24
STEVEN MARCUS
to possess that which is forbidden, " he lets drop in a footnote, "is
as strong in the man as the child, in the wise as the foolish." That
which is forbidden has naturally to do with sex; but when Ashbee
turns his attention to justifying or discussing his own interests in this
direction, and asks himself the hypothetical question "why I have
not turned my attention to works on subjects ... more profitable,"
he
is
suddenly rendered impotent of thought. "I'll not answer that,"
he quotes in verse, "But, say, it is my humour; Is it answered?" This
combination of a commendable though poignant candor with a dis–
inclination or inability to examine the contents of one's mind or the
nature of one's motives is familiar-we have already met with it in
Acton.
s
And we shall meet with it again repeatedly,
it
being, I be–
lieve, a characteristic mode of defense not only of pornography and
the pornographic mind but of the stage of mental development which
both may be said to have attained. And Ashbee
is
precise in his choice
of the term "humour"; he
is
using it in the older historical sense,
which signifies a mental disposition so deeply fixed or rooted as to
seem organic in origin. At the same time it describes a state of mind
having no apparent ground or reason, and a person "in his humour"
appears both to those who observe him, and often to himself as well,
as someone possessed by a capricious or eccentric drive-which can–
not be gratified since its demands are infinite. He is in other words
in subjection to himself, although he does not experience it this way.
In the Preliminary Remarks to the
Centuria,
for example, Ashbee
offers an apology to the reader for his failure in this volume to reach
"the goal for which I am striving. I have not been able strictly to
carry out my intention of registering and branding exclusively worth–
less books . . . . I have been attracted by masterpieces, and have
neglected the unartistic; consequently in this volume less rubbish
will be found than in the
Index Librorum Prohibitorum."
The faintly
plangent note of regret is struck as Ashbee, looking back over his
second volume, suddenly recognizes that in it his "humour" has been
temporarily defeated or derailed by "higher" aims. It puts one in
mind of Noddy Boffin gazing wistfully over his shoulder at the be–
loved dust-heaps he has had to relinquish.
Given over thoroughly to this pursuit, Ashbee is none the less
3
Partisan Review,
XXXI, 2 (Spring, 1964) .
