Eighty years ago, a woman gave a school exercise book filled with near-indecipherable scratchings to a maid, telling her to burn it in the kitchen boiler. It had been left in her house by an unwelcome guest.
The maid, Louie King, did not obey. Instead, she put it at the back of a drawer, only remembering its existence two decades later when she heard of the death in New York in 1953 of the man whose exercise book it had been.
He was the poet Dylan Thomas. Next month, the book – filled with 19 hand-written poems – will go under the hammer at Sotheby's, but it is already regarded as the most important Thomas find for decades.
The notebook, one of five used by Thomas during his career, holds poems – all of which were published later in his career, though heavily amended – written in the mid-1930s when he was in his early 20s.
The ink-filled pages, with crossed-out lines and absent-minded doodles, were left behind by Thomas at the home of his mother-in-law, Yvonne MacNamara, who loathed the man who had taken the heart of her daughter, Caitlin.
Sent by Louie King’s family to Sothebys for valuation, the notebook, which may throw light on some of the Welsh bard’s often impenetrable thoughts and meanings, astonished manuscript experts when they first opened its pages. Following his death, King inserted a covering note, explaining the provenance of the notebook and how it came to be in her hands, a boon today when its authenticity had to be verified: “This Book of Poetry by Dylan Thomas was with a lot of papers given to me to burn in the kitchen boiler. I saved it and forgot all about it until I read of his death.”
Thomas’s feelings towards his mother-in-law are illustrated by a letter also in the December 9th auction, in which he talks of sitting and hating her as she grumbles “in the sad, sticky, quiet of the lavatory”.
Centenary of birth
Today, the notebook could be sold for up to £150,000 (€189,000). Efforts will be made to keep it in Britain, particularly since this is the centenary of Thomas’s birth. The other four notebooks used by the poet – often dubbed the holy grail of Thomas-related papers for academics struggling to come to terms with his works – have long been held by the State University of New York in Buffalo.
However, even less exalted writings of Thomas are now valuable. On Wednesday, two cheques for £3 each that were cashed for the poet by the long-suffering landlord of the Cross House Inn in Laugharne sold for £3,750 (€4,727). The bounced cheques reflect the reality of Thomas’s life: “A heavy drinker from adolescence, he was also frequently short of money,” said an auctioneer for Bonhams before the sale.
