Item 15 - Letter from Alice Walker to R. B. McKerrow

1 single sheet

The White House, Tite Hill, Englefield Green.—Returns papers relating to 1 Henry VI, Acts III and IV, and discusses her annotations and queries. Asks about the line-numbering of stage directions and the collation of spelling variants.

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Transcript

at The White House, Tite Hill,
Englefield Green. Surrey.
14 May 1936

Dear Dr. McKerrow,

I am sending Acts III and IV of I Henry VI. I was hoping to finish it all before the week-end {1} but don’t think I shall manage it, so I am letting you have what I have done. As most of the points I raise now concern individual readings rather than general principles, I have left my queries to Act IV on the slips on which I wrote them as I read. If you find my handwriting quite illegible (most people do, so I shan’t be surprised or hurt to hear you can’t interpret it!) I will type them in future. It takes very little extra time—so if you find the slips teasing to the eye or unmanageable in the hand, I hope you will protest!

I started going through the stage directions (as I said I would in my last letter) but came to the conclusion that the only profitable way for me to deal with them was by looking at the relevant eighteenth-century editions. There seemed so many points I couldn’t settle from the Cambridge notes that I am quite sure I could settle for myself, without troubling you, if I had the text that it seemed best to leave the checking of these until I am in Oxford. Where, however, in the later Acts, I have felt fairly confident that the brackets round a name or a plus sign were right I have ticked them in green pencil. Mostly, however, I have left the question of stage directions open and if I find any alterations need making I will let you know later.

There are just two general points I am a little hazy about. The first concerns stage directions. Do you always attach to these the number of the preceding line?—or do you associate the S.D. with what it belongs to and number an Exit with the preceding line and an Enter with the following? Whenever I have had any doubts concerning the line numbering of these I have queried them, on the assumption (and perhaps, I now think, the wrong one) that they were always numbered with the preceding line.

The other matter concerns spelling. In Acts III and IV I have come across a number of collation notes on what seem to be nothing more than orthographical points such as that on Vmper (IV. i. 151) {2}, waste (IV. iii. 36) {3}, travel (IV. iii. 36) {4}, etc. These have worried me quite a lot as a note such as

18 antique] antick F3–Cap.: antic Ste.+ {5}

seems to give undue weight to what are mere differences in spelling. I don’t know what to do with these as I am typing, as I don’t like to tamper with them without your permission and it gives you a lot of trouble to answer my queries about them and make corrections in the typescript copies which could have been made as the notes were being copied. I have tried, therefore, on the accompanying sheets, to divide up typical variations in spelling etc. into the categories into which they seem to fall and have suggested some of the methods which might be adopted in dealing with them. I have tried, so far as possible, to take cases which do occur but you will find the spelling in places a little wild as most of them have been shot down from memory. The scheme has been thought out very much all’improviso—so if you find it doesn’t in the least represent what you are trying to record, I shan’t grieve over its destruction!—And if you feel inclined to tell me that I am a ‘meddlesome Mattie’ you may!—but if you do, I shall certainly enquire what that young person did, because I have never been able to find out.

I have done what I could to the collation notes to the part of Henry VI I am sending, but havn’t made a separate list of the points I have checked as I have done what I did before to I and II. I havn’t had much time to give to the notes, but have jotted down a few things that occurred to me as I read them through. If you find my suggestions no use, please don’t bother to argue with me. I am sure you must find that I am a great drain on your time and energy.

Yours sincerely,
Alice Walker.

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Typed, except the signature and two characters in the collation note. Sent with MCKW A4/16. The through-line numbers below are taken from the Norton facsimile edition of the First Folio.

{1} 16th and 17th.

{2} F1. ‘Let me be Vmper in this doubtfull strife:’ (TLN 1902).

{3} ‘36’ is a mistake for ‘20’. Walker’s eye probably slipped to the next reference. F1. ‘Who now is girdled with a waste of Iron,’ (TLN 2030).

{4} F1. ‘I met in trauaile toward his warlike Father;’ (TLN 2046).

{5} The reference is to IV. vii. 18. F1: ‘Thou antique Death, which laugh’st vs here to scorn,’ (TLN 2249).