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The Hull Daily Mail has, I regret to say, taken the side of the Canon.  This is a pity.  The Hull paper should be a little more careful about the letters it prints.  In a recent issue it allowed a correspondent to call “Ann Veronica” “pornographic,” which is most distinctly libellous.  But possibly the correspondent and the newspaper felt themselves secure in Mr. Wells’s disdain.  “Ann Veronica” is not pornographic.  It is not even indecent.  It is utterly decent from end to end.  It is also utterly honest.  It is not one of Mr. Wells’s major productions.  But if a work of an honourable and honoured artist is to be damned because it happens to be inferior to other works of the same artist, Hull ought to consider the awful case of “Measure for Measure.”  By the way, would Canon Lambert as soon send a Miss Lambert to a house infected with mumps as put “Measure for Measure” into her hands?  The Hull Daily Mail, taken to task, sheltered itself behind Mr. Clement Shorter and the Sphere.  I will not discuss Mr. Shorter’s singular pronouncement upon “Ann Veronica,” because I am in a very good humour with him just now for his excellently acid remarks upon the “success” literature of Mr. Peter Keary.  But I may remark that Mr. Shorter did not advocate the censoring of the book, nor did he come within seven Irish miles of describing it as pornographic.

Canonical people have tried to make capital out of the fact that “Ann Veronica” is not to be found in the public libraries of sundry large towns.  But the reason may not be connected with the iconoclasm of “Ann Veronica.”  In an interview, Mr. T.W.  Hand, the librarian at Leeds, said:  “I haven’t read the book through (Why not?), though I have seen it, and we haven’t got it in any of our libraries in Leeds.  The reason for this is not the character of the book, but the fact that we never purchase our novels until they have become cheaper.”  Charming confession!  A subscription ought to be opened for poverty-stricken Leeds, which must wait to buy an English book that is or will be translated into every European language, until it has become cheaper!  A few weeks ago the country was laughing at little Beverley because its Fathers publicly decided to purchase no fiction less than a year old.  But are the great towns any better off?

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[3 Mar. ’10]

Literary censorship in the intellectual centre of the world:  I need hardly say that I mean Boston, Mass.  Boston is the city of Harvard University.  It is also the city of the Atlantic Monthly.  It is also the city of Emerson, Lowell, Longfellow, and Holmes.  Boston has a Public Library.  It is supposed to be one of the finest public libraries in this world or any other.  Great artists, such as Puvis de Chavannes and John Sargent, have helped to decorate the Boston Library.  In brief, Boston and its Library are not to be sneezed at.  A certain