A Communication to My Friends, Chapter 9

London: Nonesuch Press, 13 June 1933, pages 68-77, 2,570 words

lX

So pleased was I with my discovery of a subject in which I had not yet been able to find a fault, that my face lighted up as I told Vizetelly how a few words in a newspaper had indicated a subject that would have been accepted by a Greek tragedian for drama — but drama having given way to comedy in London, I would write it in a novel. But the old gentleman in the spectacles behind the dusty table covered with manuscripts and proofs listened indulgently, and when I had finished and he had put one or two questions to me, asking me how long I thought it would take to write this book and I told him about two years, he replied, "Perhaps I shall never see your book." "And why not? Half my pleasure in writing it — " "The Vigilance Society's man has been here purchasing one of our translations of Zola's novels. That is the law. The prosecutor must prove that he purchased in the publishing house itself one of the books he has in mind to proceed against.'' Vizetelly went on to tell that he regretted he was not in the shop below, for had he been he would have recognised the scout and would have sent him away without a proof. "Come again. But now he has the book and any day within the next fourteen days I may expect a summons." I must have questioned him with my eyes, hoping that he would tell me that he would win the lawsuit, but he said nothing, and every day after unpleasant news continued to come in. The worst news of all was when the lawyer that Vizetelly had engaged to defend him wrote to say that he would prefer to return his brief, and when questioned as to why he would not defend Mr. Vizetelly, he said, "To defend him properly I should have to read the books and there are passages which my conscience would not excuse me for reading.'' This sentence reported faithfully will show the reader the marked atmosphere of suspicion and treachery that the Vigilance Society had contrived to involve us in. And when the Society manifested itself in the next move, we could not disguise from ourselves the fact that it was out to ruin Vizetelly. The Society had succeeded in getting the support of the Government of the day, and it is very much harder for a single publisher to defend himself against the Government than against a private society. At once Vizetelly felt that he was in danger of losing his case, but he made no lament. He did not speak of his age, which was nearly eighty; he faced the trial with apparent confidence, until the counsel that he had engaged to defend him began to advise him to plead guilty, saying if he pleaded guilty he would get off with a light sentence, whereas if he defended, the judge might not give him the alternative of paying a fine, but send him straight away to prison. He expected Vizetelly to answer, ''Which will be a sentence of death,'' but he said nothing; he was a grave old man, but he was nearly eighty and his nerve was not what it was, and a defence needed funds and he had no friends who would subscribe. So he pleaded guilty in hope of a lighter sentence. "I am sorry now that I did plead guilty; we had an excellent jury and a clever counsel could have put up a defence which would secure at least a disagreement." Our next misfortune was that Vizetelly's money had run out, and to save his business he took out all the passages in the condemned book that the Vigilance Society had marked as obscene. He reasoned that if he omitted the passages that the Society had marked, they could not proceed against him again. He was wrong. The Society found other passages and started a new prosecution. Again Vizetelly was persuaded to plead guilty, but this time he went to prison for three months, and apparently the Vigilance Society had triumphed. But the triumph was not long lived. A few months later Zola was invited to come to London; he accepted the invitation, and the Lord Mayor and all the officials turned out to honour Zola, the publishing of whose book had ended in the death of Vizetelly. He was dead before Zola came; that is all he was spared. The ceremonies were magnificent; the dinners given to the great author were elaborate, and only a few obscure newspapers had the heart to call attention to the manifest injustice. The death of Vizetelly had satisfied the Vigilance Society, and it was silent, like hounds after coming to a kill, waiting for something to happen that would enable them to obtain discredit. They waited in vain. What happened was the condemnation of the huntsman that had cried on the pack and arranged for the prosecution of Vizetelly. Nothing less than his death would abate the zeal of these Christians, and Vizetelly was dead. The Vigilance Society looked out for other victims and their hatred was not stayed till W.T. Stead, an honest heart within him, declared that if it was their intention to prosecute the Heptameron of the Queen of Navarre written in the I6th century, and Flaubert's Madame Bovary, he would be forced to resign from the Council of the Society. The charge of being obscene novels was withdrawn, and again the Society thought itself safe — but worse, indeed, was to come. If I may use a simile, a tile from the roof was the arrest, for the seduction of a young cook, of one of the most active members of the Society. When he came into their office and took the chair at the long table, he called for the books that he had selected for further inspection, marking the passages that seemed to him objectionable. He would sit facing the Committee, "to have your opinion, ladies and gentlemen, on these passages. Would you care to look at this, Mrs. A, and when you've read it, will you pass it on to Mrs. B, who is anxious to see it? She has heard the book spoken about." Many of these ladies and gentlemen are dead, but some may be alive, ancient men and women who sleep lightly, and in the long conscious hours which no doubt afflict their slumbers, they cannot fail to come sometimes upon Vizetelly's name. When that happens I can imagine how stricken they must feel when they remember the details of these prosecutions and how carefully they encompassed Vizetelly's death, in the shadowy belief that they were acting like good Christians, as Christ himself would have acted in like circumstances. But I must return to my own story.

A prejudice had been created against all that concerned Vizetelly. I remember when I spoke to William Heinemann about his taking over Vizetelly's plates, his answer was, "Any manuscript you bring me I shall be glad to print, but I would like it to come to me first." I do not know whether he used the word 'tainted' literature, it was not like William Heinemann to say that, but I can understand it. Why should he meddle with other people's manuscripts? And it was difficult to find a publisher who would. At last one presented himself — Walter Scott of Newcastle. All the copyrights and stereotype plates and drawings that Vizetelly had collected during a long lifetime were offered for sale, and I was glad to hear that Walter Scott had procured valuable work for a few pounds. It was good news that A Mummer’s Wife would appear soon in a new edition and would be followed by Muslin. His purchase of the stereotypes of these books did not pledge me to offer the book I was now writing, Esther Waters, but I offered it to him and applied myself to the composition of the second half — a difficult task, for I was already pledged to the editor of the Spectator to supply a weekly article on painting. But Esther pleased me very much, and encouraged, I continued her history, writing about this time the description of the Derby Day, when all the servants went down by road to see the race run.

The reception of A Mummer's Wife I have already said was friendly, indeed it was more than friendly; many newspapers of the highest class recognised at once a new voice, and one worthy of hearing. But these friendly notices of A Mummer's Wife were quenched in the blaze of a real success. Every paper, high and low, literary and commercial, had the same tale to tell of Esther Waters, that a great novel had just been published; illiterate and literate liked it. And when Macmillan asked me how many copies we had sold and I told him 24,000 (in those days books did not sell in the numbers they do in these), he answered, "A great sale indeed. I know of no other book that has sold as much, except perhaps Tom Brown's Schooldays." Nothing was lacking. I said to myself, the censorship is dead beyond all hope of resurrection. The nation has wakened up to this monstrosity, the press will not allow it. And I read every morning fresh articles about the book from all English newspapers and many foreign papers, and after each one I muttered, "Yes, the censorship is over for English literature, and those who have talent can now apply it to the best advantage." At length the news that Mr. Gladstone approved of Esther Waters was reported by the Westminster Gazette, and I asked myself, What will these two miserable librarians say, or rather, what will they do? and I set off to interview Mr. Mudie's co-adjutor, Mr. Faux, Smith's librarian, saying to myself: "Smith will not dare to ban a newspaper, and if he does not refuse to sell the Court and Society Review on his bookstalls, his librarian can hardly refuse to admit the book into the library.” And it was with this argument in my head that I mounted a long concrete staircase to arrive on the third storey at lack-lustre rooms in which I discovered a long, lean man, one of those men who have grown old without knowledge of life or literature in the dim shadows of their book-shelves. Mr. Faux was particularly attractive as a specimen. A tangle of dyed hair covered a bald skull, and as he smiled, or rather giggled, his false teeth threatened to jump out at me. His withered face betrayed amusement when he heard that I had called upon him to ask his reasons for excluding Esther Waters from his library. "You see," he answered, "we are a circulating library and our subscribers are not used to detailed descriptions of a lying-in hospital." "So you do not aim at distributing good literature, but exclude certain aspects of life which you have decided dogmatically are not suitable to your subscribers in Belgravia and Mayfair." ''There is much in good literature that we are bound to exclude." "But can you explain how it is, Mr. Faux, that everybody in England has praised the book, except you and Mr. Mudie, and I heard yesterday that Mr. Mudie had decided to admit the book into his library. Is it wisdom, Mr. Smith — but I changed the words on my lips to Mr. Faux — when all the newspapers in England have published articles in favour of the book — the Athenaeum, the Spectator and the Guardian — the religious papers are specially enthusiastic?" "No, I have read some of the articles in praise of the book, Mr. Moore, but they have said nothing that has shaken my opinion that the book is not suitable to our library." I spoke of classical literature, of Shakespeare and the Bible, but Mr. Faux shook his long lean head and smiled dolefully. Classical literature was another matter. "But what do you do in certain cases — Shakespeare for instance? You are aware of the very doubtful success of Bowdler's Family Shakespeare and how little value a bowdlerised Shakespeare has to-day?" I have forgotten what answer he gave to this interjection, but I could see he was ready with some sort of answer that would only lead us into further wrangling, and I asked him instead about the literature he approved of, in a tone which suggested to him that I was anxious to avail myself of his opinions, and he told me that Thackeray was the great authority and one worthy to rank with all that was good in English narrative prose. And I heard from him that there was a post-mortem examination of the brain of this elegant Victorian novelist and on being weighed it was found to out-weigh considerably any known brain. ''Of course,'' I said to myself, "your opinion is that the excellence of a man's gift can be measured by the weight of his brain,'' but the answer was not worth making, and Mr. Faux glided into a history of his successes, one of which I remember though forty years have gone by. It related to a sale of the remainder of one of Stevenson's books, a packet containing some 400 copies (I have forgotten the title of the book), and he had been clever enough to buy this packet, which lay quietly on his shelves, for an instinct had inspired in him the conviction that a boom was coming, and it did come, and the 400 remainder had proved very useful on that occasion. Mr. Faux in his appearance and in his words had painted his own portrait, and I retired, telling him that I hoped to do better next time. But my books continued to be received with favour and the prejudice that Mudie and Smith had stirred up against me was beginning to decline, the twain being looked upon as stupid fellows; and I can only think it was the despair caused by finding himself obliged to refuse to supply a book that everybody wanted to read that provoked Mr. Faux to take the Press into his confidence, for one day when a reporter came to ask him to give his reasons for banning Esther Waters, he answered, "For certain pre-Raphaelite nastiness that Mr. Moore cannot keep out of his writings''; an answer that counsel would he puzzled to justify, so I was told, but instead of a lawyer I called in an accountant who, after checking the sales and reckoning the rebate that Smith's monopoly allows him to ask and get, sent in a report that Smith had lost probably fifteen hundred pounds by refusing to deal in Esther Waters. It was after the publication of these figures that I had the satisfaction of hearing that the partners of the firm sent word to their librarian that it would he well in the future to avoid heavy losses by banning books, especially books that Mr. Gladstone was likely to read and to express his approval of in the Westminster Gazette.

The censorship of the librarians has come to an end, I said to myself, and I boasted that I had served the cause of humanity.