The Manuscript "Nethermere II": Paper
Analysis
My analysis of "Nethermere II" accounted for the following features:
the paper make, whether or not the tear marks down one side of a page or
a torn watermark could be matched with that of another page elsewhere in
a quire, evidence of stapling to indicate whether bound or unbound quires
were used, the scribal style of the page and quire numbers, the principal
scribe on each page, and the layers of revision in different scribal styles and
ink types.
Page and quire numbers proved to be very unreliable as scribal
indicators because even when characteristic features of a sequence of
numbers could be listed, they could not be linked to any particular person.
There was no apparent consistency to the way a given scribe would write
his or her numbers. The numbers must, however, have been written quite
late in the history of the manuscript, because although there are sections
transferred from earlier drafts there are no sequences of re-numbered pages.
It appears that in early drafts of the novel Lawrence did not number
individual pages as he wrote them. The stapled and folded quires were
simply numbered with roman numerals. A similar procedure was followed
for Lawrence's 1909 play A Collier's Friday Night. The
pages
of this manuscript are unnumbered and grouped entirely by folded
sections.[10] This system may also be
seen in the surviving pages from "Laetitia I" and "Laetitia II" (see
WP
328). When Lawrence realised the extent of his later revisions to the novel
he must have decided to number each page; a page which needed copying
out could then be easily identified by its number, torn out and thrown away,
and the new page inserted into the quire at the correct location. Bruce
Steele and Helen Baron show that Lawrence continued to use this system
for The Trespasser and Sons and Lovers. The
situation is complicated with The White Peacock, however,
by
the other people who helped Lawrence copy pages, as will be explained
later.
I also paid attention to the content of the revisions; in both versions
of "Laetitia", for example, George's family was named "Worthington".
This name may be found corrected to "Saxton" in several places of
"Nethermere I", which suggests that these pages belong to an earlier period
of composition than other sections of the manuscript where Worthington is
never used, but Saxton occurs instead in the body of the text. It is not
known exactly when Lawrence decided to change the name from
Worthington to Saxton. Since Holt and Mason's pages always use Saxton,
the change must have occurred before about mid-September 1909, the
earliest probable date at which they became involved in the revision
process.
Six makes of paper were identified in the manuscript and labelled
from A to F. Their details are listed in Table 2 in the Appendix. There are
no noticeable differences in their colour, see-through and finishing features.
All the
lines are printed front and back and there are no ruled left margins. Paper
A and paper F are easy to distinguish at first because their top margins
slope so differently. The slope of paper F pages, however, gradually
decreases through Part III, owing to manufacturing variation, until the last
pages are almost indistinguishable from paper A. The different layers of
revision between Holt's A and Lawrence's Part III pages indicate,
nevertheless, that papers A and F do belong to different periods of
composition.
Table 1 shows the chronological development of the manuscript and
identifies its various components by paper type, principal scribe and layers
of revision. The page numbers refer to the manuscript (MS)
and
the Cambridge Edition of The White Peacock
(WP).
Dotted lines connecting the column for September-October 1909 to the
column for February-April 1910 indicate those pages which were copied by
Agnes Mason and cannot be firmly dated. Agnes Holt and Mason had very
distinctive handwritings and made no revision marks to the manuscript.
Corke's handwriting was noticeably rounded and she always used dark
blue-black ink and a thick nib. Lawrence made revisions in three different
styles: in pencil, in black ink with a fine nib (which I call the 'thin' style),
and in a black ink written with a markedly thicker nib (which I call the
'thick' style).
In the remainder of this paper I justify in detail the datings made in
Table 1. My evidence relies on two assumptions; firstly, that it is a strong
possibility that Lawrence would use only one particular paper type over a
given period; secondly, that revisions of a particular 'style' were all made
at the same time. Some pages have as many as four levels of revision, but
the styles may easily be distinguished.
