"A Phantom Lover" by Vernon Lee (Violet Paget)

Later entitled Oke of Okehurst, this is a supernatural novella by Vernon Lee, the pen-name of Violet Paget. It is written in the first person and the past tense, narrated from the point of view of the portrait painter who, commissioned to paint portraits of Mr and Mrs Oke, goes to stay at their secluded country house in Kent. 

It starts with a classic call (the portrait is commissioned) followed by a near refusal of the call ("I began to regret ..."; Ch 2), immediately followed by the journey into the other world, that of the Okehurst estate, in which mysterious things, such as hauntings, are possible.

This is a perfect example of a Victorian Gothic tale of the supernatural. An isolated house, a marriage on the rocks, a woman who identifies with an ancestress who was unfaithful ... will tragedy repeat itself?

Selected quotes:

• “It seemed to me that I was being led through the palace of the Sleeping Beauty.” (Ch 2)
• “If there are such things as ghosts ... I don't think they should be taken lightly. God would not permit them to be, except at a warning or a punishment.” (Ch 3)
• “She seemed to know every word that Alice had spoken, every idea that had crossed her mind. It sometimes struck me as if she were telling me, speaking of herself in the third person, of her own feelings.” (Ch 5)
• “Outside, the mists were beginning to rise, veiling the parkland dotted with big black oaks, and from which, in the watery moonlight, rose on all sides the eerie little cry of the lambs separated from their mothers. It was damp and cold, and I shivered.” (Ch 6)
• “How would it ever be possible to get this serious, conscientious, slow-brained representative of English simplicity and honesty and thoroughness to understand the mixture of self-engrossed vanity, of shallowness, of poetic vision, of love of morbid excitement, that walked this earth under the name of Alice Oke?” (Ch 8)

Beautifully told.

October 2026; 94 pages
First published in 1886
My paperback edition was issued by Renard Press in 2026

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God