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The Final Manuscript: Agnes Mason's Contribution
It is difficult to identify precisely when Agnes Mason did her copying. Owing to the lack of detailed information about her from biographical sources, we have to concentrate on clues offered in the manuscript. Her pages have remarkably few further revisions by Lawrence, which suggests that she may have made her copies late in the revision process. All Mason pages with 'thick' revisions must, however, have been written in 1909. There are a few corrections by Corke, so those copies must have been made before Corke checked that part of the manuscript in March-April 1910. Any pages copied by Mason in Part III of "Nethermere I" would have been thrown away when Lawrence completely rewrote that section. In the following analysis I describe noticeable features of each surviving block of Mason's pages and attempt to draw conclusions about when they were written.
The first page in Mason's hand is on A paper (page 77), and continues on directly after Holt until the end of Chapter 3 on page 82. Mason uses the name Saxton throughout. She did not number the pages, and as the number
Many of Mason's pages are single sheets inserted in a main block of B paper. Judging by her largest contribution (pages 272-326), she appears to have had papers A, C and D all to hand at the same time for these fair copies. In Quire XXIV, pages 275-286 (a twelve-sheet quire) of C paper lie between pages 272-274 and 287-289 of A paper. The tear of page 272 matches page 289, page 274 matches 287 and page 273 matches 288, whilst the cross of a 'T' on page 288 carries over onto the back of page 273 (the quire had not yet been torn into single sheets when she wrote the 'T'). Quire XXV (page 290-305) is all A paper (some tears match). Quire XXVI (page 306-326 plus one blank A page) consists of fourteen pages of A paper split into two groups of seven bracketing a central section of eight D pages.
It is difficult to date the writing of pages 272-326 and to say why they were copied out in the first place. The writing must have occurred before Corke's involvement, since on page 279, for example, Corke changed '[Marie's hair] lies wavily, to coil in her neck' to read 'lies low upon her neck in wavy coils' (WP 107:39). This time Mason did not write the page numbers, as she did with her single sheets. The new page numbers were written by Corke; the ink colour is the same as for her corrections. It seems likely that Lawrence simply gave Mason's pages to Corke to correct and number, although he did give them a final 'thin' revision. There is little revision on these pages, suggesting that Mason copied them at a late stage in the manuscript's evolution. The text had certainly been revised since the E pages of "Laetitia II" because H. G. Wells's novel Tono-Bungay, which Lawrence had not read when he wrote the E pages (see WP 121:17), is mentioned. The plot content of these pages is not, however, sufficiently distinctive to tell whether the material copied by Mason had been largely transferred from "Laetitia II" or consisted of new work written for "Nethermere I". The plot deals with Lettie's birthday/engagement party; George's resentment seems appropriate for the plots of both "Laetitia II" and "Nethermere I", but the fact that Mason copied this large section suggests that Lawrence had heavily revised this scene at some time during or after the writing of "Nethermere I".
Mason's pages 90-91 have no corrections, and the page numbers have the same ink colour as the text, which is clearly different from the surrounding block of B paper in Lawrence's hand (pages 83-116). Mason must have copied out pages 90-91 after Lawrence numbered his B pages, which was some time after he had written the B text; the ink is different, and there are signs that B pages were left out before numbering began. At the bottom of page 146, for example, a sentence once continued onto the next page. During 'thick'
Mason's pages 117-119 and 160 stop short of being full of text, indicating that although she was tidying up Lawrence's B pages, she was obliged to keep to an existing numbering system. Pages 134-135 are unrevised by Corke or Lawrence and, like page 126, are crowded at the bottom, presumably again because Mason was keeping to the numbering system. Page 202 is also crowded at the bottom, and unrevised. Her fair copy stands in dramatic contrast to the following page. Page 203 on B paper is covered with corrections in Lawrence's 'thick' style. For some reason she did not make a fair copy of this page.
Mason's pages 117 and 124 on D paper, and 164 and 167 on A paper, have clear matching tears, and so were probably written at the same time. The slope of the top margins of pages 164 and 167 also confirms that they originally formed one sheet of paper in a quire. Upside down on the reverse side of page 167 Mason began to copy out the text found in full on page 164, but stopped after a few words. She must have realised that she had started her new sheet the wrong way around, by writing in the small bottom margin. The tear patterns of Mason's other A pages (77-82 and 171) are not sufficiently distinctive to allow matching.
Mason's single pages of A, C and D paper are all numbered in a similar style and ink colour. This style and ink are noticeably different from the surrounding B pages written by Lawrence. It may seem probable that Mason's pages were all written after Lawrence numbered his B pages, and before the final revisions by Lawrence and Corke in March-April 1910. This conclusion is supported by an analysis of the revisions on Mason's page 171. Her text is cramped at the bottom, indicating that she was trying to squeeze a fixed amount of revised B material onto the new page. At some time after this Lawrence wrote in pencil on the back of page 170: '"You'll mesh yourself up in a silk of dreams."' (see WP 66:15). Helen Corke copied this correction onto Mason's page 171. Furthermore, page 171 has revisions in Lawrence's 'thick' style, indicating that it was copied in October 1909 and subsequently revised; the same is true of page 117.
The dating of these pages should not, however, be extended to include all of Mason's single sheets, judging from a fragment of "Nethermere I" which Helen Corke tore in half lengthways and used as a bookmark.[15] The fragment is of Type B paper, was once the start of quire 14 and was removed when Agnes Mason copied it out as page 135 of "Nethermere II". This dating is suggested by the levels of revision on the page. There is 'thick' revision and a pencil revision by Lawrence, and a minor blue-black revision by Helen Corke. Mason must therefore have copied out page 135 (which is unrevised) after Corke's involvement in March 1910. The same is therefore possible for Mason's other unrevised pages. It is simply not possible to tell. Mason's pages
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