The Last Draft — Volume II
B: The pages beginning on a verso headed "Vol. II" and paginated by
Mary 1 ("161" — a continuation of the Volume I, or Part A, pagination
sequence — appears on the blank recto) — 21 (corresponding to Rieger
97.17 — 109.8); they comprise manuscript chapters 1 and 2, and part of
Chapter 3.[5] Most pages have pencil-ruled
margins. The eleven leaves involved are of the same light-blue type as Part A
and were originally part of the same quarto Continental notebook. They once
constituted leaves 8 — 10 of quire VIII and the first eight leaves of quire
IX (the remaining four are lost).
Cr: After a significant gap, a disjointed sequence (containing part of
a deleted first and then a completed second rewrite of the now lost
original Part [C]) of the same light-blue pages (most probably from the same
Continental paper notebook as parts A and B) continues in an order that can
be construed from the textual continuities and from matching leaves now
separated. First are two separated bifolia consisting of: a recto numbered 57
(a cancelled
marginless page, here distinguished from a second recto numbered 57 as
57
A), its marginless unnumbered verso (with the order of continuation
number "59" about one-fifth down); a recto numbered 60 (a marginless page
with the right hand bottom corner torn off before use), its verso numbered 61
(marginless with the corresponding left hand bottom corner torn off); a recto
numbered 62 (marginless), its blank verso page; and a blank recto (with its
right hand lower corner torn off before use), its verso numbered 63 (with an
unruled margin and the corresponding left hand lower corner torn off). Bruce
Barker-Benfield accounts for the two blanks by surmising "that MWS had
accidentally turned over two leaves of the bound notebook" (9). Since the
text is continuous between pages 61 and 62, these four leaves must
at
some point have formed the two central bifolia of their quire.
Part Cr continues with a bifolium which almost certainly, at some
previous point, was the central bifolium of the same quire (it must
have been detached for rewrite purposes before the continuous text
of pages 61 and 62 was written). It was intact at the time of writing since
penstrokes carry across the matched join. In essence, the first passage on
what was this central bifolium replaces and continues the cancelled material
on page 57A above and at the top of its unpaginated verso, while a
second passage on the same bifolium continues from page 63 above. The
once central bifolium consists of: a recto numbered 57 (57B, with an
unruled margin and headed, by Percy, "another Chapter"), its verso
numbered 58 (with an unruled margin); and a recto numbered 59 (with an
unruled margin and text about one-third down the page identified by the
continuation number "64"), its unnumbered verso lacking a margin and
including text about one-fifth down the page identified by
continuation number "65". The "65" material concludes (presumably because
the two pages accidentally left blank had not been noticed, and because there
was no more Continental paper) on a fragment of off-white, probably British
paper (approximately one quarter the height of the white leaves of Part
A1).[6]
The gap between 21, the last page of Part B, and 57, the first page of
Part Cr, suggests, if the draft was paginated continuously, that 36
pages numbered 22 — 57 are lost. But only slightly more than eight pages
account for the interval between the Rieger 1818 edition equivalent of the
end of Mary's page 21 — (the appropriate) "how was that possible"
(Rieger 109.8) — and the 1818 equivalent of the beginning of her page 57
— "Some time elapsed" (Rieger 117.17, the beginning of Chapter VI of
Volume Two). It is not, however, an inevitable deduction that a substantial
amount of text in the draft was cut; it is possible (indeed likely) that the first
page number of Cr was made to coincide with a lost page of pre-Part D
material and does not continue the 1 — 21 sequence of Part B. Since Part
B ends five draft pages into Mary's Chapter 3, the missing pages (of greater
or lesser extent) and the following extant pages would seem to have
accounted for the remainder of Mary's
Chapter 3 and a "Chapter 4", which, after what can be assumed to have been,
perhaps on different occasions, deletions and rewriting, presumably
corresponded to the 1818 Volume Two chapters V and VI. As will appear,
the establishment of this Chapter 4 is important. After the rewrite stage that
survives as Cr, it was divided into two chapters (presumably 4 and 5)
presumably in line with Percy's direction at the top of page 57B, "another
Chapter". His placement of this direction for the beginning of what
presumably became Mary's "Chapter 5" corresponds to the beginning of the
1818 Chapter VI. That undesignated "Chapter 5," the rewritten second half
of a long "Chapter 4," is all that now survives of "Chapter 4." I apologise to
the perhaps wearied reader for what might seem a very finicky account of
this central Part Cr, but it clearly relates to a portion of the manuscript
that presented major problems and involved considerable revision. Under
scrutiny, Cr provides the best
clues as to the course of Frankenstein's redrafting and to an area of
creative trauma.
D: The remainder of the Last Draft consists of seventy-five off-white
folio leaves of British paper measuring 19.9 — 20.2 x 31 cm; they are,
then, larger than the light blue leaves of parts A, B, and Cr, and very
slightly smaller than the off-white leaves of A1. These leaves derive from five
successive sixteen-leaf quires (originally in a bound notebook) of which only
the second and third are complete (leaves 1 and 2 are missing from the first,
leaf 16 from the fourth, and leaves 12 — 16 from the fifth). Three leaves
cannibalized from elsewhere in the same notebook (and a scrap of different
paper) have been inserted in quire II after its eighth leaf. The watermarked
date "1806" below the initials "JL" is visible (upside down relative to the
writing) at the center of 39 leaves, and a Britannia in crowned triple oval is
visible (also upside down) at the center of 36 other leaves.[7] There are unruled margins throughout. (The
columns of mathematical
calculations in the margin of the first page appear to be basically two
pagination totals.) The pages are numbered a hard-to-make-out 62
(possibly changed to 66 — the "2" is blotted in a way that makes it
look like a "6", or like it may have been altered to a "6" to follow on from
the Part Cr continuation numbers "64" and "65"; at any rate, the next
page is 63) to 203 (Rieger 122.28 — 221.12 to the end).
After two cancelled lines, the first page of Part D, page 62, opens at the
equivalent of the start of the 1818 Chapter VII (Volume Two). There is no
chapter designation on page 62. Chapter headings appear for chapters 7 —
18 which are paginated 70 — 203.[8]
Presumably the opening pages 62 — 69 constitute
the concluding portion of "Chapter 6." The opening portion of that "Chapter
6" is now lost. The also-now-lost Part [C] (as distinguished from C
r)
seems to have constituted the end of a "Chapter 4." In other words, there is
reason to suspect that the pagination and the chapter numbering of Part D
was not the result of a continuous sequence initiated by Part B.
Barker-Benfield's reconstruction of the notebook quires indicates, as
noted above, that three leaves were inserted after leaf 101A/102A
(there is a second leaf numbered 101 and 102) and that one leaf (presumably
two cancelled pages) is missing after leaf 181/182 which concludes with
cancelled text (the following page number 183 appears to have been altered
from 185). This evidence points to fourth and fifth significant areas of
revision (additional to A1, the last two thirds of Volume I Chapter 14, and
Volume II "Chapter 4") commencing at Rieger 149.5 ("But it is this gloom")
and at Rieger 206.9 ("You took me on board").
