iii
So much for a close look at a cross section of the changes in the
second edition of Clarissa. To evaluate Richardson's efforts
in
1749, several distinct issues must be tackled directly. Patently any claim
that he revised primarily because of criticism from an audience that was
sentimental, careless or superficial must be reassessed. Given the extent and
range of his tiny and large revisions at this time, covering thousands of
nuanced difference in tone and content, designed for very different
functions, purposes and effects, it is clear that only some of them (and a
rather small proportion at that) can be pinpointed with any certainty as
specifically governed by his reaction to his contemporary readers.
Kinkead-Weekes may be right that many of the "editorial" footnotes,
and certain insertions into the text, that darken Lovelace's character and
defend Clarissa's delicacy, were probably prompted by criticisms
Richardson received during the long intervals between installments of his
first edition. But these obvious revisions are only a small part of his total
— they form only one compact group amid the thousands of
instances
resulting from the thorough overhauling of the first four volumes in 1749.
In fact, they constitute an even smaller part of all the changes
Clarissa repeatedly underwent from the time this novel was
in
its first manuscript form.[24] They
certainly should not be treated out of proportion to their role in the entire
scope of Richardson's complex endeavor.
A second assumption which has clouded discussion of Richardson's
revisions implies that if he introduced a certain footnote or line into his text
to meet a specific criticism from his readers, he must have made all
changes of the same kind for the same reason. On the contrary, each
revision must be judged independently in light of its own evidence. The
dangers of not doing so are visible in Philip Stevick's new version of
Clarissa for the Rinehart Press. His introduction, and a
footnote
on page 223, indicate that his abridgement is based on the first edition, with
one exception — a letter in which Lovelace describes to Belford his
projected scheme to rape Anna, Mrs. Howe, and their maid, and to throw
Hickman overboard, during a trip to the Isle of Wight. Stevick claims that
"Richardson wrote the letter for inclusion in the revised third edition," and
he explains that it serves in his abridgement to provide his readers
first-hand experience with "one of the more obvious
and sustained efforts Richardson made, in revising, to darken the character
of Lovelace" (p. 223).
Ironically, this one sample was not at all written specifically for the
third edition (1751), nor can it truly exemplify even those post-publication
revisions which Richardson invented in response to criticism from an
adverse audience. It was written at least five years earlier and then cut from
his manuscript during Richardson's struggles to shorten
Clarissa
for his first printing. We know it existed in the earliest versions of the
novel, because it is one of the scenes that Miss Sophia Wescomb, on April
14, 1746, suggested the author might eliminate when he appealed for her
help in condensing and correcting his work.[25]
A third problem any editor or scholar of Clarissa must
face, and face squarely, is that Richardson's changes taken as a whole are
not uniformly successful, but they do reveal, as his novel does too, both his
considerable strengths and his particular weaknesses as an artist. It is
special pleading to set aside certain revisions that seem crude, by arguing
that they do not represent his true intentions (because they are his response
to an allegedly inferior audience) while others do. For better or worse, all
his changes in 1749 represent his conscious and deliberate intentions as a
craftsman. Indeed, they mark another important stage in a persistent
practice of revising that began many years earlier.
This is confirmed by the fact that some patterns of change are not
confined to Clarissa alone, for they originate with his very
first
novel. In their thorough examination of Richardson's revisions in
Pamela, Eaves and Kimpel have noted that "85 mentions of
God
were either cut or altered by changing the word 'God' to 'Heaven.'"[26] This, as well as other patterns that
continue, shows that certain kinds of change made as early as 1741 recur
in Clarissa eight and ten years later, for he altered six
examples
of this sort in 1749 and seven more in 1751. In other words, as a serious
independent artist Richardson made certain decisions that not only
transcended particular audiences and times but particular works as well.
Nor did he passively rely on the many persons whose suggestions he
sought. As Eaves and Kimpel have concluded from their study of the
evolution of Clarissa before publication, he rarely followed
most
of the
advice he received.[27]
Lastly, it is tempting to separate the small changes from the large,
give credit to the former but dismiss them as relatively unimportant, and
marshal one's ammunition against the "large revisions." While it
can be useful to separate these two groups for purposes of discussion, as I
have done in this paper, there is no separation of them in the novel.
Because they are interwoven, any theory that focuses on one group with
only nodding attention to the other is headed for difficulty: it vastly
oversimplifies and distorts the data relevant to a careful evaluation of
Richardson's art. Quantitatively, Richardson's revisions form a continuum
from the very tiny to the very large, and certain patterns of qualitative
strengths and weaknesses, certain stylistic features peculiar to him, certain
goals that he set himself, turn up at many different points throughout this
continuum.
The quality of Richardson's efforts in 1749 can also best be viewed
as a continuum ranging from poor to excellent, with a subtle range of
distinctions in between. Richardson did succeed in purifying his heroine of
certain vexing weaknesses, and this enhances her character. But he also
gave her further opportunities for moralizing and chiding. These do not
warm a reader's heart, and many such signs of her character could have
been more advantageously pruned from the work even in its original form.
The finer distinctions introduced to harden Mrs. Harlowe against Clarissa
solidify the family's opposition, completing the heroine's domestic isolation
in Books I and II, with consequences that operate indirectly throughout the
rest of the novel, especially during its denouement, when she is utterly
alone. This subtle tightening in one important thread of his plot is certainly
to Richardson's credit, for it partakes of the stuff that tragedies are made
of, the pain caused by seeing a
close relationship reversed, with someone suffering undeservedly as a
result.
In regard to that group of revisions which I have purposely excluded
from my discussion because other scholars have treated them (the
"editorial" footnotes and the textual insertions that expose Lovelace), it is
a pity that Richardson did not trust his own better instincts to let the final
installment speak for itself, without encumbering his novel with these
changes. Lady Bradshaigh, like so many other readers who wrote to him
throughout 1748, could not have anticipated exactly how he would bring his
heroine through the ordeal of being raped, nor how he would make her
death an appropriate, desired, and satisfying conclusion to his fiction.
Surely he was on sound ground when he urged Lady Bradshaigh to
wait until Volume V before she made up her mind about the catastrophe.
"But after all," he argued, "it is the Execution must either condemn or
acquit me."[28] Whatever may be his
ineptitude in retouching
Lovelace, it must not make us forget his fiercely creative independence in
resisting the most radical request of all voiced by his readers: that he give
his work a happy ending. His retouching is flawed, but this pales by
comparison with his impeccable sense that the structure of a masterpiece is
no arbitrary thing — probabilities of character and action must be
followed out even to their stark ending in humiliation and death.
His refusal to give up his catastrophe is consistent with his perceptive
argument (in the Postscript to the first edition) against the widespread
contemporary clamor for happy endings (VII, 428). He singled out Nahum
Tate's popular script of King Lear, but his charge held for
other
works as well. Whether the preference to act on the English stage an altered
version of King Lear is due "to the false Delicacy or affected
Tenderness of the Players, or to that of the Audience," Richardson did not
claim to know, but he urged that the "Public Taste" should be tried upon
the original once again. Coming from one who is so often thought of as the
sentimental novelist par excellence at the mid-century, this clear-eyed
disenchantment with ruling fashions in taste is a pointed reminder that
Richardson was as independent and surprisingly different as most great men
of any age or time.
