Evelyn Waugh's story “Period Piece” is one of his most complex in narrative method—it uses a frame tale, a narratee, and a literary and social context in which the most cynical narrative and social monstrosities are accepted as the norm—and one of his most interesting thematically, for it anticipates by a quarter of a century the resolution of the dynastic plot of Sword of Honour. Furthermore, it is the only Waugh short story for which a manuscript or typescript has been discovered, and a comparison of carbon typescript and printed versions shows how carefully Waugh reconsidered questions of style, character, and narrative strategy.

In the frame tale, Miss Myers reads to her employer, Lady Amelia, a work of “strong” modern fiction. Lady Amelia finds the novel anemic, “painfully reticent,” and unduly concerned with vulgar probability, and she offers in contrast an anecdote from her experience that comprises the central section of “Period Piece.” In that story, Billy Cornphillip, wealthy and dull, marries the would-be artistic Etty, to the distress of Ralph Bland, his nearest relative, presumptive heir, and attractive sponger on women. Billy and Etty produce no heir, but after an escalating series of quarrels between the two men, Ralph elopes with Etty, impregnates and abandons her, and leaves her to return to her husband, who accepts the situation and the child who is legally if not genetically his heir, dispossessing Ralph and his legitimate son.

The twelve pages of carbon typescript—titled “The Case of Lord Cornphillip” and provided, as the stamp shows, by the long-suffering “ALEX McLACHLAN, Literary Typecopying Specialist,” whom Waugh used from the early 1930's until McLachlan's death in 1946—vary from the text in Mr. Loveday's Little Outing and Other Sad Stories¹ in a number of significant ways. Judging from Waugh's letter to his agents about October 3, 1936, the story had not yet been published even though it is elsewhere dated 1934.² As was often the case, Waugh obviously sought between typescript and publication greater precision and economy in language; he rearranged the order in which events were narrated to make it more logical; he deleted extraneous material; and he added details to strengthen the narrator's link to events and to emphasize her casual, aristocratic brutality.

Waugh's stylistic revisions are best exemplified in his treatment of the quarrel between Lord Billy Cornphillip and his cousin and heir Ralph (in typescript Harry) Bland:

Typescript

Coming as it did towards the end of a large and gloomy Christmas party this remark could not be disregarded or forgotten. It made the first serious breach between the two cousins. … There is no limit to the extremes to which they [relatives] will go.

“Period Piece”

It was towards the end of a large and rather old-fashioned Christmas party, so no one was in a forgiving mood. There was a final breach between the two cousins. … There is no limit to the savagery to which they will resort.

(61)

“Savagery” and “resort” are more precise and emphatic than the words replaced, and the ironic assumption that “old-fashioned” means disastrous strengthens the more obvious contrast between Christmas and implacable resentment.

Revisions of structure are a bit more complex. Because Lady Amelia's narrative is reminiscent and expository rather than dramatic, Waugh was not forced to rely on chronology as a structural principle, and in typescript he made several false steps. Thus in a passage corresponding to pp. 57–58 of “Period Piece,” he originally introduced Bland before he had finished explaining the circumstances which led to Billy's marriage and his wife Etty's reaction to his dullness. In revision, Waugh first established the context of the marriage and then described the intruder Bland. And after Bland has failed to secure a seat in Parliament, the typescript turned to Etty's growing dissatisfaction with Billy before describing Bland's paranoia which leads him to elope with her in revenge. “Period Piece” puts the mania first, then Etty's dissatisfaction, then the elopement. Since Ralph initiates the action, this order is more logical.

Waugh also recognized the blunting of emphasis by unnecessary detail in the typescript. In the final paragraphs of the story, Lady Amelia mentions the occasion on which the present Lord Cornphillip learned that he is Bland's, not Billy's son. Both in typescript and printed text, her nephew Simon reveals the information, but the typescript gives his motive, a quarrel about capital punishment. Waugh clearly saw that the topic was irrelevant to the theme, and the final text merely mentions the revelation.

More important, on two other occasions Waugh deleted material about the fate of Bland. The typescript introduced him with Lady Amelia's memory of her last sight of him playing for minimum stakes at Monte Carlo. In “Period Piece,” she does not “know what became of him” (58). Having dropped from polite society, the revision implies, he no longer exists for people of her circle. Later, in presenting Bland's parliamentary campaign, Billy's “accusation against Ralph of corrupt practices,” and Bland's loss of his seat, both typescript and printed text establish that the campaign is more expensive than Bland's means allow. The typescript summarizes the aftermath, including Harry's bankruptcy and the Queen's displeasure at Billy's behavior; “Period Piece” moves directly from Ralph's losing his seat to his developing paranoia.

However, Waugh augmented where he saw the opportunity. The typescript states that the campaign was “more in fact than Harry could well afford” and ends the sentence there. “Period Piece” continues: “but in those days Members of Parliament had many opportunities for improving their position, so we all thought it a very wise course of Ralph's—the first really sensible thing we had known him to do” (61–62). In the printed story, therefore, Billy has not merely cost Ralph money but ruined his prospects of gaining more, additional motive for Ralph's sense of grievance.

Other additions after typescript seem to be intended to establish Lady Amelia's narrative authority, especially those about Etty's wedding announcement and Lady Amelia's serving as a bridesmaid (57, 58). Others emphasize the callousness with which she accepts the events she narrates and her aristocratic brutality towards her companion, Miss Myers. Near the beginning of the story, after Miss Myers has commented that the author of the novel she is reading aloud “must have come from a terrible home,” the typescript makes the transition to Lady Amelia's reminiscence about her own circle by her characterizing them as “people who come from the most unexceptionable homes,” delivering the judgment “with a sharp glance at her companion.” The printed text picks up Miss Myers' unfortunate phrase and adds a simile which underlines, especially by the use of “ivory,” the rebuke at her unconscious presumption in criticizing her betters, who are “‘people who come from anything but terrible homes,’ she added with a glance at her companion; a glance sharp and smart as a rap on the knuckles with an ivory ruler” (55).

More subtle is the revision of Lady Amelia's bullying of her companion at the end of her narrative, signalled both in typescript and printed text by the arrival of the tea-tray:

Typescript

You will have plenty of time for your tea, Miss Myers. The library does not close until six o'clock.

“Period Piece”

… I see that Mrs. Samson has made more of those little scones which you always seem to enjoy so much. I am sure, dear Miss Myers, you would suffer much less from your migraine if you avoided them. But you take so little care of yourself, dear Miss Myers … Give one to Manchu.

(66)

The typescript sought to impose symmetry by returning at the end to the subject of the beginning: Lady Amelia's taste for novels. The revision assumes her moral rather than her social superiority to Miss Myers, and with its subtle parallel of her diet with the self-indulgence of Ralph Bland, makes both the authors of their own misfortunes and emphasizes the polite rapaciousness which Billy and Lady Amelia share beneath the façade of manners. The fact that Manchu is a dog and casually given that which Miss Myers should deny herself is an added fillip.

Waugh's revisions added to, if they did not entirely create, what depth and resonance the story has, and they show that his sense of craftsmanship extended to a story that by comparison with his novels he considered minor. Obviously his repeated advice to Nancy Mitford was the result of long practice: “No more complaints about headaches. Revision is just as important as any other part of writing and must be done con amore.”³

Notes

1. Mr. Loveday's Little Outing and Other Sad Stories (London: Chapman and Hall, 1936), p. 55. This edition cited parenthetically hereafter.

2. For the letter and a physical description of the typescript, see my A Catalogue of the Evelyn Waugh Collection at the Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin (Troy, NY: Whitston Publishing Company, 1981), items E296, A13. The story is dated 1934 in Tactical Exercise (Boston: Little, Brown, 1954). No periodical publication has been discovered.

3. The Letters of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Mark Amory (New Haven and New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1980), p. 347.