If Mr. Cabell had not pre-empted the phrase, the words with which he characterized the tale Jurgen might well be used as a title for an account of the tale’s adventures with the law. Those adventures, which the matter of this book commemorates no less effectively than it helped to divert them from a less happy outcome, form indeed a comedy of justice: a comedy which, perhaps, aroused more of indignation than of mirth, and which, in its duration, somewhat exceeded the time-limit that a canny dramatist allots himself, but which ended appropriately on a note of justice, and thus showed Mr. Cabell to be not only the maker of a happily descriptive phrase but also somewhat of a prophet.

Well, the comedy of Jurgen’s suppression is ended. The book is admitted once more to the freedom of the library, and the pawnbroker is again at liberty to wander throughout the universe in search of rationality and fair dealing. And in due course, time and the wisdom of other generations will decide whether the pawnbroker, or the book, or the adventures of either be in any way memorable.

Today, however, the vicissitudes of Jurgen are of indisputable importance, if only because similar misfortunes may overtake yet other publications. At the moment it appears that the position of literature is less precarious than it has been in the recent past. For the courts, of late, with gratifying accord have failed to detect obscenity in a number of volumes at which professional righteousness has taken offense, and there apparently is cause to hope that legal precedent will dispel the obscurity which so long has surrounded decency—within the meaning of the statute. Yet it is still possible for an incorporated organization to waylay and imprison art: to exercise by accusation a censorship which impermanence makes no less dangerous. Until the difference between the liberty permitted to art and the license forbidden to the vulgar be clearly defined, it remains impossible for any artist to foreknow how fully he may describe and thereby interpret life as he sees it, or for the community to enjoy uninterrupted access to much of the best of ancient and modern literature.

In the pages which follow is printed an argument that expressly defines the test whereby that which is legally permissible and that which is prohibited may be determined. It is, explicitly, an argument in behalf of Jurgen, submitted at the trial of the publishers of that book: and it is published in book form, in part because of its intrinsic interest to all readers of Cabell, in part because it is a valuable addition to the literature of censorship. But here there seems need to preface the argument with a brief history of the Jurgen case.

II

It is now a trifle less than three years ago that a Mr. Walter J. Kingsley, a theatrical press agent, sent to the literary editor of a New York newspaper a letter[1] directing attention to James Branch Cabell’s Jurgen as a source of lewd pleasure to the sophisticated and of menace to the moral welfare of Broadway. Hitherto Jurgen had found some favor with a few thousands of discriminating readers; it had been advertised—with, its publishers must now admit, a disregard of the value of all pornographic appeal—as literature. Critics, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, had applauded the book as a distinguished addition to American letters; three editions had been printed and the tale promised to enjoy the success to which its wit, its beauty and the profundity of its theme entitled it. No one, until Mr. Kingsley broke silence, had complained of Jurgen as an obscene production; no letters of condemnation had been received by the publishers; and the press had failed to suggest that decorum, much less decency, had anywhere been violated.

Mr. Kingsley’s letter altered affairs. Immediately a chorus in discussion of Jurgen arose. In the newspapers appeared many letters, some in defense of the book, others crying Amen to Mr. Kingsley. Within a week, the merry game of discovering the “key” to Jurgen was well under way and a pleasant, rather heated controversy had begun. In the upshot some one sent a clipping of the Kingsley letter to Mr. John S. Sumner, secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, calling upon him to do his duty. Mr. Sumner procured a copy of the book, and, on January 14th, 1920, armed with a warrant, he entered the offices of the publishers, seized the plates and all copies of the book and summoned the publishers to appear in court the following day on a charge of violating section 1141 of the Penal code.[2]

Thereafter the record is uneventful. Mr. Sumner’s complaint[3] was duly presented and the case was called for formal hearing in the magistrate’s court on January 23. Upon that date the defendants waived examination and the case was committed for trial in the Court of Special Sessions. The trial was set for March 8, but upon motion of Mr. John Quinn, then Counsel for the Defense, who appeared before Justice Malone, the case was submitted for consideration to the Grand Jury which found an indictment against the publishers[4] thereby transferring the case to the Court of General Sessions and enabling the defendants to secure a trial by jury. On May 17, 1920, the publishers pleaded not guilty ... and, until October 16, 1922, awaited trial.

For, in New York, a “crime wave” was in progress. The courts were crowded with cases which involved other than a possible technical violation of the laws; and, however anxious to rid the docket of the Jurgen case, neither the courts nor the District Attorney’s office could do other than give precedence to the trials of persons charged with more serious offenses.

On October 16, then, two and one half years after the indictment, the Jurgen case was called before Judge Charles C. Nott in the Court of General Sessions. A jury was drawn, the book was submitted in evidence and the people’s case was presented. The defendants, through their attorneys, Messrs. Goodbody, Danforth and Glenn, and their counsel, Mr. Garrard Glenn, moved for the direction of a verdict of acquittal, submitting, in behalf of their motion, the brief which is printed hereinafter. The trial was adjourned for three days; and on October 19, 1922, Judge Nott rendered his decision, which also appears hereinafter, and directed the jury to bring in a verdict of acquittal.

III

There ends the record of the tale Jurgen’s adventures with the law. The record is, as has been said, uneventful. A book had been impugned, that is all. An author had been vilified and his publishers indicted; certain thousands of readers had been deprived of access to a book which critical opinion had commended to their interest; and author and publishers both had been robbed of the revenues from whatever sale the book might have had during the nearly three years in which it was removed from publication.

True, Mr. Cabell and his book had received much publicity.... There is a legend, indeed, that the author of Jurgen (and of a dozen other distinguished books) owes much of his present place in letters to the advertising which Mr. Sumner involuntarily accorded him. But one may question that. An examination of the publishers’ files seem to show that most of the expressions of admiration for Jurgen were repetitions of an enthusiasm expressed before the book’s “suppression.” And if the enthusiasm and the sympathy of Mr. Cabell’s admirers were hearteningly evident, the attacks of his detractors did not flag; and an inestimable number of persons, knowing Mr. Cabell’s work only through the recorded opinions of Messrs. Kingsley and Sumner, did certainly condemn him unread and, shuddering, barred their library doors against him.... No, Mr. Cabell owes no debt of thanks to the accusers of Jurgen.

But all this is by the way. The argument, which appears in the following pages, is of importance not alone because it so ably defends Jurgen, but because it defines, more clearly than any other recent document, the present legal status of literature in America in relation to permissible candor in treatment and subject matter. The brief is not in any sense an argument in behalf of unrestricted publication of any matter, however obscene, or indeed in behalf of the publication of obscenity in any form. It is not a denial of the community’s right to protect itself from offenses against good taste or against its moral security, or to punish violation of the laws by which the public welfare is safe-guarded.

But one need not be an apologist of license to perceive that there is in a thoughtful consideration of every aspect of life no kinship to indecency; or to perceive that the community cannot, without serious danger to its own cultural development, ignore the distinction between the artist’s attempt to create beauty by means of the written word, and the lewd and vulgar outpourings of the pornographer. When these two things are confused by a semi-official organization which is endowed with suppressive powers, even when the courts fail to sustain its accusations, the menace to the community is measurably increased. As a protection against this menace the brief presents, with admirable clarity, a legal test, the validity of which common sense will readily recognize, for the determination of literature as distinct from obscenity.

Guy Holt.

New York City,

November 14, 1922.