Item 26 - Letter from Alice Walker to R. B. McKerrow

3 single sheets

151 Woodstock Road, Oxford.—Has received the rest of 2 Henry VI. The explanatory notes are adequate for the sort of reader who will use an ‘old-spelling’ edition; she is sceptical of the OUP’s desire to make the edition suitable for the ‘general’ reader. Suggests how glosses of obsolete spellings might be made more interesting.

(Dated May by mistake.)

—————

Transcript

at 151 Woodstock Road, Oxford.
3 May 1936 {1}

Dear Dr. McKerrow,

The packet containing the final pages of 2 Henry VI reached me safely this morning. I am sorry I couldn’t acknowledge it before. I have been away all day and fear this won’t catch a post before tomorrow. I hope the things havn’t been in the post as long as the date on your letter suggests.

In general, I think the kind of note you are giving should adequately cover the needs of the average reader. I have generally noted points which I think you might have dealt with but there hasn’t been much about which I felt it necessary to quibble. Perhaps some of the more straightforward glosses such as ‘wood’ (mad), ‘sterve’ (starve) might be omitted. I think you ought to assume a knowledge of Chaucer and Spenser. I agree with you that, as everyone ought to own a classical dictionary of some sort, the explanation of classical allusions should not be necessary. What is wanted far more, I think, is explanation of obsolete constructions, changes of meaning in words etc. and discussion of problems which are evaded, in even the best available editions, by traditional departures from the original text (e.g. in stage directions). For instance, it wouldn’t worry me in the least not to be told who Absyrtus was because I should know exactly where I could find out, but it would irritate me not to be told what justification there was for retaining a form like “ha’s” because, although I should have some notion how to set about finding out how and when it arose, I can’t pick up a book of reference (so far as I know) which will infallibly give me the desired information. [I don’t, as a matter of fact, know anything about this spelling. As a guess, I should say it was an example of the illiterate use of the apostrophe. I don’t remember having seen it before and it is, therefore, the kind of thing on which I should want some information]. I think that some of your misgivings about the notes are due to the O.U.P.’s desire to make the edition suitable for the ‘general’ reader—whatever that is!—but I really can’t see that an edition of this kind is going to be used habitually by any but the expert. The ‘general’ reader wants a book that will go into his pocket and even the ‘honours’ student will want an edition in which the plays are obtainable separately. I don’t think that even the most optimistic publisher could expect the average student with, say, Richard III, Twelfth Night, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Othello and Cymbeline as ‘set’ books, to buy five hefty volumes containing a score of plays to satisfy his examiners. [Incidentally, does it cost a great deal more to issue the plays separately? I should have thought that if the O.U.P. had an eye on the general reader this kind of publication was the way to catch him! Although I know the Cambridge edition is more accurate and ultimately cheaper than the Arden, I have never bought a volume of the former but don’t mind in the least buying the latter for no better reasons than that the cost per volume is less and the book is easier to handle]. I think, therefore, that the kind of reader who is likely to use an ‘old spelling’ edition won’t need much more in the way of notes than you are giving. I don’t think there should be any necessity to add to the number of words you gloss. I should say that syntax and spelling problems needed far more explanation than vocabulary for which there are well-known and exhaustive works of reference. Anyone can look up a word in Onions {2} or the N.E.D. but it often takes a long time to solve a problem of syntax or pronunciation and orthography as there is no one standard work of reference on these subjects. I should be much more inclined to explain how a form like ‘duchesse’ for ‘duchies’ got into the text than to gloss a form like ‘gyrt’ or explain the meaning of ‘attainted’.—This is probably not very helpful. Probably the best advice is ‘Please yourself!’ as, in the notes, it is bound to be a case of ‘Tot homines …’. I think it is impossible to arrive at any principle of selection that will satisfy everyone’s needs.

I didn’t get to the Bodleian to look up the things I mentioned yesterday but hope to do so tomorrow. I shall be going home on Friday {3} and shall be in Southport (so far as I know) for some weeks.

Yours sincerely,
Alice Walker.

PS to my letter. A further suggestion.

Instead of adding to the number of words glossed, would it be possible to make the explanations (such as those of girt, wrack, denay’d, quill etc.) {4} more interesting by explaining exactly what relationship the obsolete forms of F1 bear to their modern equivalents? If you are reckoning on a reader not knowing what girt means, ought you not to explain it more fully? The reader unaccustomed to Elizabethan English would not know from a note such as girt, i.e. gird whether girt was a common Elizabethan word or the ancestor of N.E. gird or something verging on a misprint or merely an example of the Elizabethan ‘licence’ one hears so much about. If, however, you explained that there existed a verb girt side by side with gird (the older and surviving verb from the p.p. of which girt was originally formed) and that editors from X on read gird, the reader knows exactly what justification there is for F1 girt and the precise nature of the change made by X etc. In the same way the average reader wouldn’t know from wrack, i.e. wreck whether wrack was a spelling of wreck or the older form of N.E. wreck or an obsolete cognate. I think that fuller notes of this kind would allay the irritation of those who know what girt means at finding it glossed and they would be a boon to those who didn’t know the word’s meaning. I can only speak for myself, of course, but I find it annoying to find a mere gloss on girt, wrack, denay’d etc as although I know exactly what they mean I am not always sure what relationship they bear to the modern forms. For instance, concerning hoise (which, by the way you didn’t gloss) although I was fairly sure that it bore the same relationship to hoist as gird to girt, I had to look it up to make certain. In the same way I had to go to the N.E.D. to find what relationship denay’d bore to denied and to satisfy myself about the meaning of quill. In general, in fact, I find that a mere gloss tells me what I know and merely irritates me by awakening me to the fact that there is something behind it which I ought to know and either don’t know or can merely guess. I don’t press this point as (as I have said in my letter) there are accessible sources of information I can go to, but I think that this kind of thing is different from classical allusions etc. as dictionaries of the latter kind can be got for a few shillings but the N.E.D. cost over £20 (and on this kind of thing Onions is no use and often merely misleading). Even see O.E.D. isn’t as easy an order to comply with as you might think! If I am at 151 Woodstock Road I have to go to the Bodleian, if at the White House I have to go into college which involves getting the car out and probably wasting a great deal of time in transit and conversation when I get there and if I am at home I have nearly two miles to go to the nearest reference library and probably find that my desire to see O.E.D. is the signal for everyone else in the house to remember some small errand that I might do while I am out! As I imagine the fortunate possessors of the N.E.D. are few, I am sure the many unfortunates would be deeply grateful if you satisfied their curiosity and saved them the bother of going to a library!

—————

Typed, except signature. The postscript was typed on different paper, using a different typewriter, or least a different ribbon, from the rest of the letter. The square brackets are original.

{1} The letter is misdated; cf. MCKW A4/15, 20, and 24.

{2} A Shakespeare Glossary, by C. T. Onions, first published in 1911. A second edition was issued in 1919.

{2} 5th.

{3} Cf. 1 Henry VI, III. i. 171, I. i. 135; and 2 Henry VI, I. iii. 107, I. iii. 4.