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APP TO GEORGE ELIOT'S ROMOLA
AND HER FLORENCE

Split screen these notes to https://www.florin.ms/Romola.html
Map: 1 Dante House and Loggia dei
Cerchi; 2 Mercato
Vecchio and Corso dei Adimari to 3
Duomo and its Piazza San Giovanni; 4
Ponte Vecchio; 5 Oltrarno,
Via dei Bardi; 6 Borgo
Pinti and its Porta a' Pinti; 7
Palazzo del Popolo, della Signoria and its Piazza; 8 Badia fiorentina and Corso
degli Albizzi 9
Piazza Ognissanti; 10 San
Marco; 11 Santissima
Annunziata; 12 Rucellai
Gardens; 13 Via
Gualfonda/Valfonda; 14
Ponte Rubaconte and Piazza de' Mozzi; 15
Santa Croce and its Piazza; 16
Borgo and Porta La Croce; 17
Porta San Gallo ->Trespiano; 18
Impruneta->San Gaggio->Florence; 19
San Stefano; 20 Oltrarno,
San Miniato; 21 Bargello; 22 Viareggio (outside the map);
23 Oltrarno, Porta San
Frediano; 24 Ponte alla
Carraia; 25 Ponte Santa
Trinità

Map of Florence, Augustus Hare, Florence
George Eliot
published her carefully-researched historical novel set in
Renaissance Florence, Romola, first in Cornhill
Magazine serially with Frederic
Lord Leighton's illustrations for it, his drawings being now
in the Houghton Museum, Harvard University, which were executed as
mirror-reversed engravings by John Swain and others for being
printed, and next included in book form, London: Smith, Elder,
1863, a de luxe limited edition of a 1000 copies of the same being
printed in 1888. Guido Biagi,
next, in 1906, edited the novel from his perspective as a
scholarly Florentine librarian, London: Fisher Unwin, 1907,
filling two volumes of the text with photographs between almost
every three pages showing the buildings George Eliot had seen and
used, many of which no longer exist, being destroyed in the
Risorgimento and in World War II or which have been altered, as
well as authograph documents, etc. Both Leighton and Biagi had
intimate knowledge of Florence, Leighton having studied at the
Accademia di Belle Arti, Biagi being librarian of the
Magliabecchian and Laurentian libraries. All three were
celebrating and teaching Florence's former greatness, blending, as
had Dante Alighieri in the Commedia, fact with fiction,
history with romance, in order to share Florentine learning with
everyone, all three clearly understooding, also, the partnership
between art and literature. Frederic Leighton carried out similar
homage to the other great English woman writer of Florence,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, illustrating her "Musical Instrument"'s
figure of Pan, then designing her tomb in Florence's English Cemetery,
placing on its first harp the head of the god Pan from the
Giardino Torrigiani, at the same time that George Eliot was
writing Romola, while his sister, Mrs Sutherland Orr,
wrote Robert Browning's official biography. Everything in Florence
is 'intrecciato', intertwined, particularly the Anglo-Florentines
and their love of the city with their crafting in their art and
literature a 'golden ring twixt Italy and England'.
Guido Biagi's Introduction to the edition of Romola he
edited in 1907:
THE
MAKING OF THE ROMANCE
In this "historically illustrated" edition of the most classical
romance of modern English literature it will be interesting to
attempt an investigation, new, curious, and engrossing, of the
historical foundation upon which is based this work of art and
fiction, to try to discover the hidden scaffolding which supports
it, and see what materials have been employed in the building— to apply, in short,the Roentgen rays of
criticism to the fair form of "Romola" in order to behold the
historical skeleton divested of all clothing of romance or
embellishment of art and imagination.
Such an investigation could not be attempted without great
difficulty in the case of an Italian author, in whom certain
national ideas and historical knowledge had, through long habit of
study and surroundings, been so thoroughly absorbed as to become,
as it were, part of his flesh and blood. But when, on the
contrary, we have to do with a stranger in the land, who made but
a brief sojourn amidst the scenes he was about to describe, it
should not be difficult, amongst the records of things seen and
books read and studied, to trace the source of that inspiration
under the influence of which his work appeared to him first
vaguely and indistinctly, little by little assuming definite shape
and form. For in the unconscious working of our creative faculties
lies hidden the mechanism of dreams, which, arising from things
seen and remembered, sometimes soar to visions of serene beauty
peopled with graceful radiant fancies. But that reality, whence
the dream was born and took its flight, often appears to those who
seek it behind the golden clouds of the dream to be very mean and
bare; and yet, without that first impulse derived from the
reality, the fanciful creation would never have come into being,
just as without an inventive genius these germs of fact would have
remained inactive and wasted.How many there are who pass through
some lovely country, treading upon the poetry of the land as upon
stones, and who afterwards marvel that they should have been
there, yet have seen nothing. How many had read the chronicles of
Florence and studied the great drama of Savonarola without even
dreaming that against that historical background could arise, pure
and stately as an antique statue, the noble figure of Romola?
To Mary Ann Evans, better know as George Eliot, as to all elect
souls in whom is inborn the love of Italy, a journey through the
classic land of memories must have seemed like the realization of
a long-cherished dream, almost the fulfilment of a religious vow.
In the middle of the last century the present too easy means of
communication had not yet robbed that pilgrimage of all its
poetry, and travellers journeyed by post-chaise and diligence,
putting up in tiny hamlets and isolated villages, where they were
brought into far closer contact with men and things, and received
from them impressions far more vivid and exact than is possible
nowadays. Then the traveller could dawdle on the way as long as he
pleased and admire a fine view or building without feeling
compelled by the necessity of travel to hurry on in search of
fresh impressions: and a journey to Italy represented to a
superior and educated minds "the enlargement of our general life,
rather with hope of the new element it would bring to our culture,
than with the hope of immediate pleasure."
And it seemed to Miss Evans that this dream was about to be
realized, in order to "absorb some new life and gather fresh
ideas," just at the time when George Eliot, the famous but still
mysterious author of "Scenes of Clerical Life" and of "Adam Bede,"
had completed the last page of "The Mill on the Floss," dedicating
to her life-long companion, George Henry Lewes, that third
chef-d'oeuvre: "written in the sixth year of our life together."
in a calm, conscious, unprejudiced communion of the affection and
intellect. The author had brought to a mournful close the record
of her thoughtful girlhood "on the banks of the Floss," and now
spread her wings for flight to higher and more impersonal
conceptions. On the 21st of March, 1861, she wrote this sentence
in her diary: "We hope to start for Rome on Saturday, the 24th:
Magnificat anima mea!"
Mary Ann Evans had retained a very vivid impression of Italy. On
arrival at Genoa from Turin, which latter city they had reached by
way of the Monte Cenis, travelling partly in diligences and partly
in sleighs, she remembered having been there eleven years
previously, in June 1849; when she was in great grief after her
father's death and sought distraction in a short trip on the
continent in the company of her friends, the Brays. "I was here,"
she wrote in her diary, "eleven years ago, and the image that
visit had left in my mind was surprisingly faithful, though
fragmentary." The view of Genoa with "the masts of the abundant
shipping" was still the same, but not so was the mind of her who
gazed upon it.
From Genoa they went by sea to Leghorn, thence to Pisa; then by
way of Leghorn again, to Civitavecchia, where they took the train
to Rome, crossing the desolate Campagna "crowded with asphodels,
inhabited by buffaloes," with occasionally the sight of some
sombre hawk winging its flight across the plain. After Roma they
paid a brief and fatiguing visit to Naples and its surroundings,
Pozzuoli, Baja, Capo Miseno, Capodimonte, Poggio Reale, Pompei,
also to the Museum, and farther still, to Salerno, Paestum,
Amalfi, Cava, and Sorrento. Then, leaving this smiling land and
sky, they returned to Leghorn by sea, touching at Civitavecchia,
and finally the two pilgrims reached Florence, arriving there on
the 17th of May and remaining until the 1st of June.
That Florentine springtime, seen and felt in the communion of two
elect souls, whose exquisite culture rendered doubly keen the
delight of the enjoyment, those radiant days spent amidst the
marvels of art and the enchantment of nature clothed in all her
wealth of flower, whilst Italy and her people abandoned themselves
in hopeful confidence to all the enthusiasm aroused by their newly
acquired liberty, all this must have made upon the mind of the
author an everlasting impression of keen delight and indescribable
longing.
In Rome they had had "the very worst Spring that has been known
for the last twenty years," and that city, in which, at that
period, the stranger was struck chiefly by two things, the cobble
paving and the mud, had certainly not shown itself under its best
aspect. Moreover, the great metropolis with its immensity, its
historical buildings, its ruins of two worlds and two
civilizations, seems overwhelmingly fearful and solemn to those
who visit it for the first time, and neither unbends nor appeals
to the passing wanderer. In order to some degree to penetrate the
character and enter into the spirit of Rome, there must be visits
often renewed, lonely meditations on all the meaning of that great
name, frequent invokings of the past, long and thoughtful
contemplation of the city under all its varied aspects, in the
sunsets of its golden Autumn, in the sharp clearness of its Spring
skies, the torrid heat of Summer, and the calm freshness of its
starry nights. Florence, on the contrary, seems to speak directly
to the heart and mind of anyone who beholds her, on some fair
Spring morning, from the ethereal height of one of her verdant
hills. She has had but one civilization, one period of greatness,
one flower-time of art and poetry. Here was a brilliant Spring of
life and youth, through the lasting vigour of which the robust and
venerable trunks still flourish and from time to time burst forth
in blossom; it would almost seem that the great souls of her
"makers" still lived and breathed within those creations of stone
and marble which glisten in the sun, immortal witnesses t
centuries of thrilling history, to imperishable traditions of art
and life.
George Eliot felt immediately all the suggestive charm of the
Florentine landscape. "Florence looks inviting as one catches
sight from the railway of its cupolas and towers and its
embosoming hills, the greenest of hills, sprinkled everywhere with
white villas." They took rooms in the Pension Suisse, in Via
Tornabuoni, opposite the Palazzo Strozzi and the loggia of the
Palazzo Corsi, which, before its restoration, faced the Via della
Spada and served as the gaily-hued shop of a florist.
On that first evening of their stay in Florence the travellers
"took the most agreeable drive to be had round Florence, the drive
to Fiesole. It is in this view that the eye takes in the greatest
extent of great billowy hills, besprinkled with white houses
looking almost like flocks of sheep,—the great,
silent, uninhabited mountains lie chiefly behind,—the
plain of the Arno stretches far to the right. I think the view
from Fiesole the most beautiful of all; but that from San Miniato,
where we went the next evening, has an interest of another kind,
because here Florence lies much nearer below, and one can
distinguish the various buildings more completely. It is the same
with Bellosguardo in a still more marked degree. What a relief to
the eye and the thought, among the huddled roofs of a distant
town, to see the towers and cupolas rising in abundant variety as
they do at Florence! There is Brunelleschi's mighty dome, and
close by it, with its lovely colours not entirely absorbed by
distance, Giotto's incomparable Campanile, Beautiful as a jewel.
Farther on, to the right, is the majestic tower of the Palazzo
Vecchio, with the flag waving above it. Then the elegant Badia and
the Bargello close by; nearer to us the grand Campanile of Santo
Spirito, and that of Santa Croce; far away, on the left. the
cupola of San Lorenzo and the tower of Santa Maria Novella, and
scattered far and near other cupolas and campaniles of more
significant shape and history."
As appears from these pages of her diary, the topography of
Florence had firmly fixed itself in her artist's memory on her
first panoramic view of it, and the first germ of that wonderful
construction of the ancient city found in the Proem to "Romola"
was unconsciously evolved in the calm moonlight night when, on the
arm of her beloved guide, philosopher and friend, she stood on the
heights of Fiesole gazing down in fertile admiration at the city
of ivory and stone, and the silver streak of the Arno stretching
away westward down the luminous valley like some bright diaphanous
dream of the Spring.
The short stay of a fortnight was entirely devoted to exploring
the city, its churches, buildings, frescoes, galleries, and to
gathering in a rich treasure of impressions and memories. They
admired the "paradise gates" of the Baptistery, but the interior
seemed to them "almost awful, with its great dome covered with
gigantic early mosaic, the pale large-eyed Christ surrounded by
images of Paradise and Perdition." The interior of the 3 Cathedral, George Eliot says,
"is comparatively poor and bare, but it has one great beauty, its
coloured lanceolated windows." They never wearied of gazing at the
old fifteenth-century palaces, beginning with the Palazzo Strozzi,
built by Cronaca, perfect in its massiveness with its iron
cressets and rings, as if it have been built only last year." And
in the Palazzo Pitti they found "a wonderful union of cyclopean
massiveness with stately regularity." They recognized and
extolled, too, the magnificence of the Medici, now Riccardi
Palace. "Grander still, in another style, is the 7 Palazzo Vecchio with its
unique cortile where the pillars are embossed with
arabesque and floral tracery, making a contrast in elaborate
ornament with the large simplicity of the exterior building." The
Loggia of Orcagna appeared to her "disappointing at the first
glance from its sombre, dirty colour; but its beauty drew upon me
with longer contemplation. The pillars and groins are very
graceful and chaste in ornamentation." In the 21 Bargello, which was under
repair, she had "glimpses of a wonderful inner court, with
heraldic carvings and stone stairs and gallery."
These true and vivid impressions of the Florence of 1869, when
there still existed the fourth circle of walls, and the gutter ran
down the middle of the narrow streets, not yet overlaid with the
modern paving which has raised their level and thus deprived the
churches, palaces, and monuments of the steps which formed their
natural pedestals,--these records of the things she saw, which
were to remain as shining lights in the writer's memory, have
acquired for us a singular importance. The outlines and colours of
her historical background became indelibly fixed in her creative
mind; Florence began to be a part of her life, to occupy a
separate cell in her brain, to take possession of her thoughts
with a slow, constant, but unconscious penetration.
She considered the Florentine churches "hideous on the outside,"
like "piles of ribbed brickwork awaiting a coat of stone or
stucco," and with a daring but easy imagination she likened them
to "skinned animals." At Santa Maria Novella she admired the
façade by Leon Battista Alberti and the frescoes by Orcagna, which
she pronounced superior to those in the Campo Santo at Pisa. At
San Lorenzo the Medici Chapel seemed to her "ugly and heavy with
all the precious marble"; and strange to say, she added that "the
world-famous statues of Michael Angelo on the tombs in another
smaller chapel, the Notte, the Giorno and the Crepuscolo, remained
to us as affected and exaggerated in the original as in copies and
casts." The vigorous and symbolical art of Buonarroti found no
favour in the sight of one who preferred the simplicity of the
primitive masters and the fragile and delicate creations of the
preraphaelites.
It is easily understood, therefore, that the two friends preferred
the churches of Santa Croce and the Carmine, and that chief
amongst the great frescoes of Masaccio they placed the "Raising of
the Dead Youth," whilst of Giotto's they singled out the
"Challenge to pass through the Fire" in the series representing
the history of St Francis, which picture, on account of its
subject, must have made a special impression on the author.
But George Eliot had not yet seen 10
San Marco, a convent which in those days, before the unfortunate
suppression of the religious orders in 1865, still maintained its
customary existence as a Dominican monastery and had not yet been
reduced to a cold and empty museum. The cloisters, the
refectories, the halls, the chapels, the modest and spiritual
little cells were still inhabited by the heirs and successors of
the great Monk, and the glory halo of his martyrdom shed a light
of reverence and holiness over his humble followers and the places
where had been enacted the immemorable scenes of the great tragedy
of Savonarola's life, and over which his spirit seemed to hover,
invisible, but as ardent and living as before his body was reduced
to ashes. The clausura of the rules forbade women to enter
a part of the monastery, and this prohibition naturally increased
and strengthened George Eliot's desire to visit the building. "The
frescoes that I cared for most in all Florence were the few of Fra
Angelico's that a donna was allowed to see in the convent
of San Marco. In the Chapter House, now used as a guard-room, is a
large crucifixion, with the inimitable group of the fainting
Mother upheld by St John and the younger Mary and clasped around
by the kneeling Magdalene. The group of adoring sorrowing saints
on the right hand are admirable for earnest truthfulness of
representation. The Christ in this fresco is not good, but there
is a deeply impressive original crucified Christ outside in the
cloisters; St Dominic is clasping the cross and looking upward at
the agonized Saviour whose real, pale, calmly enduring face is
quite unlike any other Christ I have seen."
The artistic explorations continued, "That unique Laurentian
Library, designed by Michael Angel: the books ranged on desks in
front of seats, so that the appearance of the library resembles
that of a chapel with open pews of dark wood. The precious books
are all chained to the desks, and here we saw old manuscripts of
exquisite neatness, culminating in the Virgil of the fourth
century and the Pandects, said to have been recovered from
oblivion at Amalfi, but falsely so said, according to those who
are more learned than tradition,"
And herein we may see the hand of the Mentor, the learned friend
and companion, who corrected the mistakes of guidebooks and local
cicerones.
After the Laurentian Library came Or San Michele, the Ufizi, the
Palazzo Pitti, the Accademia, Galileo's Tower, and then after an
excursion to Siena, they visited the house of Buonarroti and the
Cenacolo of Foligno, which was then close to the Egyptian Museum.
They had chosen "the quietest hotel in Florence," in order to
avoid tourists and not be "in a perpetual noisy picnic . . .,
obliged to be civil, though with a strong inclination to be
sullen." Precisely at that time Tuscany was "in the highest
political spirits, and of course Victor Emmanuel, 'Il Re
Libratore,' stares at us at every turn here, with the most
loyal exaggeration of moustache and intelligent meaning. But we
are selfishly careless about dynasties just now, caring more for
the doings of Giotto and Brunelleschi than for those of Count
Cavour."
That year, for ever beloved and glorious in the memories of all
good Italians, was the year that saw Garibaldi's heroic deeds in
Sicily. And even the weather contributed its enchantment to that
springtime of the new kingdom of Italy. "We are particularly happy
in our weather, which is unvaringly fine without excessive heat."
And when, on the evening of the first of June, they left Florence
in the diligence, by the Bologna road, "travelling all night,
until eleven the next morning," to reach the city of towers, the
plan of the book was already determined and George Eliot was able
to confide it, as a secret, to Major Blackwood, "There has been a
crescendo of enjoyment in our travels; for Florence, from its
relation to the history of Modern Art, has roused a keener
interest in us even than Rome, and has stimulated us to entertain
rather an ambitious project, which I mean to be a secret from
everyone but you and Mr John Blackwood." And when an author thus
confesses to a publisher, the book is either already written or
must be written without fail.
From Bologna the travellers went to Ferrara, Padua, and Venice,
but the new impressions did not succeed in effacing their memories
of Florence, "Farewell, lovely Venice! and away to Verona, across
the green plains of Lombardy; which can hardly look tempting to an
eye still filled with the dreamy beauty it has left behind." From
Verona they went to Milan, to Como, and across the Splugen to
Zurich, and then, after brief halts at Berne and Geneva, they
returned home. "We found ourselves at home again, after three
months of delightful travel." On the first of July, George Eliot
reached her own house again, her thoughts still full of that
"unspeakably delightful journey, one of those journeys that seem
to divide one's life in two, by the new ideas they suggest and the
new veins of interest they open."
Meanwhile the hazy plan of the novel had assumed a definite form
and the secret had been completely revealed to Mr John Blackwood.
"I think I must tell you the secret, though I am distrusting my
power to make it grow into a published fact. When we were in
Florence I was rather fired with the idea of writing a historical
romance--scene, Florence; period, the close of the fifteenth
century, which was marked by Savonarola's career and martyrdom. Mr
Lewes has encouraged me to persevere in the project, saying that I
should probably do something in historical romance rather
different in character from what has been done before."
But in the meantime, before the echo of the great success obtained
by "The Mill on the Floss" had yet died away, she had another and
sudden inspiration which was in strong contrast with the great
Florentine idea. "It is a story of old-fashioned village life,
which has unfolded itself from the merest millet-seed of thought.
It came to me, first of all, quite suddenly, as a sort of
legendary tale, suggested by my recollection of having once, in
early childhood, seen a linen weaver with a bag on his back." And
on the 10th of March, 1861, "Silas Marner" was finished and the
author thought longingly of returning again to Florence in the
Spring, to gather fresh colouring for her cherished design.
On the 19th of April, they "set off on their second journey to
Florence, through France and by the Cornice Road. The weather was
delicious, a little rain, and they suffered neither from heat nor
from dust." The Cornice road was indeed delightful in that lovely
weather, and the view marvellous. From Toulon they had travelled
by the carrier, and after the necessary stoppages they reached
Florence on the 4th of May, going to lodge at the Albergo della
Vittoria on the Lungarno. "Dear Florence was lovelier than ever on
this second view, and ill-health was the only deduction from
perfect enjoyment."
The two friends were full of content; from London came excellent
notices of the success of "Silas Marner," and this fresh triumph
encouraged the author to begin a new novel. "I feel very full of
thankfulness for all the beautiful and great things that are given
me to know; and I feel, too, much younger and more hopeful, as if
a great deal of life and work were still before me" Their spirits
rose in the Florentine atmosphere. "I have had great satisfaction
in finding our impressions of admiration more than renewed on
returning to Florence: the things we cared about when we were here
before seem even more worthy than they did in our memories. We
have had delightful weather since the cold winds abated, and the
evening lights on the Arno, the bridges, and the quaint houses are
a treat that we think of beforehand."
On this second visit there was less wandering about, but more
meditation and more work. "We have been industriously foraging in
old streets and old books," she wrote. George Eliot was preparing
for her new venture, entering thoroughly into the life of her
subject, since, like all true artists, she could write of nothing
with which she was not, heart and mind and soul, in sympathy.
To be able to write she must also feel "that it was something,
however small, which wanted to be done in this world," and that
she was "just the organ for that small bit of work."
In this work of preparation and comparison George Henry Lewes
rendered the greatest possible assistance. He was "in continual
distraction by having to attend to my wants, going with me to the
Magliabecchian Library, and poking about everywhere on my behalf,"
she having "very little self-help of the pushing and inquiring
kind." They spent their time collecting materials and information
and admiring the surrounding country and the views. One evening
they mounted to the top of Giotto's Tower, a feat requiring much
exertion, but for the most part they contented themselves with
observing from the windows of their hotel "the various sunsets,
shielding crimson and golden lights under the dark bridges across
the Arno. All Florence turns out at eventide, but we avoided the
slow crowds on the Lungarno and took our way up all manner of
streets."
They arrived in Florence on the 4th of May, and they left on the
7th of June. "Thirty-four days of precious time spent there. Will
it be all in vain?" was the question George Eliot asked herself.
"Our morning hours were spent in looking at streets, buildings,
and pictures, in hunting up old books at shops or stalls, or in
reading at the Magliabecchian Library."
We have been fortunate enough to discover several documents of
singular curiosity and importance in connection with this long and
concluding sojourn in Florence, when the romance of Savonarola was
assuming its actual form in the mind and the creative imagination
of the author. We take a pleasure, in certain historical
researches, in imitating the methods, sometimes, perhaps, rather
suspicious methods, pursued by a clever detective when seeking the
material proofs of something that has happened; for it is the fate
of all human deeds, whether good or evil, always to leave some
trace behind them. It may happen, however, that through distance
of time and place these traces cannot be discovered, that either
carelessness or chance has destroyed them; but this is no reason
for denying that the fact ever occurred and that the traces of it
ever existed; we should have groped and searched diligently
whenever there was a chance, and something would surely have been
brought to light. It was this consideration, given the fact that
George Eliot and George Henry Lewes had really studied in the
Magliabecchian Library, that led me to think that some trace, some
record of these studies might still be found there. But during the
forty-four years from 1861 until the present time, the
Magliabecchian Library has passed through so many vicissitudes, so
many other collections of thousands of thousands of volumes have
been added to the original collection left by Antonio
Magliabecchi, there have been so many transformations and
rearrangements that any search of this description seemed wellnigh
hopeless. Only the old reading hall, which had been built in the
former Medicean Theatre,—the great
hall with its two huge windows, and the staircase at the end, and
the bust of Magliabecchi smiling grimly at the readers,—is
still exactly as it was when George Eliot and George Henry Lewes
sat down at their studies at one of those massive walnut tables.
There is the same peaceful stillness, barely disturbed even by the
greater number of readers: upon the shelves, with their ornamental
brass gratings, the same books await their turn to be read; nor is
there wanting some attendant who, in the May of 1861, might have
noticed the repeated visits of those two foreigners. An ancient
priest, in greasy skull-cap and snuffy cassock, then presided over
the books, keeping beside him as a guide the "Index librorum
prohibitorum." Another Cerberus, equally snuffy, kept guard
over the receipts for all books given out,—receipts which the students were obliged to sign
and file, and which were cancelled with the Library stamp when the
books were returned.
Knowing this old formality in the library economy of those days,
it occurred to me to search through the receipts of that year,
still preseerved at the top of a cupboard, in the office of the
archives, and from amongst those dusty bundles of many Italian
students, since become famous;—such
as Alessandro
d'Ancona, Enrico
Nencioni. and Ferdinando
Martini;—and names of many
obscure and humble persons who continued to frequent the Library
even in later years when I myself went there to study, before
entering on my career as a librarian. There were not many readers,—perhaps fifteen or twenty at the most; and
they went there rather to read through one book than to consult
several, often requesting the same volume for weeks together. From
George Eliot herself I found not a single receipt; but there were
a number signed G.H. Lewes, to whom she left all the trouble and
labour of those learned investigations in which she was not
accustomed.
Their first visit was paid on the 15th of May, and the first book
they sought was some illustrated work which would give them an
idea of the costumes of the period. They were given Ferrario's
"Costume Antico e Moderno," of which they examined the volumes
dealing with Italy. The author wished to obtain some knowledge of
the historical surroundings of her story, and to know in what
materials to dress her characters; and for this purpose a book
somewhat superficial and theatrical, as is that of Ferrario, could
be of service. On the following day they must have spent a longer
time in the Library, because their researches were more extended
and could not have been carried out without the assistance of one
of the Library attendants. They had the "Malmantile," by Lippi, a
comic poem which is a perfect mine of phrases, proverbs, and
quaint sayings, fully illustrated and explained by Canon A.M.
Biscioni; and it was doubtless in these instructive notes that
George Eliot found many of the jests and sayings which she was
pleased to insert in her novel in order that her characters might
speak the language of the period of which they wore the dress. But
the historical reconstruction and the scene could not be confined
only to the personages of the story,—the
background of the picture and the scenery must correspond with all
the rest; and hence in the "Firenze illustrata", by Leopoldo del
Miglione, and in "Firenze Antica e Moderna," by Rastreli, we find
them studying the aspect of the city at the end of the fifteenth
century, its topography and its various changes.
Besides printed books, they consulted manuscripts; and from the
"Priorista," by Luca Chiari, which bore the pressmark "Classe
XXVI, Cod 36, Palch, 1," they obtained the first idea of the
gorgeous magnificence with which they used to celebrate the Feast
of St John, with the homage of the various tributary towns, the
cars, the races, and the painted tapers of extraordinary size. the
illustrations from Del Migliore and from Chiari, which we have
reproduced, correspond fully with the descriptions of places and
ceremonies which she gives in her novel with an almost excessive
profusion of detail. But that was a mental necessity with her,
which she herself recognized. "It is the habit of my imagination
to strive after as full a vision of the medium in which a
character moves as of the character itself." It is not surprising,
therefore, that in order to satisfy this need, she eagerly read
any book whence she might derive precise ideas and knowledge of
the manners and customs of those days. On the 17th of May they
consulted the "Chronichette, Antiche della Città di Firenze," but
probably with little advantage. On the 18th, they examined four
other works; namely the "Diario," by Buonaccorsi, the "Istorie
Fiorentine" by Cavalcanti, the "Istorie Firoentine," by Nerli, and
the "Opere Volgari," by Poliziano. On the 19th, they studied
"Marietta dei Ricci," by Agostino Demollo, a historical romance
whose chief merit lies in the learned wanderings from the main
subject and in the notes on the families of old Florence appended
by Luigi Passerini. From these notes George Eliot undoubtedly
derived her first knowledge of the Bardi family, to whose
genealogical tree she added the ever-memorable figure of Romola.

[Guido Biagi (henceforth GB), I.xxxii. Among the
library slips not shown here is that for 'Poliziano Opere in
volgare 1503, 18 Maggio, GHLewes'. George Eliot was
consulting primary sources.]
During four days, from the 19th to the 24th, they
did not go to the Library. But on the 24th they returned to study
again "Marietta dei Ricci," and in vain to seek out in Litta's
book of Italian families, "Le Famiglie del Litta," the pedigree of
the Bardi. For now Romola, the Antigone of Bardo Bardi, was
already created, and George Eliot could take her to England and
weave around her the fabric of her romance, the costumes,
surroundings, language, and historical and genealogical background
for which she had studied in those few days at the Magliabecchain
Library, reserving the actual making of her romantic plot to be
done when she should reach her home.
After an excursion to Camaldoli and La Vernia, "which is perched
upon an abrupt rock rising sheer on the summit of a mountain,"
where they saw the grave and solemn Franciscans "turning out at
midnight (and when there is deep snow for their feet to plunge in)
and chanting their slow way up to the little chapel perched at a
lofty distance above their already lofty monastery," they returned
to London to the quiet house, 16 Blandford Square, where George
Eliot felt herself "in excellent health and longed to work
steadily and effectively."
She immediately began her studies and the varied reading required
for the elaboration of her book, her work relieved by walks with
George Lewes, during which "we talked of the Italian novel." But
the construction of the romance proved full of difficulties, often
overwhelming her with anxiety and discouragement. She felt she no
longer knew how to write, that she was no longer capable of
inventing a plot, and that she ought to give up her work. Her
diary is full of those alternating feelings, these continued
heights of joy and depths of despair. "This morning I conceived
the plot of my novel with new distinctness," she wrote on the 20th
of August. Then, on the 4th of October, "My mind still worried
about my plot, and without any confidence in my ability to do what
I want." But three days later, on the 7th of October, she wrote,
"Began the first chapter of my novel."
With this beginning, however, she was not satisfied and resumed
her reading, burying herself in the story of Nerli and of Nardi,
"so utterly dejected that in walking with George in the Park, I
almost resolved to give up my Italian novel." But on the 10th of
November a new prospect seemed to open before her, and she had a
"new sense of things to be done in my novel, and more brightness
in my thought . . . .This morning the Italian scenes returned upon
me with fresh attraction." She experienced renewed pleasure in her
Italian subject, and felt again captivated by its charm and
attractions. In order, then to bring it more vividly before her
mind, she went "to the British Museum reading-room, for the first
time, looking over costumes." On Sunday, the 6th of December,
whilst walking with Lewes "in the morning sunshine, I told him my
conception of my story, and he expressed great delight. Shall I
ever be able to carry out my ideas? Flashes of hope are succeeded
by the long intervals of dim distrust."
Meanwhile she continued her reading of erudite books. She had
finished the eight volumes of Lastri's "Osservatore Fiorentino,"
which she almost learned by heart, and which is the more immediate
source of all her information about old Florence, and had
commenced Book IX of Varchi's "Storie," "in which he gives an
accurate account of Florence." On the 12th of December she
finished writing out her plot,—of
which, however, she made several other drafts before really
beginning to write the book. What a solid and conscientious
foundation of study, how much hard reading, all in preparation for
a work of fiction and imagination! Of the books perused during
these long readings we find a long list in her diary, with the
titles more or less correct. Amongst these we naturally find the
work from which George Eliot obtained the greatest amount of
information about Savonarola and his times, namely, "La vita di G.
Savonarola," by Pasquale Villari, which had then only just been
published and was attracting the attention of the whole learned
world, and which came to be recognized as a masterpiece of
historical criticism. Of this book, for some unknown reason, we
find only a cursory mention in a note to the novel and in that
confused list of authors consulted by her, whilst in reality we
must attribute to this work a large share of the inspiration which
led her to write about Florence and the Dominican martyr who was
one of the two principal figures in the novel. Indeed, her use of
the most important scenes—that in
which Baldassare Calva makes his first appearance, when he meets
Tito Melema on the steps of the Cathedral—she
is indebted directly to Villari, the only writer who, on the
authority of the manuscript chronicles of Parenti and Cerratani
(to which George Eliot certainly had no access), describes the
fray which arose for the liberation of the Lunigiana prisoners, a
scene of which she made dramatic use in the second chapter of Book
II, entitled "The Prisoners." And who does not know the important
part of this liberation of the prisoners plays in the plot of
"Romola"? But amongst the sources, more or less direct, whence the
material of the novel was derived, like the "Novelle" of Sacchetti
(for the scene in the Mercato Vecchio and for the chapter entitled
"A Florentine Joke") and the "Veglie piacevoli" of Domenico Maria
Manni (for the character of the barber Nello, modelled upon that
of his great predecessor, the jolly poet Burchiello), none, in my
opinion, is equally important with that work which suggested to
the author such a fundamental point in her story.
In January, 1862, George Eliot wrote in her diary, "I began again
my novel of 'Romola,'" and set to work seriously,--a great
difficulty being the necessity of immediately gathering new and
correct partculars, which she sought to obtain on the 26th of
January, about Lorenzo de' Medici's death, about the possible
retardation of Easter, about Corpus Christi Day, about
Savonarola's preaching in the Lent of 1492. It is not easy to
imagine the care and industry with which she studied every detail,
every trifle of historical interest. She twice read through
Machiavelli's "Mandragora" and the "Calandra" by Bernardo Dovizi
for the sake of Florentine expressions, and she was never
satisfied with the result of her labours. On the 31st of
January she read to George Lewes "the proem and opening scene of
her novel, and he expressed great delight in them."

GB I.1
By the middle of February she had completed the first two
chapters, in addition to the admirable Proem, but the author was
still swayed between hope and fear. "I have been very ailing this
last week, and have worked under impeding discouragement. I have a
distrust in myself, in my work, in others' loving acceptance of
it, which robs my otherwise happy life of all joy. I ask myself,
without being able to answer, whether I have ever before felt so
chilled and oppressed. I have written now about sixty pages of my
romance. Will it ever be finished? Ever be worth anything?" this
uncertainty continued as the work of fiction gradually assumed
shape and form, through all the great difficulties which her
exquisite artistic taste pointed out and enabled her her
inspirations, as in her other romances, written on the impulse of
the moment at the dictating of her poetic and creative
self-control and selection were exercised in the presentation of
her imagination, forcing her to renewed efforts to rekindle it
each time she took up her work again after an interval of
historical or archeological research.
She had, meanwhile, accepted the offer of George Smith, the
publisher, and had agreed that "Romola" should appear in the
"Cornhill Magazine," and she received much encouragement and
advice from Anthony Trollope, a keen and wise judge on such
matters. The novel now made quicker progress, and by May the
second part was finished; by June the scene between Romola and her
brother in San Marco was written and she was about to commence
Part IV. In October she had also written the scene between Tito
and Romola and had completed Part VII, "having determined to end
at the point when Romola has left Florence." In November Part VIII
was ready, and in December Part IX. The novel had begun to appear
in the "Cornhill Magazine" in July, 1862, and from every side came
encouragement and praise.
"I have had a great deal of pretty encouragement from immense
big-wigs, some of them saying 'Romola' is the finest book they
ever read"; but the opinion of big-wigs has one sort of value and
she preferred "the fellow-feeling of a long-known friend." The
greater part of her work was now done, and the diary no longer
recorded uncertainty and indecision. In May, 1863, there was
wanting only this last part, and she had already "killed Tito with
great excitement," and on the 9th of June, ever memorable day, she
noted in her diary, "Put the last stroke to Romola—Ebenezer!" while on the first page of the
manuscript she wrote the following inscription:—
"TO THE HUSBAND WHOSE PERFECT LOVE WAS BEEN THE
BEST
SOURCE OF HER INSIGHT AND
STRENGTH
THIS MANUSCRIPT IS GIVEN BY HIS
DEVOTED
WIFE THE WRITER"
Romola was the fair fruit
of the union between erudition and poetry, the dream-child
conceived in that moonlit night in May when she stood upon the
ethereal heights of Fiesole, gazing down in the white and shadowy
city in the valley below. It was a long and laborious creation,
and for that reason greatly beloved.
"The writing of 'Romola' ploughed into her more than any of her
other books. She could put her finger on it as marking a
well-defined transition in her life. In her own words, 'I began it
as a young woman, I finished it an old woman.'"
Of this romance, whose poetical beginning we have seen and whose
historical and artistic facts we have traced to their source, we
should now like to quote some criticisms, concerning these
historical contents, pronounced by various unquestionable
authorities. Pasquale Villari, whose name is indissolubly linked
with that of Savonarola, says, in the second edition of his
monumental work, that amongst the books on this subject which have
appeared during the last few years, "The one which attracted the
most attention was a novel, "Romola," by George Eliot; but this
admirable work of art, by the great English author added no new
facts to the history, because, as was only natural, she accepted
unquestioningly the conclusions already arrived at." As he had
pronounced such a favourable judgment on the work of art, it may
be concluded that the illustrious Italian critic deemed it also
worthy of the highest praise for the reconstruction of historical
scenes, and that the author was quite justified in writing, "My
predominant feeling is, not that I have achieved anything, but—that great, great facts have struggled to
find a voice through me and have only been able to speak
brokenly."
But these very qualities of historical truth, of exact
reproduction of surroundings,—tested
by investigations whose results are embodied in the notes appended
to the text and by the examination of numerous iconographical
documents which give us a picture of Florence in the days of
Savonarola, as well as by a careful research amongst the books
whence the writer drew her inspiration,—these
qualities appear in the opinion of several recent critics, to be
one of the reasons why "Romola" with all its life-like vigour, its
vivid reality of representation, remains nevertheless, inferior to
the other purely imaginary romances with which George Eliot has
enriched English literature. A keen and genial Italian critic,
Gaetano Negri, who has written two volumes of essays on the works
of Marian Evans, attributes this weakness to the fact of its being
a historical romance and to the literary, artistic, and political
archaeology which impedes the freedom of movement and robs it of
the stamp of truth.
He bluntly accused George Henry Lewes of having allowed his
learning to exercise an evil influence on the genius of his
companion, and of not knowing how to prevent her from running now
and then into literary adventures which were for her both
dangerous and hurtful. Negri, a faithful admirer of Alessandro
Manzoni, wished that Lewes could have read the dissertation which
the author of "Promessi posi" wrote on the subject of the
historical novel, to prove that this is a form of literature not
to be cultivated because "the laborious adherence to historical
truth which is necessary in the historical novel, in order to form
the background for the probable, hampers the action and distracts
the attention from that which is really of importance; namely the
analysis of the human soul and its passions. This mixture of truth
and apparent truth is fatal to both; it robs the probable
of the stamp of truth, and it robs the real truth of the semblance
of probability; what is probable must also seem possible,
and what is truth must retain its impression of reality.
It is a fact that Manzoni, in spite of his theories, has given us
a masterpiece which contains not only an admirable picture of the
human soul. But it is certainly an instance of the exception
proving the rule, because the good result has been obtained
through the genius of the author, who has known how to overcome
the evils of the system."
We maintain, however, that this rule does not exist, for it has
been amply proved that no work of art can ever be created
according to fixed rules, even though these rules be drawn up by
men of genius. Manzoni's dissertation, and the arguments
syllogized by him after having given Italy such a work as
"Promessi Sposi," are one of the attacks of hypercriticism to
which even the cleverest men are occasionally liable. But these
sophisms did not prevent Sir Walter Scott from writing "The
Waverley Novels," nor Alexander Dumas from inventing "The Three
Musketeers," nor did they hinder Leo Tolstoi from writing "Peace
and War," or Henry Stenkwicz from the creation of "Quo Vadis." It
is not the fault of the historical romance if, according to some
opinions, the figure of Romola does not appear in sufficiently
strong relief against the historical background, whilst those of
Tito Melema and Baldassarre appear, even to a sceptical critic
like Gaetano Negri, more alive and more human. If there is a
defect in Romola, it is the fault of her nature, her inclinations,
her temperament; she is not Italian, she is an English girl, a
Puritan, to whom even the ardent mysticism of Savonarola is
repugnant and whose whole soul rises up in rebellion against him
when he declares, "The cause of my party is the cause of God's
Kingdom," to which she makes answer, "God's Kingdom is something
wider, else let me stand outside it with the beings that I love."
Romola has no Latin blood in her veins, none of that quick Italian
blood which boils up hot and furious at every offense, ready with
its scorn and its anger, but which, at the bidding of a watchful
mind, is ready also to be calm and to forgive. Through all Tito's
betrayals of her she never has one of those sudden outbursts and
blazes of passion which are natural in an offended woman: she
exhibits an unfailing self-control which chills us, a sad and
resigned coldness which does not belong to the Italian nature, and
was still less a characteristic of the women of the Renaissance,
even then, when Classicism and the finest Hellenism had educated
and civilized them. Romola is a Puritan, not a piagnona, a
follower of Savonarola; Romola is English, and she bears a curious
resemblance to George Eliot herself, or to what George Eliot's
daughter might have been had she had one.
But, having said this much, we have no right to make further
criticism or censure. Indeed, it may be urged, and with good
reason, that to judge Romola as one would judge any ordinary
character in any ordinary novel, as a creature who must of
necessity have flesh and blood and be subject to the same passions
as we ourselves, would be both unjust and inopportune and would
show a total disregard of those rules of criticism so clearly laid
down by Alessandro Manzoni when he advised a consideration of
three points before pronouncing judgment on a work of art; namely,
what was the intention of the author, was this intention good, and
has the author carried out his intention. We may, indeed, in all
sincerity ask ourselves whether, in creating Romola, George Eliot
actually intended to create a real personage.
Romola finds herself in conflict with two widely differing worlds,—the Humanism which fell into decay after
the pagan Carnival of Lorenzo dei Medici, after the splendour of
the golden time of Neo-Platonism, and the Asceticism which for a
brief period flourished again and proclaimed the rights of soul
and spirit as against the triumph of material things. She is
surrounded by ruin and dissolution; everything she loves most
either abandons her or falls into evil; she loses her family, her
love betrays her, her very faith itself has no comfort for her. In
this sad vanishing of all she values she can truly say with the
poet. "Ogni cosa al mondo è vana." Her father, her brother, and
her guardian are dead, the Prophet of her faith is but a handful
of ashes scattered to the winds, the two opposing factions of palleschi
and piagnosi are extinguished, and Romola is left with
Tessa and Monna Brigida, Lillo and Ninna, in the quiet hose in the
Borgo Pinti, to dream out the memory of the tempestuous past and
to teach the children "that we can only have the highest happiness
by having wide thoguhts and much feeling for the rest of the world
as well as ourselves."
Romola stands out as a symbol, immaculate and strong, a symbol of
the woman who, after having hoped, suffered, and loved, after all
the fountains of her affections have been dried up by the fatal
touch of disillusionment, turns the stream of her unsatisfied
feelings towards those in misery and those who, all unconsciously
and involuntarily, have offended her; she is a figure sublime and
statuesque, and her name is Charity.
DR GUIDO BIAGI,
LAURENTIAN LIBRARY, FLORENCE,
JULY 1, 1906
The entire text of the novel with these illustrations supplied
by Frederic Lord Leighton and by Guido Biagi is at https://www.florin.ms/Romola.html. This page functions as a
hypertextual and archeological guide to that historical yet
deconstructing romance, as it were, articulating, x-raying, its
skeleton. As with Dante's
Commedia, of seven centuries ago, one can see that what
is real is the scholar's investigation of Florence of the end of
the fifteenth century, now six centuries ago, and its scholarly
investigator of a century and a half ago, from which the
novelist author articulates her fictional characters amidst real
personages, blending together both real and fictional worlds,
with a moral compass, in which the heroine Romola mirrors both
George Eliot and the Divine Mother, who endures the loss of all
scholarly and spiritual illusions with her brother's, father's,
godfather's, husband's and Savonarola's deaths, while its
villainous anti-hero's crime is that of maintaining in slavery
both his foster father and his two wives, a theme resonating
with the Victorian Florence of the Abolition of Slavery, the
Risorgimento, and the Liberation of Children and of Women.
George Eliot's Romola is her 'Distant Mirror' for
resolving the author's own Puritanical and Victorian moral
compass, renouncing a dead bookishness, those parchment scrolls
Romola's ascetic brother glimpses which are, in fact, this
novel's sources, her achieving self-worth in the face of false
patriarchy's mortmain. George Eliot does so by
juxtaposing the obedient daughter-wife to the two disobedient
sons in the text, the second of whom George Eliot, masked as
Baldassarre Calvo, kills off in the greatest excitement. She
just may be, using the lies of a novel, herself such a liar as
is Tito Melema, shrouding that self-truth with all the
historical trappings of extreme scholarly research into
verisimilitude—which turn into dead
parchment scrolls. We recall that she is herself part of a
pattern of adultery and bigamy, George Henry Lewes, her partner,
being legally married to Agnes Lewes, who, however was not
faithful to him, nor he to her, they having chosen to live an
open marriage. So many of her characters in this fictional novel
were real people complete with Wikipedia and Enciclopedia
Treccani entries and presented in fine portraits, now in
great museums. While the father and daughter are not really of
the Renaissance, but of the Victorian century, Bardo de' Bardi
modelled on the eccentric artist scholar, Seymour Kirkup,
discoverer of the portrait of Dante in the Bargello, Romola
modelled on herself. Indeed, George Eliot's Romola looks in a
mirror at herself in the text to test the efficacy of her
disguise, just as earlier Nello had Tito look at his
transformation. Iain McGilchrist, the neuroscientist, has noted
that first person narratives activate the brain more than do
novels with omniscient observers; in a sense, Romola is
a first person narrative, the reader being as if Romola, who is
as if a mirrroring of George Eliot's own Pilgrim's Progress.
For this novel, amidst all its distancing and projection onto
another, all its blending of real and virtual, is a
self-examination, as Nello the Barber called it, a nosce
teipsum mirror, a knowing of thyself. Two other characters
also note the change in their appearance, Baldassore sees
himself in the barber's hand mirror in Arezzo, and then in a
puddle of water, noting his aging, just as we find Monna
Brigida initially resists, then accepts, hers. The book is as if
George Eliot's own Bonfire of Vanities, her maturing. And it is
ours.
Place
|
Author
|
Character
|
Work
|
Florence
|
Dante
Alighieri
|
Dante
Alighieri
|
Vita
nova, Commedia
|
Florence
|
George
Eliot
|
Romola
de' Bardi
|
Romola
|
PROEM. The
word 'Proem' is taken by George Eliot from the use of it by
Savonarola to The Triumph of the Cross and by Machiavelli
to The Prince. As introduction, George Eliot here has us
survey the cityscape of Florence at our feet through the eyes of a
now dead Florentine in 1492. Pillars of Hercules=Straits
of Gibralter. The "small, quick-eyed man" = Brunelleschi. Frati
minori= Franciscan friars. Palazzo Vecchio=Old
Palace, People's Palace. 8 Badia=Abbey.
Santa Croce (Holy Cross)'s tower is Victorian, likewise the
façades of 15 Santa Croce and
of the 3 Duomo
Cathedral. 4 Ponte
Vecchio=Old Bridge. Oltrarno=the other side of the
Arno River. Frate Predicatore= Dominican Savonarola. Wax ex
voto images used to be hung in the 11
Santissima Annunziata (Most Holy Annunciation)'s atrium, such as
one can still see in Marian shrines as at Montenero and
Einsiedeln. All Florentines, until recently, because of tourism,
were baptised in Florence's Baptistery of San Giovanni, Easter
Saturday. marmi=marble. The Calimara was the guild for
Florentine merchants trading throughout the known world. Proemio
is the word Savonarola uses in his introduction to his Trionfo
della Croce/ Triumph of the Cross; likewise did
Machiavelli in The Prince.
Footnotes, 1880 edition: Frati minori=Franciscans. Bogoli=Boboli
Iddio non paga il Sabato=God does not pay on a Saturday. Regno=Name
given to Naples among Italian states



John Brett, Bellosguardo,
Tate

Frederic Leighton (henceforth FL), 1862-1863,1888, Proem,
I.10, Spirit of the Past at 20 San Miniato.
1492 Tito Melema came to Florence as Lorenzo il Magnifico died. He
has been shipwrecked, is aided by the peddlar Bratti, and the
barber Nello, ought to ransom his foster father who is now
enslaved but instead uses the gems he has for that purpose for
himself. Falls for the contadina peasant Tessa, and for
the noble Romola in bigamy, is an anti-hero filled with anxiety
about his social-climbing as a scholar. Romola assists her blind
scholarly father, in place of her fanatic brother, Bernardino, now
Fra Luca, who dies telling her of the vision he has of her
marriage, as of parchment scrolls.
BOOK I, CHAPTER I. THE SHIPWRECKED
STRANGER
9 April 1492. Main characters in each chapter will be bolded.
Fictional characters, Tito Melema, Bratti Ferravecchi
(baratta=bargain), a peddlar, Monna Trecca, a greengrocer,
Goro, Nello, a barber, Ser Cioni, a lawyer, Niccolo,
a blacksmith. Historical persons mentioned are Antonio
Pucci, a poet, Lorenzo
de' Medici, the merchant prince who has just died in the
presence of the Dominican, Girolamo Savonarola, an event we come
to learn of in the cacaphony of market gossip. In a sense, Bratti
functions in the text like the author herself, bartering and
exchanging objects, introducing people to each other, setting
the plot in motion; likewise Niccolo, as blacksmith, forges its
weapons of crime. George Eliot deliberately 'births' her novel
at Dante's birthplace, the 1
Casa di Dante.
QUI NACQUE IL DIVINO POETA=Here
the divine poet [Dante] was born. Inscription formerly on the
true Dante house which is next to the fake one built for the
Museum of Dante's House.
'E vedesi chi perde con gran soffi,
E bestemmiar colla mano alla mascella,
E ricever e dar di molti ingoffi.'
Mercato=market,
castello=fortified village, marzolino=Tuscan sheep's
cheese, mi pare=seems to me, Frati serviti=Servites
of Mary, a Florentine Order, Quaresima=Lent when meat
could not be eaten, Marzocco is the Lion, emblem of
Florence, sculpted by Donatello. This first chapter is not easy to
read, presenting as it does a babble of voices in a crowded market
place, packed full of long-ago proverbs in a foreign tongue, but
bear with the author, for the novel gets better.
Footnotes, 1880: 'Chi
abbaratta—baratta—b'ratta—chi abbaratta cenci e
vetri—b'ratta ferri vecchi?'=Who wants to exchange
rags, broken glass, or old iron? Palle=Arms of the
Medici. A votive images of Lorenzo, in wax, hung up in the
Church of the Annunziata, supposed to have fallen at the
time of his death. Boto is popular Tuscan for Voto.
netto di specchio=The phrase used to express the
absence of disqualification-i.e. the not being entered as a
debtor in the public book (specchio)
FL (henceforth FL),
1862-1863, 1880, I.12. Bratti and Tito, I.I,
initial T.


Guido Biagi (henceforth GB), I.76, 1907

GB, I.106

GB, I.98

Lorenzo de' Medici
CHAPTER II. A BREAKFAST FOR LOVE
Fictional characters, Bratti, Tito, Tessa, Monna Ghita,
Nello. Historical persons mentioned, Demetrio
Calcondila, Bernardo
de Rucellai. Place: Mercato Vecchio
obolus=Greek coin
CHAPTER III. THE BARBER'S SHOP
Fictional character, Nello, Tito. Historic persons
mentioned, Lorenzo de' Medici, compared to Pericles of Athens,
Demetrio Calcondila, Michele Marullo, Bernardo Rucellai, Alamanno
Rinuccini, Pico della Mirandola, Giotto, Brunelleschi, Lorenzo
Ghiberti, Angelo Poliziano, Burchiello, Piero di Cosimo, Giovanni
Argiropulo, Bartolomeo Scala. Nello has Tito look at himself in a
Venetian mirror from Murano. 3 Piazza
San Giovanni.
'"Ingenium
velox, audacia perdita, sermo
Promptus, et Isaeo torrentior."
contadina=country woman

GB, I.134
FL, 1880, Frontispiece. "SUPPOSE YOU LET ME LOOK AT MYSELF," Tito
and Nello. The sculpture in the window is of the stele or
herm of the god Pan in the Torrigiani Gardens which
Leighton also designed on the first, Greek, harp he placed on
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's tomb in Florence's English Cemetery.

Giardino
Torrigiani herm of Pan, Frederic Leighton, Elizabeth
Barrett Browning, 'A Musical Instrument', Harp on her tomb,
Frontispiece to Romola, and I.348, in Piero di Cosimo's studio
CHAPTER IV. FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Tito, Nello, Domenico Cennini, printer, Bernardo Cennini's
son, Piero di
Cosimo, mentioned, Francesco Filelfo, Angelo
Poliziano, Pietro Cennini, Domenico's brother, Pico della
Mirandola, Leonardo da Vinci.
Here George Eliot is also speaking of the impressions in the
printing of this book and its engravings. That her Piero di Cosimo
sees Tito as Sinon, the betrayer though guile of Troy (Timeo
Danaos, ut dona ferentis/Beware the Greeks bearing gifts, in
this case of the Trojan Horse), from Virgil's Aeneid, is
prophetic at the beginning of Tito's treachery.

The printer
Benardo Cennini's son, Domenico

Self-portrait,
Piero di Cosimo
CHAPTER V. THE BLIND SCHOLAR AND HIS
DAUGHTER
Fictional characters: Maso, the servant, Bardo
de' Bardi, his daughter, Romola, Nello, Tito.
Historical persons mentioned, Agnolo Poliziano, Nonnus, Hadrian,
Apollonius Rhodius, Callimachs, Lucan, Silius Italicus, Petrarch,
Manuelo Crisolora, Filfelfo, Argiropulo, Panhormita, Poggio,
Thomas of Sarzana, Marsilio Ficino, Nicolo Niccoli, Cassandra
Fedele, Demetrio Calcondila, Plautus, Quintilian, Boccaccio, Aldus
Manuzio, printer, Pontanus, Merula, Epictetus, Horace, Zeno,
Epicurus
"Libri medullitus delectant,
colloquuntur, consulunt, et viva quadam nobis atque arguta
familiaritate junguntur." ' [Books delight the heart, they speak
to us, they also help give advise and they are joined to us
...] Petrarch
"Optimam
foeminam nullam esse, alia licet alia pejor sit."
"duabus sellis sedere" [to sit in
two saddles]
"Sunt qui non
habeant, est qui non curat habere." [Those
who have not, care not to have].
Optimam
foeminam nullam esse, alia licet alia pejor sit [ ]
"Perdonimi
s'io fallo: chi m'ascolta
The
Palazzo de' Bardi, via de' Bardi. Bardo dei Bardi,
is modelled by George Eliot from the Victorian
eccentric deaf scholar, Seymour
Kirkup, who lived in via dei Bardi, and who had
discovered Dante's portrait where Vasari said it was,
in the Magdalen Chapel of the Bargello.
The Palace was obliterated in World War II.
Footnotes, 1880: wide kinship=A sign that such contrasts were
peculiarly frequent in florence is the fact that Saint Antonino,
Prior of San Marco, founded the society of the Buonuomini di San
Martino (good men of St Martin) with the main object of succouring
the poveri vergognosi--in other words paupers of good
family. In the records of the famous Panciatichi family we find a
certain Girolamo in this century who was reduced to such a
state of poverty that he was obliged to seek charity for the
mere means of sustaining life, though other members of his family
were enormously wealthy.

BG, I.182
BG, I.176

FL, 1880, I.64. THE BLIND SCHOLAR AND HIS DAUGHTER. Bardo [/Seymour Kirkup] and
Romola, his daughter
CHAPTER VI. DAWNING HOPES
Bardo, Romola, Maso, Nello, Tito. Historical person, Bernardo
del Nero, others mentioned, Manuelo Crisolora, Luigi Pulci,
Aurispa, Guarino, Ciriaco, Cristofero Buondelmonte, Ambrogio
Traversari, Demetrio Calcondila, Aristotle, St Philip, Pausanias,
Pliny, Margites, Domenico Cennini, Alessandra Scala, Bartolommeo
Scala, Camillo Leonardi, Lorenzo de' Medici, Piero de' Medici
There is an echo here of Tito telling of his background to that
narrated by Othello which enchants Desdemona in Shakespeare's
play.
"Perdonimi s'io fallo: chi m'ascolta
Intenda
il mio volgar col suo latino." [Pardon me if I err; who
hears me mix my vernacular with his Latin]
abnormis sapiens
[wise beyond bounds]
'Con viso che
tocendo dicea, Taci'.
[Touching her face, says 'Hush!']

FL, 1880, I.68, initial W.

GB, I.210, Bernardo del Nero
CHAPTER VII. A LEARNED SQUABBLE
Fictional character, Tito. Historical persons, Bartolommeo
Scala, mentioned, Agnolo Poliziano, Marsilio Ficino,
Cristofero Landino,
transmarini=across
the seas, lusus naturae=play of Nature
Villa
Gherardesca, Porta a' Pinti, home to Bartolomeo Scala, now Four
Seasons Hotel.

GB, I.232, Bartolomeo della Scala
GB, I.214, Villa Gherardesca, Borgo
Pinti

GB, I.228, Villa Gherardesca, Borgo Pinti, now Four Seasons
Hotel
GB, I.154, Agnolo Politian, Laurentian Library, who would be poisoned by the
Mediceans for his support of Savonarola

Marsilio
Ficino, who would be poisoned by the Mediceans for his
support of Savonarola

Marsilio
Ficino, Cristofero Landino, Agnolo Politian, Demetrio
Calcondila
CHAPTER VIII. A FACE IN THE
CROWD
Fictional Characters, Tito, Nello, Fra Luca,
Tessa, mentioned Maestro Vaiano. Historical
Persons, Piero di Cosimo, Pietro Cennini,
Cronaca, Francesco Cei, Bernardo Del Nero;
mentioned, Queen Theodolinda, Cecca, Girolamo
Savonarola. Piazza San Giovanni
"Da quel
giorno in qua ch'amor m'accese
Per lei son fatto e gentile e cortese."'
Frati Predicatori=Dominicans, Giostra=tournament, Pestilenza=plague, Zecca=mint
Footnotes, 1880: 'hound of the Lord'=A play on the name
of the Dominicans (Domini Canes) which was
accepted by themselves, and which is pictorially
represented in a fresco painted for them by Simone
Memmi."Arte di Calimara," "arte" being, in this
use of it, equivalent to corporation. [Merchants' Guild]
Proposto=Spokesman or Moderator

GB, I.296

GB, II.6

Cassone Adimari
GB, I.244
Palio
GB, I.248 Tribute of the Prisoners
George Eliot consulted this manuscript
.jpg)
GB,
I.272 Florentine
Nobles
GB, I. 276 Sienese Nobles

GB, I.264
Montopoli
GB, I.268 Candles

GB, I.256 Cart of teh Zecca,
the
Mint
GB, I.260 Montecarlo Cart
CHAPTER IX. A MAN'S RANSOM
Fictional Characters, Tito, mentioned,
Tessa, Nello, Baldassarre Calvo. Historical
persons, Domenico
Cennini pays
for the last
jewel, a
"man's
ransom", mentioned,
Demetrio Calcondila, Poliziano, Bernardo
Rucellai.
Footnotes, 1880: morgencap=A sum given
by the bridegroom to the bride the day after
the marriage (Morgengabe).
CHAPTER X. UNDER THE
PLANE TREE
Fictional characters, Tito had been
handed his florins from Cennini?, Tessa,
Maestro Vaiano, Fra Luca. Histoical
person mentioned, Lorenzo de' Medici. Scene
remniscent of Samson and Deliliah. Tito give
TEssa the red coral horn still used in Italy
against the Evil Ey for her to wear beside the
parchment blessing or breve she
received from a priest.
Places: San Martino, Badia, Porta rossa,
Ognissanti, Porta del Prato, Peretola, via de'
Bardi

FL, 1880, I.149. Under the Plane-Tree

FL, A RECOGNITION. This is misplaced in the
1880 edition to Chapter V, I. 118.
CHAPTER XI. TITO'S
DILEMMA
Fictional characters, Tito, Fra Luca,
Romola, Bardo, mentioned, Baldassarre.
Via de' Bardi, San Marco.

FL, 1880,
I.155, Leighton's
view for the initial W
is of the archway by the
Hospital of the
Innocents in the
Santissima Annunziata
Square, the square next
to that of San Marco.
St Mark's Dominican
convent was commissioned
by Cosimo the Elder of
the architect Michelozzo
Michelozzi, was
completed in 1443 at a
cost of 36000 florins,
and is filled with
paintings and frescoes
by Fra Angelico, who
repeated the
architecture of the
convent in the frescoes
in the monks' cells,
making the contemplative
'Sacred Conversations'
here and now in their
space and time, as well
as Cosimo endowing it
with the library of
Niccolò Niccoli. See
Ross King, The
Bookseller of Florence..
CHAPTER XII. THE
PRIZE IS NEARLY GRASPED
Fictional characters, Tito, Maso, Bardo,
Romola, Monna Brigida, mentioned,
Dino=Bernardino->Fra Luca.
Historical persons mentioned, Calderino,
Poliziano, Thucydides, Lorenzo Valla, Pope
Nicholas V, Thomas of Sarzana, Alibizzi,
Accaiuoli, Francesco
Valori, Bernardo del
Nero, Niccolò
Machiavelli, Franco
Sacchetti, Bernardo del
Nero, Bartolommeo Scala,
Alessandra Scala,
Michele Marullo.
Piagnoni=
followers of Girolamo Savonarola, named after
San Marco's bell. Good Men of St
Martin/Buonuomini di San Martino, Befana=cross
old lady wtih broom looking for Christ Child
at Epiphany
Good Men of St Martin=Buonuomini di San
Martino who carry out charity.
Footnotes, 1880: Befana=The name given
to the grotesque black-faced figures, supposed
to represent the Magi, carried about or placed
in the windows on Twelfth Night, a corruption
of Epiphania. [Today these are of the cross
old woman with her broom to beat children who
are naughty, to give sweets to good children
as they might be the Christ Child.]

FL, 1880, I.177. THE FIRST KISS
CHAPTER XIII. THE SHADOW OF NEMESIS
7 September 1492 Fictional characters, Tito, Nello, Romola,
Monna Brigida, Bernardino/Fra Luca. Historic persons
mentioned, Giovanni de' Medici, Bernardo Dovizi, Piero Dovizi,
Piero de' Medici, Angelo Poliziano, Pietro Crinito, Dante
Alighieri, Francesco Cei, Cristofero Landino, Bernardo del Nero,
Cronaca.
'Quant' e bella giovinezza
Che si fugge tuttavia!
Chi vuol esser lieto sia,
Di doman non c'e certezza.
Footnotes, 1880:Beauteous is life in blossom! And it
fleeteth--fleeteth ever; Whoso would be joyful--let him! There's
no surety for the morrow." Carnival Song by Lorenzo
de' Medici Fierucola=The little fair.
Fierucola,
country market, 11 Piazza
Santissima Anunziata, 10 San
Marco,
CHAPTER XIV. THE PEASANTS' FAIR
My friend, Giannozzo Pucci, the descendant of the historical
Giannozzo Pucci in this romance, re-started the Fierucola in the
Piazza Santissima Annunziata, encouraging the contadini to
sell their produce and their wares.
Fictional characters, Tito, Bratti, Tessa, Maestro Vaiano. Historical
character, mentioned, Pope Alexander Borgia VI in the fake bull
Maestro Vaiano displays.
andate con Dio= Go with God
berlinghozzi=lemon doughnuts eaten in Lent



Santissima Annunziata, Florence. The legend is that a Servite
began painting the fresco, came down one morning to find that an
angel had finished it. Many miracles are recorded of it, here a
young woman recovering her sight. Elizabeth Barrett Browning
also includes the Santissima in Aurora Leigh.

FL, 1880, I.195. THE PEASANTS' FAIR
CHAPTER XV. THE DYING MESSAGE
Ficitional characters, Romola, Monna Brigida, Fra
Luca/Bernardino, Vaiano and his monkey. Historic person,
Girolamo Savonarola. San Marco

FL, I.209, initial W


FL, I.219, THE
DYING MESSAGE. Leighton has sketched the Fra Angelico fresco as
background. George Eliot had written: "The frescoes that I cared for most in all
Florence were the few of Fra Angelico's that a donna was
allowed to see in the convent of San Marco. In the Chapter
House, now used as a guard-room, is a large crucifixion, with
the inimitable group of the fainting Mother upheld by St John
and the younger Mary and clasped around by the kneeling
Magdalene. The group of adoring sorrowing saints on the right
hand are admirable for earnest truthfulness of representation.
The Christ in this fresco is not good, but there is a deeply
impressive original crucified Christ outside in the cloisters;
St Dominic is clasping the cross and looking upward at the
agonized Saviour whose real, pale, calmly enduring face is quite
unlike any other Christ I have seen." Fra Luca, in
reality, was the Della Robbia brother who became a Dominican under
Savonarola. So many artists and scholars came under his influence,
among them Botticelli, Marsilio Ficino, and Agnolo Poliziano.
CHAPTER XVI. A FLORENTINE JOKE
Fictional characters, Tito, Bratti, Nello, Niccolo
the blacksmith, Maestro Tacco, Maso, mentioned,
Fra Luca, Monna Ghita. Historical persons, Niccolò
Machiavelli, Cronaca, Piero di Cosimo, Francesco
Cei, Domenico Cennini, mentioned, Bernardo Rucellai,
Piero de' Medici, Domenico Cennini, Pagolantonio Soderini, Tommaso
Soderini, Fiametta Strozzi,Savonarola, Pico della Mirandola,
Angelo Poliziano, Marsilio Ficino, Pope Alexander VI, Luigi Pulci,
Antonio Benevieni, Hippocrates, Galen, Avicenna, Saint Stephen,
Saints Cosmas and Damian, the Medici family's patrons, Cecco d'Ascoli.
Maestro Tacco is tricked into doctoring Maestro Vaiano's monkey,
bundled in fasces as if a baby, like the swaddled orphans
by the Della Robbia on the façade of the Hospital of the
Innocents.
"non oratorem, sed
aratorem"
'Il cavallo| Il Diavolo'=The horse, the Devil!
Piazza San Giovanni, Corso degli Adimai ->via dei Bardi.

Niccolò
Machiavelli
Bernardo Rucellai

Piero de' Medici?
FL,1880, I.238, A FLORENTINE JOKE
CHAPTER XVII. UNDER THE LOGGIA
Romola, Tito. Romola tells Tito of Fra Luca's dying.
Historical persons mentioned, Alamanno Rinucini, Bernardo del
Nero. Bardi Palace.
CHAPTER XVIIII. THE PORTRAIT
Fictional characters, Tito, mentioned, Baldassarre,
Nello. Historical person, Piero di Cosimo, mentioned,
Ovid.
Bacchus and Ariadne. Oedipus and Antigone at Colonos. Via Valfonda

Piero di Cosimo, Andromeda and Perseus
CHAPTER XIX. THE OLD MAN'S HOPE
Fictional characters, Bardo, Romola, mentioned, Tito.
Historic person, Bernardo del Nero, Cardinal Giovanni
de' Medici, Piero de' Medici. The Library.
Footnote, 1889: queenliness="Quando una donna è grande, ben
formata, porta ben sua persona, siede con una certa grandezza,
parla con gravità, ride con modestia, e finalmente getta quasi
un odor di Regina; allora noi diciamo quella donna pare una
maestà, ella ha una maestà." FIRENZUOLA:
Della Bellezza delle Donne.
CHAPTER XX. THE DAY OF THE BETHROTHAL
Fictional characters, Tito, Tessa, Romola, Monna
Brigida, Bardo. Historic persons, Bernardo Dovizi,
Bernardo del Nero, Bartolommeo Scala, mentioned
Michelangelo Buonarotti, Piero di Cosimo, Leonardo Bruni.
Tabernacle of Piero di Cosimo. Spozalizia at Santa Croce, during Carnival.
Por Santa Maria, Porta
Rubaconte, Palazzo Bardi, Santa Croce.

Bernardo Dovizi as Cardinal of Bibbiena, Raphael
BOOK II. CHAPTER XX1. FLORENCE EXPECTS A
GUEST
17 November 1494.
Fictional character mentioned, Tito. Historical persons, Charles
VIII, Savonarola, mentioned, Lorenzo de' Medici, Ludovico
Sforza, Leonardo da Vinci, King Ferdinand, Prince Alfonso of
Naples, Pope Alexander Borgia, Piero de' Medici.
Charles VIII of France arrives by way of the Porta San Frediano,
the Medici already driven out of Florence. Tito's foster father
Baldassare Calvo refusing to beg. From Duomo to Palazzo Vecchio.

FL, I.278, Porta San Frediano, initial I.

Girolamo Savonarola
CHAPTER XXII. THE PRISONERS
Ficitional characters, Ser Cioni, Goro, Oddo, Tito,
Lollo, Baldassarre Calvo, mentioned Guccio.
Historical persons, mentioned, Piero de' Medici, Lorenzo
Tornabuoni, Piero di Cosimo, Lunigiana prisoners. This episode is taken directly from
Paquale Villari, Savonarola, describing the escape
of the prisoners from the Lunigiana. Piazza
San Giovanni.

FL, I.299.THE ESCAPED PRISONER
CHAPTER XXIII. AFTER-THOUGHTS
Tito. Historical person, Lorenzo Tornabuoni, Piero
di Cosimo
Piazza San Giovanni->People's Palace
CHAPTER XXIV. INSIDE THE DUOMO
Fictional character, Baldassarre, Romola.
Historic person, Savonarola.
Footnote, 1880: The sermon here given is not a translation, but
a free representatio of Fra Girolamo's preaching in its more
impassioned moments.



CHAPTER XXV. OUTSIDE THE DUOMO
Fictional character, Baldassarre. Historic person, Savonarola,
Piero di Cosimo, mentioned, Masaccio, Domenico
Ghirlandaio, Francesco Valori, Soderini, Piero Capponi, Luca
Corsini, Strozzi, Acciaiuoli, Fra Bartolomeo, Girolamo
Benevieni, Pico della Mirandola, Niccolo Machiavelli, Dolfo
Spini
Piero di Cosimo rescues Baldassare, cutting his ropes and
enabling his flight from the Duomo->Santa Croce

CHAPTER XXVI. THE GARMENT OF FEAR
Fictional character, Tito, Niccolo. Historic
person, mentioned, Luca Corsini, Maso of Brescia
Via dei Benci, Borgo La Croce, Niccolo, the Blacksmith. Tito
buys coat of mail against his father, Baldassare

FL, I.327. NICCOLO AT WORK. Niccolo, the Blacksmith, whom
Frederic Leighton shows as creating the lantern still on the
Palazzo Strozzi, drawn also by Augustus Hare:

CHAPTER XXVII. THE YOUNG WIFE
Fictional characters, Tito, Romola, Bardo, Maso,
mentioned, Niccolo, Baldassare. Historic persons, Bernardo del
Nero, mentioned, Medicis, Savonarola, Luca Corsini, Gaddi,
Dolfo Spini, Lorenzo Tornabuoni, Piero di Cosimo
Bardo, neglected by Tito, has died. Romola, Tito, talk of
Baldassare and Piero di Cosimo.

FL, I.330, intial W

FL, I.338, COMING HOME
CHAPTER XXVIII. THE PAINTED RECORD
Fictional character, Romola, mentioned, Maso. Historic
person, Piero di Cosimo.
"Chi promette e non mantiene
L'anima sua non va mai bene." [The soul of one who fails to
keep his promise is always ill at ease]
Piero di Cosimo's painting of Tito, now with Baldassare, and
Tito's terror, seen by Romola in his studio in Via Valfonda when
she goes for her father's portrait as blind Oedipus.
Self-referentiality with Frederic Leighton again with the Pan
sculpture from the Giardino Torrigiani, a bust that seems to be a
self-portrait of a younger Piero di Cosimo, and the bust of
Bernardo Rucellai.

FL,
Frontispiece
I.348

FL, I.348, THE PAINTED RECORD
CHAPTER XXIX. A MOMENT OF TRIUMPH
Fictional characters, Nello, Tito, mentioned,
Baldassare, Camilla Rucellai. Historic persons, Piero di
Cosimo, Francesco Cei, Pietro Cennini, Cronaca, mentioned,
Pico della Mirandola, Angelo Poliziano, Niccolo Macchiavelli,
Franco Sacchetti, Piero Capponi, Guiantonio Vespucci, Domenico
Bonsi
Piero di Cosimo in Nello's shop speaks of Baldassarre. Francesco
Cei, Pietro Cennini, Pico della Mirandola now dead, Agnolo
Poliziano murdered two months before. Tito tells of Piero Capponi,
trumpets, bells.
CHAPTER XXX. THE AVENGER'S SECRET
Fictional characters, Baldassarre, Bratti,
mentioned, Tito. Historic person, mentioned, Piero di Cosimo
Baldassare sees himself in the barber's mirror on the road to
Arezzo. Bratti Ferravecchi and the story of the ring, Baldassarre
saw on the hand of a Genoese, sees himself in a pool of water.
Buys poinard from Bratti with sapphire from his mother. Buys Greek
book he can no longer read.
CHAPTER XXXI. FRUIT IS SEED
Fictional characters, Tito, Romola. Historic person,
Bernardo del Nero
The French about to leave. Tito sells Romola's father's library.
Romola shows Piero's painting of her father to her godfather
Bernardo del Nero.
CHAPTER XXXII. A REVELATION
Fictional characters, Romola, Tito. The French depart. Tito
tells Romola of the library's sale. Romola, btterly, asks only to
repay Bernardo del Nero.
VOLUME II. CHAPTER I. BALDASSARRE MAKES AN APPEARANCE
Fictional characters, Baldassarre, Monna Lisa, Tessa, baby
Lillo, mentioned step father Nofri, 'husband' Naldo. Via de'
Bardi, Boboli Gardens
Footnote, 1880: A sin that's hidden's half forgiven="Peccato
celato è mezzo perdonato"

FL,
II.1. Trebbio, initial W. Leighton is working from memory of
Florence in London and misremembers the base of the Trebbio. It is
actually an inverted capital.

FL, Frontispiece "YOU DIDN'T THINK IT WAS SO PRETTY, DID YOU?"
Tessa's baby and Baldassare
CHAPTER II. NO PLACE FOR REPENTANCE
Fictional characters, Tito/Naldo, Tessa, Baldassarre, Monna
Lisa
CHAPTER III. WHAT FLORENCE WAS THINKING OF
Fictional characters, Tito, Romola. Historic persons,
Pagolantonio Soderini, Guidantonio Vespucci, Savonarola, Great
Council
Footnote, 1880: . . . my purposes were few and great="So vi pare
che io abbia detto poche cose, non ve ne meravigliste, perché le
mie cose erano poche e grande."
CHAPTER IV. ARIADNE DISCROWNS HERSELF
23 December. Fictional character, Romola, Tito, Maso,
mentioned,Cassandra Fedele, Camilla Rucellai. Historic
persons, mentioned, Suora Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi, Bernardo
Rucellai
CHAPTER V. THE TABERNACLE UNLOCKED
Fictional characters, Romola, Maso,
Romola's attempt to
escape, Ariadne and Bacchus, Ariadne and Theseus, Antigone and
Oedipus, Andromeda and Perseus. Mirror, Letters
to Tito and Bernardo del Nero, Flight. Ponte Rubaconte, Borgo
Pinti, Santa Croce, Porta San Gallo, Vecchia Fiesolana, Trespiano,
Bologna, Venezia.

FL, II.56. ESCAPED
CHAPTER VI. THE BLACK MARKS BECOME
MAGICAL
Fictional characters, Tito, Baldassarre. Historic persons,
Bernardo Rucellai, mentioned, Lorenzo de' Medici's
sister.
Street lighting was provided by the tabernacles with images of the
Madonna and Child and their votive lamps.
MEΣΣΗNIKA. KB'
Rucellai Gardens, Via della Scala
FL, II.58, initial T





CHAPTER VII. A SUPPER IN THE RUCELLAI
GARDENS
Fictional
characters, Tito, Baldassarre (called Jacopo di Nola by
Tito). Historic persons, Bernardo Rucellai, Lorenzo Tornabuoni, Giannozzo Pucci,
Niccolo Ridolfi, Piero Pitti, mentioned,
Pico della Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino, Angelo Poliziano, Erasmus,
Dante Alighieri, Antonio Pollaiuolo, Luigi Pulci, Savonarola,
Francesco Valori, Pagolantonio
Soderini, Cristofero Colombo,
Bernardo del Nero, Dolfo Spini, Leon Battista Alberti,
"Ciascun segua, o Bacco, te:
Bacco, Bacco, evoe, evoe!"
[All follow you, Bacchus, Bacchus, Bacchus, Hail, Hail!]
sbirri=police, prison guards
Rucellai Gardens, Via della Scala. Leon Battista Alberti had
fashioned its architecture, including the model of the Jerusalem
Sepulchre. The Gardens are now destroyed.
Footnote, 1880: Stinche=The largest prison in Florence.

FL, II.72. A SUPPER IN THE RUCELLAI GARDENS
CHAPTER VIII. AN ARRESTING VOICE
Fictional character, Romola, mentioned, Tito. Historic
person, Savonarola
Savonarola has Romola return to Tito

FL, II.103, "FATHER, I
WILL BE GUIDED"
CHAPTER IX. COMING BACK
Fictional characters, Romola, Maso. Historic persons, Savonarola,
Fra Salvestro Maruffi,
San Domenico, Fiesole, 24 December 1494
BOOK III. CHAPTER X. ROMOLA IN HER PLACE
Fictional characters, Romola, Baldassare.
30 October 1496 Madonna of Impruneta Florence starving, Romola
assists Baldassarre at San Stefano, goes to hospital of San Matteo
between the Santissima Annunziata and San Marco piazzas
.

FL, II.109, initial I
CHAPTER XI. THE UNSEEN MADONNA
Fictional characters, Romola, Tito. Historic
persons, Savonarola
Procession, Hooded Flagellants, Franciscans, Dominicans,
Augustinians, Carmelites, Servites, Savonarola, Umiliati from
Ognissanto, Vallombrosans, Benedictines, Arti/Guilds, Canons of
Duomo, Impruneta Madonna, Tito. The description of tbe good news
is taken from Paquale Villari, Savonarola, p. 467, 30
October, messenger from Porta San Frediano, crossing Ponte
Carraia, in Por Santa Maria.

GB, II.192

GB, II.208, Procession of Madonna of Impruneta
CHAPTER XII. THE VISIBLE MADONNA
Fictional characters, Romola, Baldassarre. Historic
person mentioned, Savonarola
Footnote, 1880: . . . believing utterance=He himself had had
occasion enough to note the efficacy of that vehicle. "If", he
says in the Compendium Revelationum "you speak of such as
have not heard these things from me, I admit that they who
disbelieve are more than they who believe, because it is one thing
to hear him who inwardly feels these things, and another to hear
him who feels them not; . . . and, therefore, it is well said by
St Jerome, 'Habet nescio quid latentis energiae vivae vocis actus,
et in aures discipuli de auctoris ore transfusa fortis
sonat".

FL, II.133, THE VISIBLE MADONNA
CHAPTER XIII. AT THE BARBER'S SHOP
Fictional
characters, Tito, Nello. Historic characters, Bernardo
del Nero, Dolfo Spini, Niccolo Machiavelli, Domenico
Cennini, Francesco Cei, Piero di Cosimo, Ser Ceccone, mentioned,
Romola, Meo de Sasso, Savonarola, Pope Alexander VI, Pope Gregory
XI, Piero de' Medici, Giannozzo Pucci, Fra Michele, Bartolommeo Scala, Dante
Alighieri. Dolfo Spini discussed, Villari, Savonarola, p.
482. Villari notes that Ser Ceccone will falsify the statements
the three Dominicans will make under torture, p. 724.
Footnote, 1880: . . . or in the wolds="Del mondo o di maremma2.

On aging:
'Behold him ! ' said Nello, flourishing his comb and
pointing it at Tito, 'the handsomest scholar in the world or
in the worlds, now he has passed through my hands ! A trifle
thinner in the face, though, than when he came in his first
bloom to Florence—eh? and, I vow, there are some lines just
faintly hinting themselves about your mouth, Messer Oratore
! Ah, mind is an enemy to beauty ! I myself was thought
beautiful by the women at one time—when I was in my
swaddling-bands. But now—oime! I carry my unwritten poems in
cipher on my face ! '
CHAPTER XIV. BY A STREET LAMP
Fictional characters, Romola, Maso, Tito . Historic
persons, Dolfo Spini of the Compagnacci, mentioned,
Savonarola. Street lighting in Florence was carried out at
Tabernacles, generally of the Madonna and Child, on street
corners.

FL, II.156, A DANGEROUS COLLEAGUE
CHAPTER XV. CHECK
Fictional characters, Tito. Romola. Historical
persons, Cronaca, Ser Ceccona, mentioned,
Dolfo Spini, Savonarola, Bernardo del Nero
Via de' Bardi->Nello's shop. Ser Ceccone (Ser Francesco
di Ser Barone). On Bernardo Del Nero, see Pasquale Villari,
Savonarola, pp. 526, 560. Villari
notes that Ser Ceccone will falsify the statements the
three Dominicans will make under torture, p. 724.

FL, II.165, initial T
CHAPTER XVI. COUNTER-CHECK
Fictional characters, Tito, Romola, mentioned,
Baldassarre/Jacopo di Nola. Historical persons mentioned,
Dolfo Sini, Bernardo del Nero, Francesco Valori
CHAPTER XVII. THE PYRAMID OF VANITIES
Fictional characters, Romola, Monna Brigida,
mentioned, Bardo. Historical persons, Piero di Cosimo,
mentioned, Francesco Valori, Savonarola, Bernardo del Nero,
Dolfo Spini, Fra Domenico, Boccaccio.
Piagnoni versus Compagnaccio. Piero di Cosimo
CHAPTER XVIII. TESSA
ABROAD AND AT HOME
Fictional characters, Tessa, Tito/Naldo, Ninna, Lillo,
Monna Lisa, Nofri, Baldassare, Bratti, Romola

Botticelli, who became an adherent of Savonarola,
showed these boys in his drawing of angels in
Dante's Paradiso XXVIII
CHAPTER XIX. MONNA
BRIGIDA'S CONVERSION
Fictional characters, Romola, Monna Brigida,
Bratti. Historical persons, Savonarola's
bonfire boys, mentioned Piero di Cosimo.

FL, II.203, MONNA BRIGIDA'S CONVERSION

FL, Houghton
Library, Harvard University
This is George Eliot's self perception of her aging as well in the
figure of Monna Brigida.
CHAPTER XX. A PROPHETESS
Fictional characters, Romola, Camilla Rucellai, Baldassare.
Historical person, Bernardo del Nero, Marchiavelli
Romola -> Badia
Camilla Rucellai, though having a historical name, is not
a historical person, but a fictional one on whom George Eliot
projects her dislike of women of such character. Romola flees
from her threatening prophecies concerning Romola's godfather,
Bernardo del Nero, to turn to the painting of St Bernard's
Vision of the Madonna by Filippino Lippi, then above an altar in
the Badia.
FL,II.207,
initial T

CHAPTER XXI. ON SAN MINIATO
Fictional characters, Baldassarre, Romola->San Miniato,
mentioned, Tito, Tessa


FL, II.220, "BUT YOU WILL HELP ME?"

FL, Houghton Library, Harvard University

GB, II.282
CHAPTER XXII. THE EVENING AND THE MORNING
Fictional characters, Romola, Maso->People's Palace.
Historical persons, Bernardo del Nero, mentioned,
Piero de' Medici at the Porta Romana, flees.
CHAPTER XXIII. WAITING
Fictional character, Romola->Duomo. Historical persons,
Savonarola, mentioned Borgia Pope Alenxander VI.
June, Plague and Excommunication of Savonarola.

CHAPTER XXIV. THE OTHER WIFE
Fictional characters, Romola, Lillo, Tessa, Ninna, Monna Lisa,
Naldo/Tito, Nofri. Historical persons, Tito tells her of Bernardo
Del Nero's imprisonment and death sentence Lamberto
dell'Antella, accomplice of Piero de' Medici, betraying Bernardo
along with Nicolo Ridolfo, Lorenzo Tornabuoni and Giannozzo
Pucci.Borgo La Croce. She remains silent to him about
knowing of Tessa.

FL, II.237,
TESSA AT HOME

FL, Houghton
Library, Harvard University
CHAPTER XXV. WHY TITO WAS SAFE
Fictional
characters, Tito, mentioned, Baldassare. Historical
persons, Francesco Valori, Lambeto dell'Antella, Bernardo del
Nero, Lorenzo Tornabuoni, Giannozzo Pucci, Ser Ceccone, mentioned,
Pontanus. Villari notes that Ser Ceccone will falsify the statements
the three Dominicans will make under torture, p. 724.
'Il tradimento a molti piace assai,
Ma il traditore a gnun non piacque mai.
[Betrayal pleases many enough, but the traitor never pleases anyone.]

FL, II. 251, initial T

GB, Francesco Valori
CHAPTER XXVI. A FINAL UNDERSTANDING
Fictional characters, Tito, Romola, Brigida. Historical
persons, mentioned, Piero
Guicciardini, Giovan Battista Ridolfi, Francesco Valori, Lorenzo
Tornabuoni, Savonarola, Fra Silvestro.
Tito returns from Siena 17 August, Tito sends Romola to
Savonarola.
Footnote, 1880: . . . who got the law passed=The most recent, and
in some respects the best, biographer of Savonarola, Signor
Villaru, endeavours to show that the Law of Appeal ultimately
enacted, being wider than the law originally contemplated by
Savonarola, was a source of bitter annoyance to him, as a
contrivane of the aristocratic party for attaching to the measures
of the popular government the injurious results of license. But in
taking this view the estimable biographer lost sight of the fact
that, not only in his sermons, but in a deliberately prepared book
(the Compendium Revelationum) written long after the Appeal
had become law, Savonarola rnnumerates amng the benefitssecured to
Florence "the Appeal from the Six Votes, advocated by me, for
the greater security of the citizens".
CHAPTER XXVII. PLEADING
Fictional characters, Romola, Bratti, mentioned, Dino/Fra
Luca. Historical person, Savonarola, mentioned, Bernardo
del Nero, Lorenzo Tornabuoni, Dolfo Spini
Romola goes to Savonarola at San Marco, who is obdurate.


CHAPTER XXVIII. THE
SCAFFOLD
Fictional characters, Romola, Tito.
Historical persons, Francesco Valori, Bernardo
del Nero, Niccolo Ridolfi, Lorenzo Tornabuoni,
Giannozzo Pucci, Romola, Giovan Battista Ridolfi,
Brother to Niccolo Ridolfi and Savonarolan,
Domenico Cennini, Niccolo Machiavelli

Augustus Hare, Bargello
CHAPTER XXIX. DRIFTING AWAY
Fictional characters, Romola, Boccaccio's
Gostanza, her model.
Viareggio

FL, II.295, DRIFTING AWAY
CHAPTER XXX.THE BENEDICTION
27 February, San Marco. Fictional character, Tito.
Historical persons, Savonarola, Pietro Cennini

FL, II,297, initial A.
CHAPTER XXXI. RIPENING SCHEMES
Fictional character, Tito, Goro. Historical persons, Savonarola,
Fra Francesco di Puglia, Fra Domenico, Dolfo Spini,
mentioned, Valori, Salviati, Albizzi, Ser Ceccone.
'Ecclesia Dei
indiget renovatione'=The Church of God needs renewing
'Flagellabitur,'=it will
be scourged
'Infideles
convertentur ad Christum,'=Pagans
will convert to Christianity
'Haec autem
omnia erunt temporibus nostris'=But this will all
happen in our time
'Excommunicatio
nuper lata contra Reverendum
Patrem nostrum Fratrem
Hieronymum nulla est' =The Exocummincation
against the Reverend Father our
Brother Girolamo is annulled.
'Non observantes eam
non peccant'=Those not
observing it are not sinning.
March, Lenten Sermons, Santa Croce, Ordeal by fire. Villari, Savonarola,
notes that Ser Ceccone will falsify the statements the three
Dominicans will make under torture, p. 724.
Footnote, 1880: . . . who could read and write.=The old diarists
throw in their consonants with a regard rather to quantity than
to position, well typified by the Ragnolo Braghiello
(Agnolo Gabriello) of Boccaccio's Ferondo.

GB, I.322, Santa Croce
CHAPTER XXXII. THE PROPHET IN HIS CELL
Fictional
characters, Tito. Historical persons, Savonarola,
mentioned, Fra
Domenico Mazzinghi, Fra Mariano, Domenico
Mazzinghi, Pope Alexander
Borgia VI, Philippe de Comines, Fra Niccolo,
Ludovio Sforza
'Cor mundum crea in me,'=Create
in me a pure heart
Fra Angelico's rainbows of frescoes in the cells, Tito,
Savonarola, Tito orders interception of Savonarola's letter to the
French by the Milanese.
CHAPTER XXXIII. THE TRIAL BY FIRE
7 April. Fictional character, Tito. Historic
persons, Dolfo Spini, Marco Salviate, Savonarola, Fra
Giuliano, Fra Domenico, Fra Francesco, Niccolo Machiavelli

CHAPTER XXXIV. A MASQUE OF THE FURIES
8 April, Palm Sunday. Fictional character mentioned, Tito,
Historic persons, Francesco Valori, Savonarola, Fra Domenico,
Fra Salvestro, Rifolfi, Tornabuoni, Dolfo Spini, Ser Ceccone,
Francesco Cei, Soderini
Savonarola taken from San Marco to the People's Palace, Francesco
Valori to be killed by Ridolfi and Tornabuoni kinsmen,
Compagnacci, Ser Ceccone, Dolfo Spini, Santa Croce. Villari, Savonarola,
notes that Ser Ceccone will falsify the statements the three
Dominicans will make under torture, p. 724.
CHAPTER XXXV. WAITING BY THE RIVER
Fictional characters, Baldassarre, Tito, mentioned, Tessa
and children. Historical person, Savonarola, Piero di Cosimo,
Bernardo Rucellai.
Tito turns to cross by the Ponte Vecchio, fleeing from the
Compagnacci, 'Piagnone! Medicean!' Tito murdered by Baldassare at
the moment Savonarola is being tortured and cries out that he will
confess. Piero di Cosimo recognizes Baldassare, also Bernardo
Rucellai.

GB, II.52, Ponte Rubaconte

FL, II.355, WILL HIS EYES OPEN?
George Eliot notes in her
Diary that she kills Tito in great excitement
CHAPTER XXXVI. ROMOLA'S WAKING
Fictional characters, Romola, priest, Jacopo. Viareggio.
Sephardic Jews with the plague. As in the beginning with Tito
being given milk by Tessa, now Romola gives milk from the priest
to the surviving baby and other plague victims.
Footnote, 1880: pievano=parish priest

FL, II.358, initial R
FL, II.358. AT THE WELL
CHAPTER XXXVII. HOMEWARD
Fictional character, Romola, Jewish baby christened Benedetto.
Romola recovers and begins to return
CHAPTER XXXVIII. MEETING AGAIN
14 April. Fictional character, Romola, Monna Brigida,
Bratti, Tessa, Lillo, Ninna, mentioned Tito,
Baldassare. Historic persons, mentioned, Savonarola.
Augustinian monk tells Romola of Tito's and Baldassare's deaths
and Savonarola's confessions. Monna Brigida. Romola finds first
Bratti, then Tessa and the children. San Gallo->Borgo degli
Albizzi
CHAPTER XXXIX. THE CONFESSION
Fictional character, Romola. Historic persons, Savonarola.
Torture
CHAPTER XL. THE LAST SILENCE
Fictional character, Romola. Historic persons, Savonarola,
Jacopo Nardi.
19 May Papal messengers. 20 May, Savonarola speaks from God. More
torture. Again etracts.
23 May 1498, Gibbet and pyre.

GB, II.362, Prison Door


EPILOGUE
23 May 1509.
Fictional characters, Tessa, Romola, Lillo, Ninna, Monna
Brigida, Historic person, Piero di Cosimo. Borgo
Pinti.
I end with George Eliot's portrait as a young woman, because we
enter into her perception through Romola's maturing, learning by
these means their coming to wisdom in the distant mirror we now
all share of this historical romance, part fact, part fiction,
ourselves participating in its tragedy and its healing in time.
Romola in speaking to the boy Lillo, Tito's son, is speaking to
us, teaching us ethical behavior.
But there are problematic areas to the novel which may explain,
apart from its great erudition, why it is not popular with readers
of George Eliot. The murder of Tito she commits with great
excitement in its writing needs unpacking. Is Baldassare only a
victim or has he already kept the maturing boy Tito enslaved to
him in a relationship of pedophilia? Could Tito in turn, as
orphaned, then exploited, become lacking in empathy towards his
benefactor--and also towards other benefactors, such as employers
and wives? John Boswell, who died of AIDS, published on The
Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western
Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance. The study of
Tito's moral deterioration both intrigues and alarms the reader,
almost as if one is reading a confession manual, a mirroring, of
one's own moral failings. Which is countered by Eliot with the too
fervent and provocative preaching of Savonarola. It is a brilliant
novel which
fails—like Tito and
Savonarola—to
be liked.
Bibliography
Academia Bessarion.
Karen Attar. https://talkinghumanities.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2019/11/26/george-eliot-at-200-revisiting-the-genius-of-romola/
John Boswell. The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of
Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the
Renaissance. New York: Pantheon Books, 1989,
George Eliot. Romola. With Illustrations by Sir Frederic
Leighton, F.R.A. London: Smith, Elder and Co, 1880. Limited
edition to 1000 copies, of which this is 23. 2 vols.
George Eliot. Romola. Edited with Introduction and Notes
by Dr. Guido Biagi, Librarian of the Laurentian Library, Florence,
with One Hundred and Sixty Engravings of Scenes and Characters,
selected by the Editor. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1907. 2 vols.
Ross King. The Bookseller of Florence. Londom: Chatto and
Windus, 2021.
Salman Rushdie. The Enchantress of Florence.
Pasquale Villari. Savonarola. Trans. Linda Villari.
London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1880. Dedication to William Ewart
Gladstone.
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