THE TRACES

Ten objects record where the Lowick notebooks have been. Each is described as it was found and, where it carries writing, the writing is transcribed. Nothing is said of an object beyond what it shows. Where a hand is unknown the description says so. They are given in the order of the custody, from the envelope of 1831 to the record office folder of 1962.

I. The envelope

A stiff paper wrapper, folded over a bundle of loose sheets and sealed with wax. It is addressed on the outside to Dorothea's own name in her hand, and on the inside, where the flap lies over the sheets, there is a note in the same hand, which reads:

I could not use it. Do you not see now that I could not submit my soul to yours, by working hopelessly at what I have no belief in—Dorothea?

The note is the one that Middlemarch gives in its fifty-fourth chapter, word for word.¹ The seal was unbroken until 1962. The bundle it covers is the Synoptical Tabulation. Warwickshire County Record Office, with the folder of Trace X.

II. Spanning's receipt

A half-sheet, written on one side, in a small upright hand, which is that of the signature at its foot, "J. Spanning." It acknowledges, to the proprietors of the Lowick estate, "fifty-nine volumes of notes in quarto and one volume of contents lettered A." It is dated 1833. It was laid in volume A, and the count it gives, fifty-nine, is the count of the notebooks as they stand. Bodleian Library, laid in MS. Lowick A.²

III. Spanning's Prospectus

The printed leaf, with its list of subscribers, is given in full under its own title in these papers. Bodleian Library, printed ephemera.

IV. Farebrother's shelf labels

Narrow slips of paper, each with a number in ink and a few words, in a hand which is the same on all of them. They were pasted to the shelf edges where the volumes stood; some have been cut from the shelf and used a second time, folded over the string of a parcel. The numbers run from 1 to 59, and the volume lettered A has a slip of its own. The hand is Farebrother's, by comparison with his letter in Trace V. Bodleian Library, with the notebooks.³

V. Farebrother's letter

A retained draft, in ink, of a letter of 1851 from the Rev. Camden Farebrother, Vicar of Lowick, to the editor of the Westminster Review, offering the notebooks of the late Mr. Casaubon for the Review's consideration. It is signed, and it is Farebrother's draft, not the letter that was sent. It states that the notebooks are fifty-nine in number and that they have been kept at the vicarage since 1835. It makes no estimate of their worth. Bodleian Library, with the notebooks.⁴

VI. The Strand label

A paper label, printed, which gives the name and address "J. CHAPMAN, 142, STRAND," and which was gummed to the string of a parcel. Across the lower part, in pencil, is written "Miss Evans." The pencil is in a hand that has not been identified. No other writing is on the label. It was found in the boxes of the notebooks in 2026, when the present edition was prepared. It does not say who wrote the words, or when, or why. Bodleian Library, found with the notebooks.⁵

VII. The Bodleian stamp

An oval stamp in black ink, struck inside the front board of each of the fifty-nine volumes and of volume A, with the name of the Library and the year 1868. Bodleian Library.

VIII. The referral slip

A printed form, with the blanks filled in by a clerk whose name is not given. It records that the volumes were referred in 1883 to the Rector of Lincoln College, and that they were returned to the Library in the same year "without remark." The Rector's name is not on the form and no word of his is on it. The slip is dated 1883. It was laid in volume A. Bodleian Library, laid in MS. Lowick A.⁶

IX. The Carp papers

A bundle, tied, of loose papers: three drafts of one review, with Carp's recension of the Biblical Cosmology in the last of them (printed in these papers); a reply on three sheets which breaks off before its end and was not sent; and a letter in the hand of the Rector of Lowick, with a leaf on which a dedication has been written out. The dedication is to a person whose name has been struck through so heavily that it cannot be read; and a note in another hand, on the leaf's back, says only that it was to be cancelled. Brasenose College Archives.⁷

X. The record office folder

A manila folder, from the papers of Will and Dorothea Ladislaw, which were deposited in 1938 with the Brooke of Tipton estate papers; the envelope of Trace I was among them, unopened. The folder holds a typed note signed by an archivist of the county. The note says that the seal of the enclosed envelope was broken in 1962, when the deposit was listed, that the envelope contained a bundle of sheets in tables and a leaf of writing, and that the leaf was copied into the list. It does not name Middlemarch, and it makes no comparison between the leaf and any printed text. Warwickshire County Record Office.