University of Virginia Library

Tracking Lawrence's Fox: an Account of its Composition, Evolution, and Publication
by
Judith G. Ruderman

Since its first public appearance in 1922, D. H. Lawrence's novella The Fox has encountered contradictory reactions. F. R. Leavis praises the work for "the unambiguous clarity with which it presents its theme";[1] but most critics seem to agree with the assessment of the anonymous reviewer in the Spectator, who, after recounting the plot of The Fox, admitted that "actually the story is very strange."[2] In fact, there is much disagreement about the author's intentions and the story's meaning, not to mention the impact of the "message" on the reader.[3] The differences of opinion about The Fox point up its ambiguities and suggest the need for further discussion, not only because The Fox is an important work in its own right, but also because it contains in miniature all the concerns and contradictions that mark Lawrence's third writing phase, which is characterized by the ideal of leadership. An accounting of the variations in The Fox from its genesis as a simple short story through its growth into a complex novella provides an accurate textual basis for critical assessment of the philosophical turn that Lawrence's art was taking in the formative stages of his leadership period.

Lawrence wrote the first version of The Fox in Derbyshire in late autumn 1918, after having discussed his plans for the story with Katherine Mansfield in London during an October visit. On 21 November he noted cryptically, at the end of a long letter to this friend, "I've not done 'The Fox' yet."[4] Within three weeks he had finished "the fox story—rather odd and amusing" (CL, I, 568), and he sent Miss Mansfield the story to read and pass along to their agent, J. B. Pinker. This 1918 Fox, a twenty-two page unpublished draft, is now in the George Lazarus collection in England, but it was made

available to the public in 1959 by Harry T. Moore in A D. H. Lawrence Miscellany.[5]

The second version of The Fox was produced in Berkshire on 10 July 1919. Lawrence wrote to Pinker that "the letter about shortening the story, with the enclosure from Vivian Carter [journalist and editor of the Bystander, a popular magazine, from 1908-1916] came yesterday. Why it should be so many days behind I don't know. I would rather do the cutting myself"; a second letter, also dated 10 July, states, "I send The Fox by return. I wish I could have cut more—but I simply can't, without mutilating the story."[6] No manuscript or typescript of this second, revised version appears to be extant. The story appeared in Hutchinson's Story Magazine (Vol. iii., No. 17, pp. 477-490) for November 1920,[7] the same month that Lawrence wrote to Martin Secker from Sicily to "please get me a copy of Hutchinson's Story Magazine, published October 8th [Lawrence had gotten the date wrong: the notation October 8, 1920, on the proof sheets probably signifies the day on which he had made his corrections], and containing a story of mine 'The Fox.' I know nothing of this magazine. Please try and send me the copy." He received the magazine some time between 13 December 1920 and 14 January 1921;[8] yet only eleven months later he mistakenly informed his new British agent, Curtis Brown, that the story had been published in Nash's Magazine (CL, II, 680). Brian Finney discovered the Hutchinson's Fox and published word of its existence in a brief 1972 note;[9] he is the sole exception to the fact that Lawrence's "forgetfulness" and the unavailability of the correct journal have combined to send the second version of The Fox into oblivion so far as critics of the story are concerned. As a result of Hutchinson's being over-looked, misconceptions about Lawrence's intentions and achievement in the final, expanded version have flowered.[10]

At first glance, the version of The Fox that appeared in Hutchinson's Story Magazine seems little different from the Lazarus manuscript. Brian Finney notes that "out of a story of some 9,000-9,500 words, Lawrence cut only about 650 words and altered the wording of a few more sentences." The first paragraph of the story exemplifies the obvious and least important kind of change that Lawrence made when cutting the piece for magazine publication: in Lazarus, March and Banford were going to rear chickens, make a living by poultry, and add to this by keeping a cow, and raising one or two young beast[s]. Unfortunately things did not turn out well" (L, p. 1); in Hutchinson's they simply "were going to rear chickens, keep a cow, and raise one or two young beasts" (H, p. 477).

On at least six occasions, however, Hutchinson's has expanded Lazarus, and the significant additions have reference to the fox. For example, the fox in March's dream is "very yellow and bright, like corn or like fire" (H, p. 485), rather than just "very yellow and bright, like corn" (L, p. 16). Since the Hutchinson's version omits at least two references to Grenfel's fiery quality —"And again he burned"; "The great nerves in his thighs and at the base of his spine seemed to burn like live wire" (L, p. 19)—Lawrence probably inserted the succinct phrase "or like fire" in order to retain that important element in the story. Other, similar additions seem also to result from Lawrence's effort to restore to his work the power and significance of the fox that his deletions of whole sentences or even paragraphs from the first draft had tended to diminish.

Minor word variants on the order of Banford's "quick" interest (H, p. 484) instead of her "perky" interest (L, p. 12) make no real contribution to the story's meaning or development. But other changes result in character growth for Ellen March and Henry Grenfel. The alterations concerning March create a stronger woman, one who still capitulates to Grenfel, but not quite so mindlessly. March's feeling about the marauding fox is expressed very differently in the first and second versions: in the Lazarus manuscript "She did not so much think of him: she was possessed by him" (L, p. 5); in Hutchinson's "She was possessed by a desire to defeat him—to outmatch him" (H, p. 478). Her resistance to the fox carries over into her relationship with Grenfel. In the proposal scene, the word lost rocks in March as if in "dark waves" (H, p. 488), not "a narcotic dream" (L, p. 20). At the close of the story, March's "wickedness," which had seemed to Banford only "secret" in the first version (L, p. 22), now seems "cunning" (H, p. 490); moreover,

Lawrence omits the second-to-last paragraph, about March's living in a dream world of the fox. As March becomes stronger, so too does Grenfel, in the sense of being more hard-hearted and sure of himself. He makes a confident prediction to March—"Tomorrow we shall be all right!" (H, p. 490)—rather than a simple declaration: "Tomorrow we shall be married" (L, p. 22). And where the Lazarus manuscript has Grenfel suffering because he has to leave March for awhile, Hutchinson's says that "it is doubtful if he suffered in going."

Lawrence revised The Fox again in November 1921, when he was living in Taormina, Sicily, and preparing to leave Europe in search of the ideal society he called Rananim. He had in his possession at that time the 1918 version of The Fox that he had requested and received from Pinker a month after severance of their business relationship in January 1920;[11] he also had the copy of Hutchinson's Story Magazine that Secker had sent him almost one year later. Between October 1921 and January 1922 Lawrence expanded his short stories "The Mortal Coil" and "The Thimble" (also requested from Pinker) into The Captain's Doll and The Ladybird, which he intended for publication with a new version of The Fox in a volume of novellas. On 16 November 1921 he wrote to a friend in Ceylon, who was importuning him to visit there, "I have put a long tail to 'The Fox,' which was a bobbed short story. Now he careers with a strange and fiery brush. I hope you will read him some time, because then you will see that I am not really drawn Buddhawards, but west" (CL, II, 678). This Taormina Fox, complete with "tail," is now owned by the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas in Austin.[12]

The typescript returned by Pinker became the first thirty pages of the sixty-eight page Taormina manuscript;[13] by and large these typed pages correspond to the Lazarus manuscript. There is no knowing who made the typescript, but internal evidence suggests someone other than Lawrence. One of the typist's mistakes reveals the way in which people ancillary to the creative process can leave their marks on an author's work. In the first draft of The Fox, Lawrence writes the "when March saw the dark crests of the pine trees against the blond sky, again her heart beat to the fox, the fox" (L, p. 5). The Hutchinson's version, in accordance with the galley sheets, reads, "When she saw the dark crests of the pine-trees against the bland sky, her heart beat thick" (H, p. 479). The Taormina typescript page reproduces

the Lazarus sentence in all respects except one: the pine trees now rise against the "blood" sky. Whoever transcribed these pages from the draft probably mistook the word blond for blood; Lawrence's handwriting, normally quite legible, is not entirely clear on this point. In any case, the Taormina manuscript shows that Lawrence penned in the word red after blood, and all subsequent versions of The Fox have the pine trees rising against the blood-red sky. The image would more logically apply to a sunset, when March had first seen the fox that day, than to a moonlit night—which the word blond describes—when this scene takes place; "blood-red" is also opposite in connotation to the adjective bland, the Hutchinson's choice. Yet the image is symbolically effective in terms of the dichotomy between Grenfel's blood-consciousness and Banford's mental consciousness; the metaphor likening Grenfel to a tree ("And he sat . . . with all the blood burning in his veins, like fire in all the branches and twigs of him" T, p. 53, VP, p. 163); and the bloody death of Banford that occurs when a tree—Lawrence calls it a pine at first, but changes it to a scotch-fir (T, p. 57)—falls on her. Indeed, the image helps The Fox to career "with a strange and fiery brush."

Lawrence made numerous handwritten changes in the typescript and then left off its final page, at the point where Grenfel has March and Banford under his spell. His interlinear markings in the typescript, combined with the substantial "tail" (thirty-eight holograph pages) that he added, change the story's direction by introducing such "western" elements as discord, violence, and murder. The little-known Hutchinson's Story Magazine version of The Fox may well have made a significant contribution to this change in direction.

In the magazine story, as already noted, March shows a certain willfulness completely absent from Lawrence's first conception of her. A study of the prototypes for Lawrence's characters in The Fox [14] suggests that the Hutchinson's depiction of Ellen March matches her real-life counterpart more closely than the Lazarus version does. Violet Monk, a young woman at whose farm the Lawrences occasionally stayed between 1918 and 1919, has been described by her cousin (herself one of the models for Jill Banford) as "belligerent," with a personality that was "a strange mixture of overwhelming conceit and arrogance allied to a kind of meekness and unsureness in direct contradiction."[15] When Lawrence wrote the original (Lazarus) draft, in late autumn 1918, he had had little or no contact with Violet Monk for a seven-month period; but when he revised the story in summer 1919, producing the version that was published in Hutchinson's over a year later, he had been living near Monk and seeing her for over two months. Lawrence's close proximity to the farm-girl, providing him with frequent opportunities for observation, may well have prompted him to alter the personality of Ellen March in "The Fox"—most of these changes were made in July 1919[16] —even

as the exigencies of getting his story published prevented his expanding on these alterations. When he revised the story again, in November 1921, Lawrence had not seen Monk for two years (though they had corresponded, and she had done some typing for him), but he had the Hutchinson's story before him and the freedom to elaborate on its suggestion of truculence in March's personality.

Although Lawrence left untouched the Lazarus rendition of March's feelings of possession by the fox, he penned into the typescript a further note of resistance to Grenfel, the human fox: "Already the fright was in her voice. But she was too much mistress of herself" (T, p. 27, VP, p. 131). In the ensuing proposal scene, the Taormina typescript, following the Lazarus manuscript, reads, "But she knew she was lost" (L, p. 20); Lawrence crosses out "But she knew" and pens in "She felt for a minute" (T, p. 29, VP, p. 132). He also has the word lost rock in March "as if she were dying," to indicate the threat of annhilation that Grenfel poses to her. A comparison of this proposal scene among the three texts shows a gradual evolution from March's unthinking acquiescence to her qualified defiance:

Lazarus, p. 21

• "Say yes."
• "Yes—yes," she murmured slowly. . . .

Hutchinson's, p. 489

• "Say 'yes.'"
• "Yes. Oh, yes—if you like!" she murmured slowly. . . .

Taormina, p. 29

• "Say yes."
• "Oh I can't," she wailed helplessly. . . . [changes from Lazarus in DHL's hand]

Indeed, a primary characteristic of the "tail" that Lawrence added to his story in 1921 is March's continued resistance to, and defiance of, Henry Grenfel. In one of the last paragraphs of the manuscript, in fact, Lawrence first has March "dying with the strain of her own hard wakefulness," and then, reconsidering the adjective, he crosses it out and writes resistant above it (T, p. 67).[17]

Just as the Taormina version of The Fox follows the Hutchinson's lead in the growth of Ellen March, so too it continues the development of Henry Grenfel. In the Lazarus manuscript, Grenfel is a little lost boy; in the Hutchinson's version, he is more sure of himself; and in the Taormina manuscript, Lawrence takes pains to make Grenfel exceedingly foxy: he changes "clap" of laughter (L, p. 14) to "yap" of laughter (T, p. 19, VP, p. 124); Grenfel goes from being "rather confused" about his attraction to March (L, p. 17) to being "rather calm about it" (T, p. 23, VP, p. 128); Lawrence inserts a long section, using the hunting conceit, on how to go about winning the battle between the sexes (T, pp. 26-27, VP, pp. 130-131); he adds that Grenfel gathers himself "silently" together, then changes the adverb to "subtly" (T, p. 27, VP, p. 131); and, of course, the "accidental" death of Banford, added to the story in 1921, epitomizes Grenfel's cunning and acts as a climax to the new, expanded version of The Fox. One variant in particular evidences Grenfel's gradual evolution from lost boy to cunning fox:

Lazarus, p. 19

• And suddenly he wanted to stay here permanently, to have this place for his own. And then the thought entered him like a bullet: Why not marry March? . . . . His mind opened in amazement—then his soul gave an odd little laugh.

Hutchinson's, p. 488

• And suddenly he decided to stay here permanently, to have this place for his own. And then the thought entered him wickedly: Why not marry March? . . . . His mind opened in surprise—then his soul gave an odd little laugh.

Taormina, p. 25

• And he thought to himself, it would be a good thing to have this place for his own. And then the thought entered him shrewdly: Why not marry March? . . . . His mind waited in amazement—it seemed to calculate—and then he smiled curiously to himself, in acquiescence.
• [changes from Lazarus in DHL's hand]

Another manifestation of Grenfel's cunning is found early on, when the women are trying to decide whether public opinion would permit a man to stay on with them. When they defiantly conclude that "we can look after ourselves," Grenfel first says, in the 1918 version, "Of course you can"; but, reconsidering, Lawrence crosses out the you in the Lazarus manuscript and changes it to we, which is how it appears in the Hutchinson's copy (L, p. 15, H, p. 485). The choice of pronoun makes a difference: with we, Grenfel has already assimmilated himself, somewhat ingenuously, into the household and its affairs; with you, Grenfel ingeniously reinforces the women's decision by leaving himself out of the affair—as he will do in the "accident" with Banford. When Lawrence revised again in 1921, he underscored Grenfel's cunning by crossing out the we in the typed sentence and penning in an interlinear you (T, p. 21, VP, p. 126), thereby returning to his very first conception. A little later on, Lawrence changes Grenfel's plea to stay on the farm into a statement of why he cannot possibly stay elsewhere, and once again Lawrence has him ostensibly leaving himself out of the decision: "He put the matter to them" (L, p. 17, H, p. 486) becomes "He left the matter to them" (T, p. 23, VP, p. 128).

The changes in the characterization of Grenfel that underplay his need for security and emphasize his cunning "foxiness" were made between October 1920, when Lawrence corrected the Hutchinson's proofs,[16] and November 1921, when he expanded his story. Until late 1919 Lawrence was especially dependent on the women around him for shelter and sustenance: after his expulsion from Cornwall in autumn 1917, under suspicion as a German spy, Lawrence relied for housing on many people, among them his sister Ada, who leased a cottage for him in Derbyshire at her expense, and Margaret Radford, who lent or rented to him—and then reappropriated or visited at whim—her cottage in Berkshire. Moreover, he was deathly ill with influenza from late 1918 until spring 1919 and desperately needed Frieda's nursing. Exacerbating Lawrence's immediate needs for security was the lifelong dependency on outside support that he had developed in his protracted, often sickly childhood with the domineering Lydia Beardsall Lawrence.

Lawrence's need for mothering seems to have been the common denominator of many business or literary relationships as well. Of Lawrence in his

Croydon years, during which time Mrs. Lawrence died, Ford Madox Ford writes, "I cannot say that I liked Lawrence much. . . . He had so much need of moral support to take the place of his mother's influence that he kept one in a constant state of solicitude. He claimed moral support imperiously—and physical care too."[18] But in November 1919 Lawrence took off for Sicily, leaving England behind and with it, he thought, his past. Shortly afterward he decided to take business matters in his own hands: in January 1920 he broke with J. B. Pinker and Pinker's "grinning patronage" (CL, I, 544). Lawrence explained the break to his American publisher Ben Huebsch: "I want to act now for myself. And I must be clear and sure about everything. I don't like this vague, half-friendly, in-the-air sort of business. It leaves me irritated and dependent" (CL, I, 613). Yet Lawrence was still dependent on publishers, and he soon complained to Huebsch that Huebsch left him "in the same vague and airy cast as all the rest: very friendly, but never telling me anything" (CL, I, 618). Recognizing Lawrence's extreme touchiness on the subject, a friend advised a publisher's agent that "if you don't want to lose Lawrence's friendship, you must be very careful never to let him guess that you are doing anything for him."[19]

When Lawrence corrected the Hutchinson's galleys in October 1920, and expanded The Fox in November 1921, he may have played down Henry Grenfel's need for security because he felt more confident in his ability to do for himself, in both the domestic and the literary realms. Or perhaps he wished to cover up some nagging doubts about himself, especially after cutting his ties to home and the security it represented. Henry Grenfel may have become more like a fox because his creator felt increasingly like a wild and reckless creature, flouting society and fending for himself.

In subtle counterpoint to Grenfel's increasing foxiness is a new element of qualification regarding his capture of Ellen March: Lawrence's creation of a more assertive March as well as a more determined Grenfel results in a stand-off battle between the two. Grenfel had gone from seeming only "cocky" in the first version of the story (L, p. 22) to seeming "triumphant" in the second (H, p. 490). But Lawrence rejected this direction for his novella, deleting the many references to Grenfel's success with March and inserting other, more tentative sentiments in their stead. Thus, where Grenfel had felt "a curious elate triumph" when he looked into March's eyes (L, p. 19, H, p. 488), he feels only "a curious elate excitement" in the Taormina manuscript (T, p. 25, VP, p. 129). The proposal scene is altered accordingly:

Lazarus, pp. 20-21

• "I want you—you see—that's why—" he proceeded, soft and slow. He had achieved his work. . . . She was in his power. He stepped forward and put his arm round her. [Hutchinson's version essentially the same]

Taormina, p. 29

• "I want to marry you, you see. Why shouldn't I?" he proceeded, soft and rapid. He waited for her to answer. In the dusk he saw her almost phosphorescent. . . . She seemed to be in his power. But he waited, watchful. He dared not yet touch her. [changes from Lazarus in DHL's hand]

It is just after the proposal scene, which comes near the end of the Lazarus and Hutchinson's versions, when Lawrence apparently discarded the one remaining page of typescript and continued the story in his own hand: he must have decided that it was foolish for him to do any more extensive revision, since the original ending—in which the women are completely dominated by Grenfel—was now totally inappropriate and required complete replacement.

Unlike the characters of Grenfel and March, which show development between the Lazarus and Hutchinson's versions of The Fox, the character of Jill Banford changes significantly only in the expanded version of the story. In a sense Banford is the expanded version, for the "tail" is concerned with her influence on March and with Grenfel's attempts to fight that influence. Banford's role in the novella is as ambiguous as it is prominent, for Lawrence was very careful to make her a rather sympathetic figure even as Grenfel perceived her to be a threat to his existence. In the Lazarus manuscript, Lawrence mentions Banford's "natural warmth and kindliness" and her "sisterly attention" to Grenfel (L, p. 15). In the Taormina typescript, after the notation that Ellen March was attending to the fowls, Lawrence adds in his own hand that "then she flew into the village on her bicycle to try and buy food. She was a hospitable soul"; but he crosses out "then she" and inserts the word Banford—it is Banford, not March, who is to be the "hospitable soul" (T, p. 23). Again, when the women decide to let Grenfel stay on for awhile, Lawrence inserts the following exchange between Banford and Grenfel:

On the one hand, Banford's very hospitality is a source of danger to Grenfel, who, like Lawrence, resents "patronage" of any sort;[20] her arranged death is Grenfel's ultimate means of revenge and the mechanism by which he hopes to take control of his life. On the other hand, Lawrence is setting the stage for a betrayal: Banford has graciously opened her home to a stranger, who will then proceed to try to steal from her her most prized possession—a fictional turn of events reminiscent of Lawrence's "theft" of Frieda Weekley from his hospitable French professor. Banford's death, viewed in this light, is the last word in ingratitude. Lawrence's emphasis on Banford's warmth and kindliness does not gainsay her clearly negative qualities—her snobbery, ultra-refinement, and extreme spirituality—but it does cast doubt

on complaints that Lawrence has tried unsuccessfully to weld an evil Banford onto an earlier conception of her character as benign; it casts doubt as well on arguments that Banford's death is a "deed of life," or a moment of self-realization for Grenfel.[21]

The murder of Banford has drawn praise because Lawrence would have it represent the necessary passing away of an entire mode of living. In 1921 Lawrence had grand designs for his story: in the 1918-1919 versions, Bailey Farm is a setting for the action; in the final version, Bailey Farm is a microcosm of England. Grenfel, hunting the fox, feels trapped by all the farmhouses representing England "little and tight" (T, p. 40, VP, p. 146). Bailey Farm epitomizes English sterility, and Jill Banford, owner of the farm, personifies that quality. To reinforce the point that the women's lack of success at breeding their animals indicates their negative attitude toward life, Lawrence penned into the Taormina typescript Banford's remarks about not having a good opinion "of Nature altogether. . . . Don't talk to me about nature," and he added goats and the weather to the list of natural phenomena that Banford says she and March abhor (T, p. 19, VP, p. 124). Even Lawrence's slips of the pen in the holograph portion of the manuscript may reveal the author's desire to highlight the barren existence at Bailey Farm. On numerous occasions, for example, he wrote Marsh instead of March (T, pp. 31-35, 46, 50), sometimes catching his mistake and correcting the s to a c. Perhaps Lawrence had Edward "Eddie" Marsh on his mind, since that name is similar to Ellen "Nellie" March.[22] The first such error occurs in a description of Banford's refined sitting room, which may have put Lawrence in mind of Marsh's own home. Lawrence owed a great deal to Edward Marsh, who had lent him sums of money and published his work in Georgian Poetry; but Lawrence considered Marsh's kindness to him to be patronizing, and much Georgian poetry to be effete, and these are the associations with Bailey Farm that may have led to Lawrence's mistakes. In fact, the very name of the farm gave Lawrence trouble: once he called it Beedle Farm (T, p. 33), another time, Beeley Farm (T, p. 39). Combined into a portmanteau word, Beedle, Beeley, and Bailey almost spell Breadalby, which is Hermione Roddice's country home in Women in Love. The coincidence suggests that Lawrence had it at least in his unconscious mind to model Bailey Farm, in certain key respects, on Hermione's false paradise. Interestingly, the real-life model for Bailey Farm had a name that in and of itself hints at joylessness and death: Grimsbury.

The Taormina version of The Fox, then, shows Lawrence undertaking a more ambitious examination of love and of life than he had first attempted in 1918. If the ending is tentative, and its effect both confusing and unsettling to the reader, it may be because Lawrence, like Grenfel, was in the transitional state of rejecting Europe and reaching out for a better way of

life in some "foreign" place. Grenfel's failure to become lord and master, even after drastic efforts, may reflect one or more aspects of his creator's life: Lawrence's admission of his own needs and weaknesses; his acknowledgment of the power and strength of the women around him; his belief in the necessity for conflict in the love relationship; his emphasis on maintaining one's individuality and uniqueness. The final pages of the Taormina manuscript show an increasing number of minor deletions and alterations, as if Lawrence were finding it harder and harder to express himself precisely. Grenfel's final remark—" 'If only we could go soon,' he said with pain in his voice"—comes at the bottom of a page and Lawrence chooses not to begin a new one: he too is impatient to get on with it . . . to go west, as he said to his friend in Ceylon.

However, the importunate letters from Mabel Dodge Sterne temporarily frightened Lawrence off his westward course; taking off "Buddhawards," for Ceylon, he sent in his place—through his American agent, Robert Mountsier—the new, expanded version of The Fox. The story was accepted by the Dial magazine in New York for the sum of five hundred dollars.[23] It was this magazine's publication of Sea and Sardinia that had convinced Mabel Sterne that Lawrence must come to America to do for New Mexico what he had done for Sardinia, and that had initiated her flurry of letters to him.

Lawrence may well have had his eye on the Dial when he revised The Fox in 1921, for the magazine had already printed his work in seven out of its fifteen previous issues. The Dial had begun its publishing of Lawrence in September 1920, with a seemingly innocuous story about Adolph the pet rabbit that Middleton Murry of the London Athanaeum had nonetheless rejected because of its scatalogical references to Lawrence's own relations with England. Lawrence knew that the avant-garde American journal would not reject his novella out of hand because of its condemnation of English "littleness" or its violent destruction of the character who embodied that quality.

The differences between the two magazines that published The Fox correspond to the differences between the two versions of the story, one a romantic fantasy, the other an exploration of man's relationships to woman and society. Hutchinson's Story Magazine was a glossily-illustrated mass-circulation monthly. It provided captioned drawings to accompany Lawrence's text; interposed between pages of "The Fox" slick photographs of the leading stage beauties of the day ("A pleasing picture of. . . ," "A charming picture of. . . ," "A clever portrait of. . . ."); followed the story with a sentimental poem, by one P. M. Doherty, entitled "Alone"; and subtitled Lawrence's work, "A fine story of a post-war partnership between two modern young women—and the intervention of the inevitable man." The Dial, in contrast, was a "little magazine" of international scope (for example, it published T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land in November 1922), not inhospitable to

lengthy works. It printed Lawrence's story uninterrupted and unembellished by illustrations, and, in general, it favored art work of the line-drawing variety—Picasso's, for example—or reproductions of "primitive" artifacts like the Mayan god Chac-Mool and watercolors by young Indians of Taos (Joost, pp. 67-68).

The Fox ran serially in the Dial from May through August 1922, with many variations from the Taormina typescript. Nicholas Joost and Alvin Sullivan, in their book on Lawrence's association with this journal, offer no explanation for the Dial variants, and neither they nor the curator of the Yale University Library, where the Dial papers are housed, have any further information on the Fox-Dial relationship. But Joost and Sullivan's accounts of the care that the Dial editors exercized with other Lawrence materials over the nine-year period that Lawrence was associated with their journal suggest that the changes were either made or sanctioned by the author himself (Joost, pp. 40, 47, 104-105). Lawrence had had a typescript of the Taormina manuscript made for him by a Mrs. Carmichael in Florence, and he sent this typescript off to Mountsier in America in December 1921 (Tedlock, p. 94), where it made its way to the Dial. In January 1922 he left Europe and traveled to Ceylon, Australia, and points in between during the three months preceding the Dial serialization. Whether Lawrence made alterations on either the typescript or (less likely) the galleys is unknown at this time, for neither document appears to be extant.

Certain of the Dial variations, carried over into all subsequent publications of the story, clearly bear the stamp of Lawrence's approval. In the Dial, unlike the three earlier versions, March and Banford are "near thirty" (D, p. 471, VP, p. 113) rather than "over thirty" (L, p. 1, H, p. 477, T, p. 1), perhaps in an attempt to heighten the credibility of a love affair between March and twenty-year-old Grenfel. That Lawrence intended this change is shown by an interlinear correction in the "tail" of the Taormina manuscript, where Lawrence started to say that Banford was not "much over" thirty, then, reconsidering, he crossed out "much over" and penned in "yet" (T, p. 33, VP, p. 137). In the Lazarus and Taormina manuscripts, "Banford wished to paint curvilinear swans on porcelain. . . . For she was a creature of odd whims and unsatisfied tendencies" (L, pp. 2-3, T, p. 4). In the Dial, Banford's name is replaced by March's, as Lawrence meant it to be, for, further on in the Taormina manuscript, he mentions that the sitting room contains March's handpainted swans (T, p. 31, VP, p. 135). It is, after all, March and not Banford whose "unsatisfied tendencies" are at the heart of the story.

Other Dial variants are problematic. In light of the added stress on Grenfel's cunning in the 1921 version of the story, it seems entirely appropriate that Grenfel's eyes, which were only "wide" and childish in the Taormina manuscript, following Lazarus and Hutchinson's (L, p. 16, H, p. 485, T, p. 23), are "wise" and childish in the Dial (D, p. 485, VP, p. 127); however, this change may perhaps be one of those inevitable accidents of publishing. Another variation occurs when Banford reacts to Grenfel's news about the impending marriage between him and March: in the Taormina manuscript

she says, "I should die with shame" (T, p. 37), but in the Dial she exclaims, "It's absolutely impossible!!" (D, p. 577, VP, p. 142). Since Banford again says "absolutely impossible" at the dénouement of the story—when Grenfel, pretending to be solicitous, warns her that the tree may fall on her (VP, p. 173)—one may surmise that Lawrence intended the deliberate echo to link the two scenes symbolically and thematically.

Three variants occur in the scene where March has put on a dress for the first time, thereby awakening Grenfel's sense of male responsibility toward her. Perhaps in accordance with the Dial's determined efforts to publish "the modern," March wears a "modernly" short skirt (D, p. 79, VP, p. 156) instead of a "moderately" short one (T, p. 48). More important, Banford acts graciously toward Grenfel, who is leaving the next morning, only because she feels "she must be as nice as she could" (D, p. 80, VP, p. 157), not because "she would miss him when he had gone" (T, p. 49). Certainly it would be unreasonable for her to miss the person who has disrupted her household and threatened her authority. Concomitant with Banford's more superficial politeness toward Grenfel is his more profound desire to get rid of her: "He wanted her to go to bed" (D, p. 80, VP, p. 157) rather than "He waited for her to go to bed" (T, p. 49). Grenfel's hatred of Banford occasions further variations. In the Dial, after Grenfel receives March's "Dear Henry" letter he is possessed by one "thing" (i.e., Banford), whereas in the manuscript there had been one "thorn" (T, p. 56, D, p. 186, VP, p. 167). Since the word thorn is used several other times in this paragraph, Lawrence or the Dial editors may simply have decided that there was one thorn too many here. In any case, another change—one that eliminates the same word, and with it, Lawrence's characteristic mode of repetition—occurs after the death of Banford:

Taormina, p. 63

• He knew it, and he was satisfied. Satisfied in his soul and his blood. The thorn was drawn out of his life, he could live again. The thorn was drown out of his bowels.

Dial, p. 193 (VP, p. 174)

• He knew it, that it was so. He knew it in his soul and his blood. The inner necessity of his life was fulfilling itself, it was he who was to live. The thorn was drawn out of his bowels.[24]

A month after the final installment was published in the Dial, Lawrence arrived in North America for what was to be a three-year stay, about half of it in the Taos region of New Mexico. From Taos he negotiated with Martin Secker in London and Thomas Seltzer in New York for publication of his three novellas, The Captain's Doll, The Fox, and The Ladybird, about which he had written Seltzer in January 1922, "[they] will, I think, make a really interesting book—perhaps even a real seller."[25] Seltzer and his wife visited the Lawrences in New Mexico from Christmas day 1922 until 2 January 1923, and on their last day together Lawrence signed a contract for a volume to be called The Captain's Doll. Two weeks later he wrote to Seltzer that, according to Curtis Brown, "Secker is making a fine book of Ladybird, and will bring it out in March. I knew that was what they were up to. Hurry up your printers. If you have proofs of Captain's Doll & Fox, & there is time, let me see proofs. I will send them back at once. But be sure & be ready with the book early in March. That Secker shall not steal a march on us [a fitting, if unintended pun on the plot of The Fox], and leave us stranded in April" (Lacy, p. 56. It should be noted that Lawrence wrote in similar angry terms to Secker about Seltzer).

In early 1923 there occurred a bit of frantic maneuvering with Hearst International, which had paid Lawrence one thousand dollars in September 1922 for magazine rights to The Captain's Doll but had not yet published the story; this delay was holding up publication of the hardcover volumes in both England and America. In February Lawrence returned the Ladybird proofs to Seltzer, and, as Hearst had released rights to The Captain's Doll, he also informed Seltzer and Secker to fix a simultaneous date of publication. Preparing to leave for Mexico, Lawrence instructed Seltzer to "let me have proofs of everything as soon as they come off the press, no matter where I am" (Lacy, p. 73); "Remember to send me proofs of everything" (p. 74). Correspondence with Secker about proofs for the English edition is notably

lacking from Secker's collection of Lawrence's letters to him, which includes no letters between 19 September 1922 and 20 February 1923. We do know that Lawrence never saw the Seltzer galleys of The Fox; for in May 1923 he sent Seltzer a list of corrections from the Captain's Doll volume made by a concerned reader in the Brooklyn Library (Lacy, p. 93) to whom Lawrence had responded, "In excuse, I've had no proofs of the books printed in America except the story 'Ladybird'" (CL, II, 742).

Martin Secker published The Ladybird in London in March 1923 and Thomas Seltzer came out with The Captain's Doll: Three Novelettes in New York the following month—"stranded in April," as Lawrence had feared.[26] In both volumes The Fox was the second story, though the order of the other two stories was reversed. The fact that approximately thirty Dial variants—almost all of the total number—carry over into both texts of The Fox suggests that the Dial was the printer's copy for the Secker and Seltzer editions. There are numerous minor differences between the Seltzer and Secker texts of The Fox, and these differences, combined with the accidents of publishing, account for the variations among the editions in print today.[27] Viking

Press, for instance, publishes two slightly different versions of the novella: The Portable D. H. Lawrence, first issued in 1947 and edited by Diana Trilling, follows the faulty Seltzer text (and is the only British or American edition to do so); Four Short Novels, first issued in 1965, follows the also faulty and probably equally unauthoritative Secker text.

In the burgeoning of critical attention to the Lawrence canon, since the 1950s, The Fox has generally been regarded as a work apart from Lawrence's leadership fiction, concerned with personal relationships rather than with large social and political issues. Yet in The Fox as Lawrence expanded it in 1921, Jill Banford, by virtue of her attempts to expel Grenfel from her domestic domain, exemplifies the England that hounds its foxes—those, like Lawrence, with anti-social tendencies. Moreover, Jill Banford is but one of the many Lawrencian figures who, because of their domineering motherliness, are seen as the enemy, and who come to represent for Lawrence in his leadership period a certain stand on a whole spectrum of social, educational, and political issues. Banford metamorphoses in a later work into the woman who rode away, the epitome of White Consciousness, who becomes, in her turn, Don Ramón's first wife in The Plumed Serpent. All of these women must die for the good of society.

The ambiguities in The Fox regarding the death of Banford, the leadership of Grenfel, and the capitulation of March reflect the conflict between Lawrence's lifelong belief in the necessity for maintaining one's integrity in any relationship and his injunction—developed and promulgated especially during the years between 1917 and 1925—toward the power role of certain strong men. The evolution of The Fox poignantly mirrors Lawrence's own attempts at cutting the bonds to motherhood, home, and society, setting himself free to take charge of his life and to build a better world. That Lawrence himself regarded these attempts as tentative, even unsuccessful, is revealed in a letter he wrote to Murry from Mexico in 1923, when he had begun work on what was to become the crowning achievement of his leadership period, The Plumed Serpent: "I think in the long run perhaps 'The Ladybird' has more the quick of a new thing than the other two stories. 'The Fox' belongs more to the old world" (CL, II, 743).[28]

Notes