Cline and Huysmans Part 3 of 3

On Wednesday, 16 April 1924, Heywood Broun gave a part of his regular column "It Seems to Me" over to Leonard Cline, who thereby got to voice his views on what happened with La Bas and his review of it.  I copy the complete Cline part below.

“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!”