University of Virginia Library

Some Remarks on the Extant Manuscripts of Hawthorne's Short Stories
by
Seymour L. Gross and Alfred J. Levy

Because Hawthorne's short stories were published in an era when authors did not have the close control over their manuscripts that they enjoy today, there has always been some question among Hawthorne scholars of just how reliable the texts of the tales are. Frank Luther Mott has noted in writing of the period in which Hawthorne did his magazine and gift-book publishing that the "rights of the author . . . in the products of his pen were little recognized when once he had turned his manuscript over to the editor."[1] John M. Mason, for example, the editor of Christian's Magazine, piously announced in his "Prospectus" (1806) that as editor "he will feel himself not only at liberty, but under obligation, to make such alterations in the pieces which may be offered for insertion, as he shall judge expedient." A rather egregious example of editorial high-handedness was the action of the editor of Holden's Dollar Magazine (in which Hawthorne's "Ethan Brand" appeared in May, 1851), who, when J. H. Dugannes refused to finish his serialized story, The Atheist, until he was paid, blithely finished the story himself.[2] Nor is Hawthorne silent on the problem of editorial fiddling. In a letter to the New York editor, C. W. Webber, Hawthorne irritably comments, "I am as tractable an author as you ever knew, so far as putting my articles into the fire goes; though I cannot abide alterations or omission."[3] And again in "P.'s Correspondence," P. asks Hawthorne, ". . . do those infernal compositors and proof readers misprint your unfortunate productions as vilely as ever?"

In view of the general editorial policy of the era and Hawthorne's objection to it, it seemed profitable to undertake a comparison of the extant manuscripts of Hawthorne's short pieces with their first published versions. Unfortunately, after extended search, we were able to turn up only four manuscripts: "The Wedding Knell" (The Token, 1836), "Earth's Holocaust" (Graham's Magazine, May, 1844), "The Snow Image" (International Magazine, October, 1850), and "Feathertop" (International Magazine, Feb.-March, 1852).[4] Four manuscripts (out of a possible one hundred

or more), needless to say, hardly constitute an occasion for reliable generalization. But we have assumed that some evidence, cautiously interpreted, is better than none at all.

Although they are spread over a fourteen-year period, the manuscripts of "The Wedding Knell," "Earth's Holocaust," and "The Snow Image" reveal certain consistencies in the editorial revision they underwent. ("Feathertop," except for three typographical errors, completely follows the manuscript, the reasons for which we will speculate on in a moment.) For one thing, Hawthorne was far more conservative in his punctuation than Goodrich of The Token, Graham of Graham's, or Griswold of International Magazine wanted him to be. There are about 100 instances in the three stories of an editorial lightening of punctuation—usually from a comma to no mark at all, or, more infrequently, from a semicolon or dash to a comma. Hawthorne was likewise more conservative (or old-fashioned) in his choice of spelling than the editors to whom he submitted his work. For example, in "Earth's Holocaust," staunch (adj.) is changed to stanch, and worshipper to worshiper; in "The Snow Image," sate and skipt become sat and skipped; in "The Wedding Knell," the editor preferred stepped, diverse, and stopped to Hawthorne's stept, divers, and stopt.[5] The Americanizing of Hawthorne's spellings is, most probably, another reflection of the desire for an American literature, a cause strenuously ballyhooed in American magazines and annuals in the first half of the nineteenth century.

The manuscripts also clearly demonstrate Hawthorne's predilection for generic capitalization—a practice of which the editors did not approve. This tendency shows up most noticeably in the parabolic "Earth's Holocaust," where the editor reduced no less than fourteen of Hawthorne's capitalizations, including such terms as Last Toper, Child of Dust, Immortality, Eternity, Last Thief, Last Murderer, Evil Principle, Heart, and so on. Similarly, in "The Snow Image," Providence is put into the lower case, as is Time in "The Wedding Knell."[6] Evidently Hawthorne's typically allegorical cast of mind led him to capitalize many abstract terms and epithets which he wished to be taken as representative; his editors, however, probably wished to make these tales somewhat less removed from common terminology by their de-emphasis. From such evidence as is available in these three manuscripts, we should conjecture that this procedure (as well as that of changing his spelling and reducing his punctuation) was one of the things to which Hawthorne explicitly objected.

The manuscripts turn up very few editorial changes in Hawthorne's diction, certainly never a major alteration which would significantly affect the meaning of a passage. The majority of these revisions occur in "The Snow Image." Where Hawthorne wrote "Violet . . . was struck with a new idea," Griswold changed the last word (reasonably, since Violet is a child) to thought. Griswold made another reasonable change. In describing the Snow Image (whose objective reality is always kept extremely ambiguous) Hawthorne wrote that she was "dressed all in white, with rose-tinged cheeks and ringlets of golden hair." The "hair" is too concrete to maintain the ambiguity of the Snow Image's existence and so Griswold changed it to hue (which can more easily be accounted for by "the bright, blinding dazzle of the sun"). The other changes simply involved the cutting out of some excess words: e.g. handsome as possible to handsome, and may prove to be absolute to may prove absolute. Perhaps the most interesting change in diction occurs in "The Wedding Knell." At one point in the story Hawthorne asks of the decrepit couple who are about to be married after forty years, "But why had she returned to him, when their cold hearts shrank from each other's touch?" The somber, sexless touch is connotatively correct for a "hoary bridegroom in his shroud [and his] aged bride," but Goodrich, following the sentimentalized diction of the gift-book tradition, changed it to embrace, which is tonally all wrong.[7]

We may now come to the problem of why Rufus Wilmot Griswold made ten changes in "The Snow Image," but left "Feathertop" absolutely unaltered. Early in 1850 Griswold asked Hawthorne for a contribution for the volume memorializing the recently deceased Mrs. Osgood, and Hawthorne authorized James T. Fields to sell him "The Snow Image." But several months before the tale appeared in the memorial volume (1851), it appeared in Griswold's International Magazine.[8] Some time in 1851 Griswold asked Hawthorne to write a series of twelve stories for the International; but Hawthorne, now a reasonably successful novelist and utterly disgusted with tale writing, which he called "the most unprofitable business in the world," refused and sent him instead "Feathertop," which he had written several years before.[9] It is possible that Griswold's faithful following of the manuscript of the story was part of an attempt to get Hawthorne to change his mind about writing the series, a motive which did not enter into his earlier revision of "The Snow Image."

All four manuscripts are almost certainly the final copies which Hawthorne submitted to the editors.[10] As such, they exhibit fewer revisions

than we would expect from Hawthorne, who, like Poe, was a reviser.[11] Even so, Hawthorne made more changes in his manuscript—at least in the matters of diction and phrasing—than did his editors. The majority of the twenty-nine changes seem to be arbitrary: e.g. a thrill to a swell of exalted sentiment; pealed to poured forth an anthem; she had been left to she found herself again a widow ("The Wedding Knell"); reach to attain; there to in that spot; with their aprons to holding their aprons ("Earth's Holocaust"); good to kind lady; cold-pinched to frost-pinched ("The Snow Image"); face to countenance; only to merely; image to picture; answered to said; examine to analyze ("Feathertop").

Occasionally, however, Hawthorne's revisions decidedly clarified his intentions. In "The Wedding Knell," Hawthorne altered his description of Mr. Ellenwood from diseased sensitiveness to diseased sensibility, a change which helps to point up the emotional derangement of that wild eccentric's "abortive life." In "Feathertop," the eeriness of Mother Rigby, the witch, is heightened by having her supernatural powers described as singular rather than remarkable, and by having her have made rather than merely have seen devil dolls of all sorts. (One revision, however, works against the grotesque intention: there is something more macabre about the witch's having skinny palms rather than the more literally accurate skinny hands, which was Hawthorne's final choice.) Perhaps the most significant manuscript revision is to be found in "The Snow Image." In describing Mr. Lindsay, that well-intentioned, "common-sensible" destroyer of the imaginative world, Hawthorne originally wrote that he "was glad to get back to his wife and children and his quiet home." Hawthorne then deleted the reference to the wife and children. This deletion helps to prepare us for Lindsay's "stubborn materialism," which keeps him from committing himself to the imaginative life of his family and makes him cruelly, though unwittingly, annihilate their imaginative vision of life, as it is symbolized by the Snow Image.

On the basis of the four available manuscripts of Hawthorne's short stories, it is difficult to see the reason for Hawthorne's annoyance with his editors. The frequent changes in capitalization and rare changes in diction are the only revisions that affected the meaning, and then only slightly. But, after all, one can hardly blame an author for wanting his work to be printed precisely as he wrote it. What we regret, of course, is that more manuscripts were not available so that this study might not be so extremely tentative.

Notes