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!”

Cline and Huysmans Part 2 of 3

After Cline's review of La Bas appeared on 30 March 1924, the publisher received an invitation to appear in the office of the District Attorney to defend the book. A complaint had been lodged by John S. Sumner (1869-1971), who was then the head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, an arch-conservative organization that had successfully prosecuted and removed from sale books like The Genius by Theodore Dreiser in 1916, and failed to remove from sale Jurgen by James Branch Cabell in 1919.

On Friday, 11 April 1924, an article in the New York World noted that La Bas had been withdrawn by the publisher, after the threat of prosecution.  Albert and Charles Boni were a new publishing firm, having been founded in 1923. 

On Saturday, 12 April 1924, New York World columnist Heywood Broun gave literary editor Laurence Stallings much of his column to describe what happened.  I quote the Stallings portion here in full.

“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.”

Cline and Huysmans Part 1 of 3

The New York World, in the 1920s, was perhaps the premier newspaper in New York City. Leonard Cline was on its staff from around May 1923 through August 1924, though he nearly lost his job in May 1924 after he'd gone on a drinking spree. James W. Barrett, the City Editor of the New York World, remembered Cline in 1931 as a "wonderfully good reporter when sober." Besides his work as a reporter, Cline also contributed book reviews and poems (the latter, to Franklin P. Adams's column, "The Conning Tower"). One of his book reviews caused quite a stir.  This was his review of a new translation of La Bas by Joris Karl Huysmans, published by Albert and Charles Boni under the title Down There. I copy below the full review, which appeared in the issue for Sunday, 30 March 1924.  In two subsequent blogposts I will detail the subsequent banning of the book, and Cline's reaction to it.

La Bas, in Translation, a Story of Utter Demoniacal Content and Terror

We hasten to say—before the howl of protest arises—that it is perfectly proper for Joris Karl Huysmans's novel, La Bas, to be published, in spite of the fact that packed between its covers is the heaviest load of mustiness we have ever found in a book.

La Bas comes before us now in an excellent translation by Keene Wallis, under the title Down There, with the imprint of Albert and Charles Boni. A curious commentary on the American idea of what is proper is made in Mr. Wallis's elisions. He has omitted translating some passages in the original, episodes in which may be perceived an element of pleasure. But episodes that are written in a vein of sheer horror, although they are much more foul than the others he has included. Well, of course, he had to keep the foulness of La Bas, or the whole work would lose its cleaning.

It is a novel of demonology, together with sex inversions and perversions that accompany devil-worship.

Durtal, a writer himself, disgusted with ordinary life, is impelled in the direction of religion, but applying logic to the fundamental bases of Christianity he finds himself diverted into a macabre bypath. Indeed it is serious what result a reasonable interpretation of the Christian myth entails. If the vicarious atonement of Jesus was necessary to the salvation of mankind, then must not Jesus be adored as the agent that brought it about? The path that leads to the old Gnostic and other heresies one is very likely to choose by mistake for the main highway of truth, if one wanders far in Christianity.

Durtal, curious albeit revolted, goes down from the hilltop into Gehinnom.

There are two complementary stories unfolding contrapuntally in La Bas. One of them is the story of Durtal's adventures in contemporaneous devil-worship, He hears about incubi and succubi, about black masses said with consecrated wafers, about poisons and charms and incredible carnalities, about Canon Docre, who had the image of Jesus tattooed on the soles of his feet so that he could profane it with every step. He meets Hyacinthe Chantelouve, and in the end she takes him to a black mass in the ruinous chapel of an abandoned Ursuline convent, at which, in a hysteria of abominations, Canon Docre officiates.

The other story is the history of Gilles de Rais, a Breton nobleman of the middle ages, which Durtal is writing. Gille de Rais was wealthy, accomplished, courageous; he fought with Jeanne d'Arc and seemed ascending to the heights of glory. But, back from the wars, he is seduced by the alcheny and astrology of the time. He invites famous thaumaturges of Europe to his castle, and there they carry on their experiments, invoking the devil. Finally they drift into orgies and prey on the children of the region. Hundreds are slain. Gilles becomes demented, and is finally apprehended, tried and burned at the the stake, but not before the reader is taken with him on that horrible raving flight through the foest of Tiffauges.

Surely nobody will be led to immoral devices by La Bas: it is too hideous for that. The amateur of lickerish literature will not find any amusement in it. It is superbly written, but a too sensitive person would find his enjoyment of the craftsmanship of Huysmans blighted by the obscenity.

Joris Karl Huysmans hated the world and humanity. Arthur Symons pictures him at the very time he was writing La Bas as possessed by “an almost ecstatic hatred,” as wearing “an amused look of contempt, so profound that it becomes almost pity, for human imbecility.” Yet at the end Huysmans, without repudiating his earlier works, embraced the Roman Catholic faith. There was a desquamation of the old loathing, the fever that tormented him subsided, and thenceforth he could look with charity on life.

Leonard Lanson Cline