University of Virginia Library

II

Anderson's work on the novel in Ohio and then in Chicago in 1913 does not complete the history of its composition. His letters indicate that he reworked parts of the novel, and predicated its eventual publication, at least twice before the end of the decade. For example, a 1916 letter to his good friend, Marietta Finley, shows him still considering some major revisions in the text. This letter also recalls the essential sexual ambiguity of Mary Cochran, the uncertainty whether Mary has achieved sexual satisfaction with Sylvester along with her marriage to him and her new-found success in the working world:

That the extant typescripts, in spite of this letter, retain Mary's marriage to Sylvester suggests four possibilities: that Anderson decided to make the revision but simply never wrote it in; that he made the revision in the novel but that any portions of text containing it were discarded or lost; that he considered, but later rejected, this change in the narrative; or that he perhaps transformed a more conventional marriage in an earlier manuscript into a less conventional one involving separate residences in the extant typescripts. In any case, the letter shows that Mary Cochran was still very much in Anderson's plans in late 1916.

No references to this novel can be found in the Newberry outgoing letters for the following year, 1917—a year in which Anderson continued his Chicago friendships, sought publication of more stories and novels, and still wrote advertising copy for a living. But early in 1918 he writes Van

Wyck Brooks that, "When I came to look at my novel Mary Cochran, written several years ago, it didn't suit me. I shall hold it back for more work" (Jones and Rideout, Letters, p. 31: ? early April, 1918). Not until over a year later, however, do Anderson's letters again record his interest in this project. To his publisher, Ben Huebsch, he reports in the late summer of 1919, "About the novel. When I got in to it I found I wanted to rewrite it almost entirely. It is a book I wrote several years ago and it seems to me it can be very greatly improved. I will keep at it and hope I will have it ready for you to look at shortly after the first of the year" (Newberry outgoing, 23 Aug. 1919). Apparently Anderson did keep at the rewriting, remarking to Huebsch in mid-November that, "One of these days I shall be able to give you the Mary Cochran book. It has tantilized me a good deal but is coming clear now. In its final form it will be like Winesburg, a group of tales woven about the life of one person but each tale will be longer and more closely related to the developement of the central caracter" (Newberry outgoing, 12 Nov. 1919). Of course, this intention to rework and finally to publish Mary Cochran conflicts with the 1922 letter to Hansen in which he states that he never returned to work on the novel after the apprentice writing period in Ohio. But in late 1919, satisfied with his recently published Winesburg, he felt that he had found his own prose form and perhaps thought that he could publish another collection of interrelated short stories on the heels of Winesburg, Ohio. There was no need, in 1919, to obscure the genesis of the novel for he did not yet consider the project a failure.

Later in the winter of 1919 he repeats his desire for an integrated noveltale collection. To Waldo Frank he writes, "Out of my necessity I am throwing the Mary Cochran book into the Winesburg form, half individual tales, half long novel form. It enables me to go at each tale seperately, perhaps when I am ready to do it at one long sitting. My life now is too broken up for the long sustained thing. Every few days I must go wade in mud, in the filth of money making" (Newberry outgoing, ca. Dec. 1919). Three additional late 1919 letters also refer to his work on the book. He says to Paul Rosen-feld, his good friend, "I have gone back into my Mary Cochran book, written a long time ago and have been trying to work on it when I can" (Newberry outgoing, ca. winter, 1919). To Frank he writes, "Also I write the Mary Cochran stories," and in another letter to Frank that, "Still I work again. I am casting Mary Cochran into real form." But in the final 1919 letter to Waldo Frank, Anderson's frustration with the revision project begins to show: "The tales that are to make the Mary Cochran book are waiting like tired people on the doorstep of the house of my mind. They are unclothed. I need to be a tailor and make warm clothes of words for them" (Newberry outgoing, all three letters to Frank ca. Dec. 1919).

Sick with influenza, dispirited by his advertising routine, and probably depressed by his standstill on Mary Cochran, Anderson left Chicago in January of 1920 for a working vacation in Mobile and then Fairhope, Alabama. Remaining there until late spring, he probably made one last effort

to put the novel together. In an undated letter from Fairhope, though one probably written just a few days before his May departure,[9] he notes that he is "having great fun with my new book Many Marriages and poor Mary C is shoved away again" (Newberry Reserved, Fairhope 1920). If Anderson had been able to work on Mary Cochran during his stay in Alabama, now he was once again postponing its completion. But some convincing evidence suggests that he probably shelved the novel before this last month of his Alabama visit, deciding instead to fashion from it several independent short stories or perhaps a collection. In fact, before Anderson even left the South, the May, 1920 issue of the Dial was coming out with his "The Door of the Trap," a short story with Mary Cochran as its protagonist.

In this story, one of Mary's college professors frightens her with an unexpected embrace while she is visiting his home for dinner. Though the names of the professor and the college town are different, the plot of the story resembles that of the missing portion of the Newberry typescript mentioned earlier in this essay, judging by scattered allusions to the incident in extant parts of the typescript. And it seems possible, therefore, that in 1920 Anderson may have removed pages from his aging typescript for use as starter copy for the story that came to be published in the Dial. Though the correspondence between "The Door of the Trap" and the Newberry typescript is speculative, that between the typescript and a second published story is less so. Over a year after the first story's appearance, Anderson published "Unlighted Lamps" in the July, 1921 issue of Smart Set, only a few months before the inclusion of both stories in the collection The Triumph of the Egg. Whereas "The Door of the Trap" may account for part of a missing chapter in the Newberry typescript, "Unlighted Lamps" closely parallels the extant first chapter of the novel typescript. A portion of this first chapter, in fact, is carried over verbatim into the published story.[10]

The probable extraction of these two stories from Mary Cochran provides substantial evidence that Anderson had given up trying to form either a novel or a Winesburg-like collection from the typescript by 1921. Perhaps his decision to insert only a few Mary Cochran stories into an otherwise unrelated collection of stories came in December of 1920, when he wrote Huebsch that, "I've an idea I would like to publish another book of short stories and I have some good ones. I'll likely come down in January and we'll talk this over" (Newberry outgoing, 14 Dec. 1920). For by March he was able to write that "the new book is ready to close" (Newberry Reserved, Mar. 1921 to Finley), and that it would be entitled The Triumph of the Egg (Newberry outgoing, 21 Mar. 1921 to Huebsch). In April, however, Anderson

seemed to favor a title change and wrote that, "The new book has gone to the publisher. I shall call it 'Unlighted Lamps'" (Newberry Reserved, April 1921 to Finley). Even at this late date he seemed reluctant to relegate Mary Cochran to death by extraction, and wanted to label an entire short story collection by one of its only two Mary Cochran stories.

Only when Anderson left for Europe in June—on another of his great escapes from the business world—did he probably bid farewell to the now ten to twelve-year-old novel. For after the publication later that summer of "Unlighted Lamps" and "The Door of the Trap" in the fifteen-story collection which came to be titled, after all, The Triumph of the Egg, no Anderson publication in the author's lifetime ever again included any portion of the Mary Cochran story. This novel, begun in the Ohio apprentice-writing years, crafted in 1913 under the influence of Dell and the Colony, reworked partially in 1916 and 1919, and then dismantled in part in the early twenties prior to the publication of Triumph, would add to the long list of Sherwood Anderson's unpublished novels. But because he never destroyed the novel, as he had claimed to in his 1922 letter to Harry Hansen, Anderson left at least partly unanswered his final disposition toward the work.