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

seriously and sincerely, with restraint in expression and with great literary skill and delicacy … If the subject is one that can permissibly be treated at all in a novel, it is difficult to see how it could be treated with more restraint. If on the other hand the subject is to be regarded as inadmissible, it will be difficult to know where our censorship is to stop.

He asked for permission to release the books. The Chancellor deferred his decision until he had seen the Home Secretary.

Without Floud’s support Joynson-Hicks had to put into place an alternative strategy of censorship. His colleagues came to his rescue: the Lord Chancellor Lord Hailsham, the Attorney-General Sir Thomas Inskip, the Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Archibald Bodkin, the Chief Magistrate Sir Chartres Biron.

On 11 October the Director of Public Prosecutions gave instructions to the Metropolitan Police. The Dover consignment when released was to be shadowed until delivered to Leopold Hill. A watch was to be kept on Hill’s premises ‘in case the parcel is removed to any other address’. Four copies of the book, ordered by Jonathan Cape and intercepted by the Post Office, were to be delivered at the same time as the Dover consignment. The police were to be waiting at both addresses with search warrants.

Joynson-Hicks had a further problem. He feared that if tried by jury The Well of Loneliness would not be banned. He knew the strength and eminence of those defending this book, how articulate they were, how wide their support of it and interest in it, how persistent the press coverage, how cogent and persuasive judicial defence might be. He intended to avoid such a trial and impose his prejudice. On 15 October, with the book still stuck at Dover, he warned of his intentions in a lecture to the London Diocesan Council of Youth. It was reported in The Times the next day:

It may be possible in the near future I shall have to deal with immoral and disgusting books … I am attacked on the one hand by all those people who put freedom of speech and thought and writing before everything else in the world, as if there were freedom in God’s world to pollute the young generation growing up. There must be some limit to the freedom of what a man may write or speak in this great country of ours. That freedom in my view, must be determined by the question as to whether what is written or spoken makes one of the least of these little ones offend.

The following day a letter from the publisher Geoffrey Faber expressed disbelief:

He indicates the kind of censorship he will practise … the whole of the content of English literature is to be restricted in future to such stuff as Sir William thinks it safe to put in the hands of a schoolgirl. Is it possible that a 20th century British Government can be contemplating such an incredible betise?

The answer was no. Hicks was not interested in literature or the minds of the young. He was not going to censor ill-written novels about murder, burglary, adultery, torture, war and cataclysm. It was sex between women that interested him. He thought it a pollutant and he was going to deal with it.

On 18 October, Rubinstein got a warning letter from a junior official at the Customs Board:

Gentlemen

I am instructed by the Commissioners of Customs and Excise to refer to your letter of the 10th instant and to inform you that instructions have been given to release the consignment of copies of The Well of Loneliness which were detained at Dover.

I am however to add that the decision of the Commissioners to release the consignment is without prejudice to any action that may be taken by any other Department.

I am Gentlemen

Your Obedient Servant

James Cook

The consignment, reduced to 247 copies, was delivered to Leopold Hill on 19 October. The four intercepted copies were waiting at Cape’s office. Chief Inspector John Prothero of the Metropolitan Police Force and his men were at both places with search warrants. These had been issued under the Obscene Publications Act of 1857 by no other than Sir Chartres Biron, Chief Magistrate at Bow Street. The police took the books and circulars and proof of postage to customers. They tried to search Cape’s private files until stopped by Rubinstein. They handed their spoils to Chartres Biron.

‘The government was bent upon persecution’, Radclyffe Hall wrote. ‘Are we living in England? … It seems to me that this shameless & benighted government of ours would gladly institute a rain of teror. They have tried by every means in their power to terrify me into cowed submission – but in this they have failed I do assure you.’

Summonses followed. Leopold Hill and Jonathan Cape were ‘commanded to appear’ at Bow Street Court on 9 November before Chartres Biron to ‘show cause why the said obscene books so found and seized as aforesaid should not be destroyed’. Rubinstein had fifteen days to prepare what he thought would be their defence.

Radclyffe Hall galvanized support and worked at the statement she intended to make in court. It was clear to her that it was she who was on trial, the essence of her, her life, her sexuality and her book. Una typed this statement, honed it, read it out. They moved between the turmoil of London and the peacefulness of Rye, between walks with the dogs on Camber Sands and Romney Marsh and endless meetings with lawyers. They lunched at the Mermaid Hotel and took mass with Father Bonaventura in the small Catholic church. In the evenings Una read aloud Orlando.

22

A serious psychological subject

Rubinstein sent out 160 letters eliciting support for publication of The Well of Loneliness. He aimed to pack the Bow Street court with eminent professionals opposed to the destruction of the book, who would defend it persuasively. He compiled a mass of expert testimony to its virtues and gathered a glittering array of