Page 67—Speaks simply of a kiss. Whether long or short, a kiss is not lewd.
Page 80—Jurgen is talking about Guenevere to her father—“I can get justice done me anywhere, in all the bed chambers of the world.” If this is lewd, then we should abolish Ophelia’s mad song in Hamlet. Anyhow, Jurgen goes on to say (same page) “I only meant in a manner of speaking, sir.”
Pages 84–6—Jurgen tells Yolande she must reward him by candle light, etc. This contains no description of any offensive act. There is nothing explicit.
Page 89—Guenevere’s father suspects that she was not entirely chaste while in the giant’s cavern. Has literature, ancient or modern, never previously exposed a father’s doubt of his daughter’s chastity? Did no one ever study the Greek tragedies?
Page 90—The King wonders whether “a thing like this is happening” in his city in many places, and Jurgen says that it probably is. Sinclair Lewis has similar speculations in “Babbitt”. The references to a “breakage” refer to infractions of moral law.
Page 92—The King says that, if Jurgen has had improper relations with Guenevere, he should lie like a gentleman. Where is the obscenity? Has not that phrase become time-worn, in literature and conversation, since the late eighties?
Page 98—Jurgen looks forward “to more intimate converse” with the lady. Entirely compatible with just what it says. The dreadful word “liaison” also is used. But the late war has brought it into such use—“liaison officer”; “liaison between the Y. M. C. A. and the chaplains’ corps”, etc.—that the word now has Anglice the extensive meaning that the French always allowed it.
Pages 100, 102, 104–8—These deal with Jurgen’s affair with Guenevere. If read as a whole, bearing in mind the outstanding point, that Guenevere’s characteristic was “her innocence, combined with a certain moral obtuseness” (108) there is nothing lewd or obscene in this any more than in Hardy’s “Tess of the D’Urbervilles”. Reference may be made to page 102, where Jurgen had his answer to the question, what sort of service did women most cordially appreciate. He believed they did not really desire to be served as (103) a symbol of Heaven’s perfection, as (336) half goddess, half bric-a-brac. But this opinion was not suitable for a mixed audience in Glathion, where people believed otherwise (104–108). They are not said to have done anything but kiss and talk. The reasons for their talking in privacy are logical. If any improprieties took place the text nowhere alludes to them. Compare the first part of Goethe’s “Faust,” Scott’s “The Heart of Midlothian,” George Eliot’s “Adam Bede” and “Middlemarch,” or Stevenson’s “Weir of Hermiston,” for precisely similar seductions.
Page 120—Jurgen gets into the bedroom of the Bishop. “His eminence was not alone, but as both occupants of the apartment were asleep, Jurgen saw nothing unepiscopal”.—If we are to be literal, then let us observe that this passage does not say (a) that the other was a female; (b) that they were in bed together. Sterne’s “Sentimental Journey” has passages much more explicit.
Page 144—Jurgen talks concerning Guenevere and Lancelot. Tennyson, in verse, discoursed of the same thing.