37 

AH, BUT WAIT. One had to remind oneself not to jump immediately like a scalded cat to recrimination or to wreak instant vengeance and reprisal. For I had a good example to follow. My mother throughout her very long life always kept a poem within sight of her very bright blue eyes. And it seems now no question but that judging by her own reaction to disasters, she followed such precepts as were penned by this anonymous author. And I hope hereby not to infringe anybody’s copyright in reproducing such wise words.

Never cherish the worries

That meet you each day, For the better you treat them

The longer they stay.

Just put them aside

With a smile or a song

And something much better

Will hurry along.

This now famed list of works, whose authors were pseudonymous and whose existence adorned the last page of the first edition of THE GINGER MAN, and such becoming the basis for my swearing revenge on Maurice Girodias and the Olympia Press. Although the use of the words “special volume,” according to Girodias, was meant to set it apart from the other titles, it could also be interpreted to mean in such context that THE GINGER MAN was a particularly raunchy variety of dirty book.

Well, let me tell you, there was not one trace of an iota of a smile or a song or even the spending of the briefest fraction of a second waiting for something much better to come along as I hurried in one awful quick step right out my front door and up Bryan’s Alley and over to my local library just across Wandsworth Bridge Road, and under that friendly roof went to delve into the nearest thing I could get to being a law book. And from which one could try to piece together words and phrases that might say anything about redressing disaster and aggrievement in the sphere of the subject of contract and copyright. Nor could there be any doubt whatever, that if this man Girodias,

whoever he was, if he was, had he been within an immediate physical distance to be reached, he would have been smashed by me into a bloody pulp.

My most major concern was that the book, in its pornographic and pseudonymous series, could never be taken seriously for what it was and could never be reviewed by any reputable periodical. And with the exception of Paul Allen being able to write something mildly commendable in a journal he worked for, called Courier, the book was trapped and frozen, if not forgotten, in its tracks. Everything I was or hoped to be as an author simply no longer existed. I noted the use of the words “special volume” appended after The Ginger Man’s back page listing, which I could consider meaning in the context of the books it was published with, only that this particularly pseudonymous book was especially pornographic. Even number 10 on the list, Frank Harris, author of My Life and Loves, was a pseudonym for Alexander Trocchi, a genuine writer but also one of Girodias’s most reliable and trusted pornographers. And thus it was, on what was to be the first of many dismal disaster days, I sat down this midsummer to write to what was to become nearly a lifelong bane in Paris.

July 15th 1955

Dear Mr. Girodias,

I have received two copies of book.

I had no idea you intended to include mine in your Traveller’s Companion Series and under no circumstances will I approve of this book being sent to England with it included among list at back or this list being advertised with my work. You may sell more copies of book this way. However, in publishing my book you were publishing a book of genuine literary merit and it seems a pity to waste this merit by including it with books obviously written with ulterior motives.

I would like to point out that it cost me £2000 to write this book, keeping myself and family while doing it. The £250 that I’ve been paid as an advance means nothing in payment for my work or for the heart and soul I’ve put into it. I want this book removed immediately in subsequent printings from your Traveller’s Companion Series.

I also note you are charging Frs 1500 per copy. In your letter of January 7th 1955 you state that the retail selling price will be about 750 francs. You are charging twice this price. This is a breach of our agreement. It was on this basis that I accepted your offer of £250 for a first printing of 5000 copies and agreed to an equal division of monies secured of rights and as an act of good will, American rights also, which may prove to be valuable ones and which rights are normally reserved by an author. I’m afraid that this matter will get somewhat involved unless I get some straightforward explanations. Obviously you underestimate the literary worth of my work. This I don’t mind since the book will ultimately speak for itself. But I have no intention of letting my work be exploited in this way and will take every step necessary to prevent it.

Yours sincerely,

J. P. Donleavy    

From my letter, it seems I knew more than I revealed in my first letters of negotiation with Girodias and certainly knew that what he had obviously, deliberately done would not forever ostracize The Ginger Man away from the attentions of the kindred to whom this work was directed, and upon whom I would always depend as an author.

 

THE OLYMPIA PRESS

July 21st 1955

Dear Mr. Donleavy,

I suppose that you are a rather difficult person, with a tendency to ignore other people’s problems, and to indulge in bouts of violent self-pity. As, however, you do not seem to be a bad character, I will refrain from launching into a tedious and ridiculous argument with you, and will not answer the first two paragraphs of your letter dated July 15th.

Regarding the third paragraph, which raises the question of money and therefore deserves attention, my position is the following: your book proved much longer than I expected; I had asked you to cut out about ⅓ of the original typescript, and my first idea was that the cuts were not as important as I had expected. This made it necessary for me to raise the selling price. It has never been my intention to deprive you of your rights, and I am ready to pay a supplementary £150 when this first edition is exhausted. I hope this will seem satisfactory and that you will understand that, if I had “underestimated the literary worth of your book,” I would not have published it (which, incidentally, I have done against the advice of my readers).

Yours sincerely,

M. Girodias       

If it ever would be hard to fathom the motives of one’s now unquestionable adversary, in Girodias’s masterly reply there was little doubt that he had parried my objections by merely ignoring them. Nor is there much doubt that in his eyes I was a victim and that as a victim I was intended to remain, at least for the considerable time being. But the one word he uttered which was in lieu of any explanation for what he’d done in publishing The Ginger Man as pornography was, if any word was, a woeful mistake, and was not to be forgotten by me. And that word was “self-pity.” I would, over the years to come, often be reminded of it as it more aptly applied to Girodias as our fortunes became reversed.

Without being able to afford a lawyer or legal advice, I had to totally rely on my wits, as in the matters of law, equity or copyright or contract, my knowledge was amateurish indeed. It would seem that the matter of mistake had interjected itself, for what proof could there be that what had happened and the risk that it would, could not have been clearly forseen by me. A view given me immediately upon my seeking advice from the Society of Authors, to which society it did not take me long to let my membership lapse. In any event, I had now to try best as I could to pick up the pieces. With no prospects now of making my name or a title of a book known, there was little hope of earning more as a writer in order that I might remain as one, my priority above all priorities. For this work once predicted by Behan that it would go round the world like the Bible, it had now gone only in a package from Paris to London and maybe under the counter of a few dirty bookshops in Soho, whose proprietors would immediately stop selling it when their customers stopped buying it as a very poor imitation of pornography indeed.

What I had now if I had anything was five thousand or however many copies were actually printed of The Ginger Man. And as I read through the now published book, there were a few major blunders and distantly misplaced paragraphs and an odd misprint here and there, but the work with these exceptions had meticulously followed the manuscript. And I still retained the draft and working pages plus a carbon copy of the original and unrevised manuscript. In any event, from my point of view of Girodias’s commercial stupidity, as well as his clear ignorance as to The Ginger Man’s literary worth and future, I knew not to trust the contents of Girodias’s letter of July 21 and replied mildly enough. But hidden beneath my words was a deathly ruthless intention. I knew I had to get the book published in England free of the Olympia Press’s imprimatur of pornography as soon as possible and to redress my first publishing disaster.

July 28th 1955

Dear Mr. Girodias,

I am difficult, but I think you will find that it is not a matter of self-pity so much as that I am proud of my work and want to see the best done by it. I am pleased when someone likes and recognizes my work for being what it is, but I have no illusions about art world and have far more respect for opinions passed in wool trade. But as a writer, I do know my business as I’m sure you know yours as a publisher, especially so since you obviously make money. But I was considering in my objection to your list the fact that it can deprive book of reviews here which book would have received and can also prejudice any case brought against book under Obscene Publications Act, which I would fight. However, what’s happened has happened and nothing can now be done about it, but you may as well know that I feel my objections are sound. I realize work in running a firm can be complicated and heavy, but if some explanation were given me beforehand concerning your intentions with book, you would get my complete cooperation even if this were a matter of silence.

As regards your adjustment in price; £150 paid when this printing is exhausted is reasonable as far as I am concerned.

I’ve received four copies of book but would be grateful for two more to have some for loaning for possible reviews.

Yours sincerely,

J. P. Donleavy   

Removing the offending pages advertising the Traveller’s Companion Series from the volume, The Ginger Man was again sent to an odd English publishing house. And was even seen by such as the poet Cecil Day Lewis, an editor at Chatto and Windus. One knew of this gentleman, for his wife, Jill Balcon, who was possessed of one of the world’s most beautiful speaking voices, had been an acquaintance of Valerie’s and we had occasionally met to all walk together around the round pond in Kensington Gardens, little Philip kicking a football and the Day Lewises’ young offspring, later to become Daniel Day Lewis, the actor, pushed in his pram. But Chatto and Windus returned the work without comment and indeed Day Lewis later seemed at once evasive upon seeing me walking down St. Martin’s Lane. However, Paul Allen, editing the magazine Courier, had literary friends whom he’d already told about the book, and the words of my July 15 letter to Girodias, “the book will ultimately speak for itself,” were in fact already beginning to happen. Allen recalling that he was standing in a group of people at the York Minster Pub when someone suddenly exhibited for the company to see a copy of The Ginger Man in its green format of the Traveller’s Companion Series. Allen adding that at the sight of this work and mention of my name, an Irish poet from Dublin who was present, shrunk back out of sight. The power of The Ginger Man was working against its first ever known begrudger.

But much more positive matters were also surfacing. Paul Allen also had an uncle who ran a rather debutante type of drinking and dining club called the Renaissance in the very socially acceptable area of South Kensington. Where in an attractive upstairs, tall-ceilinged room, the uncle had a bar, dining booths and a dance floor. Allen had on a few occasions invited me and a few of his other friends here. And one evening such was the case as a few of us sat in one of the booths and I was introduced to a shyly attractive young lady and her gentleman companion. Both of these pleasantly sympathetic people were like Allen, considerably knowledgeable about the literary world. Derek Stanford, a poet, had read The Ginger Man and said he knew of an English publisher who might be interested in an English edition. The quietly studious lady concurred with Stanford on this idea and seemed unusually erudite for this debutante hangout. When I opinioned that I thought the work might be attacked, she confidently predicted The Ginger Man would be well received. Her acumen in the matter to be explained only many years later when her name turned out to be Muriel Spark.

During these months of August and September 1956, the work was now at least a little circulated and talked about. News soon arrived that a Neville Armstrong of the publisher Neville Spearman Ltd. indeed would be interested to look into considering to publish The Ginger Man in England. The book also came to the attention of a Keidrick Rhys, a Welsh literary person working on The People Sunday newspaper and who wrote a column for its Welsh edition. Rhys, who founded a literary magazine, was one of the first ever to publish a poem by another Welshman, Dylan Thomas. But now the momentum was fast increasing, with suddenly crucial now the fact that a piece of mine published in the Manchester Guardian had been chosen to be reprinted and read by children in a volume used as a text in modern secondary schools. And this matter in concert with The Ginger Man and its list of dirty books published in Paris interested The People newspaper, to whose offices I was invited.

Rhys assured me that his interest in writing about The Ginger Man was of an entirely literary nature. However, as one was to find, he was also a gourmet. And while nearly licking his chops and with yours truly, his Paris pornographer, in tow, Rhys showed his editor the list of dirty books in the back of The Ginger Man and asked if he might call Rules, the restaurant, to make a booking for lunch. The editor read the list, looked at me and agreed to the expense. And so at this old established eatery in Covent Garden, my first paid-for entertainment as an author was about to take place. Rhys tucking in his napkin over duck à l’orange and a vintage bottle of Burgundy. There were crepes suzette and equally splendid jolts of brandy accompanied by delicious coffee to drink us back to our senses. We sat eating merrily away till nearly four o’clock. And now returned to the newspaper office, Rhys, who had already written much of his interview, now concluded it and, with it typed, further presented it, along with his gigantic lunch bill, to the editor. It did not take long for this gentleman to look up from his desk with a grimacing and disapproving face. Following which Rhys vanished and did not reappear.

As I sat waiting out in this large outer room of desks and reporters, I was suddenly confronted by a tall, quite distinguished-looking Australian. Whose no-nonsense words were now shot out at me like lethal bullets from a gun. And who, as he pulled up a nearby chair, swung his legs and feet up to rest on the edge of a desktop.

“Hey, what’s this business about this dirty book of yours you’ve published in Paris with the Olympia Press.”

“It’s not a dirty book.”

“Well, you tell me what it is, then.”

This tall gentleman was Murray Sayle. A journalist who I was to later learn was already famed in Australia. And like many from that country, who’d made their mark in their native territory, he had come farther afield to again achieve celebrity in what was then thought to be the mother country. One immediately got the impression that Sayle was trying to break through what his editor saw as a defense and disguise to my being engaged in the dirty book trade. A trade that The People newspaper regarded as fair game to expose and bring to the attention of the police and director of public prosecutions. And Sayle’s words, although disarmingly mild and even friendly, were relentless in their probing into what he clearly felt continued to be my cover for this prosperous activity of purveying porn and known to be much alive and thriving under certain booksellers’ counters in many a British city and which The People newspaper especially let it be known they would expose and stamp out. There was no doubt that despite the wonderful lunch, Rhys still wanted to keep his literary conscience clear and stand by his representations to me. However, the article he had written, one was told by Sayle, had been met by his editor’s predictable reaction.

“Hey, you’re praising this guy. Get to the bottom of this guy. We can’t have innocent children reading the work of a dirty book writer in Paris.”

Rhys, albeit well fed, was extremely apologetic that he had his favorable article put aside. And clearly Murray Sayle had replaced him on the job of what now was an investigative matter with Sayle’s interest in my story continuing as six P.M. now approached and he invited me to go with him to a nearby pub. Sayle looking and probing for holes in my story but also seemed to be impressed by my continuing adamant affirmation that I was a genuine writer whose work was of literary merit. I was also finding Sayle’s intelligent company equally strange and deceptive. No longer interrogating, he became a generous host as we drank a few beers and he was actually listening to what I said. Along with an Australian associate, he invited me back to Notting Hill Gate and his flat up three floors in Palace Gardens Terrace and looking out back on part of the Russian embassy. Populated with a stunningly beautiful girl, a mastiff dog and a couple of Australian friends, as the beer flowed and canapés were passed about, his gramophone was soon playing and thundering out for perhaps the first time in England the composer Carl Orff’s music. This was an entirely new breed of mankind. Intelligent, tough, erudite, without English social snobberies and pleasantly letting you know it as they called each other digger, a favorite Australian cognomen to denote comradeship. And Sayle, after our evening at Palace Gardens Terrace, had pronounced,

“Based on my judgment of men, so far, I believe your story. But based on the ways of the world, I’d feel happier if I could know a few more facts.”

Back in Fulham, I’d told Eddie Connell about my brush with The People newspaper and how now my concern existed over what might turn out to be an exposé of me as a dirty book writer for the Olympia Press. But that I had met both a literary man and an intelligent Australian journalist to whom I was attempting to let know the truth of the matter and that the story, if one there was, I felt would be fair and factual. But Connell immediately cautioned me: “Mike, from my knowledge, The People, once they get on to a story, they never let go and they pursue it to its ruthless end. And believe me when I say they are not in the business of painting a flattering picture of an author whose work is published along with the likes of The Sexual Life of Robinson Crusoe.”

Again Connell reminded me of the plight of Oscar Wilde, who, when released from prison, had finally to flee to the continent for good to escape British persecution and opprobrium. And now as if by design, I seemed to be provided by Girodias with all the ingredients to enable me to be described as a pornographer and a dirty book writer and to be about to suffer exposure and endure the first pitfalls and to risk prosecution for having written The Ginger Man. The fact that I’d been published in Punch and the Manchester Guardian could mean now only that here was a pornographer posing as a literary type and who assumed such disguise as a protection, which the headline due to appear in The People would soon widely disavow. For as a Sunday newspaper whose circulation was in the millions and whose readers were in the many millions, and which was required reading by the underworld as well as all law enforcement agencies, I was sure to undergo more than just a little of ridicule and contempt.

“MOTHERS AND FATHERS, DO YOU WANT YOUR 

CHILDREN TO READ THE WORK OF A 

DIRTY BOOK WRITER?”

And as I dreaded, indeed, the worst was about to happen. According to Rhys, who regretted the development, The People newspaper was planning to use exactly such a headline. And a further reaffirming urgent message reached me at Broughton Road from Eddie Connell, who, in inquiring of his underworld contacts, now informed him that I was indeed to beware of The People newspaper, as they were well and truly after me. And, as befitted the sensational nature of the story, had put their ace reporter on the job. Anguish on all sides. Trust no one. And of course it did not help to have recently read a biography of Oscar Wilde. Fame now at long last imminent. But to be accompanied by arrest, prosecution and imprisonment and immersion in a bath of shameful ignominy. In mildly befriending me, Sayle, for this public crucifixion, was also presumably reading the book and finding out more about the Olympia Press. And I of course was imagining even grimmer headlines.

“PORNOGRAPHIC PEN–WIELDING

DIRTY BOOK 

WRITER CAUGHT

FILTHY HANDED

ESCAPING AT

DOVER”

A day or two passed, during which I walked the miles away much depressed but not totally in a state of fatal despair, but, living through what I thought were to be my last moments in Fulham before I made my escape across the channel to France. And worst above all now, a gloom and doom descending with the awareness that no British publisher, once The People newspaper had written its exposé, would dare publish The Ginger Man in Britain. As was my wont in such dilapidated spirits, I had wandered the dismal, empty isolation of the streets around the Fulham Gas Works. Staring into the grime and grit of the streets over which I walked along Sand’s End Lane and Imperial Road. Then emerging through Harcourt Terrace and down Bagley’s Lane, I could come to the more cheerful open space and grass of Eel Brook Common. Here, in from the traffic of New King’s Road, I chose a bench with my back facing Musgrave Crescent, where I had always thought it would have been pleasant to live in such houses facing a few trees, and in front of which I had often sat in reverie and pleasant daydreaming, which on this solemn evening only seemed to conjure up dread and another headline.

“ESCAPING PORNOGRAPHER

IN DISGUISE

CAUGHT COWERING

IN CROSS CHANNEL

SHED”

It was Thursday at just past six P.M. By Friday sometime Murray Sayle would have scratched his head for the last time and the story would be written. And by Saturday the printing presses of The People newspaper would begin to whine and then begin to roar and finally thunder as the bound bundles of print slammed down on the loading piers and were shoved into lorries and heaved on trains. And through the night would be all over England, Wales and Scotland to be ready on Sunday morning to be brought into households all over Britain. If they hadn’t already got me in handcuffs in bed that night, by Monday the latest, Broughton Road would be full of the vice squad, and, with curtains twitching and fingers of the neighbors wagging, I would be hauled across the pavement into a squad car to face oblivion. And worse, leave a young family of two children minus a father who left them to be ridiculed in headline disgrace.

“PARIS

PORN PURVEYOR

CORRUPTING YOUNG

ARRESTED”

Having before me the soon approaching Sunday, I was already wondering what to pack, thinking it best to gather sparse luggage to accompany me with an apple, orange and banana on the train ride to Dover. Once on the ferry I’d be at least half safe and could have the orange. Then halfway across the channel have the apple. And finally reaching what could be temporary respite and shelter in France, I could eat the banana. And there in that country, with the work not yet translated into French, I would for sometime at least be free of prison bars, affording me a chance to continue to fight the battle of The Ginger Man. But then according to Behan and now according to Connell, even if the worst did happen, the standard of accommodation and the library facilities of Her Majesty’s prisons were not half bad and in befriending your better class of criminal, introductions to whom they would readily provide, much influence could be wielded and much additional physical and intellectual comfort was available.

Meanwhile, as I sat in the gathering darkness of Eel Brook Common suffering my growing sense of intimidation and keeping an eye open around the park for the gathering forces of The People newspaper henchmen, who were noted for their fearlessness in tracking down the guilty, and just as Connell predicted to happen, I was already feeling that I should now, prudently, before it was too late, be making for Victoria Station on the number 11 bus that passed nearby. And not be physically present while I and the Olympia Press were at last being brought to book before the righteous population of Britain, who were to be richly entertained with this exposé of dirty books. Being able to imagine getting into The Enormous Bed, or joining the School for Sin, or feeling the lash of The Whip Angels, or squeezing their thoughts between White Thighs, or last but not least, fantasizing on The Sexual Life of Robinson Crusoe. And let me tell you, the gossipy residents of Broughton Road would especially be gloating.

As darkness had nearly descended over Eel Brook Common, I could hear the hammering of the final nail in the coffin of The Ginger Man and the lid sealed over what now promised to be the remnants and tatters of my life. I was on the verge of making up my mind to escape, as Connell had already suggested I should, and that he would get me a phony passport and could send word down the criminal grapevine to have someone hide me out overnight in Newhaven or Dover before I caught the boat. And at that moment, as I considered this prospect, and was already deciding that I would instead stay and fight, a shadowy figure had entered the otherwise empty park and was directly approaching me across the grass. From the menace of this large shadow and the purposeful walk, it looked at least like a detective inspector of some special criminal venereal vice squad. Size in an adversary had never particularly perturbed me and in fact I took a suicidal interest in such contest and was already contemplating sending this approaching brute’s trilby hat flying and laying him out with one punch. But then surely I’d have to run for it back to Broughton Road, collect luggage and a few sandwiches Valerie could hurriedly make me and head for Victoria Station. But now the converging figure was nearly upon me. And was, in fact, Murray Sayle.

“Your wife, J.P., said if I looked around, I would no doubt find you sitting here in the park.”

Sayle was well known, according to Connell, to be a man not to be intimidated nor deterred from tracking down quarry as a reporter. Nor indeed was he any slouch in a fight. Nevertheless, I felt my muscles relax and glacial calm settle over me as I awaited provocation to spring to the attack. But Sayle’s voice was friendly enough. He was clearly stunned to find me in the twilight sitting alone in the empty park and asked if he could sit down. He seemed to think that I must be waiting for someone and asked how long I had sat there. When I said I was waiting for no one and would perhaps sit for an hour or two, he voiced surprise at my reclusiveness.

“Your wife, Valerie, told me that this is where I would probably find you. I’d like to accompany you back to Broughton Road and have a talk. But first I want to give you my opinion about this book of yours. I’ve read it twice. It’s a work of literary distinction. In fact, when I first read it, I thought it one of the best novels I’d ever read. On second reading, I figured it was the best novel I’d ever read. And in my opinion, in no sense is it a dirty book and had no business to be published among the work listed at the back. You’re a genuine writer. As far as I’m concerned, the story is dropped.”

“I’ve been told by a friend that The People newspaper never drops a story.”

“They’re dropping this one. They’re going to be told there is no story. You have my word on it.”

After these sentiments were exchanged, I walked with Sayle back to Broughton Road, where, at the nearby off-license shop, he bought a half bottle of Bell’s whiskey, for us an unusual luxury. As Philip played noisily till his bedtime and Karen already lay asleep, Sayle sat in our kitchen room, revealing a large and sensitive awareness about literary matters. He talked of the formation of sentences and the abbreviation of language and of the distinctive style in which he thought The Ginger Man was written. He enthusiastically quoted lines and laughed recalling incidents from the book. The transformation from what I had imagined was a tough investigative journalist and ogre pursuing me, into a man of learning and culture who confidently expressed his opinions over the worth of The Ginger Man, brightened the bleak darkness of my recent days. But upon telling Connell of the evening with Sayle, he immediately cautioned me that it was a trap. Which would close upon me the coming Sunday morning when The People newspaper hit the newsstands and I would more than deeply regret that I wasn’t already halfway across the English Channel to France.

However, I stood firm and took and trusted Sayle’s assurance. And Sunday came. When The People newspaper was opened, there was no mention of me, The Ginger Man nor the Traveller’s Companion Series. For like many of the ancient Manx from whom he descended, Sayle was true to his word.

And now

I lived to fight

Another day

While not knowing

There would be

More than

Nine thousand

Of them