Violet Paget (“Vernon Lee”)
: A Chronology
14 October 1856: birth of Violet
Paget at Château St Léonard, near Boulogne sur Mer.
She is the daughter of unconventional parents. “Family feeling between them was
strong but, at the same time, they seem all to have been rather afraid of one
another, or perhaps afraid of getting their own ways. In their letters to one
another they were either ingratiating or dictatorial, being extremely polite or
else being very rude.” (1)
1845: birth of James Eugene
Lee-Hamilton
Matilda Adams (1815-1896),
Violet Paget’s mother. From a painting by Frank Stone. (2)
“She was quite cynical, disillusioned
and emancipated, but she believed in behaving conventionally on the surface if
you wanted to go into society which, however, she didn’t. She left England to
escape the English Sunday, and went to live in France. Her two husbands bored
her and she gave them their liberty after having had a child by each.” (3)
Mr Henry Hippolyte
Ferguson Paget: “He led a life apart from his family. It used to be said that
he always had his meals at the railway station.” (4)
Her half-brother, the poet James
Eugene Lee-Hamilton, was born in 1845.
About her education, she wrote: “I
recognize now that my family is, on one side, acutely [illegible] &
hysterical, & that my earlier years were obdurately calculated, by an
alternation of indiscipline & terrorism, by exertion, over work & a
[illegible] solitude, to develop these characteristics.” (5)
Winter 1866-67: meets John Singer
Sargent in Nice.
1868-1870: VL and family spend the
winters in Rome (with John Singer Sargent and family) and the summers in Paris.
1868:
writes the Biographie d’une pièce de
monnaie.
Violet as a child. Photographs
taken from Peter Gunn, p. 21.
Violet’s fascination for music.
“I can remember when the first packet of
copied-out airs had arrived from Bologna, and my mother was going to try some
of them over the piano for me, I could not remain in the presence… of what, I
really do not know; I felt shy of those unknown, longed-for songs, and had to
escape into the garden. The first piece she played was Pallido Il Sole, one of the three legendary airs with which the madness of
Philip of Spain had been smoothed by virtuous David Farinelli.”
1870: At 14, VL begins collecting
material for her Studies of the
Eighteenth Century in Italy. Visiting the gardens of the Villa Doria, she “longed to conjure up the shades of its former
society.” (6)
Tries to have Capo Serpente
published.
1873: The family settle permanently
in Italy.
1873: Eugene’s first paralytic
symptoms. He was a prostrate invalid through the following 20 years.
2 October 1874: “On the Fourteenth of
this month I shall be eighteen […] I know that writing must be my profession as
well as my pleasure. […] I am quite in earnest: literature must be my profession, and the sooner I begin, the better–so at
least it seems to me.” (7)
6 April 1875: “The name I have chosen
as containing part of my brother’s and my father’s and my own initials is H.P.
Vernon-Lee. It has the advantage of leaving it undecided whether the writer be
a man or a woman.” (8)
1878: meets Annie Meyer.
1879? “some time before 1880” (Gunn
76) meets Mary Robinson (then Mme Duclaux).
1883 or 1884? Death of Annie Meyer.
VL shattered.
1880-1884: publishes 6 books and 20
articles, reviews, short stories
1880: publication (anon.) of Tuscan Fairy Tales, Taken from the Mouth of
the People.
Publication of Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy. Her masterpiece.
Immediate success.
1881: Belcaro, being Essays on Sundry Aesthetical Considerations. Dedicated to
Mary Robinson.
1883: The Prince of the Hundred Soups: A Puppet-Show in Narrative.
1883: Ottilie
1884: The Countess of Albany
1884: Miss Brown
1884: Euphorion
June 1881: VL’s
portrait done by her great friend John Singer Sargent: “[John] came the day
before yesterday to do my likeness; about three hours’ sitting […]; I enjoyed
it very much; John talking the whole time & strumming the piano between
whiles. I like him. The sketch is, by everyone’s admission, extraordinarily
clever & characteristic; it is of course mere dabs & blurs &
considerably caricatured, but certainly more like me than I expected anything
could–rather fierce & cantankerous.” (9)
[This portrait is now in the
Tate Gallery]
26 June 1881: “… talking of literary
fame, the only two creatures who seemed to have heard of me as a writer were
Wm. Rossetti & Oscar Wilde!” (Letter to “my dearest Mamma”, in Letters, op. cit., p. 66).
18 July 1881: meets Walter Pater: “He
is a heavy, shy, dull-looking brown moustachioed creature over forty, much like
Velasquez’ Philip IV, lymphatic, dull, humourless. I sat next him at supper
& then he sat by me all the evening. Of all the people I have met in
England he is the one who has been most civil to me. […] He is heavy but, to my
surprise quite unaffected.” (10)
1882: The Pagets
settle in Florence.
Panorama of Florence from San Miniato. Personal photograph. January 2002.
1882: The family move into 5, via Garibaldi, Florence.
Personal photograph. January
2002.
Personal photograph. January 2002.
1884: Miss Brown, her roman à clé: publication
and scandal.
28 August 1886: VL famous at last: “I
hear that Oke
[of Okehurst]
is flaring about on all the bookstalls of the kingdom. But whether I shall be
any richer for that I don’t know.” (11)
8 September 1886: VL back in Italy:
“for all my interest in England, this is my
country.” (12)
1886: Baldwin: being Dialogues on Views and Aspirations.
1886: A Phantom Lover.
24 July 1887: meets Clementina (Kit) Anstruther-Thomson:
“My hostess has gone to the station to fetch another woman coming here for
Sunday, a Miss Anstruther-Thomson, a semi-painter,
semi-sculptor, handsome creature, who is, or was, a great friend of Mrs Callander’s, & with whom I am expected to make great
friends.” (12)
25 July 1887: “Miss Anstruther-Thomson turns out very handsome, a sort of Venus
of Milo—Margaret-Cantagalli creature, clever &
curiously interesting. […] she is a picturesque personality, paints very well,
dresses crane & rather fast, drives tandem & plays polo…” (13) From now
on, VL will be attracted to Scotland, especially to St Andrews (“The handsome
Miss A T lives 10 miles beyond”). (14)
25 August 1887: VL’s
mysterious breakdown at Kit’s house: “my plans are shattered, scattered for the
moment by a rather astonishing occurrence, owing to which I may be wanted to
stay on in England for another few days. […] I am sorry to have to be so
mysterious […] Please tell no one, except Eugene […] of any upsetting of my
plans. /The business which thus sets everything per aria, although it has
nothing ostensibly to do with me --other folks’ business altogether-- touches
me in a way, I mean causes me some faint trouble--in fact has given me rather a
shock./ I cannot say how grateful I am to circumstances that this complication
should find me in this house rather than in any other.” (15)
The mystery is explained a few days
later (30 August 1887): “Last week I received half a sheet of notepaper from
Mary [Robinson] telling me she has engaged herself to marry James Darmsteter […]” (16)
1887: Juvenilia. Dedicated to Carlo Placci.
1888: the Pagets move to Villa Il Palmerino, n° 8-12 via dell Palmerino,
Maiano.
Lee’s villa, Il Palmerino. Personal photograph, taken in January 2002. Courtesy of the current
owners.
November 1888-late January 1889: VL
travels to Tangier with Kit (via Spain, Gibraltar, then back via Malaga,
Granada, Cadiz, Naples, Pompei); the two friends
depressed and sick.
1890: Hauntings.
November 1891: VL starts lecturing
(“It might be a mode of influence & money making.”) (17)
1892: Vanitas: Polite Stories. (contains “Lady Tal”)
4 July 1893: Meets G. B. Shaw : “ a
young socialist, who despite (I think) his socialism, is one of the most really
brilliant writers & thinkers we have, paradoxical (sic) wrongheaded &
perhaps a little caddish, but original.” (18)
20 August 1893: VL lectures in
Cambridge: “the audience […] 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 of
lectures on every imaginable subject.” (19)
31 August 1893: “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 […] At thirty-seven I
have no public, but […] I think it better to restrict my expenditure than to
increase my income. […] 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. … 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.”
(20)
November 1894: death of her father.
She writes to Carlo Placci: “I used to like to hear
him talk about how animals lived & plants grew & clouds & water
moved: he seemed to know it all intimately, 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...”
VL is disappointed by the lack of outward sign of grief in her mother’s
attitude: “she let Eugene & me take her drives, read to E. regularly &
yesterday began to read Taine’s Ancien
Régime quite hard to herself. ‘It is so touching & so splendid!’ What a
beautiful & blessed thing is this old fashioned English tenue!” (22)
She secretly cremates her father,
complying with his wishes; her mother will remain convinced that he is buried
in the family’s grave.
1894: Althea: a Second Book of Dialogues on Aspirations and Duties.
1895: Renaissance Fancies and Studies.
1896: death of her mother.
The tombstone of VL’s parents, Cimetiero Agli Allori, Florence. Personal
photograph.
1897: Limbo.
1897: Bernard Berenson’s accusation
against VL and Kit’s Beauty and Ugliness.
The quarrel lasted for 25 years, but was settled by Mary Berenson.
1898: Eugene marries Annie Holdsworth in Hampshire. VL is present, but “strongly
advise[s] against his having children.” (23)
1899:
Genius Loci : Notes on Places.
Aug. 1902: Annie pregnant. VL taken
aback by “this awful catastrophe”.
2 October 1904: death of little Persis, who strikingly looked like her aunt. VL and Eugene
estranged: “I am grateful for your kind words. But had you given her a single
smile or penny toy while she was alive, it would have been more to the
purpose…” (24)
1903: VL’s
play Ariadne in Mantua published.
1903: Penelope Brandling.
1904: Pope Jacynth.
1904: Hortus Vitae: Essays on the Gardening of
Life.
1905: The Enchanted Woods.
1906: VL buys the Villa Il Palmerino.
1906: Sister Benvenuta and the Christ Child.
1906: The Spirit of Rome: Leaves from a Diary.
September 1907 : death of Eugene.
The tombstone of Eugene and
his wife. Cimetiero Agli Allori, Florence. Personal photograph.
1908: Gospels of Anarchy. Dedicated to H. G. Wells.
1908: The Sentimental Traveller: Notes on Places.
1909: Laurus Nobilis: Chapters on Art and Life.
1912: Vital Lies: Studies of Some Varieties of Recent Obscurantism.
1912: Beauty
and Ugliness. With Clementina Anstruther
Thomson.
1913: The
Beautiful: An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics.
1914: Louis Norbert, a Two-Fold Romance published.
1914: The Tower of the Mirrors: and Other Essays on the Spirit of Places.
1915: writes The Ballet of Nations, a Present-Day Morality. Dedicated to Romain Rolland. Published in 1920 as Satan the Waster: A Philosophical War Trilogy.
1914-1920: a pacifist through the
war, VL remains in England.
1923: The Handling of Words: and Other Studies in Literary Psychology.
20 September 1924 : VL awarded
Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters by the University of Durham.
1925: Proteus, or the Future of Intelligence.
1925: The Golden Keys.
1926: The Poet’s Eye.
1927: For Maurice: Five Unlikely Stories. Dedicated to Maurice Baring.
1932 : Music and Its Lovers published.
Summer 1934: last visit to England.
13 February 1935: death of V. Lee.
Cremated and buried in the Cimetiero Agli Allori, Florence.
Violet Paget’s humble tombstone. Personal photograph. January
2002.
NOTES
1.
Irene
Cooper Willis, preface, p. x. All my references to Cooper Willis are to her
edition of Vernon Lee’s Letters, London: Privately Printed, 1937.
2.
Taken
from Peter Gunn, p. 20.
3.
VL
quoted in Cooper Willis, p. v-vi.
4.
Cooper
Willis, p. ix.
5.
Unpublished letter to Carlo Placci, 9 Aug. 1894, Biblioteca Maruccelliana, Carteggio Placci.
6.
Cooper Willis, preface, op. cit., p. iv.
7.
Letter to Mrs Jenkins, in Letters, op. cit., p. 40-41.
8.
Letter to Mrs Jenkins, in Letters, op. cit., p. 49.
9.
Letter to her “dearest
Mamma”, 25 June 1881, in Cooper Willis (ed.) Letters, op. cit., p. 65.
10.
Letter
to “my dearest Mamma”, in Letters, op. cit., p. 78-9.
11.
Letter to “my dearest
Mamma”, in Letters, op. cit., p. 236.
12.
Letter to “my dearest
Mamma”, in Letters, op. cit., 238.
13.
Letter to “Mamma”, dated
from Effingham, Surrey, in Letters, op. cit., p. 260.
14.
Letter
to “Mamma”, in Letters, op. cit., p. 261.
15.
Letters, op. cit., p. 261.
16.
Letter
to “Mamma”, in Letters, op. cit., p. 271.
17.
Letter to “Mamma”, in Letters, op. cit., p. 272.
18.
Post card dated 9 Nov. 1891,
to “Mamma”, in Letters, op. cit., p. 342.
19.
Letter to “Mamma”, in Letters, op. cit., p. 349.
20.
Letter to “Mamma”, in Letters, op. cit., p. 359.
21.
Letter
to Eugene, in Letters, op. cit., pp. 364-65.
22.
Unpublished
letter to Carlo Placci , Biblioteca
Marucelliana, Carteggio Placci.
23.
Peter
Gunn, Vernon Lee-Violet Paget, 1856-1935,
London: Oxford University Press, 1964, p. 163.
24. Eugene Lee-Hamilton, letter quoted in P. Gunn, op. cit., p. 164.
