09/05/2017
TWENTY-SIX POEMS, ONE OF TEN COPIES PRINTED ON JAPAN VELLUM, WITH ORIGINAL PEN-AND-INK DRAWINGS BY DYLAN AND CAITLIN THOMAS
THOMAS, Dylan. Twenty-Six Poems. 4to, original quarter vellum & boards, publisher’s slipcase. (NY & London: James Laughlin & J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1949). First edition, deluxe issue. One of only 10 copies printed on Japan vellum, out of a total edition of 150 copies printed by Hans Mardersteig at the Officina Bodoni in Verona, Italy, and signed by Thomas. The ten copies on Japan vellum were divided between the publisher and the poet, the present copy being copy number five [V], one of the poet’s own copies, bearing his ownership signature and address on the rear endsheet: “Dylan / Boat House / Laugharne / Carmarthenshire / Wales.” The bibliographer suggests that: “the vellum copies preceded the hand-made paper issue by about two days.” Rolph B13. Schmoller 94. Barr 48 (regular issue). Twenty-Six Poems is a selection of Thomas’s best poems, including “I see the boys of summer”, “After the funeral”, “The hand that signed the paper”, “There was a saviour”, “Ballad of the Long-Legged Bait”, “Deaths and Entrances”, “Fern Hill”, “A Refusal to Mourn”, “In my craft and sullen art”, and “In Country Sleep”, among others.
Presentation copy, inscribed on the front free endpaper by Thomas to the Asian American poet José Garcia Villa: “To José Garcia Villa from Dylan Thomas”. Thomas’s inscription is followed on a later blank page by a pen-and-ink drawing by Thomas bearing the caption “Who is Love” and the inscription “from Dylan with affection, May 1953.” In addition, at the back of the book, there is a pen-and-ink portrait of José Garcia Villa by Caitlin Thomas, which is signed “Villa by Caitlin”.
At the time this book was published, Garcia Villa was an associate editor at New Directions, whose publisher James Laughlin co-published this book. Laughlin was delighted with Garcia Villa when he first met him: “Marvelous little guy. Like an affectionate squirrel. . . . He worships Cummings, which puts him in good with me.” – Ian S. MacNiven, “Literchoor Is My Beat”: A Life of James Laughlin, Publisher of New Directions ((N. Y.: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2014), p. 196. Garcia Villa owned copy number 106 of the regular issue of Twenty-Six Poems, also inscribed to him by Thomas. Although it is unlikely Garcia Villa could afford to buy Twenty-Six Poems at the time, it is possible that Laughlin gave him a copy of the regular issue, perhaps as a bonus, or allowed him to purchase a copy at a low price. As for Thomas’s own copy of the deluxe issue, Thomas may have given it to Garcia Villa, or may have offered to sell him this copy during the early 1950s when the poet was touring America and felt desperate to raise money. It should be noted that it is for his love poetry that José Garcia Villa is perhaps best known today.
Moreover, and most importantly, there is an additional pen-and-ink drawing by Caitlin on the page facing the colophon, a picture of “Dylan & me”, with the figure of Caitlin labeled “wife”, and the figure of Thomas labeled “D. T.s”. Above the drawing is an inscription in Caitlin’s hand reading “on George Reavey’s Nth birthday, May 4, 1952 at Irene Rice-Perieira’s and George Reavey’s apt.” The date is subsequently corrected: “Really 1st May”. At the time Reavey and his wife, the artist Irene Rice-Pereira, lived on West 15th St. in New York. Below the inscription are the signatures of those who were present at the party, including Dylan Thomas, Oscar Williams, Irene Rice-Pereira, and David Lougée [“one of Dylan’s first American friends” – John Malcolm Brinnin, Dylan Thomas in America (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1955), p. 278].
Caitlin joined Dylan for his second tour of America in 1952, and the inscriptions and drawings in this book, with the exception of Thomas’s ownership signature and address at the back, probably all date from the birthday party at Reavey’s house in May 1952, when Caitlin would have drawn the self-portrait of herself and Dylan, and the portrait of Garcia Villa, and when their friends signed the book. It is possible, of course, that Dylan could have met Garcia Villa again in May 1953, separately, and added the drawing and inscription to him then, but it seems more likely that he simply misdated the inscription at the time of Reavey’s party the previous year.
Caitlin did not accompany Dylan on his third tour of America in April/May 1953, and only returned to America on November 5, during Dylan’s fourth tour, after learning that Dylan had been hospitalized in New York. Thomas died on November 9, without having awakened from a coma, while Caitlin was recovering from a nervous breakdown at the River Crest Sanitarium on Long Island. Originally attributed to acute alcohol poisoning, the cause of Thomas’s death is now believed to have been severe bronchopneumonia, which went undiagnosed and untreated – that is to say, mistreated – at the time.
When Thomas was admitted to St. Vincent’s Hospital on November 5, “the simmering rivalry between Dylan’s local friends flared into open hostility. On the one hand was a definite inner circle centred on these three [John Malcolm Brinnin, Ruthven Todd and Liz Reitell, John Malcolm Brinnin’s assistant, with whom Thomas was having an affair] and the Slivkas [David and Rose]; on the other, a group, headed by George Reavey and Oscar Williams, who felt excluded. As well as being closer to Caitlin, they considered they had known Dylan longer and were the true guardians of his interests, literary and otherwise.” – Andrew Lycett, Dylan Thomas: A New Life (Woodstock & NY: Overlook Press, 2003), p. 370.
Artifacts like the present copy of Twenty-Six Poems seem all the more precious for commemorating the less conspicuous – because less self-consciously self-promoted – but no less important circle of Dylan and Caitlin Thomas’s friends in New York City.
Although Dylan Thomas’s impromptu impulse to add caricatures of himself and his friends to copies of his books is familiar to collectors, Caitlin’s impromptu drawings are less well known. However, Ferris notes her “own brand of wild caricature” and mentions her impulse, “unnervingly, in her more uncommunicative moods, (to) take out her notebook and begin sketching everyone around her.” – Ferris, p. 324.
A fabulous copy of Dylan Thomas’s rarest book.
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