Memoirs Of A Booklegger

By Jack Kahane

Kahane, father of Olympia Press founder Maurice Girodias, recalls his life and his incredible publishing run in Paris from '31-39.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Olympia Press
• Release date: Dec 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781608727742

Book preview

Table of Contents

Memoirs Of A Booklegger

Jack Kahane

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Memoirs Of A Booklegger

Jack Kahane

This page copyright © 2009 Olympia Press.

Jack Kahane

TO MY BROTHER

F.E.K.

BEST OF BLOKES

Chapter One

WE were drinking coffees together, Brighouse and I, in one of those dark underground dens for which Manchester in those days was justly famous. It was eleven o'clock in the morning, we were both in the cotton trade, and the hour had struck (as it did at the same time every morning) to discuss ways and means of getting out of it.

Both of us had been born into cotton. Brig was in his father's business, but my father had died when I was six and his business soon after him, so I had to find a job when I left school. We were both Manchester Grammar School boys and saw no reason to be ashamed of it. I had not known Brig at school. He was a few years older and on the modern side. By the time I had reached the Classical Transitus, next to the top, my interest in education had evaporated, and the cotton trade looked like heaven.

How to get out of it? Brig had definite ideas. I hadn't. He was going to be a playwright (it would have been affected to say dramatist): he was one already. I don't know how many plays he had written. All his holidays he spent in London, and went to a play every evening and to every matinée. When he got home from the office he wrote hard into the night. He wrote, thought, lived, dreamed, saw plays. He was unique—at least I thought he was until I met Stanley Houghton. Another playwright....

But how to get out of cotton? We sipped our coffee, and felt a little scornful. I had written a play or two myself, infected by the prevalent ardour, but my heart wasn't in it. I couldn't see myself a professional playwright. Whereas Brig-house (and Houghton) saw nothing else. But playwriting, where does it lead? I complained. Look at all you've written, and you're still here, getting old selling cotton.

Brig sucked at his pipe. I don't know that he appreciated the allusion to age. And I think he had the essential realism to argue that twenty-four wasn't really old.

Well, Jack, he said, his eyes glinting, as far as I am concerned, the theatre's the only way out of here, and you must do as you like. He jerked up his head, looking more like a neurotic bulldog than ever. I didn't feel happy about it. London was the Mecca, of course; we may have been decidedly not snobs about being Manchester men, but that didn't mean that we wanted to go on living there.

Well, I don't think playwriting's the way, I persisted. Brig looked at me scornfully. Then what's your way? Alas, I didn't know. I remained silent, and sucked at my pipe. One couldn't have literary leanings and not smoke a pipe. Je grillais quelques cigarettes. You recognize it? Balzac, Eugene de Rastignac, Lucien de Rubempre. Les Illusions Perdues. I had read the whole Comedie Humaine, from the beginning to end, the whole forty volumes of them, in French, and my entire outlook had been shattered and reformed.

Of course I didn't realize it then, while I was drinking coffee with Brighouse, but one of the many major tragedies of my life was that I was a romantic born in an age of realists.

There is a way, I said at last, firmly. Not for me the petty vie de province, even if I hadn't the playwright's sacred fire. I'll bet you, Brig, I'll bet you that—What? In the name of God what? How was I to prove beyond all words of doubt my defiance? Inspiration came. "I'll bet you I'm mentioned in a Manchester Guardian leader before you, I gasped. Brig-house stared at me, eyes bulging out, jaws sagging. He left off smoking his pipe. I met his gaze firmly, my head high. Blasphemy I might have uttered, but I didn't retreat. I mentioned the stake, the amount of which I have forgotten. Is it a bet? I asked. He nodded and then: Pshaw! he uttered, practically as spelt. Come on, let's pay for this coffee, I have to get back to WORK."

Pretty proud of myself I strode away in my direction; six feet tall and about three inches thick. I passed a girl, hurrying along. She had liquid brown eyes as I could perceive because they were full on me for a moment, softly and amiably. I blushed and strode on. Pshaw! I said to myself, exactly as spelt. A little soubrette. Somebody's plaything for an hour. But of course, I looked higher. La Femme de trente ans was my mark.

My life until then had been an up and down affair with the downs in a large majority. My family seemed to be in a state of chronic impecuniosity, and poverty comes the harder when one has known another state. Moreover, few people can adapt themselves to poverty who have not been born to it. My family was no exception, and probably made the worst of such resources as they still possessed.

My mother having died when I was eight (my father had preceded her by two years), I was brought up by a sister more than twenty years older than myself (I was the penultimate of a large family). I adored her. Unfortunately, from my point of view, she had two boys of her own, one a year younger than myself, the other a baby. It was on my elder nephew's account that I was so glad to leave school. I had a very average brain and as luck would have it his was one of the best of his generation. A first-class mind, bad cess to him. So I left school when I was nearing seventeen, and he went to Oxford—Balliol, where he got the Craven, the Ireland, the Gaisford Greek verse, and most else—and out of my life for ever.

And I went to business. I got a job in a shipping office which had advertised in the Manchester Guardian for a gentleman's son. As I got the job I must have been a gentleman's son. And the catch was that whereas ordinary men's sons were paid five shillings a week, gentlemen's sons were paid four shillings and prospects.

We were a perfectly new firm. The furniture was new and burnished, and brightly reflected the big cheerful fire. There were two partners, one of whom was a gentleman, the other of whom advertised for gentlemen's sons. We were engaged in the export of cotton goods to Shanghai, China, where we had our own branch. At first I took it very seriously, and worked hard. On three evenings a week I went to the technological branch of the Victoria University of Manchester, which was a high-sounding institution. I learned weaving, or rather didn't, as the simplest machine is beyond my build of mind to understand. I got a diploma for weaving without knowing at which end of the machine to put the shuttle, and then dismissed the matter from my mind.

As we were dealing with China I thought a logical thing to do would be to learn Chinese. For three years I applied myself to that amalgam of picture making and vocal acrobatics, and did better at it than at the weaving machines. I was first in Chinese from beginning to end, and enjoyed every moment of that experience. The professor was E. H. Parker, who had been British consul in various parts of China for countless years. He was a fascinating man to me, very gruff and eccentric, and I think he took rather a fancy to me. Perhaps that was why I was always first. He had been in command of the defence of Canton during the Boxer rebellion, for which he had received written thanks from the German Emperor, the Tsar and other monarchs. These he showed me one day, not without a certain shy pride, but I don't think he was really interested in them. He was deeply devoted to the language and literature and had written some excellent works on the subjects. I wonder why nobody has thought to reprint them at this time when China is such tragic news.

He lived in Liverpool—he was also a Reader in Chinese at the University — with his daughter Mary and two huge dogs who always dined at the same table. Other pupils were Sir Tom Ainscough who has made good, but in India, and Norman Melland, brother-in-law of Asquith, the Prime Minister, by his first wife, Helen. Norman Melland joined the class late and I was told off to bring him up to date. It was purely honorific, and I only remember it because it was in Melland's house I first smoked a supremely good cigar, my pay.

After about three years of drudgery, I found out that the moment had come to choose which of the young gentlemen should be sent to the Shanghai branch. There were only two of us in it: a boy called Rupert whose father was a neighbour of one of the partners, and who, although a good sport, was one of the most wooden-headed citizens that I have ever met. But his uncle was a professor of music and a prominent member of the bowling and social club to which the senior partner belonged; so Rupert had the advantage of birth and my weaving diploma and my considerable knowledge of Chinese went for nothing.

My only consolation was that in less than a year he was shipped back as hopelessly incompetent, both socially and mentally. I was delighted. I had come to loathe the senior partner, who was anyhow a scented and over-polished Cockney, and whose choice had been the cause of so much expense and humiliation.

I was fobbed off with the secretaryship of a tiny subsidiary company which had been in financial difficulties and had been taken over. But I was no longer interested in business. I dropped Chinese and began to be more interested in playwriting, and similar pursuits. Business, such as it was, had become a mere contemptible means to an end. I wasn't sure what the end was, but that didn't matter.

Velvet was the particular product my firm produced; a more important branch of the cotton industry than might be imagined. There is quite a romance of velvet, or there was as far as I was concerned. The surface of the cotton consists of invisible loops across the whole width of the cloth which are cut by a knife, the two halves of each loop, infinitely repeated, being the pile. The cutting operation is an industry of its own. It was still being done by hand, and was controlled by a group of men banded together into an association of incomparable toughness. The member of it with whom my firm was in touch, Roger Meanock, was the toughest of all. Today when I hear of tough Americans I think of Roger and smile. What's mine's my own, said Roger, and I please myself how I spend it.

One day, a friend, Price-Heywood, said he could get me a better job. A big merchant he knew wanted to start a velvet department. We met. He was a gigantic German, with a yellow hat and a flower in his buttonhole, and bunions. I had recently mastered the art of conversation, so I quietly listened to him while he talked himself into giving me the job. I began with about six times as much money as I had been getting; a fine office, a secretary, and forty per cent of the profits.

The first job was production. The cloth was easy to buy, but at the next stage, cutting, I struck my first snag. Roger Meanock refused to cut for me. There were enough people in the velvet trade. I should have stayed with Harry Ross, my previous boss. I tried every means to persuade him to alter his decision, but he refused to budge. I was spoiling the market. And Roger was the Association.

I went to see my new chief and put the situation before him. Well, vat are you going to do about it?—I don't know yet.

He gave me a bleak look. Veil, you had better find out. I went back to my office and thought. By then I had the offer of a good many orders from friends, but no way to execute them. It was winter. I went out into the Lancashire and Cheshire wilds where the cutting was done. In a pub I met a man who had been a cutter's foreman and who was out of a job. We had a few drinks and talked and had a few more drinks. He was a bad hat, that became more evident with every drink he swallowed. But he told me he could get a few people together, here and there, if he had the money. Never mind the money. How many pieces a week? That night I slept where I drank. The next morning I hired a car and we went round the snow-covered country-side. In three months my business was well away. I had a cutting business consisting of over a hundred branches, each branch having a staff of at least one. The cutting was bad and expensive, and as I had foreseen, my foreman friend was soaking me to the limit of endurance. But I was delivering the goods.

And one morning four months after I had driven round the country-side Roger Meanock walked into my office. Anything fresh? he said, sitting and lighting a cigarette. I had won. I had busted a trust. I gave Roger an order for the rest of the year on our account.

Chapter Two

ON the momentous morning of my bet with Brighouse I was still a young and hard-up clerk or secretary or something of the sort. The Manchester Guardian was a divinity towards which all we young men shaped our ends, and its leaders were the oracular emanation of godhead itself. In those days, Edward VII still reigned, the M.G. had begun to prove itself right about its unpatriotic policy in the Boer War; in fact there were so many high problems to be settled in its august columns that it seemed to me improbable that there ever would be an occasion to settle my bet with Brighouse.

Manchester at that time was known in the world of art principally as the habitat of the Hallé Orchestra, whose conductor was Hans Richter. A big, snuffy, bearded, fat German, Richter was a god, a German god, but a god. About him had collected a thick and even impenetrable bunch of sycophantic worshippers, Germans and others, who would allow no word of criticism against their cigar-smoking, beer-drinking, potato-salad-devouring darling.

In spite of his attendant mob, Richter was a great man. His Beethoven and his Wagner have never been equalled except, and in a very different and personal way, by Toscanini, the Duce of music today, who has said that in Richter alone he could recognize his master. Richter was a very great conductor. He had been one of the little band that had played the Siegfried Idyll in Wagner's garden one early morning as a birthday surprise for him. He conducted the Ring at Covent Garden, and I have heard no one pretend that he has had a successor greater than himself.

He was massive, Olympic, immutable, and so was his conducting, and so, generally, was his music. He was an intolerant, tyrannical giant and he ruled music in Manchester with a baton of toughened steel. And all the sycophants, ninety per cent of whom couldn't have told the difference between an andante and a pizzicato, fawned on him and found him lovely.

My musical experience consisted of desultory violin playing during about eleven years. I played in amateur orchestras for a time, very badly, and then I did the one really musicianly thing of my life: I gave up playing for ever. The last orchestra I had played in was one run by the musical section of the Old Boys' Association. I was secretary of the section and I think my administrative abilities were superior to my musical gifts. But the section was small and parochial and I lost interest in it pretty soon. I hate the type of man who is a successful leader of associations. They have a smug smiling amiability, an odour of efficiency and disinterestedness, and generally a large secret axe to grind. One sees the same type of people on the executive committee of Chambers of Commerce as one did in the Old Mancunians' Association of my youth: worthy, efficient, communal-minded people, but...

The musical section was one of the first societies I joined and, after creating a good deal of commotion in it, not without fracas I left. One of them, however, in which I was perfectly happy, was the French Club, or Society. I forget exactly what it was called. I had always had an impulse towards France, and Balzac, Hugo, the Symbolists, and all the other literary adventurers had increased it to the point of being a permanent consideration. Most of the French Club's interests were literary and dramatic, but a few members were musical, and one day a French member wondered about why one never heard French music in Manchester.

French music? I asked innocently. "Do you mean Carmen?"

That's the point! the Frenchman said. Here every one seems to think that Bizet, Massenet, and Saint-Saens are the only French composers. They've never heard of Debussy, Franck —

Oh! Come —

d'Indy, Dukas, Faure, Ravel, Duparc...

He began to talk of French music, and we agreed that we inhabitants of Manchester were entitled to hear the French as well as the Germans. And for my part I said that I was going to see about it.

In a little while we had organized a deputation to call on Richter. Herr Doktor, we asked him, with carefully prepared humility, may we occasionally, very occasionally, be given an opportunity of hearing some French music?

He stared at us malevolently. French music? He grunted. There is no French music. And shrugged us out.

The disgusting old despot! I raged. Who the devil did he think he was? Did he imagine we owed allegiance to his beastly emperor? To hell with German music and German conductors and Germans generally. We were all furious anyway, but I more than the others, because I was the youngest, the least experienced, and consequently the most intolerant of such blatant bullying. And also the vestments of brief authority have always got my goat.

At that time I belonged to a little luncheon club, about which I shall have something to say elsewhere. Foaming at the mouth, I asked the members what they thought of it. Reaction was mixed, but I collected those on my side. One of them was Gerald Cumberland, as he was afterwards generally known. And there's English music, too. I looked at him doubtfully. Yes, modern music; as well as Elgar, there's Delius, Holbrooke, Bantock, Boughton.—You don't say so! I exclaimed, and then, Look here, we're going to form a society, the Manchester Musical Society, and we're going to do things.

We did. In a very short while we had hundreds of members, nice Manchester people of all social grades who wanted to hear French and English music at prices they could afford. We had fortnightly club concerts of very high merit, and two or three full-dress affairs. We gave Debussy and Delius, Holbrooke, Boughton, and other French and English moderns whose names were unknown to our public. We made a stir, we were well talked of: our concerts were small affairs at the best, but they had the right idea; our audiences forgave technical shortcomings, and applauded our adventurousness and goodwill.

And then there happened something that could not but favour our cause. The Hallé Orchestra, conducted by the unique Hans Richter, the divine Doktor, showed a deficit. The guarantors were squealing.

The finances of the orchestra, I should explain, were guaranteed by a group of people of social eminence, whose names were printed in the programmes of the concerts and who got a good deal of kudos out of their disinterested generosity. For years all had gone well. The Thursday evening concerts were the only artistic-social rendezvous the city of nearly a million inhabitants possessed, and when a guarantor took his seat ordinary mortals eyed him reverently and gratefully as he looked about him and bowed gravely to other guarantors sitting in adjacent seats. They were all wreathed in dignity and altruism. Thanks to these high-minded gentlemen, merchant princes for the most part, we had the best orchestra in England; they guaranteed us the Doktor for our pleasure and uplift. They were the wealthiest, the most important, and the most respected inhabitants of no mean