April 10th, 2025 is the hundreth anniversary of the publication of The Great Gatsby. In the 1920s Simon Called Peter was a considerably more popular novel but was seen as immoral by Scott Fitzgerald and has been virtually forgotten today. The accusation of immorality, from Fitzgerald of all people, has always concerned me. Below is my examination of the accusation.

Is Simon Called Peter any more immoral than The Great Gatsby?

Simon Called Peter, best known for being referenced in The Great Gatsby was a huge best-seller in its day, selling over 400,000 copies in the 1920s, whilst The Great Gatsby sold only 25,000 copies during the life of Scott F Fitzgerald (who died in 1940). Today The Great Gatsby is considered an American classic. It has sold over 25 million copies, is studied by students around the world and has been the source for eight films. In contrast Simon Called Peter’s reputation, thanks in part to Scott Fitzgerald’s derogatory comments, is of a trashy immoral novel.

Back in 1922 the view on Simon Called Peter was very different. An American reviewer wrote:

Whatever your opinion of Simon Called Peter I think it is one of the books which has got to be read. It is gay and amusing, much of it, but after all it is a serious book written by a serious man, who is describing conditions which he knows existed.[i]

Robert Keable was thirty-two when he wrote Simon called Peter. He was not the obvious candidate to write a scandalous novel. He had studied at Cambridge University, achieving a first-class honours degree when such awards were rare. (His First in History Tripos was the first ever awarded to a student from his college – Magdalene). His poetry had been published in an anthology of Cambridge University poets, alongside Rupert Brooke. His earlier non-fiction works had been well-received. The American publisher, EP Dutton was so impressed ‘with the mystical and spiritual qualities’ of his book Loneliness of Christ and ‘also with the power of the author to write’,[ii] that he imported and published his next four non-fiction works, A City of the Dawn, The Drift of Pinions, Standing By and Pilgrim Papers. After writing Simon called Peter Keable was invited to submit short stories to volumes three and four of the New Decameron. If one judges someone by the company they keep, then one cannot fail to be impressed by Keable’s fellow writers, which included D. H. Lawrence, Vita Sackville West, J.D. Beresford and Compton Mackenzie. He was also invited to submit an article for a book on censorship called Nonsensorship alongside, amongst others, Dorothy Parker, Wallace Irwin and Ben Hecht.  

Keable was also a well-respected priest having spent two years in Zanzibar working for the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa before becoming a parish priest in Basutoland (now Lesotho), where he successfully expanded the congregation with the help of his wife, who he had met when working as a curate in Bradford, and who had followed him out to southern Africa. During the war he was one of only 12 white chaplains appointed to accompany the South African Native Labour Contingent (SANLC) to France – a force of over 10,000 black native labourers recruited by the South African government.

But Keable’s experience in France had not been what he had expected. Having personally recruited some of his own parishioners from Basutoland to accompany him to France he was upset by their treatment. The racism faced by the men was shocking, even to Keable, with his experience of working in Africa. Members of the SANLC were forced to stay in closed compounds, banned from meeting local people or any white soldiers, fed badly and made to work for longer hours than any other labourers. And Keable was blocked from doing his job, rarely able to hold religious meetings or meet with the men. Surrounded by mainly racists officers Keable was unable to support his men. He wrote, and had accepted for publication by SPCK, a book, The First Black Ten Thousand. that ‘was censored out of existence’ by the British censor because ‘he had given slight hints of the truth about the racial situation in South Africa.’[iii] Unable to help his men Keable did try to go to the front but had a disillusioning experience, helping out at an Advanced Dressing Station, full of wounded and dying soldiers. There he found himself almost surplus to requirement – since none of the soldiers sought religious comfort.

When the South African government decided to end their experiment – allowing black labourers to aid the war effort in France – Keable returned to Basutoland with the men. Keable wrote Simon Called Peter in 1919 during a three-week holiday away from his job as the parish priest. Although it wasn’t published in England for another two years the final novel was little changed from that first draft.

The novel is centred on a conflicted priest – perhaps the first ‘hot priest’ in literature and his relationship with three main women characters - his wealthy fiancé Hilda, the nurse Julie and Louise a French prostitute. When the First World War begins Peter, the priest, travels to France as a military chaplain based behind the lines. Bored by his limited duties, he begins a friendship with Julie. Although initially horrified by the behaviour of off-duty soldiers he is slowly drawn into their life, and soon he joins fellow officers drinking in town. After the seemingly random death of an acquaintance – Jenkins - who is shot by enemy fire from an aeroplane flying over their train, Peter decides to spend more time amongst ‘sinners and publicans’ keeping his fiancé fully informed of his actions. Peter befriends Louise, a prostitute and often visits her for conversation (without revealing his occupation). After he sleeps with Louise, Hilda breaks off their engagement. Peter renews his friendship with Julie and after a raucous New Year’s Eve party with friends the two agree to meet up in a London hotel when they are next on leave. Their weekend together is described in detail. Having enjoyed each other’s company Julie believes Peter is torn between his love for her and his love of God and she persuades him to return to France to continue his duties, ending their relationship.

Not surprising the reaction to Simon Called Peter when it was published was mixed. In England The Church Times review was headed ‘Avery disagreeable novel’ and the Guardian wrote: ‘Not only is the theme unpleasant but its working out is infinitely nasty … If Mr. Keable has not written an actually immoral book he has certainly produced a very offensive one.’ But others were more complimentary. The Spectator wrote ‘The book is very well written, and obviously has a serious intention.’[iv]

In America the critic in the American Bookman Magazine said Keable did not ‘shudder at recounting the most unsavoury and most unnecessary details of the life of its hero’ Grace Phelps in the New York Tribune wrote:

However puzzling and inadequate the end, “Simon Called Peter” is a novel far out of the ordinary and ranks with “Three Soldiers” in presenting a startling picture of the effect of war in stripping men and women to the essentials. It is not a pretty picture.[v]

Hugh Cecil in his short biography of Keable published in 1995 explained why Simon Called Peter was so popular.

Firstly it was vividly written and fast-moving. Secondly albeit moral in its way, it took a tilt at Victorian sexual hypocrisy and conventional English religion, both contemporary targets for attack; but it also stresses hope and self-realisation …Thirdly … it was … an absolutely authentic account of a padre’s experience[vi]

So why did Keable decide to write his first novel about a military chaplain giving in to temptation? The answer is simple. Because that was what happened to him. Much of Simon called Peter was autobiographical. In the novel the eponymous hero befriended a nurse called Julie. In real life Keable befriended a 19-year-old driver working for the Canadian Lumber Corps called Jolie. Although Keable returned to his wife after the war he remained in touch with Jolie and after the success of Simon Called Peter, he left his wife and run away to Tahiti with her, where they set up home in Gaugin’s old house. Tragically Jolie died in childbirth in 1924.

Scott F Fitzgerald and Simon Called Peter

We know Fitzgerald felt it necessary to reference the novel in The Great Gatsby as when he submitted his manuscript, he asked his publisher Maxwell Perkins: ‘… in Chapter II of my book when Tom & Myrtle go into the bedroom while Carraway reads Simon Called Peter – is that raw? Let me know. I think it’s pretty necessary.’

Sarah Churchwell suggests that mentioning Simon Called Peter in this scene would remove any doubts about the activities of Tom and Myrtle since ‘for men like John Summer, (the executive secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice) merely reading Simon Called Peter was to be caught in flagrante delicto.’[vii] The scene itself is discreetly described. There is no mention of Tom and Myrtle going to the bedroom, simply that when Carraway returned from the drug store ‘they had both disappeared’ and after Carraway had read a chapter of Simon Called Peter ‘Tom and Myrtle … reappeared.’[viii] Mentioning Simon called Peter told the reader all they needed to know. But there were other reasons Fitzgerald wanted to mention the novel.

For a start Fitzgerald disliked the novel. In his review of Many Marriages in March 1923 he called it ‘a recent piece of trash’ and ‘utterly immoral’[ix]. Nick Carraway, having read a chapter, comments: ‘either it was terrible stuff or the whiskey distorted things because it didn't make any sense to me.’[x] Calling the writing ‘stuff’, and saying it ‘didn’t make any sense’, would have been seen by contemporary readers as an attack on Keable, and on his novel.

Secondly he wanted to add to his portrait of Myrtle by suggesting she was the sort of woman who read gossip magazines and trashy novels. The book is mentioned as lying around on top of some old copies of ‘Town Tattle’ magazine in the flat Tom Buchanan had set up for his mistress. Fitzgerald chose his words and references very carefully. He could have chosen from a number of gossip magazines, but as Sharon Hamilton explained in her article[xi] contemporary readers would have known Town Tattle was referring to the magazine Town Topics which gossiped about wealthy Long Islanders and had mentioned Scott and Zelda as ‘drunks’ in one copy. Similarly, he could have chosen a different ‘trashy’ novel, but Simon called Peter was notorious. Notorious thanks to a gruesome murder that fascinated Americans throughout the autumn of 1922, whilst Fitzgerald was working on The Great Gatsby at his home in New York.

In September 1922, Mrs Eleanor Mills and the Reverend Edward Hall, were found dead in a field near New Brunswick shot in the head and their throats cut. The murder, subsequent investigation and later trial received huge coverage in the American newspapers, with every little detail examined by the papers. One ‘fact’ which hit the paper was that Eleanor Mills had been given both Simon called Peter and Keable’s second novel The Mother of All Living by the minister, and that both books were subsequently found by her bedside.

For weeks the story dominated the papers. The contents of love letters between Mrs Mills and Rev Hall were gradually revealed and in one Mrs Mills discussing the fact that Robert Keable was also a priest, said he understood that true spiritual connections needed to be expressed physically. Some journalists jumped to the conclusion that Simon called Peter was the inspiration behind their love affair, and therefore the cause of the murder.

Leaping on to the bandwagon, following the coverage of the double murder, John Sumner, the secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, attempted unsuccessfully to prosecute a bookseller for stocking Simon called Peter. However, the chief magistrate in rejecting the case did say ‘It is quite true it is a nasty book and particularly objectionable because written by a clergyman.’

The Boston Watch and Ward Society had more success managing to successfully prosecute Edith Law, a librarian in Arlington, six miles northeast of Boston, for stocking the ‘obscene book’ and the following year Morris Honigbaum the owner of the Boston Modern Bookshop. So ensuring Simon called Peter was banned in Boston.

Sarah Churchwell in her excellent book[xii] showed that Fitzgerald was not only fully aware of Hall and Mills murders, but also that he developed the key themes of class warfare, forbidden passion, and murderous jealousy from the double murder case. So, another reason for mentioning Simon Called Peter was that it allowed Fitzgerald to draw his contemporary readers to the Hall-Mills case, and in doing so pre-warn them of the deaths of Myrtle, Gatsby and George at the end of his novel.

 

 

An immoral novel?

“There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.”[xiii] Oscar Wilde.

Opinions differ on whether Fitzgerald believed all novels should have a moral. When young, whilst still at Princeton, he had violently disagreed with his friend Charles Arrott who quoting Tolstoy, suggested the purpose of a work of art was to convey a moral. ‘If such were the case, he argued, then the greatest works of art would be nothing but “damn good sermons.”’[xiv] Then near the end of his life he admitted, in a letter to his daughter, that he was ‘too much of a moralist at heart, and really want(ed) to preach at people in some acceptable from rather than to entertain.’[xv]

To add to the confusion Churchwell tracked down a reference to a letter Fitzgerald wrote to Burton Rascoe about The Great Gatsby quoting Fitzgerald: ‘I give you my word of honour this isn’t a moral tale.’[xvi]

It seems difficult today to not read The Great Gatsby as a moral tale but perhaps we can shine a light on this by looking at Fitzgerald’s claim that Simon Called Peter was ‘an immoral novel’ and consider, by comparing the book with The Great Gatsby, whether the claim stands up.

In considering Fitzgerald’s charge, made twice in 1923, it is important we think about morality in the context of the time. As in any era there was much hypocrisy but what is certain is that society, if one can talk in such vague terms, on both sides of the Atlantic, took a different view of life than it does now. Today one could argue that there are no real taboos in novels and a novelist can write about anything. Back in the 1920’s there were restrictions, and a novelist would be rebuked for writing an immoral scene, especially if it was with an uncritical eye.

Before they agreed to publish the American publisher E.P. Dutton commissioned two independent readers (GMA and LW) to comment on Simon Called Peter. Their comments give us an indication of the type of content that might have been considered unacceptable.

For example, GMA believed:

The American public, which is far more puritanical than the British with respect to such matters as the clergy taking a drink of whiskey when they need it or dining in a hotel of doubtful reputation in the society of ladies whose reputation is by no means doubtful, would probably condemn it unheard and unread. [xvii]

And LW was very uncomfortable with the ‘cold-bloodied bedroom and bathroom scenes in London’. He stated: ‘There is something criminal about a man who can write up a very, very private episode like this, … with Keable it must all be told, though I admit – told sincerely, told even pathetically.’ And he couldn’t believe readers would want to ‘sit between the twin beds, or even climb into the bath.’ That said he did admit that he doubted ‘whether the nude scenes here exactly offend.’[xviii]

Many who read Simon called Peter at the time of publication would have agreed with GMA and LW about the inappropriateness of some of the passages in the book especially, as Cecil later pointed out, the ‘many pious readers (who) were lulled by the religious title into buying it on the assumption that it was an improving book of a traditional sort’.[xix]

But Fitzgerald’s concern was about the whole tone and themes of the book. It was in a review of Sherwood Anderson’s novel Many Marriages where Fitzgerald first loaded the gun and fired with both barrels.

There is a recent piece of trash entitled Simon Called Peter which seems to me utterly immoral, because the characters move in a continued labyrinth of mild sexual stimulation. Over this stimulation play the coloured lights of romantic Christianity.

Now anything is immoral that consoles, stimulates or confirms a distortion. Anything that acts in place of the natural will to live is immoral. All cheap amusement becomes, at maturity, immoral – the heroin of the soul.[xx]

He later repeated the charge in June 1923 when, commenting on Supreme Court Justice Ford’s campaign against unclean books, he suggested ‘The really immoral novels like Simon called Peter … won’t be touched.’[xxi]

We need to break down Fitzgerald’s claim about the immorality of Simon Called Peter in order to compare the novel with The Great Gatsby.

We can see five charges being made by Fitzgerald. First, he claims ‘the characters move in a continued labyrinth of mild sexual stimulation’. Second, he mentions ‘the coloured lights of romantic Christianity’. Third he suggests a ‘distortion’ is consoled, stimulated or confirmed with ‘the natural will to live’ being violated. And fourth he criticises ‘cheap amusement’. And the final, implicit, criticism, relates to the wartime setting of the novel. In discussing Many Marriages Fitzgerald praises the fact that that novel is set in a vacuum.

In what ways can Simon called Peter be considered immoral?

Labyrinth of mild sexual stimulation

It is interesting that Fitzgerald chose a review of Many Marriages (a novel that was also banned or at least suppressed in Boston[xxii]) to complain about the labyrinth of mild sexual stimulation in Simon called Peter. The main character John Webster in Many Marriages is seemingly driven by sexual desire. “Am I just a lustful man wanting a new woman?”[xxiii] He frequently sleeps with prostitutes before leaving his wife to live with his, younger, work colleague Natalie Swartz.

The real drama at the centre of both The Great Gatsby and Simon called Peter revolves around the love between a man and a woman. Jay Gatsby’s reignited love for Daisy, and Peter’s love affair with Julie. The heart of Simon Called Peter is the pursuit of an unmarried woman by an unmarried priest whilst the heart of The Great Gatsby is the pursuit of a married woman by an ex-lover. Both novels climatic scene occurs in a hotel room. Simon called Peter in the hotel bedroom. The Great Gatsby in the Parlour of a suite in the Plaza hotel. However, the two relationships could not have been handled more differently by their authors.

As Judith Saunders[xxiv] has explained, competition among men for women’s sexual attention and loyalty – and among women’s for men’s – occupies much narrative space in The Great Gatsby. Daisy has to choose between her adulterous husband or the glamorous former boyfriend. And the adulterous affair of her husband, Tom, with Myrtle is the necessary backdrop for Gatsby’s “long secret extravaganza” to entice Daisy to leave her husband. This affair is known to nearly everyone in the novel. Nick is told by Jordan ‘Tom’s got some woman in New York’ in the first chapter.[xxv] Nick Carraway the narrator, waiting in the living-room as Tom and Myrtle disappear, is the closest we get to hearing about characters in the novel having sex, although who slept with whom, and when, is a key question throughout the book. Tom admits that ‘once in a while’ he goes ‘off on a spree.’[xxvi] Jay Gatsby told Nick about his relationship with Daisy at the beginning of the war when ‘he took Daisy one still October night’.[xxvii] Sex is dealt with, with discretion, but we are left in no doubt that Tom and Myrtle’s adultery is the cause of the tragedy.

In Simon called Peter, sex, or the desire for sex, also permeates the novel. Pennell who tricks Peter into the brothel, leads his girl to another room to have sex. A friend, Jenks, departs on ‘business of his own’ because ‘A girl lived somewhere in the neighbourhood.’[xxviii] Peter spends much time comforting Louise but then gives in to lust and asks her to treat him as a client. Julie has clearly had relationships before, admitting to Peter that she “can't abide shams and conventions.”[xxix] And Peter plans in minute detail his dirty weekend away with Julie.

Keable would have had no problem pleading guilty to Fitzgerald’s charge that his book is centred around mild sexual stimulation. One of his main aims was to try and accurately portray life behind the lines in France during the war. In response to a critical review Keable admitted life behind the lines largely was ‘a devil’s trinity of drink, damns and debauchery,’ suggesting it may not have been ‘hell itself, but at least it was the antechamber’.[xxx]

It would not surprise us today that sex was on the mind of many of the soldiers on leave from the front in towns like Le Havre. Keable does not shy away from portraying prostitution and individual prostitutes. There are many references to prostitutes in the novel, walking the streets, sitting in the porch of their small homes or working in a brothel. When Peter first meets two of them canvassing for trade he says, "Women like that, and men who will go with them, aren't fit to be called men and women. There's no excuse. It's bestial, that's what it is."[xxxi] But it is quickly made clear that no one else in France in the novel (and certainly not Julie) shares this view, and Peter quickly re-evaluates his opinion.

Simon called Peter is remarkable for the frank descriptions of visits to prostitutes by soldiers. During and immediately after the war any discussion of organised prostitution on the Western Front was taboo and Simon called Peter was the first novel after the war to openly discuss the issue. Again, in response to a review, Keable acknowledged that there were ‘houses of lust… kept for the troops, where the men lined up for immorality at a few francs a time’.[xxxii]

Dr Clare Makepeace has written about how the British forces were allowed to visit brothels – legally - throughout the war. She claims that 171,000 British troops visited the brothels of just one street in Le Havre (where much of Simon called Peter is set), during just one year of the war. Long queues outside the brothels were common. Private Richards visited a ‘red lamp’ in Bethune and found a queue of 300 men outside waiting patiently.[xxxiii]

There is a suggestion that one of characters in The Great Gatsby is a prostitute. Catherine, Myrtle’s sister, may well have been procured for Nick. Nick seems oblivious to it but there are hints. However, Fitzgerald does not seem to be making a point by introducing such a character except to throw further light on Myrtle’s background, and to contrast her appearance at Tom and Myrtle’s party compared to the celebrities at Gatsby’s party in the following chapter.

It is interesting to consider the extent to which 1920’s society would have seen the relationships in Fitzgerald’s and Keable’s novels as immoral. Certainly, Tom and Myrtle’s adulterous relationship would have been condemned. Less certain, that Jay Gatsby was wrong to think about running away with Daisy, especially after Daisy admitted she hadn’t wanted to marry Tom in the first place and nearly did not go ahead with the marriage ceremony. Tom is certainly painted in bad enough light to suggest Daisy should leave him. Gary J Scrimgeour felt that the reader liked Jay Gatsby because of his ‘adherence to the official American sexual code (the only moral code he does obey).’[xxxiv]

Peter of course breaks the sexual code which Fitzgerald might believe unforgivable. A priest sleeping with a prostitute, accepting the breaking off his engagement, and then sleeping with a promiscuous nurse. And there is no subtlety in the writing. At the end of the novel, we have a very detailed telling of Julie and Peter’s weekend in London. This was perhaps also unforgivable for Fitzgerald

However, if one can look beyond the fact that Peter was a priest, and that is a big if, then Julie and Peter’s relationship could easily be seen as one between two, single, consenting adults, in love.

Overall, it seems unfair to suggest that the undercurrent of sexual stimulation in Simon called Peter or indeed in The Great Gatsby makes either book immoral, but then Fitzgerald’s charge of immorality links sexual stimulation with romantic Christianity.

Coloured lights of romantic Christianity

Keable was still a priest when he wrote Simon called Peter although he had left the church by the time it was first published. Religious from a young age – he was preaching in the open air whilst still at school – he initially followed his father - who was a very low church Anglican priest. At university, under the influence of R H Benson, among others, Keable became an Anglo-Catholic. His two previous books before Simon Called Peter were Standing By: War-time reflections in France and Flanders, and Pilgrim Papers, From the Writings of Francis Wilfrid, Priest. Both were (despite the title of the latter) very personal autobiographical books written by, and about, being a priest. Not surprisingly then, his first novel was also a semi-autobiographical book about a priest. Like Fitzgerald Keable only wrote novels based on his own experience.

So, Simon Called Peter was always going to be framed in the ‘coloured light’ of Christianity. But did it need to be ‘romanticised’ Christianity? The novel is full of visits to churches - lovingly described; conversations about religion – mainly between Peter and his fellow padre, Arnold; and some of the key characters – not least Hilda and Louise – have a strong faith. Although an attack on conventional English Christianity the book’s reassuring message according to Hugh Cecil is ‘that breaking the sexual rules, far from cutting Christians off from God, could even be instrumental in leading them back to Him.’[xxxv] The final scenes in Westminster Cathedral where Peter again appreciates the love of God is, according to Hugh Cecil, sincerely written if unconvincing.

It would be interesting to know why the ‘coloured lights of romantic Christianity’ so annoyed Fitzgerald. He was from a strong Irish catholic background but by the time he was writing The Great Gatsby he was no longer devout (as Arthur Mizener pointed out the appeal of Catholicism peaked for him at the age of 14)[xxxvi]. Richard Halkyard’s in his study of Fitzgerald’s treatment of religion in his short stories suggests that Fitzgerald believed human craving usually overwhelmed the need or benefit for religion[xxxvii]. With his own fraught relationship with religion perhaps Fitzgerald took offence at the idea that Keable’s priest could, or would, return to his God at the end of the novel.

Fitzgerald made sure that there was no suggestion any of his major characters in The Great Gatsby were burdened by a religious belief, but that did not stop him bringing God into the story. Halkyard goes further than Tom Burnam[xxxviii] to suggest the eyes of Dr T. J. Eckleburg, on the giant billboard between West Egg and New York, are the eyes of God. Whether that was the intention or not, George Wilson’s repeated ‘God sees everything,’[xxxix] near the end of the story suggests God is doing more than just watching over everyone and perhaps punishing the sinners.

The fact that the protagonist in Simon called Peter is a priest who goes unpunished, is the main reason the book was treated with such revulsion by religious publications. The Church Times in England titled their review of the book ‘A very disagreeable novel’ and described the book as ‘the story of unattractive and sordid vice on the part of a clergyman.’ Their main complaint was that the priest, after falling ‘into careless living and philandering ways with nurses and others’, and after ‘spending several days of leave with a nurse who becomes his mistress’, ‘goes back to France, back apparently to celebrating the Holy Eucharist and making his communion; back to his priestly work attending the sick and dying in the great base hospital; back to being, in the eyes of the army, a faithful priest.’ [xl] Other Christian publications were equally unhappy with the portrayal of a man of the cloth. In America, a publication of the Church Socialist League described Keable’s novel as ‘A filthy book, disgraceful to author and publisher.’

One can see why many were shocked by the behaviour of the priest in Simon Called Peter and his lack of contrition but surely that does not make the novel immoral.

Distortion

Perhaps the reason Fitzgerald considered Simon called Peter immoral was because Keable distorted what Fitzgerald believed was the natural progress of life. For many, such as Marius Bewley[xli], the key theme of The Great Gatsby is the withering of the American Dream. Jeffrey Steinbrink suggested:

The impact of history in Fitzgerald’s work is inevitably to remind us that the course of human experience, whether individual or societal, is best described as a long downward glide. Moments of happiness or triumph from the past can neither be recaptured nor repeated,[xlii]

And Steinbrink goes on to suggest that Fitzgerald’s ‘instincts and his view of history told him that early, soaring successes were likely to produce intense lingering disappointment’.[xliii]

Keable’s crime – in the mind of Fitzgerald – could have been to produce a novel which distorts reality, or at least 19^th and early 20^th century convention, by having a story end on an upward glide, with no apparent consequences for the main characters of their behaviour. 

One can point out that for some of the individuals in The Great Gatsby there is also no consequence for their behaviour. Although Tom and Daisy have to move back west, Tom is not explicitly punished for his adultery. That said he will continue living in a loveless, affair-driven, marriage. One can assume that Tom, when last sighted by Nick, ‘frowning into the windows of a jewellery store’[xliv], was looking for a present for a new mistress, not his wife.

The death of Myrtle could be read as punishment for her behaviour, but some readers would see her and her husband, as just casual victims of a corrupt class. Myrtle run over by a luxury car. George committing suicide after his life had been ruined by a rich man.

However, the death of Jay Gatsby is very symbolic. Zamira Hodo[xlv] argued that Gatsby is the embodiment of a corrupt immoral society which overvalued materialism and money. Throughout the novel it is Gatsby who looks to display his obvious wealth with ‘the outsized house, together with the lavish parties and the garish clothing, the automobiles and the aquaplane’ which ‘represent his attempt to establish himself as someone’.[xlvi] We know Gatsby’s wealth was built on ill-gotten gains. To show the death of the American dream, to give a moral message, Fitzgerald had to kill off Gatsby. And not only kill him off but give him a bleak send off with a poorly attended funeral.

In contrast, with Simon Called Peter, there is no final moral message. The Church Times critic wrote:

Mr Keable suggests that, in the end Peter is finding God. But this is to be untrue to life, for God is not found through unfaithfulness. If such were the writer’s intention, the book ought to have ended with a tremendous repentance. Had it done so our judgement on it would have been different.[xlvii]

Intriguingly some critics did read a moral message into the novel. For example, the reviewer in the New York Herald stated:

The chief value of the novel consists in its vivid demonstration of the moral decay and pollution that accompanies warfare. If it did no more than show the deterioration in Peter’s character it would be well worth reading at least by those who insist that warfare develops moral virtues.[xlviii]

But this was not the message Keable was trying to get over. He was not aiming to portray a deterioration or even an improvement in Peter’s character. As Keable wrote:

Nor does the book set forth the author's judgment, for that is not his idea of a novel. It sets out what Peter and Julie saw and did, and what it appeared to them to be while they did it.[xlix]

The only character who could be seen to face consequences in Simon Called Peter is Jenkins, the Second Lieutenant, who drank and womanised more than most. He arrived late on the train after seeing his ‘little bit’ – ‘a jolly good sort’; and after ‘whiskies at the club first’ and French Brandy ‘blasted strong stuff’.[l]  It is he who is killed by an aircraft firing at the train. But Keable goes out of his way to show his death as a random act. Jenkins was asleep when the plane struck, not behaving drunkenly. And Peter later explained to his fiancé:

Jenks was not fundamentally evil, or at least I don’t think so. He was rather a selfish fool who had no control, that is all. He did not serve the devil; it was much more that he had never seen any master to serve.[li]

Throughout his novel Keable’s aim was to give an accurate picture of what happened behind the lines in France. People may have drunk more than was sensible and committed sexual infidelity, but he made no judgment.

One can see how this lack of consequence, in contrast to The Great Gatsby, could have been behind the charge of immorality and we will return to this later.

Cheap amusement

Fitzgerald’s suggestion that ‘All cheap amusement becomes, at maturity, immoral – the heroin of the soul’ seems to be aimed at novelists who include scenes or actions in their novels that add nothing to the themes or ideas of the book. One can see how this could be a fair criticism of Keable’s work although to conclude that such writing is immoral seems a little harsh. An example could be Keable’s constant references to drinking alcohol in Simon called Peter.

In The Great Gatsby drinking is seen as problematic. The appearance of a second bottle of whisky at Tom and Myrtle’s house ‘in constant demand by all present’ leads to increasingly erratic behaviour ‘people disappeared, reappeared, made plans to go somewhere, and then lost each other, found each other a few feet away.’[lii] Both Tom and Myrtle have been drinking and, shockingly, Tom breaks Myrtle’s nose with his open hand during an argument about Daisy. At Jay Gatsby’s party alcohol flows and Nick notices ‘Most of the remaining women were now having fights with men said to be their husbands’.[liii]  And the character who drinks the least, Jay Gatsby, turns out to be a bootlegger. That all said, Fitzgerald does not over play the use of alcohol and a quart of whisky remains unopened in the suite of the Plaza Hotel whilst Jay Gatsby confronts Tom about Daisy (although they had all drunk gin rickeys at the Buchanan’s house before heading to the hotel via Myrtle’s husband’s garage.) Every reference to alcohol in The Great Gatsby is there to serve a purpose.

In Simon called Peter there is little concern with men and women drinking alcohol, often to excess, as long as they don’t make a beast of themselves. As one of the main characters says: ‘I can see that a man may very wisely get drunk at times, but he's a ---- fool to get himself sodden with drink.’[liv]

Although over double the length of The Great Gatsby (about 113,000 words compared to 47,000) it is still striking how many more references to alcohol there are in Simon called Peter than in The Great Gatsby. Spirits including brandy, cognac and whisky get 25 mentions, wine 26 and champagne 11. In contrast in The Great Gatsby spirits get 11 mentions, champagne 8 and wine none. Incidentally, cigarettes, lit or about to be lit, get over 70 mentions in Keable’s book, but just 10 in The Great Gatsby.

Despite the heavy drinking of Peter, and others, in Simon called Peter there is no suggestion the alcohol has a serious negative impact on any of the characters. Indeed, Keable makes it very clear that alcohol played no part in Peter’s shocking decision to demand to have sex with Louise, the French prostitute, who he had previously visited many times as a friend and confidant. (Peter says "I think I am mad to-night, but I am not drunk, as you thought”.[lv])

The excessive drinking in Simon called Peter, with no obvious consequence, may well have seemed inappropriate especially in the time of prohibition (which began in 1920 in America, although it did not affect Keable in Africa and England).

A second possible example of cheap amusement could be seen in the telling of private episodes. There are no intimate descriptions in The Great Gatsby.  The use of the narrator to tell the story gives the reader distance from such intimacies. The reader knows that the narrator Nick Carraway is only reading Simon called Peter because Tom and Myrtle ‘have disappeared’ in the middle of the afternoon to have sex, causing him to sit ‘down discreetly in the living-room’ until they ‘reappeared’.[lvi] Fitzgerald sees no need to describe what Tom and Myrtle were actually doing.

In the first fifteen chapters of his novel Keable is almost as discreet. Peter’s time with Louise is described in two sentences: ‘Then did the girl of the streets set out to play her chosen part. …She was worldly wise, and she did not disdain to use her wisdom.’[lvii] And there are no other descriptions of sexual activity. However, when it comes to describing Peter’s weekend in London, with Julie, Keable goes into much detail, unusually for a book of the 1920’s. The sex act itself is skated over, (‘It was all so different from what he had imagined.’[lviii]) but there is much description of their time together in their hotel suite. As Dutton’s independent reader, L.W., wrote,

‘I don’t know why such stories as this have to be written. It is enough that they are lived. But some fools can’t let flowers grow they have to pick them… There is something criminal about a man who can write up a very, very private episode like this… The episode, I know, is what it is; I, for one, cannot excuse it. It is that it is written up, however, and can be read by another that is the crime. How man can pin, as they pin a butterfly to a board, their innermost, most sacred thought and emotions and rather most secret acts, pin these with wings outstretched to public gaze in a vibrating, quivering passionate tale is more than I can see!

There is a place to stop. The ancient Greek dramatists knew where that place was. The actual stabbing was done off-stage, over the secretest love scenes a veil is dawn. So it should be. But with Keable, it must all be told, though I cannot help admit - told sincerely, told even pathetically.[lix]

The line between the public and the private is clearly broken but whether that is immoral is questionable. Michael Sadler, Keable’s publisher, clearly did not think so as he insisted on protecting that long passage in the novel from the censor. He suggested cutting out sections of the scene with Peter on his first visit to a brothel because playing ‘second fiddle to prudery’ would allow then freedom to publish in full ‘the great scenes in the Piccadilly Hotel’.[lx]

War time setting

It would be interesting to know the extent to which Fitzgerald was concerned by the wartime setting of Simon called Peter. Duttons’ independent reader L.W. certainly was, as he questioned how Keable could write such a ‘weak, flabby, physical’ novel set in France when ‘ten million boys died in France while this was going on.’[lxi]

Although Fitzgerald was originally against the war and claimed to join up for social reasons, he never travelled abroad with his unit and later admitted he had ‘wanted to belong to what every other bastard belonged to: the greatest club in history.’[lxii]

The Great Gatsby is set a few years after the Great War. Both Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby are veterans who travelled to France. Tom Buchanan suggests the war allowed Gatsby to rise from ‘Mr Nobody from nowhere’,[lxiii] although it seems likely Gatsby’s bootlegging (and other illegal activities) grew after the war and were not started during it, especially since prohibition did not begin until 1920.

The setting of The Great Gatsby – during the roaring 20s or the Jazz Age - is, for many, significant. Charles Thomas Samuels suggested the subject of the novel ‘is atrophy; the wasting away of the self into the world of sex and money and time; the wasting away of America as it grows from wilderness to civilisation’.[lxiv] Muhammad Saleh Habib and others,[lxv] see the corrupt Gatsby’s failure to capture Daisy as a metaphor for a corrupt American society failing to fulfil its dream.

A criticism of Simon called Peter is that despite the use of the war as a backdrop, the novel is not making a statement about the time, instead simply telling a seedy tale of infidelity. Some, perhaps including Keable’s own parents (whose second son, Henry Keable, died in Malta during the war), believed that Keable’s tale in some way besmirched the memory of those who died. Several successful novelists writing at the same time as Keable used the war as a backdrop to their novels, but these were stories of heroism, like Ralph Connor’s The Sky Pilot in No man’s Land, (1919) or tragedy like Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier (1918), or adventure like Edwards Phillips Oppenheim’s spy story The Pawns Count (1918). In his introduction to the American editions of Simon Called Peter, Keable questioned whether the truth had really been told in these novels which ‘recorded such heroisms as might make God proud and such horror as might make the Devil weep.’[lxvi]

An American reviewer wrote in 1922 that the book was ‘valuable chiefly as an authentic record of experiences in the war and as a testimony to the devasting moral effects of the conflict.’[lxvii] Certainly Keable’s purpose, in setting his novel in France, was to shine a light on what really happened behind the front lines. He explained that men and women, ‘for the greater part of the time, live an unnatural life, death near enough to make them reckless and far enough to make them gay.’ He went on to explain that:

The stay-at-homes will not believe, and particularly they whose smug respectability and conventional religion has been put to no such fiery trial. Moreover they will do more than disbelieve; they will say that the story is not fit to be told. Nor is it. But then it should never have been lived.[lxviii]

For Keable the real immorality of the time was the war itself.

It is a small thing that men die in battle, for a man has but one life to live and it is good to give it for one's friends; but it is such an evil that it has no like, this drifting of a world into a hell to which men's souls are driven like red maple leaves before the autumn wind. [lxix]

Fitzgerald may have disliked the use of the war in France as a backdrop to a tale full of cheap amusement but that does not in itself explain why he considered it immoral.

Lack of Consequence

We have considered why Fitzgerald argued Simon called Peter was an immoral novel and we keep returning to the issue of lack of consequence for the main characters. Oscar Wilde joked, ‘The good end happily and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.’[lxx] And perhaps it was Keable’s refusal to acknowledge this which angered Fitzgerald. Simon Potter[lxxi] points out that many of the great 19^th century writers ‘inherited the 18^th century conviction that writing should be a force for moral good.’ And this continued into the early 20^th century. Keable was not a great writer but he was an important one, and his decision to allow his priest to go unpunished despite his perceived immoral behaviour was unusual to say the least.

If we were to review nineteenth and early twentieth century novels, we would find the protagonists committing sexual infidelity would nearly always face consequences. (Sexual infidelity defined as engaging in sexual intercourse with someone other than one’s partner whether as adultery or sex outside of marriage, consensual or forced).

Some examples, starting with characters who commit adultery. Emma Bovary in Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1856), Anna in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1878), Edna Ponteillier in Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening (1899) and both Florence Dowell and Captain Edward Ashburnham in Ford Madox Ford’s novel The Good Soldier (1915) all end up committing suicide. Arthur Dimmesdale in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) dies in the arms of Hester after confessing his sin. Effi in Theodor Fontane’s Effi Briest (1895) suffers depression and a nervous disorder and dies soon after an attempt at reconciliation with her husband Major Crampas. Ana Ozores in Leopoldo Alas’s la Regenta (1884-1885) is excommunicated from the church by her priest and confessor. Lady Isabel Vane’s complicated life, in Ellen Wood’s East Lynne (1861), sees her return to her husband and children after an adulterous affair, disguised as a housekeeper, after he has remarried believing she was dead. The novel ends with a confession and forgiveness before she dies. Liza in Somerset Maugham’s Liza of Lambeth (1897) is raped by, but still falls in love with, father of five, Jim Blakeston. She is attacked by a mob, miscarries, and then dies.

There are two women who commit adultery in Jane Austen novels. Maria Bertram’s husband divorces her in Mansfield Park (1814), and she is ostracised to another county; and Eliza Brandon’s in Sense and Sensibility (1811) leaves her husband and sinks into prostitution, destitution and then death. Anne Bronte was the only Bronte sister to include an obviously adulterous affair in her novel. In The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) it is the abusive and debauched Arthur Huntingdon and his mistress Annabella Wilmot who face consequences for their actions.

Protagonists having sex outside marriage also face consequences. Some atone for their ‘mistakes’. Esther, who is seduced by the footman William Latch in George Moore’s Esther Waters (1894) ends the novel leading a devout life with her former employer Mrs Barfield. Ruth in Elizabeth Gaskill’s Ruth (1853), who was seduced by the aristocrat Henry Bellingham; tries to lead a virtuous life against the odds although she dies after nursing Bellingham (renamed Mr Donne) back to life. Mercy Merrick in Wilkie Collins’ The New Magdalen (1873) does find a good match at the end of her tale. But she is fully repentant of her actions and marries Julian Grey a non-conformist minister. Charles Dickens for the most part avoided issues of infidelity or adultery. A key exception is Lady Dedlock in Bleak House (1853) whose secret about her illegitimate child, born before she married, drives much of the plot. At the end of the novel Lady Dedlock finds the grave of her dead fiancé, lies down on it, and quickly dies of exposure. A more minor character, James Steerforth elopes with Emily in David Copperfield (1849) but soon dies, when his boat is shipwrecked in a storm.

Thomas Hardy allows his eponymous protagonists to suffer for their sexual infidelities. In Jude the Obscure (1896) Jude’s life spiral’s downwards after he sleeps with local girl Arabella Donn and is forced to marry her when she pretends to be pregnant. And in Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) Tess dies after murdering Alec d’Urberville, who had raped her at the beginning of the novel.

There were some novels written in the second half of the nineteenth century where the protagonist survived relatively unscathed from sexual infidelity. In her article Immoral Fiction in the Late Victorian Library,[lxxii] Dee Garrison analysed sixteen authors[lxxiii], who in a survey of 70 librarians in America in 1881, were said to be morally questionable. Twelve of these authors were women writing novels with female heroines and Garrison points out that what is common to these novels is they rejected traditional authority and struck out against the clergy, the pompous rich, the penal system and the marriage system. A number of these heroines did commit adultery but only because the treatment of their husband was so cruel or dire. These novels were considered immoral by the librarians in 1881 because the protagonists often committed adultery, bigamy and even murder sometimes without guilt or consequence. But these were moral tales. They presented what unhappy woman suffered in rich detail. The heroines have cause for their behaviour. For example in Rhoda Broughton’s Belinda (1883) Belinda is treated like a ‘drudge without wage’ by her husband and in Mrs Forrester’s Fair Women (1867) Miss Alton’s rich husband, Lord Clayton is cruel and merciless and sleeps with prostitutes.

Conclusion

We have seen that Fitzgerald chose to reference Simon Called Peter in The Great Gatsby for various reasons but significantly because he saw it as an immoral novel worthy of mockery. We have compared immoral behaviour in both The Great Gatsby and Simon Called Peter and considered the reasons Fitzgerald gave for calling Simon Called Peter immoral. It seems unlikely that Fitzgerald would have considered Simon Called Peter immoral because it detailed immoral behaviour. Relating excessive drinking, inappropriate relationships or detailing private episodes in themselves do not make the novel immoral.

One can therefore conclude that it is the lack of consequence experienced by the protagonists which separates the novels. Myrtle Wilson and Jay Gatsby die at the end of The Great Gatsby, Peter Graham a priest who sleeps with a prostitute and has an affair with an unmarried woman goes unpunished and seemingly returns to his work as a priest. A review of 19^th and early 20^th century novels would show that traditionally novelists set a moral tone and ensure characters who commit sexual infidelity either repent or our ultimately punished. All this perhaps explains why Fitzgerald considered Simon Called Peter immoral.

Whether this is a fair charge is a different question. Fitzgerald recognised that the behaviour of Tom and Myrtle, for certain, and perhaps of Jay Gatsby with Daisy were immoral. Both he and Zelda strayed during their marriage, and he never attempted to excuse their behaviour. In contrast Keable did not recognise the behaviour of Peter and Julie in Simon Called Peter as immoral. He believed sex between two people who loved each other was never immoral. In an interview in 1922 he argued:

My ideal of the relations of man and woman is this; If they are attracted to each other to each other they swing together, and quite frankly tell their friends “We are in love with each otherand are going to live together.’  … ‘If married people do not love each other, yet continue to live together, it is gross immorality.’[lxxiv]

Ultimately a writer is responsible for their work of fiction and for the message they wish to deliver. Fitzgerald was a socialite living a promiscuous life partaking in the same vices as his characters whilst he was writing, and after he had written, The Great Gatsby. Keable although a priest, had lost his faith by the time he wrote Simon Called Peter and the relationship he described between Julie and Peter mirrored his relationship with Jolie Buck. And throughout the rest of his life, he championed free love and campaigned to change the outdated marriage laws of the day.

In the context of the age, we can understand why Fitzgerald and the public might have called Simon Called Peter an immoral novel, and similarly why the public saw The Great Gatsby as a moral tale. Today however when society is influenced less by religious teaching perhaps Simon called Peter deserves to be reassessed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Books and articles used:

• Alas, Leopoldo la Regenta Debolsillo (2005)
• Anderson, Sherwood, Many Marriages B. W. Huebsch, New York (1923)
• Austen, Jane Mansfield Park Oxford Paperbacks (1980),
• Austen, Jane Sense and Sensibility Penguin Classics (1994)
• Bewley, Marius, Scott Fitzgerald’s Criticism of America, The Swanee Review, LXII (spring 1954) 223-246)
• Bronte, Anne The Tenant of Wildfell Hall Penguin Classics (1979)
• Broughton, Rhoda Belinda Virago (1984)
• Burnam, Tom. “The Eyes of Dr. Eckleburg: A Re-Examination of ‘The Great Gatsby.’” College English, vol. 14, no. 1, 1952, pp. 7–12.
• Cecil, Hugh The Flower of Battle Chapter 7 - A Parson’s Life Laid Bare Robert Keable Secker and Warburg 1995
• Churchwell, Sarah, Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby Barnes and Noble (2015)
• Chopin, Kate The Awakening The women’s Press Ltd. (1999)
• Collins, Wilkie The New Magdalen Sutton Publishing (1193)
• Connor, Ralph The Sky Pilot in No Man’s Land, George H Doran & Co. New York (1919)
• Dickens Charles Bleak House Oxford Paperbacks (1998)
• Dickens Charles David Copperfield Oxford Paperbacks (1983)

• Donaldson, S Possessions in The Great Gatsby The Southern Review. (2001)
• Eble, Kenneth, The Craft of Revision: The Great Gatsby American Literature Vol. 36, No. 3 (Nov 1964) pp. 315-326 Duke University Press
• Eble, Kenneth, The Great Gatsby College Literature Vol. 1, No. 1 (Winter, 1974), pp. 34-47 The John Hopkins University Press

• Fitzgerald, F. Scott Correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli, Margaret M. Duggan, and Susan Walker. Random House, 1980.
• Fitzgerald, F. Scott The Great Gatsby, Penguin Edition, 1978.
• Fitzgerald, F. Scott Review Of Many Marriages By Sherwood Anderson, New York Herald 4 March

                1923, Sect.9

• Flaubert, Gustave Madame Bovary Penguin Classics (1995)
• Fontane, Theodor Effi Briest Penguin Classics (1976)
• Ford, Ford Madox The Good Soldier Penguin Classics (2002)
• Forrester, Mrs Fair Women British Library, Historical Print Editions (2011)
• Fullerton Susannah, Jane Austen and Adultery, Jane Austen Society of North America (2002)
• Garrison, Dee Immoral Fiction in the Late Victorian Library, American Quarterly Vol 28, No 1 (Spring 1976) pp 71-89
• Gaskill, Elizabeth Ruth Oxford Paperbacks (1985)
• Habib, Muhammad Saleh et al, The American Dream in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby: a boom or bane International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research and Development, Vol 7; Issue 4 pp34-36 (2020)
• Halkyard, Richard W. Becoming Your Broken Cisterns: F. Scott Fitzgerald's Short-Fiction Treatment of Religion (2018). Graduate Theses. 81.
• Hamilton,  Sharon, The New York Gossip Magazine in The Great Gatsby, The F Scott Fitzgerald Review, Vol. 8 (2010) pp 34-56 Published by Penn State University Press
• Hardy, Thomas Jude the Obscure OUP Oxford (2002)
• Hardy, Thomas Tess of the d’Urbervilles Penguin Classics (1979)
• Hawthorne, Nathaniel The Scarlet Letter Penguin Classics (1994)

• Hodo, Zamira, The Failure of the American Dream in “The Great Gatsby” – Fitzgerald, European Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies Sep-Dec 2017 Vol 2 Issue 7
• Keable, Robert Pilgrim Papers, Christophers (1920)
• Keable, Robert Simon called Peter, Constable (1922)
• Keable, Robert Standing By, Nisbet (1919)   
• Makepeace, Dr Clare Sex and the Trenches, from The First World War Story, (BBC History magazine 2016)
• Maugham, Somerset Liza of Lambeth Vintage Classics (2000)
• Miller, Neil Banned in Boston: The Watch and War Society’s Crusade against Books, Burlesque, and the Social Evil Beacon Press (2011)
• Mizener, Arthur. The Far Side of Paradise: A Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Houghton Mifflin, 1951.
• Moore, George Esther Waters Oxford Paperbacks (1999)
• Oppenheim, E Phillips The Pawns Count McClelland, Goodchild and Stewart (1918)
• Potter, Simon Charles Dickens’ Moral Crusade, ThinkingFaith.org (2012)

• Putnam G. G. and Others, Nonsenseorship, Sundry observations concerning prohibitions inhibitions and illegalities, Robert Keable chapter The Censorship of Truth, (G.P. Putnams 1922)
• Samuels, Charles Thomas The Greatness of ‘Gatsby’, The Massachusetts Review Vol.7 No. 4 1966
• Saunders, Judith P The Great Gatsby: An Unusual Case of Mate Poaching Chapter 8 of American Classics: Evolutionary Perspectives pp. 138-174
• Scrimgeour, Gary J Against "The Great Gatsby" Criticism Vol. 8, No. 1 (Winter 1966), pp. 75-86  Wayne State University Press
• Steinbrink, Jeffrey "Boats Against the Current": Mortality and the Myth of Renewal in The Great Gatsby Twentieth Century Literature Vol. 26, No. 2, F Scott Fitzgerald Issue (Summer 1980) pp 157-170 Duke University Press p158
• Tolstoy, Leo Anna Karenina Oxford Paperbacks (1995),
• Turnbull, Andrew, Scott Fitzgerald A biography Charles Scribner's Sons (1962)
• West, Rebecca The Return of the Soldier Virago Press (1980)
• Wood, Ellen East Lynne Broadview Press (2000)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works