University of Virginia Library

A Bibliographical Analysis of the Manuscript of D. H. Lawrence's The White Peacock
by
A. R. Atkins [*]

Bibliographical analyses by Bruce Steele and Helen Baron of the manuscripts of D. H. Lawrence's second and third novels (The Trespasser and Sons and Lovers respectively) have shown that the final works can include

passages written up to two years earlier.[1] The history of Lawrence's first novel, The White Peacock, is just as complicated. The aim of the analysis offered here is to unravel the development of The White Peacock by establishing when each page of the final manuscript was written and when subsequent layers of revision were made. My hope is that this information will aid future scholars in their understanding of how the novel was put together and their interpretations of its constituent elements.

My account may be compared with Andrew Robertson's "Introduction" to the Cambridge Edition of The White Peacock.[2] Robertson sets out the historical background to the writing and revision of the novel, but he does not describe the detailed structure of the final manuscript. My analysis reveals that the revision and rewriting of The White Peacock was a more complex process than has hitherto been recognized, especially when one considers its relationship with the events of Lawrence's life and the writing of poems and other works through 1909-10. The first few pages of this paper outline the history of successive versions of The White Peacock; the major stages included the first two drafts called "Laetitia", two further drafts called "Nethermere", and the final novel The White Peacock which resulted after a revision to the proofs. The analysis in the rest of the paper identifies the components of the final manuscript, ignoring the proof revisions (which are listed in the Cambridge Edition) and those pages of the early drafts which were not incorporated into the final manuscript (most of them have been lost or were destroyed).

Historical Background

In 1908 Lawrence recalled his boredom in September 1906 with his teacher training course at University College, Nottingham: 'It was imperative that I should do something, so I began to write a novel—or rather, I resumed a work I had begun some months before—two years last Easter'.[3] The first draft ("Laetitia I") was completed by June 1907. Lawrence was, however, dissatisfied with it and immediately began to rewrite from the beginning. The second draft ("Laetitia II") was finished by May 1908. A forty-eight page and a ten-page fragment of the respective drafts have survived and have been published in an appendix to the Cambridge Edition.

Lawrence moved to Croydon to start work as a schoolteacher in October 1908, and began to rewrite his novel in January 1909, renaming it "Nethermere".

It is difficult to determine his rate of progress with the new work because he rarely mentions it in his surviving letters of the period. On 19 August 1909, however, he told his teacher friend Louie Burrows, with whom he was collaborating on short stories: 'It will take you at least three years to write a novel—at school' (Letters i 136). Lawrence had begun his own novel three years earlier, at Easter 1906, so it seems likely that he had recently brought the work to some form of completion. This was probably before the end of July because he was away from Croydon on holiday in August (two weeks on the Isle of Wight, the rest in Eastwood).

In late August 1909 Lawrence heard that some of his poems had been accepted for publication by Ford Madox Hueffer (later Ford), the editor of the English Review. He met with Hueffer in London before 11 September, and it was probably at that meeting or in a letter that Hueffer said he would 'be glad to read any [prose] work' Lawrence sent him (Letters i 138). After revising parts of the manuscript, probably with the help of two friends, Lawrence submitted his novel to Hueffer just before 1 November (see Letters i 141). This completed draft is referred to as "Nethermere I" in the following analysis.

On 20 November Lawrence wrote: 'Hueffer is reading my novel. He says it's good, and is going to get it published for me' (Letters i 144). On 15 December Hueffer sent Lawrence a letter approving the work. Lawrence immediately sent a copy of the letter to the publisher William Heinemann, and asked if he could send him "Nethermere I" to be considered for publication (Letters i 148-149).[4]

The whereabouts of "Nethermere I" between 20 November and 15 December is unclear. Robertson suggests that Hueffer returned the manuscript before writing to Lawrence on 15 December; Lawrence would then have had time to revise the work before offering it to Heinemann (see WP xxvii). I believe, however, that Hueffer held onto the manuscript up to 15 December, discussing it with Lawrence when Lawrence visited his home in central London at weekends.[5] Hueffer's letter of 15 December told Lawrence: 'I have now read your novel, and have read it with a great deal of interest'. He gave his opinion of the book's faults and merits, and offered advice on how to improve it and approach a publisher, having decided it was too long for the English Review. Even if he had already told Lawrence, as seems probable, to forward a copy of his letter to Heinemann and had deliberately phrased it so as to

arouse Heinemann's interest, it seems reasonable to accept his opening statement as a strong indication that the manuscript was still in his hands. The letter contains no suggestion that Hueffer was returning the manuscript to Lawrence for revision; the manuscript was delivered to Heinemann's office in central London at an unknown date after 15 December by Violet Hunt, who lived with Hueffer.[6]

Lawrence met Heinemann on 20 January 1910 and was informed that "Nethermere I" had been approved for publication, subject to a number of alterations. It is not known when the manuscript itself was returned to Lawrence, but Helen Corke remembers him unpacking it for her sometime in February, after asking her to look over it for him.[7] The manuscript has not survived intact. It was substantially redrafted over the following months into "Nethermere II", which is the surviving manuscript and was used as setting copy for the first edition of The White Peacock. "Nethermere II" was delivered to Heinemann on 11 April (see Letters i 158-159). Whilst Robertson surmises that "Nethermere I" was revised during late November and December 1909, I believe that all the revisions to "Nethermere I" were made after February 1910 and were in effect the writing of "Nethermere II".

The Manuscript "Nethermere II": General Features

Andrew Robertson states that "Nethermere II" is entirely written on Boot's exercise paper (see WP xxiv). The list of paper types in the Appendix shows that this is not the case. Robertson also says that the manuscript's pages were originally in 'gatherings of six pages folded once, but these have been cut at the fold; the resulting sections of twelve written pages (8 x 6.5 inches) are numbered consecutively by DHL in roman numerals' (WP xxiv n.19). This is true of the entirely rewritten Part III, but the earlier parts have quires of various sizes. The manuscript consists of long stretches of one particular paper type, interspersed with pages of different paper types which appear to have been written after the main body of the text. This suggests that Lawrence would tend to buy a batch of paper of a particular type, use it up, and then buy a new batch which was sometimes made by a different manufacturer.

One way of dating the pages would be to compare the paper with the types of paper used for Lawrence's letters between 1906 and 1910. Helen Baron's paper analysis of Sons and Lovers shows that during 1911-14 Lawrence often used the same paper for writing his novels and his letters. Comparatively few letters survive from 1906-10 but they show that Lawrence usually wrote his letters on special sheets of writing paper. He only occasionally used paper types similar to those used in "Nethermere II". These are recorded in the Appendix of this article, but in view of their scarcity there is insufficient evidence to establish that letters from a certain period were being written at the same time as certain pages of "Nethermere II".

There are five different types of handwriting in "Nethermere II". Lawrence's hand forms the bulk of the script. Twelve pages are in an unknown hand. The hands of Agnes Mason, Agnes Holt and Helen Corke appear on pages which they copied out neatly, and Corke also wrote revisions throughout the manuscript. All three women were Croydon school-teachers. Mason worked at the same school as Lawrence and remained his friend throughout his Croydon years; Holt, whom Lawrence briefly contemplated marrying in the autumn of 1909, met him at an unknown date and continued their relationship until she moved to the Isle of Man in mid-1910; Corke met Lawrence briefly through Mason in late 1908, but was intimate with him only from September 1909 until he left Croydon in March 1912.

It is unclear exactly when Mason and Holt did their copying. Andrew Robertson suggests that Holt copied her seventy-six pages during the revision period which he believes Lawrence undertook in between Hueffer's appraisal of the novel during November 1909 and the manuscript being sent to Heinemann in December (see WP xxvi-xxvii). He dates Mason's writing in the final revision period of February-April 1910. John Worthen suggests, however, that

Datings must remain tentative, owing to the lack of biographical evidence, but Worthen's judgment concerning the probabilities is persuasive. Agnes Mason's involvement appears to be more complicated than that of Holt's; her pages are not in a single block of text and may have been written at different times through the autumn of 1909 and spring of 1910.

Most of Helen Corke's accounts say that she became involved with the revision of the novel in 1910, when her relationship with Lawrence developed into a closer intimacy. Her diary of the period has an entry dated 25 March 1910 which refers to 'some folios of David's story which [she was] revising for him' (CY 6). She remembers that in February Lawrence asked her to 'read the manuscript and make suggestions, especially marking passages showing prolixity'.[9] They also worked together on the manuscript at her home, when she may have written corrections according to Lawrence's direct instructions, although she does not say who did the actual writing. Five pages of the final manuscript are in her hand, but there are also corrections and re-wordings

scattered throughout the work, confirming her memory of the extent of her involvement.

The Manuscript "Nethermere II": Paper Analysis

My analysis of "Nethermere II" accounted for the following features: the paper make, whether or not the tear marks down one side of a page or a torn watermark could be matched with that of another page elsewhere in a quire, evidence of stapling to indicate whether bound or unbound quires were used, the scribal style of the page and quire numbers, the principal scribe on each page, and the layers of revision in different scribal styles and ink types.

Page and quire numbers proved to be very unreliable as scribal indicators because even when characteristic features of a sequence of numbers could be listed, they could not be linked to any particular person. There was no apparent consistency to the way a given scribe would write his or her numbers. The numbers must, however, have been written quite late in the history of the manuscript, because although there are sections transferred from earlier drafts there are no sequences of re-numbered pages. It appears that in early drafts of the novel Lawrence did not number individual pages as he wrote them. The stapled and folded quires were simply numbered with roman numerals. A similar procedure was followed for Lawrence's 1909 play A Collier's Friday Night. The pages of this manuscript are unnumbered and grouped entirely by folded sections.[10] This system may also be seen in the surviving pages from "Laetitia I" and "Laetitia II" (see WP 328). When Lawrence realised the extent of his later revisions to the novel he must have decided to number each page; a page which needed copying out could then be easily identified by its number, torn out and thrown away, and the new page inserted into the quire at the correct location. Bruce Steele and Helen Baron show that Lawrence continued to use this system for The Trespasser and Sons and Lovers. The situation is complicated with The White Peacock, however, by the other people who helped Lawrence copy pages, as will be explained later.

I also paid attention to the content of the revisions; in both versions of "Laetitia", for example, George's family was named "Worthington". This name may be found corrected to "Saxton" in several places of "Nethermere I", which suggests that these pages belong to an earlier period of composition than other sections of the manuscript where Worthington is never used, but Saxton occurs instead in the body of the text. It is not known exactly when Lawrence decided to change the name from Worthington to Saxton. Since Holt and Mason's pages always use Saxton, the change must have occurred before about mid-September 1909, the earliest probable date at which they became involved in the revision process.

Six makes of paper were identified in the manuscript and labelled from A to F. Their details are listed in Table 2 in the Appendix. There are no noticeable differences in their colour, see-through and finishing features. All the

lines are printed front and back and there are no ruled left margins. Paper A and paper F are easy to distinguish at first because their top margins slope so differently. The slope of paper F pages, however, gradually decreases through Part III, owing to manufacturing variation, until the last pages are almost indistinguishable from paper A. The different layers of revision between Holt's A and Lawrence's Part III pages indicate, nevertheless, that papers A and F do belong to different periods of composition.

Table 1 shows the chronological development of the manuscript and identifies its various components by paper type, principal scribe and layers of revision. The page numbers refer to the manuscript (MS) and the Cambridge Edition of The White Peacock (WP). Dotted lines connecting the column for September-October 1909 to the column for February-April 1910 indicate those pages which were copied by Agnes Mason and cannot be firmly dated. Agnes Holt and Mason had very distinctive handwritings and made no revision marks to the manuscript. Corke's handwriting was noticeably rounded and she always used dark blue-black ink and a thick nib. Lawrence made revisions in three different styles: in pencil, in black ink with a fine nib (which I call the 'thin' style), and in a black ink written with a markedly thicker nib (which I call the 'thick' style).

In the remainder of this paper I justify in detail the datings made in Table 1. My evidence relies on two assumptions; firstly, that it is a strong possibility that Lawrence would use only one particular paper type over a given period; secondly, that revisions of a particular 'style' were all made at the same time. Some pages have as many as four levels of revision, but the styles may easily be distinguished.

The Final Manuscript: Material from "Laetitia II"

The E pages (223-271 and 327-350) are two sequences inserted into the large block of B pages extending from page 83 to 575 (which is uniform except for Corke and Mason's copied pages). The E and B pages must have been written and the insertion must have occurred before the revisions of September—October 1909 because both the E and the B pages use the name "Worthington" (subsequently changed to "Saxton"). The section linking the two E sequences (pages 272 to 326) was copied out by Agnes Mason in October 1909 or March 1910, always using "Saxton".

There is evidence that Lawrence removed some E pages from the surviving E sequences, either before they were incorporated into the B block before October 1909, or during the drafting of "Nethermere II" in February-April 1910. For example, some lines are deleted at the bottom of the page now

numbered 259. If one reads the deleted sentences, and turns to page 260, the text does not run on in meaning. There must have been material in between pages 259 and 260; Lawrence inserted a chapter division at the top of page 260 to account for the change of subject matter (see Note to WP 100:16). The E quire headings were clearly written at the same time as the main text (the ink shade is the same). The pages were numbered individually at the same time as the 'thick' revisions. Furthermore, a large amount of 'thick' revision on page 237 was followed by pencil revision which deleted the whole page. The pages must therefore have been numbered before the 'pencil' revisions, otherwise page 237 would have been thrown away. It had to be kept to maintain the existing number order. The same is true of pages 213-215 of B paper.

The E pages appear to belong to an earlier period of composition than the B pages. The handwriting style on E pages is much more formal and 'copper-plate' than on B pages; it is akin to the neat handwriting used by Lawrence for his college essays from 1906-8 and for both drafts of "Laetitia".[11] Pierre Loti's Pêcheur d'Islande is mentioned on page 229, and since Lawrence is believed to have read this novel in August 1907 (see Note to WP 87:35 and Letters i 36) the reference probably indicates that these E pages were not written in 1906 or early 1907, and therefore did not belong to "Laetitia I".

Why did Lawrence transfer these particular E pages? Helen Baron and Bruce Steele have shown that when Lawrence transferred pages in Sons and Lovers and The Trespasser, he did so to save himself copying out material which he felt would need only minor revision (if any) in the new draft. The same conclusion may be reached here. In the first E section (pages 223-271) Cyril tells George that Lettie and Leslie have got engaged. Lettie subsequently broke the engagement in "Laetitia II", but for "Nethermere I" Lawrence decided: 'I don't believe Lettie ever did break her engagement to Leslie —she married him' (Letters i 92). George's self-pitying response to Cyril's news, and the prelude to the Christmas party of Chapter VIII (to page 271, WP 103), were appropriate to the plots of both "Laetitia II" and "Nethermere I". Subsequent events for "Nethermere I" (pages 272-326) were either written on B paper or on revised E pages; we cannot tell which because the pages were later copied out neatly by Agnes Mason.

Lawrence returned to E paper for pages 327-350. The events here include Annable's discovery of the lovers in the woods and his caustic comments about women, and Lettie's last farewell to George before she marries Leslie. All these events could have occurred in what we know of the plot of "Laetitia II" (Annable was first introduced into the novel in "Laetitia II", and Leslie jilted Lettie, who then married George), whilst also being acceptable for the

revised plot of "Nethermere I". Lawrence stopped using E pages at page 350 because he decided in Section 3 of Part II Chapter I to change the character of Meg, whom George was now going to marry instead of Lettie. The extent of Meg's early relationship with George is unknown (she is briefly mentioned in a draft plot-plan of "Laetitia I" which will be published in John Worthen's forthcoming biography of Lawrence), but the new plot of "Nethermere I" clearly required Lawrence to increase her role in the novel.

Lawrence may have written these E pages as separate sections in early 1909 to accommodate the change of plot for "Nethermere I" and then incorporated them into a second version of the draft copied out later in the year on B paper. There is no evidence, however, for believing that he wrote "Nethermere I" in this way. The most likely hypothesis is that the E pages were simply transferred forward from "Laetitia II" to "Nethermere I" as the new draft was being written. The material on these E pages which existed before Lawrence's 1909 'thick' revision is therefore a fragment of "Laetitia II" and is in addition to the material printed in the appendix to the Cambridge Edition of The White Peacock.

The Final Manuscript: Principal Materials from "Nethermere I"

Most of "Nethermere I" was written on Type B paper. The quires are usually between twelve and fourteen pages long. Such consistency suggests that they were written as part of a regular routine, as Lawrence later remembered: 'I must have written most of ["Laetitia"] five or six times, but only in intervals. . . . But at Croydon I worked at ["Nethermere"] fairly steadily, in the evenings after school'.[12] The name Worthington (later corrected to Saxton) occurs frequently in these pages. A number of literary references help to date the writing. Page 461, for example, where reference is made to H. G. Wells's Tono-Bungay, cannot have been written before December 1908 to March 1909, because Wells's novel was first published as a serial in the English Review over that period. Similarly, Stephen Reynold's story The Holy Mountain (referred to on page 509) was published in the English Review over April-July 1909. Finally, the earliest that Lawrence is known to have read Dostoevsky (page 461) is May 1909.[13] The text written on the B pages is a mixture of new material and revised passages copied from "Laetitia II", as can be seen, for example, when pages 157:31-158:14 of the Cambridge Edition are compared with the extract of "Laetitia II" printed in the appendix (WP 348-349:5). Another example is the age of Mr. Saxton. On page 406 of the manuscript he is said to be forty-five years old, as his original Mr. Chambers would have been in 1908. Lawrence probably copied this detail from "Laetitia II" without correction, because during his 'thick' 1909 revision (see below) he updated Mr. Saxton's age to forty-six (see Note to WP 186:5).

The Final Manuscript: 'Thick' Revision to B and E Pages and Agnes Holt's Copies

In the autumn of 1909 Lawrence tided up "Nethermere I" for submission to Hueffer. The earliest level of corrections appears to be those made with a thick-nibbed pen, in black ink, to the B and E pages. It is the 'thick' correction style which changed "Worthington" to "Saxton"; this particular change must have been made before Mason and Holt began copying, because they always used "Saxton" on their pages.[14] Lawrence continued to make 'thick' revisions after Mason and Holt's copying, however; numerous 'thick' corrections may be found on their pages. Further evidence that the 'thick' revisions were the first to be made is offered later in the paper.

Lawrence also numbered pages individually during this revision for Hueffer, and he took the opportunity to remove deleted pages from some quires. The similarity between the ink colours of the page numbers and the 'thick' revisions can clearly be seen, especially on pages 417, 519 and 526.

Agnes Holt copied out pages 1 to 76 on a new paper, Type A, probably between mid-September and the end of October 1909. She used the name Saxton and numbered the pages as she wrote them (the numbers are in the same ink as the main text). Lawrence numbered the quires afterwards, and inserted chapter divisions in a black ink which may easily be distinguished from Holt's ink. On page 44 Holt copied as far as the word 'hesitated' (WP 17:5). Lawrence then wrote a few sentences (WP 17:6-10) and Holt continued after leaving a space of three lines. This suggests that she was copying from Lawrence's revised (presumably in 'thick' style) B pages, which he then threw away; on page 44 she broke off for some reason, and Lawrence set her on her way again by writing a few lines. After she completed her pages Lawrence revised them again in 'thick' style.

The Final Manuscript: Agnes Mason's Contribution

It is difficult to identify precisely when Agnes Mason did her copying. Owing to the lack of detailed information about her from biographical sources, we have to concentrate on clues offered in the manuscript. Her pages have remarkably few further revisions by Lawrence, which suggests that she may have made her copies late in the revision process. All Mason pages with 'thick' revisions must, however, have been written in 1909. There are a few corrections by Corke, so those copies must have been made before Corke checked that part of the manuscript in March-April 1910. Any pages copied by Mason in Part III of "Nethermere I" would have been thrown away when Lawrence completely rewrote that section. In the following analysis I describe noticeable features of each surviving block of Mason's pages and attempt to draw conclusions about when they were written.

The first page in Mason's hand is on A paper (page 77), and continues on directly after Holt until the end of Chapter 3 on page 82. Mason uses the name Saxton throughout. She did not number the pages, and as the number

style is different from that on Holt's pages, it was probably done by Lawrence. This was definitely before Helen Corke's involvement, for on page 77 Mason mistakenly wrote: 'She played with of the book' (see WP 29:25), and Corke corrected it by adding 'the leaves'. Mason's A pages were presumably left over from the supply used by Holt. Papers A and D were also used by Corke, but never by Lawrence. He entered 'thick' revisions onto the existing manuscript pages rather than make fair copies, although he later rewrote Part III on a different paper type altogether.

Many of Mason's pages are single sheets inserted in a main block of B paper. Judging by her largest contribution (pages 272-326), she appears to have had papers A, C and D all to hand at the same time for these fair copies. In Quire XXIV, pages 275-286 (a twelve-sheet quire) of C paper lie between pages 272-274 and 287-289 of A paper. The tear of page 272 matches page 289, page 274 matches 287 and page 273 matches 288, whilst the cross of a 'T' on page 288 carries over onto the back of page 273 (the quire had not yet been torn into single sheets when she wrote the 'T'). Quire XXV (page 290-305) is all A paper (some tears match). Quire XXVI (page 306-326 plus one blank A page) consists of fourteen pages of A paper split into two groups of seven bracketing a central section of eight D pages.

It is difficult to date the writing of pages 272-326 and to say why they were copied out in the first place. The writing must have occurred before Corke's involvement, since on page 279, for example, Corke changed '[Marie's hair] lies wavily, to coil in her neck' to read 'lies low upon her neck in wavy coils' (WP 107:39). This time Mason did not write the page numbers, as she did with her single sheets. The new page numbers were written by Corke; the ink colour is the same as for her corrections. It seems likely that Lawrence simply gave Mason's pages to Corke to correct and number, although he did give them a final 'thin' revision. There is little revision on these pages, suggesting that Mason copied them at a late stage in the manuscript's evolution. The text had certainly been revised since the E pages of "Laetitia II" because H. G. Wells's novel Tono-Bungay, which Lawrence had not read when he wrote the E pages (see WP 121:17), is mentioned. The plot content of these pages is not, however, sufficiently distinctive to tell whether the material copied by Mason had been largely transferred from "Laetitia II" or consisted of new work written for "Nethermere I". The plot deals with Lettie's birthday/engagement party; George's resentment seems appropriate for the plots of both "Laetitia II" and "Nethermere I", but the fact that Mason copied this large section suggests that Lawrence had heavily revised this scene at some time during or after the writing of "Nethermere I".

Mason's pages 90-91 have no corrections, and the page numbers have the same ink colour as the text, which is clearly different from the surrounding block of B paper in Lawrence's hand (pages 83-116). Mason must have copied out pages 90-91 after Lawrence numbered his B pages, which was some time after he had written the B text; the ink is different, and there are signs that B pages were left out before numbering began. At the bottom of page 146, for example, a sentence once continued onto the next page. During 'thick'

revision, the sentence was deleted and the next page (and possibly others) was thrown away. Lawrence then numbered the pages individually for the first time; page 147 is the start of a new chapter.

Mason's pages 117-119 and 160 stop short of being full of text, indicating that although she was tidying up Lawrence's B pages, she was obliged to keep to an existing numbering system. Pages 134-135 are unrevised by Corke or Lawrence and, like page 126, are crowded at the bottom, presumably again because Mason was keeping to the numbering system. Page 202 is also crowded at the bottom, and unrevised. Her fair copy stands in dramatic contrast to the following page. Page 203 on B paper is covered with corrections in Lawrence's 'thick' style. For some reason she did not make a fair copy of this page.

Mason's pages 117 and 124 on D paper, and 164 and 167 on A paper, have clear matching tears, and so were probably written at the same time. The slope of the top margins of pages 164 and 167 also confirms that they originally formed one sheet of paper in a quire. Upside down on the reverse side of page 167 Mason began to copy out the text found in full on page 164, but stopped after a few words. She must have realised that she had started her new sheet the wrong way around, by writing in the small bottom margin. The tear patterns of Mason's other A pages (77-82 and 171) are not sufficiently distinctive to allow matching.

Mason's single pages of A, C and D paper are all numbered in a similar style and ink colour. This style and ink are noticeably different from the surrounding B pages written by Lawrence. It may seem probable that Mason's pages were all written after Lawrence numbered his B pages, and before the final revisions by Lawrence and Corke in March-April 1910. This conclusion is supported by an analysis of the revisions on Mason's page 171. Her text is cramped at the bottom, indicating that she was trying to squeeze a fixed amount of revised B material onto the new page. At some time after this Lawrence wrote in pencil on the back of page 170: '"You'll mesh yourself up in a silk of dreams."' (see WP 66:15). Helen Corke copied this correction onto Mason's page 171. Furthermore, page 171 has revisions in Lawrence's 'thick' style, indicating that it was copied in October 1909 and subsequently revised; the same is true of page 117.

The dating of these pages should not, however, be extended to include all of Mason's single sheets, judging from a fragment of "Nethermere I" which Helen Corke tore in half lengthways and used as a bookmark.[15] The fragment is of Type B paper, was once the start of quire 14 and was removed when Agnes Mason copied it out as page 135 of "Nethermere II". This dating is suggested by the levels of revision on the page. There is 'thick' revision and a pencil revision by Lawrence, and a minor blue-black revision by Helen Corke. Mason must therefore have copied out page 135 (which is unrevised) after Corke's involvement in March 1910. The same is therefore possible for Mason's other unrevised pages. It is simply not possible to tell. Mason's pages

would therefore seem to have been copied at different times throughout the mid-September 1909 to March 1910 period.

The Final Manuscript: Revisions by Lawrence and Corke in 1910

The order in which various revision styles were made can often be established only by the evidence on a few pages where several styles occur and a later style revises an earlier one. There is evidence that Lawrence's 'thick' revisions were made before his 'pencil' ones, and the 'pencil' before Helen Corke's contribution. Whenever Lawrence made a 'pencil' correction, Corke later overwrote it with her characteristic blue-black ink and rounded handwriting. Lawrence replaced '"you have not treated him kindly of late"' on page 194 with '"I suppose he is paying you back"', in 'thick' black ink. He later crossed this out with a pencil and wrote '"You have treated him badly"', which Corke then wrote over in blue-black ink (the phrase was eventually deleted in proof). Pages 213-215 were corrected in 'thick' black ink and then deleted with diagonal pencil strokes across the page, after the pages had been numbered. The deletion in pencil was then confirmed by Corke's blue-black ink (see WP Notes to 82:33). The deleted pages were not thrown away because the deletions occurred after the pages were numbered; the manuscript would have had a jump in the text from page 212 to 216.

Because of the close relationship between Lawrence's pencil revisions and Corke's later over-writing, it seems likely that the pencil revisions were made in February or March 1910. Lawrence rarely used a pencil in his extant manuscripts from this period. The only other pencil writings occur in two significant sections of one of his poetry notebooks.[16] An unfinished and untitled poem may be found written in pencil inside one fly-leaf. It appears to be Lawrence's first response to reading Corke's "Freshwater Diary" in February 1910 (see CY 7). A completed poem (in ink) entitled "A Love Passage", found amongst the main body of the text, starts off like the pencil poem but then changes, indicating that it is a revised version. It is preceded by the prosepoem "Malade" which is in pencil and was probably written during Lawrence's illness in February; the poem has the same image of a flapping tassel of a window-blind as Lawrence's letter of 28 February (Letters i 155). Writings in pencil occur nowhere else in Lawrence's poetry notebook. It seems possible that Lawrence used a pencil when he was lying in bed convalescing (rather than a bottle of ink which could be spilled), writing the first version of "A Love Passage" and "Malade", and taking the opportunity to start the final revision of "Nethermere I", which he had just received from Heinemann. He may have done this before he thought of asking Helen Corke to look over the manuscript, or in the three days between asking her and personally delivering the manuscript to her home.[17]

The poetry notebook has very few poems written in this period of early 1910, in contrast to the large number that were written or copied into the

notebook around November 1909, probably in response to a suggestion by Hueffer that Lawrence should offer a volume of verse for publication (Letters i 144). Lawrence had plenty of time to write poetry through November to January whilst Hueffer was reading "Nethermere I" and Heinemann was considering it for publication, but had little time in February/March 1910 because he was intermittently ill and then busy revising his novel. He worked through the manuscript with Corke, sitting in her sitting-room in the evenings and 'discussing points of the revision' (CY 20).

Corke wrote in corrections and new sentence orderings, presumably with Lawrence's agreement. She also helped him correct the novel's proofs in September 1910, and believed that 'Lawrence took reasonable care in the reading of his proofs, and he would have fiercely resented any inaccuracy on the part of the compositor'.[18] Such resentment would presumably have also applied to Corke if she had tried to correct the manuscript without his permission. Her revisions either overwrite Lawrence's 'pencil' revisions or re-order sentences, as he had asked her to look for 'split infinitives and obscurities of phrase' (CY 50). On page 83, for example, she changed 'I put it away, the letter' to 'I put the letter away'. On page 279 she changed '[Marie] is a little below the fashion' to 'behind the fashion' (WP 108:1) and, on page 604, 'a jingle of a flat piano' to 'a jingle from an out-of-tune piano' (WP 247:17). On page 390 she changed the clumsy sentence 'It was decided that it was an accident' to 'They decided at the inquest that the death came by misadventure' (WP 154:37).

Corke also copied out a few pages neatly. On the back of page 88 Lawrence wrote some extra sentences in pencil (WP 34:19-26) to be inserted on page 89. Corke must have decided to copy out page 89 incorporating the new text, although for some reason she chose to leave out part of one of the new sentences. She began to copy it, and then crossed it out; the Cambridge Edition uses Lawrence's pencil version.

The Final Manuscript: Final Revision by Lawrence

On 9 March Lawrence believed that he had 'nearly finished the novel ready for the publisher' (Letters i 156). He must have decided to rewrite Part III after this date, for he spent another month finishing the novel. Part III was entirely rewritten on Type F paper; many of the page tears and watermarks match up within quires, and the page numbers are the same colour ink as the main text. There is evidence of rapid composition; the black ink was often not allowed to dry properly before the page was completed and turned over, so that an imprint was left on the back of the preceding page. The new text has incidents which appear to be based on events in Lawrence's life between November 1909 and January 1910 when "Nethermere I" was with Hueffer and Heinemann. Emily's letter from 'Old Brayford', for example, is full of details that suggest it was based on letters from Jessie Chambers after she moved to West Bridgeford in February 1910 (see Note to WP 261:32).

Lawrence also refers to George Moore's Evelyn Innes which he read in November 1909 (Letters i 142).[19]

Helen Corke looked through Lawrence's new pages as she had done with Parts I and II, making corrections and copying out four heavily revised pages, which she numbered. For example, on page 643 she corrected 'Meg and him' to 'Meg and he', and on page 756 she changed '"I can hardly believe it is possible it is you"' to '"I can hardly believe it is really you."' (WP 307:19). Pages 738-749 (quire LXI) were written by an unknown person. The style is similar in places to Lawrence's, but other features, such as a flowery 'Q' on page 739 are very uncharacteristic. Both Corke and Lawrence subsequently made corrections to these pages.

Corke remembered that when pages were copied out neatly by her, 'the original pages were destroyed, and the fair copies were incorporated in the manuscript, which then received the author's final personal revision'.[20] Lawrence's final revision across the whole manuscript was in black ink with a thin nib. There are only a few places where it is possible to confirm Corke's memory that the 'thin' revision followed her own. On page 40, for example, a Corke revision was crossed out by Lawrence in 'thin' style, and on page 752 there are two 'thin' deletions, including one of a phrase which Lawrence had previously revised in pencil and Corke had copied over.

Lawrence described the final revision and rewrite to Heinemann's co-director Sydney Pawling as follows: 'A good deal of it, including the whole of the third part, I have rewritten . . . I think I have removed all the offensive morsels, all the damns, devils and the sweat . . . I am sorry the manuscript is in such scandalous disarray, but I have done my best to keep it tidy. I am sorry, also, that I could not compress it any further. It is a pity, but I could not cut my man to fit your cloth. I have snipped him where I could, and have tried to make him solid' (Letters i 158, 11 April 1910).

Lawrence's account is largely confirmed by the paper analysis. We have seen above that pages were cut or 'snipped', even though this disrupted the page order and meant that the deleted pages had to be left in a disorganised manuscript. 'Offensive morsels' were indeed removed as Heinemann had requested on 20 January. The publisher was probably particularly sensitive to such matters after the decision of the Circulating Libraries' Assocation on 30 November 1909 to censor itself and withdraw 'objectionable' books.[21]

Lawrence changed 'damn' to 'dash', for example, on page 46, and the words 'belly' and 'devil' were deleted on pages 58 and 59. These changes again suggest that Holt wrote her pages (1-76) in October 1909 and that they were corrected by Lawrence in 1910. If Holt copied her pages in 1910, Lawrence would presumably have taken the opportunity to alter 'damn' to 'dash' and so on before she began to copy.

Lawrence's assertion that 'a good deal' of Parts I and II had been 'rewritten' presents problems however. It seems highly unlikely that the E and B pages analysed in this paper represent freshly written material like Part III. Lawrence may have been referring to the pages copied by Mason and Holt, especially if many of Mason's pages of uncertain dating were in fact copied in March 1910. The material on these pages may conceal extensive revision of the pages they replaced. These uncertainties do not, however, alter the order of events outlined in this paper; they affect only the rate at which those events occurred. If Holt and Mason did make their copies in February 1910, Lawrence would also have had to fit in all the extant layers of 'thick' and 'thin' revision, any revisions on the pages which were eventually copied, and write Part III before 11 April. This would indeed have been a 'labour of Hercules'. He may, admittedly, have been exaggerating the extent of his revision to account for the delay in the return of the manuscript. Another possibility is that he regarded his 'pencil' and 'thin' interlinear revision to Parts I and II as 'rewriting', even though the work was not nearly so extensive as the new Part III. Why might he have felt this? An answer is suggested by a consideration of the context and content of the final revision.

Since September 1909 Lawrence had been growing increasingly intimate with Helen Corke. She told him about the tragic events in her life in the summer of 1909, when her married admirer H. B. Macartney had killed himself. In February 1910 she showed Lawrence some of her writings, including the "Freshwater Diary".[22] Sometime after that Lawrence began to write "The Saga of Siegmund". This new novel was based on Corke's writings and Lawrence's understanding of her and Macartney, and told the story of the fatal passion between the musician Siegmund and the sexually reluctant Sieglinde (also called Helena). Jessie Chambers remembers that Lawrence wrote to her shortly before Easter (27 March) 1910, when he was still revising "Nethermere I": 'I have always believed it was the woman who paid the price in life. But I've made a discovery. It's the man who pays, not the woman' (Letters i 155). This is a discovery he might have made from the story of Siegmund, but it also describes one of the conclusions that could be drawn from the revised novel "Nethermere II". Siegmund kills himself after the failure of a relationship, and George's living-death at the end of "Nethermere II" can be seen as a form of suicide through alcoholism, after the failure of his relationship with Lettie.[23]

The overlap between the material of "The Saga of Siegmund" and "Nethermere II" is also suggested by the fact that Lawrence mistakenly used the name 'Siegmund' for Leslie three times in Part III (see WP, Note to 255:16).

If Lawrence regarded his revisions to Parts I and II as 'rewritings' it would be because he had adjusted the early parts to fit with his revised conception of one of the main themes of his novel. On 23 January 1910 he had believed all he had to do was 'alter in parts', as requested by Heinemann (Letters i 152). By March, however, Part III, which brought together and extended the themes of Parts I and II into the middle-age of the characters, had to be re-written to take account of the discovery that Lawrence had announced to Chambers. In Parts I and II Lettie was made less forward in her encouragement of George's attentions, perhaps to emphasize George's later failure to take the initiative and Lettie's willingness to take the easy route in life, so denying her deepest desires and contributing to George's self-destruction. Despite being told to remove potentially offensive phrases, Lawrence did add some relatively explicit descriptions of George's sensual response to Lettie. For example, in 'thin' revision style he added 'For the first time in his life [George] felt his heart heavy with concentrated passion' (MS 77, WP 29:29), and 'he shivered, so much did he want to take her and crush her bosom up to the hot parched open mouth of his breast' (MS 78, WP 29:35).

Space limitations prevent further analysis of connections between "The Saga of Siegmund" and "Nethermere II", or of the different thematic emphases of "Nethermere I" and "Nethermere II". Such analyses, which may lead to an increased understanding of Lawrence's early literary development, how he shaped his novels and moved between different possibilities and interpretations, cannot be undertaken by reference to any current published text. The general editorial policy of the Cambridge Edition, for example, has been to include variants between previously published texts, the final manuscript and the proofs. As a result, material deleted at earlier revision stages is rarely provided in either Andrew Robertson's edition of The White Peacock or Elizabeth Mansfield's The Trespasser. This article provides insights beyond those made possible by the apparatus of Robertson's edition. It should, one hopes, enable critics to undertake an 'archaeological' exploration of Lawrence's first novel in similar fashion to the possibilities opened up by the articles on The Trespasser and Sons and Lovers by Bruce Steele and Helen Baron, although analysis of these latter two novels will still require access to the texts of "The Saga of Siegmund" and the various versions of "Paul Morel".[24]

The writing of "Nethermere II" may be summarised as follows:

Appendix: Paper Descriptions

I. "Nethermere II"

Paper A

Dimensions: 200 mm long, 162.5 mm wide.

Lines: 21, at different angles. The lines are an average of 8.5 mm apart. The 'front' top margin slopes left-right from 20 to 22 mm, whilst the 'back' top margin slopes left-right from 20-19. The bottom margin slopes too, but less consistently, varying between 8.5 and 10 mm in width. If the front of one page is placed against the back of another, so that they meet along the torn edges which had originally been joined, the top margin slopes consistently across both pages from 22 mm to 19 mm. This fact provides a useful and consistent check as to the identity of what appears to be a Paper A page, if the side-tears cannot be shown to match those of another page.

Calendaring: Chain-and-wire

Watermark: "Boot's Cash Stationers"

Paper B

Dimensions: 202 mm long, 163 mm wide.

Lines: 21, at different angles, and an average of 8.5 mm apart. The front top margin slopes 19-20 mm, the back top 21-20, so the same matching as for Paper A can be done. The bottom margin is larger than for Paper A, varying between 10 and 11 mm in width. The lines are a very pale blue; this is the distinguishing feature of

Paper B.

Calendaring: Chain-and-wire

Watermark: "Boot's Cash Stationers"

Paper C

Dimensions: 202 mm long, 161 mm wide.

Lines: 20, an average of 8.5 mm apart. The front top margin slopes 20-21 mm, the back top 21-20. The bottom margin is between 14 and 15 mm. The lines are noticeably finer than those of Papers A and B.

Calendaring: Chain-and-wire

Watermark: None

Paper D

Dimensions: 202 mm long, 162 mm wide.

Lines: 20, an average of 8.5 mm apart. The top margin is consistently 25 mm wide, so distinguishing this paper easily from Paper C. The bottom margin is between 10 and 11 mm. The lines are as fine as with Paper C.

Calendaring: Chain-and-wire

Watermark: None

Paper E

Dimensions: 201 mm long, 162 mm wide.

Lines: 20, an average of 8 mm apart. The front top margin slopes 28-29 mm; the back top margin slopes 29.5-29 mm. The bottom margin varies between 10 and 11 mm.

Calendaring: None

Watermark: A complex oval design reading: "HIERATICA (a vegetable Parchment) I. S & C."

Paper F

Dimensions: 200 mm long, 162.5 mm wide.

Lines: 21, an average of 8.5 mm apart. The first pages of this paper type in the manuscript have a very noticeable slope to their top and bottom margins. 'Front' and 'back' sides can be matched up with pages elsewhere in a given quire. For example page 577 measures as follows:

           

	Front (text)	Back (blank)
Top margin:	18.5 to 20 mm	20 to 17.5 mm
Bottom margin:	10 to 9 mm	9 to 11 mm
Page 586 (whose torn edge and watermark matches page 577) measures:
Top margin:	17.5 to 16 mm	18 to 18.5 mm
Bottom margin:	11 to 13 mm	12 to 10 mm

If these pages are placed together as above with Paper A, then the front side of page 577 lines up with the back of page 586, and vice-versa. However as Part III progresses this slope to the lines becomes increasingly less noticeable, until in the last quires the pages are indistinguishable from Paper A pages (a front top margin slope of 20-21 mm, and a back top margin of 20-19 mm).

Calendaring: Chain-and-wire

Watermark: "Boot's Cash Stationers"

II. Lawrence's Correspondence

Lawrence usually used special small sheets of paper for his letters, especially for those to Louie Burrows and Blanche Jennings. Sometimes he used exercise book paper, but the sheet size was very different from the standard size used in "Nethermere". The following list of paper types only includes those which appear similar to

Types A to F.[25] I have also examined the paper of all other extant letters from this period which are written on exercise book paper, but none are of the types used in "Nethermere".

• 1) Second page of letter dated 30.6.09. Dimensions: 203 mm x 163 mm. Lines: 20, an average of 8.5 mm apart. Top margin 26 mm, bottom margin 15 mm. No watermark. Possibly Type D paper.
• 2) Double sheet used for letter dated 20.11.09. Dimensions: 203 mm x 164 mm. Lines: 21, an average of 8.5 mm apart. The lines are noticeably pale. Top margin is 20-21 mm at the front, 19-20 mm at the back. Bottom margin is 13-12 mm at the front, 14-13 mm at the back. Watermarked "Boot's Cash Stationers". Possibly Type B paper. The same paper was used for the poem "Absence" sent to Grace Crawford on 21.11.09.
• 3) Two single pages used for letter dated 23.1.10. Dimensions: 202 mm x 160 mm. Lines: 20, an average of 8.5 mm apart. Top margin 21.5 mm, bottom margin 10 mm. No watermark. Possibly Type C paper.
• 4) Second page of letter dated 9.3.10. Dimensions: 204 mm x 164 mm. Lines: 21, an average of 8.5 mm apart. Top margin 18 mm, bottom margin 14.5 mm. Watermarked "Boot's Cash Stationers". Possibly Type F paper.
• 5) All of letter dated 28.1.10. Dimensions: 200 mm x 160 mm. Lines: 20, an average of 8.5 mm apart. Top margin 22 mm, bottom margin 9 mm. No watermark. Possibly Type C paper.

Lawrence used a new type of paper for his letter to Florence Wood on 28 January 1910, and used this and one other type for most of his letters through the rest of 1910. The first paper type is watermarked with an oval design showing a lion holding a spear, surmounted by a crown and with the Letters 'F M L' underneath; the second type is watermarked "T. H. SAUNDERS".

Notes