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Vanitas: Polite Stories

Vernon Lee

VANITAS POLITE STORIES

VERNON LEE

AUTHOR OF “HAUNTINGS, ” ETC. LONDON

WILLIAM HEINEMANN 1892

(dedication)

ALLA BARONESSA E. FRENCH-CINI.

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 min 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.

Vernon Lee - Vanitas Polite Stories.pdf

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