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THE OSCHOLARS: Special Teleny
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Leonard
Smithers’ Role as Publisher of Teleny |
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James G.
Nelson |
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In the later nineteenth century, there were coteries of the male
English aristocracy given to sublimating their frustrated sexual desires by
enlivening their idol hours not only reading but writing pornographic
novels. They whiled away the dull
hours apart from their extravagant house parties in town and country and
their nightly attendance in Parliament by crafting in conjunction with
friends of like mind, pornographic literature, an activity which belied their
reputations as men of unimpeachable behavior and unsullied honor. Perhaps the best known of these cliques was
one led by Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton, and his close friend, the
famous Captain (later) Sir Richard Burton.
Milnes was a statesman of distinction who spent most of his adult life
as a Member of Parliament. A friend of
many of the most celebrated men and women of the Victorian age, Milnes was a
social lion who frequently entertained the elite of the nation at his famous
breakfasts in his London town house at 16 Upper Brooke street and during his
weekends at his family seat in Yorkshire, Fryston Hall. Instrumental with Thomas Carlyle in founding
the London Library and subsequently serving as its president, Milnes also is
remembered as the rescuer of John Keats’ reputation by writing the first
biography of the great Romantic poet.
Moreover, Milnes was a book collector of note whose magnificent
library at Fryston was widely known for its splendid editions of rare tomes,
and among the few, as the repository of one of the finest and most choice
collections of erotica in Britain, the mecca for such sexually risqué young
men as the young poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, who, in a review of his
recently published volume, Poems and
Ballads (1866), had by a leading critic been dubbed the ‘unclean imp from
the pit’ and elevated to the unenviable position of the ‘libidinous laureate
of a pack of satyrs.’ (Morley, 145) Milnes, taking a fatherly interest in his
new protégé, made a pet of him, opening to him the wonders of this vast
gathering of erotica, which included choice works by the Marquis de Sade. (Pope-Hennessy II, 132-34; Nelson: Milnes,
passim.) Milnes was aided in the leadership of the coterie by Burton, well
known then as today as a world traveler, explorer, diplomat and translator of
Eastern erotica such as The Kama Sutra
(1883) and The Ananga-Ranga (1885),
and the author of a celebrated work of erotica, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (1885-1888), more
commonly known as The Arabian Nights.
(Pope-Hennessy II, 122-26). |
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Among the Milnes-Burton coterie’s pleasureful pursuits was the
penning of pornographic novels such as Milnes’s own The Rodiad (1871), a long poem in praise of the joys of
flagellation which reflected the sadistic/masochistic experiences of many an
upper-class boy at an English public school (including the young Swinburne)
during the Victorian age. More
important for our purposes, though, was the group’s penchant for regaling
themselves by composing so-called ‘Round-Robin’ novels, that is lengthy
fictions written over a period of time by the members who took turns writing
a chapter or so until, having circulated among all the participating members,
the work came to a close. Among such
works produced by the Milnes-Burton clique was The Romance of Lust (1873-76.) Though the publication of such
novels by reputable publishers was a quite risqué business, underground
publishers such as William Lazenby (alias ‘Duncan Cameron’) eagerly printed
these ‘Round-Robin’ tales which were then available in small numbers to a
select public, primarily men of wealth who indulged their leisure hours by
perusing them. So dangerous and
delicate was this matter of publication that Burton published many of his
books under false imprints, referring to them as ‘printed for private
circulation only’ or as issuing from the membership of a private society. Burton and his protégé Leonard Smithers
brought out several works of erotica under the imprint of a fake society
known as the ‘Kama Shastra Society.’ London, of course, was never listed in
the imprint as the place of publication, but as issuing from exotic cities
such as ‘Athens,’ ‘Benares,’ and ‘Cosmopoli.’ |
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Smithers’ relationship with Burton came about when the young man
subscribed to Burton’s Arabian Nights,
followed by a correspondence the consequence of which led to the
Burton-Smithers collaboration in the translation and privately published
edition of Priapeia (1890)) and the
Carmina of Catullus (1894) which
appeared after the death of Burton.
Although Milnes had died in 1885, Smithers, deeply involved as he and
Nichols were in the early ’Nineties with pornographic materials, was well
acquainted with the Round- Robin novel.
So it is not surprising that in 1893 Smithers and Nichols
clandestinely printed and distributed perhaps the best-known and finest
example of all Round-Robin novels, Teleny,
or The Reverse of the Medal. A
Physiological Romance of To-day.
Published in two volumes at ‘Cosmopoli,’ in an edition of 200 copies,
it was nicely printed on Wrigley laid paper and bound in salmon-pink lettered
wrappers at the considerable price of four guineas. (Mendes 87-A and pp. 447-49, 253; Nelson C1893.1; Booth contains
a photograph of the Teleny title-page, #423, p. 58) According to Brian Reade, Teleny was ‘the one English novel
until then in which the main story was concerned with homosexuality at its
fullest extent,’ the novel’s authors, Reade continues, being ‘alone in their
day in England in attempting to record the special atmosphere of homosexual
intrigue and the emotions of men involved in what the police call a liaison.’
(Reade 49-50). More important, the
novel, over the years, has been associated with the name of Oscar Wilde, who,
according to the account of Charles Hirsch (the Frenchman who penned the only
account of the novel’s origins), brought the manuscript of Teleny into his
Librairie Parisienne bookshop in Coventry Street, London, ‘towards the end of
1890,’ with directions that the tied-up and carefully sealed parcel be held
until one of Wilde’s friends, producing Wilde’s calling card, should ask for
it. The parcel was called for and returned
to Hirsch four times before it was finally returned to Wilde. (Hirsch’s account is in the Introduction to
his 1934 edition of a French translation of Teleny). Although the
authorship of Teleny has by some
been attributed to Wilde himself, the novel is probably the product of
several authors, as Hirsch’s account suggests. Moreover, Hirsch, who gave in to temptation
and read the manuscript while it was in his care, noticed that the manuscript
was written in a number of different hands.
If so, Teleny is clearly a
pornographic novel written in the Round- Robin tradition. (For suggestions as to who the authors
probably were, see Booth #423, p.57). |
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Although Hirsch himself did not know how the manuscript of Teleny got into Smithers’s hands. One might speculate that because of the
sensationally pornographic nature of Teleny,
not even Wilde would have approached any reputable publisher of the day. Yet his acquaintance with the
Smithers-Nichols rare book shop and printing businesses, both located in Soho
Square, probably led him there sometime in 1891. Smithers, who later declared that he would
publish anything other publishers dared not touch, accepted the dangerous job
of printing Teleny. But as soon as the manuscript came into his
hands, he made some important changes in the text. These emendations angered Hirsch when he
read the printed work. Besides adding
the subtitle, ‘Or the Reverse of the Medal,’ Smithers also had omitted the
prologue, which, in Hirsch’s view, ‘meant that the dialogue began abruptly
without the reader being acquainted with the characters. But,’ continued Hirsch, ‘the major
difference’ was the transference of the setting of the novel from London to
Paris. Later when Hirsch met Smithers
at the 1900 Exposition in Paris, he asked the publisher why he had made that
emendation, Smithers replying: ‘in order not to shock the natural
amour-propre of the English subscribers.’ (Smithers at that time told Hirsch
that ‘a definitive version’ of Teleny
existed and, to quote Hirsch’s account, that ‘he was going to print a second
edition as soon as the original 1893 one was out of print.’) Although
Smithers generally has been criticized for this particular change in the text
of Teleny, John McRae, in his
Introduction to his excellent edition of the novel, writes that Smithers’
‘defence of “the national amour proper” is not as spurious as it might seem.’
In McRae’s opinion, Smithers’ ‘transferring of the action of Teleny to Paris, while in no way
lessening the risqué content of the book, gave an added fashionable frisson
of Frenchness to an already highly esoteric work. The fascination of the Aesthetic movement,
for things French--from yellow-bound books to the eroticism of Pierre Louys,’
McRae opines, ‘makes Smithers’ alteration both understandable and apposite.’
(McRae 10) In his prospectus which was issued to advertise Teleny, Smithers described the novel
as ‘undoubtedly, the most powerful and most cleverly written erotic Romance
which has appeared in the English language during recent years.’ Apparently
Smithers was content that his readers assumed that there was a single author
and that that person was Wilde, referring as he did to the novel’s author as
‘a man of great imagination ... [who]
has conceived a thrilling story, based to some extent on the subject treated
by an eminent littérateur [John Addington Symonds] who died a few months
ago--i.e. on the Urning, or man-loving
man. It is a most extraordinary story
of passion,’ continued Smithers, ‘and, while dealing with scenes which surpass
in freedom the wildest license, the culture of its author’s style adds an
additional piquancy and spice to the narration.’ (Mendes 87-A. Smithers here is referring to Symonds’ A Problem in Greek Ethics which
Smithers had privately printed in 1901.
Nelson C1901.1) |
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Although Smithers had told Hirsch in 1900 that he possessed ‘a
definitive version’ of Teleny which he intended to publish, it is doubtful
that such a version ever existed. By
1900 Smithers’ ‘Glory Years,’ as I have dubbed them elsewhere, were
over. By then a bankrupt and
disillusioned publisher who was rapidly losing ground, force to pirate the
drawings of Aubrey Beardsley which he once had so proudly owned, the works of
Wilde, and others, painfully ill and relying more and more heavily on the
fatal twosome, drugs and drink, Smithers I suspect would have made an attempt
along with his underground printer associates to issue the ‘definitive
version’ of Teleny if such a manuscript had existed. Yet who knows but what that ‘definitive
version’ of the novel lies misplaced or forgotten in the archives of some
great library or, perhaps, its value unknown, lies at the bottom of some old
trunk in the lumber and wrack of some dusty old attic waiting to be
resurrected in time by an ardent Wildean with a nose for lost treasures? |
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WORKS CITED |
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[Booth, Robert]. Leonard Smithers & the 1890s: The
Booth Collection of Books Published by Leonard Smithers: [A
Catalogue]. London: Phillips Auction
House, 1996. |
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McRae, John.
‘Introduction,’ Teleny,
Edited with an Introduction. London:
Gay Men’s Press Publications, 1986. |
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Mendes, Peter. Clandestine Erotic Fiction in English
1800-1939. Aldershot: Scolar
Press, 1993. |
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Morley, John. ‘Mr
Swinburne’s New Poems,’ Saturday Review,
22 (4 August 1866). |
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Nelson, James G. Publisher to the Decadents: Leonard
Smithers in the Careers of Beardsley, Wilde, Dowson. University Park, Pa. : Penn State Press; High Wycombe, Bucks:
The Rivendale Press, 2000 |
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——‘Richard Monckton Milnes,’ Dictionary of Literary Biography,’
vol. 184: Nineteenth-Century British Book-Collectors and Bibliographers,
ed. William Baker and Kenneth
Womack. Detroit: Gale Research, 1997. |
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Pope-Hennessy, James. Monckton Milnes. 2 vols.
New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1955. |
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Reade, Brian. Introduction,
Sexual Heretics. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1970. |
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