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

publish The Well of Loneliness in December as their first joint publishing venture. Pascal Covici was the publisher and friend of John Steinbeck. Donald Friede had been a vice-president of Liveright. They gave Radclyffe Hall an astonishing advance of ten thousand dollars, then sold the book at five dollars, not the usual two. Cape increased her royalties on the nine thousand copies already sold in Paris. Holroyd-Reece reprinted each month. Newspaper sellers with carts at the Gare du Nord sold the book to passengers on the Golden Arrow. In the rue de Castiglione dealers bought English first editions for six thousand francs and sold them for ‘as high as anything you are silly enough to pay’. Sylvia Beach, who published James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922, had more orders at her bookshop Shakespeare and Company in rue de l’Odéon for The Well of Loneliness than she could meet.

In England newspapers filled with comment on the dangers of censorship and pleas for a change in the obscenity law. Silence about same-sex relationships splintered, though it did not break. There were whispers that they might exist. Hugh Walpole, in Time and Tide on 23 November, wrote of how between them James Douglas, Joynson-Hicks and Chartres Biron had ‘caused certain subjects to be discussed, inquired into and pleasingly investigated as never before in the history of this our hypocritical country’. In the same issue, an editorial claimed that a world best-seller had been created and that now no reader was unaware of the subject of the book. A ‘Modern Mother’ wrote that she defied any young person to ‘remain ignorant of certain facts which ordinarily would never have come to their notice’.

Other issues were glossed over. There was no discussion about institutionalized homophobia or the government’s manipulation of the law. The fuss embarrassed women who might have liked to live openly lesbian lives. Janet Flanner commented that The Well of Loneliness was a rather innocent and confused book. In a more adult society it might have braved the way for books that gave other views, that reflected diversity.

Radclyffe Hall insisted on an appeal to a higher court. She fought on, so she said in her oratorical style, ‘for the sake of the honour of literature, for the sake of all serious minded writers, for the sake of the freedom of the press which every writer holds sacred’.

The appeal against the Order made by Sir Chartres Biron was set for 14 December in the London Sessions Court. It was to be heard by Sir Robert Wallace KC ‘and a very large bench of London justices’. They were to judge whether Biron’s sentence should be upheld. Prior to the hearing, Rubinstein wrote to the Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Archibald Bodkin, asking him to release copies of the book for these magistrates to read. Sir Archibald replied in problematic prose:

With reference to your request that I should supply copies of the above-named book to the Court of Quarter Sessions with a view to the Justices attending thereat in connection with the appeal should have an opportunity of reading the book before the appeal is heard, I beg to inform you that I have been in communication with the Clerk of the Peace, Sessions House, Newington, who, on the directions of the Chairman of the Court, informs me that it would not be appropriate nor practicable to act upon your suggestion. I therefore do not propose to adopt it.

The Chairman of the Court, Sir Robert Wallace, was seventy-eight. He had already made clear his horror of the book in the papers. ‘His aged mind,’ wrote Radclyffe Hall, ‘evidently did not grasp that before being asked to pass judgement on a book the judges should one and all have read it.’

Sir Robert had been briefed by Sir Archibald as to how to proceed. And the Preposterous Jix was still there, positioning his men and stitching things up. The Attorney-General, Sir Thomas Inskip, was to act for the Crown. Sir Thomas’s fee was much higher than for ordinary counsel. He was entitled, because of his high office, both to open the case and to close it. The Home Office pathologist, Sir William Willcox, was to appear in court. Two doctors and a bacteriologist were paid fees totalling 115 guineas for agreeing to testify for the Crown. The Bishop of Durham wrote in his diary: ‘I received a letter from the new Archbishop of Canterbury conveying a suggestion from the Home Secretary that I should consent to give evidence in favour of prohibiting The Well of Loneliness as an obscene book.’ He noted his own reply: ‘I do not feel myself disposed, nor am I in the least competent to argue the case. Moreover, the whole subject is disgusting to me, and I have no desire to be mixed up with it, even in the modest degree your Grace suggests.’

Among writers solicited by the Home Secretary, Rudyard Kipling, a frequent guest at Whiteladies, Joynson-Hicks’s home, agreed to testify. Stanley Baldwin was his cousin. Kipling’s was the complex face of prejudice, as Hugh Walpole revealed:

I asked him at luncheon whether he approved of censorship (apropos of this tiresome, stupid The Well of Loneliness). No, he doesn’t approve of the book. Too much of the abnormal in all of us to play about with it. Hates opening up reserves. All the same he’d had friends once and again he’d done more for than for any woman. Luckily Ma Kipling doesn’t hear this.

The government, Radclyffe Hall said, was out for her blood. The defence knew that they would not be properly heard. The court was again packed with spectators. Marie Stopes, the advocate of birth control, was there. Her books were soon to be tried in the USA. Kipling showed up but left after Sir Thomas Inskip whispered to him that professional evidence would not be sought.

Twelve magistrates had been hired to condemn a book they were not allowed to read. The sole witness was again to be poor Inspector Prothero. The Attorney-General