"VERNON LEE"
The Renaissance in Italy

Lovers of literature, and especially students of the Renaissance and the eighteenth century, will receive with regret the news of the death of Miss Violet Paget, long known to the world as "Vernon Lee," which occured yesterday at Il Palmerino, San Gervasio, Florence, at the age of 78.

If this gifted and learned writer never quite fulfilled her brilliant promise, and if much of her later work is ephemeral and some of it not a little obscure, still the best of her writings should survive among the most interesting of the literature of aesthetic criticism of the last 50 years.

Though of British parentage, Vernon Lee was cosmopolitan from her birth, without any single national tie or sympathy. Her father was for a time concerned in the management of a college at St Petersburg where the imperial pages were trained. Her mother, whose maiden name was Abadam, was Welsh, and at the time of her marriage with Mr. Paget was the widow of Mr. Lee-Hamilton. Vernon Lee was born at Boulogne-sur-Mer in October 1856. The family seem to have wandered up and down Europe during all her early years, settling finally at Florence, which became her permanent home. Her half-brother, Eugene Lee-Hamilton, a poet of charm, was her constant companion, and had much to do with forming her powerful intellect and encouraging her literary taste; her mother, too, was a woman of ability and learning. Thus she lived from her earliest years in a highly stimulating intellectual atmosphere, to which her precocity, versatility, and perhaps the tendency to discursiveness that runs through much of her writings may in some measure be attributed.

It is with the school of Walter Pater and John Addington Symonds that much of Vernon Lee's critical and historical work will always be associated, though her first (and perhaps her best) book "Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy," published in 1880, stands alone as the first attempt in England to explore the intellectual life of that little-known period. She introduced to many English readers for the first time the names of musical composers whom a later generation has elevated into something of a cult; and in a series of striking and picturesque essays subjected the drama of the period to a similar review. But the book is much more than a collection of aesthetic criticisms, for we feel that we are actually living in the queer puppet-like world of the Italy of that day. An amazing book for a girl of 24 to have written, and still more so when we learn from her that the materials for it were collected between the ages of 15 and 20. It immediately attracted great attention here and abroad, especially in Italy, the sex of the author being veiled by her pseudonym. The Nuova Antologia spoke of it as "true life revealed to us in brilliant and various, but never exaggerated colours," and added, "The severity of his studies and the patience of his research are evident at every step"; and another learned Roman review described the author as a "subtle and imaginative critic . . . who has profoundly studied a subject in which he takes passionate interest and who has written of Italy and Italian art with a wonderful artistic intuition comparable only with that shown in some of Robert Browning's Italian subjects."

The author came to England for the first time on a visit in 1881, and her remarkable conversational gifts and caustic power of repartee made her welcome in circles where she could hold her own with such a master of good talk as Whistler. Three years later aesthetic society found themselves not very kindly caricatured under thin disguises in "Miss Brown," Vernon Lee's first effort in fiction, now for long out of print and almost forgotten, but for the student of the artictic society of that day not unworthy to be remembered with Patience. The book was much resented by some of her friends, but she could afford to be indifferent, as she remained throughout her life, to what people might think or say about her. The same year in which "Miss Brown" appeared "Euphorion" was published, described as "Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the Renaissance," and dedicated to Pater. Though striking less new ground than "Eighteenth Century in Italy," it contains some of Vernon lee's best work and will survive when much of her later books will be forgotten. Shortly afterwards appeared "The Countess of Albany" in Allen's "Eminent Women Series," a sympathetic, though critical, study of the life of the unhappy wife of the Young Pretender and her lover, Alfieri. She herself described this book as a sort of sequel to "Eighteenth Century Studies," and the picture of society in Italy that it contains is just as brilliant and, as it deals more with individuals, more definite.
Vernon Lee's later work is of less value. Over 30 volumes of criticism, fiction, and essays stand to her credit, most of which are redolent of the colour and sentiment of Italy, and all of which reveal a mind steeped in the learning of the past and the beauty of the present. "Renaissance Fancies and Studies," "Genius Loci," "The Enchanted Woods," "Limbo and Other Essays," "The Spirit of Rome" (which captures its very breath), among her volumes of essays and travel scenes, and "Hauntings" and "Vanitas," among her volumes of stories, have long been familiar to most lovers of literature, and the exquisite little play, "Ariadne in Mantua", and some of her less attractive pseudo-political and sociological writings, such as "Gospels of Anarchy" and "Satan the Waster," reveal her versatility of mind.

In 1924 she contributed to "The Times" a long letter, suggested by a criticism of Mr. Walkley's, on the vital tempo of the artist. "The Golden Keys," which came out in 1925, contained admirable studies of the "genius loci". In 1932 appeared "Music and its Lovers," an empirical study of emotion and the imaginative responses to music. Last spring she was able to present a performance in Florence of the Italian version of "Ariadne in Mantua", which obtained great success, and she was honoured enthusiastically by her many Florentine admirers.

During the Italian-Turkish War she made herself very unpopular by her strong and openly expressed sympathy with the Turks; and during the Great War, at the outbreak of which she was in England, she estranged most of her friends by writing articles against this country in the American Press, as a result of which she was refused a passport by the authorities. She was a prominent member of the Union of Democratic Control, and was the author of more than one of their polemical pamphlets. It must be remembered that nationality, and in consequence patriotism, were completely outside her understanding. Anatole France is usually credited with having drawn the character of "Miss Bell" in "Le Lys Rouge" from Vernon Lee, but it is more likely a combination of her personality with that of another lady well known in England and France who was at one time an intimate friend of hers. She is mentioned by name in Browning's "Asolando":--

"No, the book

Which noticed how the wall-

growths wave," said she,

"Was not by Ruskin."

I said, "Vernon Lee."