Two 'New' Texts of Thomas Hardy's The
Woodlanders
by
Dale Kramer
A textual matter concerning the American publication of one of
Thomas Hardy's best novels opens new areas for Hardy investigations and
for studies of nineteenth-century publishing practices. Two "American"
texts of The Woodlanders constitute separate stages of
composition of that novel; they do not correspond precisely to the
manuscript nor to any version ever published in England. The value of this
fact, beyond its usefulness to bibliographers, lies in the new insights its
explanation provides into Hardy's novel-writing and revising
methods.
Hardy scholars have long known of five printed versions of
The
Woodlanders, and they have assumed that what they considered the
first printed version [text number 4 in the list below] reproduces the
manuscript.[1] While the present study
primarily deals with two previously unidentified printed texts, it also reveals
the manuscript to be a separate version. The following table lists all eight
of the now-known versions in the order of the novel's evolution, with
explanatory comments.
- 1. The manuscript, in the Dorset County Museum, Dorchester,
England.
- 2. Harper's Bazar text; weekly installments from
May
15, 1886, to April 9, 1887; published in New York.
- 3. Harper & Brothers book version, published in New York
in
one volume on March 25, 1887.[2]
- 4. Macmillan's Magazine text, published in monthly
installments in London from May, 1886, to April, 1887.
- 5. English first edition, published by Macmillan and Co. of
London in three volumes on March 15, 1887.
- 6. The "Second Edition," the first English one-volume edition,
published in London in August, 1887, by Macmillan and Co.
- 7. The text of The Woodlanders published in 1896
by
Osgood, McIlvaine & Co. of London as Volume VII of the first
collected
edition of Hardy, Thomas Hardy's Works: The Wessex
Novels.
This collected edition is usually called the "Osgood edition" to distinguish
it from the next edition in this listing.
- 8. The definitive text, Volume VI of Prose of
Macmillan and Co's The Works of Thomas Hardy in Prose and
Verse (Wessex Edition) of 1912. It is this edition that is legitimately
referred to as "the Wessex Edition."
This article deals with the first four texts, which are referred to as the
manuscript, Harper's Bazar, Harper book, and
Macmillan's Magazine. It should be noted, for emphasis, that
the middle two are the unique texts. These two hitherto unidentified texts
were both published in America and both represent early stages in the
novel's evolution, thereby pointing to an interesting if not unprecedented
bibliographical oddity. The English first edition [text number 5] is the first
edition only in date of publication; the American first edition, published ten
days later, contains an earlier version of the text.
Hardy, as the list above suggests, seldom let a new setting of type
slip by without offering a number of reworked passages to the printers. And
while he did not read the proof sheets which were made by the American
printers, he did supply the copy from which the American texts were set
up. A brief digression will show how and why this was
accomplished.
Hardy customarily arranged for simultaneous publication of his novels
in England and in the United States. In the case of The
Woodlanders, he sold the rights of serialization and domestic book
issue in each country to a major publishing house — Macmillan
& Co.
in England and Harper & Brothers in America. The economic
necessity
for simultaneous publication of The Woodlanders is an
essential
factor in the formation of the unique American texts. Before 1891 there was
no copyright protection in the United States for works first published in
England. Any publisher in America could reprint British books or
magazines without obtaining the permission either of the author or of the
original publisher. Throughout the nineteenth century, such writers as
Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Disraeli, and Wilkie Collins felt the
loss of thousands of pounds in royalties from this piracy. Under these
conditions, it was important for J. Henry Harper, Hardy's authorized
American
publisher of The Woodlanders, to be able to place on sale his
weekly Harper's Bazar and — at the end of the
serialization
— a bound edition of The Woodlanders before the
omnipresent and highly efficient American pirates of the publishing
profession could produce cut-rate competitors after obtaining a copy of
Macmillan's Magazine, which arrived in New York
via steamship a short time after being printed in London.
Since
a pirating publisher was able to sell a book under his own imprint within
thirty-six hours after obtaining a copy whose pages he could distribute
among a crew of compositors, not only days but hours were crucial
elements in obtaining priority of publication.
To gain the the slight but important edge in priority of publication,
as well as to be honest in a very basic way, the more reputable American
publishers arranged with an English author to be furnished pre-publication
copy. Hardy's usual procedure under the terms of the arrangement with his
American publisher was to send to America advance proof sheets of his
English serialization.[3] On page 85
of Hardy in America Weber prints a letter in which Hardy
proposes such a method for The Woodlanders to Thomas
Bailey
Aldrich, editor of the Atlantic Monthly; Aldrich rejected the
offer but Harper obviously acceded to a similar offer. The same variation
from the manuscript in all of the English and American printed versions
indicates that this method, rather than sending longhand copies as in the
case of Two on a Tower (whose initial appearance was as a
serial in the Atlantic),
was used for
The Woodlanders. At one point, the manuscript
contains an addition without the use of a caret:
trees of
from the later harvest (fol. 236),
which is printed as "from the trees of later harvest" (p. 210). Judging from
the position of the addition and the spacing of the words in the manuscript
(the words "the" and "later" are joined by the pen-stroke) as well as from
the sense of the phrase, "from trees of the later harvest" is what was
intended. Had
The Woodlanders gone to America in duplicate
manuscripts, this phrase would probably have been correctly written out by
Hardy or his wife Emma in a single line; but as it is, the original
typesetter's error has never been corrected.
Hardy once a month sent manuscript sheets from his home in
Dorchester to the Macmillan printers in London, who set them in type and
sent several sets of the resulting proof sheets to Hardy. Until now, it has
been assumed by Hardy scholars either that the English publisher sent the
proof sheets to America or that for each novel Hardy corrected and revised
a set of proofs to be returned to his English publisher, and that he copied
verbatim those corrections and revisions onto another set of proofs which
was sent in monthly packets to his authorized American publisher. But in
at least the case of The Woodlanders, Hardy's pre-publication
revising was more elaborate. Because of the lack of international copyright,
the sheets for Harper's Bazar had to be sent hastily, so Hardy
had time to make only a small number of revisions, which, naturally, he or
Emma copied onto the other sets of proof sheets. Hardy sent a second set
of advance proof sheets, on which he had made
further revisions, to America under separate cover as a precaution against
the possibility that the first set might be missent or lost.[4] But even the second set could not
be
revised carefully enough to satisfy the conscientious and artistically restless
Hardy, since in sending the second set of proofs promptness still had to be
the primary consideration. So, after dispatching both sets of proof sheets to
America, Hardy made further revisions on a third set before returning that
set
to the Macmillan printers for the forthcoming monthly issue of
Macmillan's Magazine.
The result, then, of Hardy's penchant for revision, the lack of
international copyright, and the vicissitudes of transatlantic mail service,
was this: Harper's Bazar set up its pages from the first set of
proofs, the Harper book printers used the second set, and
Macmillan's
Magazine used the third set. No correspondence or memorandum
remains to show whether the Harper printers realized that the two sets of
proof sheets that Hardy sent had differing author's revisions and
corrections; most probably, the book's printers were sent the second set by
Harper's editors solely for the sake of convenience.
The evidence of the above assertions concerning the uniqueness of the
American texts rests upon a comparison of four versions of The
Woodlanders: the manuscript, the Harper's Bazar text,
the Harper book text, and the Macmillan's Magazine text. In
the first of several sections devoted to particular sorts of variants, I contrast
variants in Harper's Bazar with the corresponding passages
in
the manuscript. Next, I discuss distinctions between the two American
texts. Then, I cover differences between the Harper book and
Macmillan's Magazine. A section pointing out passages that
were revised more than once in the four versions follows. Drawing upon
these sections for illustrations, the conclusion proves that the American
texts' variants were authored by Hardy; the conclusion also summarizes the
primary findings of the comparison of the four versions, and points out the
signifiance of this study to an understanding of Hardy's art.
This might be the best place to mention in passing the pirated text of
The Woodlanders sold by H. C. Munro & Co., New
York,
April 16, 1887, reprinted by A. L. Burt in 1895, and by Munro again in
1898. I have checked only 1898 and 1895 copies, but I presume that Munro
always used the same plates. If this belief is accurate, Burt's volume is
either a sub-edition or a re-issue of Munro's. This is a tentative ascription,
since there were at least eleven other pirating publishers of The
Woodlanders, but Munro's first edition bears the earliest date of the
pirates. Weber's "Tragedy in Little Hintock," pp. 151-153, contains a
check-list of the pirated — as well as the authorized —
American
printings of The Woodlanders.
The complexity of the American bibliography is increased by the
knowledge that the pirated edition itself comprises a unique text. Both
Macmillan's Magazine and Harper's Bazar
were
raided by the pirating printers, who set up their type from the June-August,
1887, installments of Macmillan's Magazine (Chapters
V-XVIII)
while using Harper's Bazar for the rest of the text. Contrary
to
another general
assumption, then, the pirates did not wait for the English first edition to
arrive in America before setting to work. Since the focus of this study is on
Hardy's habits of revision, the pirated printings were not exhaustively
checked and are not discussed here.
I
Since the proof sheets sent to the American magazine received only
a cursory revision by Hardy in the necessity to meet deadlines, there are
but occasional differences between Harper's Bazar and the
manuscript. Moreover, the variants that mark differences between the
manuscript and Harper's Bazar also mark differences between
the manuscript and the Harper book text. (The only exception to this
generalization reflects Hardy's reluctance to offend Victorian readers: it is
discussed in a more pertinent context in the next section of this paper.)
Hardy, in other words, did not alter in the second set of proofs any of the
revisions he made while working on the first set. Therefore, the variants I
am discussing in this section are in both Harper's Bazar and
the
Harper book text; these variants are common Harper variants when
compared to corresponding passages in the manuscript. Of course, the
Harper book text has additional revisions. The book edition's other
variants, which make it a different text than Harper's Bazar
and
which establish it as the second American version, are covered in the next
section of this article.
Only a few improvements were made in time to be included in
Harper's Bazar. In one of the few additions of humor that
Hardy worked into his Harper's Bazar revisions, Marty South
dryly comments to herself after Giles tells her that his houses are only
life-holdings and will someday become Mrs. Charmond's, "They are going
to keep company with my hair" (p. 38) — the hair she had sold to
a
barber to be made into a wig for the rich and fashionable Mrs. Charmond.
Another improvement, the substitution of "gentleness that might hinder
sufficient self-expression for her own good" for "latent sauciness that might
never actually show itself," more clearly connotes Grace's placid lack of
independence (p. 42).
A more important change than most of those affecting the
Harper's Bazar text removes the manuscript's identification
of
Felice Charmond as "the daughter of an eminent painter" who might, if she
wished, have claimed more merit than falls to people merely possessing
family antiquity. In place of this artistic background, Harper's
Bazar ascribes to her an "adaptable, wandering
weltbürgerliche nature" (p. 69). Also, the manuscript's
reference to Grace as "this gentle young girl" becomes
in
Harper's Bazar "this gentle acquaintance [of Mrs.
Charmond's]" (p. 70).
The last two sentences of the last paragraph of Chapter XXX, which
describes Melbury's indecision to ask Mrs. Charmond to cease flirting with
his son-in-law, first appear in Harper's Bazar:
For days he sat in a moody attitude over the fire, a pitcher of cider
standing on the hearth beside him, and his drinking-horn inverted upon the
top of it. He spent a week and more thus, composing a letter to the chief
offender [Mrs. Charmond], which he would every now and then attempt to
complete and suddenly crumple up in his hand (pp. 267-268).
Another added paragraph portrays Grace hearing "a faint noise among the
trees, resembling a cough" during the first day she is at Giles's cabin after
fleeing from her husband Fitzpiers (p. 369). This addition provides the first
indication that Hardy gives to Grace that Giles is ill, even though she does
not consciously link the sound with disease until the evening of the
following day when she hears Giles deliriously talking to himself in the
rain-soaked shelter he has made for himself out of hurdles and thatches
after giving up his hut to Grace.
The conjunction "if" enters a sentence in Harper's
Bazar
to clarify a set of modifiers: "'Grace!' said Fitzpiers in an indescribable
whisper — more than invocating — if not quite
deprecatory" (p. 386; italics mine). Another minor grammatical correction
that was made first in Harper's Bazar was the substitution of
"it" for "them" in the sentence, "Fitzpiers discerned a gay procession of
people coming down the way, and was not long in perceiving
it
to be a wedding-party" (p. 407).
Also, in the early pages of the manuscript Giles has been called
"Ambrose;" this is corrected to "Giles" twice (pp. 32, 34) although in two
other places the appellation remains "Ambrose" (pp. 13, 30). (In several of
the early pages of both the manuscript and the Harper text, Giles is
correctly named.) The name of the man who keeps a ciderhouse is changed
from "Aaron" to "Farmer" Cawtree (p. 27). Interestingly, other evidences
of the evolution of characters' names are unchanged from the manuscript:
Robert Creedle in one passage retains an earlier Christian name, "Lot" (p.
31); and the first appearance of Suke Damson is as "Suke Sengreen" (p.
176). These remnants of earlier names are corrected in Macmillan's
Magazine.
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!"
III
Besides more concretely establishing differences between the
American book text and the English serial, presentation of a few of the
revisions made for Macmillan's Magazine illustrates the sort
of
thing that Hardy as an artist gave attention to. Touches of humor
concerning the servant Grammer's sale of rights to her corpse to Fitzpiers
for physiological experiments are added to the English serial version by
references to "the head in question" and "heathen's chopper" (pp. 142,
143). An erudite adjective, "accipitrine" (p. 254), is deleted for
Macmillan's Magazine, as are "macaroni" and a technical
architectural term, "double-cyma," in references to Fitzpiers (p. 120).
Redundancies are taken out: in the American texts, Fitzpiers describes his
youthful love for Felice as "a colossal passion in posse; a
giant
in embryo;" in Macmillan's Magazine he terms it "a colossal
passion in embryo" (p. 227). A word in Hardy's manuscript which
Mowbray Morris, the
editor of Macmillan's Magazine, had not liked,
"horizontality,"[5] was left
in the proof sheets bound for America, but
Macmillan's
Magazine does not contain it. Also, in the Harper text as in the
manuscript Mrs. Charmond had always been rich, while in
Macmillan's Magazine she evidently married her husband for
his money; the English version thereby makes more understandable the
intensity of her interest in her frustrated youthful affection for Fitzpiers.
This change in Mrs. Charmond's character occurs through two revisions:
Fitzpiers' statement that "you have grown rich" had been in the American
texts "You are still rich" (p. 227); and Felice says that her mother had
prevented a lasting acquaintance with Fitzpiers, in the American texts
because "she knew my disposition," in
Macmillan's Magazine
because "she knew my face was my only fortune" (p. 226).
One interesting category of variants, certain manuscript passages that
were published in America but not in Macmillan's Magazine,
implies that the American text represents to a certain degree Hardy's
intentions more fully than does the English serial. But the likely explanation
for this fact is entirely non-aesthetic; the editors of Macmillan's
Magazine were forced to excise several passages in order to fit
Hardy's copy into available space in their magazine. Proof of this assertion
is circumstantial: the eighth, ninth, and twelfth monthly portions in
Macmillan's Magazine, from which the following material
was
deleted, end flush on the bottom of the last page given to the particular
month's serial. A 250-word-long passage describing a meeting in church
between Fitzpiers and Mrs. Charmond early in their affair is in the
American text (p. 260), as are the following italicized passages describing
Mrs. Charmond's haste and emotion in returning home after her
trip to Melbury's on the night of Fitzpiers' accident:
Once outside Melbury's gates, Mrs. Charmond ran with all her speed
to the Manor House, without stopping or turning her head, and
splitting her thin boots in her haste. She entered her own dwelling,
as she had emerged from it, by the drawing-room window. In other
circumstances she would have felt some timidity at undertaking such an
unpremeditated ["unprecedented" in the manuscript] excursion
alone; but her anxiety for another had cast out her fear for
herself.
Everything in her drawing-room was just as she had left
it — the candles still burning, the casement closed, and
["and" is not in the manuscript] the shutters gently pulled to, so as
to
hide the state of the window from the cursory glance of a servant entering
the apartment. She had been gone about three-quarters of an hour
by
the clock, . . (p. 317).
Also contained in the manuscript and the American texts of The
Woodlanders, though not in the English serial, are Grace's wish that
either she or Marty had been Giles's wife "for a little while, and given the
world a copy of him who was so valuable in their eyes" (p. 404),
a long sentence commenting upon Fitzpiers' "marvellous escape from being
dragged into the inquiry" following Mrs. Charmond's death (p. 404), and
Tim Tangs's exclamation at finding the man-trap (p. 423). Of these
deletions from the manuscript and American readings from
Macmillan's Magazine, the last two were reinstated into the
English text in the English first edition [text number 5 of the list at the
beginning of this paper].
IV
In addition to the passages already cited, which undergo only one
alteration, a relatively sizable number of passages with multiple variants
offer further evidence of what I have asserted about Hardy's creative
methods; that is, they represent his perpetual desire to improve upon what
he had once done. After one or more readings, during which he would
make a number of changes, he sent each of the two sets of advance proofs
to America. Then he would proofread again for the English serial, making
new changes and rechanging passages already altered in the America-bound
sheets. There are several of these "double-variants" which indicate Hardy's
tentative, experimental approach to revision. For the purpose of more
clearly distinguishing between the two American texts, I discuss in turn the
passages that were first affected in the Harper's Bazar text
and
then those whose first alteration occurs in the Harper book text.
The variants in Harper's Bazar which are mentioned
below remain in the Harper book, as did those mentioned in Section I of
this article; i.e., they receive their second revision in Macmillan's
Magazine. In the manuscript, nature has "a curious perversity," in
the Harper text "a serious apparent perversity," and in Macmillan's
Magazine "an apparent perversity" (p. 136). In the manuscript,
Fitzpiers "went to the door" to listen to Melbury's men talk about Mrs.
Charmond's fretfulness, in the Harper text he "half opened the casement,"
and in Macmillan's Magazine he "half opened the window"
(p.
298). An unconsciously half-humorous image in the manuscript, presenting
Melbury "drawing the skin of his face together" before he whips away his
arm from Fitzpiers' waist at hearing his son-in-law's drunken confessions
of indifference to his wife, evolves into a slightly more realizable image in
the Harper text, "the skin of his face compressed" (p. 307). Still,
the omission of the description altogether for Macmillan's
Magazine is probably to be preferred, since neither image can be
readily pictured by the reader.
The Harper book text also contains textual phenomena showing that
Hardy "tested" revisions, altering or rejecting initial revisions. In the
following discussion, it is understood that the manuscript reading is also in
Harper's Bazar — that is, that the Harper book text
alone contains the American variant. Again, the second revision is in
Macmillan's Magazine. These revisions, while fairly
numerous,
are minor. They include both additions to the text and revisions of extant
passages. For example, to the Harper book text is added a Shakespearean
allusion, "like Horatio," which in
Macmillan's Magazine is
revised further to "like Hamlet's friend" (p. 264). An animistic description
added in the second set of proof sheets about "funereal trees" singing dirges
occurs in a different context in
Macmillan's Magazine than
it
had in the Harper book text, and it also acquires a slightly different
wording in the English serial. In the Harper book the passage is: "Deep
darkness circled her about,
the funereal trees rocked and chanted
their
diriges and placebos around her and she [Grace] did not know which
way to go" (p. 293; italics mine). Feeling perhaps that "placebos" was too
esoterically ironic, Hardy deleted the ingratiating
quality of the sound of wind in the trees for
Macmillan's
Magazine, and corrected the spelling of "dirges:" "Mrs. Charmond's
furs consoled Grace's cold face; and each one's body, as she breathed,
alternately heaved against that of her companion; while the funereal trees
rocked, and chanted dirges unceasingly" (p. 292). Plants crushed by the
wheels of Melbury and Grace's gig are "strange" in the manuscript,
"strange and ordinary" in the Harper book, and "strange and common" in
Macmillan's Magazine (p. 164). In the manuscript Melbury
tells
Grace that if she marries Fitzpiers she will have "a blithe romantical life;"
in the Harper book it is "a high intellectual life," and in
Macmillan's
Magazine "a high, perusing life" (p. 192). Mrs. Charmond's noble
spirit is subject to "fierce assaults of introspection" in the manuscript, to
"fierce periods of stress and storm" in the Harper book, and to "fierce
periods of high-tide and storm" in
Macmillan's Magazine
(p. 281). Giles "said" in the manuscript, "said . . . within himself" in the
Harper book, and "said . . . to himself" in
Macmillan's
Magazine (p. 350). In order to prevent her from realizing the
sacrifice he is making by sleeping outside while giving her his hut, Giles
hides from Grace his "pallor" in the manuscript, his "color" in the Harper
book, and his "sickliness" in
Macmillan's Magazine (p.
367).
V
To discuss all of the Harper's Bazar and Harper book
variants in detail would only bury the basic issues in an accumulation of
individual words and short phrases. The striking thing is not that two
authorized American versions have gone so long unnoted, but that Hardy
would make the effort each month to read consecutively each of the two
sets of advance proofs to be sent to his American publisher and nonetheless
content himself with making only picayune revisions. The
American texts reveal no trend in either revision. It would seem, then, that
Hardy was not interested in shaping or was not able to shape his overall
creative vision until the proofs of the entire novel were in his hands, which
situation naturally was not possible at this time because the serialization of
The Woodlanders began before Hardy had finished writing
the
novel.
There is no reason to give credence to a natural suspicion, that
someone in America may have written the significant variant passages in the
two Harper texts. The variants in both Harper's Bazar and the
Harper book are logical middle stages in the evolution of the affected
passages from the manuscript to the Macmillan's Magazine
text.
This generalization holds true even though a few revisions do not fit into
the scheme of progressive revision discussed in this article but follow an
"alternate text" (1, 3; 2, 4) pattern. An example of an "alternate text"
pattern is Melbury's reference to his second wife as Grace's "mother-law"
in the manuscript (1) and the Harper book (3), but as Grace's
"mother-in-law" in Harper's Bazar (2) and Macmillan's
Magazine (4) (p. 185). Timothy, one of Melbury's workmen, uses
the phrase "sole of his foot" in the manuscript and the Harper book, "sole
of his boot" in Harper's Bazar and "sole of his boots" in
Macmillan's
Magazine (p. 255). An occasional variant in Harper's
Bazar is a relative pronoun which clarifies an otherwise confusing
sentence — a sentence that is published in the Harper book as Hardy
originally wrote it. But these exceptions are minor, and were probably
made either by Harper's Bazar proofreaders or by Hardy
himself, who omitted to transfer the revisions to the second set of proofs,
or — as in the case of "sole of his boot" — may have retained
the
manuscript reading in the second set of proofs and made a different revision
in the proof sheets meant for Macmillan's Magazine. In the
face
of the preponderant evidence for progressive revision of the proof sheets
destined for Harper's Bazar, the Harper book, and
Macmillan's Magazine, these atypical variants are important
only because they offer further evidence that the two American versions
were set up from different copy. Certainly, the double variants referred to
in Section IV of this
paper demonstrate prima facie that a dissatisfied mind is
striving
consistently over a number of readings to achieve particular effects.
Moreover, the longest addition, that describing Mrs. Charmond's artificial
manner in receiving Melbury, is written in a style not unlike Hardy's
frequent ponderosity in the setting of scene and description of motive. And
so, even had Hardy given the Harper publishing house permission to alter
passages of The Woodlanders as he had
Atlantic
magazine to alter those of Two on a Tower,[6] it is unlikely that any of the
important
passages discussed here were written by someone in America. The
improbability is confirmed by the inclusion of several of these passages in
Macmillan's Magazine months before the publication of the
American first edition.
To summarize the key findings of this investigation, then: In view of
the number and types of differences among the four earliest versions of
The Woodlanders, it is evident that Hardy sent in monthly
installments one set of advance proof sheets to America for use by
Harper's Bazar after he had made only a comparatively few
revisions. These revisions were copied onto another set of proof sheets.
This second set was sent to America after more revisions were made, and
this set provided copy for the Harper book text. The absence of trends in
the Harper book revisions indicates that this second set of proofs was also
mailed in installments, probably within a few days after the installments of
the first set; this indication is supported by noting that the main purpose of
the second set was precautionary, against loss of the first set. In revising
still a third set of proofs, to be returned to Macmillan's
Magazine, Hardy altered or deleted some of the revisions
made in the two sets of advance proofs sent to America in addition to
making many completely new revisions.
These findings add impetus to the contemporary scholarly view that
Hardy was a conscientious craftsman, concerned that his product be as good
as he could make it.[7] Obviously, the
former view, that Hardy's awkward prose style can be attributed to his
giving less than his best efforts because of his contempt for fiction when
compared to poetry, is completely mistaken. Hardy was content with his
work only after numerous rereadings and revisions that would have
stultified the creativeness of a less dedicated writer. Indeed, Hardy was an
inveterate reviser, given to making basically nit-picking revisions as well
as — if not more than — to making significant changes. That
he paid
little attention to subsequent American printings of The
Woodlanders does not negate this view, although he obviously held
a less vigilant attitude toward his American texts once he had published
them than toward his English texts, which he continued to revise
intensively until 1912.[8]
Notes