The English Governess. John Glassco

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.

      But the middle nineteen sixties also witnessed shifts and complexities that arose to bedevil the published life of The English Governess. On January 15, 1965, Girodias wrote to Glassco telling him of the imminent publication of “The Olympia Anthology,” and asked Glassco to supply a biographical note on himself since the intended publisher, Grove Press of New York, was planning to use an excerpt from the Beardsley/Glassco text of Under the Hill. In a postscript Girodias mentions that he does not know if Grove Press will use an excerpt from The English Governess as well. As it turned out, they did not. A few months later, Olympia Press released its Summer 1965 catalogue cum flyer and price list in which it announced a “new” title which it was offering for eighteen francs or three dollars and sixty cents. The title in question was described as The English Governess (Under the Birch) by Miles Underwood. It was listed on the reverse side of the flyer under the heading “Ophir, Ophelia and Odyssey Books.” Almost a year later Glassco, expressing surprise—feigned or otherwise—that his book was once more available, wrote to Girodias on May 25, 1966 enclosing a money order for a copy since, to quote him, “At present I have no copy of my own.” The English Governess (Under the Birch) by Miles Underwood was listed again in the September 1966 flyer of Olympia Press, and was now priced at twenty-four francs. This development provoked Glassco who, smarting from his difficulties at collecting the three thousand franc advance initially, now felt that he was being despoiled of his royalties anew. He sought legal advice from no less a figure than Frank Scott, the eminent constitutional lawyer and civil libertarian who, incidentally, had appeared successfully before the Supreme Court of Canada on behalf of D.H. Lawrence’s classic Lady Chatterley’s Lover and its latter-day publishers. The result of this consultation was a stiffly worded letter in which Glassco accused Girodias of publishing a book entitled Under the Birch but which was, in effect, the text of The English Governess. Glassco claimed breach of contract and demanded immediate payment of one thousand francs and a ten per cent royalty on sales. Girodias replied promptly acknowledging that he had, indeed, re-issued The English Governess under a different title, but that “... The new edition is exactly similar to the first one in all other aspects....” The reason for changing the title, Girodias would reveal, was that The English Governess had been named in some of the court actions to which he had been subjected, and that therefore it was on a list kept by the French police of banned books. Giving The English Governess a different title would protect it from the unwelcome attention of the authorities, and thus circumvent the ban; “our usual practice” Girodias added. Glassco eventually received his own copy of the renamed version, and it became part of his library on December 18, 1967.

      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