Lettre de Vernon Lee à Mary Robinson - 9 Janvier 1880?erreur: 1881

Lettre de Vernon Lee à Mary Robinson - 9 Janvier 1880?
erreur: 1881

Authors : Lee, Vernon (Violet Paget)

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LanguageEnglish

SourceBibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits, Anglais 244

General condition of the documentAverage condition

Document locationAnglais 244. Correspondance de Mary Robinson - V - Lettres de Vernon Lee à Mary Robinson I 1880-1882. Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Manuscrits.

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Lee, Vernon (Violet Paget), Lettre de Vernon Lee à Mary Robinson - 9 Janvier 1880?
erreur: 1881, 1881-01-09. Holographical-Lee, Sophie Geoffroy, Université de La Réunion ; projet EMAN (Thalim, ENS-CNRS-Sorbonne nouvelle). Consulted on 2025/10/22 on the EMAN platform : https://eman-archives.org/HoL/items/show/403

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[Written across the first page in red ink:]

On account of the wet weather they have not yet finsihed the cast from the little Orphans copy

Flor. Jan. 9. 80

My dearest Mary. You seem to want an answer to your postcard; So I won’t delay. Dearest little Princess Quesara, I can’t tell you how sweet I think of you to want to dedicate that poem to your Vernon, nor how much pleasure it would give me to see my name associated with the one that is always uppermost in my thoughts.

Also, as a writer, I my vanity would be extremely gratified, because I do so completely believe in you as an artist; and it would also be a sort of friendly introduction into a world into which my intention has been (& is) to get by mere solitary battering.

But there seem to me several reasons against it. Some perhaps absurd, but one which I think you should certainly take into consideration. As the book as a whole is dedicated to an old friend & encourager of yours, would there not be something – how shall I express it?- something strange in any portion being dedicated to someone else, especially a someone else of whom you had never heard when you probably decided to whom to dedicate the whole?

I don’t know the etiquette or the rationnel of dedication: of course the effect depends on what is or is not the custom. I should be horribly sorry if you did anything which you might afterwards regret, --I think at this moment, when you care for me as you do, you can scarcely judge fairly of what you might afterwards think on the subject. Also, I don’t think you will ever have reasons to be ashamed of me.

As the as to what I feel; but from one of the things you have said & from my knowledge of my own temper, perhaps you may later have occasion to hear me blamed & blame me yourself for what you might think a crude & unwomanly way of speaking: you know that on that point there is a difference in our temper or our education (I felt it dreadfully, to my disadvantage, that evening you went out of the room at Siena, tho’ I afterwards completely sympathised ˰with˰ & admired yr behaviour) – well, perhaps someday you might be sorry to have bracketed yrself with me. And I should be dreadfully sorry at that.

You know, or don’t know, that one man, who rather admires me as a writer told me (on my Contemporary articles) that I might give Ouida lessons of impropriety of language: I don’t care a rush for what such folk say, but you & your people might. The principal objection is the filching, as it seems to me, of parts of the book from Mr Symonds.

Dearest Mary, it costs me a great deal to say this, because I should dearly like the thing. But I think I ought to say what occurs to me. The intention in itself is more than I could hope; and it will be very pleasant for me to think, if ever I hear that poem praised, of the time when I told you the story out of Cinthis; that very happy time on the bench on the Uffizzi stairs, which is so short a time since, but seems so infinitely long ago.

Do just as you think proper; I am too selfish to say deliberately no to what I should like; only I must suggest my doubts to you.

It is very kind of you to send me the photographs, which I suppose will come tomorrow. I hope, dear that some day you will show me the originals, as I showed you the pictures at Siena.

I have been feeling very ungrateful & discontented of late; seeing a good many people; coming home in the evening from people who are so friendly & encouraging to me, I yet feel a sort of rage at the notion that they are what I must live with always ˰all year round˰, weekly, daily, and that the one person I care most for I can barely hope to see for a few short days every two or three years. I can’t say how much touched I am every time I think of that sentence about the picture of the lamps at Siena.

Did I thank your sister abo for her likeness? Tell me about Miss Poynter; I fear she w^d very much disapprove of my ways if she knew them.

Goodbye dearest Mary

Always yr Vernon

NotesDedication of a book

Contributor(s)

Geoffroy, Sophie (édition scientifique)
Walter, Richard (édition numérique)

Author (s) of the transcriptGeoffroy, Sophie

Auteur transcriptionGeoffroy, Sophie

Presentation

Date1881-01-09

LiTypeCorrespondance

RightsRecord : 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)

PublisherHolographical-Lee, Sophie Geoffroy, Université de La Réunion ; projet EMAN (Thalim, ENS-CNRS-Sorbonne nouvelle)

PublicationGagel, Amanda (ed.), Sophie Geoffroy (assoc. ed.), Selected Letters of Vernon Lee 1856-1935, volume I (1865-1884), London and New York: Routledge, "The Pickering Masters", 2016.

Editorial informations

RecipientRobinson, Mary

CoverageFlorence, Italie

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Record created by Sophie Geoffroy Record created on 01/08/2018 Latest modification 18/06/2024