By Adrian Hardiman, Head of Zeus, Ltd., London, 2017, $22.50
Adrian Hardiman was a distinguished Dublin barrister who was appointed to the Irish Supreme Court in 2000 and served there until his death in 2016. He also was a serious scholar of the work of James Joyce, and this posthumous volume was finalized by his friend and editor Neil Belton from manuscripts, drafts, speeches and papers prepared by Hardiman in the final years of his life.
The overall theme of the book is Joyce's fascination with the law, lawyers, judges, and important contemporary civil and criminal cases. By Hardiman's count, there are 32 separate law cases mentioned in "Ulysses," 18 of which involve criminal trials.
Several of the criminal cases involve miscarriages of justice and the importance of reasonable doubt in a criminal case is a major theme in both "Ulysses" and "Finnegans Wake." Two of the major cases extensively considered by Joyce involve the trials of The Invincibles, the murderers of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Under-Secretary Burke in the Phoenix Park in 1882 and the Katherine "Kitty" O'Shea divorce trial of 1890 in which the co-respondent was Charles Stewart Parnell.
The parts of the book that will be of particular interest to American lawyers relate to the efforts to suppress publication of "Ulysses" in the United States. There are two aspects to that story, what we might call the Little Review episode, and the Random House episode.
The Little Review was a literary magazine originally published in Chicago by Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap. They had been introduced to Joyce by Ezra Pound and were most anxious that "Ulysses" should be serialized in their magazine. They began publishing the first episodes of "Ulysses" in March 1918, but it was the July-August 1920 edition containing the Cyclops episode that brought on the criminal prosecution.
It was Anderson who effectively arranged for the prosecution by sending a copy of the issue containing the Nausica episode to a young lady whom she knew the daughter of a well-known New York lawyer of conservative views. Anderson calculated that the girl would show the magazine to her father and that he in turn would notify the authorities. That is exactly what happened and his complaint was in due course referred to John S. Sumner of the New York Society for the Prevention of Vice, who made an official complaint in September 1920.
The criminal trial began on St. Valentine's Day 1921 and led to the eventual convictions of Anderson and Heap on obscenity charges. At that trial, the editors were represented by attorney John Quinn whom Hardiman charitably says operated in a "somewhat seat of the pants way and lacked the profound knowledge of the contemporary law of obscenity."
The reality is that Quinn had absolutely no experience as a criminal defense lawyer, appears to have been poorly prepared, despised his two clients, called no expert witnesses in their defense, and assured the magistrates that his clients would publish no more "filth." Inevitably, there was a conviction and a $50 fine on each defendant. Quinn did not appeal.
The Random House case began in March 1932 when the publisher Bennett Cerf contacted Morris Ernst to discuss the possibility of Ernst representing Random House if they imported a copy of "Ulysses" from France and it was seized by U.S. Customs. Ernst readily agreed to represent Random House on a modified contingency arrangement of $500 plus expenses; Ernst also got a royalty on "Ulysses" for the rest of his life.
Arrangements were thereafter made for a copy of "Ulysses" to be sent to New York and Ernst's law firm wrote to the U.S. Collectory of Customs in May 1932 advising them that the volume was on the "Bremen" due in New York on May 3, 1932. In their letter to Customs, the lawyers specifically noted that they were sending this information "because we do not wish the book to slip through customs without official scrutiny." Counsel for Random House and the government then entered a stipulation pursuant to which Random House waived its right to a trial by jury and both parties would move for judgment and the court could decide all questions of law and fact and render general findings of fact and conclusions of law. The copy of "Ulysses" sent from France included the reviews pasted into the volume by a friend of Joyce, so the favorable reviews were part of the exhibit received into evidence.
The cross-motions eventually came on for hearing before Judge John M. Woolsey in the Southern District of New York on Nov. 25, 1933, in a courtroom at the Bar Building on West 44th Street. The proceeding technically involved the government's motion for judgment on the pleadings and the Random House cross-motion to dismiss the libel. At the conclusion of the arguments, Woolsey reserved decision and his opinion dismissing libel and denying the government's motion for a decree of forfeiture was handed down Dec. 6, 1933. Random House had the printer standing by to begin an immediate print.
Woolsey famously wrote "I have read 'Ulysses' once in its entirety and those passages of which the government particularly complains several times. In fact for many weeks my spare time has been devoted to the decision my duty requires me to make in this matter. 'Ulysses' is not an easy book to read or to understand. But there has been much written about it and in order properly to appraise it, it is advisable to read a number of other books which have become its satellites."
On appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the panel consisted of Learned and Augustus Hand, and Martin Manton. Augustus Hand wrote the majority opinion affirming Woolsey over a vigorous dissent by Manton. No certiorari petition was filed.
"Ulysses" was never banned in Ireland, but Hardiman concludes his study with an extensive history of the suppression efforts in the U.K., which began in December 1922 when a copy was confiscated by H.M. Customs at Croydon Airport near London. The matter was referred to Sir Archibald Bodkin, director of public prosecutions, who advised the Home Office that in his opinion, "the book was obscene and indecent" and that "it is filthy and filthy books are not allowed to be imported into this country." Bodkin's comments were focused primarily on the Molly Bloom soliloquy, which constitutes the final episode in "Ulysses."
"Ulysses" was not importable into the U.K. until 1936. Hardiman points out one difference between the U.K. and U.S. suppression efforts:
"To a reader in the early 21st century, what is very striking about the English official correspondence concerning 'Ulysses' is the total self-confidence of politicians and bureaucrats who were still expounding and enforcing High Victorian values in the 1920s and 1930s. Equally striking is the elitism they manifest: what possible value could be the 'memoirs' of 'an Irish chamber-maid' have? Why should such things be published? This, of course, would have particularly outraged Mrs. Molly Bloom, a major part of whose persona was that she was the daughter of an officer and a gentleman, Major Tweedy. This self-confident elitism is reminiscent of the demeanour of Joyce's one-time mentors, the Irish Jesuit Fathers, who flourished in Ireland as late as the 1960s. Another parallel was the paternalism, not to say patriarchalism, of Joynson-Hicks, Bodkin, Henderson and the rest. It was for them to decide, they confidently believed, what was and was not suitable for 'boy and girl undergraduates' to read and to control the excesses of uppity young dons."
Hardiman's volume is a valuable addition to the Joycean canon and will be of particular interest to lawyers and judges interested in the work of James Joyce or the history of literary censorship.
