The Project Gutenberg EBook of Hortus Vitae, by Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee

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Title: Hortus Vitae
Essays on the Gardening of Life

Author: Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee

Release Date: October 7, 2008 [EBook #26800]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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HORTUS VITAE
ESSAYS ON THE GARDENING OF LIFE

BY
VERNON LEE

JOHN LANE: THE BODLEY HEAD
LONDON & NEW YORK. MDCCCCIV

SECOND EDITION.

WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.

DEDICATION

To MADAME TH: BLANC-BENTZON

MAIANO, NEAR FLORENCE,
June 20, 1903.

MY DEAR MADAME BLANC,

The first copy of this little book was, of course, to have been for
Gabrielle Delzant. I am fulfilling her wish, I think, in giving it,
instead, to you, who were her oldest friend; as I, alas! had time to be
only her latest.

She had read nearly all these essays; and, during those weeks of her
illness which I spent last autumn in Gascony, she had made me rewrite
several among them. She wanted to learn to read English aloud, and it
amused her and delighted me that she should do so on my writings. Her
French pronunciation gave an odd grace to the sentences; the little
hesitation spaced and accentuated their meaning; and I liked what I had
written when she read it. The afternoons at Parays which we spent
together in this way! Prints of _Mere Angelique_ and _Ces Messieurs de
Port Royal_ watching over us in her spacious bedroom, brown and yet
light like the library it had become; and among those Jansenist
worthies, the Turin Pallas Athena, with a sprig of green box as an
offering from our friend. Yes; what I had written seemed good when read
by her. And then there were the words which had to be looked out in the
dictionary, bringing discussions on all manner of subjects, and
wonderful romantic stories, like the "Golden Legend," about grandparents
and servants and neighbours, giving me time to rearrange t