An impromptu drinking ditty, dashed off in pencil by Dylan Thomas while seated at a London bar, is to be published for the first time after coming to light during the centenary of the poet’s birth.
The ode to the pub was discovered by Fred Jarvis, a former general secretary of the UK’s National Union of Teachers, in papers belonging to his late wife, Anne, whose parents knew Thomas.
Written in Henneky’s Long Bar — now the Cittie of Yorke — in High Holborn, central London, it was described by one Thomas expert, John Goodby of Swansea University in Wales, as “no masterpiece,” but a very rare, exciting and “pretty valuable” find.
The “song,” about the threat of a fabulous new hostelry run by “Mr Watts-Ewers / (Licenced to sell / Beer, wine and spirits / And tobacco as well),” was scribbled on the reverse of notepaper for the Apollo Society, a poetry and concert society whose members included Peggy Ashcroft, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis, and for which Thomas gave readings.
Beneath the letterhead is handwritten: “This little song was written in Henneky’s Long Bar High Holborn by Dylan Thomas in 1951.” It also bears the signature “Dylan Thomas, Esq.”
In it Thomas, who had more than a passing fondness for pubs and drink, plays on the familiar round-buyers’ refrain: “What’s yours?” to describe the detrimental impact of “Mr Watts-Ewers’ / Buckingham Palace of Booze” on rival publicans.
Jarvis, 89, found it among “piles of papers” while researching his autobiography, You Never Know Your Luck: some reflections of a Cockney campaigner for education, due to be published through Grosvenor House next week. He has been given permission by the poet’s estate to include the previously unseen poem.
The manuscript was left to his wife by her mother, Maureen.
His wife’s family knew the poet through their Oxford printing business and her father used to drink with him.
Goodby is now to include the song in a new edition of collected Thomas’ poems, to be published by Orion in October.
“The handwriting is Dylan Thomas’s. I have just spent several weeks in America looking at his manuscripts, so I am pretty au fait with his handwriting,” he said. Describing it as “a little pub song,” Goodby added that it was typical of the “songs, lyrics and very simple straightforward ballads” Thomas was interested in before his death, aged 39, and was “in the vein” of Under Milk Wood.
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