Vernon Lee, Letter to Mary Robinson - September 27, 1925

Authors : Lee, Vernon (Violet Paget)

General information

LanguageEnglish

SourceBibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Anglais 247

Kind of documentAutograph Letter Signed

Format

4 pages
postcard

Medium

Postcard
White paper

General condition of the documentGood condition

Document locationBibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Paris

The folios

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6 File(s)

The topics

amitié (Maria Pasolini), amitié (Maria Waser), amitié (Mary Robinson; Mme Darmesteter; Mme Duclaux), art (architecture), art (peinture), écriture (conditions matérielles), paysage, santé (Vernon Lee), tourisme, transports (moyens), voyages

Genetic folder

Record

Text & Analysis

TranscriptionMontericco, near Imola
Sept 27. XXV
Dearest Mary, you will want to know my further adventures ? I think I wrote you from Zurich, telling you how I had crumpled up in after the night journey and had to take a day in bed in my Swiss friend’s most hospitable châlet by the lake. It was only a bad chill, and I was all right next day. And the restfulness of the little white, student’s room (for it my friend’s elder son had been turned out for my benefit) with the boy’s books, his foil and neat skull on the porcelain stove. The sense of not going on was inexpressibly delicious. It is a bore for everyone else, being ill in the house of a friend but there is something nice about it one has’nt in one’s own house. Well! the sense of kindness. And my Swiss friend, who might be - almost my granddaughter, was enchantingly motherly.
My journey was further interrupted by a breakdown of the engine on the Gothard. I arrived in Milan in time to see my train departing for Bologna. I had to go from hotel to hotel begging for a room. And when I got one it was’nt inviting. But I m presumed it was a piece of good luck, took a taxi and drove to Sant Ambrogio and the Duomo, and what was better, slept like a sack that night to the clanking and tootling of innumerable tram’s raging round. I was so pleased with myself that next day I actually changed trains twice in order to get two hours at Modena to see the cathedral. I have’nt done anything so adventurous except in Mabel Price’s company for nearly thirty years, and this sense was better than the cathedral, though the cathedral was good.
But as a result of it all, and of the endless chatter and vociferation of Italian hospitality, and also the sudden plunge back into a kind of summer, I am quite imbecile, and must beg forgiveness for this inane letter.
This is a great four-square brick villa, tower-shaped and with a fortress-like buttress, among vineyards and thin woods of oak and cypress on the very lowest spurs of the Apennine near Bologna - the great Venetian place in front of a Pier della Francesca landscape of peaks and dentellations, pale like his pictures, blue and dun, behind. And belongs to Maria Pasolini’s younger son, with charming wife and endless children and nephews and nieces. On Thursday I shall at last get home to my servants and my doctor and I hope my work ! Dear Mary, how can I thank for your dear news ? Yrs V.
[postcard] Imagine the first floor the height of a Paris 3d, the rest to match

Notescontains a photo

Contributor(s)

Geoffroy, Sophie (scientific edition)
Miteran, Cécile (transcription and indexation)
Walter, Richard (digital edition)

Presentation

Date1925-09-27

LiTypeAutograph Letter (Signed)

Rights

Document: Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Gallica
Record : Project EMAN, Holographical-Lee, Sophie Geoffroy, University of La Réunion & Institut des textes et manuscrits modernes, CNRS-ENS. Licence Creative Commons Attribution – Share alike 3.0 (CC BY-SA 3.0 FR)

PublisherProject EMAN, Holographical-Lee, Sophie Geoffroy, University of La Réunion & Institut des textes et manuscrits modernes, CNRS-ENS

PublicationUnpublished

Editorial informations

RecipientRobinson, Mary

Person

Pasolini, Maria
Price, Mabel
Waser, Maria

CoverageImola, Italy

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Record created by Sophie Geoffroy Record created on 21/09/2018 Latest modification 23/08/2021