THE SENTIMENTAL TRAVELLER.t • "VERNON LEE" has written many delightful
things, but nothing perhaps more keenly suggestive and charmingly
• 4 School for Mothers. By Evelyn X. Bunting, Dora E. L. Bunting, 3LB., B.S., Annie E. Barnes, and Blanche Gardiner, B.A. With an Intro- duction by Sir Thomas Barlow, M.D., and a Chapter by Dr. J. F. J. Sykes, X.O.H. London Horace Marshall and Son. [Is.] • t The Sentimental Traveller Rotes on Places. By Vernon Lee, Loudon& John Lane, [8.. Od net.]
convincing than the first chapter of her new book. Here she sets herself to explain how she comes to be a "Sentimental Traveller," a worshipper of the "Genius Loci," so faithfully sought and followed in all her books. Perhaps we who are familiar with her writings knew already that their attractiveness was not due to the fact that she had travelled more and further than most people. Indeed, this was plainly not the case, for Italy, Germany, Switzerland, France, to speak roughly, the most familiar parts of Europe, could be guessed from her sketch-books to be the limit of her wanderings. It is no news to us, therefore, that "Vernon Lee's" enchanting impressionism should be rather owing to her having travelled "not more, but less, than most folk." But this sensation of having known it all before does not affect one's keen enjoyment of the
traveller's own explanation, which ought to open the eyes of many who, in " gipsy-carts, trains de luxe, motors," . follow
after and search for the "Genius Loci" in vain :—
" For the passion for localities, the curious emotions connected with lie of the land, shape of buildings, history, and even quality of air and soil, are born, like all intense and permeating feeling, less of outside things than of our own souL They are of the stuff of dreams, and must be brooded over in quiet and void. The places for which we feel such love are fashioned before we see them by our wishes and fancy ; we recognise rather than discover them in the world of reality; and this power of shaping, or at least seeing, things to suit our heart's desire, comes not of facility and surfeit, but of repression and short commons."
Yes ; but the imaginative genius must be there too. Most of us might have been brought up, as "Vernon Lee" was, to drive round the Pincian and the Villa Borghese, without her experience of a Rome hidden in her imagination :— "And in the nostalgic longing for that city, unknown though looked down on during each daily walk, began my secret worship of the Genius Loci, of the spirit immanent in those cupolas and towers and hilly pine-groves which seemed as far beyond my reach almost as the sun setting behind them. Thus I became a Sentimental Traveller."
The new volume is very similar in arrangement and character to its forerunners, especially Genius _Loci and The Enchanted Woods. It is a collection of short studies, sketches, vignettes, full of human as well as artistic interest. No one will question their originality and charm. The first eight have their scene in Germany, the next nine in Italy, the next eight in France, the next six in Switzerland. In a little essay at the end the author reflects on her own work, and on the lamentable fact that "no description can make you see things unless you
have seen them before." But she comforts herself with the thought that the emotion stirred in her by localities may be transmitted to her readers, though the images cannot. And two, at least, of her French studies will appeal to many who never can make her journeys, and to whom mere localities have not much to say ; these are the papers written in memory of Madame Blanc-Bentzon and M. Emile Duclaux,—delicate portraits set in frames of their own familiar scenery.
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