Tenderness, page 55
Mr Justice Byrne (reddening): He was trying to – what?
The Bishop of Woolwich (gripping the stand): Lawrence tries to portray this relation, in a real sense, as something sacred; indeed, as a form of holy communion. For him, you see, flesh was completely sacramental of spirit.
On the Judge’s bench, Mr Justice Byrne does not see. He scribbles furiously.
Mr Gardiner: Is this a book which, in your view, Christians ought to read?
The Bishop of Woolwich (looking heavenward, as if for revelation): Yes. I believe it is.
The press section, already in a lather at the ‘holy communion’ of the gamekeeper and the lady – they haven’t heard it called that before – erupts. Reporters dash outside for telephone boxes. The proceedings are disrupted. ‘A Book All Christians Should Read!’ The headline is on its way.
‘Silence!’ demands the usher of those of us who remain.
Mr Gardiner: No further questions, my Lord.
* * *
—
Mr Griffith-Jones (taking to the floor): You have spoken of the sexual relation, Bishop Robinson. Marriage is another aspect of ethics, is it not?
The Bishop: It is, although it is perhaps germane to note that Lawrence revealed an astonishing sensitivity to the beauty and value of all organic relationships, of which he saw sex as the culmination, and in no sense sordid. Naturally the book is not a treatise on marriage. He is concerned with establishing a permanent, genuine, spiritual—
Mr Griffith-Jones: Bishop, I don’t wish to be offensive to you, but you are not here to make speeches. Answer plainly, if you would. Are you suggesting this book is of instructional value upon the subject of ethics? Yes or no?
The Bishop: No.
Mr Justice Byrne (rapping his desk): But does it portray an immoral woman?!
Mr Griffith-Jones pauses in the cross-examination, either with surprise or so that the Judge’s words might linger in the air. Lady Byrne reaches across to her husband. Does she steady the shifting paperwork on his desk or pat his hand? We shall, quite simply, never know.
* * *
—
‘Professor Vivian de Sola Pinto!’
Vivian Pinto is Professor of English at the University of Nottingham and an internationally respected Lawrence expert from the author’s native region. The Professor’s white hair is oiled and neatly parted. He wears a dapper three-piece suit and walks with his head bowed, as if already concentrating on his testimony as he crosses the court. He is a man who must be close to retirement. There is nothing at all in or on his person to evoke his distinguished service as an infantry officer, alongside his friend the poet Siegfried Sassoon, at the Western Front during the Great War. Such is the deceit of the ageing body.
Mr Gardiner (holding the Penguin paperback high, so that even we can see it, at the back where we hover): Professor, I am aware that all standards and measures must, to a degree, be relative. But, for the benefit of the court, what do you say to the literary merits of this book?
Professor Pinto: I would give it a high place; not the highest place. I think it is a deeply moving story. There are weak passages, but it is an important and valuable work.
Mr Gardiner: Am I right in thinking it was the last novel Lawrence wrote?
Professor Pinto: Yes. The last long prose work.
Mr Gardiner: Would you kindly give the court your expert assessment of the following passages, which I shall now read aloud to you, passages identified by the Prosecution as ‘obscene’. Page 27…
Mr Gardiner reads two paragraphs in a clear, strong voice.
Professor: Competently written.
Mr Gardiner: Page 30…
Professor: Beautifully written.
Mr Gardiner: Page 120…
Professor: A beautiful passage, full of tenderness and insight.
Mr Gardiner: And now, the gamekeeper’s letter at the very end of the novel…
Professor: A highly poetical passage, an affirmation of life.
Mr Gardiner: In your view, are the four-letter words necessary?
Professor: Perhaps what he tried to do with those words was impossible. But yes, certainly. I think, for his purpose, it was necessary to use them.
Mr Gardiner: No further questions.
* * *
—
Mr Griffith-Jones rises from his chair, and one eyebrow rises elaborately with him: Professor Pinto, is D. H. Lawrence, as it were, a hobby-horse of yours?
Professor: As Professor at Nottingham, it is very natural that I should be interested. Lawrence himself was from a small mining village in Nottinghamshire.
Mr Griffith-Jones: You tell us that you would give this novel ‘a high place’ in your ratings.
Professor: Yes.
Mr Griffith-Jones: Yet Miss Esther Forbes, the respected American critic, has said that Lady Chatterley’s Lover is ‘the worst of all Lawrence’s books – stiff and unnatural’.
Professor: I’m afraid I don’t think Esther Forbes is a person of any particular standing as a literary critic.
Mr Griffith-Jones: Allow me then to read to you from John Middleton Murry’s fulsome criticism of the novel in his literary-critical work, Son of Woman. (He does so at length.)
Professor: I know it. It’s a very unsatisfactory book.
Mr Griffith-Jones: Because he, like Esther Forbes, doesn’t agree with you?
Professor: No.
The acoustics are not good at the best of times, and Professor Pinto’s voice has lost some of its power.
Mr Griffith-Jones: Very well. You will, I assume, permit me to quote from the novel itself, from page 185.
Mr Griffith-Jones’s reading is deliberately tone-deaf: ‘Th’art good cunt, though, aren’t ter? Best bit o’ cunt left on earth. When ter likes! When th’art willin’!’, and so on and so on. We get ‘cunt’, ‘cunt’, and ‘fuck’, ‘fuck’. Does this novel really merit your ‘high place’?
Professor (colouring): I think it should be read in Nottingham dialect—
Laughter explodes.
‘Silence!’ bellows the usher.
Mr Justice Byrne: If people cannot refrain from such outbursts, the court will be cleared.
Mr Griffith-Jones: That may well be so, the point you make about the accent in which it is read, but not all the people who would read this book, if sold by Penguins at 3s. 6d., would have a knowledge of Nottinghamshire dialect, would they?
He smiles, as if the very notion is amusing.
His witness does not reply.
Mr Griffith-Jones: Professor Pinto, yes or no?
Professor: No.
Mr Griffith-Jones: No further questions, my Lord.
Yet the Judge bristles still. The witness is not released.
Mr Justice Byrne: Professor, what do you believe is meant by the words ‘literary merit’?
Professor Pinto: Many things.
Mr Justice Byrne: Such as?
Professor Pinto: I look for the quality of the writing, the freshness of the subject matter, the meaning of the book; whether the artistry is adequate; whether it succeeds in conveying the author’s experience, and whether that experience is significant experience; whether one can come back to it and get fresh pleasure from it. I did that. I came back and read Lady Chatterley’s Lover before this trial, after a number of years, and I found it was an even better book than I thought originally.
Mr Justice Byrne makes a sound in his throat, one that is not easily described.
* * *
—
Enter the Editor of the London Churchman, ‘The Reverend Prebendary Stephan Hopkinson!’
From our perch at the threshold of Court Number One, we watch a man in his fifties – short, bald, spectacled and wearing a vicar’s collar – cross the floor. We see, as he passes us, that he suffers from chilblains on his nose. For all of his reverend sensibility, Prebendary Hopkinson curses the English climate.
Mr Gardiner (checking his notes): Reverend Hopkinson, I will cut to what is perhaps the heart of the matter. Is it a proper assumption that sex can be treated in accordance with the Christian faith?
Reverend Hopkinson (radiating unexpected charm): Yes. I think it is one of the great basic emotions. All life comes through sex itself, and sex is of course essential to life as we know it. I would believe therefore that God himself created these functions, and we ought therefore to learn to regard them with respect and reverence, which does not mean with timidity.
Mr Gardiner: Thank you, Reverend Hopkinson. Your witness, Mr Griffith-Jones.
Mr Griffith-Jones (nodding to his rival): Do you, Reverend Hopkinson, find anywhere in the book a single word suggesting criticism of Lady Chatterley’s adultery?
Reverend Hopkinson: Not a word, but that is because I take it that the book is intended to depict—
Mr Griffith-Jones (looking up to the public gallery): It is very difficult, you know. No expert in this case appears to be able to answer a question ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. I will try again (returning to Reverend Hopkinson). Do you find one word of criticism of Lady Chatterley’s adultery in this novel?
Reverend Hopkinson: No.
Mr Griffith-Jones emotes a satisfied weariness.
Reverend Hopkinson: I must add, however, that I find no criticism of any moral conduct in the book.
Mr Justice Byrne: Reverend Hopkinson, the question might also be thus put: would you not have any objection to your own children reading this book?
Reverend Hopkinson: Provided they discussed it with me – no. None.
Under the lofty dome of the Old Bailey, Reverend Stephan Hopkinson, at five feet four inches, holds his ground.
* * *
—
The last witness of Day Two is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Leicester University, ‘Mr Richard Hoggart!’
Mr Jeremy Hutchinson, QC, Junior Counsel for the Defence, now takes to the stage. He is a tall, broad man of forty-five, with a generous brow, a receding hairline, a pronounced nose and a modest chin. Behind his spectacles, his eyes are sharp, but characteristically merry too, as if he is determined to enjoy himself.
We make ourselves comfortable.
The witness, Mr Hoggart, is in his early forties. He runs a hand over his dark widow’s peak and nods to the barrister that he is ready to begin.
Mr Jeremy Hutchinson: It has been said, Mr Hoggart, that the two main characters in the book are little more than bodies which continuously have sexual intercourse together. What say you to that?
Mr Hoggart: I should think it was grossly unfair. I should think it was based on a misreading of the book.
Mr Hutchinson: The book has also been described as little more than ‘vicious indulgence in sex and sensuality’. In your view, is that a valid description?
Mr Hoggart: I think it is invalid on all three counts. It is not in any sense vicious; it is highly virtuous, and if anything, it is puritanical.
Mr Justice Byrne (craning forward): Did you say ‘virtuous’ and ‘puritanical’?
Mr Hoggart (unperturbed): I did say that. Taken as a whole, it is a moral book. The overwhelming impression which comes out to me as a careful reader of it is of the enormous reverence which must be paid by one human being to another with whom he is in love and, in particular, the reverence towards one’s physical relationship.
In this sense, it seems to me that it is highly moral and not degrading of sex. The book advocates marriage, not adultery. It takes a difficult and distressing human situation which we know exists, a marriage which has gone wrong, which never started right. D. H. Lawrence wanted us to say, ‘Yes, this is what one does. In a simple, ordinary way, one fucks,’ with no sniggering or dirt. He is therefore properly viewed as a British nonconformist Puritan.
Mr Hutchinson (smiling genially to the Prosecution): Your witness.
* * *
—
Mr Griffith-Jones is nine years Mr Hoggart’s senior, an Old Etonian and an Oxbridge alumnus. Mr Hoggart grew up orphaned and poor, but, by dint of a scholarship, studied English and gained a degree from the University of Leeds.
Mr Griffith-Jones’s sneer is faint but observable as he begins: I have apparently lived my life, Mr Hoggart, under a misapprehension as to the meaning of the word ‘puritanical’. Perhaps you would be so kind as to enlighten me?
Mr Hoggart (friendly): Of course. You’re not alone, Mr Griffith-Jones. Many people do misunderstand it. It’s the way in which language decays. The proper meaning of the word ‘puritan’ is somebody who belongs to the tradition of British puritanism generally. The distinguishing feature of that is an intense sense of responsibility for one’s conscience. Lawrence, I would argue, felt little else. His work is, for him, a profound expression, not only of his artistic sense but of his conscience too. In this sense, this book is puritanical.
(Reporters dash out, racing for the nearest phone-box. ‘Lady C. “puritanical” says Potty Prof!’)
Mr Griffith-Jones: I am obliged to you, Mr Hoggart, for the fullness of your lecture. This, however, is the Old Bailey and not (checking his notes) Leicester University. I must ask you to turn your attention to the particulars of the novel under discussion. I refer you now, in the copy you have been handed, to page 30, and to the description of Lady Chatterley’s second sexual bout, with the man Michaelis, a character she has sex with and dismisses early on. Is this a passage which you would say is ‘puritanical’?
Mr Hoggart (his eyes large and expressive): Yes, puritanical and poignant, and sad, about two people who have no proper relationship. It is, in that sense, an immoral relationship, as Lawrence shows us. Michaelis shows no understanding of her. Indeed, he casually humiliates her, and she is wounded.
Mr Griffith-Jones: She is wounded? May I remind the court that she is a married woman? Her relationship with Michaelis was conducted behind her husband’s back for the satisfaction of her sexual lust. That is the position, is it not?
Mr Hoggart (in a good-natured tone): It is not.
Mr Griffith-Jones: What else is it?
Mr Hoggart: Lady Chatterley hopes that, through this act with Michaelis, which comes early in the novel, she will feel less lonely and lost. She did not judge him well, unfortunately.
Mr Griffith-Jones (with restrained indignation): On the contrary, it is done, is it not, because her husband was wounded in the War and has been incapable ever since of satisfying her sexual demands?
Mr Hoggart: It is not.
Mr Griffith-Jones: Very well. That is your view.
Mr Hoggart: I can substantiate that view.
Mr Griffith-Jones: Never mind about substantiating it.
Mr Justice Byrne: What you are being asked is this, Mr Hoggart, as I understand it. This was an immoral relationship between this woman and that man, was it not?
Mr Hoggart: Yes, Lawrence makes that perfectly clear. There was affection, or so she thought, but Lady Chatterley realises belatedly that Michaelis neither loves nor respects her as he should.
Mr Justice Byrne’s face reddens with questions even he dares not put: Respect her? That harlot?
* * *
—
The Prosecution hammers at Mr Hoggart for over an hour, with a peculiar ferocity reserved for this ‘jumped-up’ expert from Leicester University. Shortly after the trial, the eminent author Mr E. M. Forster will write to Richard Hoggart to commiserate: ‘It was for you to bear the full insolence of the prosecuting counsel, whom it is difficult to believe is not a cad, privily as well as publicly.’
Mr Griffith-Jones (with the bone between his teeth): Allow me to quote: ‘Sharp soft waves of unspeakable pleasure washed over her as he entered her, and started the curious molten thrilling that spread and spread till she was carried away with the last blind flush of extremity.’ Is that puritanical, Mr Hoggart?
Mr Hoggart: It is.
Mr Griffith-Jones (turning a page): ‘A woman’s a lovely thing when ’er’s deep ter fuck, and cunt’s good.’ Is that puritanical?
Mr Hoggart: Yes. It is the gamekeeper Mellors beginning to express, in honest, realist dialogue, the reverence he feels for the female form, for what he calls ‘womanness’.
Mr Griffith-Jones: Is it realistic, though? Would a gamekeeper speak in such a way to a land-owner’s wife? Moreover, would not an actual woman, such as Lady Chatterley, object to the relentless vulgarity of his speech? (He pauses to give a faint smile of condescension.) Are you adequately acquainted, Mr Hoggart, with social spheres such as that to which Lady Chatterley belongs? Can you actually judge the realism of Mellors’s vulgarity in this context, and are you able to assess the authenticity of Lady Chatterley’s response?
Mr Hoggart (heedless of the slight): She does not object to Mellors’s speech because she believes it to be neither vulgar nor aggressive, in the way profanity can often be. The author is evoking, quite radically, an entire register within that variety of speech we often term ‘profane’. Lady Chatterley is able to hear beauty in it. The speech is both realistic and credible within the terms set by the novel itself. The reaction of any actual woman of a similar station in this period is, I’m afraid, irrelevant. Good novels have no use for generalisations or class ‘demographics’.
Mr Griffith-Jones (looking to the jury as if for sympathy): In Chapter Ten, following another bout, we learn that ‘Connie would not take her bath this evening. The sense of his flesh touching her, the very stickiness upon her, was dear to her, and in a sense, holy.’ Is the ‘very stickiness’ puritanical, Mr Hoggart?
