The Devil's Pool and Other Stories

Notes

c 183 Notes Introduction 1. In practical terms, this meant that a novel was at least 50,000 words long: so, for example, E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel and Related Writings, ed. Oliver Stallybrass (London: Edward Arnold, 1974), 3. By that definition, The Devil’s Pool (28,000 words) is a nouvelle, while François le champi and La Petite Fadette (each over 60,000 words) are novels. 2. She was working at the story by 14 January. George Sand, Correspondance, ed. Georges Lubin, 25 vols. (Paris: Garnier, 1964–91), 2:225. 3. C.-A. Sainte-Beuve, “La Mare-au-diable, La Petite Fadette, François le champi, par George Sand,” in Causeries du lundi, 15 vols. (Paris: Garnier, 1857–62), 1:369. 4. Wladimir Karénine, George Sand: Sa vie et ses œuvres, 4 vols. (Paris: Plon, 1899–1926), 1:445–6. All English renderings in the introduction and notes are by the present translators. 5. Sand sent it to her publisher on 23 February. Sand, Correspondance, 3:286. 6. Karénine, 2:286. 7. Sand, Correspondance, 7:151–2. 8. Pierre Salomon, “Les Rapports de George Sand et de Pierre Leroux en 1845 d’après le prologue de La Mare au diable,” Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France 48 (1948): 352–8. In La Revue sociale the text was substantially rewritten, presumably by Leroux or one of his assistants; Sand did not adopt any of these alterations when she issued the novel herself. 9. Eugène Delacroix, Correspondance générale, ed. André Joubin, 5 vols. (Paris: Plon, 1936), 2:276. 10. “Quite simply a little masterpiece” (tout simplement un petit chef d’oeuvre)—Sainte-Beuve, 1:353. “Certainly a masterpiece” (certainement un chef d’oeuvre)—Émile Zola, “George Sand,” in Œuvres complètes, ed. Henri Mitterand, 12 vols. (Paris: Cercle du livre précieuse, 1966–70), 12:409. 11. Frédéric Chopin, Correspondance de Frédéric Chopin, ed. Bronislas Édouard Sydow and Suzanne and Denise Chainaye, 3 vols. (Paris: Richard Masse, 1981), 3:254–5. 12. Sand, Correspondance, 7:296. 13. “Mothers in Fashionable Society” seems to have been written either in December 1844 or in March 1845 (Sand, Correspondance, 6:747– 8, 820). It was published in volume 2 of Hetzel’s miscellany Le Diable de Paris in April 1845. 14. Sand, Correspondance, 3:391–2. 15. Jules Lemaître, “George Sand,” in Les Contemporains, 8 vols. (Paris: Société Française d’Imprimerie et de Librairie, 1887–1918), 4:167–8. 16. Zola, 12:401. 17. George Sand, Théâtre complet, 4 vols. (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1866), 2:357. 18. George Sand, Impressions et souvenirs (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1873), 91–106. 19. Victor Hugo, Les Contemplations, ed. Léon Cellier (Paris: Garnier, 1969), 19–25. 20. George Sand, Questions d’art et de littérature (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1878), 330. 21. Sand, Impressions et souvenirs, 103. 22. “Female liberation is based on the conquest—and, above all, the personal, idiosyncratic appropriation—of language.” Sylvie Charron Witkin, “Les Nouvelles de George Sand: Fictions de l’étrangère,” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 23 (1995): 366. 23. Sand, Correspondance, 8:401. 24. This hint of incest was fully apparent to the tale’s early reviewers , who clearly found it the most unsettling thing in the whole work. Sand took the theme further in her next book, François le champi. 25. Sainte-Beuve, 1:351–70. 26. George Sand, The Master Pipers, trans. Rosemary Lloyd (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1994), xx. Lavinia 1. The action is set expressively against the backdrop of the French Pyrenees, and the characters’ chosen abodes are significantly stratified. Sir Lionel is staying at Bagnères-de-Bigorre (population in Sand’s day about 7000), a fashionable spa town (“watering place”) 774 kilometers (483 miles) south of Paris. Miss Ellis is further north on the edge of the Pyrenees—closer to civilization—at Luchon (Bagnères-de-Luchon, population over 3000), another fashionable spa town. Lavinia, by contrast, is 184 Notes to Lavinia further south at Saint-Sauveur, a much smaller town in the very heart of the mountains, only 22 kilometers (14 miles) from the Spanish border. At the time of the tale, Saint-Sauveur and Luz (originally distinct villages 1500 meters [1 mile] apart, situated at the junction of the Gave de Gavarnie...