Vanitas

Vernon Lee

Description

When viewed in light of the fact that "Vernon Lee" was actually a pseudonym for female writer Violet Paget, the engaging tales collected in Vanitas become all the more interesting. These stories cast light on the silly, superficial and sometimes unsavory attitudes and behaviors of the so-called fairer sex.

Sujets

• Short story

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776586691
• Langue: English

Extrait

VANITAS
POLITE STORIES
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VERNON LEE
 
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Vanitas Polite Stories First published in 1892 Epub ISBN 978-1-77658-669-1 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77658-670-7 © 2013 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Alla Baronessa E. French-Cini Lady Tal I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X A Worldly Woman I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX The Legend of Madame Krasinska I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X
Alla Baronessa E. French-Cini
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PISTOIA PER IGNO.
MY DEAR ELENA,
We had a conversation once, walking on your terrace, with the wind-rippled olives above and the quietly nodding cypress tufts below—about such writings as you chose to compare with carved cherry-stones. We disagreed, for it seemed to me that the world needed cherry-stone necklaces as much as anything else; and that the only pity was that most of its inhabitants could not afford such toys, and the rest despised them because they were made of such very cheap material. Still, lest you should wonder at my sending such things to you, I write to declare that my three little tales, whatever they be, are not carved cherry-stones.
For round these sketches of frivolous women, there have gathered some of the least frivolous thoughts, heaven knows, that have ever come into my head; or rather, such thoughts have condensed and taken body in these stories. Indeed, how can one look from outside on the great waste of precious things, delicate discernment, quick feeling and sometimes stoical fortitude, involved in frivolous life, without a sense of sadness and indignation? Or what satisfaction could its portrayal afford, save for the chance that such pictures might mirror some astonished and abashed creature; or show to men and women who toil and think that idleness, and callousness, and much that must seem to them sheer wickedness, is less a fault than a misfortune. For surely it is a misfortune not merely to waste the nobler qualities one has, but to have little inkling of the sense of brotherhood and duty which changes one, from a blind dweller in caves, to an inmate of the real world of storms and sunshine and serene night and exhilarating morning. And, if miracles were still wrought nowadays, as in those times when great sinners (as in Calderon's play) were warned by plucking the hood off their own dead face, there would have been no waste of the supernatural in teaching my Madame Krasinska that poor crazy paupers and herself were after all exchangeable quantities.
Of my three frivolous women, another performed the miracle herself, and abandoned freely the service of the great Goddess Vanitas. While the third ... and there is the utter pity of the thing, that frivolous living means not merely waste, but in many cases martyrdom.
That fact, though it had come more than once before my eyes, would perhaps never have been clear to my mind, but for our long talks together about what people are and might be. A certain indignation verging on hatred might have made these stories of mine utterly false and useless, but for the love of all creatures who may suffer with which you lit up the subject. And for this reason the proof sheets of my little book must go first to that old bishop's villa on the lowest Apennine spur, where the chestnuts are dropping, with a sound of rustling silk, on to the sere leaves below, and the autumn rain storms are rushing by, veiling the plain with inky crape, blotting out that distant white shimmer, which, in the sunlight, was Florence a moment ago.
VERNON LEE. CHELSEA, October , 1891.
Lady Tal
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I
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The church of the Salute, with its cupolas and volutes, stared in atthe long windows, white, luminous, spectral. A white carpet of moonlightstretched to where they were sitting, with only one lamp lit, for fearof mosquitoes. All the remoter parts of the vast drawing-room were deepin gloom; you were somehow conscious of the paintings and stuccos ofthe walls and vaulted ceilings without seeing them. From the canal roseplash of oar, gondolier's cry, and distant guitar twang and quaverof song; and from the balconies came a murmur of voices and women'slaughter. The heavy scent of some flower, vague, white, southern,mingled with the cigarette smoke in that hot evening air, which seemed,by contrast to the Venetian day, almost cool.
As Jervase Marion lolled back (that lolling of his always struck oneas out of keeping with his well-adjusted speech, his precise mind, thesomething conventional about him) on the ottoman in the shadow, he wasconscious of a queer feeling, as if, instead of having arrived fromLondon only two hours ago, he had never ceased to be here at Venice,and under Miss Vanderwerf's hospitable stuccoed roof. All those yearsof work, of success, of experience (or was it not rather of study?)of others, bringing with them a certain heaviness, baldness, andscepticism, had become almost a dream, and this present moment and thesimilar moment twelve years ago remaining as the only reality. Excepthis hostess, whose round, unchangeable face, the face of a world-wise,kind but somewhat frivolous baby, was lit up faintly by the regularpuffs of her cigarette, all the people in the room were strangers toMarion: yet he knew them so well, he had known them so long.
There was the old peeress, her head tied up in a white pocket-handkerchief,and lolling from side to side with narcoticised benevolence, who, as itwas getting on towards other people's bedtime, was gradually beginningto wake up from the day's slumber, and to murmur eighteenth-centurywitticisms and Blessingtonian anecdotes. There was the AmericanSenator, seated with postage-stamp profile and the attitude of a bronzestatesman, against the moonlight, one hand in his waistcoat, the otherincessantly raised to his ear as in a stately "Beg pardon?" Therewas the depressed Venetian naval officer who always made the littlejoke about not being ill when offered tea; the Roumanian Princess whocultivated the reputation of saying spiteful things cleverly, and woreall her pearls for fear of their tarnishing; the English cosmopolitanwho was one day on the Bosphorus and the next in Bond Street, andwas wise about singing and acting; the well turned out, subdued,Parisian-American æsthete talking with an English accent about modernpictures and ladies' dresses; and the awkward, enthusiastic Englishæsthete, who considered Ruskin a ranter and creaked over the marblefloors with dusty, seven-mile boots. There was a solitary spinster freshfrom higher efforts of some sort, unconscious that no one in Veniceappreciated her classic profile, and that everyone in Venice stared ather mediæval dress and collar of coins from the British Museum. Therewas the usual bevy of tight-waisted Anglo-Italian girls ready to playthe guitar and sing, and the usual supply of shy, young artists from thethree-franc pensions, wandering round the room, candle in hand, withthe niece of the house, looking with shy intentness at every pictureand sketch and bronze statuette and china bowl and lacquer box.
The smoke of the cigarettes mingled with the heavy scent of the flowers;the plash of oar and snatch of song rose from the canal; the murmurand laughter entered from the balcony. The old peeress lolled out herBlessingtonian anecdotes; the Senator raised his hand to his ear andsaid "Beg pardon?" the Roumanian Princess laughed shrilly at her ownmalignant sayings; the hostess's face was periodically illumined by hercigarette and the hostess's voice periodically burst into a childlike:"Why, you don't mean it!" The young men and women flirted in undertonesabout Symonds, Whistler, Tolstoy, and the way of rowing gondolas, withan occasional chord struck on the piano, an occasional string twanged onthe guitar. The Salute, with its cupolas and volutes, loomed spectral inat the windows; the moonlight spread in a soft, shining carpet to theirfeet.
Jervase Marion knew it all so well, so well, this half-fashionable,half-artistic Anglo-American idleness of Venice, with its poetic settingand its prosaic reality. He would have known it, he felt, intimately,even if he had never seen it before; known it so as to be able to makeeach of these people say in print what they did really say. There issomething in being a psychological novelist, and something in being acosmopolitan American, something in being an inmate of the world ofHenry James and a kind of Henry James, of a lesser magnitude, yourself:one has the pleasure of understanding so much, one loses the pleasureof misunderstanding so much more.
A singing boat came under the windows of Palazzo Bragadin, and as muchof the company as could, squeezed on to the cushioned gothic balconies,much to the annoyance of such as were flirting outside, and to thesatisfaction of such as were flirting within. Marion—who, much to poorMiss Vanderwerf's disgust, had asked to be introduced to no one as yet,but to be allowed to realise that evening, as he daintily put it, thatVenice was the same and he a good bit changed—Marion leaned upon theparapet of a comparatively empty balcony and looked down at the canal.The moonbeams were weaving a strange, intricate pattern, like someold Persian tissue, in the dark water; further off the yellow and redlanterns of the singing boat were surrounded by black gondolas, eachwith its crimson, unsteady prow-light; and beyond, mysterious in themoonlight, rose the tower and cupola of St. George, the rigging ofships, and stretched a shimmering ban