L
L From: E. D. O'Brien. Graham Greene, Kenneth Allsop, John Davenport. Lady de Zulueta. Tristan Jones. Alan Wolfe, Derek Bloom. Roger Wimbush, Tom Sargam. E. C. Clifford Woods, William Wilberforce Wink worth, Frederick Seebohm.
Olympia in Swinging London
Sin.—Had I not been personally concerned. I would have been delighted by Kenneth Allsop's witty article (April 29) under the general heading of 'Pornography' and under the particular title of 'Olympia Comes to Swinging London.' As Mr Allsop involves me with the activities of Monsieur Girodias and the Olympia Press, I would like to make my position as clear as possible.
The New English Library, of which the Olympia Press is a very recent by-blow, have been respectable clients of mine for some years past. Their paper- back editions of the classics are beyond praise. 1 would- like to refer particularly to their Shakes- peares, which, for their presentation and the scholar- ship of the annotations, cannot be bettered. Indeed, on the very day on which Mr Allsop's article appeared. The Times, in a leader, commented rather more than favourably on their new 'Great Histories' Series paperback versions of Thucydides, Herodotus. Gibbon and Voltaire. edited by Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper.
Unfortunately. the doctrine of Cabinet responsi- bility must apply to private firms as much as to politicians. Therefore. I, as chairman of this organi- sation. have. witty nilly. to accept responsibility. not merely for the handout to which Mr Allsop took exception, but :or Monsieur Girodias's books, for the publicity for which I find myself responsible. It is therefore no excuse on my part if I say that I never saw the handout and I was virtually unaware either of Monsieur Girodias's reputation or the type of book which Monsieur Girodias, having left France, is purveying in this country.
I am placed in the position of having to choose between either making myself look a fool (in that I did not sufficiently control the section of my staff responsible for publicising this branch of the other- wise admirable New English Library's activities) or promoting pornography. (Middle-aged gentlemen with a tendency to overwork, bullied by their doctors, families or friends into 'greater delegation,' might take warning from this!) On a personal note. I must confess to being narked that 1, a fairly ruse character who has been around for quite a number of years, should stand accused of the major sin of innocence: i.e., that until recently I had never heard of Monsieur Girodias or of the Olympia Press.
Please understand me. sir, I am not in principle against pornography. except as far as it affects adolescents. My only general complaint against pornography is that on the whole it tends to be dull, and, in any case. I believe in the slogan of the party I supported in the last election. 'Action, not words.' Of course, sometimes it can be witty, as in Voltaire's delicious description in Candide of the emotions of Mademoiselle Cunegonde discovering Doctor' Pangloss seducing (I quote from memory) 'la femme de chambre de sa mere, petite brune tres jolie et tres docile.'
I must confess I did dip into the Bedside Odyssey —with mild astonishment. It must be forty years since I last read the Odyssey. Was my• ageing memory playing tricks on me, I wondered, or could possibly some eminent nineteenth-century Anglican divine have brilliantly succeeded in bowdlerising Homer in the original Greek on behalf of my pastors and masters? It took me some time to realise it was a cod, but, given the mystic language of pornography, not one that would have caused a blush to rise on the cheeks of my younger children. (It may amuse you to know, sir, that a certain left-wing Socialist MP—who shall be nameless—who, like myself, was a classical scholar when young, swallowed Monsieur Girodias hook, line and sinker, and wrote, I see, praising the scholarship of the translation with, as he said, the exception of 'the obvious misprint on page 63'!) I read one of the books to which Mr Allsop takes exception at the weekend after I had read his article, and it did indeed make my thinning hairs stand on end. Stradella. to my mind. makes the works of that North Midlands inferior poet (and still worse prose- writer) who provided the Game Keepers' Association with such unreliable guides as to the duties of game- keepers on a well-kept estate (ah yes. Lawrence, I believe, sir, was the name) look, by comparison, like Peter Rabbit and the Flopsy Bunnies.
All this is by way of saying that had I been more fully informed we would have had nothing to do with the activities to which Mr Allsop objects. This is an explanation: I could wish it was an
2 Old Burlington Street. London. WI
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