Dedication: Unfurling Vernon Lee’s Kinship Networks
An International Vernon Lee Society Symposium
Online, 16 & 17 October 2024
In the essay ‘New Friends and Old’ in Hortus Vitae: Essays on the Gardening of Life (1903), Vernon Lee writes:
We are (luckily for every one) such imitative creatures that every person we like much, adds a new possible form, a new pattern, to our understanding and our feeling; making us, through the pleasantness of novelty, see and feel a little as that person does. And when, instead of liking (which is the verb belonging rather to good acquaintance, accidental relationship as distinguished from real friendship), it is a case of loving (in the sense in which we really love a place, a piece of music, or even, very often, an animal), there is something more important and excellent even than this (p. 68).
This is an excellent distillation of Lee’s expansive definition of kinship, which incorporates not only human connections, but also affective bonds with places, music, and animals. In a subsequent essay in the collection, ‘Other Friendships’, Lee describes the process of developing kinship with ‘a small boy, a baby almost, jumping and rolling (a practice intolerable in any child but him) on the seat of a second-class carriage’, as well as being ‘comforted’ by ‘a group of slender, whispering poplars by a mill’ and by ‘the dear little Gothic church of a tiny town of Western France’ (pp. 79, 81). Here, Lee finds kinship with the animate and the inanimate, the known and the unknown, and with the natural and the human-made.
Lee’s networks included a wide circle of friends and acquaintances with whom she corresponded over more than six decades. They included writers, artists, psychologists, archaeologists, economists, and campaigners on social and political issues (pacifism, antivivisectionism). The publication of the Selected Letters of Vernon Lee provides a wealth of material, demonstrating the extent of her personal and professional networks, from her early mentors Henrietta Jenkin and Linda Villari in the 1870s, to members of the Bloomsbury set such as Roger Fry, John Maynard Keynes and Lytton Strachey. Given that Lee is often thought of as a fin-de-siècle writer, we would particularly encourage work which takes seriously Lee’s continued engagement with intellectual life into the twentieth century, including her correspondence with figures such as H. G. Wells, Bertrand Russell, George Bernard Shaw and Desmond MacCarthy. The breadth of Lee’s intellectual and affective networks is also evidenced by the many books she gifted and dedicated to friends and fellow authors. We would particularly welcome work which engages with the material and book historical evidence of Lee’s kinship networks.
Kinship has, of late, become a particularly important locus of discussion in queer studies, borne out of queer theorists’ work on the family and on alternative affective and communitarian relationships. Kristin Mahoney’s 2022 monograph Queer Kinship After Wilde: Transnational Decadence and the Family discusses the author and socialite Harold Acton’s decades-long fascination with Vernon Lee’s writings. In her 2024 The Queer Art of History: Queer Kinship After Fascism, the historian Jennifer V. Evans theorises queer kinship as ‘the coalitions, attachments, hookups, and solidarities of choice and necessity that [make] up queer life’, and encourages scholars to see ‘queer and trans* lives as associative, as part of elaborate histories of relationality, of kinships bad as well as good’ (pp. 2, 7). Queer kinship is useful because it enables us to think, with Vernon Lee, beyond the normative affective bonds of the familial, and of the human, and also to acknowledge the complexity and perhaps the negativity of such attachments.
We invite proposals for 15-minute papers on any topic relating to Vernon Lee and her kinship networks, broadly defined, for a Symposium to be held online in October 2024, organized under the auspices of the International Vernon Lee society.
Topics could include:
● Queer kinship/ kinship as viewed through the lens of gender and/or sexuality
● Different networks of relationality (family, friendship, companionship)
● Mentorship: the relationship between the young Lee and her mentors
● Lee’s mentorship of other writers
● Lee and Bloomsbury/Modernism
● Lee and the networks of socialism; pacifism; other social causes
● Lee’s kinship with the past
● Material text evidence of kinship: Lee’s book dedications to friends and authors she admired, and vice versa; networks of book gifting and exchange
● Kinship with the natural world
● Kinship with the material world
● Kinship extending beyond Vernon Lee’s lifespan: those who continued to read and write about Lee; reprints of Lee’s works
● Transnational kinship/kinship extending beyond national and linguistic borders
Sophie Geoffroy is Professor at the University of La Réunion (France). She is the founding President of the IVLS (founded in Paris, 2013). She is the founding editor of The Sibyl, A Journal of Vernon Lee Studies and of Vernon Lee Online, a Vimeo channel featuring interviews of family members and people who knew Vernon Lee or her close friends, of scholars, students and archivists. A Vernon Lee scholar, she is also a Vernon Lee translator (e.g. La Voix Maudite, Terre de Brume).
Her field of research includes textual genetics, comparative literature and translation studies with a focus on women, gender and cosmopolitan writers (Henry James, Walter Besant, Annie Besant). With Amanda Gagel, she is the editor ofthe six-volume Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, 1856-1935, London & New York: Routledge, “The Pickering Masters”. Volumes I (1865-1884), II (1885-1889) and III (1890-1896) have been published, the latest in December 2023: Geoffroy, Sophie (ed.) and Amanda Gagel (assoc. ed.). Transl.: Sophie Geoffroy (French-English) and Crystal Hall (Italian-English). Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, 1856-1935; Volume III, 1890-1896. London & New York: Routledge, “The Pickering Masters”, 2023.
Always eager to share archival documents and transmit knowledge, she has recently turned to Digital Humanities: her latest creation (and work in progress) is the digital library and participative database Holographical-Lee (HoL)-Vernon Lee (Violet Paget) : Letters, notebooks and manuscripts – hosted on the platform eMAN supported by ITEM-THALIM-CNRS-ENS.
Michel Prum is Professor Emeritus at Paris Cité University. He has been Vice-President of the IVLS since its foundation in 2013 and has represented the Society inside Paris Cité, where the IVLS is officially registered. His field of research is the history of thought in Victorian and Edwardian Britain, especially early Socialism and Darwinism, as well as translation studies. He contributed a paper on J.H. Huxley and Vernon Lee to the IVLS Conference on The Future of Intelligence in Florence in 2023.
Email: prum.michel@wanadoo.fr
Shafquat Towheed, Vice-President of the IVLS
Shafquat Towheed is a founding member of the International Vernon Lee Society (2014) and is currently a Vice-President of the IVLS. He is a Senior Lecturer in English in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS), The Open University (UK). He is also Vice-President of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP). He has written extensively on Vernon Lee, with articles published in Victorian Studies, The Yearbook of English Studiesand Nineteenth-Century Literature. He has a chapter forthcoming in Elisa Bizzotto and Sally Blackburn-Daniels (eds) Vernon Lee: Place, Nation, Memory, (Ohio University Press, forthcoming 2024). Towheed has considerable expertise in 19th and 20th century British and American literature, with a particular focus on the history of reading, and in scholarly editing. He is one of the editors of the Collected Works of Edith Wharton for Oxford University Press. Together with Blackburn-Daniels, he was one of the co-organisers of the Future of Intelligence: A Multidisciplinary Vernon Lee Conference (Florence, Italy, 8-10 September 2023).
Sally Blackburn-Daniels, Vice-President of the IVLS
Sally Blackburn-Daniels became Vice-President of the IVLS in 2023, after serving as Communications Officer for the society from 2016. Sally is a Research Fellow at Teesside University, where their scholarship focuses on Vernon Lee, performance and pacifism, and digital humanities approaches to late nineteenth and early twentieth century literature. They have recently published a chapter on Vernon Lee in Oxford Handbook of American and British Nineteenth-Century Women Philosophers, ed. Alison Stone and Lydia Moland (Oxford University Press), and have co-edited special issues of Voluptè: Interdisciplinary Journal of Decadence Studies on Vernon Lee with Professor Patricia Pulham (Surrey), and a special issue of English Studies with Edmund King (Open University) titled ‘Bookshelves, Social Media and Gaming’.
Email: s.blackburn-daniels@tees.ac.uk
Gilles Pasquet, Treasurer of the IVLS
Gilles Pasquet, membre fondateur de l’International Vernon Lee Society, est trésorier de l’Association depuis sa création en 2013.
Médecin généraliste, Spécialiste de Médecine du Sport, il a publié L’échauffement du sportif ou Comment préparer l’organisme à un effort : anatomie, physiologie, psychologie, sophrologie, plus de 200 exercices de musculation et étirement (Paris, Amphora sports, 2004).
Auteur de théâtre et de poésie, amoureux de littérature et de philosophie, Gilles Pasquet est le découvreur des lettres, manuscrits, carnets de Vernon Lee dans le grenier des peintres Berthe et André Noufflard à Fresnay-le-Long (Normandie) en 2012. Il est le réalisateur de bon nombre des vidéos consacrées à Vernon Lee et à la recherche leeienne sur la chaîne Vimeo « Vernon Lee Online ».
Gilles Pasquet, founding member of the International Vernon Lee Society, has been treasurer of the Association since its inception in 2013. Gilles is a general practitioner, Specialist in Sports Medicine, he published The warm-up of the athlete or How to prepare the body for an effort: anatomy, physiology, psychology, sophrology, more than 200 bodybuilding and stretching exercises (Paris: Amphora sports, 2004).
Specialist in Legal Reparation of Bodily Injury (as victim support), Psychotherapist, in Bio-Energetic Analysis certification, he is the founding Vice-President of the Indian Ocean Sophrology College (CSOI), where he teaches Sophrology.
In addition, as a cryptography researcher and treasure hunter, he has published his research method in « L’Arcane unveiled: an original method of reading documents relating to buried treasures in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries » in Danièle Berton-Charrère, Sophie Jorrand, Monique Venuat (eds.), Testifying: buccaneers, pirates and other filibusters from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal, 2015).
Playwright and poet, lover of literature and philosophy, Gilles Pasquet is the discoverer of autograph letters, manuscripts, notebooks by Vernon Lee in the attic of French painters Berthe and André Noufflard in Fresnay-le-Long (Normandy) in 2012. He is the film director of many of the videos dedicated to Vernon Lee and Leeian research on the Vimeo channel «Vernon Lee Online».
Mary F. Burns, American Liaison for the IVLS
Mary F. Burns writes historical fiction, including an historical mystery series featuring Vernon Lee (as Violet Paget) and John Singer Sargent as a different kind of Holmes & Watson (she’s Holmes!). As an independent scholar, Mary has focused her studies, writing and conference papers on Vernon Lee, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf. Learn more about her at www.maryfburns.com. Mary lives in San Francisco with her husband.
Suzy Corrigan, Secretary and Communications Officer for the IVLS
Suzy Corrigan is a first year PhD student at Teesside University and in the early stages of her research. She is interested primarily in music and cosmopolitanism in late nineteenth- and early twentieth century women’s writing, particularly Vernon Lee. As a mature student, Suzy has recently returned to academia after a successful career in performing arts, where her theatrical experience provided her with an insight into the act of musical performance.
Frankie Dytor, Secretary and Communications Officer for the IVLS
Frankie Dytor is secretary and communications officer for IVLS. They are a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow in English at the University of Exeter, where they are working on a project provisionally entitled ‘Aestheticism, Sexology, and the Making of Trans Feeling, 1870-1930’. Frankie completed an AHRC-funded PhD in History of Art from the University of Cambridge and is currently turning this work into a book tentatively entitled Renaissance Resurgent: Aestheticism and the Pursuit of the Living Past. They have written on Vernon Lee for the Journal of Victorian Culture as well as public platforms such as Sound and Music.
Decadence prowls in the shadows of war, and exposes its contradictions. As a byword for decline, decadence is that which war is supposed to overcome. The destructive force of war empowers those who wage it, and is often seen as a corrective, in the eyes of protagonists, to the weakened moral backbone of a beleaguered nation. Decadence and adjacent concepts are routinely deployed in rhetoric intended to stoke the flames of less bloody but nonetheless aggressive ‘culture wars’ – be it in the condemnation of artists like Ron Athey on the floor of the US Senate (‘Congressional Record’, 1994), or in the grandstanding of politicians like Oliver Dowden, who, in February 2022 while serving as Co-Chairman of the Conservative Party in Britain, vilified the propagation of so-called ‘woke ideology’ as ‘a dangerous form of decadence’.
Chaos, conflict, and political antagonism on the global stage are perennial issues, but in recent months, in the wake of geopolitical crises, bloodshed at borders, and the unhappy renaissance of culture wars ahead of election campaigns, such turmoil appears to have reached fever pitch. What, then, might decadence have to offer to our understanding of the interplay between different kinds of conflict? How do armed conflicts play into the rhetoric of those looking to manufacture a culture war for political gain, and how might the waging of culture wars inform attempts to justify armed conflicts?
We invite contributors to respond to these questions and contexts – and those of their own suggestion – in a one-day symposium co-organised by the British Association of Decadence Studies (BADS) and the Decadence Research Centre (DRC) at Goldsmiths, University of London. We encourage proposals considering diverse forms of cultural expression including literature, poetry, theatre, live art, dance, film, music, and visual and material cultures, as well as a range of geographical and historical contexts, from antiquity to the present.
We welcome both conventional and unconventional presentation formats, including 20-minute papers, performance lectures, screenings, and panel proposals. The symposium will also include a roundtable discussion for which we invite 5-minute provocations that will serve as points of departure for discussion and debate. Abstracts of 300 words for papers and panels (and of 150 words for provocations) plus a brief biography should be sent to drc@gold.ac.uk by 25 March 2024.
Conference Organisers
Adam Alston (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Alice Condé (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Jane Desmarais (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Jessica Gossling (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Vernon Lee, portrait photographique par André Noufflard
Cui bono
J’ai en moi le sentiment grandissant du manque complet de but dans la vie en elle-même, ou plutôt de la nature illusoire des différentes fins que nous appliquons, par manière d’acquit, aux différentes parties de la vie.
Mais, avec ce sentiment, grandit aussi la conviction de plus en plus forte et plus sûre que ce manque de but ne doit pas nous faire douter de la valeur qu’a la vie pour nous, ou de la grandeur de la vie en elle-même.
Loin de là: car si ces fins sont une illusion, n’est-ce-pas le signe que la vie se suffit à elle-même, qu’il suffit de vivre à travers la vie, notre vie, dans son impérieuse constitution?
Ce sont les nécessités de la vie même et sa puissance, qui conduisent à ces actions, à ces sentiments, à ces pensées que la raison réflective essaie en vain d’expliquer et de légitimer par des fins. Plus encore, cette même recherche des fins, cette critique et cette intervention de la raison n’est qu’une autre manifestation de ces nécessités peut-être sans but, et de la puissance des choses.
Pourquoi vivons-nous? –Dites-moi d’abord pourquoi les atomes s’attirent les uns les autres, pourquoi l’humidité se condense sur la terre et s’évapore à sa surface, répand le sable et creuse les rochers; pourquoi les animalcules de la craie s’entassent en formant des continents, et les coraux minuscules construisent des îles tout au long des âges? Pourquoi le pollen des fleurs est-il porté par le vent, pourquoi les carcasses des bêtes rendent-elles au sol les éléments qu’elles en avaient pris?
Pour rien; mais à cause de tout. Et pourquoi pensons-nous et, en pensant, posons-nous toutes ces questions, pourquoi si ce n’est parce que penser et interroger sont des manières d’être de notre vie même. Et si nous continuons à penser assez longtemps, nous pourrions arriver à cette conclusion que “à quelle fin?” est une question que l’homme n’a le droit de poser que lorsqu’il s’agit de ses propres actions, mais qu’il a le devoir, quand il s’agit d’elles, de les poser quelquefois avec plus d’esprit critique qu’il ne fait.
Vernon Lee, traduit en français par Berthe Noufflard, inédit.
Lovers of literature, and especially students of the Renaissance and the eighteenth century, will receive with regret the news of the death of Miss Violet Paget, long known to the world as “Vernon Lee,” which occured yesterday at Il Palmerino, San Gervasio, Florence, at the age of 78.
If this gifted and learned writer never quite fulfilled her brilliant promise, and if much of her later work is ephemeral and some of it not a little obscure, still the best of her writings should survive among the most interesting of the literature of aesthetic criticism of the last 50 years.
Though of British parentage, Vernon Lee was cosmopolitan from her birth, without any single national tie or sympathy. Her father was for a time concerned in the management of a college at St Petersburg where the imperial pages were trained. Her mother, whose maiden name was Abadam, was Welsh, and at the time of her marriage with Mr. Paget was the widow of Mr. Lee-Hamilton. Vernon Lee was born at Boulogne-sur-Mer in October 1856. The family seem to have wandered up and down Europe during all her early years, settling finally at Florence, which became her permanent home. Her half-brother, Eugene Lee-Hamilton, a poet of charm, was her constant companion, and had much to do with forming her powerful intellect and encouraging her literary taste; her mother, too, was a woman of ability and learning. Thus she lived from her earliest years in a highly stimulating intellectual atmosphere, to which her precocity, versatility, and perhaps the tendency to discursiveness that runs through much of her writings may in some measure be attributed.
It is with the school of Walter Pater and John Addington Symonds that much of Vernon Lee’s critical and historical work will always be associated, though her first (and perhaps her best) book “Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy,” published in 1880, stands alone as the first attempt in England to explore the intellectual life of that little-known period. She introduced to many English readers for the first time the names of musical composers whom a later generation has elevated into something of a cult; and in a series of striking and picturesque essays subjected the drama of the period to a similar review. But the book is much more than a collection of aesthetic criticisms, for we feel that we are actually living in the queer puppet-like world of the Italy of that day. An amazing book for a girl of 24 to have written, and still more so when we learn from her that the materials for it were collected between the ages of 15 and 20. It immediately attracted great attention here and abroad, especially in Italy, the sex of the author being veiled by her pseudonym. The Nuova Antologia spoke of it as “true life revealed to us in brilliant and various, but never exaggerated colours,” and added, “The severity of his studies and the patience of his research are evident at every step”; and another learned Roman review described the author as a “subtle and imaginative critic . . . who has profoundly studied a subject in which he takes passionate interest and who has written of Italy and Italian art with a wonderful artistic intuition comparable only with that shown in some of Robert Browning’s Italian subjects.”
The author came to England for the first time on a visit in 1881, and her remarkable conversational gifts and caustic power of repartee made her welcome in circles where she could hold her own with such a master of good talk as Whistler. Three years later aesthetic society found themselves not very kindly caricatured under thin disguises in “Miss Brown,” Vernon Lee’s first effort in fiction, now for long out of print and almost forgotten, but for the student of the artictic society of that day not unworthy to be remembered with Patience. The book was much resented by some of her friends, but she could afford to be indifferent, as she remained throughout her life, to what people might think or say about her. The same year in which “Miss Brown” appeared “Euphorion” was published, described as “Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the Renaissance,” and dedicated to Pater. Though striking less new ground than “Eighteenth Century in Italy,” it contains some of Vernon lee’s best work and will survive when much of her later books will be forgotten. Shortly afterwards appeared “The Countess of Albany” in Allen’s “Eminent Women Series,” a sympathetic, though critical, study of the life of the unhappy wife of the Young Pretender and her lover, Alfieri. She herself described this book as a sort of sequel to “Eighteenth Century Studies,” and the picture of society in Italy that it contains is just as brilliant and, as it deals more with individuals, more definite. Vernon Lee’s later work is of less value. Over 30 volumes of criticism, fiction, and essays stand to her credit, most of which are redolent of the colour and sentiment of Italy, and all of which reveal a mind steeped in the learning of the past and the beauty of the present. “Renaissance Fancies and Studies,” “Genius Loci,” “The Enchanted Woods,” “Limbo and Other Essays,” “The Spirit of Rome” (which captures its very breath), among her volumes of essays and travel scenes, and “Hauntings” and “Vanitas,” among her volumes of stories, have long been familiar to most lovers of literature, and the exquisite little play, “Ariadne in Mantua”, and some of her less attractive pseudo-political and sociological writings, such as “Gospels of Anarchy” and “Satan the Waster,” reveal her versatility of mind.
In 1924 she contributed to “The Times” a long letter, suggested by a criticism of Mr. Walkley’s, on the vital tempo of the artist. “The Golden Keys,” which came out in 1925, contained admirable studies of the “genius loci”. In 1932 appeared “Music and its Lovers,” an empirical study of emotion and the imaginative responses to music. Last spring she was able to present a performance in Florence of the Italian version of “Ariadne in Mantua”, which obtained great success, and she was honoured enthusiastically by her many Florentine admirers.
During the Italian-Turkish War she made herself very unpopular by her strong and openly expressed sympathy with the Turks; and during the Great War, at the outbreak of which she was in England, she estranged most of her friends by writing articles against this country in the American Press, as a result of which she was refused a passport by the authorities. She was a prominent member of the Union of Democratic Control, and was the author of more than one of their polemical pamphlets. It must be remembered that nationality, and in consequence patriotism, were completely outside her understanding. Anatole France is usually credited with having drawn the character of “Miss Bell” in “Le Lys Rouge” from Vernon Lee, but it is more likely a combination of her personality with that of another lady well known in England and France who was at one time an intimate friend of hers. She is mentioned by name in Browning’s “Asolando”:–
“No, the book
Which noticed how the wall-
growths wave,” said she,
“Was not by Ruskin.”
I said, “Vernon Lee.”
And her spirit lives on… at Villa Il Palmerino tonight:
Ossessioni (Hauntings): Max Baroni, Roberto Barzanti, Veronica Scerra
We are glad to promote our friends’ event tonight.
Carissimi Soci e Amici eccoci, dopo una breve pausa, a iniziare subito l’anno con l’incontro per ricordare nel miglior modo il 13 FEBBRAIO, giorno della morte di Vernon Lee.
Lo scorso anno è stto tradotto un corpus dei suoi racconti fantastici in italiano e siamo felici di porteli presentare nella sua antica residenza.
Per presentre questa nuova raccolta dal titolo Ossessioni, saranno con noi Max Baroni, il curatore della casa editrice Alcatraz di Milano insieme a Roberto Barzanti, il critico letterario che ne ha fatto una bella recensione alla sua uscita e la giovane Veronica Scerra che continuando con successo i suoi studi attoriali si presta a leggerne alcuni brani significativi.
Sarà questa l’occasione di ritrovarci dopo la pausa invernale e riprendere le attività al Palmerino
Ricordate RVSP obbligatorio causa posti limitati!
Dear Members and Friends here we are after a short break to start the year immediately with an event to remember in the best way the February 13 day of Vernon Lee’s death. Last year was translated into Italian corpus of her fantastic tales and we are happy to present it in her former residence. The book is a new collection of the fantastic short stories entitled Obsessioni (Hauntings); it will be presented by Max Baroni, the editor of Alcatraz publishing house in Milan together with Roberto Barzanti, the literary critic who wrote a nice review upon its release and the young Veronica Scerra who, continuing her successful acting studies, will read some significant excerpts from it. The conversation will be in Italian. This will be an opportunity to meet again and start the new year of activity!
with my very best wishes for 2024, I wish to express, like I did last year, my dearest wish that peace may reign on earth, as Vernon Lee herself desired. During the past year, this natural wish has moved away from us and we must strengthen our bonds of friendship and fraternal thoughts.
As treasurer of our association, I am writing to kindly ask you for your membership fees to the IVLS.
The IVLS is committed to promoting Vernon Lee, and to supporting research as well as creative works about her life and work. Thus, in 2023, the Future of Intelligence Symposium in Florence at Villa Il Palmerino, focusing on Vernon Lee’s innovative and predictive 1925 Proteus, or the Future of Intelligence, allowed the IVLS to enthusiastically welcome new members willing to contribute to our mission of promoting our beloved author. On this occasion, the IVLS provided funding for the artistic event performed at Il Palmerino itself and sponsored younger scholars’ participation.
Your membership will be valid from January 1, 2024 to December 31, 2024, and will allow you to benefit from reduced registration fees to all our events, scientific or artistic, especially our Vernon Lee Day 2024 and annual meeting, usually held on her birthday, October 14, or around that date. Your contribution to these events is therefore highly appreciated.
Look out for more details about that event, enthusiastically being prepared this year by our team of dedicated new members of the Board: Frankie Dytor, Lucinda Janson and Suzy Corrigan!
The 2024 International Vernon Lee Society membership fee remains:
THIRTY EUROS (30 €) for the regular subscription FIFTY EUROS (50€) and ABOVE for benefactor members FIFTEEN EUROS (15€) for students
payable by:
– SEPA transfer or international transfer to our bank account
INTERNATIONAL VERNON LEE SOCIETY IBAN FR76 4191 9094 3201 0864 9029 117 BIC: BNPARERXXXX- Paypal on account: vernonlee974@gmail.com
– or by cheque for French banks, payable to INTERNATIONAL VERNON LEE SOCIETY, addressed to:
M. Gilles PASQUET
Résidence Marie Galante, App. C 62,
33 Chemin de la Caverne,
97434 Saint Gilles les Bains
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Cher.e.s sociétaires, cher.e.s ami.e.s,
comme l’année passée, j’évoquerai, avec mes meilleurs voeux pour 2024, celui que la paix puisse régner sur la terre, comme Vernon Lee le désirait. Durant l’année écoulée, ce souhait si naturel s’est éloigné de nous et nous devons resserrer nos liens d’amitié et nos pensées fraternelles.
Je viens vous solliciter pour vous acquitter de votre cotisation à l’IVLS, comme ma fonction de trésorier de notre association m’y engage. Le colloque de septembre 2023 à la Villa Il Palmerino où Vernon Lee nous a conduits à des travaux novateurs et prédictifs, initiés par son oeuvre de 1925 “Proteus, or the Future of Intelligence“, a permis à l’IVLS de s’enthousiasmer de l’arrivée de nouveaux membres qui expriment un fort désir de travailler à la renommée de notre autrice bien-aimée. L’IVLS s’est aussi réjouie de financer une manifestation artistique dansée à cette occasion ainsi que la participation de nombreux jeunes chercheurs.
Votre adhésion sera valide du 1er janvier 2024 au 31 décembre 2024, et vous permettra de bénéficier de frais d’inscription réduits à tous nos événements, scientifiques ou artistiques, notamment notre Vernon Lee Day 2024 et notre assemblée annuelle, habituellement tenue le jour de son anniversaire, le 14 octobre, ou vers cette date. Votre contribution à ces événements est donc très appréciée.
Plus de détails vous seront transmis sous peu au sujet de cet événement, préparé avec enthousiasme cette année par notre équipe de nouveaux membres dévoués du conseil : Frankie Dytor, Lucinda Janson et Suzy Corrigan!
La cotisation à l’International Vernon Lee Society pour l’année civile 2024 reste de :
TRENTE EUROS (30 €) pour la cotisation ordinaire
CINQUANTE EUROS (50€) et AU-DESSUS pour les membres bienfaiteurs
QUINZE EUROS (15€) pour les étudiant.e.s
à payer par :
– Virement SEPA ou virement international sur notre compte bancaire
A principios de 2024, quiero destacar el notable trabajo realizado por los traductores, editores científicos, críticos, estudiantes o simples aficionados de Vernon Lee en español, catalán, portugués de Portugal y portugués de Brasil. La siguiente bibliografía muestra el importante trabajo de divulgación y análisis realizado por nuestros amigos. Las columnas de The Sibyl están abiertas a ellos, ¡y estaremos encantados de recibir sus contribuciones!
Queridos leitores, amigos de Vernon Lee,
Neste início de 2024, quero destacar o notável trabalho realizado pelos tradutores, editores científicos, críticos, estudantes ou simples amadores de Vernon Lee em espanhol, catalão, português de Portugal e português do Brasil. A bibliografia que se segue testemunha o importante trabalho de divulgação e análise realizado pelos nossos amigos. As colunas do The Sibyl estão abertas para eles, e teremos o maior prazer em recolher as suas contribuições!
Dear readers, friends of Vernon Lee,
At the beginning of 2024, I would like to acknowledge the remarkable work done by Vernon Lee’s translators, scientific editors, critics, students or simple amateurs in Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese from Portugal and Portuguese from Brazil. The bibliography that follows testifies to the important work of dissemination and analysis carried out by our friends. The columns of The Sibyl are open to them, and we will be happy to collect your contributions!
Chers lecteurs, amis de Vernon Lee,
Je souhaite en ce début d’année 2024 mettre en lumière le travail remarquable accompli par les traducteurs, les éditeurs scientifiques, les critiques, les étudiants ou les simples amateurs de Vernon Lee en Espagnol, Catalan, Portugais du Portugal et Portugais du Brésil. La bibliographie qui suit témoigne de l’important travail de diffusion et d’analyse effectué par nos amis. Les colonnes de The Sibyl leur sont ouvertes, et nous serons ravis de recueillir leurs contributions!
Vernon Lee in Spanish
Vernon Lee, Mi Vida Estética. Castellano. Prologo de Lorena Fuster. Traducción de Olivia de Miguel. La Micro, 2023.
Una mujer de mundo : un relato cortès.Trad. Castellano. Traducción de Pilar Lafuente. Sevilla: El Paseo Editorial, 2023.
Sobre el Estillo. Trad. Castellano. Traducción de Blanca Gago Dominguez. Madrid : Escolar y Mayo, 2023.
Presencias. Los Dark Tales de la British Library. [Vernon Lee, “A Phantom Lover” and Other Dark Tales]. Trad. Castellano. Traducción de Begoña Prat Rojo. Barcelona : Duomo Ediciones, 2023.
Genius Loci, Notas sobre sitios. Trad. Castellano. Prologuista Maria Belmonte Barrenechea. Traducción de Rodrigo Verano Liaño, Jordi Vidal Tubau. Athenaica Ediciones Universitarias, 2022.
La psicología de una escritora de arte. Trad. Castellano. PrologodeRafael Accorinti. Carpe Noctem, 2022.
La Vieajera Sentimental. Edizion de Miguel Angel Martinez-Cabeza. Trad. Castellano. Madrid: Abada Editores, 2021.
Los mejores cuentos de Vampiros: Leyendas de vampiros (Los mejores cuentos de… nº 15) Edición en Español por Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe, et ál. Mestas Ediciones, 2020. [Vernon Lee, “Marsias en Flandes”]
Los mejores cuentos de Grandes Escritoras: Obras maestras escritas por mujeres ; Shelley, Alcott, Bazan, Lee, de La Fayette… (Los mejores cuentos de… nº 32). Edición en Español. Mestas Ediciones, 2020.
Vanitas. Castellano. Traducción de José Luis Piquero González. Ediciones de la Isla de Siltola, 2019.
El espíritu de Roma: Fragmentos de un diario (Cuadernos de Horizonte nº 18). Castillano. Traducción de Amparo Serrano de Haro. La Línea del Horizonte; N.º 1 edición (3 julio 2019)
Cuatro damas del misterio. Edición en Español por Louisa May Alcott, Amelia B. Edwards, Vernon Lee, Margaret Oliphant. Traducción de Goran Gallarza, Marina Alonso, Javier Ruiz, Francisco G. González. Editorial Funambulista S.L., “Grandes clasicos”, 2019.
Embrujada [Hauntings]. Edición en Español por Violet Paget. Reveladas, 2019.
Damas oscuras: Cuentos de fantasmas de escritoras Victorianas eminentes (Impedimenta nº 169). Castellano. Edición en Español de Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, Dinah Mulock, Catherine Crowe, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Rosa Mulholland, Amelia B. Edward, Rhoda Broughton, Mrs. Henry Wood, Vernon Lee, Charlotte Riddell, Margaret Oliphant, Lanoe Falconer, Louisa Baldwin, Violet Hunt, Mary Cholmondeley, Ella D’Arcy, Gertrude Atherton, Willa Cather, Mary E. Wilkins (Freeman). Traducción de Alicia Frieyro Gutiérrez, Olalla García García, Sara Lekanda Teijeiro, Magdalena Palmer Molera, Consuelo Rubio Alcover. Formato: Edición Kindle. Publisher : Editorial Impedimenta, 2017.
Guerra. Lee. Bierce. Twain. En edición bilingüe, con nuevas y cuidadas traducciones. Castellano. Traducción de varios autores. Rasmia Ediciones, “Triadas”, 2016.
Amour dure, Vernon Lee. Presentacion de Javier Mariàs. Nota previa, traduccion y edicion de Antonio Iriarte. Reino de Redonda, 2007.
El Principe Alberico y la dama serpiente. Trad. castellano Marta Lila Murillo. Valdemar, 2006.
La Voz maligna. Atalanta, “Ars brevis”, 2006.
El Deus i El Cavaller Tanhüser. Traducción de Roser Berdagué. Barcelona : Laertes, 1996.
Galeria de Espectros : Un fantasma Enamorado/Vernon Lee ; La Puerta Abierta/Margaret Oliphant ; Monsieur Maurice/Amelia B. Edwards. Trad. Castellano. Traducción de Agustin Temes, Rafael Diaz Santander, Jose Luis Checa. Madrid: Valdemar, 1995.
La Virgen de los Siete Punales. Trad. Miriam Rovira. Barcelona: El Blanco Daten, coll. “Los Jovenes Bibliofilos”, 1992.
Inspired by Vernon Lee (Spanish)
Mario Colleoni, Contra Florencia, La Línea del Horizonte Ediciones, 2019.
Studies (Spanish)
Esther Cross y Betina González, La aventura sobrenatural, Historias reales de apariciones, literatura y ocultismo. Edición en Español. Seix Barral Argentina, 2023.
Vernon Lee in Catalán
La Verge Dels Set Punyals ; La Veu Perversa. [“The Virgin of the Seven Daggers”; “A Wicked Voice”]. Edición en Catalán. Prologuista Jordi Vidal Tubau. Traducción de Roser Berdagué, Jordi Vidal Tubau. Barcelona : Laertes, 1998.
Els déus i el cavaller Tanhûser. Trad. catalàn Roser Berdagué. Laertes editorial, Coleccio L’Arcà, 1996.
El fantasma enamorat. Trad. catalàn. Laertes editorial, 1987.
Vernon Lee in Portuguese
Clássicos do horror, do estranho e do sobrenatural n° 5; contos de Vernon Lee, Gustave Le Rouge e Joseph-Emile Poirier. Ficções Pulp! Tradução exclusiva (Portuguese Edition). Edición en Portugués. Parte de: Clássicos do horror, do estranho e do sobrenatural (6 libros) por Vernon Lee, Gustave le Rouge, et ál. Apresenta: Vernon Lee, “A Boneca” [The Doll]; Poirier: “Os Condenados de Ker-Ys” [Les condamnés de Ker-Ys]; Le Rouge: “No Ventre de Huitzilopochtli” [Dans le ventre de Huitzilopochtli].
Vernon Lee in Brazilian portuguese
Vitorianas Macabras. Ed. and transl. Marcia Heloisa. Charlotte Brontë, Henrietta Dorothy Everett, Vernon Lee, Rhoda Broughton, Charlotte Riddell, E. Nesbit, Amelia B. Edwards, Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Edición en Portugués brasileño. Darkside, 2020.
(for the English version of R. Rolland’s text, please scroll down)
En décembre 1916, Romain Rolland, l’auteur de Au-dessus de la mêlée et de Jean-Christophe, à qui Vernon Lee avait dédicacé The Ballet of the Nations, et pour qui elle avait fait campagne en vue de l’attribution du Prix Nobel de Littérature (qu’il obtint en 1915), publiait un message d’espérance que je souhaite partager en cette fin d’année 2023.
In December 1916, Romain Rolland, the author of Au-dessus de la mêlée and of Jean-Christophe, to whom Vernon Lee dedicated her avant-garde pacifist play The Ballet of the Nations, and who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1915 thanks to her campaigning, published a message of hope that I wish to share on these last days of 2023.
On this December 30, 2023, from my island of La Reunion so aptly named, I wish us to see peace and justice triumph in 2024!
“Mais nous nous devons entre frères de toutes les nations, entre hommes qui ont su défendre leur liberté morale, leur raison et leur foi dans la solidarité humaine, entre âmes qui continuent d’espérer, dans le silence, l’oppression, la douleur, —nous nous devons d’échanger au terme de cette année, des paroles de tendresse et de consolation ; nous nous devons de nous montrer que dans la nuit sanglante la lumière brille encore, qu’elle ne fut jamais éteinte, qu’elle ne le sera jamais.
Dans l’abîme de misères où l’Europe [et le monde] s’enfonce[nt], ceux qui tiennent une plume devraient se faire scrupule de ne jamais apporter une souffrance de plus à l’amas de souffrances, ou de nouvelles raisons de haïr au fleuve brûlant de haine. Deux tâches restent possibles pour les rares esprits libres qui cherchent à frayer aux autres une issue, une brèche, au travers des amoncellements de crimes et de folies. […] Ainsi font les courageux Anglais de l’Independent Labour Leader et de l’Union of Democratic Control, ces hauts esprits indépendants, Bertrand Russell, Norman Angell, Bernard Shaw […]
Certes, le spectacle présent est bien fait pour qu’on doute de la raison humaine. Pour le grand nombre de ceux qui s’étaient endormis béatement sur la foi au progrès, sans retours en arrière, le réveil a été dur ; et sans transition, ils passent de l’absurde excès d’un optimisme paresseux au vertige d’un pessimisme qui n’a plus de fond. Ils ne sont pas habitués à regarder la vie sans parapets. […]
Courage, frères du monde ! Il y a des raisons d’espérer, malgré tout. Les hommes, qu’ils le veuillent ou non, marchent vers notre but, — même ceux qui s’imaginent qu’ils lui tournent le dos. En 1887, en un temps où semblaient triompher les idées de démocratie et de paix internationales, causant avec Renan, j’entendais prédire à ce sage : Vous verrez venir encore une grande réaction. Tout paraîtra détruit de ce que nous défendons. Mais il ne faut pas s’inquiéter. Le chemin de l’humanité est une route de montagne : elle monte en lacets, et il semble par moments qu’on revienne en arrière. Mais on monte toujours.
Tout travaille à notre idéal, même ceux dont les coups s’efforcent à le ruiner. Tout va vers l’unité, — le pire et le meilleur. Mais ne me faites pas dire que le pire vaut le meilleur ! […]
Mais nous, […] il y a longtemps que nous avons accompli l’unité, âmes libres de tous les temps, de toutes les classes, de toutes les races. Des lointains de l’antiquité d’Asie, d’Égypte et d’Orient, jusqu’aux Socrates et aux Luciens modernes, aux Morus, aux Érasme, aux Voltaire, jusqu’aux lointains de l’avenir, qui retournera peut-être, bouclant la boucle du temps, à la pensée d’Asie, — grands ou humbles esprits, mais tous libres, et tous frères, nous formons un seul peuple. Les siècles de persécutions, d’un bout de la terre à l’autre, ont lié nos cœurs et nos mains. Leur chaîne indestructible est l’armature de fer qui tient la molle glaise humaine, cette statue d’argile, la Civilisation, toujours prête à crouler.”
(Romain Rolland, Le Carmel, Genève, décembre 1916).
“The Road Goes Up in Laces” by Romain Rolland
“But we must be among brothers of all nations, among men who have been able to defend their moral freedom, their reason and their faith in human solidarity, among souls who continue to hope, in silence, oppression, pain—we must exchange words of tenderness and consolation at the end of this year; we must show ourselves that in the bleeding night the light still shines, that it was never extinguished, that it will never be extinguished.
In the abyss of miseries in which Europe [and the world are] sinking, those who hold a pen should scrupulously avoid to bring more suffering to the heap of sufferings, or pour new reasons for hatred into the burning river of hate. Two tasks remain possible for the few free spirits who seek to give others a way out, a breach, through piles of crimes and follies. […] Thus do the courageous Englishmen of the Independent Labour Leader and the Union of Democratic Control, these high independent minds, Bertrand Russell, Norman Angell, Bernard Shaw…
Certainly, the present spectacle is well made for us to doubt human reason. For the great number of those blissfully anesthezied by their faith in continued progress devoid of relapses, the awakening was hard; and without transition, they went from the absurd excess of a lazy optimism to the vertigo of a pessimism that no longer has any substance. They are not used to watching life without parapets. […]
Have courage, brothers of the world! There are some reasons for hope, despite everything. Even those who believe they are turning their backs on it are actually advancing toward our goal, whether they like it or not. In 1887, at a time when the ideas of democracy and international peace seemed to be triumphant, talking with Renan, I heard the prediction of this wise man: You will see yet another great reaction. Everything of what we stand forwill seem destroyed. But don’t worry. The path of humanity is a mountain road: it goes up in laces, and sometimes it is as if we were going backwards. But we always go up.
Everything works to our ideal, even those whose blows strive to ruin it. Everything goes towards unity, the worst and the best. But don’t make me say that the worst is the best! […]
But we […] free souls of all time, of all classes, of all races, achieved unity ages ago. From the distant past of Asia, Egypt and the East, to the modern Socrates and Luciens, to the Morus, to the Erasmuses, to the Voltaires, to the distant future, which may return, closing the circle of time, to the thought of Asia—great or humble minds, but we are all free and we are all brothers and sisters. Centuries of persecution, from one end of the Earth to the other, have bound our hearts and hands. Their indestructible chain is the iron frame that holds the soft human clay, this clay statue, the Civilization, always ready to crumble.”
(Romain Rolland, The Carmel, Geneva, December 1916).
“In this third volume, covering the years 1890-1896, the 429 assembled letters follow Violet Paget-Vernon Lee from the age of thirty-four, when she lives with her parents and half-brother, the poet and invalid Eugene Lee-Hamilton, at Villa Il Palmerino (Florence), to the ripe age of forty, when both her parents died and her brother recovered from his illness and decided to leave home.
As Lee copes with Eugene’s invalidism and her own physical and psychological ailments, we get a view of the practice and teaching of medicine and nursing in Europe in the late 1890s. Lee sponsors her friend’s Amy Turton’s convalescent home and nurses’ training. Mental sciences are at the forefront, from experimental psychology, psychiatry and neurology to neurophysiology; and in August 1892, Vernon Lee and Clementina Anstruther-Thomson attend the Psychological Congress in Paris, with speakers Hermann von Helmholtz, James Sully, Alexander Bain, Francis Galton, G. Stanley Hall, and Amboise-Auguste Liebeault. Lee came to consider herself as a psychologist as much as a philosopher of art and delved more deeply into experimental psychology; and with her partner Clementina Anstruther-Thomson she refined a theory of aesthetic empathy and inner mimicry. According to this theory, a viewer’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. They published a synthesis of their work: “Beauty and Ugliness” (The Contemporary Review, October-November 1897).
While travelling, Lee continues to write her travel essays (e.g. Genius Loci: Notes on Places, 1899) and her popular supernatural tales. She starts lecturing, emulating Eugénie Sellers’s British Museum lectures and her method for attribution and connoisseurship.
Her interest in socialism and political economy intensify as her circle widens beyond an aristocratic and society milieux to working-class districts, and her collection Althea (1894) shows her interest in ethics, moral duties and free-thinking. She indicts the proponents of art for art’s sake. Her discussions about contracts, copyright and royalties, pirated editions, and money matters are intertwined with educational ethics and a concern for the fair recognition of women’s higher education and careers. She 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, and 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.
In 1894 the Affaire Dreyfus (1894–1906) begins, revealing the rise of anti-Semitism targeting many of Lee’s close friends, also defenders of Dreyfus, such as James Darmesteter. After he died, Darmesteter’s wife, Mary (Robinson) and Lee once again became close to one another.
By the time she turned forty, Vernon Lee experienced several emotional blows: her friend and mentor Walter Pater died on 30 July 1894. That same year, four months later, on 14 November 1894, her father died from complications related to asthma, Eugene Lee-Hamilton started to recover from chronic illness soon after his stepfather’s death. Eighteen months after her father’s death, Lee was hit again in the death of her mother on 8 March 1896. Feeling vulnerable, Lee made her will (1896), asking Eugene and Bella Duffy to act as executors— “clinging to” the Palmerino: “the only thing I care for in the world”.
In the present volume, she meets for the first time the Italian actress Eleonora Duse, also Lady Margaret Brooke, Ranee of Sarawak; G.B. Shaw; and the composer Ethel Smyth. In France she meets archaeologist, explorer and novelist Jane Henriette Dieulafoy; American painter Mary Cassatt; geographers Edouard Blanc (Marie-Thérèse Blanc’s son) and Jean Brunhes; philanthropist and feminist activist Gabrielle Alphen-Salvador; connoisseur and art collector Gustave Louis Dreyfus and his wife Henriette (suggests Olive Anstruther-Thomson as a tutor or “female lad” for their son, Carle Dreyfus who was to become curator at the Louvre). She also met art expert Albert Sancholle Henraux and his wife Maria del Carmen (Carlo Placci’s sister); illustrator Albert Lynch; painter and printmaker Paul-Albert Besnard; and the Empress Eugénie (Eugénie de Montijo), but also Paul Desjardins and his circle at the Union morale including Daniel Halévy,.
Lee’s Correspondents in this volume include her parents, Matilda and Henry Ferguson Paget; her half-brother poet Eugene Lee-Hamilton; Italian Countess Angelica (Pasolini) Rasponi, Percy William Bunting, French translator and critic 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 Moff at Vincent, Alice Foulon de Vaulx, Alys Pearsall Smith (Mrs Russell) and Hannah Whitall Smith (Mrs Pearsall Smith).” (Sophie Geoffroy, https://www.routledge.com/Selected-Letters-of-Vernon-Lee-18561935-1890-1896/Geoffroy-Gagel/p/book/9781848934979
Another great idea for a Christmas gift for our Italian friends: Elisa Bizzotto‘s translation of Vernon Lee’s first work of fiction: Ottilie, Un idillio settecentesco. This is the very first Italian translation of this very interesting text.
Ottilie: Un idillio settecentesco (Ottilie: An Eighteenth Century Idyl, 1883), prima opera di fiction della scrittrice angloitaliana Vernon Lee, si rifà alla tradizione del romanzo sentimentale per raccontare del rapporto di affetto e intesa intellettuale tra una sorella e il fratello al quale fa da madre dopo la morte dei genitori. Ambientato in Germania tra la fine del diciottesimo e l’inizio del diciannovesimo secolo, Ottilie è anche romanzo di formazione e riporta le vicende quotidiane del narratore in prima persona, il poeta Christoph, e della sorella Ottilie, ragazza e poi donna colta, sensibile e amante dell’arte, in una provincia bigotta e volgare tratteggiata con sottile ironia. Il contesto storico che fa da sfondo è presentato dall’io narrante attraverso le teorie di Rousseau sull’educazione prima, e l’ossianesimo e l’aspirazione al sublime poi, con rimandi alla letteratura tedesca preromantica e romantica a punteggiare il testo. Non mancano riferimenti alla vita musicale dell’epoca, oggetto di studi appassionati da parte di Vernon Lee, attraverso la descrizione di attività di corte, esecuzioni e strumenti che evidenziano i legami tra cultura tedesca e italiana.
we are delighted to announce 3 major events and 2 books, which, I am sure, will be of interest to any Vernon Lee scholar or student. Your feedbacks are always welcome!
TONIGHT’S EVENT: INAUGURATION OF Palace Women, Oltrarno and Beyond: Photography and Artisans, Villa Il Palmerino, Florence, 30 October-15 December 2023
Una mostra composita ispirata a figure femminili del passato e alle loro abitazioni raccontate attraverso diversi materiali e tecniche artistiche da un gruppo di giovanissimi o di artisti artigiani internazionali che operano a Firenze.
La mostra è parte di una rassegna iniziata a Settembre che si compone di conferenze visite guidate e tours nelle realtà fiorentine che raccolgono l’eredità di donne eccezionali ancora così importanti per la nostra storia.
Inoltre segnaliamo che il 2 Novembre presso la colonica del Palmerino si terrà un laboratorio di tecniche pittoriche per la realizzazione di un dipinto di un vaso di fiori tramite una tecnica elaborata dalla Bottega degli Angeli in concomitanza con la mostra su Federigo Angeli a Palazzo Medici Riccardi e inserito nel cartellone del Festival dell’Italia Gentile!
Il laboratorio è riservato a 10 gruppi famigliari ( un bambino e un genitore) ed è gratuito iscrizioni a associazione@palmerino.it
A composite exhibition inspired by female figures of the past and their homes told through different materials and artistic techniques by a group of very young or international artisan artists working in Florence.
The exhibition is part of an exhibition that began in September which consists of conferences, guided visits and tours in the Florentine realities that collect the legacy of exceptional women who are still so important to our history.
Furthermore, we would like to point out that on November 2nd at the Palmerino farmhouse a pictorial techniques workshop will be held for the creation of a painting of a vase of flowers using a technique developed by the Bottega degli Angeli in conjunction with the exhibition on Federigo Angeli at Palazzo Medici Riccardi and included in the program of the Festival dell’Italia Gentile!
Federigo Angeli, Il Rinascimento fiorentino nel XX secolo07 Oct – 07 Jan2024. The exhibition “Federigo Angeli -The Florentine Renaissance in the 20th century” will open to the public on Saturday 7 October, promoted by the Metropolitan City of Florence, organized thanks to the support and contributions of Banca Patrimoni Sella & C. and Sella Sgr, companies belonging to the Sella group, with MUS.E and the Il Palmerino Cultural Association aps and hosted in the Fabiani Rooms of Palazzo Medici Riccardi until 7 January 2024. Curated by Francesca Baldry and Daniela Magnetti. Organized by: Banca Patrimoni Sella & C., Sella Sgr, Associazione MUS.E, Associazione Il Palmerino. Location: Sale Fabiani
The exhibition – The exhibition project was born and developed around two matching paintings by Federigo Angeli entitled “Corteo di dama” and “Signore a Cavallo,” belonging to the collection of Sella Sgr on which the Artistic Direction of Banca Patrimoni Sella & C. carried out an important work of conservation, analysis, and correct attribution of the works, thanks also to the collaboration of various art historians, public bodies and private institutions. The documentary evidence from the archives at the Cultural Association, Il Palmerino proved to be particularly useful.
The exhibition committee entrusted with catalog insights and curatorship benefited from the collaboration of professionals and art historians from public and private institutions, in a synergy of experience and expertise capable of encouraging new perspectives of study: Cristina Acidini, Francesca Baldry, Daniela Magnetti, Roberta Masucci, Marco Moretti, Federica Parretti, Filippo Timo, and Valentina Zucchi.
The exhibition is an opportunity to learn more about the artist and the context in which his workshop operated. In Florence, in the period between the 19th and 20th centuries, a real cult for Renaissance art developed thanks to the strong presence in the city of the Anglo-American community. La Bottega of Federigo (1891), Alberto (1897) and Achille (1899) Angeli took on the dimension of a great artistic forge capable of satisfying the ambitious extravagances of patrons and clients: from the restoration of paintings to copies from antiquity, from weddings coffers to the tempera paintings, to the fresco decoration of entire villas in the United States, the French Riviera and Monte Carlo, helping to disseminate the taste for fourteenth and fifteenth-century painting abroad.
The works – The two paintings on canvas can be directly traced back to the Cappella dei Magi fresco cycle painted by Benozzo Gozzoli (1420-1497) between about 1459 and 1464, both in terms of the overall construction of the scene and of precise literal references: the steed in step and the rampant steed, the ornamented noblemen, the rocky backdrop on which the turreted cities stand out, the treatment of vegetation. Compared with Gozzoli’s precedent, however, Angeli’s workshop stands out for its innovations and contamination of sources. If in the richly decorated walls of the Medici-Riccardi Palace chapel female figures are either totally absent or relegated to the margins of the scene, in the two canvases signed Angeli, women appear as protagonists of the procession. Inspired by Ghirlandaio (1448-1494) from Cappella Tornabuoni in Santa Maria Novella, the woman on horseback echoes the profile of Giovanna Tornabuoni in the Birth of Maria, while the woman with a basket on her head holding the rabbit is a reference from the Birth of St. John the Baptist. Alongside the two large canvases, the exhibition places other evidence of the wide and varied artistic production of the Bottega Angeli, with displays of sketches, paintings and richly decorated furnishings that can tell the story of the family of artists’ inexhaustible search around the sources of inspiration from the Renaissance.
Federigo Angeli (1891-1952), a native of Castelfiorentino and the oldest of four children, began his apprenticeship at a very young age with his father, painter and decorator, Angiolo Angeli. In Florence, at the Accademia delle Belle Arti, he frequented the Libera Scuola di Nudo and was a pupil of the American artist Julius Rolshoven. Federigo’s artistic abilities and talent as a draughtsman were soon recognized and it was not long before he received awards and certificates of merit: he won the first prize for two consecutive years in the Scuola Pio Istituto De’ Bardi for ornamental and figure drawing, Together with his brothers Alberto and Achille, Federigo transformed his father’s workshop into a successful enterprise that contributed to the spread of Florentine taste throughout the world, exporting its style and reproductions of the major artistic works of the Renaissance.
In addition to the works in the Neo-Renaissance style, he cultivated a more personal artistic production which will be represented in exhibition with some portraits and a still-life.
During the period of the exhibition, the visitors have the exceptional opportunity to visit the painter’s house at Villa Il Palmerino and its garden: Saturdays of October 14th, November 18th, and December 9th . Visits only by appointment: associazione@palmerino.it.
EXHIBITION: GLI EBREI, I MEDICI E IL GHETTO DI FIRENZE,
Palazzo Pitti | Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Sala del Fiorino e Sala della Musica 23 ottobre 2023 — 28 gennaio 2024
a cura di Piergabriele Mancuso, Alice S. Legé e Sefy Hendler
This is an important event, and we are very grateful to the curators, especially Alice S. Legé, for bringing to light the history of the ghetto. For Vernon Lee scholars and students, it offers the opportunity of seeing the letter Lee wrote to the Editor of the Times, dated December 15, 1898, to save the Historical Center of Florence from destruction. An Italian translation of the letter is held at the Archivio Storico Comunale di Firenze.
The “Centre”–including the old market-place, Vasari’s fish-market, several very important ancient churches, some beautiful and most interesting palaces of guilds and old families, and a unique ensemble of mediaeval streets and lanes–was not cleared or ventilated, or drained, or otherwise sanitated, but simply swept off the face of the earth, not a trace of it remaining in the group of commonplace and inappropriate streets, and the ostentatious and dreary arcaded square which arose on its site. Only a colossal inscription proclaimed to the scant passers-by and the solitary cabs that, after centuries of squalor, the “Centre” of Florence had been given over to new life! Many of us foreigners can remember this astounding self-mutilation of the town of Florence; and all who can must heartily agree with one of the greatest of German authorities on art, and, like him, stigmatize it as “scandalous.” (Vernon Lee to the Editor of the London Times, December 15, 1898, Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Ins. C cass. 57 nm. 4028-4056 e nm. 2011-2012 prezzi 2+29)
As Lee wrote to Clementina Anstruther Thomson, her engagement with this conservation work as a Member of the Society for the Protection of Old Florence was a fairly uphill work: “Now I have finished, I hope, with old Florence –over 4000 signatures already come in, including 20 French academicians! –” (Vernon Lee, letter to Clementina Anstruther Thomson, December 4, 1898, Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College).
The story of Harriet Chastel de Boinville’s heirloom is in itself a powerful incentive to read the book. It started for me with a letter from a reader I did not know, Bryan Chastel de Boinville, about Vernon Lee’s letter to Henrietta Jenkin, Lucca, June 18, 1875. Vernon Lee’s letter read:
“Alfred Turner sent me a few days ago the beautiful watch of Dr Burney which Madame d’Arblay left to Madame Chastel de Boinville –Mrs Turner had mentioned it in one of her letters to me –It is most precious to me, for Mrs Turner’s sake as much as Madame d’Arblay’s –I hope I may do something to deserve it some day-” Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Volume I, p. 199.
My reader marvelled: “Why, this is my ancestress’s watch you are talking about!”
Indeed, after Harriet’s death, on June 28, 1875, Giovanni Ruffini sent the watch to Vernon Lee with this note:
A vous enfant précoce, revenant de droit le souvenir de cette autre enfant précoce, qui fut Madame d’Arblay
To you, a precocious child, righly belongs this memento of the precocious child that was Madame d’Arblay.
(Qtd B. Corrigan, “Giovanni Ruffini’s Letters to Vernon Lee, 1875-1879,” English Miscellany 13 (1962): 179-240)
Now it was my turn to wonder.
How did Charles Burney’s gold watch end in Vernon Lee’s grateful hands, through Frances Burney d’Arblay, Harriet de Boinville, Cornelia Turner, Alfred Turner and finally Giovanni Ruffini? Many years later, when came the announcement that Barbara de Boinville had just published Harriet de Boinville’s biography, I was eager to find an answer to that mystery.
The reader discovers an amazing web of friends in this immensely readable biography that provides a wealth of information, through anecdotes, first-hand testimonies, letters and diaries, about Harriet Chastel de Boinville and her Circle. Vernon Lee scholars will particularly appreciate Chapter 26, “Cornelia Turner and Vernon Lee Continued the Literary Life, 1848-1875”. Cornelia Turner was Harriet Chastel de Boinville’s daughter, and Vernon Lee’s mentor.
“When they met, Cornelia was seventy-five; Violet, fourteen. . . . . Violet’s half-brother, Eugene Lee-Hamilton, introduced her to Cornelia and Ruffini. Eugene had met the couple in the summer of 1868 in Thun, Switzerland. A member of the staff of the British embassy, Lee-Hamilton was transferred to Paris in 1870 and on June 16th he took his sister to the rue de Vintimille, where Cornelia and Ruffini then lived. “Mrs Turner was oh so kind!” Violet wrote her father the next day and enthusiastically described the visit.”
Mrs Turner encouraged fourteen year old Violet to write, read her very first story, Les aventures d’une pièce de monnaie, comforted her after the editor of the journal La Famille (Lausagne), Vuillet, had cut her text, offering anecdotes about her friend Shelley’s writer’s block. (Vernon Lee’s letters to Mrs Turner are in Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Volume I).
Mrs Turner’s partner Giovanni Ruffini, was also “closely involved in young Violet’s literary progress. He urged her to read what the poet-dramatist-librettist Pietro Metastasio had written. Violet followed Ruffini’s advice. In 1871 she read what the renowned musicologist Dr. Charles Burney, Frances Burney d’Arblay’s father, had written long ago about Metastasio.” This is how Violet Paget started on, and then, with Mrs Turner’s and Ruffini’s encouragements, persevered in, completed and published her Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy in 1878. By the time it was published, Violet Paget had become Vernon Lee, as she announced to her mentor on April 6, 1875: “The name I have chosen as containing part of my brother’s [Eugene Lee-Hamilton] and my father’s [Henry Paget] and my own initials is H.P. Vernon Lee.”
Cornelia Turner also helped Eugene Lee-Hamilton to find publishers for his works. During the Franco-Prussian war in 1870, Eugene received a telegram from Alfred Turner worried about the fate of his brother and uncle hospitalized at the Maison de Santé in Ivry, following the bombing of Fort d’Ivry. He travelled by car from Versailles to Ivry, a journey of 6 to 7 o’clock, which allowed him to give reassuring news of A. Turner’s parents but also to make the bitter observation of the destruction of the villages by the Prussians during the Siege of Paris: “The destruction is indescribable.” About these letters, see our publication “C’est un monde qui s’écroule”: Eugene Lee-Hamilton et la Commune de Paris, lettres à sa famille (31 août 1870 – 9 juin 1871).
It is probably from them that Eugene Lee-Hamilton knew about the correspondence between Claire Clairmont and Lord Byron. Claire Clairmont was Byron’s young lover and the mother of his daughter Allegra. In March-May 1888, Henry James published The Aspern Papers sourced from his visit to Eugene of January, 12 1888.
“On 12 January one of Henry James’s Florentine circle, Eugene Lee-Hamilton (1845–1907), the half-paralysed poet stepbrother of Violet Paget (Vernon Lee, 1856–1935), had told him of Captain Edward Silsbee, ‘the Boston art-critic and Shelley-worshipper,’ and his richly frustrating encounter with the ancient Claire Clairmont, ‘Byron’s ci-devant mistress,’ whose papers he coveted. This became The Aspern Papers, which appeared in The Atlantic in 3 shortish parts (March–May 1888)” (Philip Horne [ed.], Henry James: A Life in Letters [London: Penguin Classics, 1999], p. 189). (Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Volume II, ftn 2, p. 478)
On October 24, 1888, in his letter to his sister, familiarly addressed as “Bags”, Eugene somewhat bitterly comments:
“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 “Bags” (Vernon Lee), Florence, October 24, [1888]). (Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, Volume II, p. 477)
“This is my birthday & I cannot let it pass without writing to you”
Vernon Lee to Matilda Paget, October 14, 1891. Vernon Lee Archive, Miller Library, Colby College
Dear readers,
October 14 marks the date of Violet Paget’s birth in Boulogne sur Mer, and like every year, The Sibyl “cannot let it pass without writing to you”, dear readers.
But this year the current deluge of violence and hatred against innocent civilians took my breath away, and quite muted me.
The civilian population in Israel targeted by ruthless terrorists, and the civilian population of Gaza caught under the fire of Israel’s retaliation… and the reconciliation efforts and peaceful solutions painstakingly carried out, elaborated and agreed upon by the more moderate elements of society on both sides have now been shattered by extremists.
Then, in the wake of the bloodbath, here in France, our colleague, Dominique Bernard assassinated by an islamic fanatic right in his High School in Arras– for what? for being a History and Literature teacher?! This, exactly 3 years after another colleague, Samuel Paty, was savagely decapitated near his School in Conflans Sainte Honorine for teaching secularism and freedom of speech… What a terrible commemoration!
The attack level alert has been raised in France; and of course, so have endless controversies and divisions, fed by more or less well-informed or well-meaning (read my lips) social media reporting the opinions of more or less well-meaning politicians and self-appointed “experts”. As for us, we wish to express our heart-felt sympathy and condolences to the families of the victims.
Are we yet again going to live in Terror, for the sake of religious fanatics? What can men and women of good-will do? What would Vernon Lee say? In 1921, she wrote to her friend, the pianist Mathilde Hecht (née Oulman) who had suffered so much during the war:
If only people could see in their fellow man the other self of Buddhism, or at the very least, a vulnerable creature as capable of suffering and error as themselves!
(Vernon Lee, Letter to Mathilde Hecht, Decembre 30, 1921)
In this situation, Lee’s Satan the Waster and Ballet of the Nations sound more sinister, and more visionary than ever… but then she died 4 years before WWII, and her views might have been different, had she actually lived through Nazi barbarism…
“Literature is the universal confidant, the spiritual director of mankind" Vernon Lee
Portrait de Miss Paget par Berthe Noufflard, 1932
"L’avantage d’être écrivain, même sans lecteurs, c’est de pouvoir éviter tout malentendu et toute déloyauté en mettant sous les yeux des autres ce qu’on pense sous forme de livre." VL, Lettre à Berthe Noufflard 26 juillet 1925
Miss Paget, portrait photographique par André Noufflard
« Mais si seulement les gens voulaient reconnaître dans leurs semblables : des semblables, l’autre soi-même du Bouddhisme ou du moins une pauvre bête aussi capable de souffrance et d’erreur que soi-même ! » (Vernon Lee, Lettre à Mathilde Hecht, 30 décembre 1921)
