ID2I LK O1
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Conipton Mackenzie
WEEK or two ago I received a letter from a gentleman who described himself as an American journalist. Here is an extract: " I have come across, in the library of a ship travelling between Barbadoes and London, a book called The Dividing Stream, on the cover of which is a strong commendation by you.
" This book is, as you must know, a thing of foulness, obscenity and blasphemy, and it is appalling that a man of your considerable literary standing should even wish his name associated with it. . . .
" It is, of course, sadly true that the present is the era of the leprous-minded writer, that there is no emphisis on cleanliness, moral standards, or common decency in current literature,' that no respect is shown for purity in womanhood." I had not intended to enter into the argument about 'obscene' literature, but a letter like that, which uncovers 'purity' stink- ing like a fetid cheese, is a warning that nobody who cares about the future of literature can afford to treat the present demon- stration of official chastity with the contemptuous indifference it deserves.
Mr. Francis King's novel, The Dividing Stream, was sup- ported by me as a choice for the Book Society when I was serving on the advisory committee. I need hardly say that the myopic retrospect of literature in The Annual Register does not mention one of the very few novels of genuine promise by the younger generation, and so I am unable to check the year of publication, but it must have been about three years ago. There was no vestige of obscenity in The Dividing Stream and my correspondent's ability to discover it suggests a condition of mental priapism, which it would detract from the dignity of Whitehall to emulate. I have not, read any of the three or four novels which have been, or are being, prosecuted now, and I should be debarred from comment while the case is sub judiee. What can be said, however, is that every prosecution of a sincere work of art has proved to be a moral boomerang, whereas it gives a fictitious importance to books worthless as literature. In 1915 D. H. Lawrence's novel The Rainbow was sup- pressed by the Home Office with the help of some magistrate: today it can be obtained in a popular edition. This incredible prosecution in the middle of a great war was perhaps the most fatuous display of hebetated bumbledom which common sense has had to endure. Yet in 1928 when the egregious Joynson- Hicks was Home Secretary Miss Radclyffe Hall's rather weari- some book The Well of Loneliness was prosecuted in response, in deference, in obedience--call it what you will—to the hysterical demand of James Douglas, the editor of the Sunday Express. It happened that a novel of my own called Extraordinary Women was published within a week or two of The Well of Loneliness. My book treated the theme of Lesbianism from a comic angle and it was probably above the head of James Douglas. The wise men of Gotham at the Home Office dis- cussed the possibility of prosecuting Extraordinary Women but unfortunately abstained. I say unfortunately because that abstention deprived the public of the rich comic entertainment they would have enjoyed from my cross-examination of the witnesses for the prosecution. Baulked of that, I challenged James Douglas to argue with me over the radio on the question of obscenity in books, and the BBC arranged for this debate, a pretty daring step for Savoy Hill in those days. However, at the last moment James Douglas pleaded indisposition and the debate was never held. " Considerable public agitation, resulting in its suppression, was caused by Miss Radclyffe Hall's Well of Loneliness which was opportunistically used as a- sensation by a Sunday news- paper. The book, despite its merits, had too much the air of a personal crusade. . . . Mr. Compton Mackenzie published in a limited edition Extraordinary Women. Its high price and the restricted number of copies probably saved it from the fate of Miss Radclyffe Hall's novel. Mr. D. H. Lawrence took refuge in a limited private edition for his book Lady Chatterley's Lover."
Nobody who knew D. H. Lawrence could have supposed for an instant that he was actuated by any notion in writing Lady Chatterley's Lover except a passionate desire to serve the truth at the urge of a profound moral compulsion. The suppression of The Rainbow had inflicted a wound from which he never really recovered and the publication of Lady Chatterley's Laver in a private edition continuously fretted him as what he thought was an ignoble surrender to expediency. The thickest head in authority is not so thick but that it is able to know when a book is published with the deliberate intention of attracting the money of the public by salacity, and nobody would wish any protection extended to such books. From time to time the police raid the premises on which such books are sold. Fines are irnposed, and the unsavoury wares are destroyed. Is any voice raised to protest against such action as an outrage against literature? Of course not. What we must guard against is the arrogation by the police of a right to prosecute any book that incurs the displeasure of somebody like my correspondent whose mind is so corrupt that lie can find an admirable novel like The Dividing Stream foul and obscene. Will the Home Office venture to draw up a list of words and expressions the printing of which will entail a prose- cution, and supplement that list of words and expressions with a list of situations that. will involve a writer in police-court pro- ceedings if he should ever allude to them in a book? No Act of Parliament will be required; in this corner of the `free world' an Order in Council will probably be enough to put a brake on the liberty of the Press, and that, be it understood, is the liberty of the printing press for which Milton fought in his Areopagitica, although the term is now used only for newspapers.
There stalks abroad at this moment a spirit of official hybris, and it behoves us to lay that spirit. Mr. Attlee observed at the recent dinner of the English-Speaking Union that Britons never shall be Slays, but we are moving all the time a little nearer to that disagreeable transformation. I am haunted by those sombre words of Gibbon written under the emotion of the Gordon Riots: " The month of June, 1780, will ever be marked by a dark and diabolical fanaticism Which I supposed to be extinct, but which actually subsists in Great Britain perhaps beyond any country in Europe."
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