On this day, October 14, 1856, 169 years ago, Violet Paget, later known as “Vernon Lee”, was born at the Château du Pont Feuillet, Saint Léonard near Boulogne-sur-Mer (France).
It is such a pleasure to recall our discovery of the very place, in October 2022! Members of the IVLS and participants at Pr. Marc Rolland’s conference on “Vernon Lee and the Fantastic” at the University of Boulogne sur Mer) were guided by the French historian Michel Parenty along a “Vernon Lee itinerary” following the footsteps of her family in October 1856–her mother Matilda Paget (formerly Lee-Hamilton, née Adams), her father Henry Ferguson Paget and her half-brother Eugene Lee-Hamilton– to her birth place: Pont-Feuillet.
Michel Parenty’s help was much needed to complete the information provided by Vernon Lee in her record of her first days of life in “Boulogne sur mer and Literary Immortality,” A Vernon Lee NoteBook (unpublished typescript), written in Oxford, 20 Juin 1930. Readers of Michel Parenty’s important chapter “Pont-Feuillet, demeure inspirée” in his book published in December 2022 De la demeure inspirée au château d’esprit balnéaire will discover that the house was later home to the famed egyptologist Auguste Mariette.
The visit included a respectful visit of the cemetery of Saint-Léonard and the tombs of the Pagets’ hosts at the time: Major Bergonzi and his wife Mary-Anne Marshall, as well as the house itself where the current owners heartily welcomed the IVLS and their projects. Last but not least, we were honoured by Mrs Loire, Mayor of Saint Léonard, at the City Hall, where the authentic birth certificate of Violet Paget was displayed for all those present. Again, we are most grateful to Michel Parenty for his important role in the local authorities’ agreement to make our projects happen.
I can’t resist the pleasure of (again) publishing here Lee’s own account: “Boulogne sur mer and Literary Immortality,” A Vernon Lee NoteBook
“I have never been at Boulogne,” I replied, probably to myself, since no-one else had asked –“I have never been at Boulogne before.” Now, as a fact, I was born there, or within so few miles thereof, and from my window of the hotel, I could watch a constant to-and-fro of motor buses “Boulogne-Ponte de Briques” proclaiming as it were, the imposture of my alibi. Also suggesting I might spend an hour, or a quarter of one, pilgrimaging to the precise spot where I was born. Had I not, until trees or houses obstructed its view, (before the war) seen from the train, recognising one of my Father’s many sepias, the very house “Château St. Léonard”, with its Louis Philippe terrace, in which I actually emerged into the world, A.D. 1856; came into the world with the legend that the doctor said “Madame, je n’ai rien à vous reprocher”, words repeated to me many times during my childhood, as a reason for filial gratitude and sometimes of reproach, little suspecting that Dr. Perrichod (that was his name) doubtless said the same words to all the ladies he thus assisted, and irrespective of the subsequent glory of their offspring. And, by the way, how small is the world and how telescoped is time, that sixty years later I should have been the guest (at a place less attractive than its name, “Cavalière du Lavandou”) of an old becraped and somewhat moustached widow lady who was the daughter of that doctor who had introduced me to the world and particularly to Pont de Briques, Boulogne sur Mer, Pas de Calais, and, as I have mistakenly taken for granted, also to eventual immortality.
Now, if Boulogne had not been simmering under a kind of mid-night sun (for no daylight was ever so hot and so dim) making its quays like some faded Vernet print of a “Harbour of France”, I might have taken heart of grace, and, after wandering round the donjons and douves and leafy ramparts of the Upper Town (how the open windows reveal Louis Philippe buffets and miroirs à glace and Balzacien retired officials!) – I might have taken likewise one of those motor buses and pilgrimaged to that place of my Birth. And the queer thought arises that had I been somebody else (which I might so easily have been) who in some future times had read my works, the probability is I should thus have spent my afternoon; the place of my Birth being one of the few objects of interest to travellers at, or near, Boulogne sur Mer. For have I not pilgrimaged to similar Birth (or, for that matter, Death) places of other writers. Which thought led to the further one that this would have happened only if Dr. P. had assisted and congratulated (“Madame, je n’ai rien à vous reprocher”) somewhat earlier in the History of Literature. Since it was easier in earlier days to attain such immortality as is starred in guidebooks simply because, given that somebody had to be immortal, there weren’t so many people to do it. So that, after comparison of the prose and poetry in Golden Treasuries, etc., indeed, that of many departed writers, with my own and the consequent recognition that the latter, to wit, mine, is better worth remembering, yet, I may assert with equal confidence that it will not be remembered, or the Birth Place of V. L. be recorded (elsewhere than on obsolete passports, as Pont de Briques, Pas de Calais, near Boulogne sur Mer), and pilgrimaged-to by my Passionate Readers of Future Ages.
For one of the few certainties which life has brought me is that the competition for immortality much exceeds nowadays the immortality available for distribution; and that literature is ceasing to be aere perennius and assuming its true status as journalism and perishable. About which fact, though at moments disappointing to my secret hopes, I cannot fairly complain, and am bound to apply to Fate Dr. P.’s remark at my own birth: “Madame, je n’ai rien à vous reprocher.”
….
But apart from this matter of “oblivion versus immortality”, there would be more for me to say about Boulogne sur Mer because, as a fact, I really had been there before, though only at the age of five, the year of the wedding of the afterwards King Edward VII, whose effigy alongside of his bride in The Illustrated News, is one of the few images I retain (perhaps because I coloured it by hand!) from those months at No. Blank, Grande Rue, Boulogne sur Mer.
Also that of Major Bergonzi’s garden at Pont de Briques, cruelly branded on memory by one of those mishaps disgracing parents after accepting the hospitality of old friends for their offspring. Much later in life I learned, connecting him with a wholesomely austere plum-pudding, that Major Bergonzi had fought in the Crimean War, had a wife who was a Swedenborgian (?) and had been born in Italy, as was proved by his playing the guitar after meals.
Oxford: June 20th, 1930
