accusers as an aesthete, an alien. As Chubb had said, he would not bow down.
When called to take the oath he declared he could not and there was some confusion about why this was, the court assuming it was because he was a Jew and Weiss finally making it clear that he did not believe in God at all. All this you can read in the transcript of the trial and I have used my own copy to jog my memory here and there.
The thing that struck the horrified Chubb was not how preposterous it was to convict someone for a culturally pretentious pun like “Boult-upright” but how relentlessly the government brought down all its power on this young man.
The judge in fact was not Sir David Gibbons but Alfred Cousins, who turns out to have been the godfather of the girl Weiss had spurned. He displayed a very obvious physical power—a swimmer’s shoulders, large hands, a wide but inexpressive mouth. Vogelesang, the chief witness, was also a sportsman and is nowadays more remembered as a celebratedcontestant in that wild, anarchic, rather Gaelic football they play down there. Even the prosecutor, who was red-faced and decidedly out of shape, had a crushed, pugnacious face from which he had managed to exclude any evidence of human sympathy.
The trial began with Vogelesang being called to the stand and recounting his meeting with Weiss at Acland Street.
This, of course, must have been a very dreary performance, with the stolid detective reading from his notebook in an uninflected nasal drawl, but Chubb, sitting in the Merlin Hotel years later, played the parts of WEISS and VOGELESANG to considerable comic effect. It was only later, when I read the transcript, that I appreciated the accuracy of his recollection, as if the grotesque inquisition had been burned into his living brain.
DET. VOGELESANG: Are you acquainted with the poems of Bob McCorkle?
WEISS: Yes.
DET. VOGELESANG: There is a poem titled ‘Boult to Marina.’ What is your opinion of that poem?
WEISS: I don’t know what the author intended by that poem. You’d better ask him what he meant.
DET. VOGELESANG: What do you think it means?
WEISS: Ask the author. I am not going to express an opinion.
DET. VOGELESANG: That means that you have an opinion but you are not prepared to express it.
WEISS: I would have to give it two or three hours’ consideration before I could determine what it means.
DET. VOGELESANG : Do you think it is suggestive of indecency?
WEISS: Do you know anything about the classical characters?
DET. VOGELESANG: What I want to know is what it means.
WEISS: Pericles and Boult are both classical characters.
DET. VOGELESANG: Do you think the poem is suggestive of indecency?
WEISS: No more than Shakespeare or Chaucer.
DET. VOGELESANG: Ah, so you do admit that there is a suggestion of indecency about the poem.
WEISS: No, I don’t.
DET. VOGELESANG: What does it mean when it says, ‘Part of me remains, wench, Boult-upright’?
WEISS: I’m very sure that some people could place an indecent interpretation on anything.
At this comment the public gallery burst into laughter and the judge made a stern speech about his courtroom not being a place of entertainment. Personally, Chubb needed no reminding. The machinery of justice intimidated him; and the more intimidated he felt, the greater his admiration became for Weiss, who refused to bend to its dull and bullying will.
It quickly became clear to Chubb that his victim was the only other person in court who understood how well made the hoax had been. The rest of the cast, he said, the defence included, could not have read a poem to save their lives. Allegedly esteemed psychologists from the Melbourne Tech were called to attest that these verses were high art. These opinions Chubb called worthless, but Weiss mostly explicated the issues very elegantly, laying out the cross-references to
Pericles
or
The Tempest
, the parodies of Eliot and Read, the manner in which the hoax itself was both subject and key
When called to take the oath he declared he could not and there was some confusion about why this was, the court assuming it was because he was a Jew and Weiss finally making it clear that he did not believe in God at all. All this you can read in the transcript of the trial and I have used my own copy to jog my memory here and there.
The thing that struck the horrified Chubb was not how preposterous it was to convict someone for a culturally pretentious pun like “Boult-upright” but how relentlessly the government brought down all its power on this young man.
The judge in fact was not Sir David Gibbons but Alfred Cousins, who turns out to have been the godfather of the girl Weiss had spurned. He displayed a very obvious physical power—a swimmer’s shoulders, large hands, a wide but inexpressive mouth. Vogelesang, the chief witness, was also a sportsman and is nowadays more remembered as a celebratedcontestant in that wild, anarchic, rather Gaelic football they play down there. Even the prosecutor, who was red-faced and decidedly out of shape, had a crushed, pugnacious face from which he had managed to exclude any evidence of human sympathy.
The trial began with Vogelesang being called to the stand and recounting his meeting with Weiss at Acland Street.
This, of course, must have been a very dreary performance, with the stolid detective reading from his notebook in an uninflected nasal drawl, but Chubb, sitting in the Merlin Hotel years later, played the parts of WEISS and VOGELESANG to considerable comic effect. It was only later, when I read the transcript, that I appreciated the accuracy of his recollection, as if the grotesque inquisition had been burned into his living brain.
DET. VOGELESANG: Are you acquainted with the poems of Bob McCorkle?
WEISS: Yes.
DET. VOGELESANG: There is a poem titled ‘Boult to Marina.’ What is your opinion of that poem?
WEISS: I don’t know what the author intended by that poem. You’d better ask him what he meant.
DET. VOGELESANG: What do you think it means?
WEISS: Ask the author. I am not going to express an opinion.
DET. VOGELESANG: That means that you have an opinion but you are not prepared to express it.
WEISS: I would have to give it two or three hours’ consideration before I could determine what it means.
DET. VOGELESANG : Do you think it is suggestive of indecency?
WEISS: Do you know anything about the classical characters?
DET. VOGELESANG: What I want to know is what it means.
WEISS: Pericles and Boult are both classical characters.
DET. VOGELESANG: Do you think the poem is suggestive of indecency?
WEISS: No more than Shakespeare or Chaucer.
DET. VOGELESANG: Ah, so you do admit that there is a suggestion of indecency about the poem.
WEISS: No, I don’t.
DET. VOGELESANG: What does it mean when it says, ‘Part of me remains, wench, Boult-upright’?
WEISS: I’m very sure that some people could place an indecent interpretation on anything.
At this comment the public gallery burst into laughter and the judge made a stern speech about his courtroom not being a place of entertainment. Personally, Chubb needed no reminding. The machinery of justice intimidated him; and the more intimidated he felt, the greater his admiration became for Weiss, who refused to bend to its dull and bullying will.
It quickly became clear to Chubb that his victim was the only other person in court who understood how well made the hoax had been. The rest of the cast, he said, the defence included, could not have read a poem to save their lives. Allegedly esteemed psychologists from the Melbourne Tech were called to attest that these verses were high art. These opinions Chubb called worthless, but Weiss mostly explicated the issues very elegantly, laying out the cross-references to
Pericles
or
The Tempest
, the parodies of Eliot and Read, the manner in which the hoax itself was both subject and key
Similar Books
