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The Manuscript of Page's "Marse
Chan"
by
John R. Roberson
Thomas Nelson Page's volume of short stories, In Ole Virginia, was first published in 1887. Page's autograph drafts of the six stories which constitute the book are contained in the collection of literary manuscripts given to the Alderman Library by Clifton Waller Barrett. I have collated the first and most famous of them, "Marse Chan," as it appears in the manuscript, in The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine for April, 1884,[1] in the 1887 edition of In Ole Virginia, and in the Plantation Edition of Page's collected works (1906). The collation reveals that the editors of the Century made considerable revisions before the first publication, and that almost without exception Page let their changes stand when he brought out the story in book form.
The manuscript is written in ink for the most part, on lined note-paper, on one side only. It is quite legible, and is obviously a fair copy, a second or perhaps a third draft. Rosewell Page, in his memoir of his brother, says that "the manuscript from which 'Marse Chan' was published" was in the hand of a boyhood friend of Page's, a grandson of his neighbors the Winstons.[2] This, then, is not the manuscript which was submitted to the magazine, but I believe it is its immediate predecessor in the line of descent.
At some time Page gathered together a draft of each of the six stories and had them bound in heavy brown paper. He wrote notes on some of them giving the circumstances of their composition. The one for "Marse Chan," dated March 24, 1913, reads as follows:
Note—
This story was written in my law office, in Shafer's Building,
on 10th St. in Richmond, Virginia in the late summer of 1880, and
occupied me about a week. It was then sent with a poem, "The Bent
Monk" to the Editor of Scribner's Mag. with a request that I be
commissioned to write a paper on Yorktown, for the approaching
Yorktown Celebration. I heard nothing of it until the following
Feb. 7, when I rec'd. a letter from Mr. R. W. Gilder, Ed. of the
Century Mag., accepting the story, returning the poem, and
commissioning me to write the paper on Yorktown. He sent me a
cheque for $80.00 for the story, which made me feel rich—richer
than, when years afterwards, he paid me $1000 for a story. It was
not published till April 1884.
Thos. Nelson Page
Wash'n D.C.
March 24, 1913
Page had a tendency, in his early days at least, to diffuseness. The greater part of the changes the editors of the Century made in the story were intended simply to shorten it. In the letter accepting "Marse Chan," they wrote that they would like to omit some parts near the beginning which they felt were "extraneous to the subject of the story. . . the relations of the young couple."[3] Later Mrs. Sophia Bledsoe Herrick, of the Century staff wrote to Page, on August 29, 1885:[4] "In Marse Chan the material was in excellent shape, it was a charming story. Where it had to be shortened I cut it with positive pain—it was so exquisite from beginning to end." But cut it she did.
Two incidents included in the manuscript were cut out entirely. One concerns the childhood of Marse Chan and Miss Anne, when a boy in their school dropped a slate pencil down Anne's dress, and Chan, to avenge her, put two hornets down the boy's back. Sam, the Negro narrator, says that Chan was whipped, but that he never told "huccome" he did it. Page noted in the margin of the manuscript, "This incident was cut out to shorten the story-T.N.P." The other omission concerns a time when a neighbor whipped Sam, and Chan sought out the man and thrashed him. Page noted, "This incident was cut out and was used in Edinburg's Drowndin. T.N.P."
In addition, a good bit of introductory and descriptive material was pruned from the beginning of the story. Of these cuts, the only one that seems worth recording is from the very beginning of the manuscript. In Page's hand it reads:
There are a number of minor changes. Apparently the editors felt that Page's reproduction of the Negro dialect, no matter how faithful, would be unintelligible to northern readers if the pronunciations were too foreign
There were occasional changes in matters of style, in which Page's version may well be preferred more often than the "improvements." He said Chan's dog was corpulent from "over-much feeding and over-little-exercise." The editors made this simply "excessive feeding." Page called him "his canine-ship"; they called him "his dogship." These changes seem to be motivated by opposing inclinations toward the refined and the familiar. In each case, Page's ear seems better. Page wrote, correctly, of a "bran new saddle," but the magazine printed "bran' new."
The editors seemed determined to leave out anything which might offend a reader in connection with religion, strong drink, or horror. Moreover, Page had Sam somewhat moralistic, and these passages were cut. Also cut were these lines:
"Den Cun'l Chamb'lin he sort o' got to takin a leetle too much— yo' know any gentleman wil do dat occasionally." (This said with a slight glance at me as if he wouldn't admit to a stranger that one of the people he had known would act badly in any way.)
"He [Marse Chan] was stone dead. Dey had done kill im twice, fuh deah wuz a bay'net stobbed wight in im besides de bullet in he breas."
There are two evidences of revision by Page himself. In the earliest version, Anne wrote to Chan that she had decided she loved him, without any particular reason being given for her change of heart just then. Apparently Page decided that her motivation was weak, and added the incident of Chan's quarreling with Mister Ronny when he started to say something about Anne, and Sam's writing Judy about it. The addition is clearly marked, since it is in pencil on the versos of the leaves immediately preceding the arrival of Anne's letter. It is also marked, in an ink different from the rest of the manuscript, "L. A.," which could mean Later Addition. Sam's reminiscence about how well off the slaves were does not appear in the manuscript, so it was apparently added later too. It reads in the printed version:
In 1887 the firm of Charles Scribner's Sons brought out In Ole Virginia, or Marse Chan and Other Stories. The text is substantially the same as that which appeared in the Century; none of the omissions have been restored. The main changes concern the spelling of the Negro dialect. As has been remarked, the Century did not follow Page's spellings when they seemed likely to be unintelligible. Apparently Page went through the magazine version and corrected words he thought too untrue to Negro speech, and Scribner's used this marked Century as printer's copy. The word most often changed is "other," with its compounds. The Century spelled it ordinarily in "Marse Chan" as "udder"; the book spelled it "urr." So, also, "anudder" became "anurr"; and "nudder," in the phrase "some one or nudder" became "nurr." ("Nurr" can also mean "neither," as in "He wouldn' let none o' de chil'en tease her, nurr.") A variation occurs with the rendering of "the other," which the Century makes "tudder" or once "tor'er," but the book makes "t'urr." The similar sound, "brother," was changed from "brudder" to "brurr." "Together" was changed from "togedder" to "togerr." Other spelling changes are "three" to "th'ee," "gwi" to "gwine," "whop" to "whup," "God" and "Gawd" to "Gord," "'coz" to "'cause," "flag" to "fleg," "ke'idge" to ker'idge" and "hyard" to "heahd."
Two spelling changes seem to make no difference in pronunciation; perhaps they are accounted for by the fact that the Century forms have other meanings: "sense" became "sence," and "staid" became "stayed." In another case the changes seem to have been made to render more natural Sam's quotations of the words of white speakers. In the Century Anne says, ". . . you made me a present of my father, whom you first insulted an' then prevented from gittin' satisfaction." In the book she says "fust insulted." A few lines later, the book changes Chan's "by yourself" to "by yourse'f."
As far as punctuation is concerned, the only significant change is in Page's use of the dash. He regularly placed a comma before a dash, and the Century followed his practice. In the book these commas were removed.
In 1906, Scribner's began publishing the Plantation Edition of Page's works. Collation shows only five variations from the 1887 text. A missing apostrophe was added to "im" in one place. The form "'t wuz" was run together to the more usual "'twuz." "For'ds" was expanded to the more intelligible "for'ads," and "ra'ed" (for "rared") was changed to "ra'd" to preserve the broad "a" sound. "Solum" was changed to "solumn," to make the meaning clear.
Consideration of the manuscript and three printed versions of "Marse Chan" lends support to two accepted facts about Page the artist. Magazine editors did him a great service in disciplining his creations. Page himself gave rather careful attention to the details of his transcription of the speech of the old Virginia Negro. Both facts contributed to make him one of the most successful dialect story writers of his day.
Notes
See my editing of "Letters of Thomas Nelson Page to the Century Magazine," forthcoming in The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. The handwriting would seem to indicate that this letter, signed simply "Ed. S.M.," is from Robert Underwood Johnson, Associate Editor, rather than from Gilder himself, as Page remembered it to be in his note quoted above.
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