Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner (101 page)

Repository: ROUM, 10-pp. ms. and 32-pp ts.

This story appeared in
The Saturday Evening Post
, CCIX (14 Nov. 1936), 12–13, 121, 122, 124, 126, 128, 130. In the late spring of 1937, when Faulkner revised it, he used tearsheets from the
Post
, pasting one column on each page and typing in other parts. The proportions of tearsheets to typescript were about equal, and there were no significant differences in the text between the magazine form and the book form apart from the insertion of three numerals to divide Chapter IV. The material was retitled “Riposte in Tertio,” and the original title was used to give the new book its name.

Repository: ROUM, 13-pp. ms.

When this story first went to
The Saturday Evening Post
in September of 1934, editor Graeme Lorimer liked it but requested that Faulkner “bring about the boys’ revenge on Grumby more swiftly and keep Grumby in character throughout.” Faulkner did so and made a number of other clarifying changes in the first half of the story. He carefully rewrote passages from typescript pages 8–13 and 18–19, totaling more than a thousand words in all. He described Uncle Buck, Ringo, and Bayard as they tracked Ab Snopes toward Grenada at the same time that they pursued Grumby and his men. This material also included the first meeting with Grumby and the treatment of the wound he inflicted on Uncle Buck. Yance’s name was changed to Joby, and more than two dozen new paragraphs were created by indention. The end of the magazine version told the reader only that Grumby was pegged out on the door of the old compress, whereas deleted material from the typescript plainly said that he looked like a flayed coon, and one passage, here included in brackets, describes obliquely what seems to have been the process by which the boys flayed Grumby and partially cured his hide before they pegged it to the compress door. After a long interval the story finally appeared in Volume CCIX (5 Dec. 1936), 16–17, 86, 87, 90, 92, 93, 94. In revising the story to become Chapter V of
The Unvanquished
, Faulkner supplied additional material about the pursuit of Grumby, the kill, and the placing of his severed hand on Rosa Millard’s grave. Faulkner also supplied numbers to divide the chapter into four parts.

Repository: ROUM, 12-pp. ms. and 32-pp. ts.

It may have been in the late winter or early spring of 1935 that Faulkner wrote a ten-page manuscript which he entitled “Fool About a Horse.” A nameless narrator relayed the story told in the disused law office of “Grandfather” while a servant named Roskus operated the fan against the summer heat and served the drinks. The only Roskus in Faulkner’s work is Roskus Gibson, who works for the Compsons and figures in
The Sound and the Fury
. This suggests that this story, like several others, began with one of the Compson children, in this case Quentin MacLachan Compson III, who related the tale told by the sewing-machine agent V. K. Suratt to Grandfather, presumably Jason Lycurgus Compson, Jr., and Doc Peabody. It was the story of the losing encounter of Pap, his father Lum Suratt, with Pat Stamper, to the considerable disadvantage not only of Pap but also the boy’s
Mammy, Vynie Suratt. Later, in an undated letter Faulkner probably wrote in March of 1935 to Morton Goldman, he said he did not know whom to try a new story (“Lion”) on, “since I made such a bust about the Post with FOOL ABOUT A HORSE.…” Whatever the bust was, Faulkner did not give up on the story, and in the summer of 1935 he asked Goldman to send it to
Scribner’s Magazine
with the assurance that he would rewrite it if necessary.
Scribner’s
bought the story, and it appeared there in Volume C (Aug. 1936), 80–86. A surviving thirty-three-page typescript is different enough from the
Scribner’s
version to suggest that Faulkner did a very thorough job of revision. In the magazine there was no narrator interposed between the reader and the witness of the trading contest who described it in the first person. This witness was no longer identified as Suratt, and the passages describing Suratt were deleted. Faulkner thus eliminated not only the conjectural Quentin Compson but also Grandfather and Doc Peabody and the setting in Grandfather’s office. The other changes were many without being major. One thing Faulkner did was to smooth out the narrator’s dialect. Whereas he pronounced the impersonal pronoun “hit” in the typescript, in the magazine it usually became “it,” and “misdoubted” became “thought.” Some changes worked in the opposite direction, however, as “might” became “mought” and “fire” became “fahr.” But most of the paragraphs of the typescript underwent changes of some kind as Faulkner sharpened the story, working meticulously to convey the narrator’s speech precisely as he wanted it. In the winter of 1938–39, at work on what would become his novel
The Hamlet
, Faulkner revised the story, incorporating it into part 2 of Chapter Two in Book One, “Flem.” Now the nameless narrator, who had been Suratt in the typescript, became V. K. Ratliff. And Lum Suratt, who had become just Pap, had been replaced as the story’s protagonist by Ab Snopes. Vynie Suratt, later just Mammy, had become “Miz Snopes.” Faulkner made at least as many revisions between the magazine version and the book version as he had earlier made between the typescript version and the magazine version. Most of the changes came in the first half of the story, where he compressed a number of pages. There were obvious changes: Varner’s store became Whiteleaf; McCaslin’s store became Cain’s store, and Uncle Ike McCaslin was replaced by Cain. Faulkner also eliminated the Roman numerals II and III which had separated the parts of the magazine story. Although he had not altered the main facts of the trading match between Ab Snopes and Pat Stamper and its consequences, he had, in effect, had Ratliff retell the whole story, with many changes in diction, sentence structure, and sequence to sharpen his tale yet again.

Repository: FCVA.

The evolution of this story shows how painstakingly Faulkner worked on his fiction and how many stages might separate the inception and the final version of a story. Perhaps as early as the late 1920’s Faulkner began a manuscript entitled “Omar’s Eighteenth Quatrain.” (It was actually the seventeenth in Edward FitzGerald’s first edition of his translation of
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
, eighteenth in the third, fourth, and fifth editions.) One six-page fragment, a two-page fragment, and three separate pages testify to Faulkner’s determination to get the story right. With no internal divisions, the six-page fragment in Faulkner’s tiny script follows Suratt from Mrs. Littlejohn’s boarding house to Henry Armstid’s farm. Joined by a third man named Vernon, they drive in Suratt’s buckboard with its sewing-machine housing out to the Old Frenchman’s place, where Faulkner paused for a philosophical disquisition on the now anonymous early settler who gave the tract its name. The three men squat hidden in the bushes listening to the shoveling, which Suratt assures them is the sound of Flem Snopes searching for buried treasure. Soon afterward, when the sound ceases, Suratt dispels some of Vernon’s doubts by accosting a lone departing rider in the dark night, who turns out to be Flem on his way back to Frenchman’s Bend. With Vernon still skeptical and Henry a fanatical believer, Suratt returns the next night to Henry’s farm with Uncle Dick, the dowser. The two eat hurriedly and set out once again for the Old Frenchman’s place. Joined by Vernon, the three men complete the journey and then take pick and shovels from Suratt’s buckboard to begin digging wherever Uncle Dick might find a lode. There the fragment breaks off. The other single pages are slight variants of the episodes at Henry’s house, of Uncle Dick’s appearance, and of the skulking in the bushes at the Old Frenchman’s place. On one of the pages Flem had installed one Elmer Vance as caretaker at the place. This was followed by Suratt’s dickering with Flem over a sale price. On the two connected pages (the second of them actually comprising only eight lines), Vernon discovers that the oldest coin in the sack he had found had been minted in 1901; Suratt’s, in 1894. Here Faulkner brought the story swiftly, almost abruptly, to an end, as Henry keeps digging madly in his hole, visited once a day by his gaunt wife bringing him food. To the lounging onlookers he digs with “the regularity of a mechanical toy … with something monstrous in his unflagging motions.…” The only complete manuscript, eight unnumbered pages entitled “Lizards in Jamshyd’s Courtyard,” shows, on seven of the pages, one or more paste-ons cut from a previous manuscript. Part I introduces Suratt and follows him through the goat-buying deal (which took place three years before) to his learning of Flem’s purchase of the Old Frenchman’s place. Part II shows him there, spying on Flem, then bringing Vernon Tull and Henry Armstid with him. When Uncle
Dick, the dowser, finds buried coins, they determine to buy the place from Flem. Part III relates the purchase, for $3,000, the unsuccessful search for more coins, and Ratliff’s realization that they have been duped. Part IV describes the crowd watching Armstid dig and then the men on the porch of Varner’s store commenting on Flem and his triumph. A number of typescript fragments of varying lengths show Faulkner trying different arrangements and development of his material. The only complete typescript, one of thirty pages (which could antedate the eight manuscript pages), begins with a description of the Old Frenchman’s place and Suratt and then goes on to the goat-buying deal. This section ends with Suratt learning of Flem’s new purchase. Only a space rather than Roman numerals separates the parts of this version. Next Faulkner shows Suratt and his two partners spying on Flem. Another section is devoted to Uncle Dick. In the next section, Suratt dickers with Flem. In the next, the three men buy the place. The sixth section shows them digging. Then Suratt realizes they have been tricked, while Armstid continues his furious efforts. The seventh and last part shows the spectators observing Armstid and ends with the comments of the men at Varner’s Store. The last six lines of dialogue are almost identical with those in the eight-page manuscript version. On his sending schedule Faulkner noted that he sent the story to
The Saturday Evening Post
on 16 May 1930, but then he canceled that date and substituted “5-27-30.” Faulkner’s correspondence with the
Post
²
reveals that he sent in two versions of the story, that the editors liked the first one rather than the second, and that they had indicated acceptance by 5 August 1930 and confirmed this on 18 August, although Faulkner recorded on his sending schedule an acceptance date of 7 August. Because of the radical difference in the
Post
version—putting the mad Armstid and his observers first rather than last—it seems likely that the typescript the editors accepted was substantially different from the one discussed above. The story appeared in
The Saturday Evening Post
, CCIV (27 Feb. 1932), 12–13, 52, 57. It was probably the winter of 1938–39 when Faulkner began to use elements of the story in
The Hamlet.
The most obvious change was in Suratt’s name: he was now V. K. Ratliff. And Odum Bookwright had replaced Vernon Tull as one-third owner of the Old Frenchman’s place. There were other changes deriving from Faulkner’s integration of the materials of the short story into his novel. For one, Flem Snopes did not buy the Old Frenchman’s place; Will Varner deeded it to Mr. and Mrs. Flem Snopes as a part of his daughter Eula’s dowry. Faulkner expanded the goat-buying story which is section II of the magazine story to become part 2 of Chapter Three in Book One of the novel, and he ended it with Flem sitting proprietorially in front of the Old Frenchman’s place. Then, in part
1
of Chapter Two of Book Four, he launched into the much expanded tale. In rewriting sections III and IV
of the magazine story he made a number of specific changes. For example, the purchase price in dollars of the Old Frenchman’s place was not specified, but the presumptive date of the coins to be found, 1861, was specified, presumably to make more immediately apparent the meaning of the clue that tells Ratliff for certain that they have been duped into buying a salted mine. Finally, Faulkner took section I of the magazine story, rearranged and expanded it, and used it in part 2 of the chapter to end the novel.