Authorial Changes to the Second Edition of Glenarvon, by Paul Douglass
William Lamb’s complicity in his wife’s writing career is proved by his giving permission for further editions, despite the wounded outrage of his friends and family. Within days of his statement that Colburn would print no more copies, Lamb wrote to her publisher, ‘I am happy to say that I have obtained leave to publish a second Edition which will be greatly improved without delaying the Printer. I have also written a most beautiful preface’. Lamb wanted her name printed on the title page this time, and she promised to make improvements on the first edition expeditiously: ‘I will learn all the marks to which the Printers are used . . . I see so many errors I corrected last time’. She sent him the preface and asked him to ‘get rid of the 1st Edition as quick as possible that I may correct some very ridiculous mistakes in the second’.[i] She strongly desired to appease critics within the Lamb-Bessborough circle. ‘I am doing every thing I can to stop the further mischief’, she told Lady Melbourne.[ii]
Lamb did indeed revise Glenarvon carefully in an attempt to damp the fires of controversy, and she expended a lot of energy so that the printer would encounter minimal problems in re-setting the novel. For every word she added, she sought to subtract at least one. Revisions decreased the page count of volume one from 295 to 288. Remarkably, she kept the page counts for volumes two and three exactly the same: 390 and 322 respectively. The revisions were numerous; over 900 individual changes were made in the first volume alone, and a similar number in volume two. Volume three was relatively lightly edited, and edits from chapter twenty-one to the conclusion on are especially light. Hundreds of the changes were minor punctuational ones: substituting a colon for a semi-colon, and vice versa; putting in commas and taking them out; adding exclamation marks; subtracting dashes. These small edits show how carefully the author went over her text, though they changed little of substance. Hundreds of other changes were, however, substantive. She cancelled passages and added others in the attempt to assuage her critics and mollify her family. She changed the characterizations of Glenarvon and Calantha, dropped or modified some passages that supporters of Lady Holland and Samuel Rogers had complained about, and reduced the gothic elements. Glenarvon grew somewhat less Satanic, while Calantha and her family became Catholics.[iii] Lord Avondale was made somewhat more noble and courageous; he also more specifically repented that he had not seized control of his errant wife. The duel between Avondale and Glenarvon was also altered so that Glenarvon commits a dastardly act, stabbing Avondale in the chest.
Most of Lamb’s substantive revisions were aimed at deflecting charges of immorality. For example, direct references to God are often eliminated. ‘God’ becomes ‘Heaven’ or ‘Being’; ‘Oh God!’ becomes ‘Oh Heavens!’; ‘for God’s sake’ becomes ‘in mercy’. This attempt to deflect charges of blasphemy is accompanied by the effort to play down the carnal nature of the relationship between Glenarvon and Calantha. For example, in a brief passage in Chapter 12 of Volume Two, Lamb alters the phrase ‘fires of lust’ to ‘fires of passion’, changes ‘whirlwinds of passion’ to ‘whirlwinds’, and substitutes ‘pure’ for chaste’. Another example may be found in Chapter 23 of the second volume. There Lamb wrote originally, ‘As he spoke, he again pressed her to his bosom, and his tears fell over her’. The second edition alters this to, ‘As he spoke his tears fell upon her hand’. In the fourth chapter of volume two, Lamb cuts several descriptions of physical attraction: ‘. . . but the kiss I have snatched from your lips is sweeter far for me. Oh, for another, given thus warm from the heart! It has entranced – it has made me mad’. The sexual aspect of the relationship is not eliminated, but it is submerged. Similarly, in the first pages of Volume 3, Lamb reverses her statements about human frailty to avoid charges that she makes excuses for the heroine’s misbehaviour: ‘There are trials which human frailty cannot resist’ becomes ‘There is no trial which human frailty cannot resist. . . if we call upon our God to assist us. . .’[iv]
A good example of Lamb’s revision technique may be found in chapter sixteen of volume two of the novel. Changes include: deletion of two dashes; insertion of eight commas; deletion of six commas; conversion of one comma to a semicolon; capitalization of three words (‘Greek Church’ and ‘Princess’); spelling out the word ‘damn’d (rather than ‘d – d’); correction of three typographical errors (‘concietious’, ‘disconfiture’, and ‘change: his’ (the latter a superfluous colon – all changes handled as silent corrections in the present edition); introduction of one error, probably by the printer (‘exuberant’ became ‘exuberent’); change of a name spelt differently in the first edition (‘Mowbray’ becomes ‘Mowbrey’); failure to correct a typographical error (‘wispered’remains uncorrected; handled in this edition as a silent correction); and the substitution of one word for another (‘pretty’ becomes ‘handsome’). In all, Lamb cuts twenty-eight words and adds fifteen. The deletions and additions have three apparent purposes: first, to add specificity (the word ‘it’ is modified to ‘the partiality’); second, to change the sense of the activities at Castle Delaval (from ‘an agreeable variety’ to ‘rational pleasure of the society’); and third, to tone down the passion of the relationship between Calantha and Glenarvon as exhibited in the scene in which he gives her a ring. The sentences in the first edition read:
As he spoke, he pretended to pick up a ring. ‘Is this yours?’ he said. ‘No.’ ‘It is,’ he whispered; and placed it himself upon her finger.
In the second edition, the same passage reads simply: ‘He gave her a ring.’ The changes here typify patterns of revision throughout the second edition of Glenarvon.
Not satisfied simply to minimize what offended – or at least re-contextualize it as less morally ambiguous – Lamb hit back at her critics in her preface. Lamb argues that the novel is not immoral at all, despite the inclusion of characters and actions that are reprehensible.[v] She asked that readers recognize her intention to describe, rather than to degrade human nature, and reminded them that most novels and narrative poems have such material in them. If some readers thought they were personally slandered, that was not her intention, she said.[vi] Though some of the ‘applications’ detected by readers were undoubtedly intentional, Lamb apparently never meant to offend so many so personally. She extensively revised the second edition, then published a third ‘edition’ which did not differ from the second, except for the inclusion of her name as author, and frontispiece engravings taken from designs by Lamb herself. The novel was later translated into Italian in 1817, and into French in 1819 and 1824. A severely edited, cheaply printed, and now very rare version was printed as The Fatal Passion in 1865 and 1866. It eliminated all the song lyrics and cut much other material, and it changed the chapter organization by combining two or three chapters into one.
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Notes
[i] Lady Caroline Lamb to Henry Colburn, n.d. [1816]. Forster Collection.
[ii] Lady Caroline Lamb to Lady Melbourne, n.d. (after 9 May 1816). British Library Add. MS 45546 f.91-92.
[iii] In revisions to the second edition of Glenarvon, the Duke of Altamonte is said to have ‘married into a Roman Catholic family’ in chapter II of volume one. Mrs. Seymour and her daughters, Frances and Sophia, are made specifically Catholic in an interpolated sentence in the second edition, chapter VIII of volume one: ‘She was a Roman Catholic, and all who differed from that persuasion were, in her opinion, utterly lost’. Calantha’s allegiance to Catholicism is similarly specified in an interpolated passage in chapter XVI of vol. 1.
[iv] Volume 3, chapter 1.
[v] Lamb, Glenarvon, Second Edition, London: Henry Colburn, vol. 1, p. ii.
[vi] Ibid, vol. 1, p. ii-iii.