The Problem of Pornography

When I was serving my short term as a Harvard undergraduate at the fag end of the twenties there was one bookshop—which I later referred to fictionally as the Kelmscott—with an atmosphere so rarefied that it seemed almost a breach of etiquette to ask the proprietor the price of a book. There were on its shelves, between red leather lounging chairs, first editions of most English and American modern authors as well as such limited edition items as the Nonesuch Blake, etc. Here one went to buy the Hound & Horn, here the Joyce cult burgeoned a decade before it captured the Harvard Yard. One could buy Ulysses under-the-counter for $25 if one wanted to distract the proprietor, a long-nosed red-haired man in gold spectacles who usually sat in a leather armchair reading and smoking a rather incense-like tobacco mixture known as Mick McQuade. He used to open his shop at about eleven and close it at four or earlier, and he never seemed to care whether anyone bought a book or not. I always admired him in my freshman way as a man of independent means who was using that means as a contribution to culture and an antidote to academic stuffiness. Nor was I alone. Years afterward in the double issue American number of Cyril Connolly’s Horizon an insider writing on the Cambridge scene remarked that many a Harvard undergraduate received more of his education at the Kelmscott than he did up the street at Seaver Hall.

I thought of that the other day when I saw the paper-backed Lady Chatterleys for sale on the racks of the Boston subway stands. I also thought of what I had discovered much later, that the avant-garde bookshop was really an esthetic front for a back-door smut trade. The leather chairs, the first editions that one was free to browse among, the leisurely atmosphere impregnated by Mick McQuade, the late openings and early closings, were all paid for by hard-core pornography.

FR

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Francis Russell

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When I was serving my short term as a Harvard undergraduate at the fag end of the twenties there was one bookshop—which I later referred to fictionally as the Kelmscott—with an atmosphere so rarefied that it seemed almost a breach of etiquette to ask the proprietor the price of a book. There were on its shelves, between red leather lounging chairs, first editions of most English and American modern authors as well as such limited edition items as the Nonesuch Blake, etc. Here one went to buy the Hound & Horn, here the Joyce cult burgeoned a decade before it captured the Harvard Yard. One could buy Ulysses under-the-counter for $25 if one wanted to distract the proprietor, a long-nosed red-haired man in gold spectacles who usually sat in a leather armchair reading and smoking a rather incense-like tobacco mixture known as Mick McQuade. He used to open his shop at about eleven and close it at four or earlier, and he never seemed to care whether anyone bought a book or not. I always admired him in my freshman way as a man of independent means who was using that means as a contribution to culture and an antidote to academic stuffiness. Nor was I alone. Years afterward in the double issue American number of Cyril Connolly’s Horizon an insider writing on the Cambridge scene remarked that many a Harvard undergraduate received more of his education at the Kelmscott than he did up the street at Seaver Hall.

I thought of that the other day when I saw the paper-backed Lady Chatterleys for sale on the racks of the Boston subway stands. I also thought of what I had discovered much later, that the avant-garde bookshop was really an esthetic front for a back-door smut trade. The leather chairs, the first editions that one was free to browse among, the leisurely atmosphere impregnated by Mick McQuade, the late openings and early closings, were all paid for by hard-core pornography.