The Sibyl, A Journal of Vernon Lee Studies

Vernon Lee to Clementina Anstruther Thomson, Venice, October 16, 1903

I am following this Chamberlain’s fiscal business with deep & painful interest. To me it is simply the 3d act of the policy of jingoism, of “Imperialism” –…. grabbingness of which the war was the first. It conceives of trade & industry as a fight with one’s neighbour, or even worse, a game of brag. The worst of it is not even the taxation of the poor, but the policy of bad feeling, covert hostility & colossal militarism which it will involve, let alone the political corruption which all artificial monopolies must bring with them. How I wish I were a political pamphleteer! (to CAT, Venice, October 16, 1903)

Lettre à Augustine Bulteau, Florence, 12 Juin 1903

Si vous saviez combien, et combien douloureusement depuis notre stupide guerre, je ressens le besoin de rapprochement moral entre les peuples. Sous ce rapport nous n’avons fait que baisser depuis l’avènement des démocraties et de la grande industrie ! Au dix-huitième siècle la haine nationale ne se cultivait pas encore (car j’imagine que c’est un produit artificiel, une très littérale fleur de rhétorique que fait éclore le journalisme et l’éducation à bon marché, les “lectures patriotiques ” pour enfants) on s’entr’égorgeait sans se mépriser. Souvenez-vous que Sterne a parcouru la France au beau milieu de la Guerre de Sept Ans. Et nous avons tous tellement besoin des denrées morales et intellectuelles que produisent nos voisins : voyez-vous comme toutes les grandes époques littéraires répondent à des inoculations, comme vous dîtes [dites], je dirais davantage, à des croisements de peuples : la France féconde l’Italie du Moyen Age, celle-ci féconde l’Angleterre au 16^ème siècle, l’Angleterre de nouveau produit le mouvement philosophique de la France, le mouvement philosophique et littéraire de l’Allemagne au 18^ème ; et l’Allemagne nous donne à tous les deux Coleridge, Byron, Hugo, Carlyle, tout ce qui sort de Kant et d’Hegel – Aujourd’hui au contraire l’industrie n’aboutit qu’au stupide protectionnisme dont nous sommes plus que menacés en Angleterre, et la facilité de voyage fait qu’on traîne les meubles et ses préjugés ! par toute l’Europe, revenant sans avoir, le plus souvent, échangé un mot avec un étranger. Vous savez, Toche, il me semble que le moment est venu pour les peuples où il faudrait commencer à se servir un peu de son intelligence : la dérive complète, l’égoïsme bête érigé en principe, a vraiment fait son temps… (lettre à Augustine Bulteau, Igno, 12 juin 1903)

Vernon Lee, letter to Augustine Bulteau, June 12, 1903

If you knew how much, and how painfully since our stupid war, I’ve felt the need for a moral rapprochement between peoples ! Regarding that, we have only declined since the advent of democracies and big industry ! In the eighteenth century national hatred was not yet cultivated (for I imagine it is an artificial product, very literally a flower of rhetoric made to flourish by cheap journalism and education, and children’s “patriotic readings”), people would cut each other’s throats but never despise one another. Remember that Sterne travelled across France in the midst of the Seven Years’ War. And we all need the moral and intellectual goods produced by our neighbours so much : see how all the great literary eras result from inoculations, as you say, I would say interbreeding of peoples : France fertilises mediaeval Italy, which fertilises 16th century England, England in its turn produces the French philosophical movement and the German philosophical and literary movement in the 18th century ; and Germany offers both of us Coleridge, Byron, Hugo, Carlyle, everything issuing from Kant and Hegel. Today on the contrary, industry only produces stupid protectionism, which more than threatens us in England, and thanks to easy travelling conditions we drag our furniture and prejudices across Europe, and come back home, most often, without exchanging a single word with foreigners! You know, Toche, it seems to me the time has come for the peoples to use their intelligence a little: that complete drift, that stupid selfishness considered as a principle, are certainly outdated… (to Augustine Bulteau, June 12, 1903)

No comment…

“Much of the world’s big mischief is due to the avoidance of a bigger one.

For instance, all this naïvely insisted on masculine inability to obtain the poet’s or naturalist’s joys without shooting a bird or hooking a fish, this inability to love wild life, early hours and wholesome fatigue unless accompanied by a waste of life and of money;

in short, all this incapacity for being manly without being destructive, is largely due among us Anglo-Saxons to the bringing up of boys as mere playground dunces, for fear (as we are told by parents and schoolmasters) that the future citizens of England should take to evil communications and worse manners if they did not play and talk cricket and football at every available moment.

For what can you expect but that manly innocence which has been preserved at the expense of every higher taste should grow up into manly virtue unable to maintain itself save by hunting and fishing, shooting and horse-racing;

expensive amusements requiring, in their turn, a further sacrifice of all capacities for innocent, noble and inexpensive interests,

in the absorbing, sometimes stultifying, often debasing processes of making money?“

Vernon Lee
Laurus Nobilis: Chapters on Art and Life, 1909, p. 309