II
The variant passages that are common to both Harper's
Bazar and the Harper book edition have been pointed out. This
section offers substantiation for the major assertion of this paper: that there
exist
two American versions of
The Woodlanders, in stages of
composition between the manuscript and the English serial.
The Harper's Bazar text is only slightly advanced
beyond
the manuscript, because Hardy had to send the first set of proofs to
America quickly. It naturally contains a few oversights, which are corrected
in the Harper book text. For example, in the manuscript and
Harper's
Bazar, Fitzpiers includes Fortitude, Discretion, Wisdom, and Love
in Schleiermacher's list of cardinal virtues, and Grace thinks that Giles has
not much discretion; in the Harper book text, the cardinal virtues are
Self-control, Perseverance, Wisdom, and Love, and it is perseverance that
Grace thinks is lacking in Giles (p. 167). Also, Fitzpiers' reaction toward
finding Grace in the man-trap set by Tim Tangs is made more appropriate.
In the manuscript and Harper's Bazar, the statement is
"Although he had never seen a mantrap before, Fitzpiers could not help
perceiving that this instrument was one." Probably recalling that earlier in
the novel he had described the late Mr. Charmond's collection
of man-traps (p. 67), and that Fitzpiers often had been in Hintock House
both as physician and lover, Hardy in the second set of proofs changed the
above statement to "Fitzpiers had often studied the effect of these
instruments when examining the collection at Hintock House" (p.
430).
Several other readings first enter the novel in the Harper book text.
For example, in the manuscript and Harper's Bazar, Melbury
had known that the lawyer Beaucock had written to Giles informing him
that a divorce for Grace from Fitzpiers is impossible to obtain. The passage
in Harper's Bazar reads:
"Then Giles did not tell you [that a divorce is unobtainable]?" said
Melbury.
"No," said she. "He could not have known it."
Her father suspected the accuracy of this, for he knew that Beaucock
had written. But he said nothing, and Grace went away to the solitude of
her chamber.
Melbury's explicit knowledge is deleted for the Harper book text and
is not in any of the English texts:
"Then Giles did not tell you?" said Melbury.
"No," said she. "He could not have known it. His behaviour to me
proved that he did not know."
Her father said nothing more, and Grace went away to the solitude
of her chamber (p. 354).
When Grace runs away from home upon Fitzpiers' return from the
Continent, she originally left empty-handed; but beginning in the Harper
book text, she "gathered a few toilet necessaries into a handbag" before
slipping out of the back door (p. 359). Again, Melbury's search-party
learns that the man accompanying Grace had been "holding her tight" in the
manuscript and Harper's Bazar; this phrase changes to
"clutching her tight" in the Harper book text (p. 436). The description of
Fitzpiers and Grace which Melbury obtains from other strollers is altered
in other details for the Harper book text, but considerations of space
prohibit recounting all of the alterations here.
Some of the most bibliographically challenging remnants of the
second set of proof sheets are several passages in the Harper book text
which are in no other text of The Woodlanders — that
is,
passages which Hardy wrote onto the second set of proofs but which were
not transferred to the third set of proof sheets, the one which was sent to
Macmillan's Magazine. For example, after murmuring a few
lines from Congreve (which are in the manuscript, the American and
English serials, and the Harper book text but not in any English book text
or the definitive text), Fitzpiers apostrophizes the playwright in the
italicized sentence below, which appears only in the Harper book text:
". . . Why do I never recognize an opportunity till I have missed it,
nor the good or ill of a step till it is irrecovable! . . . I fell in love . . . .
Love, indeed! —
"'Love's but the frailty of the mind
When 'tis not with ambition joined;
A sickly flame which, if not fed, expires,
And feeding, wastes in self-consuming fires!"
Ah, old author of 'The Way of the World,' you knew — you
knew!"
Grace moved. He thought she had heard some part of his soliloquy (p.
263).
Another passage unique to the Harper book text describes Mrs. Charmond
as she receives Melbury on the morning he has come to question her about
her relationship with his son-in-law. The italicized portion is the unique
Harper book passage:
"Do sit down, Mr. Melbury. You have felled all the trees that were
to be purchased by you this season, except the oaks, I believe."
"Yes," said Melbury.
"How very nice! It must be so charming to work
in
the woods just now!"
She was too careless to affect an interest in an extraneous
person's affairs so consummately as to deceive in the manner of the perfect
social machine.
Hence her words "very nice," "so charming," were uttered with a
perfunctoriness that made them sound absurdly unreal.
"Yes, yes," said Melbury, in a reverie (p. 278).
Again, the phrase "something like" exists only in the Harper book text in
the phrase "in what seemed something like her own voice
grown
ten years older" (p. 293); and in the Harper book text alone, Melbury once
describes his hair as "gray" in his plea to Grace not to let it be publicly
known that she has spent three nights in Giles's hut (even though Giles had
not been there): "Then why should you by a piece of perverseness bring
down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave?" (p.
392).
The number of differences between Harper's Bazar and
the Harper book edition increases as the novel progresses. Until the revision
of Schleiermacher's list of cardinal virtues on page 167, which occurs
shortly after the beginning of the fifth monthly installment, the two
American texts are nearly identical; but after this point the texts vary,
sometimes considerably. In a count based on the quantity of material in the
monthly divisions in Macmillan's Magazine [transplanted to
weekly Harper's Bazar portions and to the Harper book
edition], the Harper book edition has an average of more than twenty
readings different from the Harper's Bazar text in each of the
eighth, ninth, tenth, and twelfth monthly sections. Evidently, as Hardy
neared the end of writing The Woodlanders, he felt he had
more
time to devote to the second reading of proof sheets to be sent to
America.
In this and in the preceding sections I have given a number of reasons
for believing that Hardy sent more than one set of advance proof sheets to
America as a precaution against loss, one set being used by the printers
employed by Harper's Bazar, the second set by the printers
setting up the type for the Harper book edition. Hardy, who apparently
never wearied of reading his own work, corrected and revised the two sets
separately.
Awareness of this procedure makes possible a logical explanation for
a textual variant that commentators on Hardy's American publications have
pointed out but have not been able to explain. The suggestive sentence
concluding Fitzpiers' first seduction of Suke — "It was daybreak
before
Fitzpiers and Suke Damson re-ëntered Little Hintock" (p. 178)
—
is in Harper's Bazar while it is absent from the authorized
American book edition published by Harper and from Macmillan's
Magazine. (It is in the edition published by the pirates, who lifted
this portion of the text from Harper's Bazar.) Hardy's
career-long difficulties in communicating the earthy aspects of life to a
prudish Victorian
society whose family reading came largely in the form of serial fiction are
well-known. Hardy, in his forthright desire to earn a living with his fiction,
acquiesced as far as he was able to the demands of his editors to underplay
the sexual element of his novels' conflicts. He virtually rewrote
Tess
of the d'Urbervilles and
Jude the Obscure to make
them
acceptable in England as serials (cf. Purdy, pp. 68-73, 88-90); and his
treatment of the sentence quoted above reveals his sensitivity to possible
objections from guardians of his nation's moral sense. A marginal note next
to this sentence in Hardy's manuscript directs, "Omit for mag.", that is, for
Macmillan's Magazine. Evidently, however, Macmillan's
printers set the sentence in type, and Hardy left it in the first set of advance
proofs sent to America and marked it for deletion in the second set. One
notes with wry amusement that this sentence, thought too incendiary for
English magazine readers, passed
through the
Harper's Bazar editorial offices without removal
or
alteration except in the spelling of "re-entered"). Apparently American
serial readers were not thought to be as sensitive in general as English
serial readers; in addition to the "daybreak" sentence above, two
expressions of "My God!" remain (pp. 293, 350), demonstrating a more
liberal editorial policy than existed in England, where "My God" was
replaced in
Macmillan's Magazine by "My heaven!"