1 of 6
Author James Branch Cabell, 1923
2 of 6
British artist Frank C. Papé’s post-judgment illustration from "Jurgen"
3 of 6
British artist Frank C. Papé’s illustrations in "Jurgen"
4 of 6
British artist Frank C. Papé’s illustration from "Jurgen": The enchanted Guenevere rescued by Jurgen from the clutches of King Thragnar; Jurgen’s first love, Dorothy la Desirée, who, forever young in the mystical garden between dawn and sunrise, doesn’t recognize him as a middle-aged paunchy pawnbroker.
5 of 6
British artist Frank C. Papé’s illustrations in "Jurgen"
6 of 6
British artist Frank C. Papé’s illustrations in "Jurgen"
Once upon a time, here at Richmond-in-Virginia, the novelist James Branch Cabell (pronounced, he noted, like “rabble”) penned a story about Jurgen, a middle-aged former poet turned pawnbroker living in the fictional French duchy of Poictesme (pronounced PWA’-tem).
The devil kidnaps Jurgen’s wife, Dame Lisa, and he, with some grudging obligation, meanders off to the eventual rescue. He scrambles into a cave, descends into hell and then rises up through heaven, pausing at various legendary places in between to engage in strenuous physical exertions and other sensual pleasures (one involving a vampire vacationing in the underworld). After turning away all the mythical women who’d want him, Jurgen resumes a compromised domestic existence with his wife because, after all, living in a fantasy isn’t possible.
Cabell’s 12th work of fiction since 1904, “Jurgen” rolled off the presses of Robert M. McBride & Co. in New York City’s Manhattan borough on Sept. 27, 1919. The book thereafter went into three printings, selling 4,000 copies and garnering 50 reviews — five of them vaguely negative.
Cabell’s biographer, the late Edgar E. MacDonald, explains the calculated risk Cabell, his editor, Guy Holt, and publisher McBride undertook with the novel’s sexual implications. Holt spent several days in Richmond with Cabell, scouring the manuscript for overt improprieties. Cabell made six minor expurgations in yielding to what he termed as the younger man’s “pruriency.”
Cabell aimed “Jurgen” to give a jolt to popular perceptions of his writing while demonstrating his vitality to Holt and the writer’s powerful critic and friend, H.L. Mencken, widely known as “the sage of Baltimore.”
However, it came to pass that a New York City newspaper theater flack by the name of Walter J. Kingsley sent a snarky letter to the New York Tribune that ran on Jan. 3, 1920.
And then, the trouble began.
“There is an undercurrent of extreme sensuality throughout the book,” Kingsley wrote, “and once the trick of transposing the key is mastered, one can dip into this tepid stream on every page.” By “transposing,” Kingsley referred to double entendres that today resemble the “nudge, nudge, wink-wink, know what I mean?” of the celebrated Monty Python skit, what with ceremonial spears going through drapes.
The humorless John S. Sumner of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, who’d otherwise never heard of Cabell or “Jurgen,” didn’t pussyfoot. On Jan. 14, 1920, Sumner and police stormed the McBride offices, wielding a summons for the publisher and authorization for the seizure of all the plates, copies and sheets of “Jurgen.” McBride was charged with violating Section 1141 of the Penal Code of the State of New York in publishing “Jurgen,” “a certain offensive, lewd, lascivious and indecent book.”
1 of 6
British artist Frank C. Papé’s illustrations in "Jurgen"
2 of 6
3 of 6
4 of 6
5 of 6
6 of 6
Thus began two years of legalistic wrangling, during which the suspension of “Jurgen” made headlines and became a celebrity cause — a role the introvert author eschewed. “What I need is a desert island with good mail service,” he later told Holt. Author F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda, wrote to Cabell, pleading with him to make even a typescript available because “Scottie” wanted to know what all the fuss was about.
Cabell also acquired a strange superfan in the person of “magick” practitioner/cult leader Aleister Crowley. Cabell seems to have cribbed for Chapter 20 of “Jurgen” a barely disguised sex ritual from Crowley’s guidebook for The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Cabell erroneously considered the source too obscure. Crowley wrote fawning letters to the embarrassed Cabell that are today in the Special Collections and Archives of Virginia Commonwealth University’s James Branch Cabell Library.
While McBride and Holt jousted with the New York state judicial system, Cabell went on (and on). After a period of blankness, inspiration struck, and he wrote two more novels important to his oeuvre, “Figures of Earth” and “The High Place.” The first concerns Manuel, a swineherd who rises to lead Poictesme by essentially telling everybody what they want to hear — and then conveniently vanishing. “The High Place” is a proto-“Disenchanted,” an upended “Sleeping Beauty” in which there’s happily never after. Cabell also wrote his play “The Jewel Merchants” and saw it produced by the Little Theatre League of Richmond, and he assisted with editing The Reviewer, a Richmond-based literary journal.
On Oct. 16, 1922, New York General Sessions Court Judge Charles Cooper Nott acquitted McBride et al. Nott viewed “Jurgen” as a work of “unusual literary merit.” He observed in his decision that although “certain passages therein may be considered suggestive in a veiled and subtle way of immorality … such suggestions are delicately conveyed.” Considering Cabell’s writing style, he added, “It is doubtful if the book could be read or understood at all by more than a very limited number of readers.”
The “Jurgen” scandal generated a wider audience and provided inspiration across art forms. Deems Taylor composed a 1925 orchestral tone poem inspired by “Jurgen,” and in 1929, modern dance pioneers Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis created a “Jurgen” piece with dual piano accompaniment. Shawn wrote to Cabell, “The place was packed — over 20,000 people a night for the three nights — and everyone loved ‘Jurgen’ except those who hated it. It has divided people as you well know. One is either willing to fight for ‘Jurgen’ against any odds — or fight against it with equal vehemence.”
1 of 5
British artist Frank C. Papé’s illustrations in "Jurgen"
2 of 5
3 of 5
4 of 5
5 of 5
Cabell ultimately wrote 52 books but faded to become an oddball literary artifact with little in print by the time of his 1958 death.
He crops up in odd places. Novelist Robert Stone’s 1986 paean to Hollywood, “Children of Light,” features a character reeling from his failure to adapt “Jurgen” into a Broadway musical. Speculative futurist William Gibson, in his “All Tomorrow’s Parties” (1999), introduces Randall James Branch Cabell Shoats, a capable session musician from Mobile, Alabama.
Cabell’s epigrammatic style assured him of one enduring quotation, from “The Silver Stallion,” the tale of Manuel’s knights’ vain searches for him. Coth of the Rocks (Jurgen’s father) grumbles to a riddling sphinx after a discourse on philosophy and faith, “The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this to be true.”
The author mused that over time, his volumes would find appreciative readers. “Jurgen” remains in print.
The VCU Cabell Library will celebrate “Jurgen” and Cabell’s works throughout 2020.
