in their struggles to determine exactly what, in the book, was being prosecuted. There were thirteen episodes of sexual intercourse involving Lady Chatterley, of which the Prosecutor expostulated: "The curtain is never drawn. One follows them not only into the bedroom but into bed, and remains with them there." There were also a hundred-odd instances of the use of certain words not ordinarily seen in print or heard in cultivated circles, particularly a common fourletter word beginning with "f" and referring to the act of copulation. All of these instances the Prosecutor seems to have tabulated with a quite remarkable persistence, as if the "obscenity" of a certain word mounted in direct proportion to the number of repetitions. But this was not all; Lady Chatterley had committed ADULTERY, and it does not seem to have made any difference to the Prosecution that, under the given circumstances, she could have had no sexual relations otherwise, or that she had her husband's express permission to do so. All of these things were the burden of the prosecution, and "The Trial of Lady Chatterley" presents them in considerable and explicit detail, together with large amounts of dry humor.

Unlike the Prosecution, which called no witnesses, the Defense called them by the dozen, culled from among the most distinguished names in England, and representing almost every field of letters, even to including Sir Allen Lane himself, founder of Penguin Books, Ltd., who was knighted by the Crown for his exceptional services to literature. The lines of argument drawn by the Defense, and supported unequivocally by all of its witnesses, were the same as those used by educated and liberal-thinking people everywhere, that art is the reflection of what the artist sees in life, that the best art is what reflects the most of life, and that the artist, no

matter what his medium, has a right, so to speak, to set up his palette with colors of his own choosing. Whether others like these colors or not is irrelevant to the artist's purpose; and as for the viewer, he cannot properly judge this hue or that line except in its bearing on the entire composition. It is lack of composition, lack of subject, lack of message, lack of height, breadth, and depth of interpretation which discredits and disqualifies; and in the absence of these, the artistic medium, itself, whatever it may be, is purely and simply wasted. "Lady Chatterley's Lover" was vindicated on all of these counts, and although D. H. Lawrence was not, and could not have been on trial, his shade was immanent throughout the courtroom during the six days it took to reach the NOT GUILTY verdict.

Lawrence was, himself, a stern literary and moral critic and, quite apart from his fiction, wrote extensively of his own views on life and on literary matters. Both Defense and its witnesses drew heavily on this store in support of Lawrence's artistic and moral integrity, and it can scarcely be doubted that the jury was deeply impressed by the light which this sort of evidence shed upon the value of the book in question. It was not without reason that this report of the Court's proceedings was titled, "The Trial of Lady Chatterley," since with both book and author supported by such columinous and impressive testimony, what or who was there left to try? Even so, she might never have been brought to trial except for those four-letter words. As the editor of "The Trial" put the matter in closing, "It was the words that caused all the trouble, putting her Ladyship on trial as an adultress where a more conventionally spoken gamekeeper might have lent her the immunity of Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina."

-Robert Gregory

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