Hefferson-Brough, like Sir Augustine, discourses on the meaning of “tend to deprave and corrupt.” The Act, he says, was designed to stop pornography, the filth dirty old men use to masturbate with, the slime oozing from the gutters of brothels, the puerile jokes about torture which we all know, and which the author and publisher of this book abominate as much as you do, ladies and gentlemen. The Act was not designed to stop works of literature—even daring works of literature that take a fearless look at a real social problem, the decay of social and sexual controls that leads precisely to a flood of true pornography, trivial, rotten and rotting to the fibres of our community. The Act was designed to make it possible for works of literature to be published in freedom and without fear of prurient attacks. We shall lead evidence to show that there is overwhelming support for the literary, psychological and social importance of Babbletower. Bad books do hurt good men, as my learned friend wisely said. But good works hurt nothing but bad books.
“As good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye.”
Frederica wonders if this quotation is not excessive. She looks at the jury to see how many of them react to Areopagitica; one man frowns with recognition, one woman gives a beatific smile of assent and nods; most others stare, puzzled and stolid, into space.
Samuel Oliphant, QC, then speaks on behalf of Jude Mason. He says that his client is a young man, an artist, who lives in poverty in order to practise his art. He is not a pornographer, and in his view Babbletower is a complex work of art, the subject of which is the relation between erotic freedom and community, between repression and cruelty. His work is, and will be shown to be, in a great European tradition of satirical flouting, of moral outrage working through the outrageous. In cases where a work of art is being prosecuted as an obscene publication, it has been held—he cites precedents—that the intentions of the author or publisher are irrelevant to the jury’s decision as to whether the book is obscene. In other cases—he cites other precedents—it has been held that in the case of literary merit, intention can and must be discussed. “In the Lady Chatterley trial, D. H. Lawrence’s intentions invariably and inevitably came into the evidence and the debate. It was suggested by many Defence witnesses that Lawrence was a Puritan. He had written a frank book about sex, but his intentions were puritanical. The. same, ladies and gentlemen, could be argued of my client. One of his characters—perhaps the only wholly sympathetic character in the whole tale of excess and punishment—is a figure with the strange name of Samson Origen, who preaches abstemiousness, indeed abstention from all activity, a kind of asceticism. Strange though it may appear, in a book so full of plain-speaking sexual descriptions and even orgiastic behaviour, the ruling atmosphere is one of asceticism and abstemiousness. There is a certain humour, a certain irony, in Mr. Mason’s work, which is on the side of Samson Origen. It would be possible to miss this humour, this irony, particularly when you are reading with an eye to looking for depravation and corruption: I therefore bring it to your attention as perhaps the saving grace of this sorry tale. Mr. Mason’s intentions are to mock folly, and worse than folly, through exposing and depicting it mercilessly. This is an art as old as time, and as honourable as any other.”
During these speeches, Frederica is aware of a strange whirring and clicking coming from behind, or under her seat. As the judge says, “The next question, is it not, is to arrange for the reading of the book?” she turns, and sees the gingery hairy face of Avram Snitkin behind her, bright blue eyes peering between sandy lashes.
Mr. Justice Gordale Balafray asks what arrangements can be made for the jury to read Babbletower. How long should be set aside? Where should the reading take place?
Frederica whispers, “Are you recording this on your tape-recorder?”
“Of course.”
“Is it allowed?”
“I’ve got permission from the Court. I didn’t say it was ethno-methodological research. I said it was for the publisher’s records. I’m baffled they don’t use it for the official records but they don’t—there’s their shorthand writer, over there, with a pen. But they don’t mind me making a recording; they say that’s fine.”
She hears the snake of tape rustle on its reels, digesting the words.
The barristers and the judge discuss the reading. Samuel Oliphant says that the book could be taken home and read in quiet domestic surroundings, at a reasonable speed. Hefferson-Brough says that for Lady Chatterley a special room was found at the Old Bailey, with armchairs. Juries have been known to retire to hotels. The jury foreman reports that the chairs in the jury room are hard. The judge seems decided by this last complaint; he retorts that they are the chairs in the jury room, where the jurors are doing the work they have been called to do. We have all sat on hard chairs, in our time, says he, in schools, in libraries, and been none the worse for it. Indeed, he himself finds himself more alert, sitting on a good solid hard chair, than sunk on cushions. No, the jury-room chairs must suffice, will suffice.
The jury set off to read the book at two-fifteen. The Court waits. Elvet Gander says to Adelbert Holly and Avram Snitkin that perhaps the judge is a person with sadistic inclinations. That could, of course, go either way, for or against Babbletower. Frederica thinks of going to speak to Jude, but he has disappeared, apparently into the belly of the Old Bailey. Rupert Parrott repeats several times that the Counsel for the Prosecution is formidable. Parrott’s face is pink and shining. He is wearing a peacock-blue waistcoat under a fine blue-grey worsted suit.
At four-fifteen the judge sends to enquire of the jury how much longer they will need to read the book. Three or four claim to have finished it already. The foreman—the swimming-pool manager—says that he has been asked to request a dictionary—a large dictionary, my lord, and also, if it’s not too much trouble, a French dictionary, as well as the English one, that is. Several more jurymen say they will soon be through. Hefferson-Brough asks that the jury be told to read the book carefully and thoroughly, or alternatively be dismissed and replaced. The jury returns to its room and its hard chairs, and its copies of Babbletower with the black, pink and cobalt covers. Twelve men and women, twelve readings, or skimmings, or stumblings, or approximate scannings. One woman takes the book home to bed, reaches the death of Roseace, and wakes her husband, gagging. This is later known, because her husband is “in the Print,” a member of a print trade union, and tells a journalist on the News of the World, who prints this information when the trial is over.
The Court reassembles the next day. The first witness for the Defence is called. He says he is Alexander Wedderburn. His profession, he says, is that of a playwright. He is a member of the Steerforth Committee Enquiry into the teaching of the English language. He has worked in cultural radio—the Third Programme—and educational television. He has been a schoolmaster in a boys’ boarding school. His plays are set texts at O Level. He is described in the Press as “a very handsome public figure, wearing a well-cut corduroy suit in a dark green, with a lemon-coloured shirt and a blue tie with green carnations on it. He has a mane of silvering hair, a pleasant tenor voice, and an expression of cautious courtesy and helpfulness which never failed, even under pressure.”
His evidence lasts three hours, and is solid and, on the surface, calm. Hefferson-Brough takes him through the text of Babbletower, reading out long passages—mostly not sexual, and none of them cruel—asking him if he feels these passages have literary merit as pieces of English prose, if he thinks the characterisation is subtle, if he thinks the content is serious. Alexander says that Babbletower is not part of a genre that requires subtle characterisation. Hefferson-Brough asks him to explain “genre” to those members of the jury “who do not know any technical literary terms.” He reminds his witness “not to be technical if you can help it.” Alexander says that the point about the characters in Babbletower is that t
hey are types, like the characters in an allegory, or a satire, or a comedy of manners. They don’t need depth. Their actions are what is important. He is asked to explain “allegory,” “satire,” “comedy of manners.” He is asked to say that to say that characters are “types” is not to say that they are vulgar or crude. He replies, “Of course not,” and hears a ripple of laughter, laughter against either him or Hefferson-Brough, with whom he is meant to be agreeing. They represent qualities, says Alexander. Good qualities? Not necessarily. Many qualities. As in life.
The trial is to be characterised by Hefferson-Brough’s paucity of vocabulary for discussing literary merit. Alexander thinks at first that this is due to an excessive concern for the jury’s sensibilities as common readers, or “ordinary men and women,” whatever those are. But his experience of Hefferson-Brough’s questions, which is very similar to that of the specifically literary experts who follow him, is of struggling through a suffocating cloud of wool, trying to find air, trying to find light, trying to make a precise sentence and being told again and again that his vocabulary—his expert vocabulary—is inadmissible in this place, must be rephrased. Scrupulously Alexander tries to say that one passage is more successful than another, that one scene is almost tragic whereas another is merely blackly comic, Grand Guignol. “And what do you mean by Grand Guignol, Mr. Wedderburn? Tell us in English, please, tell us what that is, so we may share your thought.” And of the scenes that Alexander says are “less good than others,” Hefferson-Brough immediately asks, “But would you say that this scene is well-written? Does it have literary merit? Is it good, or is it not?” And Alexander says again and again, because he must, that it is good. Babbletower is flattened in his hearers’ minds to a series of “good” passages.
In answer to Samuel Oliphant he reiterates that Babbletower is a serious work, by a promising young writer, with a moral purpose.
Sir Augustine Weighall then cross-examines.
Q. Mr. Wedderburn. You are a man of very wide reading, a man whose life has been devoted to great writing. Your own verse drama gives me intense pleasure, I may say, on the page as on the stage. I do not flatter: I am glad to take this opportunity of speaking of your “lovely inchanting language.” I want to ask you a simple question. Did you enjoy reading Babbletower?
A. Enjoy? Yes, and no.
Q. Let us discuss both halves of that entirely comprehensible answer. Let us start with the “yes.” What did you enjoy?
A. Vivid descriptions. The successful depiction of a world part fairytale, part dystopia.
Q. Dystopia?
A. Anti-utopia. Depiction of a not-ideal world. Good writing. The sentences are lively. The atmosphere is brooding.
Q. Did the book—I know you will answer clearly, for you are a thoughtful man and a writer yourself—did the book give you any sexual pleasure?
A. (After some thought) Some, occasionally. Not much. All writing is connected with sexual pleasure. Wordsworth said the rhythms of language are the rhythms of the human body, of “the grand principle of pleasure in which we live and move and have our being.”
Q. That is very interesting. The rhythms of all writing are in your view connected to sexual pleasure. That is indeed very interesting and illuminating. Did the book give you any more specific sexual pleasure—such as you might feel looking at an erotic painting, for instance?
A. Not much.
Q. Yet you said it was well written, and “vivid,” you said, and “lively.” A very large proportion of this book is descriptions of sexual acts, of naked bodies. Yet they gave you no pleasure?
A. Not much.
Q. Are you perhaps denying the pleasure, out of a desire to defend the book?
A. I don’t think so. I think the author meant me to experience only a limited pleasure. Meant me to imagine pleasure, and then to find he had cut it off, so to speak.
Q. He tried to disgust you?
A. That is the unpleasant side. He had good reasons.
Q. He may well have had. So, in so far as you responded sexually to his writing, it was with disgust?
A. It is more complex than that.
Q. More complex. Perhaps the writing was meant to have an emetic effect, to disgust you with the world and action of the book?
A. It is more complex than that, too.
Q. It seems to be very complex. The only certain thing is that you are resolute to deny that he meant you to experience any pleasure in the infliction of pain, any reprehensible pleasure in the infliction of pain?
A. I did not say that.
Q. And you do not think that?
A. You have me in a grammatical snarl.
Q. But you know what I am asking?
A. I do not think that the intention of the author was to make me feel reprehensible pleasure in the infliction of pain.
Q. And you did not feel any?
A. No. Or almost none.
Q. You are a man who has to be truthful, I see, Mr. Wedderburn. Not none. Almost none.
Tell me, as to the question of literary merit. How good do you think Babbletower is, in literary terms? We are not allowed to compare books as to relative obscenity, but we are allowed to make comparisons of literary merit. D. H. Lawrence, when Lady Chatterley was tried, was taught in many university courses, throughout the world, as was abundantly testified. My learned friend Gerald Gardiner, on that occasion, made the point that some of the early works of Chaucer might be thought to be risqué without that great name attached to them. Tell me, Mr. Wedderburn—as a teacher, as a writer—how good is Mr. Jude Mason? As good as D. H. Lawrence? As good as William Burroughs? As good as Mickey Spillane?
A. It is his first book. It is a serious literary book. It is not a shocker, like Mickey Spillane, who is unreadable, in my view. It is well written and seriously meant. You can’t really come to any conclusions about the final status of living writers at the outset of their careers.
Q. You can’t really come to any conclusions about the literary merit of young living writers at the outset of their careers?
A. I said “final status.”
Q. But judgements of literary merit are provisional in this kind of case, as opposed to that of D. H. Lawrence.
Samuel Oliphant objects. The judge overrules him. Alexander says they are of course provisional, compared to D. H. Lawrence, but that does not mean they cannot be made.
The next witness to be called is Dr. Naomi Lurie, Reader in English Literature in Oxford University, and a Fellow of Somerville College. She says that she is the author of various books, including Dissociated Sensibility, Myth or History? (1960). She says she is in charge of the studies of many young women, and would be quite happy for them to read Babbletower. She would, she says when pressed, encourage them to do so. No, she would not positively teach the book. She is opposed to the teaching of contemporary writing; Oxford University until very recently taught nothing written later than 1830.
She is a dark-haired woman in serviceable tweed, in her mid-fifties. Hefferson-Brough says to her, “You are a maiden lady, living in an exclusively female college, and you write on devotional poetry. But you admire this book, you have said, you have said you believe it has literary merit?”
Dr. Lurie says, “I am certainly unmarried, and I certainly teach women. I don’t believe women make any different literary judgements from men.”
There is a ripple of laughter in the Court. Dr. Lurie smiles primly.
Sir Augustine tempts Dr. Lurie into the statement that Swift’s Modest Proposal for solving the Irish problem by roasting and stewing the infant Irish is shocking in the same way as Babbletower. “Or worse.” He asks Dr. Lurie if Swift makes the prospective taste, “the culinary delights,” of the broiled babies attractive. No, says Dr. Lurie. And the loathsome practices in Babbletower, the sodomy, the torture, the orgies, says Sir Augustine. “They are unattractive in the same way?”
“I think so,” says Dr. Lurie. Sir Augustine’s fine face takes on an ironic smile, which he turns on the j
ury.
“You find the descriptions of Narcisse’s juvenile peccadilloes, of Damian’s love-making with Roseace, as repugnant as Swift’s broiled babies?”
“I do not say that. Swift is a pure satirist. He writes with saeva indignatio.”
“Savage indignation,” Sir Augustine translates kindly for the jury.
“Whereas it is part of Mr. Mason’s plan to, so to speak, put the reader through the pleasures of the Babbletower.”
“To put the reader through. Not to stir, not to titillate, not to seduce? Your verb is austere and pedagogic.”
“He does wish to titillate, at the time, of course. But temporarily.”
“He turns titillation on and off, like a tap.”
“If you like,” says Dr. Lurie.
Anthony Burgess is the next witness. His face is craggy; his voice is round and beautifully produced. He praises Babbletower in musical terms: brio, appassionata, fugue. He says in answer to Hefferson-Brough that he believes that Babbletower is a deeply moral, almost too moral, book.
Q. How can a book be too moral, Mr. Burgess?
A. Well, as I have said before from time to time, the value of art is always diminished by the presence of elements that move to action. This book is didactic. The didactic is lesser than the purely aesthetic. It has designs on you. Never trust a book that has designs on you.
Q. Babbletower has moral designs on you?
A. Yes. It moves by disgusting and frightening you.
Q. But it is a work of literature.
A. I don’t know what you mean by “but.” It is a work of literature. It is a very promising, serious piece of writing. It ought to be praised. It isn’t Ulysses or The Rainbow but it ought to be read, it ought to be discussed.