The Snake Lady and the Bruised Bodley Head: Vernon Lee and Oscar Wilde in the Yellow Book

Abstract

As Vineta Colby says in Vernon Lee: A Literary Biography (2003), with ‘Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady’ the reader is ‘in as rich and exotic a realm of fantasy as Vernon Lee ever created’ (Colby 2003, 227). Surely that is an accurate pronouncement, for Lee’s 1896 short story takes place in a parallel aesthetic universe, in which certain imaginary works of art did exist once and still supposedly live on at the end of the nineteenth century. In that other world, there is a tapestry ‘of old and Gothic taste, extremely worn … [which] represented Alberic the Blond and the Snake Lady Oriana’ (1896, 290). By the end of the narrative, we are told that the tapestry enjoys a second, ongoing life as upholstery, for ‘certain chairs and curtains in the porter’s lodge of the now long deserted Red Palace are made of the various pieces’ (1896, 344). The narrator says drily, ‘These things the traveller can confirm’ (1896, 344), yet only a tourist venturing into Lee’s own fancy can do so, for the chairs decorate a room that never was. Similarly, the narrator invites the reader to visit this magnificent Italian castle, originally the residence of Duke Balthasar Maria, and to examine its murals: ‘Now Balthasar Maria had assembled at Luna … a galaxy of beauty which was duly represented by the skill of celebrated painters on all the walls of the Red Palace, where you may still see their fading charms’ (1896, 332).