Both the Ladies and the Gentlemen was Willie Donaldson’s first published "novel" and it’s one of the very best of his books I’ve managed to track down. It’s a difficult tome to categorise, but it’s probably more accurate to call Both... a work of distorted autobiography than a novel. Written when Willie was aged 38, the book details the period of his life he spent as a ponce, a "career" he embarked upon after returning to London from Ibiza, penniless, having blown the last of his third inherited fortune on a glass bottomed boat.
It’s a scream from the outset, by the way. From its opening line “Living in a brothel isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be” to its last words (coincidentally identical to its first) the book is a thoroughly engaging mixed bag, crammed with eccentric characters, philosophical diversions and an upside-down sense of morality.
From sozzled, upper-crust ex-impressarios to louche Australian con-men, from good-natured tarts to bent coppers, they’re all here and caricatured perfectly by Willie at his most playful. From early chapters detailing the lives and arrangements of call girls and their clients to the book’s outrageous, yet tastefully described, orgy, there are laughs aplenty to be had here and no mistake.
The plot, as much as there is one, sees Willie embarking on a number of schemes to keep himself busy while living on his call girl girlfriend’s “artistic earnings”, such as planning to write books on police corruption or pornography, before eventually moving out of the “brothel” at the novel’s end in a doomed attempt to set up an elite swingers’ club in partnership with a totter and the boozy, grandiose ex-theatre producer Toby Danvers (modelled on David Conyers, who produced the musical Hair in London in the late '60s).
As I say, though, it’s a difficult book to pin down. Unlike most novels, the book's narrative isn't concerned with being linear and, indeed, the work reads like a collection of embellished diary entries (which, in all honesty, is probably what it actually was).
Though this apparently loose style may well have been a deliberate ploy on Willie’s part. At one point in the book he pauses to reflect: “When I got home Emma Jane was doing a trick with a Spaniard, so I dipped into the Carnets of Albert Camus (as ponces will)...
“The first passage I came across was the one in which he refers to misplaced nostalgia for other people’s lives. This fallacy arises, says Camus, because other people’s lives, seen from outside, appear to form a whole. Our own lives, however, seen from the inside are all bits and pieces...”
Perhaps Willie was doing what he proposed in his memoir From Winchester to This and simply presenting the reader with “the facts” and allowing his audience to make of them what they will.
Sticking with the literary theme for a moment, it’s worth noting that Willie’s prose - which is always a delight - is top-notch here in his debut novel, and every page abounds with beautiful sentences, locutions and asides.
Indeed, Willie comes across as a world-weary upper-class Englishman perfectly at home in a strange little world vice, soft drugs and bizarre people, which is both a lovely depiction of his character and a useful way of ensuring that the plot nips along agreeably. Willie, here, is an observer rather than a doer, forever being pulled hither and yon by his various acquaintances’ crazy schemes.
Some of the scenes in this book are almost too funny to be read on public transport, and if you manage to get hold of a copy I’m sure you’ll agree that Ken and Willie’s visit to Farthingale’s bank, Danvers’ seduction of an eccentric old dame and the aforementioned climactic orgy (if you’ll pardon the phrase) are comedic situations you’ll find yourself re-playing in your head long after you’ve finished the book.
Compared to Willie’s other works, Both the Ladies and the Gentlemen is very similar in style to its follow-up The Balloons in the Black Bag/Nicknames Only and quite close in tone to The English Way of Doing Things, which was based on this book. It’s a more conventional and straightforwardly amusing book than his memoir, less obtuse than his Independent columns and much cheerier in tone than Is This Allowed.
A book I can’t recommend to fans of Donaldson heartily enough, Both the Ladies and the Gentlemen is essential reading for anyone keen on Willie’s work or fascinated by London low-life in the early ‘70s. It’s described on its jacket by Kenneth Tynan as “a minor classic of uncivilised bawdry,” and, frankly, I can think of no higher compliment nor more appropriate summation for this treasure of a book.
