It has been 170 years since Vernon Lee was “brought into a world which is most often tolerable & occasionally good” (Letter to Matilda Paget, 14 October 1890, Selected Letters vol. III, 47).

As one might imagine, Lee received various gifts on her birthdays throughout the years, such as three volumes of Henry Fielding from Marie Spartali Stillman in 1884 (vol. I, 589), a “lovely fan” from Mary Robinson delivered by Norman MacColl in 1885 (vol. II., 128 ), equally “lovely flowers in a brass Japanese pot” from her friend Maria Gamba in 1890 (vol. III, 47 ), and a “charming note from Lady Archie” in 1891 (vol. III, 112). Lee saw herself as an excellent recipient of gifts, as she tells us in her essay “Making Presents” in Hortus Vitae:

…I have been, what is much more to the point, a great receiver of presents, my room, my house containing nothing beautiful or pleasant that is not a present from some dear friend, or (the paradox will be explained later on) a present from myself. A great receiver of presents, also, because presents give me a very lively and special pleasure; have done so always ever since my days of Christmas-trees and birthday candles, leaving all through my life a particular permeating charm connected with certain dates and seasons, like the good, wonderful smell of old fir-needles slightly toasted, and of wax tapers recently extinguished, so that all very delightful places and moments are apt to affect me as a sort of gift-giving, what the Germans have a dear word for, beloved of children, Bescheerung. For if life, wisely lived, ought to be, as I firmly believe, nothing but a long act of courtship, then, surely, its exquisite things—summer nights with loose-hanging stars, pale sunny winter noons, first strolls through towered towns or upon herb-scented hills, the hearing again of music one has understood, not to speak of the gesture and voice of the people whom one holds dear—all these, and all other exquisite movements or exquisite items of life, should be felt with the added indescribable pleasure of being gifts.

Indeed, Lee valued the delightful moments spent in the company of “the people whom one holds dear” above all material gifts. She regarded her very first encounter with Mary Robinson as her “second birthday”, “that of [her] heart & of a great part of [her] life happiness” (1883, vol. I, 460). In a letter to Robinson the day after her birthday in 1885, she reminisced about this first meeting (vol. II, 129):

“I was just beginning to publish then; & was a very wild creature & young. Now I am an old hack, a star that has somewhat hung fire, damp somewhere, but well known in a small portion of a three inch heaven. And I am alas old.”

Two years later, she writes to Enrico Nencioni (vol. II, 418-419):

“Venerdì è il mio giorno natalizio; quando giungo ad una età in cui sono cessati da un pezzo i fiori ed i confetti, ma rimangono, più forti e più apprezzate, le amicizie, oramai vecchie quanto del vino buono.”

“Friday is my birthday, when I reach an age in which flowers and confetti have ceased for a while, but stronger and more valued friendships remain, by now old like good wine”

To celebrate her 170th birthday, The Sibyl offers Lee not only our admiration and lasting friendship, but also one of the “exquisite things” she cherished most, “the hearing again of music one has understood.” Beauty first reached her through music, and music remained her faithful companion:

“Music pierced me, caught me in its grasp: in this corner of the arts I experienced real pleasure connected to an actual exercise of attention. The persistence of my musical tastes through time are a confirmation of this fact. While my preferences for canvases, statues, and architecture have often changed, both overall and piece by piece, my musical preferences have stayed what they already were at twelve or thirteen years old, and the new pleasures that have come to complement the older ones never constituted any kind of rapture, or even shift in direction.” (“The Psychology of an Art Writer”).

We invite all Lee enthusiasts to join us in a collaborative present: a shared play-Lee-st. It will gather the music Lee confessed to loving, along with more recent pieces we believe she might have enjoyed. The play-Lee-st is now available on YouTube, awaiting contributors.

To crown the celebrations, we are delighted to announce the approaching inauguration of a commemorative plaque at Vernon Lee’s birthplace, Saint-Léonard – Boulogne-sur-Mer, in April 2027. We will share the exact date and details soon.

To extend the festivities even further, read the recent report on the Order and Chaos conference (1–3 September 2026).