‘The Scholar’s Copy Book’ and the ‘Blotting-Book Mind’: Stratigraphic Approaches to Interdisciplinary Reading and Writing in the Work of Vernon Lee By Sally Blackburn-Daniels Thesis submitted in accordance with the requirements of the University of Liverpool for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy August 2018 ‘The Scholar’s Copy Book’ or the ‘Blotting-Book Mind’: Stratigraphic Approaches to Interdisciplinary Reading and Writing in the Work of Vernon Lee By Sally Blackburn-Daniels Abstract: This project examines Vernon Lee’s (1856-1935) assimilation of contemporary models of scientific theory into her own textual output. It does so by bringing attention to Lee’s writing practice as a development of her own understanding of the scientific theory of the mneme, and furthermore, the way in which this understanding then became a framework for her investigation of the mechanisms of textual allusion. The Vernon Lee archive at the British Institute of Florence holds over four- hundred and twenty works previously owned and read by Lee, many of which carry her annotations. These holdings are predominantly scientific works, and provide a bibliographic key to unlocking the references within Lee’s essays, novels, novellas and short stories. This thesis utilizes these texts, and Lee’s marginalia therein, to consider a) the ways in which Lee embraces and embeds scientific discourse within her work, b) her recognition of the evolution of scientific fields and the continuing presence of superseded theories, and c) the ways in which scientific discourse and praxis becomes stratified within Lee’s reading. I argue that Lee’s approach to scientific progression echoes her textual practice: one that charts the succession and development of a discipline in temporal layers within her own works, or in the construction of a hybrid theorem from a multiplicity of theories within a single or across disciplinary boundaries. The advancement of this practice is, I suggest, shaped by two subtly different paradigms, the ‘scholar’s copy book’, and the ‘blotting-book mind’. Each of these metaphors are textual in nature, but they exhibit two distinct approaches to memory: from a train of thought or chronologically ordered stratigraphic approach—as in the case of the scholar’s book—to the presence of recollections from multiple layers of memory in synchronicity—as in the blotting-book mind. By unpicking the threads of association and textual fragments extant within Lee’s work, I suggest that Lee’s writing is in fact a negotiation between these two models. The disciplines selected for consideration embody different facets of the stratigraphic model: the first chapter engages with Richard Semon’s idea of mnemic storage, and Semon’s theory as an insight into Lee’s writing practice. Archaeological and geological strata become the physical site for mnemic storage and recall in Chapter II, whilst the genealogical strata of the family tree are examined in Chapter III, with considerations of both Lee’s personal family lineage, and the mono- or polygenic evolutionary origin and development of humanity. Chapter IV examines the way a framework of strata is used to render the surface of the face and coinciding substrata of psychological traits as a basis for understanding Lee’s interest in, and refutal of, physiognomy. Chapter V focuses on the biological inheritance of physical and psychological traits, and finally, Chapter VI examines the stratified consciousness and the excavation thereof in psychoanalysis. Contents Acknowledgements 1 A Note on Primary Resources 2 Introduction 12 Chapter I Richard Semon, Mnemic Psychology and the Microtome 29 Chapter II Vernon Lee and the Earth Sciences 56 Chapter III Anthropology and the War Dance 87 Chapter IV The Maniac Frown and a Schone Seele 126 Chapter V Malthusianism to Meliorism: Lee, Mary Robinson and James Darmesteter 156 Chapter VI Mediating a Male Malady 179 Conclusion 214 Afterword 218 Appendix 219 Bibliography 252 My mind seems like an old blotting-book, full of fragments of sentences, of words suggesting something, which refuses to absorb any more ink. Vernon Lee, The Spirit of Rome: Leaves from a Diary (1906) Acknowledgements Firstly, I would like to thank Dr. Matthew Bradley for his supervision, patience, and support during the research and writing of this thesis. Appreciation must also be given to Dr. Simon Marsden for his guidance, and encouragement. My sincere thanks must be given to Alyson Price at the British Institute of Florence, and Patricia Burdick and Maggie Libbey at Colby College, Maine, whose expertise and generosity has made researching Lee so enjoyable and fruitful. I would also like to thank the archivists at Somerville College, Oxford, the University of Liverpool Library Special Collections, and the Queens Square Archives who provided expert help. I express my gratitude to Federica Parretti and Stefano Vincieri at Villa il Palmerino for hosting me on so many occasions, and for their friendship. I’d also like to thank Lee scholars Sophie Geoffroy, Shafquat Towheed, Kirsty Bunting and Stefano Evangelista for their intellectual generosity. Special thanks must go to Leire Barrera-Medrano, to Jane Ford and to Anna Burton. I’d also like to show my appreciation to family and friends for their support in all things; and in particular to Jakob, Mason and Chloe for providing me with so much joy. And importantly, thank you to Kev for all his patience, love and support. This is dedicated to Ope. 1 A Note on Primary Resources Lee scholarship benefits from three considerable archives, with the foremost being the Vernon Lee Papers at Colby College, Maine. This collection was presented to the College in 1951 by Irene Cooper Willis and contains over 1000 of Lee’s letters home, 136 manuscripts and articles, photographs, personal documents and artefacts. Willis’s gift of Vernon Lee’s letters, manuscripts and other miscellaneous ephemera to the Colby College has provided scholars in Lee studies with an enormously important resource. The holdings are now freely accessible, and many of the letters are now being digitized.1 A further deposit of correspondence is held by Somerville College Archives, Oxford, and contains over 2,700 letters to Lee, from over 350 correspondents. These letters were carefully curated by Lee in her lifetime and donated to Somerville in 1935. These include letters from correspondents such as Maurice Baring, Bella Duffy, Patrick Geddes, Mary Robinson, Daniel Halevy, Eugene Lee-Hamilton, Mario Praz, Logan Pearsall Smith, Richard Semon, H. G. Wells and Edith Wharton. Lee’s personal library from her home the Villa il Palmerino, is now held at the Harold Acton Library at the British Institute of Florence. The Vernon Lee Collection contains over 400 works and was presented to the Institute by Willis after Lee’s death in 1935. The collection represents Lee’s wide-ranging interest in the sciences, social sciences and the humanities, and many of the books have been copiously annotated. This is by no means the sum of Lee’s reading in its entirety; other works with Lee’s marginalia have recently come up for sale, including an edition of H. G. Wells’s The Passionate Friend. A Novel (1913) inscribed ‘To Vernon Lee fr [sic] H. G. And next time I shall insist’,2 and Lee’s copy of Edith Wharton’s The Decoration of Houses (1897) inscribed ‘Vernon Lee from Edith Wharton January 1898’.3 The University of Liverpool Library Special Collections also holds Lee’s copy of H. B. Brewster’s The Statuette and the Background (1896) which has been copiously annotated by Lee.4 We can also of course glean Lee’s reading habits from her correspondence, quotations and mentions of books within texts, and also from her 1 The Vernon Lee Collection at Colby Digital (2016), https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/vernonlee/ [Accessed March 2018]. 2 This edition of Wells is listed under the seller Peter Harrington, London, for £875. https://www.peterharrington.co.uk/search/?q=h%20g%20wells [Accessed April 28, 2018]. 3 Wharton’s work is also listed by Peter Harrington, at £5,000. http://www.peterharrington.co.uk/the- decoration-of-houses.html [accessed April 28, 2018]. 4 H. B. Brewster, The Statuette and the Background (London: Williams and Norgate, 1896). University of Liverpool Library, Special Collections SPEC ZANIA.E.5. 2 reading notebooks held at Colby College Archives. An additional resource which includes further transcriptions of marginalia, copy books and correspondence in relation to Lee and her reading is the R.E.D. (the Reading Experience Database), directed by the Lee scholar Shafquat Towheed.5 I draw on all of these primary sources in the present thesis. 5 Anon, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading [accessed April 28, 2018]. 3 Introduction [R]ace is nothing and language is all; for the blood carries only physical resemblance, which is simple and individual; while the word carries thought, custom, law and prejudice, which are complex and universal.1 -Vernon Lee, Genius Loci: Notes on Places (1907) Scholarship focusing on the critical response to Lee by her contemporaries often emphasizes a schism between Lee and key figures in the modernist movement. This supposition of a literary opposition is reductive and fails to take into consideration the extensive networks in which Lee moved, and the reciprocity of influences between Lee and the next generation of modernist writers. Angela Leighton’s ‘Vernon Lee’s Ghostly Aesthetics’ (2007) goes some way to addressing this by providing a sketch of Lee’s critical reception during the final years