Future Ghost Story

Most of Vernon Lee’s friendships were female and, on her part, rather obsessive, although they were, it seems, based entirely on a communion of intellects, which means that hers overwhelmed the intellects of those friends. When she found out that one of them was getting married to a man whom she had met only three times, she suffered a nervous collapse which was only the first in a series of such attacks that would last until her death. Another friend said that when she saw her for the first time, she felt like the Virgin before the Angel of the Annunciation. Vernon Lee must have been entirely asexual: she certainly never married and there was no mention of any love affair, and she was quite clear on the subject: “Loving people in the way of being willing to do anything for them is intolerable to me. I cannot like, or love, at the expense of having my skin rubbed off. I can do without people. I find it more comfortable to do without them.”