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L. Bristow
The third compositor, L. Bristow, who set the second largest share of the book, c. 2380 lines or thirteen percent of the whole, made in this extract of 520 lines (or twenty percent of his total share) ten substantive errors, four of which remained unnoticed, and 129 punctuation changes, an average of one every four lines. He made no changes of paragraphing but inserted one dubious substantive correction of MS and omitted one significant comma.
L. Bristow began at a new paragraph on the second lines of MS p. 531 (E1 p. 410), beginning "'There are one or two books in the corner,' said Morel." When he had set the page, which ended the chapter, he probably handed the leaf back to Knowles, so that he could set the last words of the preceding paragraph, which were the top line on this leaf: "over the sea, but he saw nothing." On this first page, where, at the very end of the chapter (MS p. 531), Clara asked Baxter to take her back, and ". . . put her fingers through his fine, thin dark hair . . .", L. Bristow made his first error, setting "her fingers through her . . . hair". Since this reading makes sense, only Lawrence would be likely to notice the error. He overlooked it on the galley proofs but the correct reading was restored in the first edition (E1 p. 411). Similarly, Lawrence did not notice at once that his "saw, far away," had been printed as "saw far, far away," but by the first edition the reduplication had been removed and the phrase reduced simply to "saw" (MS p. 533; E1 p. 413).
The next error may have been set correctly but while the lines of type were being moved, the word "his" was dropped from the beginning of one line: "his own glass on the slopped, mahogany board. There was", and replaced at the end. The resulting nonsense was spotted by the printer's reader who wrote the correction onto the proofs before they were sent to Lawrence (MS p. 534; E1 p. 514). L. Bristow then understandably misread Lawrence's "k" as "h" and set "Colwich" for "Colwick" twice in one paragraph (MS p. 535; E1 p. 416). Only Lawrence could decide these spellings were wrong, and he corrected only one of them, the other remaining in a number of subsequent editions despite the obvious inconsistency. Another slip, "quiet" for "quite", was self-evident in context and had been corrected by the first edition (MS p. 536; E1 p. 417).
L. Bristow's last four errors are more serious and three of them have never been corrected. In the last meeting between Paul and Miriam, Lawrence inserted an extension of Miriam's inner monologue in very small handwriting at the bottom of MS p. 538, beginning with the sentences: "Oh, why did not he take her! Her very soul belonged to him. Why would not he take what was his!" The first of the inversions "not he" L. Bristow set correctly but the second he reversed to the more common "he not" (E1 p. 420). A few lines later he omitted the word "now", written clearly if small, and not obscured by interlinear revision: "'Stop now all this restlessness and beating against death . . .'". The word has never been restored (MS p. 539; E1 p. 421). But when, a few lines further on, L. Bristow again reversed Lawrence's word order, the error was more easily identified: on the galley proofs Lawrence corrected "By her tone she knew he was despising him" back to "he knew she" (MS p. 539; E1 p. 421).
Finally, on the last, now damaged, page of the manuscript Lawrence had first written, of Paul's tilt towards despair: "On every side the immense dark silences seemed pressing him into extinction, and yet, tiny speck, he could not be extinct" (MS p. 540). Then he changed the middle of the sentence to: "pressing him, so tiny a speck, into extinction, and yet, almost nothing, he could not be extinct" (E1 p. 422). Lawrence wrote his revision "so tiny a speck" very small, right at the edge of the page where it is difficult to read, but there is no doubt from the context that this is the reading he intended. However, L. Bristow set "so tiny a spark", which has never been corrected.
L. Bristow also "corrected" Lawrence's prose by inserting a conjunction into the disjointed perceptions of Paul's "semi-intoxicated trance" at the opening of "Derelict". I quote the passage in full because it exemplifies both the deliberate disjointedness of the prose and some typical effects of the compositors' punctuation changes:
Suddenly, the electric light went out, there was a bruising thud in the penny-in-the-slot meter. He did not stir, sat gazing in front of him. Only, the mice had scuttled and the fire glowed red in the dark room. (MS p. 533).
Suddenly the electric light went out; there was a bruising thud in the penny-in-the-slot meter. He did not stir, but sat gazing in front of him. Only the mice had scuttled, and the fire glowed red in the dark room. (E1 p. 414)
The lack of conjunction in the second sentence has a parallel in the first, where the comma separating "light went out, there was a bruising thud" in MS suggests Paul's disjointed perception of the near-simultaneous events. In the third sentence, Lawrence's "Only," meant "But", and this was a common usage of his which frequently depended on the comma; but L. Bristow's removal of the comma changes the meaning to "The mice alone . . ." .
Finally, in the near-famous last sentence of the novel (MS p. 540): "He walked towards the faintly humming, glowing town, quickly.", L. Bristow removed the comma before "quickly", but Lawrence restored it on the galley proof (E1 p. 423). In the manuscript the comma had originally been written over a full stop, and "quickly" was added after the sentence had been completed without it. Therefore Lawrence's reinstatement of the comma indicates that its rhetorical value was important to him.
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