Everil Worrell VS John Betancourt
Welcome to Round 2 of Everil Worrell VS Revisions. In the previous post, we pitted her original version of The Canal against August Derleth’s revised edition, and now we’re going to do the same for Leonora. So, we’ll be reviewing the story as it was originally published in Weird Tales (thank you, archive.org!) and the more recent Wildside Press revised and edited version.
LEONORA BY EVERIL WORRELL
Locked in an insane asylum, Leonora feels the end is near, and so decides to write down her story. It all began when she met a mysterious stranger in a moonlit night…
Although I, a living woman, could not remain in the abode of death, if I have not been touched by the very finger of death, then tell me this:
Why is my flesh like the flesh of the dead, so that the doctors say it is like leprous flesh, although it is not leprous? Would God it were!
Much like Morton in The Canal, naive, sheltered country teenage girl Leonora dreams of romance but instead finds only death. Worrell’s description of her surroundings give the story a haunting, nightmarish quality, and the tension is almost unbearable as readers wait for the inevitable car ride of doom. Overall, it’s another good, spooky tale, this time with a sprinkling of body horror. Weird Tales presented it as 'A modern version of the old German legend of Leonora'. The legend is even mentioned by the doctors as the likely source of the physical and mental deterioration. In the original German ballad, Lenore, published by Gottfried August Bürger in 1773, a young woman awaiting the return of her husband from the war insults God and is taken away by Death to his grave as punishment. Worrell didn't bother coming up with an equivalent sin for her Leonora - she just trusts the wrong person. This randomness and the similarity to real-life situations help magnify the horror.
LEONORA AS REVISED & EDITED BY JOHN BETANCOURT
The situation with Leonora is odder than what happened with The Canal. Let us start by saying that we like Wildside Press editions. They’re not just cheap - thanks to their Megapacks we’ve discovered many stories and authors we’d never heard about. However, that’s not enough for us to ignore the way John Betancourt handled this. In the Introduction, he states:
This version of “Leonora” has been edited by me and also contains a number of revisions not in other versions of the story. I believe it is the best version of the story available today.
There’s nothing in the rest of the Introduction to suggest Worrell wasn’t happy with the story as it was published in Weird Tales. Nothing. So why did he feel the need to change anything? Worse, he makes it sound like he changed a lot. Since the only 2 stories of his we’ve read - Tap Dancing and Buck, Glory Rae, & the Three Little Pigs - were absolute crap, that didn’t bode well. When we finally got Worrell’s original and read the 2 versions side by side, we were surprised to find out that he had barely changed anything; all the ‘editing’ and ‘revisions’ were not only wholly unnecessary, but in 2 situations also messed up the story. Oh, and he must clearly hate italics, because he removed most of them. So, what exactly did Betancourt change apart from the italics? Well, for one, he managed to add a few typos:
WORRELL: ‘malefactors of any sort were utterly unknown in our secluded part of the country’
BETANCOURT: ‘malefactors or any sort were utterly unknown in our secluded part of the country’
WORRELL: ‘the car shot silently ahead’
BETANCOURT: ‘the ear shot silently ahead’
WORRELL: ‘when Those outside must seek their dreadful homes’
BETANCOURT: ‘when those outside must seek their dreadful homes’
Great revision skills. Betancourt also changed paragraphs, putting some together and splitting others where there was a single one. Some of these splits are clunky, like this one:
WORRELL: ‘I would have been glad to find the crossroad empty. It was not.’
Now, if we were editing this, we would’ve changed it to: I would have been glad to find the crossroad empty - it was not. Betancourt opted for ending the paragraph sooner and send the last sentence to the next one:
‘I would have been glad to find the crossroad empty.
It was not. There stood the car, black’
Why? This just looks weird. He also split sentences, changed words when Worrell used the same ones too close together, and removed bits for no apparent reason. So, ‘After all, it was a fine thing to have mystery and romance for the taking, mine. Or were they mine for the taking?’ becomes ‘After all, it was a fine thing to have mystery and romance for the taking. Or were they mine for the taking?’. The ‘mine’ Betancourt removed connected to the next sentence, and the passage doesn’t sound better without it. Elsewhere, ‘The night had changed. It was bitterly cold’ becomes ‘It was bitterly cold’. If he thought there were too many ‘nights’ in a row, he could’ve easily replaced it with ‘weather’ - removing the sentence altogether alters what Worrell wanted to say, and this isn’t even the worst of it. Some changes even made us wonder if Betancourt understood what Worrell wrote. The least of these was this:
WORRELL: ‘Flying hours, for I was unconscious of the lapse of time, excepting for the once when I vaguely became uneasy at our long journey, and was reassured.’
BETANCOURT: ‘Flying hours, for I was unconscious of the lapse of time, excepting for the once when I vaguely became uneasy at our long journey, but was reassured.’
Leonora is enumerating what has happened so far, so using ‘and’ makes sense. We could ask why Betancourt felt the need to correct something that didn’t need correcting, but that basically applies to the whole revision + editing thing, so… However, there’s worse:
WORRELL: ‘Strangeness, romance - and his manner was that of a lover. In my inexperience, I knew it.’
BETANCOURT: ‘Strangeness, romance - and his manner was that of a lover. Even in my inexperience, I knew it.’
We’re no grammar experts, but these 2 sentences appear to imply the opposite. Worrell makes Leonora’s inexperience and naivete painfully obvious throughout. Her passage seems to highlight this again, as Leonora once more misinterprets the stranger’s intentions. It’s not a smooth construction, but it fits in with the rest of the story. Meanwhile, Betancourt’s addition implies that Leonora is interpreting the stranger correctly but he’s tricking her. Considering that Leonora’s meetings with the stranger are a parade of red flags, we’re not sure this change reflects what Worrell had in mind.
And now, for the most bizarre of Betancourt’s additions.
WORRELL: ‘On my sixteenth birthday, Margaret dined at my house and I supped with her. It was our idea of a celebration. It was October, and the night of the full moon. I did not start home until nearly midnight.’
BETANCOURT: ‘On my sixteenth birthday, Margaret dined at my house and I supped with her. It was our idea of a celebration. It was October, and the night of the full moon. Afterward, we went outside to walk and talk away from the ears of my father.
I did not start home until nearly midnight.’
This is how we interpret Worrell’s passage: Margaret went to Leonora’s place for dinner, and later, Leonora went to Margaret’s place for supper; then, when she was returning home from having supper with her friend, Leonora met the stranger for the first time. Clearly, Betancourt interpreted it very differently, and his revision makes it sound as if it’s all a single meal, which would make the ‘I supped with her’ bit redundant - of course Leonora ate with Margaret if she came to her place for a birthday dinner. Except, for some reason, he opted for not removing it and just added another sentence to explain how Leonora was returning to her place after Margaret had come over. This interpretation of Worrell’s sentence makes it sound super weird, because if ‘supped’ here doesn’t have the dated meaning of ‘to have supper’, it must then mean ‘eat and drink in small amounts’. So, in Betancourt’s version that first sentence is basically this: ‘Margaret dined at my house and I [ate and drank small amounts of food and drinks] with her. It was our idea of a celebration.’ We think our interpretation of dinner + supper makes more sense, as it also fits with Leonora returning home at midnight. Why Betancourt decided to over-complicate things is a mystery. Does he think most readers don’t know dinner and supper are 2 different meals? Because that’s a wee bit insulting, especially as most people who’ll seek this story out are likely already used to reading old-fashioned English. Or maybe Betancourt doesn’t know dinner and supper are 2 different meals…
One more detail about the Wildside Press edition that rubbed us the wrong way - this story being presented as ‘Classic Dark Fantasy from Weird Tales’. Dark Fantasy? There was nothing about Leonora being Dark Fantasy in the Weird Tales issue where it was first published. Is it classified as such in other editions? Because this is pretty much Weird Fiction, or at the very least Horror. Also, if this is Dark Fantasy, then a good deal of Clark Ashton Smith’s stories from his Golden Age of Weird Fiction Megapack should be considered Dark Fantasy, too.
AND THE WINNER IS…
Everil Worrell, definitely Everil Worrell. Betancourt’s boast in the Introduction - and that’s pretty much as it comes across - is just ridiculous. If Derleth had said that, we would’ve of course vehemently disagreed, but at least it would’ve made more sense as he actually changed a lot. Most of Betancourt’s changes are minimal, unnecessary, and almost feel like a petty attempt at leaving a mark on someone else’s work; and the ones that aren’t, are highly questionable. This new edition of Leonora isn’t good because of his alleged improvements - it’s good because Worrell’s writing managed to shine through them.