George Eliot's <i>Quarry for Romola</i> (2014)

I am very grateful to Jonathan Ouvry, great-great-grandson of G. H. Lewes and holder of the copyright for the notebook, for granting permission to publish it in George Eliot–George Henry Lewes Studies, and to Princeton University Library for granting permission to publish the text and to use images from the notebook. My thanks to AnnaLee Pauls, photo duplication coordinator of the Rare Books and Special Collections at Princeton Library, for help with obtaining a digital reproduction of the notebook and photographic images. Together with all George Eliot scholars, I owe a great debt to Andrew Brown's Clarendon edition of Romola, which has been an invaluable resource throughout while working on the notebook. Margaret Harris and Judith Johnston's Journals of George Eliot has likewise been invaluable, as has Gordon Haight's Letters of George Eliot. My many debts to these and other scholars will, I hope, be evident from the notes. I would particularly like to thank William Baker of Northern Illinois University for his help and encouragement in this project. My thanks to Franziska Wallner, librarian at The American University of Rome, and to Father Miguel of the Convent of Santa Sabina in Rome for providing access to library facilities. Thanks too to Paul Gwynne of The American University of Rome for help in tracking down an elusive reference.George Eliot's Quarry for Romola is held in Princeton University Library, in the Morris L. Parrish collection of Victorian novelists in the Rare Books and Special Collections section (C0171 [no. 69]). Here I present an edition comprising a transcription of the notebook, together with my notes, a list of sources consulted by Eliot while compiling the notebook, and an index. Superscript numbers refer to the endnotes.Five of the surviving George Eliot notebooks contain material of relevance to Romola: the notebook at the Beinecke Library in Yale, published under the title A Writer's Notebook 1854–1879, edited by Joseph Wiesenfarth; the notebook published as volume II of Some George Eliot Notebooks: An Edition of the Carl H. Pforzheimer Library's George Eliot Holograph Notebooks, edited by William Baker; the notebook in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, published as A George Eliot Holograph Notebook: An Edition (MS Don. G.8), edited by Andrew Thompson in George Eliot–G. H. Lewes Studies 51–52; the notebook now in the British Library (Add. MSS 40768) labelled “Florentine Notes,” which is wholly given over to notes regarding Romola (fifty-five folios); and the Princeton notebook presented here as “George Eliot's: Quarry for Romola.”This holograph notebook, measuring eleven centimeters by seventeen centimeters, is written in black ink with occasional pencilled additions and lines. It is given over in its entirety to notes for Romola and, with 106 closely written folios, it is the most important of the five notebooks for the novel. While it is possible that the notebook was used briefly in the Magliabechian Library in Florence in May during Eliot and Lewes's 1861 trip to Italy, from the evidence in Eliot's diary for the period (Journals), most of the entries can be dated accurately to the period from July-August 1861 to late March or beyond in 1862 while she was researching Romola. This was the period of intensive preparation for writing and the difficult composition of the first chapters of the novel. In June 1861, shortly after Eliot and Lewes's return from Italy, John Blackwood wrote to his wife that Eliot's “great difficulty seems to be that she, as she describes it, hears her characters talking, and there is a weight upon her mind as if Savonarola and friends ought to be speaking Italian instead of English” (Eliot, Letters III: 427). By mid-December Lewes writes to Blackwood that: she remains immoveable in the conviction that she can't write the romance because she has not knowledge enough. Now as a matter of fact I know that she has immensely more knowledge of the particular period than any other writer who has touched it: but her distressing diffidence paralyses her…. When you see her, mind your care is to discountenance the idea of a Romance being the product of an Encyclopaedia (Eliot, Letters III: 273–74).When John Blackwood does see Eliot with Lewes, “He and I were reproaching her for not fairly beginning to write and she defended herself by saying, ‘Well I have made notes for a great many scenes.’ There is talk of making a start on New Year's day. She seems to be studying her subject as subject never was studied before,” he wrote to William Blackwood on 23 December 1861 (Eliot, Letters 3: 474). By March 1862, as she records in her diary for the 24th, Eliot had begun the fourth chapter of Romola, but was “working under a weight” because of the difficulty of the project (Journals 110).The entries in this notebook are made in English, Italian, French, Latin, and occasionally Greek, and the pages are full of information on the social and political history of the period and in particular on Florence, covering many aspects of life in the city, from customs, prices, dress and sumptuary laws, funerals, family names, religious societies, and state offices and officials. There are also notes on the topography of the city in the fifteenth century. Eliot makes lists of dates of prominent figures: politicians, poets, artists, and scholars. There is a lengthy and detailed chronology of Savonarola's life from 1494–98, and several pages at the beginning of the notebook are given over to an index to Marco Lastri's sixteen-volume L'Osservatore fiorentino. She takes notes from Ammirato, Buchon, Burlamacchi, Clavier, Ginguéné, Hody, Laborde, Lastri, Marchese, Muratori, Nardi, Villari, and many others. Several of the entries are quite extended, for example, the nine-page transcription of the poem by Antonio Pucci, “La proprietà di mercato vecchio” (“The Characteristics of the Old Market”), or the entries on pages 34–36 of notes made while reading Hody's De graecis illustribus, and on pages 53–65 from Giovanni Cambi's Delizie degli eruditi toscani. Like the Bodleian notebook published in George Eliot–G. H. Lewes Studies 51–52 (2006), this one provides insights into Eliot's meticulous research and preparation for writing and of her desire when writing, expressed in a comment to R. H. Hutton on 8 August 1863, “to strive after as full a vision of the medium in which a character moves as of the character itself” (Letters IV: 96–97).Often it is possible to identify the sources, either because Eliot notes them herself in the notebook or through evidence from elsewhere, including the letters, diaries, other notebooks, or through Baker's Catalogue of the Eliot–Lewes library of books at Dr. Williams's Library in London. Occasionally it is not possible to identify sources with any certainty and where I have judged this to be the case, I have said so in the notes. In one important instance the evidence from the notebook is itself misleading in the source consulted: the title but the that on is in fact from It is on that Eliot notes from A possible is by the in Eliot's diary for March 1862, in which she have been reading books on the of by from (Journals She does not these but one have been which is not in either the notebook or the diary for this of the books by have been from which Eliot takes material on these sources are used the of the notebook, which in with the diary for March can these to the list of books Eliot consulted in preparation for have to the of Eliot's pages as as of with a of in the notebook, and the entries has been as as Eliot a the this has been as accurately as of any not in the text are given in the notes. there are or other in this notebook, the of reproduction does not Eliot's and use of as and have been as have her and of or of the Eliot writes to a to and this has been used in the Occasionally are given in the notes as of Eliot's transcription of a is at with her this is in the notes. a a or of a is I have this by in the text and to it in the where a reading be I have given this Eliot numbers her pages in the from the first after her to L'Osservatore she pages and and a after The of pages is after In of while including Eliot's on the I have given for this edition in to the of it was not possible to the of the notebook the Bodleian Romola notebook in which the pages are at the this one like a with and most of the notebook Eliot the the The to this are pages and pages she makes a chronology of in Florence and and and and pages here as and with on the and an on the which with a to the I have the of on the with the with the one on the pages and the notebook has been with to its the entries were than this in the I have given this information in the text and in the notes. for for notebook notes Savonarola and Florence which George Eliot in 1861 in preparation for the writing of di di of character of Giovanni di in di di di on Santa di of his that in his were given to any it a made which were of the in the judged that he had by of his but that in he was a in that in he had to of a of after of as a if the of his are many political as for the of Henry and is said to have a in which he the character of the to that the or the of the is of by the there is the a of of the who in in that instead of the by the be into a or of the who through the to Giovanni the of Florence, that he was of was of the family was made a for the This has to be a of the of being in the the writer of with and that the use of to be in the of the or beginning of the that have been for were were the first the who the use of the from the with had during the of the for the never the of The or family were from the of or or over which a given or in which he was or had from the of from from in the first instance di or the of from or from or offices or by sources were the from the of a a a a or or an a instance be the of the in which the of who the were by the the when one of them while the city was under an the were to with great were used the to them to the Nardi, were not or to the of Savonarola's to at as would have been and to be of not the the mind was with the the as the to or The in the of of were to the to the under the of the city on the at the on the the there was an of at Florence, been from the on of the in Florence it was that be with the as this the the were in the of from the of the from to in any Italian so that had been In this state for the of the in Nardi, the at has his by the of as he is with his to the of Florence, of that he to in the in the not to in the if the of Marco this the of Giovanni to have been by his was in the five a that when on Savonarola 8 of in the or di a in from a were in numbers in with so that it as if the of the were all the of the there were for also for or one or more the of the di di in a at the when he was to the as a was di Giovanni Pucci, in the on of in to the of had to be friends of the Giovanni di wrote a an in a of Savonarola who wrote a Santa di the of Santa which his had of in the the of the on he was a of it was this he published the he to in the the were for the by of the as of Savonarola the in the di Marco the of the a being the of the Nardi, for the by at the of the of making an in of on his as into he being to the a writer on as as a of the on the of the very of the by to the the di di in di fiorentino. 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the in on have of them with at the are the are like has over his and a like a a all the are in at the like a with so as to it like a a like the of the over the In the the has a he of the have a the have to the one has on the have have The are of them and one with is also in the of She has a of like a to her has a full The the by or a in The like of a with the The has a a of on his with a of like a with a very over his has down at the with a at the the of at the with a on the with are of or has the full the the with the of it: the has a not quite to the with or in on one a of a the are like be the of reading the there are in the as the of but are not the on his with has a with the his a for on the the the with in with down to the In there is a I is that I at Florence this in at the of the in in on In to be in had very from the great of them in so that were used as on 23 a It was like the on the was the which were of were at the the Italian of the there are the with the In the of the to be an of his on for his on a of also for a Antonio for of of for of under of with or of with or with with or of with or of with with of or of with of for the with a of of of of of with with with in Florence, in the fifteenth the of the an to them in to these were the of of the of the of the of of are not to or or of or of any other or of any of said he with the as of at Florence, for a the the in see In a is said to have had for for of religious to have had from the who first in the the or at from the who through in was of were to be also the of the which the most to were di more of was also that of when from political the were to have to have been The in were under the title of di There are a on this subject in in di by to the di where the on the of on the the of his family di the that in see di the now the a or It had to be down to the in in Santa di a Lastri, of This of for a for or a with or at first in the the this was used as a as the of the or The of this is difficult to beyond the of the when the was the the there was an the who had also his of is at the of an under a he is at with of in the of at as he In his De he of the of his in poem to his from the from to when he was a to Florence was by in from under is not said at he was in the into which he had his that it the being to itself from the of the it with from Ammirato, of in was a in the of in to There was a and the di in made from di di in a for the of the of by the of of of the There being also a at the the was the he the other he can't for of to and his to he than has been by with a present of with a he has not been to that when the is in care the mind is to he that in the present be of for not a as it is in the of that John who books on the of never upon it, in the in This to on the in which of was by the French, which he in his history to have in while is in in a list of his friends in these in his De in is This is he the of was and in was on the when he was from a to at had when he his to be of the 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