The English Governess. John Glassco

       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

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