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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
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:
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).
"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.
"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
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