George Norman Douglas 8 December β 7 February was an Austro-Scottish novelist and travel writer, widely admired in his day. He was also an active lover of boys, which was well-known in his social and literary circles, but not outside it. Its premise is that he is picking visiting-cards at random out of a bowlful which had accumulated during his lifetime, and writing about the people who had left them β and thus about himself too. Presented here are all that is of Greek love interest. Some are character sketches of well-known pederasts he knew, often giving original and fascinating information about them.
As regards himself, he was bold in what he did reveal, but his revelations are veiled in a slight aura of ambiguity which can best be removed by referring to the best and most thorough biography of him by Mark Holloway.
The man addressed here is Ernest Frederick Eric Wolton , whose lover Douglas had been when Wolton was a boy and with whom he was to remain intimate friends until death. My Dear Eric β. I wonder whether you realize β I don't suppose you do β that it was you who put the idea of this book into my head. You begin to remember? It was queer, you said, and you said it more than once, that you still knew so little about my life, about where and how I had spent all those years before the evening of the 5 November ; very queer; only a glimpse here and thereβ¦.
I kept the idea in my head, and here you are. Now, if you like, you can read about the kind of thing one used to do and the kind of people one used to meet. Ghosts, nearly all of them; undistinguished ghosts gliding alongβ¦. I skim through what I have written and note just one thing: taking us all round, we of those days must have had a fairly concrete and positive view of life. We lived with greater zest than the present generation seems able to do.
(mh=BRGU4rELcDL0kcu1)10.jpg "Whores in Rock Hill")
We had more fun β of that I am convinced. I often look around me and wonder what has come over the youngsters of today. Are they losing the sense of reality? Why are they listless, as if their blood-temperature were two or three degrees below the normal? Can you explain it? Yours ever, Uncle Norman. Totidem verbis. Now why should a Greek secondary school boy, one of those with the imposing gold braid on their caps, have a calling-card printed in the English language, and at Argos?
