University of Virginia Library

The Manuscript of Wilkie Collins's No Name
by
William Baker

Scant attention has been paid to a study of Wilkie Collins's manuscripts. Although S. Lonnoff in her Wilkie Collins and his Victorian readers: a study in the rhetoric of authorship (1982) offers a detailed account of Collins's working methods, she does not provide a sustained analysis of his manuscripts. A study of the holograph manuscript of No Name now in the Hugh Walpole Collection at the King's School Canterbury with the serial version in All the Year Round (15 March 1862 to 17 January 1863), edited by Charles Dickens, has intrinsic interest for students of serialized publication. It confirms Anthony Trollope's comments in his Autobiography concerning Wilkie Collins's compositional methodology: "Wilkie Collins seems so to construct his [works] that he not only, before writing, plans everything on, down to the minutest

detail, from the beginning to the end; but then plots it all back again, to see that there is no piece of necessary dove-tailing which does not dove-tail with absolute accuracy. The construction is most minute and most wonderful".[1] Further, a study provides a fascinating examination of the relationship between the manuscript and parts published version, in terms of what was omitted from the manuscript, deliberately cut from it, and added for serial purposes to it.

Wilkie Collins's manuscript of No Name was purchased by Sir Hugh Walpole from Maggs Brothers. The invoice now inside the front boards of the 4to. manuscript bound in full morocco gilt is dated 29 April 1937 and shows us that the manuscript cost its buyer £150. Affixed to the front papers is Wilkie Collins's holograph title page for the three-volume Sampson and Low 1862 edition of the novel with a dedication to Francis Carr Beard, and a preface—both of which did not appear in the serial form of the novel. The manuscript itself paginated "1" through "571" has black ink writing on one side of unruled paper measuring 28.5 cms. x 21.8 cms. There are printer's markings throughout, and the author indicates serial instalments in his manuscript with the note "1st Weeks' Part", "2nd Weekly Part", and so on. At the top of the opening page of the manuscript is the note in an unknown hand: "Wilkie Collins' Story. The Title was not determined on when the first pages were written", followed by three heavily erased unreadable titles.

There are literally thousands of revisions, erasures, and additions observable in the No Name manuscript. Collins tampered with sentences, blotting out single words, phrases, whole sentences, and sometimes paragraphs. He added replacements in a minute script in the narrow space between the lines. He also made further changes on carefully prepared slips, which are precisely and almost artistically affixed to the manuscript page. Two main kinds of alterations are observable. Often substantial passages have been blacked out in heavy ink. Collins made a thorough job of this, and to recover any of the wording (if recovery is at all possible), ultra-violet equipment would be necessary. The second kind of alterations are legible ones. With these, Collins placed a horizontal or series of vertical ink lines through what he had written. Practically it would be a most difficult and certainly a laborious task to reproduce every alteration in the manuscript and to document in their entirety changes between the manuscript, the All the Year Round (AYR) serialization, and the 1862 three-volume version of No Name, which appeared in December 1862, just before the serial publication stopped on 17 January 1863. Rather, I will concentrate on the manuscript and the serial version. I will illustrate the most important example of differences between these two versions of the text. The three-volume edition, published before serialization was completed, shows in fact few substantive differences from the serial version.

The reasons for the wealth of changes found in the manuscript, and between the manuscript and the AYR version, are chiefly aesthetic and practical, and often a combination of both. Collins, apparently, found writing his novels to be a race against publishing deadlines. In a letter written "presumably

[in] early Summer 1860, since Collins mentioned his bargaining with the publishers for the volume publication of The Woman in White", Collins refers to "his 'weekly race' with All the Year Round". The author "was, for most of the novel, more than a week or so ahead of publication deadlines (i.e. a month before magazine day in England so as to get the American sheets off)".[2] The average weekly length of the serialization of No Name was 64 lines per column, two columns to a page, six pages (sometimes seven, e.g. 3 January 1863), amounting to around 5,400 words per periodical part. The average length of a holograph manuscript part is 10-11 pages, but owing to the extent of revision it is very difficult to assess the number of words actually written by Collins. A detailed comparison of the manuscript with the AYR text reveals that sometimes the serial text is longer than the originally submitted weekly section, probably for practical reasons: extra column inches of wordage were needed (these modifications Collins either made on the manuscript itself, or on the prepared slips which he affixed to the manuscript page). In other instances, however, the manuscript section was apparently too long for the weekly word allowance, so words had to be dropped, irrespective of aesthetic considerations. In an article I wrote published in Dickens Studies Newsletter, 11, No.2 (June 1980) entitled "Wilkie Collins, Dickens and No Name" I analysed Dickens's contribution to the composition of No Name. A comparison of the manuscript with the serial version for the magazine edited by Dickens and a study of Dickens's letters dated 24 January 1862, 20 September 1862, and 14 October 1862, helped to assess how much Dickens had influenced plot, character motivation, and legal details in No Name. However, Collins was not totally subject to his editor's whims and was not prepared to do all that Dickens wanted. For instance, Dickens wrote to him "If the story were mine, I should decidedly not put into it the anticipation contained in the last line or two of Norah's postscript" (14 October 1862)[3] at the end of letter four. Collins refused to alter the postscript material. On the other hand Collins accepted most of Dickens's technical advice and suggestions appertaining to character and incident credibility.

Apart from these constraints, imposed by the publisher or editor, or both, Collins was probably concerned with artistic matters above all, as Trollope indicated in the words from his Autobiography already quoted. Comparative examination of the manuscript and the printed serial version reveals, for example, that in the manuscript actions in the plot had not sufficiently developed and needed clarification, and occasionally dating inconsistencies in the manuscript needed tidying up in proof for the printed text, as will be shown.

Not the least of the interesting insights to be gleaned from the No Name manuscripts are passages of quite sustained writing, which Collins erased for one reason or another, and which should not be allowed to remain unvisited amongst the thick morocco binding in Canterbury. Manuscript reading reveals passages of scenic description which failed to get into print. To cite one not too lengthy example, in the opening three paragraphs of the Fourth Scene, Collins describes "Aldborough" in Suffolk, which he probably visited

in April of 1862.[4] The texts of the manuscript, serial version (AYR, number 171, 2 August 1862, p. 481), and three decker (II, 143) are the same. Collins describes "old Aldborough" where "At its opposite extremity, the street leads to a deserted martello tower, and to the forlorn outlying suburb of Slaughden, between the river Alde and the sea. Such are the main characteristics of this curious little outpost of the shores of England, as it appears at the present time". Scene painting continues in the manuscript in a passage not found in the printed texts: Of course Wilkie Collins could not have foreseen that Benjamin Britten's residence would have such an impact upon the town in the mid and late twentieth century. Collins's vision of a submerged "Aldborough" entangling anchors and nets is a startling one. His passing comment on the railway lines, which transformed the landscape of nineteenth-century England, is another document to stand alongside the more substantial accounts in Middlemarch and Dombey and Son.

In spite of his caveats, Dickens recognized the value of Collins's colourfully written passages, writing to him on 20 September 1862: "There are some touches in [Wragge] which no one but a born (and cultivated) writer could get near—could draw within hail of" (Page, p. 129). An anonymous reviewer writing in the Reader noted, not without a hint of condescension, that "In the delineation of Captain Wragge and Old Mazey, Mr Collins again gives evidence, that if he chose he might go deeper, in his power of describing character, than he has ever yet thought fit to do" (Page, p. 135). The sheer extent of manuscript erasure and omission of material from the serial and the three-decker versions relating to Wragge suggests that Collins had problems with his conception of the character. Some of the omissions are difficult to justify solely on the ground of part publication requirements, and indicate that perhaps the character threatened to dominate No Name. Collins wrote in the preface to the three-decker version that his intention in the novel had been to depict "the struggle of a human creature, under those opposing influences of Good and Evil, which we have all felt, which we have all known". His aim was "to make the character of 'Magdalen' which personifies this struggle a pathetic character even in its perversity and its error" (I, vii). Wragge then had to be cut down to size and the focus centred clearly on Magdalen in both the printed editions.

The most substantial of these revisions are found in what Collins in his manuscript describes as "the 15th weeks portion" of No Name—"Extracts from the Commercial library of Captain Wragge" (Ms. 188). Comparison with the serialization in AYR, number 165, 21 June 1862, pp. 337-342, entitled

"Between the Scenes. Chronicle of Events: Preserved in Captain Wragge's Despatch Box. I Chronicle for October, 1846" (p. 337), i.e. the first chapter of the second volume of the 1862 first edition, reveals extensive differences between manuscript and printed text. Apart from the title change, the most obvious difference is a formal one. Wragge's "Chronicle of Events" in the printed text is divided into nine sections: "I [Chronicle for October, 1846]", (AYR 21 June 1862, pp. 337-338); "II [Chronicle for November]", (ibid., 338); "III [Chronicle for December. First Fortnight]", (ibid., pp. 338-339); "IV [Chronicle for December, Second Fortnight]", (ibid., p. 339); "V [Chronicle for January 1847]", (ibid., pp. 339-340); "VI. [Chronicle for February]", (ibid., pp. 340-341; "VII [Chronicle for March]", ibid., p. 341); "VIII [Chronicle for April and May]", (ibid., pp. 341-342). Section nine—"IX. [Chronicle for June]"—begins the next serial instalment in AYR (28 June 1862), pp. 361-366.

In Collins's manuscript "Between The Scenes Extracts from the Commercial Library of Captain Wragge" is divided into sections "A" to "B" (188-190) and then into nine sections. The first is divided (188-190) into "A" to "D". II is "Diary for the month of November established at Derby" (191). III, "Diary for December (to the 15th of the month)"—(191-192). IV, "Diary for December (continued to the end of the month)" (193-194). V, "Diary for January 1847-" (195). VI, "Diary for the month of February. At Sheffield, and afterwards at Manchester." (196). VII, "Diary for February. At Liverpool, Preston, and Lancaster." (198). VIII, "Diary for March and April. Northwards to Stockton, Darlington, Durham" (199). IX, "Diary for May. Back again, by way of Carlisle and Liverpool, to Chester, Shrewsbury and Birmingham." "Between the Scenes" concludes in the manuscript with a section dated "May 31st" (200-202). In AYR this becomes the "29th", i.e. of June (28 June 1862, p. 204).

These formal differences are a reflection of considerable changes to the content on occasions. The manuscript in this section is more than usually littered with erasures, miscellaneous markings, instructions to printers regarding capitalization and pointing, and printer's markings. Noticeable throughout is a toning down of practical detail concerning Wragge's management of Magdalen's concert parties, dates, and the actual content of her musical performances. For instance, in the manuscript, Wragge notes "I am to write the Monodrama, or Entertainment, to manage all the business in connection with it; to keep the accounts, strike the balance of profit, take half myself, and hand the other half to my niece. On her side, my niece is to appear in four changes of dress and character". These are "all female changes, all her own stipulation. She is to sing at least four songs; to play one piece on the pianoforte; and to make out with dialogue, plentifully sprinkled with safe domestic jokes about Love and Matrimony." Wragge calculates: "The whole arrangement is eminently satisfactory, except in one particular. I find it impossible to prevail on her to sign our agreement. She shows the morbid distrust of writing her name at the bottom of a document common to persons ignorant of the law; and roundly declares she will sign nothing" (Ms. 189).

Only the last passage remains in AYR; gone are details of who was to write what, Wragge's functions as her business and concert manager, how many changes of dress were to take place, how many songs to be sung, the tone of the humour. Instead all that the reader is given is Wragge's perfunctory and far less interesting: "Our arrangement is eminently satisfactory, except in one particular. She shows a morbid distrust of writing her name at the bottom of any document which I present to her; and roundly declares she will sign nothing" (p. 337).

A shift of focus from Wragge to Magdalen Vanstone is seen in a comparison between manuscript "Section D: Correspondence of the Month", and the printed "I Chronicle for October, 1846". Wragge corresponds with London lawyers on Magdalen's behalf. In a reply a letter for Magdalen is enclosed. In the manuscript Wragge comments to himself, "It having occurred to my mind on reflection, that I had better look into the letter . . .," and continued:

The AYR text is shorter and duller; the narrative voice is not that of the present tense. Letter details are omitted, the King Lear comparison is out, so is the reference to Mrs Wragge. The suggestive confusion of Mrs Wragge with Magdalen Vanstone and her return is not present.

If King Lear references have to go then so does another literary reference, which is rediscovered through the recovery of manuscript material in Collins's heavily blacked-out passages. There is extensive revision in what became the final paragraph of "III [Chronicle for December. First Fortnight]" in AYR. Cancelled passages include Wragge's account of the possibilities

which suggested themself when searching for a stage name for Magdalen. He came up "with the name of the most unfortunate young person to be found in British fiction, Clarissa Harlowe", and explains that she "was the innocent victim of a scoundrel!" Magdalen's response was immediate: "She suddenly fixed me with one of her strange looks. 'So am I' she said, 'And I'll take her name. Other men might have felt hurt at this—but I am not easily offended. I merely entered a fresh protest. I was quite [ ]: she was immovable. All I could do was to get her to drop 'Clarissa' for the [ ]'" (Ms. 192). The reader does not discover what stage name she used, and Wragge's strictures, with their literary allusions have not until now appeared in print. The Clarissa echo was not strictly relevant to No Name's development. The lack of a stage name naturally provides yet another illustration of the title's reverberating significance throughout the texture of the novel.

A more sustained illustration of writing removed from the printed text of No Name is found in Wragge's diaries for March, April, and May 1847. The manuscript reads:

This is truncated in AYR, where the "Chronicle for April and May" relates Wragge's note that "We have visited seven more large towns, and are now at Birmingham." He consults his books and finds that "Miss Vanstone has realised by the Entertainment, up to this time, the enormous sum of nearly four hundred pounds. It is quite possible that my own profits may reach one or two miserable hundreds more. But I am the architect of her fortunes—the publisher, so to speak, of her book—and, if anything, I am underpaid" (p. 341). Gone then is Wragge's assertion of principle; this is a much more pliant character. The King Lear comparison has again met with Collins's eradication. Repetitive detail, anything over-spotlighting Wragge, anything in any way suggesting emotional attachment for Magdalen, is cut out. Wragge must appear as no more than a shrewd manipulator of vulnerable young women.

Although it is tempting to do so, illustration of unpublished Wilkie Collins manuscript material should not be confined to the "Between the Scenes" section. A representative sample of other omissions is found in the

Manuscript third chapter of the fourth scene of No Name. Wragge and Magdalen are speaking, and Magdalen asks Wragge:

This magnificent passage exposing Wragge's cruelty to his wife and his sadism is absent from AYR and subsequent printing of No Name. The printed text is truncated and lacks the vitality of the manuscript. Dialogue and description are sacrificed to more mundane prose which will not distract the reader's attention from the unravelling of the plot and Magdalen Vanstone. Magdalen asks Wragge "Where is Mrs Wragge?" He replies "Mrs Wragge has learnt her lesson", adding

The "addled egg" image is an arresting one: it is a natural image conveying the lifelessness and ennui to which Mrs Wragge has been reduced by her husband's bullying. Dickens in Hard Times, serialized in Household Words, the precursor of AYR, used the image to convey the sterility of the parasite James Harthouse whose heart has become a "nest of addled eggs" (Book III, ch. 2). Mrs Wragge is, on the other hand, a creature to be pitied rather than condemned.

Collins's attention to dating detail evident in his manuscripts may be seen in his revisions in the thirty-second weekly part of No Name appearing in AYR, 25 October 1862. In this part there are fourteen letters. Either the dating of these or the signature and address formats are changed in AYR from the manuscript version. Thus, letter III in manuscript is dated "September 1847" (411); this appears in the serial as "September 6th 1847" (p. 147). Letters VI and IX in manuscript are signed "Ignatius De Bleriot" (415, 417); in AYR this reads "Alfred De Bleriot" (pp. 148-149). Letter X is dated in manuscript "October 27th" (418); AYR has "October 28th" (p. 150). Similarly, Letter XI, manuscript date "October 27th" (419), has serial "October 28th" (p. 151). Letter XII, dated in manuscript "October 28th" (420), has serial "October 29th" (p. 151). Again, the forty-second weekly part appearing in AYR, 27 December 1862, contains letters. The second, "From George Batram to Miss Garth," is dated in serial form, "Paris, April 13th" (p. 364); in manuscript the date reads "April 14th" (527).

Manuscript inspection and comparison with serial text reveals at least one extra character not present in the printed form. Towards the end of the novel, in the final weekly part (January 17, 1863), chapter IV of The Last Scene, a new character is named. Reunited with her younger sister Magdalen, Norah tells her how she discovered the evidence confirming their claim upon the inheritance of which they had been deprived. She visited a house she had known as a girl, St Crux, where a "Mr Darwin . . . persuaded" her "to look at a singular piece of furniture" (Ms. 567). In AYR (p. 543), "Mr Darwin" is replaced by "the housekeeper", a less definite matter-of-fact name. The abstract professional generalization does not give a hint of possible previous childhood association. There is no need to describe anybody or for further explanations as there would be with a specifically named character called "Mr Darwin", who appears at such a crucial juncture, indicating the essential missing link in the jig-saw puzzle of the sisters' search. In this instance then, Collins's practical instinct as a serial writer shows through. The additional character is an unnecessary possible red-herring.

Deletions in the printed text, dating amendments, are not the only differences between the manuscript and the AYR text. There are several additions appearing in the serial printing and not in the manuscript, which ought not to go unnoticed, and provide yet further testimony to the continuous re-writing in its proofs undertaken by Wilkie Collins in the production of No Name. "The Seventh Scene, chapter I, St. Crux-in-the-March" contains a paragraph:

not present in the manuscript (485). The conclusion to Chapter I of "The Last Scene, Aaron's Buildings" differs from print and manuscript. The latter finishes with "Mr Merrick was present to answer them. She was sleeping" followed by three lines of heavy erasure and the sentences "so the day ended—the first of many days that were to come" (544). The printed version reads:

This addition occurs at the end of a part instalment. Collins's extra words may have been a response to Dickens's demands for filling in material to bring the instalment up to the minimum length required. Additional material might be added anywhere in the part, and not necessarily at the end of it, or at the beginning. In the middle of the final, forty-fifth weekly part, 17 January 1863, p. 435, a paragraph appears which is not in the manuscript (562).

This does restate and illuminate Kirke's dilemma. Further, it supplies in the final instalment a little extra element of suspense helping to retain the reader's excited attention to the very last word of the novel.

To conclude, examination of the manuscript with the serial text of No Name shows that Wilkie Collins: (1) planned everything with particular care; (2) despite that, he was an obsessive tinkerer; (3) he made changes for the exigencies of publishing to satisfy the requirements of space or the wishes of his editors. Thus Wilkie Collins revised for aesthetic reasons but also for publishing ones. The text of No Name owes its features to the requirements of serial publication, i.e. the form of the novel's first publication affected its content. To repeat, the three-volume edition published before the serialization was complete, shows few substantive differences from the serial version —although I have drawn attention to a few slight verbal differences between the two. The question is raised why the three-decker version was published before serialization was complete? But serialization created the demand for the three-decker publication sooner rather than later. Publication of the first book edition whilst the serial form was still running was not uncommon

Victorian publishing practice. Guinevere L. Griest in her Mudie's Circulating Library and the Victorian Novel (1970) writes that "Charles Reade's agreement with Dickens and William Henry Wills for Hard Cash spells out a typical arrangement. Reade retained the copyright and was 'at liberty' to publish the story as a complete work three weeks before the final portion . . . be printed in All the Year Round" (p. 52). Griest adds that "Mary Elizabeth Braddon corroborates this custom in a letter to her publisher, William Tinsley 'The novel can be published on February 1st and will then be six weeks in advance of its [sic] completion in the London Journal'". Griest makes the point that Mudie's profited by this, since readers were eager to borrow volume three to know the outcome of the story (see p. 241, n. 39)! The three-decker edition of No Name was published by Sampson and Low in December 1862. The last instalment of the serial version appeared on 17 January 1863. Perhaps Collins and his publishers were aiming at the Christmas market?[8]

Collins's supreme mastery of the serial plot—"it is no small triumph to have constructed a story which, week after week, for nearly a year defied the divining powers of the most acute of novel readers, and surprised every-body at the end"[9]—may be dissected by comparing serial and manuscript versions. Such an analysis does not detract from Collins's brilliance in his use of form, and serves to show how he conquered its limitations and mastered its restraining influences. When necessary Collins added passages in print and also omitted passages from the manuscript. Scenic descriptive passages of lyrical beauty had to go. A character who threatened to take over, Wragge, had to be reduced to size. Theatrical reminiscences of North Country tours remain in manuscript but not until now have seen print. Wilkie Collins's "principal interest", as G. Robert Stang has appositely pointed out, was with "complication of narrative." Collins's concern with "'the details of business and intricacies of law', his exploitation of legal and forensic patterns of action are the means of projecting a coherent and impressive image of Victorian England—of a society dominated by its form, overlegalized, bureaucratized, rapacious, hypocritical."[10] To attain this object, at times some of his best passages had to go, and these are passages revealing two neglected facets of Collins's genius; his brilliance as a descriptive writer, and his superb mastery of personality quirks.

Notes