University of Virginia Library

Ancestral Descent of the Text

Whether with dissent or praise, readers of the typescript were reacting to a different version of The "Genius" than was published in 1915. Yet, as Dreiser remarked in 1943, neither the typescript nor the extant holograph contains the original form of the story. In situating the first attempt in 1903, however, Dreiser's memory may have been approximate. Early in the summer of 1900, elated by Frank Norris's advocacy and Walter Hines Page's promise to publish Sister Carrie, Dreiser had begun an autobiographical novel called "The Rake" and by December had written thirty or more chapters.[10] Sometime in July 1900, uncertain that Doubleday, Page and Company would keep its promise, he confided to Arthur Henry the hope that "my forthcoming book ["The Rake"], (which, if I can raise the money I shall write this winter)," might induce Doubleday to "publish Sister Carrie and preserve my credit" ([23] July 1900, Letters 1: 53). Dreiser added that he would leave no room for queries in this next novel: "Those who have feelings may prepare to have them shaken. It shall be out of my heart truly." After having completed thirty or more chapters by the end of 1900, Dreiser stopped work on "The Rake" and turned to creating Jennie Gerhardt and to other writing. Correspondence and other records of 1903 contain no hint of a return to work on "The Rake" or the start of another autobiographical novel. Only after a decade, in December 1910, did Dreiser direct his energies to another version of the autobiographical novel.

In 1972 Robert Elias commented on Dreiser's original version of The "Genius", but did not conjecture, as did the writer of a dissertation of the same year, that the small yellowed sheets of paper on which Dreiser wrote this version "lend probability to the 1903 composition date" recalled by Dreiser or, perhaps more precisely, to 1900: "The small yellow[ed] sheets are the kind of paper on which Sister Carrie was written."[11] "The Rake" of 1900 survives, Thomas P. Riggio points out, "on the small yellow sheets . . . in the manuscript of The History of Myself, vol. 2," A Book About Myself, for the most part written in ink on 8 1/2-by-11-inch sheets of white paper but "contain[ing] as well," Donald Pizer has observed, "lengthy sections on small yellow sheets, written in pencil, which are pasted in the larger, white sheet holograph."[12] "Dreiser used these yellow sheets, on which he wrote Sister Carrie and the chapters of Jennie [Gerhardt] he finished in 1901-2, only in this period," Riggio explains. "When he returned to Jennie in 1910, he began using the standard-size typewriter paper he would continue to write on for the rest of his career." These penciled portions are to such a degree autobiographical

that Dreiser inserted them into A Book About Myself with no other revision than substitution of the first-person pronoun in place of "Eugene." Thus Dreiser did not feed the chapters of "The Rake" to the fire as he reported in 1943, but incorporated most of them into the account of his newspaper days.

The extant typescript of The "Genius", like the holograph copy and the published text, has as its hero Eugene Witla, the artist. Unlike the published version, but in accordance with the holograph, it contains the reconciliation and marriage of Witla and Suzanne Dale. Whether any part of the two complete typescripts of The "Genius" in the University of Pennsylvania Dreiser Collection is a remnant of the 1911 typescript or whether they date in full from 1913 or 1914 is a matter of debate. Elias posits a 1913 typescript prepared after Dreiser had supposedly revised the one typed by Decima Vivian in 1911, but no longer in existence ("Bibliography" 31). Citing Dreiser's letter to Mencken of 22 June 1914, Joseph Katz has stated: "If Dreiser was not simply stalling Mencken, 'two complete typewritten copies' of the novel had been lost and were slowly being replaced in June 1914, when they were 'nearly recopied.'"[13]

Loss of the typescript read in Chicago by Long, Cary, Dell, and Lengel was the complicating incident in the ancestral descent of The "Genius" from manuscript to published text. When Lengel had read the typescript, he turned the copy over to Edgar Lee Masters before 29 March 1913 (Lengel to Dreiser, 29 March 1913, UPDC). But owing to his wife's illness, Masters had no opportunity to read it. Masters "wants to read it badly, but says if you are in an especial hurry he will let me have it to return to you at once," Lengel wrote Dreiser on 27 April 1913 (UPDC). On 2 May, Lengel mailed the typescript to Dreiser, mentioning in a note on 3 May, "Masters seemed surprised that you should want it back, as he said you had told him you have another copy of the book in N.Y." (UPDC). The mailed copy did not reach Dreiser. Lengel had the Post Office attempt to trace the package, laying the blame to his own "carelessness" in not having sent it express (Lengel to Dreiser, 15 May 1913, UPDC). Dreiser graciously accepted this loss both of his typescript and of Lengel's serial editing. "The Post Office made a careful search," Lengel recalled, "and Dreiser decided that it had been received by his wife and destroyed. She hated the work, as well she might."[14] Dreiser assured Lengel that the loss "was not vital because there was a copy in the safe at Harper's." However, Dreiser's letter of 24 February 1913 to Major F. T. Leigh, vice president of Harper and Brothers, then Dreiser's publisher, raises the question of when, if ever, a typescript was entrusted to the firm: "As I told you, the ms. of The Genius is now in Chicago but will be back in a month. When it comes back I will turn it over to you" (UPDC). Nine months later, on 6

December 1913, Dreiser gave a typescript of "The Genius" to the Century Company as security against a small loan (Swanberg 170). One can only guess where the first typescript was in mid-July 1913, when Dreiser wrote the following ambiguous note to Mencken, who was awaiting a script of "The Genius": "The second & only remaining copy (type) of the Genius was lost in the mails. Loss $1350. A recopying is necessary. When it is done will let you know."[15]

To Mencken's queries of "What progress with 'The Genius'?" Dreiser replied on 25 March 1914: "I am preparing The Genius of which more later."[16] Since November 1913, Mencken had been urging Dreiser to publish The Titan as soon as possible after A Traveler at Forty; "And let that story of the artist (When am I going to see it?) follow quickly" [16 November 1913], Dreiser-Mencken 1: 125-126). "Let me see 'The Genius' as soon as possible," Mencken pressed (10 June and 26 June 1914, Dreiser-Mencken 1: 142-144). "The Genius of which I lost two complete typewritten copies worth $1750 all told is nearly recopied," Dreiser explained on 22 June 1914 (Dreiser-Mencken 1: 144). "I am to try to edit it next month—and I am such a poor editor." "All of this 2nd typing of The Genius isn't here yet," Dreiser added on 2 July (Dreiser-Mencken 1: 145). "When it comes and I have had a chance to run over it myself I will send it on. I am most anxious to know what you think and that long before I publish it." "Send on The Genius whenever it's ready," Mencken requested.[17]

"Is there any chance of getting a few chapters of 'The Genius' for our Dec. no.?" Mencken asked shortly after he and George Jean Nathan had got editorial control of The Smart Set.[18] On 17 September 1914, Dreiser responded:

Mencken replied: "It's too bad we can't get a hack at the Genius. We don't want a serial, but merely an episode."[19] In fact, Dreiser had already arranged for serial editing by Lengel, who had written Dreiser on 18 April 1914: "I am very enthusiastic about the prospects of doing that work on The Genius" (UPDC). Mencken insisted on publishing an episode from The "Genius" because he envisioned it, in contrast to Dreiser's recent plays, as "a return to C major—that is, to the Sister Carrie-Jennie Gerhardt—The Titan style."[20] On 8 November 1914, Mencken reminded Dreiser, "Don't forget that I am to get a reading of 'The Genius'" (Dreiser-Mencken 1: 164).

Lengel's serial cutting was under way on 10 November 1914, when Dreiser commented to Mencken:

In this letter, Dreiser expressed hesitation about sending Mencken the copy marked "for serial purposes" ("Nothing is cut out—only portions marked out") because he had not yet done his own editing for book publication: "I have been going over one copy but I am not near done and when I am it will be somewhat better pulled together than it is now and better written."

"Let me have the pencilled copy, by all means," Mencken replied, promising to bear in mind its provisional character (12 November 1914, Dreiser-Mencken 1: 165). "By Adams express, today," wrote Dreiser on 30 November, "prepaid I sent you chapters 1 to 66 (I believe) of the typewritten mss—of "The Genius', 2nd carbon, unrevised."[22] "In all likelihood," Joseph Katz inferred, "the marked-up script Mencken did not get to see is the one surviving in the Van Pelt Library [of the University of Pennsylvania]" ("Dummy: The 'Genius'": 337). Dreiser's use of "unrevised" refers here, however, not to serial cutting, but to Dreiser's own projected editing for book publication, as he indicated in the letter of 10 November. That Mencken received the typescript penciled for serial publication is clear from Dreiser's letter of 8 December:

"Surely I'll be glad to go through the proposed serial," Mencken answered (9 December 1914, Dreiser-Mencken 1: 168-169). "The crude cuts, of course, leave the thing as it stands rather disjointed, but I think I grasp its general drift." And on 10 December, Dreiser responded:

On 12 December, Dreiser sent Mencken the second half of the marked typescript.[25] By this halfway point, Mencken had offered two "criticisms": first, "Witla's artistic progress is under-described . . . down to his New York days"; second, "there is no such word as 'alright'" (9 December 1914, Dreiser-Mencken 1: 168-169). In fact, the misspelling was a corruption introduced, not by Dreiser, but by the typist. Dreiser wrote "all right" in the holograph. As a remedy for what he considered insufficient development of Witla's artistic growth prior to his New York days, Mencken suggested: "Start him in Chicago, cutting out the Alexandria part, and then go back to it briefly later on, a la Joseph Conrad" (Dreiser-Mencken 1: 168-169).

Shortly before receiving Mencken's "criticisms," Dreiser had alerted Mencken to the distinctive punctuation of the title, not yet, however, in its final form. "Please note that the title, 'The Genius' is quoted," Dreiser wrote on 30 November 1914;

This appears to be Dreiser's first written statement to account for use of quotation marks in the title. On 5 January 1915, Mencken personally returned the typescript to Dreiser.[27] It was then that he orally delivered his preliminary "kicks and suggestions" regarding The "Genius", but no record of his comments was made. Nor did Dreiser carry out the restructuring suggested in Mencken's 9 December 1914 letter.

Such was the context of circumstances immediately preceding revision of the typescript for publication by the John Lane Company. At the center of these events was the text of The "Genius", extant in several forms in the Theodore Dreiser Collection of the University of Pennsylvania: the complete holograph copy, on white paper 8 1/2 by 11 inches ("Handwritten MS." [Boxes 156 through 159, formerly 79 to 83]); two typescripts ("First Typed Copy" [Boxes 162 and 163, formerly 84 and 85] and "Complete MS.—First Carbon Copy" [Boxes 160 and 161, formerly 87]; and a third typescript, "from which [the] first edition was printed," but missing Chapters 1 through 31 ("Revised

Typescript [Incomplete]" [Box 164, formerly 86a and 86b]). The notation on the third typescript is in Dreiser's hand, including "(Chapters 1 to 31—missing)." In the case of any given chapter, the three typewritten copies are the result of the same typewriting; but the whole is not necessarily the product of a single typist and clearly not of the same typewriter. The type is pica in Chapters 1 through 31, becomes elite in Chapter 32 and remains so until Chapter 81, in which it again becomes pica. As insertion of their initials in the holograph copy testifies, at least two typists produced the 1911 typescript of The "Genius": D. V. (Decima Vivian), who began the task and whose initials appear in notes in the first thirty chapters; and E. H. W. (unidentified), whose initials appear in notations in later chapters. Owing to the lack of additional evidence, it is impossible to establish that either or both typists produced the 1914 typescript. For the 1914 typescript, the change in typeface suggests either the hand of more than one typist or extensive changes exacted by Dreiser during the course of one typist's work: for example, Angela's hair is "red" in the manuscript, "bright" in the first thirty chapters of the typescript, and "red" in subsequent chapters.

A word on the correspondence between contents and labels of Boxes 160, 161, 162, and 163 (formerly 84, 85, and 87). Boxes 162 and 163 (84 and 85) do not contain, as indicated, entirely a ribbon copy of the text, nor do Boxes 160 and 161 (87) contain simply a carbon copy.[28] In stacking the three copies of The "Genius", Dreiser or an assistant probably was not concerned about keeping separate the ribbon copy from the first and second carbon copies, but indifferently mixed the three forms. The designation of Boxes 160 and 161 (87) as "Complete MS." is correct, however: copy of Chapters 19-21 and 28-31, missing from Box 162 (84), is not lacking in Box 160 (87).