Typography v. Taste

Unthinkable is it that the august New York Times would ever so far forget its reputation for impeccable taste as to print photographs of a Caesarean section. The Times is also stiffly proud of its reputation for impeccable typography. Last week its readers discovered which reputation the Times prizes more highly. On Page 1 of the Times's Sunday Book Review section appeared a typographical botch which any country editor would be ashamed to permit in his paper--a line which showed only as a faint, undecipherable blur. The type had obviously been scraped off. Readers' puzzlement grew to shock when, on Page 14 of the same section, they found a two-column, five-inch-high, grey smudge, beneath which was the following caption:

"The Lawyer's Pedigree"

A Broadside Set in Type by Isaiah Thomas at the age of 6.

The large grey smudge was included in an unsigned review of From 'Prentice to Patron, a biography of Isaiah Thomas, early U. S. printer. The undecipherable line was in a review by Lewis H. Titterton of With Napoleon in Russia, the newly-discovered memoirs of Napoleon's aide, General Armand de Caulaincourt* (TIME, Dec. 2). The line was at the end of a quotation from Napoleon which de Caulaincourt had offered as proof of the Emperor's unscrupulousness in winning allies.

Explanation: an unrevealed number of copies of the Book Review had been printed when Someone Higher Up saw what sample of Printer Thomas' work had been chosen to illustrate the review of his biography; what quotation Critic Titterton, who is literary adviser for prim National Broadcasting Co., had picked to reveal Napoleon's character. Choosing swiftly between typography and taste, the Higher Up ordered the presses stopped at once. All copies of the Book Review already printed were destroyed. Since it was too late for costly re-plating, printers were ordered to scratch out the offending line of type with a chisel, smudge over the offending illustration with ink.

Inquisitive readers who searched From 'Prentice to Patron found 6-year-old Printer Thomas' broadside to be an antique, circuitous poem which told how a Lawyer had been produced by a series of cohabitations between such persons as a Knight, a Friar, a Nun, a Lady.

That part of the Napoleonic quotation which the Times let by was: "When I need any one," he said, I don't make too fine a point about it;

The excised line: I would kiss his ----."

*The meticulous Times, throughout its review, spelled the General's name "Coulaincourt."

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