The English Governess

Introduction

The English Governess was originally published in Paris in June of 1960 by Maurice Girodias under the imprint of his notoriously distinguished Olympia Press. The author’s name was given as Miles Underwood, and the book joined an incredible and somewhat bizarre list of titles, some authored by such great names of twentieth-century writing as Guillaume Apollinaire, Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, Vladimir Nabokov, William Burroughs and J.P. Donleavy to name an illustrious handful. Five years later, Girodias re-issued the book, calling it Under the Birch: The Story of an English Governess, and still showing the pseudonymous Miles Underwood as its author. This charade concerning the author’s true identity would continue for some time. In 1967, Grove Press of New York, a noted American publishing house, released a work it chose to call Harriet Marwood, Governess, about the authorship of which it was coyly and tellingly circumspect, reporting on the flap of the dust jacket that “... exhaustive scholarship has proven futile in unearthing the true author of Harriet Marwood, Governess, there is enough evidence, textual and cultural for us to assume composition to be autobiographical. Whether written by the female dominator or by the male submissive, however, is totally unknown.” It is clear from the style and tone of the blurb, that this literary red herring was delicately drawn across the interested reader’s path by the true author himself—John Glassco—distinguished poet, memoirist and translator. And it would be another nine years before Glassco would open his “Preface” to the Canadian edition of Harriet Marwood, Governess with these words: “I welcome this opportunity to acknowledge, at long last, my most popular book”. A work he would describe, tongue slyly in cheek, as an “aphrodisiac romance”. In the very same “Preface,” Glassco goes on to outline his version of the publishing history of his book, saying that it is a “long, chequered and discouraging” affair, while at the same time helping to muddy these waters as much by things unsaid as by an artful telescoping of events that befell the book over two decades of deferred royalties, testy correspondence, bankruptcy, piracy and, in his own words of “furtiveness and anonymity.”

But there is more to the story of The English Governess than Glassco chose to dwell upon in that abbreviated bibliographical paragraph which opens the “Preface” to the 1976 edition of Harriet Marwood, Governess. In it Glassco indicates that the original version of the text was composed in 1954-1955, and that it was then sold outright in 1956 to an American publisher who supposedly printed it but “... in a sudden fit of panic ...” did not release it, enabling Glassco to buy back the rights to it and prepare what he describes as a “humorously pornographic” version for Olympia Press which then published it in Paris in 1960 in the olive-green paper wrappers of its somewhat notorious Traveller’s Companion Series. The evidence in Glassco’s papers in the National Archives of Canada shows that late in February of 1965, Glassco received a letter from a Mr. A.M. Shapiro who identified himself as acting on behalf of a Waron Press which listed a postal box address in Brooklyn, N.Y., and informed Glassco that they had purchased the assets of Jack Woodford Press, and that upon going through the files of the latter, they had turned up a “... galley of an untitled book”. Shapiro offered to buy it “... outright for a low flat sum.” This development compelled Glassco to write to Girodias, the publisher of The English Governess, to offer an explanation since Glassco felt that there may have been some small infringement on Girodias’ edition. In this letter of February 25, 1965, Glassco explained that he had once sold The English Governess to Jack Woodford Press, “around 1955,” but had then bought it back when they decided not to publish it. He then goes on to tell Girodias that this early version has little similarity beyond the general plot, and that it was somewhat “tepid” and longer than the version of the Governess which had been published by Olympia Press, “... of which it is no more than a rough and bowdlerized draft.” Finally,—and for reasons that are not entirely clear but might point to a guilty conscience—Glassco offers to pay a permissions fee to Girodias, and undertakes not to use the name The English Governess should Mr. Shapiro of Waron Press decide to purchase and publish the long-dormant version of the text. But there may very well be more to the story of the making of The English Governess than at first emerges from the tangle of its beginnings as retold by Glassco.

In the Glassco papers in the National Archives of Canada, there exists a manuscript outline and a partial typescript—some fifty typewritten, double-spaced pages—of a work entitled “Memoirs of Major Blueberry” with a notation in Glassco’s hand which reads: “Begun 1959 Abandoned ca. 1962.” The plan for this work was to have had it emerge as a series of seven or eight stories or sketches of about twenty-five pages each, covering a wide range of outré sexuality. Topics for three of the stories had been identified by Glassco, with one called “Education of Boy in St. Misère.” Two of the “episodes” were actually commenced by Glassco, with the first, an elaborate tale of sexual humiliation; the second being an unfinished attempt at a story with a lesbian theme; while the third not only presages the ampler narrative of The English Governess, but is also a painful dredging up and a return to the sad experiences of Glassco’s own youth and abuse at the hands of his father. There is also another small bit of information on the origins of the Governess. It occurs in a letter Glassco wrote to Girodias on June 20, 1967.

Glassco says in it:

“A copy of the ineffable Harriet Marwood, Governess is going to you today by land mail. I had forgotten how bad this book was, and I thank you again for encouraging Elma [Glassco’s first wife] and myself to convert it into The English Governess back in 1959 ...”

Confirmation of that likely date of composition and/or realization of The English Governess is lodged in a letter that Girodias addressed to Glassco at his hotel at 22 rue de Seine on March 30, 1960. Glassco, it should be added, had lived in Paris when he was a very young man in 1928-1929, and he returned to the city of his youth in 1958 and 1960 with his wife Elma in the hope of setting up permanent residence there. In his letter, Girodias outlined his undertaking to publish The English Governess under the pseudonym of Miles Underwood, a practice he favoured with many of the books in the Traveller’s Companion Series. The terms that Girodias spelled out were the following. An outright royalty of three thousand New Francs, half payable on delivery of the manuscript and the remainder within two months of publication with the proviso that three thousand New Francs would be paid for each subsequent printing. However, Girodias warned “... as you know, we seldom reprint...” and then went on to say “... You would not, however, be free to offer the manuscript to another publisher—even if we do not reprint.” Harsh and confining terms indeed, and dictated with a good deal of arrogance considering the fact that Girodias was notorious for slow payment of royalties and a habit of reneging on his promissory notes, an experience that would befall Glassco as well. Girodias stipulated, at the same time, that the manuscript should not exceed two hundred and twenty-five typewritten pages. The sad and tragic irony of all this, and illustrative of the rocky career of Maurice Girodias and his Olympia Press, is that Glassco would still be trying to collect payment on the three thousand New Francs due to him as late as 1964, the two bills of exchange for fifteen hundred francs each having been returned by Girodias’ bank for lack of funds. Before too long, Girodias would be hounded into court by virtue of the morally censorious policies of the French state then headed by Charles De Gaulle, and, as rumour would have it, powerfully influenced by a puritanical Madame De Gaulle. Girodias was hauled into court to answer to charges that he had published pornography. One of the offending titles specifically mentioned in the indictment was Aubrey Beardsley’s relatively innocuous Under the Hill, a work left unfinished at the English writer’s death, and one which Glassco had completed and published with Girodias in the Traveller’s Companion Series. Girodias was sentenced in March of 1964 to a year in prison, fined the equivalent of twenty thousand dollars, and forbidden to publish anything for twenty years. One of a series of “persecutions” visited upon the hapless Girodias by a France that we have always seen as supremely tolerant and liberal towards the arts. The Girodias’ process wound its way through various appeals and judicial reviews, and Glassco did his best to help by rounding up the signatures of Canadian writers on a petition for leniency which was submitted to the courts so that by 1966, Girodias had collected something like four to six years in suspended sentences, fines worth some eighty thousand dollars, and a ban on all publishing activities ordained to last eighty years! An unbowed Girodias, rendered both cynical and defiant by the madcap persecution by the authorities, and weary of harassment threw a party on January 4, 1966 to mark his appearance before the 17th Chambre Correctionelle. Glassco who was in Canada at that time received an invitation “... pour boire un verre ...” —drinks at the Bar des Petits Pavés, 4 rue Bernard Palissy.

While all of this was going on, Glassco, incensed by numerous piracies of his work, both in English and in other languages, had embarked on a plan to publish The English Governess independently of Girodias and the Olympia Press. He decided to depart from the “naughty” nature of the original text, and to recast it in a somewhat different and less explicit state. He had, it should be noted, continued to cooperate with Girodias who, having had enough of the French authorities, had betaken himself to New York where he was hatching a grand plan to publish two distinct mass circulation series of paperback books very much in the style and manner of his Parisian enterprise.

On August 11, 1967, Girodias wrote to Glassco saying that he wanted to reprint The English Governess in an initial printing of one hundred thousand copies to sell at ninety-five cents, and indicating, at the same time, that he was aware of the fact that Grove Press of New York had just published a supposedly earlier version of the Governess’ text under the title Harriet Marwood, Governess. Glassco, it should be noted, had dispatched a copy of Harriet Marwood, Governess to Girodias on June 7, 1967 with the disingenuous observation “This is, as you know, a very piffling book—a product of my nonage,” adding ungenerously, “You will note that the lady on the dust jacket (though well constructed) has the countenance of a mental defective. A rare piece of symbolism, this.” Clearly Glassco was concerned that Girodias might now seize the opportunity, in his own turn, to accuse Glassco of bad faith. But Girodias was gentlemanly in his acceptance of the published existence of the altered text of The English Governess. After all, had Glassco not co-operated in the publication of The Authentic Confessions of Harriet Marwood, an English Governess, which had appeared in New York in the Orpheus Series that was Girodias’ new venture. This was a cut version of the 1960 text.

The sanitized or clean version of The English Governess which Grove Press published in the summer of 1967 is a somewhat different story from the text that Glassco had crafted for Girodias in 1960. Perhaps in keeping with what he saw as the levels of acceptance of an American readership, Glassco muted the overt raunchiness of the original version, and suppressed the lubricities of Richard Lovel’s father and his Irish mistress. As has been noted earlier, the Grove Press edition still preserved the anonymity of its author. Its prime concern was to dwell on what the writer [John Glassco?] of the dust jacket called “... the crepuscular world of the dominated ...,” and, in effect it is a work devoted with near-chilling excess to the pain expressed upon the body of a willing submissive. Underlying it, of course, are the subtle pathologies of those who derive sexual pleasure from inflicting pain, as well as those who receive it. And of course there are the fetishes: leather, foot worship, etc., all of which add spice to a multi-layered experience. Richard Lovel, the central character whom one readily identifies with the author—and [Glassco’s?] note on the dust jacket which encourages us to “... assume its composition to be autobiographical...”—is an individual who learns to equate the torture of the body with the love he feels for his governess, the lovely but stern Harriet Marwood. There is also a striking aside which is voiced [again by Glassco?] on the flap of the dust jacket, and which is intended to summarize the book’s intention.

It says:

“A curious exploration of the Puritan ethic carried to its extreme conclusion, Harriet Marwood, Governess is a work which should be in the hands of all those who are deeply concerned with the problems brought about by the alarming ascendance of woman in modern Western society.”

Finally, nine years later, the ill-kept secret of the identity of the author of The English Governess/Harriet Marwood, Governess was revealed. The Canadian edition carried Glassco’s name on it. The text was that of the sanitized Grove Press edition of 1967. The present text—unexpurgated and corrected in keeping with Glassco’s notes in the National Archives—is that of Under the Birch: The Story of an English Governess by Miles Underwood published in Paris by the Ophelia Press in 1965.

Michael Gnarowski