The Well of Loneliness may be a brave book to have written, but let us hope it will pave the way for someone to write a better. Homosexuality is, after all, as rich in comedy as in tragedy, and it is time it was emancipated from the aura of distinguished damnation and religious martyrdom which surrounds its so fiercely aggressive apologists.
The subject matter was not a problem. The fears of publishers appeared misplaced. Reviews accrued over the next four weeks. Many were favourable, some were critical, all were unsensational. Una began a book of press cuttings. By 2 August Harrods and the Times Bookshop had sold all copies and reordered twice. Cape planned a third edition. John and Una were thrilled by what looked like clear success. They decided to leave London on 23 August for a long summer holiday. Una went to Cook’s and booked travel tickets and hotel reservations. They planned to sail to Calais, take the Golden Arrow to Paris, go to Bagnoles for the thermal baths, then journey on to Italy and summer in the sun.
They had their hair cut at Harrods and took a course of treatment at Cyclax for their complexions. Andrea dined one evening, but they left her and went to the first night of The Skull at the Shaftesbury Theatre. The vet called to cut Lurulu’s wings and claws. An acquaintance, Anne Elsner, a travel writer who admired The Well of Loneliness and who lived in a house called Journey’s End in Rye, invited them to spend a weekend with her. John loved Rye. She was thrilled by the views of marshland and the sea, the distant lighthouse and the glimpse of France, the cobbled streets and Tudor architecture. At the Catholic church of St Anthony, the priest, Father Bonaventura, gave her a silver gilt medal of this saint and invited her to kiss a relic of the true cross. She resolved to buy a house in Rye after the summer holidays. She went home to London ‘tired but happy’. In the Evening Standard Arnold Bennett wrote of her book’s ‘notable psychological and sociological significance’ and called it ‘honest, convincing and extremely courageous’.
On her forty-eighth birthday John went to high mass with Una and Andrea. In the evening Una read aloud Havelock Ellis’s latest book, his seventh. It was called Eonism and Other Supplementary Studies and it was about transvestism. On Friday 17 August the Daily Telegraph gave The Well of Loneliness the best of reviews and said it was ‘truly remarkable’, ‘a work of art finely conceived and finely written’. More tours of the London bookshops gratified. The Well was in all the windows. Sales were fast. John went to the chiropodist and a Mrs Fowler came to collect Mitsie to keep her in kennels over the holiday.
John felt established as the ‘bold pioneer’, the first writer to ‘smash the conspiracy of silence’. She was proud of the praise her book received. She did not know that Jonathan Cape had that morning received a note from James Douglas, editor of the Sunday Express, director of London Express Newspapers, member of the Garrick Club, author of The Unpardonable Sin and The Man in the Pulpit. Douglas informed Cape that he had written an editorial calling for The Well of Loneliness to be suppressed. It would appear in his paper that weekend.
20
Depraved practice
Jonathan Cape had not sent review copies of The Well of Loneliness either to the Daily Express or the Sunday Express. He wanted to avoid their editor’s brand of lurid interest. But James Douglas read the book and knew he could drum up scandal of the sort that sold his newspapers. On Saturday 18 August Express hoardings advertised impending disclosure of ‘the book that must be banned’. George Ellard, a sales clerk at Cape’s offices at Bedford Square, said the phone did not stop ringing all day. Bookshops rushed to order more copies of The Well. Collectors and messengers queued outside the trade counter. ‘They all wanted copies: ones, twos, sixes, tens, twenty-fives, fifties; and in the case of Bumpus, a hundred.’
Next morning, Sunday 19 August, at Holland Street, John and Una had the newspapers and breakfast brought to their bedroom by Cartwright the maid. Douglas’s peroration spanned five columns of the Sunday Express. His inch-high banner headline was A BOOK THAT MUST BE SUPPRESSED. Publication of The Well of Loneliness was ‘an intolerable outrage – the first outrage of the kind in the annals of English fiction’. This was a book that contaminated and corrupted literature. It was not fit to be sold by any bookseller or borrowed from any library. It was his duty as a critic to make it impossible for any other novelist to repeat this outrage.
Its theme is utterly inadmissible in the novel … I am well aware that sexual inversion and perversion are horrors which exist among us today. They flaunt themselves in public places with increasing effrontery and more insolently provocative bravado. The decadent apostles of the most hideous and most loathsome vices no longer conceal their degeneracy and their degradation.
They seem to imagine that there is no limit to the patience of the English people. They appear to revel in their defiance of public opinion. They do not shun publicity. On the contrary they seek it and they take a delight in their flamboyant notoriety. The consequence is that this pestilence is devastating the younger generation. It is wrecking young lives. It is defiling young souls.
It was, Douglas reasoned, perhaps a blessing or a curse in disguise that this novel had appeared. Its purpose was to make society face a disagreeable task which it had hitherto shirked, ‘the task of cleaning itself from the leprosy of these lepers, and making the air clean and wholesome once more’.
The battle against this filth, he said, had been lost in France and Germany, but not in England,
and I do not believe that it will be lost. The English people are slow to rise in their wrath and strike down the armies of evil, but when they are aroused they show no mercy, and they give no quarter to those who exploit their tolerance and their indulgence.
It is no use to say that the novel possesses ‘fine qualities’ or that its author is an ‘accomplished’ artist. It is no defence to say that the author is sincere or that she is frank, or that there is delicacy in her art.
The answer is that the adroitness and cleverness of the book intensifies its moral danger. It is a seductive and insidious piece of special pleading designed to display perverted decadence as a martyrdom inflicted upon these outcasts by a cruel society. It flings a veil of sentiment over their depravity. It even suggests that their self-made debasement is unavoidable because they cannot save themselves.
This terrible doctrine may commend itself to certain schools of pseudo-scientific thought, but it cannot be reconciled with the Christian religion or with the Christian doctrine of free-will. Therefore, it must be fought to the bitter end by the Christian Churches. This is the radical difference between paganism and Christianity.
If Christianity does not destroy this doctrine, then this doctrine will destroy it, together with the civilisation it has built on the ruins of paganism. These moral derelicts are not cursed from their birth. Their downfall is caused by their own act and their own will. They are damned because they choose to be damned, not because they are doomed from the beginning.
We must protect our children against their specious fallacies and sophistries. Therefore, we must banish their propaganda from our bookshops and libraries. I would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel. Poison kills the body, but moral poison kills the soul.
What, then, is to be done? The book must at once be withdrawn. I hope the author and the publishers will realise that they have made a grave mistake, and will without delay do all in their power to repair it. If they hesitate to do so, the book must be suppressed by the process of law … I appeal to the Home Secretary to set the law in motion. He should instruct the Director of Public Prosecutions to consider whether The Well of Loneliness is fit for circulation, and, if not, to take action to prevent its being further circulated.
Finally, let me warn our novelists and our men of letters that literature as well as morality is in peril. Fiction of this type is an injury to good literature. It makes the profession of literature fall into disrepute. Literature has not yet recovered from the harm done to it by the Oscar Wilde scandal. It should k
eep its house in order.
Radclyffe Hall’s photograph was printed alongside this diatribe. There she was with short hair, bow tie, chappish clothes, hand in pocket, lighted cigarette, clearly lesbian, a decadent apostle of hideous and most loathsome vices, a moral derelict and a poisoner of souls.
Douglas’s prose style seemed to parody her own. Each hectored, invoked the Lord and buried their argument beneath overblown prose. Both were ambitious, melodramatic, opinionated, upholders of the moral high ground, preachers of The Truth. Like Fox-Pitt with his ‘grossly immoral woman’ charge, Douglas was the outraged patriarch, the guardian of the nation’s morals. In a single editorial he contrived to be offensive to homosexuals, lesbians, those with leprosy, the French, the Germans and all who were not Christians.
Jonathan Cape reacted in fear and haste. That same day, without talking to Radclyffe Hall or Audrey Heath, he sent a copy of The Well of Loneliness and a selection of its reviews to the Home Secretary. He invited him to pass the book, if he wished, to the Director of Public Prosecutions. He then wrote a reply for Douglas to print:
If it is shown to us that the best interests of the public will be served by withdrawing the book from circulation we will be ready to do this and to accept the full consequences as publishers. We are not however prepared to withdraw it at the behest of the Editor of the Sunday Express.
Cape accused Douglas of giving widespread and unwanted publicity to the book and of spoiling his own intentions of targeting ‘the right class of reader. Smut hounds and those with a taste for pornography would now be seeking the book out.’
James Douglas was victorious. He printed Cape’s letter on Monday 20 August in the Daily Express. His new headline was A BOOK TO BE BANNED. THE HOME SECRETARY’S DUTY. He ranted about The Well of Loneliness in another editorial. It condoned sexual perversity, loosened ‘the very sheet anchor of conduct and principle’, made crime and indecency a matter of individual judgement and inferred that ‘there were no such things as right and wrong in the universe. On these lines murderers could be comfortably assured not merely of acquittal, but of sympathy as the martyrs of their “psychological impulses”. And murderers only slay the body, while these perverts destroy the soul.’
Radclyffe Hall was incredulous when she read Cape’s letter in the Daily Express. ‘This was the first that I knew of my publisher’s intention’, she revealed. ‘His were the sins of imbecility coupled with momentary panic.’ Havelock Ellis was disbelieving too. ‘I have not anywhere met with approval of his action’, he wrote to her that week. ‘He invited the Home Secretary’s opinion – which he might have known beforehand!’
The Home Secretary, Sir William Joynson-Hicks, ‘the Preposterous Jix’, was an evangelical moralist. He was President of the Zenana Bible Mission and a fervent opponent of the Revised Prayer Book. Even the Bishop of Durham called him a ‘dour fanatic’ who proceeded against one cause after another with ‘dervish like fervour’. Joynson-Hicks instructed the police to patrol public parks ‘for violations of public decency’, established the Street Offences Committee, chaired by his wife, to crack down on prostitution, prosecuted dozens of nightclubs and casinos for gambling and sexual offences, secured a judicial ruling that made the Communist Party illegal and authorized a 200-strong police raid on a small, unwitting Russian trade delegation.
He received Cape’s letter and a copy of the book on the afternoon of Monday 20 August. His reply reached Cape by hand on Wednesday 22 August. ‘One’s mind reels’, wrote Radclyffe Hall. ‘In a few hours my book had been read & carefully considered! Over 500 pages – large format – 180,000 words.’ But Joynson-Hicks had done more than consider the book. He had, in that short time, made sure that his colleagues who held high judicial office would manipulate the law to get it banned.
The Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Archibald Bodkin, was away. Joynson-Hicks sent the book by messenger to Bodkin’s deputy, Sir George Stephenson. He was at home in Newick in Surrey. Joynson-Hicks asked him whether, if Cape was prosecuted for obscene libel, a jury would convict. Sir George replied the same day:
The book has been widely and favourably reviewed in the press. It is described as ‘sincere, courageous, high minded and beautifully expressed.’ The fact however remains that it is in effect a plea not only for the toleration but for the recognition of sexual perversion amongst women. With regard to the contention which might be made on behalf of the authoress that she did not intend to corrupt her readers, intent is immaterial, the question for the jury being ‘whether the tendency of the matter charged as an obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influence and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall’. (see Hicklin L. R. 3QB 371)
In my view this book would tend to corrupt the minds of young persons if it fell into their hands and its sale is undesirable. It is of course impossible for me to say more than that I think a jury ought to convict if proceedings are taken. Whether they would do so or not is another matter. My view however is that there would be a reasonable prospect of a conviction. Incidentally it would appear to be clear that the authoress is herself what is known as a homo-sexualist, or as she prefers to describe it an ‘invert’.
I may say that I have informally consulted the Chief Magistrate [Sir Chartres Biron] upon this matter; he has read the book and tells me that he would have no hesitation in granting process. I should add that before instituting any proceedings in this matter I should consider it my duty to take the directions of the Attorney General [Sir Thomas Inskip].
I do not understand that I am asked to express my views upon the question of policy to prosecute. A prosecution would undeniably give the book a further advertisement and it may well be that the Secretary of State would think it desirable to avail himself of the offer made in the letter of the publisher Messers Jonathan Cape to the Home Office to withdraw the book from circulation.
I return your files.
G.S.
Joynson-Hicks then had a ‘long private conference with the Lord Chancellor. We came to the conclusion that the book is both obscene and indecent.’ He drafted a letter to Cape, which Sir George Stephenson checked and sharpened. The Well of Loneliness, he wrote, was ‘inherently obscene’; it dealt with and supported a depraved practice; its tendency was to corrupt; it was ‘gravely detrimental to the public interest. I am advised, moreover, that the book can be suppressed by criminal proceedings. I prefer, however, to believe that in view of your letter you will accept my decision and withdraw the book, and this I now ask you to do.’
‘If they decline, proceed at once’, Joynson-Hicks wrote to Sir George.
Cape appeared to comply with the Home Secretary’s wishes. He feared the expense of the law and the effect of adverse publicity on his publishing house. His letter of capitulation was published in The Times:
Sir,
We have to-day received a request from the Home Secretary asking us to discontinue publication of Miss Radclyffe Hall’s novel ‘The Well of Loneliness’. We have already expressed our readiness to fall in with the wishes of the Home Office in this matter, and we have therefore stopped publication.
I have the honour to be your obedient servant,
Jonathan Cape
But Cape had also to fall in with the wishes of Radclyffe Hall, who was as determined as the Home Secretary. He contrived a devious strategy. Five thousand copies of the book were already in circulation, or available from shops and libraries. No order had been given to destroy these, no criminal proceedings were imminent. The scandal was creating a huge demand. The printer was about to run a third reprint. Cape cancelled this, but told the printer to make moulds of the type as quickly as possible and to deliver them to him. His plan was to ship these moulds to Paris and to get the book printed there.
John and Una were supposed to be up at five-thirty the following day to set off for Paris, Bagnoles and Italy. All was cancelled. They hurried to Mrs Leonard who failed to predict what would happen next. Mrs Smith,
their current housekeeper, and Cartwright the maid left as planned for their holidays. ‘All day at telephone, letters, wires etc.,’ Una wrote in her diary.
21
Sapphism and censorship
The writer Arnold Bennett went to the Garrick Club on the day Joynson-Hicks told Cape to withdraw The Well of Loneliness. He saw James Douglas in the lounge talking to Sir Chartres Biron, Chief Magistrate of the Bow Street police court. ‘I set violently on Jimmy at once about his attack on Radclyffe Hall’s sapphic novel. Jimmy was very quiet and restrained but Biron defended Jimmy with real heat; so I went on attacking. I told Jimmy to come in and lunch with me. He did. He said there was an imp in me.’
Sir Chartres Biron had already been ‘informally consulted’ by the Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions on how to suppress the book. His real heat was to flare again two months later. He was the presiding magistrate when the book was tried as an obscene libel.
James Douglas voiced his bigotry to sell his newspapers. Chartres Biron, like Joynson-Hicks, used his judicial power to enforce his homophobic views. ‘Unnatural practices between women,’ Biron said, were ‘of the most horrible and disgusting obscenity.’ Inverts and perverts should be ‘treated with condemnation by all decent people’. They were ‘practitioners of unnatural vice, living in filthy sin’.
The Trials of Radclyffe Hall Page 20
