Vernon Lee, Letter to Mary Robinson - November 23, 1925

Author : Lee, Vernon (Violet Paget)

General information

LanguageFrench

SourceBibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Anglais 247

Kind of documentAutograph Letter Signed

Format8 pages

MediumWhite paper

General condition of the documentGood condition

Document locationBibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Paris

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amitié (André Noufflard), amitié (Berthe Noufflard), amitié (Fernande Dauriac), amitié (Flora Priestley), amitié (John Singer Sargent), amitié (Lionel Dauriac), amitié (Mathilde Hecht), art (peinture), correspondance, critique littéraire, finances, mort, musique, paysage, politique (bolchévisme), politique (censure), politique (lutte antifasciste), théâtre

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Lee, Vernon (Violet Paget), Vernon Lee, Letter to Mary Robinson - November 23, 1925, 1925-11-23. Project EMAN, Holographical-Lee, Sophie Geoffroy, University of La Réunion & Institut des textes et manuscrits modernes, CNRS-ENS. Consulted on 2025/06/01 on the EMAN platform : https://eman-archives.org/HoL/items/show/1320

Text & Analysis

Transcription

Nov. 23. XXV

Very dear Mary. This should be all about your Racine, but it just is’nt, for my squirrel’s habits are making me hoard that book alone with one or two others against the icy rainy days whi which must come. (At present the vines and poplars are still divinely golden all round and the drives & roads we used to call “Johnnies” after J.S.S.) are putting on vivid streaks after their summer languor).
Well -- I am writing, my dear, to bore you to get the enclosed cheque cashed at your leisures ! and (even more at your leisure !) hand the French equivalent to Fernande Dauriac. She would find it difficult to cash an English cheque. Also I am anxious not to be sending any money to her or her Paris milieu, which the papers there are perpetually denouncing as a nest of… well ! free masons.
And ask her, dearest, on no account to write me thanks or make any allusion to it, as her letters are probably opened on arrival by the Tcheka. And tell her, dear, not to discuss her affairs as she does in a letter received today, she’s very imprudent or I am very cowardly !
Also, will you be an angel? -- you can say such things gently and tactfully -- that the pennies are solely for household expenses or cabs or doctors, in fact to grease their poor wheels, but on no account for any kind of propaganda. I feel more and more that the latter is a relief to their feelings, quite useless in the face of such odds, and possibly getting other people into scrapes. (I feel a horror for the notion notion that because A. is willing to risk a his skin he has a right to make ˆinduceˆ B. to do alike. More and more I am a passive resister, but a resister. And I liked her husband’s resignation immensely. It is a case of Manzoni’s “non far tregua coi vili”. Forgive if this is inflicting a bother & please curb that admirable & interesting but rather indiscreet and over personal friend of ours !
I have been hunting for Sargent letters. Flora Priestley came for two nights & went through packets & packets, finding a lot of very charming little letters I had completely forgotten ! Incidentally, I had to open some parcels of my own letters to some people in the 80s. Lord ! what a dull, dull (and quite “literary gossipy” Villarish young prig I was. I cannot believe that John’s oil sketch of me could have been like me then ! But what these letters show in their dullness (shades of Fanny Burney etc etc !) is your marvellous sweetness and dearness and how much my mother, who heaven knows was not easy to deal with, loved you. Does everyone think he or she is to more tolerable at 70 than at 20 ? It would be a kind of posthumous purification like wings and harps and white garments !
I am still rather a rag, quite unable to work, and falling back on - of all things - five finger exercises and the difficult passages in Mozart’s quartets. Tell Mathilde !
Your Noufflards are angelic new friends ! Them also I owe to you and to Mabel.
My love to her and forgive my troubling you. Yrs Vernon

Contributor(s)

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

Author (s) of the transcriptMiteran, Cécile

Auteur transcriptionMiteran, Cécile

Presentation

Date1925-11-23

LiTypeAutobiography

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

Burney, Fanny
Dauriac, Fernande
Hecht, Mathilde
Manzoni, Alessandro
Noufflard, André
Noufflard, Berthe
Price, Mabel
Priestley, Flora
Racine, Jean
Sargent, John Singer

CoverageFlorence (Italy)

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