'Fanny Hill' Given Her Day In Court

Fanny Hill was hauled into court Wednesday and charged by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts with being "obscene, impure, and indecent."

After a full day of testimony, Judge Donald Macaulay of Suffolk County Superior Court took the case under advisement until mid-summer. Final briefs will be filled on June 19.

A confident prosecutor, Assistant Attorney General John E. Sullivan, called but one witness in the effort to ban the book, while publisher G. P. Putnam's Sons enlisted the aid of five Boston-area English professors, including John M. Bullitt '43, Master of Quincy House

Charles I. Rembar '35, counsel for Putnam's, based his defense of Fanny Hill on the contention that no work of art may be kept from the public as long as it has "social value." In Massachusetts' last major censorship case, involving Tropic of Cancer, the state's Supreme Judicial Court declared that "anything with literary attributes" or "redeeming social importance" cannot be banned.

In his testimony Bullitt stated "The book is a deliberate work of art, not a great one by any means, but an effort to portray a complex character. It presents a theme common to the eighteenth century, the education of a woman as she learns the value of love."

Sex and Wheaties

"But does it contain the type of language you would use over the breakfast table?" asked Sullivan in his cross-examination of Bullitt.

"There's not a single dirty word in the book," answered Bullitt.

"That's not what I asked," Sullivan retorted. "Would you use this kind of language over the breakfast table?"

"Yes, definitely."

The lone prosecution witness was John E. Collins, headmaster of Newman Preparatory School and a former professor of English at Boston State College. "The book lacks any literary merit that might lift it up above the level of hard-core pornography," he declared.

Collins told the Court he had read the book the night before the hearing. Reminded by Rembar that the book ends with Fanny's marrage, Collins asked, "Oh, that was supposed to be the moral?" Rembar, charged that Collins was not sufficiently familiar with the novel to be a qualified witness.

Another defense witness, Ira Konigsberg, assistant professor of English at Brandeis University, called Fanny Hill a "novel that succeeds."

"I should be saddened to be deprived of it as a document" of the eighteenth century "battle between a restricted Puritan ethic and a freer, more generous attitude toward life," he said.

Healthy Attitude

Cleland's attitude toward sex is "more healthy" than that of many modern novels, Konigsberg testified.

"Is it pornographic?" Interrupted Judge Macaulay during Konigsberg's testimony.

"What do you mean by pornographic, your honor?"

'Don't you know, Mr. Konigsberg?"

"I know what I mean by pornographic. I don't know what you mean."

"Then don't answer my question."

In his summary argument, the prosecutor charged that "no witness can in good conscience say that Fanny Hill is not obscene, impure, and indecent." These three terms appear in the Commonwealth statute and constitute the standards used by the Massachusetts Obscene Literature Control Commission, which recommended prosecution of Fanny Hill. The action against the book itself was taken by Attorney General Edward W. Brooke. The case is formally titled Brooke vs. A book Named John Cleland's "Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure" (Commonly known as "Fanny Hill").

Sullivan criticized Putnam's for calling witnesses "from only one walk of life." He suggested that the testimony of housewives might have been relevant