Lytton Strachey [antikvár]

'I'K DOUBLE PREFACE The winter of 1963-4 was for me a crucial one. After two years' work, and a further two years of waiting, I had had my first book published: a biography of Hugh Kinpmill, the novelist, biographer and critic. But two weeks after publication I was being theatened with an action for libel. The situation seemed perilous. My chief witaess, Hesketh Pearson, who had encouraged me to write, suddenly died. I could muster other supporters, but they would hardly figure as star witnesses. There was Malcolm Muggeridge, who had contributed a marvellous introduction to my book, but who had elsewhere attacked the Queen and whose appearance in court was guaranteed to stir up violent antipathy in a jury. There was John Davenport, the critic, who at that time had chosen to wear a prejudicial black beard. And there was William Gerhardie, the distinguished novelist who had not actually published a novel for the last quarter of a centuiy and who, besides denying that he spoke with a slight Russian intonation, would certainly turn up at the wrong courtroom or on the wrong day whatever precautions I took. Altogether it was not a pleasant prospect. Yet my publisher, Martin Seeker, who was nearing eighty, appeared to find the predicament wonderfully invigorating. It brought back to him, evidendy, the good old fighting days of D.H. Lawrence, Norman Douglas and early Compton Mackenzie, all of whom he had published. While the old man seemed splendidly rejuvenated, I, still in my twenties, tottered towards a nervous senility. For nights on end I would start awake from dreadful courtroom scenes - rhetorical but unavailing speeches from the dock - to the dreary horror of early morning and the next batch of solicitors' letters. But out of this nightmare something had been bom. The first of the sbrteen publishers to whom I had submitted my Kingsmill manuscript was Heinemann. Fortunately it had fallen into the hands of James Michie, the poet and translator. He had liked it, had sent for me, and gendy explained that were his firm to make a practice of bringing out books about almost unknown writers by totally unknown authors, it would very soon be bankrupt. However, I might become better known myself were I to choose a less obscure subject. Had I any ideas? •This was the opportunity for which I was looking. Kingsmill was said to be one of those biographers who had imitated Lytton Strachey and so XI . ¦ ¦ i I ,