Details
THOMAS, Dylan Marlais (1914-1953). Autograph letter signed ('Dylan') to his sister, Nancy [Marles], 5 Cumdonkin Drive, Uplands on Avon, Swansea, [1926?], 10 pages, 4to, on lined notepaper (stained and strenthened across centre folds after removal of adhesive tape, tape also removed from margins of final leaf, some tears at upper margins). Provenance: given by Nancy to her first cousin, Doris Williams, who was on holiday with her in Llangain at the time the letter was written, and who later married Randolph Fulleylove; sold Sotheby's London, July 21 1981, lot 599.
'This is not a news-letter' Thomas boldly declares. Its unstated aim was to cheer up his older sister, who had been ill, and instead of family news, it teems with schoolboy wit and drollery, frequently in verse form. A panegyric on books ends with the bathos of books bound by Woolworth's: 'Books! Ah! Before I go on we must stop. Books! what fasination [sic]; what charm; what undreamt-of dreams, what hours of unseprressed [sic] joy lie between the brown-gilt, (which has a guilty look) covers of Messers (pun!!) Woolworth's classics.' His account of a meeting an old man in Mumbles Cemetry leads to a nonsense verse in the style of Lewis Carroll: 'A drummer is a man we know who has to do with drums, But I've never met a plumber yet who has to do with plums. A cheerful man who sells you hats would be a cheerful hatter, But is a serious man who sells you mats "a serious matter?".' The letter next launches into a series of 'nursery rhymes extra-specially for Nancy-Tommy-Goo! Goo!'. These verses, of either four or eight lines, are so stylistically apt that they might easily be mistaken for anthologised examples. However, the last of the five, 'Poor, Dear Grandpa', is a squib on one of the poet's teachers: 'What is the matter with grandpa, Gwynn, Whatever can the matter be, He's broken his leg in trying to spell Dyllan Thomas without a T.' A prose riddle on the subject of a lion swallowing a missionary is followed by a four-line verse, 'Say Good Bye when your chum is married.' The letter concludes with a poem on the 'wowwies' [worries] of Swansea life: 'There's a worry in the morning because the coffee's cold, There's the worry of the postman & the "paper" to unfold. It's a worry getting on your boots & going to the train, And you've got to put your hat on & take it off again. It's a wonder how I live with such a constant strain .... Now comes the awful "wowwy" of finishing this letter, One word before I end Dear -- let's hope you're beastly better.'
THE FIRST RECORDED LETTER OF DYLAN THOMAS in The Collected Letters, ed. Paul Ferris (2nd edition, 2000, pp. 5-9). Ferris notes that since it pokes fun at 'Grandpa' Gwynne, a maths teacher at Swansea Grammar School, it must be later than September 1925, when Thomas entered the school. His eleventh birthday was on 27 October 1925, so he was probably either eleven or twelve, and his sister, Nancy, nineteen or twenty, when it was written. No other pre-1930 letters are known. Everything in the letter, even the 'Uplands on Avon' address, is a form of prank or joke. At the same time, the juvenalia is highly accomplished, showing great energy and a seemingly limitless talent for mimickery and mockery.
'This is not a news-letter' Thomas boldly declares. Its unstated aim was to cheer up his older sister, who had been ill, and instead of family news, it teems with schoolboy wit and drollery, frequently in verse form. A panegyric on books ends with the bathos of books bound by Woolworth's: 'Books! Ah! Before I go on we must stop. Books! what fasination [sic]; what charm; what undreamt-of dreams, what hours of unseprressed [sic] joy lie between the brown-gilt, (which has a guilty look) covers of Messers (pun!!) Woolworth's classics.' His account of a meeting an old man in Mumbles Cemetry leads to a nonsense verse in the style of Lewis Carroll: 'A drummer is a man we know who has to do with drums, But I've never met a plumber yet who has to do with plums. A cheerful man who sells you hats would be a cheerful hatter, But is a serious man who sells you mats "a serious matter?".' The letter next launches into a series of 'nursery rhymes extra-specially for Nancy-Tommy-Goo! Goo!'. These verses, of either four or eight lines, are so stylistically apt that they might easily be mistaken for anthologised examples. However, the last of the five, 'Poor, Dear Grandpa', is a squib on one of the poet's teachers: 'What is the matter with grandpa, Gwynn, Whatever can the matter be, He's broken his leg in trying to spell Dyllan Thomas without a T.' A prose riddle on the subject of a lion swallowing a missionary is followed by a four-line verse, 'Say Good Bye when your chum is married.' The letter concludes with a poem on the 'wowwies' [worries] of Swansea life: 'There's a worry in the morning because the coffee's cold, There's the worry of the postman & the "paper" to unfold. It's a worry getting on your boots & going to the train, And you've got to put your hat on & take it off again. It's a wonder how I live with such a constant strain .... Now comes the awful "wowwy" of finishing this letter, One word before I end Dear -- let's hope you're beastly better.'
THE FIRST RECORDED LETTER OF DYLAN THOMAS in The Collected Letters, ed. Paul Ferris (2nd edition, 2000, pp. 5-9). Ferris notes that since it pokes fun at 'Grandpa' Gwynne, a maths teacher at Swansea Grammar School, it must be later than September 1925, when Thomas entered the school. His eleventh birthday was on 27 October 1925, so he was probably either eleven or twelve, and his sister, Nancy, nineteen or twenty, when it was written. No other pre-1930 letters are known. Everything in the letter, even the 'Uplands on Avon' address, is a form of prank or joke. At the same time, the juvenalia is highly accomplished, showing great energy and a seemingly limitless talent for mimickery and mockery.
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