artist as moralist: Edith Wharton's revisions to the Last Chapter of The Custom of the Country, The

Papers on Language and Literature, Winter 2001 by MacNaughton, William R

In section two, Paul remembers his visit to different parts of the strange house earlier in the day. His exploration began "after his solitary luncheon" in the library because of his discomfort in his room; his search ended with his return to the library, his present ruminations, and an overpowering loneliness. In The Writing of Fiction, while reflecting on Dickens's overwrought handling of Little Nell's death, Wharton remarks that it is the business of the writer "to make weep, and not to weep" (121). Although she does not "weep" over Paul Marvell, she at times seems tempted to strongly sentimentalize his predicament, in part perhaps because she felt in his loneliness a close resemblance to her own remembered youthful position as a lover of books with no one to share this love. At the beginning of this section, for example, Wharton had originally written, "after awhile he pushed the album aside and began to roam by himself through the great empty house" (650). The phrase "by himself' has been eliminated in the book: "after ... began to roam through the house" (CC 1004).

The same inclination to sentimentalize is suggested elsewhere, and, arguably, is not kept totally under control even after the revisions Wharton had originally written, for example, that Paul was afraid to touch things held on "frail little tables and cabinets" in his mother's bedroom (650); in the periodical, these "frail little" objects become merely "frail" (SM642), and in the book simply "tables and cabinets" (CC 1004). Wharton thus gradually, and with seeming reluctance, disassociates the objects from the boy's own pitiable qualities. On the other hand, although she needed to guard against sentimentalizing Paul, she also did not want to minimize the emotional and moral impact of the child's loneliness on the reader. Thus, whereas in the manuscript Paul had passed on, after his first visit to the library, directly without meeting anyone to two drawing rooms at the front, in the book he first heads towards the ballroom at the back, hears hammering, and is denied entrance by a servant who "told him that 'they' hadn't finished, and wouldn't let anybody in." The narrator then comments, "The mysterious pronoun somehow increased his sense of isolation" (CC 1004). At this point, Wharton returns to the manuscript version and moves Paul into the drawing-room, where he wonders whether the pictures on the walls are of "Mr. Moffatt's ancestors" (CC 1005); Paul then enters the dining room, where, for a few minutes, he takes real pleasure in watching the table and sideboards being heaped with exotic food in colorful containers 8 as the servants prepare for a dinner party his parents will be hosting. Finally, he returns to the library.

Two revisions to the description of Paul's visits to the library are worth comment. In the manuscript, during his first visit Paul eagerly imagines that the books might have had "stories as splendid as the Arabian nights in them" (651); later, the passage becomes "stories in them as splendid as their bindings" (CC 1004). Both versions convey, of course, the boy's excitement and enthusiasm upon entering the library, emotions soon squelched when he is told that the books are too "valuable"9 to be taken down. What the later version is meant to suggest is less clear, but it is probably a resemblance Paul has to his mother-his seemingly inherited attraction to beautiful things. The second revision is to Wharton's description of Paul's return to the library. In both versions, the narrator refers to the boy's "passion for the printed page." Having made this assertion, however, the narrafor in the manuscript concludes that if Paul could have found a book, "the hours would have seemed less long and the house less empty" (653); in the later version, the boy's unshared devotion to books is emphasized even more by the revelation that if he could have found any book, "he would have forgotten the long hours and the empty house" (my italics, CC 1005).