THE BOW plunging through the still rough gray waves, I sat solitary below decks, meditating upon the defeat I now faced in London as the cross-channel steamer made its way from Calais back toward the white cliffs of Dover. The ship finally no longer pitching and tossing in the great gray swells as it glided at last into the peaceful water of the harbor. The disappointing trip somehow at least had softened the aspect of the future, now knowing that the book had already found sympathetic readers in Paris, such as Michael Sayers.
The next day in Fulham, and on the last day left till publication, I waited till early afternoon to relate the most gloomy news of my visit to Paris to Armstrong, already realizing that he would no doubt be in his office staring at a notice of an injunction stopping publication and recalling the book from booksellers. My destination, as it was on many of these afternoons, was Bishop’s Park along the river Thames where Philip could run while Karen, in her pushchair, and I could stroll under the tall, hauntingly somber plane trees. And where also on the way, in the comparative privacy of a country lane, I could stop to telephone Neville Armstrong at his office.
The route one walked took one past a housing estate and an adjoining athletic field, where once there had been a polo field. But still this area strangely seemed to retain its rural atmosphere from long ago. And at one end of a slightly crooked alley joining Peterborough and Hurlingham roads, there stood a red telephone kiosk posted like a sentry. At least it was just past lunch and, avoiding the likelihood of ruining someone’s appetite, and Neville Armstrong following my pennies clanking was immediately on the line. And who, having listened to my voice convey my dismal news, sounded surprisingly cheerful and asked me did I otherwise enjoy Paris. When I said it hadn’t been too bad, I found it difficult to believe his chirpiness or the words he was saying or the words that he now went on to say.
“We’ve had counsel’s opinion. Norman Shine was right, there was indeed something not spelled out in the agreement you have with Girodias based on the exchange of letters with him, as no document exists signed by you in which you state that you convey the right to the Olympia Press to print and sell in all countries. Such a right can only be conveyed under the written signature of the proprietor and copyright owner, which you are as the author, and therefore Girodias without this right conveyed to him can’t obtain an injunction and stop the book. Frankly I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes. Publication will take place as planned.”
Although I wasn’t as sanguine as Neville Armstrong, knowing Girodias could still sue for damages and in my judgment would remain an enemy who still existed across the channel and who showed little or no regard for an author’s work but whom I knew would show much regard for any money or profit such an author’s work might bring, it was nevertheless bliss at last to hear for the first time that an author somehow had rights hidden buried in the technicalities of the law that could, even though by accident, result to his benefit. Walking along now, my step was lighter. And even though such information was hard to comprehend, it was, after all the months not to mention years, most welcome that now, when least expected, straight out of the blue, good and positive news had struck without warning.
And as Armstrong predicted, this last day did quietly tick by without a writ and without an injunction. And the day December 7 struck. Publication. The Ginger Man at last free and out on its own. But had not this victory come and the book achieved its freedom from its undeserved yoke of pseudonymous pornography imposed upon it by the Traveller’s Companion Series, there is no question but that I would have been arise with a rage so great, Girodias’s life would have been at stake. And as indeed it turned out The Ginger Man would anyway inextricably wind around and haunt the every future day of his existence.
Reviews came. Mixed, as they say. But the best of the praising ones overwhelming the dissenters. It seemed I had crawled up out of a bleak, black abyss of encroaching jurisprudence to the brighter sands of moral hope on the beach. And on a day shortly following publication, I called on Neville Armstrong, busy as a bee in Fitzroy Street, from which he was already planning to move to a larger premises. Behind his desk, he was pretending a little that all was proceeding as routine and as was to be expected of a highly successful publisher. Nevertheless, he was beaming. He had the reviews laid out and had quotes selected for back of the jacket of the second printing, and which he now handed across to me to read.
THE SUNDAY TIMES
FICTION OF THE WEEK
BY JOHN METCALF
“The Ginger man, whose Sebastian Dangerfield is as central a version of the new Byronic hero as anyone could ask for.”
“A fine and genuine verbal talent.”
“He has fire enough for a dozen books, dexterity and liveliness to spare.”
EVENING STANDARD
FICTION SHELF
BY PHILIP OAKES
“Plotless, picaresque story. Originally published in Paris, and lightly censored for the English edition, it displays a raging, randy talent.”
“Brilliantly comic writing, but decidedly too gamy for gentle tastes.”
MANCHESTER GUARDIAN
BY ANNE DUCHENE
“The total impact of the book seems incontestably one of outrageous and fantastic comedy.”
“It is the comedy of enjoyment, with nothing destructive about it.”
“Full of love and preposterous energy and laughter.”
“People who don’t think randiness and riotous good company are subjects for comedy will not be amused, of course: but they would not have been asked to the party anyway. And that is all one needs to know, morally, about this book.”
“An ultimate comic triumph.”
Here seated in this small office in London’s Fitzroy Street, this was my mini victory, lightening my weight of concern, that might have happened three years previously in its major way in America. And as I sat reading these paeans of praise, Armstrong’s phone kept ringing as book orders were pouring in. Harrods’s large department had already reordered twice. Neville’s grin each time he put down the phone was on the verge of laughter and his bow tie seemed to be spinning like an airplane propeller. It was truly, for the time being at least, To hell with Girodias. As Brendan Behan had predicted,
The Ginger Man
Was at last
On its way
Chasing the Bible
As a repressed botanist, one always felt reassured by an ecclesiastic-looking gentleman pausing in his religious fervor to admire an instance of beauty in nature.