" THE OTHER HALF "
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—Lady Richmond's protest against my " presenting vice in an attractive light " calls for protest in its turn. To condemn conduct of any sort because it contains the elements of vice is to make a very hazardous judgement— one I should never dare to make lest I brought the whole structure of civilisation tumbling into hell. Surely it is truer to say that a sex-adventure of the sort described in my review is good or bad—demeaning or ennobling—according to its circumstances ? The protagonists in that incident had been driven by social frustration to a level of existence that was almost sub-animal ; to throw off such degradation and love, if only for an hour, with the natural dignity even of animals, is by contrast a noble thing. Sex must come into even a hobo's life. The wonder is that it came so cleanly, so simply.
Finally, Lady Richmond has misread my autobiography. I have seen little of the miseries of vice : I have seen much of the miseries of social injustice which drive its victims
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