Chapter 82 A Loss That Can't Be Forgotten – The Stories of Some Original Manuscripts Lost

- Stories of some lost manuscripts Cripple Bowdale Losing the original manuscript of a book is a little like losing a child.This loss appears to be irreparable.It sometimes takes months, even years, of careful work to compose an idea so that it can be handed down to posterity.Then comes the blow—sometimes by accident, sometimes by negligence, or by sheer bad luck—that the manuscript is destroyed, and the whole creative work has to be started all over again.Almost everyone has heard the tragic fate of the first volume of Thomas Carlyle's History of the French Revolution. But Carlyle took the blow, got up, wrote it again, and gained fame and success by it.

And the History of the French Revolution was not the only masterpiece whose first draft was lost and rewritten. For the sake of clarity, let us review this familiar accident once more.After Carlyle finished the first volume (according to Townsend Skold's biography of the historian's wife, Janie Wilbur Carlyle), he sent it to John Stuart Mill for review , hopefully he can point out the rhetorical glitches. It was at teatime on the afternoon of March 6, 1835, when Mill made a surprise visit to Carlyle at 5 Curley Street, and revealed to him the heart-wrenching news that a servant in the Mill family had taken the manuscript as a It was a pile of waste paper, which was used to make a fire, and only one or two pages were left.

"It's really something that never happened before," Mill moaned. "Yes," Lyle replied, "with Newton and his dog Diamond." Carlyle did not take notes, but without pausing he went to the first chapter of the second volume which he was now planning to work on, and returned shortly thereafter to complete the preceding material.He wrote with difficulty, but he swore that, despite such setbacks, it would be a good book—and it was. The case of Sir Isaac Newton mentioned by Carlyle concerns another famous but perhaps rumored loss.According to popular legend, Sir Newton kept the original records of his later life on the table next to the candle holder.His pet dog, Diamond, jumped and played by the table, accidentally knocked over the candlestick and set the manuscript on fire.The philosophical Sir Newton just shook his head and sighed.

"Ah, diamond, diamond," he said to it, "you don't know what trouble you've gotten into!" History does not record whether anyone managed to put out the fire, or if Newton wrote it again. The famous dramatist Molière, on a similar occasion, made himself furious.He was nearly finished translating Lucretius when one of his servants took the liberty of using part of the original manuscript as a roll for Molière's wig.In a fit of rage, the dramatist threw all the remaining manuscripts into the fire. Perhaps all philosophers grow a little sloppy in old age, or they are by nature poor judges of household management.The events of Carlyle and Newton may be said to be a replay of what happened to the philosopher Fumin Apocht, now forgotten friend and contemporary of Newton.

In the language of the time, "a simple-minded country maid," wishing to "get his things in order," threw all the papers on his desk into the fire.This includes the fruits of his forty years of hard work.But Mr. Yabozit calmly went back to the beginning. When you consider the commotion caused by Swift's eloquent "Tale of the Bath Tub," which was published in 1704, you may not be tempted to marvel at what perils the author has put his manuscript through. Stern Swift, for all the satirical works published in his early years, never brought himself to deal directly with the bookseller-publisher.As for "The Bath Tub Tale," he, in an effort to preserve his anonymity, threw the manuscript from a moving carriage at the bookseller's door, before even waiting to see if it was picked up by the person it was expecting.

Swift decided to gamble with fate and leaned tightly on the moldy seat cushion of his carriage, but the crisis was not as great as he had initially expected.If the original manuscript had indeed been lost, he would have had no problem rewriting it, stimulated by the endless indignation he felt at the superstitions and conditions of the day. This impulse in him is characteristic of the writer who, in order to speak, does not hesitate to overcome any difficulty to get his opinion across to his readers. It was in 1836, exactly a year after Carlyle's loss of the manuscript, that Richard Henry Darrah had returned to Boston and landed after completing his detour to California's history around Cape Len.In the words of his son in the preface to a later edition of "Two Years Before the Mast":

"During the sea journey, he used the record book in his arms to record almost every day, and then wrote in detail in his spare time. This complete account of his journey, together with a box of his clothes and souvenirs, and for family and friends The gift he had prepared was lost due to the negligence of a relative who took care of his belongings on the pier. If this original manuscript is still in the world and is found one day, it will be a great discovery.The article "Two Years Before the Mast", which has become a famous work today, was rewritten by Dara based on his notes after he returned to Harvard Law School.Fortunately, he never left his notes in the care of his unknown traveling companion.But it has taken almost four years for Darla to rewrite and publish by William Collen Bryant this realistic masterpiece of ocean life, which has influenced all witnessed reports for a hundred years.

writings. This trail of millions of lost words now leads us back to San Francisco, to the famous Baldwin Hotel and Theater, built by that "lucky" Baldwin, the gambler and planner—" This is the only person who has never won two hundred thousand yuan in gambling by flipping a card." William Gillette, actor and screenwriter, was staying at the Baldwin Hotel on November 23, 1898.With the "Secret Intelligence" tour, he used to concentrate every spare minute after stepping down to work on the adaptation of Conan Doyle's "Sherlock Holmes", which has been completed at this time.

We can easily imagine that the actor, having put the final touches on the last page of his manuscript, looked at the clock and reckoned that there was barely time for a quick meal before going to the theater.So he put the finished manuscript on top of his suitcase.He took his hat, went downstairs, and walked out into the street through the splendid drawing room. After eating, Gillette walked out of the restaurant, turned around and walked back to the hotel.There was a red light in the sky, and people ran past him.After a few more rooms, the whole tragedy suddenly appeared before his eyes.The Baldwin Hotel is in flames.The fire was out of control and continued to burn for several days.

But William Gillette made up his mind from the beginning, and a year later, he took on the role of Sherlock Holmes for the first time, and became famous, and he continued to play this role almost until 1937. passed away.The rewritten manuscript is now in the collection of a rare books dealer in New York.Every revision in red ink on it, every blob of ink, and every illustration for the stage manager are silent evidence of his complete recovery from the blow.And maybe a better script was rewritten. As for Boston Tarkenton, by a curious twist of fortune, he had a better fortune than William Gillette.Barton Curley, then editor of Ladies' Home magazine, visited him in Indianapolis to take the manuscript of a short story he had commissioned.

Mr. Curley put the drafts in his brand new little English pigskin travel case, which already contained several manuscripts that he was going to take back to Philadelphia.Mr. Tarkenton was about to see him off, and on their way to the station they stopped at the University Club.It was a bitterly cold day, and Tarkenton's black coachman got out of his car and went into the side door of the club to keep warm. Five minutes later, when he walked out of the Taoist room, he found that the car and everything in it had been stolen.Barton Curley had to abandon his travel bag, which contained pajamas and other personal effects, to catch the train.Let us leave the rest of the story to Boss Tarkenton himself: "The police were notified," said Mr. Tarkenton, "and a reward was advertised in the next day's papers, and the car was found—abandoned outside the town—at our breakfast. When the police and Before the person who discovered the car came with the vehicle, a bold young man borrowed a worker's aluminum lunch box and came to us and told us that he was the one who discovered the car and walked away quickly after receiving the reward We later learned that he had only been released from Pendleton's penal prison the day before. But with the money we were happy to pay him, he set off for where no one knows. When the police came with the car and its discoverer, we had to pay another reward: but Mr. Coley's pigskin wallet and the manuscripts in it were never recovered—except one.This one is my novel.The thief had evidently examined the contents of the wallet, and determined to preserve it and its contents, except for one of them, which he threw in the carriage; what a bad taste he had." But if Tarkenton was lucky, Colonel Lawrence was not. The first draft of "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom" was lost by the author himself while changing trains at Reading Station at Christmas 1919, and has never been found again. The bibliography of the various editions of this great work is perhaps more complex than that of any book in our time.But although it is not necessary to give a detailed description, we might as well summarize the growth process of the main stories that later constituted "Seven Pillars". The original ten-volume manuscripts of the whole book, except for the preface and the drafts of the ninth and tenth volumes, were all lost at the station.After a month or two, Lawrence told people that he had begun to write out a first draft of about 250,000 words from memory.In less than three months, he completed another manuscript with 400,000 characters in ten volumes. "Of course," he said, "the article is very sloppy."He kept writing this draft from time to time until 1921, when he started to draft the third draft, which was completed in February 1922.At this time, he burned all the second drafts, leaving only one page. The draft for the third time was the so-called Oxford edition based on which the first unpublished edition was printed, and this was later modified to become other editions in the future.The loss of the original manuscript seemed to have made Lawrence very sad at the time, but after the third rewriting, he personally destroyed the second manuscript, which can show that this is a pursuit of perfection that is rarely seen in the history of literature. move. As Lawrence himself said, "Beginners in literature always like to make up the outline of what they are going to describe with some adjectives; but by 1924, I had learned the first lesson in writing. I have often been able to put together two or three sentences written in 1921 into one sentence." In his prose, of course, Lawrence remains a poet—a veteran of every syllable.For a poet and historian, the loss of an original manuscript is perhaps the greatest tragedy.But a poet can rewrite if he is destined to rewrite.See the story of the accidental destruction of the entire first draft of Edana Finsant Millay's Midnight Conversations. On a May afternoon in 1936, Edana Millay, along with her husband, Eugene Persephone, arrived at the Barms Hotel on Sanibel Island off the coast of Florida.What they took with them, apart from the luggage they planned to stay for a long time, was the only complete draft of a long poem he had written for two years. This manuscript consisted of several notebooks, as well as fragments of brown wrapping paper, and old envelopes with fragments of jotted notes on the back.This was exactly Ms. Milley's plan, and she was going to type a copy of the manuscript herself on a portable typewriter within the next few weeks. After ordering their travel bags, typewriters, and manuscripts to be sent to the apartment, they set off for the seashore.Having gone less than half a mile, they happened to look back and saw the hotel in flames (a reenactment of what happened to William Gillette).Flames seemed to burst from the window of their lodging. They rushed back, but it was impossible to save anything.Fortunately, they also saved the car that was pushed away from the burning building. Getting into the car, and donning the filthy white bathrobes that were now their only clothing, they started driving across a bridge to the neighboring island of Keptiva.When we got there, the proprietor of the inn proved to be a wise man.When he knew that Ms. Milley had lost all the original manuscripts of her new book, he immediately took action automatically.He came to their room with a stack of papers and a typewriter.Immediately Miss Milley sat down and typed from memory her lost manuscript. To sum up the story in her husband's words: "If it had not been for the kindness of the innkeeper and his imagination, it is not certain that she would have been able to remember her poems. Before being overwhelmed by the hard work in front of her, she was able to remember everything except a few short sentences, and because she couldn't decide in her mind which of two or three words was better, She's continuing to work on it now." The original manuscript of the first sixteen chapters of Robert Self Henry's The Restoration Story, as well as the notes for the rest of the book, suffered the same fate as Tarkenton's short stories, but were never recovered. He put them in the trunk in the back seat of an unlocked car and walked into Nechfer himself to visit some friends.When he came out, it was all gone. Bounties, news on newspaper covers, and local radio broadcasts all came to nothing. Mr. Henry started from scratch, and it took another three years before his book could be published. There is no copy of his first draft, and many of the annotations involved are newspaper clippings and other things that are easily lost, making it impossible for him to collect it for a second time.But I do not believe that such a delay really affected his work.This can be said to contain a lesson. Most of the books published today would be better if they had been rewritten.Once a writer's mind has formed an idea on paper, he will continue to work consciously and unconsciously. Many manuscripts would have been corrected and improved by the authors if the inertia of withdrawing manuscripts was not so great.However, this is not the case. The verbatim drudgery, combined with time, money, and an overbearing editor, has writers rushing to get their volumes, articles, and novels to press. The loss of the original manuscript may have been a blessing in disguise.Who knew that the books mentioned in this article did not acquire some of their present fame because they were just rewritten?