieri, S. and C. Hall, “‘Isolated from Any Village’: Vernon Lee’s Florence and Villa Il Palmerino,” in E.M. Ciregna and S. Salenius (eds.), Special Issue: Cosmopolitan Florence: the Legacy of Nineteenth-Century Travelers, Open Inquiry Archive, An independent journal of scholarly papers on culture, vol. 3, no. 1 (2014), p. 32, https:// openinquiryarchive.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/open_inquiry_archive-2014-hallvincieri-isolated_from_any_village-ff.pdf Wakley, T.H. and T. Wakley Jun. (eds.), “Rome (from Our Correspondent),” The Lancet, 2, no. 3767 (9 November 1895), p. 1196. Warren, J., “Book Review: Gustave Dreyfus: Collectionneur et mécène dans le Paris de la Belle Epoque. By Alice Silvia Legé,” The Burlington Magazine, no. 163 (February 2021), pp. 187–188. Way, P., “Mary Cassatt & Vernon Lee: 1895,” Color and Copper, 2 October 2012. http:// colorandcopper.blogspot.com/2012/10/color-and-copper-mary-cassatt-vernon.html Weber, C.J., “The Date of Miss Jewett’s Letter to Vernon Lee,” Colby Library Quarterly, series 3, no. 8 (November 1952), pp. 134–136. ———, “Henry James and His Tiger-Cat.” PMLA, 68 (September 1953), pp. 672–687. ———, “An Interim Bibliography of Vernon Lee,” Colby Library Quarterly, series 3, no. 8 (November 1952), pp. 133–134. ———, “Letters from Gosse and Benson,” Colby Library Quarterly, series 3, no. 8 (November 1952), pp. 134–136. ———, “A List of Those Who Wrote to Lee,” Colby Library Quarterly, series 3, no. 8 (November 1952), pp. 129–133. ———, “Mr Wells and Vernon Lee,” Colby Library Quarterly, series 3, no. 8 (November 1952), pp. 129–133. West, J.M., “America and American Literature in the Essays of Th. Bentzon: Creating the Image of an Independent Cultural Identity,” History of European Ideas 1987 Volume 8 (4–5) pp. 521–535. Wilde, O., “Amy Levy, Obituary,” in A Woman’s World, 3 (1890), pp. 51–52. ———, “Review of Poems, Ballads, and a Garden Play. By A. Mary F. Robinson. (Fisher Unwin),” Woman’s World (November 1888), pp. 36–40. Zola, E., “J’accuse!”, L’Aurore, Paris, 13 janvier 1898, p. 1. Zorn, C., “Aesthetic Intertextuality as Cultural Critique: Vernon Lee Rewrites History Through Walter Pater’s ‘La Gioconda,’” The Victorian Newsletter, 91 (Spring 1997), pp. 4–11. ———, “The Handling of Words: Reader-Response Victorian Style.” in C. Maxwell and P. Pulham (eds.), Vernon Lee: Decadence, Ethics, Aesthetics, Palgrave Studies in

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Musical works Garnet, R., “Where Corals Lie,” poem set to music by E. Elgar, Sea Pictures, a Cycle of Five Songs for Contralto, Op. 37 (London: Boosey & Co., 1899). Hatton, G.F. and M. Robinson, Flower of the Cypress: A Sequence of Song by A. Mary F. Robinson Set to Music by G.F. Hatton (London: Augener & Co., ca. 1886); rpt. (Stuttgart: G.A. Zumsteeg, ca. 1886). Smyth, E., Les Naufrageurs (The Wreckers). Opera in French in three acts. Adapted from V. Lee, Penelope Brandling. Libretto in French by H. Brewster. Premiered as Strandrecht, German translation by John Bernhoff, Neues Theater, Leipzig, 11 November 1906.

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Archives Nationales de France Fonds Jean Brunhes et Mariel Jean-Brunhes (1810–1993). Cote 615AP/1– 615AP/150. Archives of American Art Lucia Fairchild Papers The Armstrong Browning Library of Baylor University “Lady Layard’s Journal,” https://pops.baylor.edu/layard/calendar/1887calendar.php “The Brownings,” www.browningguide.org The Berenson Digital Archive Gorman, Michael M. (ed.), Mary Berenson, Diaries, 1891–1900, p. 455: The Berenson Digital Archive: www.mmgorman.it/bernard-berenson/ Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence Bibliothèque de l’Institut Universitaire de France, Paris Correspondence of Gaston Paris and Marguerite Savary (Mme G. Paris). Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, Manuscrits Fonds Anglais 246, Correspondance de Mary Robinson VII, Lettres de Vernon Lee à Mary Robinson III, 1885–1887, 342 ff. Don no. 16233. Fonds Anglais 243. Correspondance de Mary Robinson IV, Lettres de Mary Robinson à Vernon Lee (Violet Paget), 1887–1933, 247 ff. Fonds Anglais 247, Correspondance de Mary Robinson VIII, Lettres de Vernon Lee à Mary Robinson IV, 1925–1929, 131 ff. Includes: “Lettres de Mrs Paget” [Letters from Mrs Paget], Ff 1–6 395

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