A Case of Vintage Smut
AFTERTHOUGHT
By JOHN WELLS
ON the back of the dust- jacket of Private Case— Public Scandal* there is a photograph of two people, one gently embracing the other, reading an uniden- tified book. Underneath is the caption 'Peter Fryer.' On closer examination, Peter Fryer appears to be the one on the left with the %my.' beard, and the one on the right his little three-year-old daughter. The photo- graph could not be better chosen, preserving as it does the image of the author as the bookish Bohemian with long hair and glasses and a beard who enjoys a good sophisticated chuckle over the oddities of the Higher Smut, compre- hensible only to an intellectual elite, and yet at the same time reminding us of the family man, the fatherly ex-Daily Worker figure who has smashed open the secret inner library of the British Museum, so long the browsing place of the aristocracy, and has handed down the filthy books to a grateful proletariat.
Peter Fryer's battle has been to persuade the authorities at the British Museum to list the contents of the Private Case—their collection of pornography ancient and modern—in the general catalogue, and to make it available to the 'serious inquirer.' He is also concerned that suppressed books—those locked away for reasons of libel, attacks on the Royal Family, or state security—should at least be listed in the cata- logue, which at the moment they are not. As he says at the end of the book: 'The British Museum Authorities will not budge unless
* Secker and Warburg, 21s. public opinion forces them to. As long as we let them, they will clog scholarship and free inquiry by maintaining this curious pocket of censorship. Liberalisation will continue only to the extent that opponents of censorship press for it. The first essential is to make known how censorship at the British Museum operates. That is why I have written this book.'
Although this is the author's main motive in writing this book, certainly the cover, with the amusing cartoon of Mr Fryer lifting the lid off the British Museum, and the subtitle 'Secrets of the British Museum Revealed,' suggest that it may appeal to a wider audience than those simply connected with the unclogging of scholarship and the freedom of academic inquiry. There is also an interesting passage in Chapter VI— `Erotic Classics and Autobiographies'—where he mentions My Life and Loves, by Frank Harris, and Henry Miller's The World of Sex. 'But these,' he goes on, 'are now in paperback and sold legally. How long will it be before they are joined by that mammoth among sexual auto- biographies, or sexual diaries, the legendary My Secret Life ("Amsterdam" [i.e. Brussels?] c. 1888-94)7' Net very long, apparently. At the end of the chapter there is an equally scholarly footnote: `*Professor Steven Marcus devotes two chapters of The Other Victorians (1966) to My Secret Life, and my own abridgement of it is shortly to appear.' These last italics are mine.
Throughout the book-the dual nature of the author continues to assert itself. On the one hand, the erudite, witty intellectual, sitting there in his beard in the slightly stale air of the British Museum, beaming happily as he traces some infinitely complicated tangle of pirate pub- lishing or exultantly discovers a hitherto un- catalogued quirk of sexual fancy; and, on the
other, the militant journalist, padding back to the grille, shaking his fist at the assistant and bellow- ing with rage at not having been allowed to see the book before. Imitating the polemic technique of the masterly Marquis de Sade, he combines these two aspects of his work with subtle cun- ning, luring the innocent reader through pages of rather tedious argument about academic facilities at the British Museum with an ever- thickening trail of erotic titbits gathered from the Private Case.
It is always tempting, when presented with the spectacle of some lumbering, slow-moving organisation like the British Museum, living its own life to a great extent, and at times unaware of the fatuous years that are rushing past out- side, to side automatically with the man of the age, the contemporary critic who demands that it should behave in the manner fashionable in 1966. But as in the case of the Church, where mini-skirted vicars prance trendily about advo- cating a cautious reappraisal of masturbation, we are inevitably forced into the position of having to reflect, sometimes against our better judgment, on the accumulated wisdom of tradi- tion.
Clearly, any kind of censorship is abhorrent to us. Obviously, the British Museum is wrong to conceal the existence of publicly-owned books from the public that owns them, whether or not they wish them to be read by anyone who asks for them. What seems more question- able is the implicit premise of the book : namely, that gloomy pornography, conceived in chronic frustration and brought out purely to make the most money in the shortest time, is worthy of such serious intellectual consideration. Bawdy, vulgar, or funny books of unspeakable coarseness are always worth having, and any- one in search of a good laugh should certainly be catered for at the British Museum. A sexually permissive atmosphere in society, too, seems preferable to any other, particularly for those who find delight in thrashing, biting, torturing or caressing their willing victims. Crudely written fantasies based on their activities, on the other hand, prepared and delivered to lonely bachelors in bed-sitting-rooms, with no one to thrash, bite, torture or caress but themselves or strangers encountered in cinemas and public lavatories, seem difficult to defend in the high moral tone adopted by their apologists. But to fight wild-eyed for the general dissemination of what Mr- Peter Fryer calls hard-core porno- graphy does seem a rather more ridiculous activity than many good progressives would have us believe.
During the Christian era, it was the practice of many of the devout, distressed at the rebuffs received on earth, to fix their eyes steadfastly on the vision of paradise, as revealed in devo- tional works of the time, and flogging them- selves in contrition at their inadequacy, to flee from reality into a changeless world of peace and beauty, where the saints and angels prostrated themselves for ever before the throne of God. Those who wrote their devotional works, and those who made them available to the people, were hailed as holy men and as saints them- selves. Today the new devout, rejected by the world and abusing themselves in a similar way, dote on the beatific vision set forth in the filthy books, where naked forms, splashed with spittle and blood, writhe in ecstasy before the eternal orgasm. The pornographers have become our saints, our priests and teachers, and we must, it seems, bow before them, always running the risk of exposing our bottoms to the irreverent boot.
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