Leonard Cline

“La Bas,” writes Leonard Cline, “has been relegated there, it would seem, and all because of a review that was written, according to the best evidence, by myself. Stallings could swear to the signature, and the cashier might confront me with a voucher, if I tried to deny it. Yet, if the facts were not so indisputable, I’d never believe that words of mine should go on the oriflamme of a Sumner crusade.

“Ten years from now, when I creep stealthily by night to consult a psychoanalyst, he will try desperately to find out why I should always be swallowing poison and shooting myself and laying hold of third-rails. He won’t succeed until he uncovers, deep in my subconscious, the horrid memory of the fact that once, in the year 1924, Mr. Sumner spoke of a book review by me as ‘good’ and ‘clean.’

“I shall be cured possibly, in the end, but I think of what I shall suffer during the decade! Imagine waking every night, perspiring with dread, from a nightmare in which Mr. Sumner comes by my bed and thanks me and calls me good and clean!

“Lest the clergy take me up and canonize me, as they have St. William H. Anderson, I beg to explain. The introduction of my review of La Bas originally was a violent declaration of a belief of mine that, smut or sedition, people should have the right of free speech. It’s a queer and suspicionable notion, I know, and most people won’t hold with me; but somehow I can’t help cherishing it. Then I admitted that if free speech on lickerish themes is going to corrupt people, well they ought to have the right to be corrupted. This was the head of the review, and Stallings lopped it off in order to fit the corpse into the ditch. God pity him, he must have heard it cry!

“Well, in concluding, I pointed out that Huysmans doubtless wrote La Bas with a purpose as austerely moral as that which actuated funny old Hosea. If my recollection doesn’t fail me, this paragraph also suffered the knife.

“So there the review was, head and tail gone. Mr. Sumner picked up the neck of it for a swan. ’Fore God, it was born a viper.

“Don’t think I want to apologize for the review. I did point out that La Bas carries the heaviest load of mustiness and filth that I’ve ever found between covers. That happens to be the truth; and I conceive that one function of the reviewer is to tell what is in the book. And if Mr. Sumner wants to make that his shibboleth, and if as a result Albert and Charles Boni lose money, I don’t consider myself at fault. My hope in writing this communication is to avoid being pointed out by my fellows in the present, and having pilgrims visit my tombstone in the future, as a friend of Mr. Sumner’s.

“Mr. Broun, Mr. Broun, he might even call on me!”

“Before you begin the assault on the censors,” writes Laurence Stallings. “may I confess partial responsibility for the suppression of La Bas? It was reviewed for the Sunday page by Leonard Cline, who stated that Huysmans work, while a terrific piece of demonology, was certainly not a book for smut-hunters. Charles Boni, its publisher, knew that The Sunday World was carrying a review, and feared that Sumner would seize upon the book if the work was reported as Cline had done. The review, of course, was run anyway. Just as Boni feared, Sumner got it, and cited to District Attorney Banton that a good, clean paper had adjudged La Bas, however indirectly, as worthy of the reformer’s hire. Boni’s fears were realized in full, and he sent the plates to Sumner’s society.

“I think the case interesting enough to be stated in full. Boni had two books he was fearful for. You know, of course, that it was once proposed that Sumner pass on manuscripts and save the publisher the expense of printing books Sumner doesn’t like, and that he declined. So Boni had no alternative but print the books, or discard the manuscripts without a trial. Other publishers had rejected La Bas. He printed them. Havelock Ellis, in his Affirmations, admires them both. I cite Ellis, because in so far as I know he is the fairest, most wind-swept mind in the profession.

“The first book was de Selincourt’s One Little Boy. This study of adolescence found critics as widely removed as Margaret Sanger and the Y.M.C.A. calling it important. Boni was safe. He published La Bas and was on the mat in the District Attorney’s office before three weeks was out. Nearly 2,500 copies (the first edition) were sold. Wednesday he sent the remaining thirty-seven copies and the plates to Sumner’s society.

“I hold no brief for the Boni brothers. They quit rather than fight. Yet they may not be censured particularly for having elected to lie down. Young publishers with little capital, they stood to lose everything by a fight. When Sumner hits a book it is done through District Attorney Banton’s office. The publisher is invited to call with his attorney. The D.A. cites the passages and asks the lawyer if he believes his client has a chance under the penal section, with the book in question before a jury of twelve men.

“The Boni house would have lost the La Bas fight in all probability. Also, a great many bookshops would have discriminated against other publications on their list. In other words, they would not fight, because a fight would have cost them something.

“Few publishers will stand up and test a book before a jury. Give Seltzer credit for artistic nerve, and mark down Knopf for having eaten crow last fall when Floyd Dell’s Janet March was withdrawn. Knopf even declined to tell me that it had been withdrawn and Banton asked that it be given no publicity.

“It seems to me that the public might as well know that there is a definite censorship operating against it effectively in the person on Sumner, and with whatever strong financial influences there may be to back him. Perhaps there is no use shouting either for or against a Clean Books Bill. It would all resolve into one arbiter of literary elegance, who probably should be another such well-intentioned man with a financial security. The situation would be unchanged whatever laws were operating. As usual, the poor man either cannot or will not fight for his rights, and the well-off man is sufficiently solvent to disregard the many laws regulating his reading and drinking.

“Perhaps all statuses supervising the publication of books should be wiped off the board. I object and confess to an illiberality precisely that of Sumner’s. The difference is only an artistic one. Thus the only book law which I should call just would be one empowering me to assume the functions and arrogances just now embodied in Sumner, I would not hesitate to sweep away juvenile pornography written by hired men for country boys to read in the hay-loft, myself fanatical enough to forbid them the literary delights I myself once knew. Even here would be the typical reform attitude, despite an artistic intention. My plan would insist that little boys who found themselves unable to stave off puberty might be forced to read Havelock Ellis and others as equally fascinating about the most fascinating phase of human existence. . . . Thus I confess that no new book law will work; and I am damned if I can think of anything better than Sumner or myself.”