The Trials of Radclyffe Hall by Diana Souhami (interesting novels to read txt) 📕

copies were printed and circulars sent to British booksellers offering the book at twenty-five shillings plus eleven pence postage. Here, the circular promised, was the original edition with not a comma changed. ‘The book is concerned with the phenomenon of the masculine woman in all its implications. It deserves better than to be suppressed by government action following on a campaign by a single newspaper.’ Orders were brisk. Holroyd-Reece appointed a London bookseller, Leopold Hill at 101 Great Russell Street, to act as his distributor. There was no formal ban on publication and initially no interference from the authorities.

Blanche Knopf, though, on 27 September ‘ratted’, as Una put it, on American publication. From New York she wrote that orders were coming not from the ‘better type of booksellers’ but from dealers in dirty books who expected something ‘very salacious’.

Our decision not to publish it will, I am sure, come as a very great shock to you, but you must view the situation from our point of view. You are an English author, and you secured a reputable English publisher for this book. The English publisher, on request of a public authority, withdrew the book from circulation, and in this withdrawal you acquiesced. You made no attempt to compel him to carry out the terms of his agreement and thus bring the matter to the attention of the Courts, the only bodies competent to render a legally binding decision. We are thus faced with the hopeless prospect of attempting to defend a book which has not been defended in its author’s own country.

She wanted to ‘preserve’ the signed contract as an option on the next two books Radclyffe Hall might write. Radclyffe Hall scorned her. It was not her nature to see ‘the situation’ from another’s point of view. Audrey Heath sent a cable to Carl Brandt: ‘In view disgraceful termination contract John absolutely refuses any compromise with Knopf. Has already received alternative offers and has signed contract with Cape.’ Cape took over the American rights. Audrey sailed to the States to try to find a new publisher.

In London Radclyffe Hall courted support and publicity. She gave press interviews, wrote letters and with Una in one week went to first nights of The Song of the Sea, The Scarlet Pimpernel and Thunder on the Left. ‘John mobbed for her autograph’, Una said. Secretarial help came in the form of a Miss Webber, who addressed envelopes all day.

‘Now enter Mr James Douglas again’, Radclyffe Hall wrote in her unpublished account of the fate of her book. ‘This time we get the Daily Express breaking out into fresh invictives.’ On 3 October a journalist from the Daily Sketch phoned the Home Office saying he had seen a circular issued by Pegasus about subscriptions for The Well of Loneliness. He asked what action the government intended. ‘Pending consideration of the circular it was too early to make any statement’, was the Home Office reply. But Joynson-Hicks wasted no time. He that day issued a warrant to the Postmaster-General ‘and all others whom it may concern’.

I hereby authorise and require you to detain, open and produce for my inspection any postal packets which may be observed in course of transmission through the post and which are addressed to the Pegasus Press …

Next day Douglas ran a story of how The Well of Loneliness was pouring into Britain and all over the world. He demanded immediate action from the Home Secretary. Joynson-Hicks issued another warrant – to the Chairman of the Board of Customs Sir Francis Floud. Floud was to prevent the book being imported. He instructed all the ports. Copies found ‘in goods or in passengers’ baggage’ must be seized. At Dover a consignment of 250 copies addressed to Leopold Hill was held. The Express aired Douglas’s approval:

That is the kind of invigoratingly prompt and effective action that becomes a Government department. The book was suppressed for reasons of decency and taste. But other questions arise when an attempt is made to evade this suppression by delivering the offending novel through the post and from abroad. The matter then becomes one of deliberate affront to the constituted authority. As such it must be sharply resented and its perpetrators taught that they cannot thus trifle with Government.

A general election was imminent. Douglas was telling the Conservative government what it must do to get the support of readers of his newspapers.

Harold Rubinstein, for Pegasus Press, asked Joynson-Hicks on what authority he acted, ‘so that our clients may take appropriate action to test the matter’. John Anderson from the Home Office replied: ‘The matter is one for the Board of Customs and Excise, to whom any communication on the subject should be addressed.’ The Board of Customs and Excise then replied to Rubinstein that it had a statutory obligation to detain literature that might be ‘obscene and indecent’. Rubinstein asked them to hurry up and decide whether The Well of Loneliness was obscene and indecent. The Board replied that it was not a matter to be dealt with hastily and they ‘were according it particularly careful consideration’.

In fact there was a problem. It was the duty of Customs to prevent the importing of indecent books under section 42 of the Customs Consolidation Act of 1876. By 9 October Sir Francis Floud and other members of his Board had read The Well of Loneliness. They did not think it obscene. Floud thought it a fine book. He called to see Sir John Anderson at the Home Office. Anderson told him that the Lord Chancellor and the Home Secretary intended proceedings under the Obscene Publications Act.

Floud wanted no part in it. He disliked the involvement forced upon him. He did not want to fob off Rubinstein, hold the consignment of books at Dover, or testify against the book in court. Nor did he want to flout ‘the publicly expressed opinion of the Home Secretary’. He gave his view in a memorandum to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The subject is treated