Tambimuttu: Re-Inventing the Art
of Poetry Illustration
Sandra Boselli
In 1939, Meary James Thurairajah Tambimuttu, a young poet from Ceylon1 who had recently arrived
in London, founded the journal Poetry London, which quickly became ‘the most important poetry
publication’2 of the war years. Four years later, in 1943, with the financial backing of the publishers
Nicholson & Watson, he launched his book imprint Editions Poetry London (PL). A characteristic
feature of both his magazine and poetry books was their inclusion of bespoke illustrations –
commissioned from established or emerging artists of the day – that went beyond mere decoration.
In the most successful pairings of poet and artist, the combination of word and image achieved a
unified purpose despite the apparent mismatch between poems and illustrations, consonant with
his credo that ‘it is contrast that teaches us the nature of truth’.3 Tambimuttu’s thought-provoking
choice of poems and visual works combined with his belief ‘in the unity of the various arts’,4
enabled the editor to offer his readers first-rate poetry set within aesthetically pleasing books and a
periodical in complete contrast to the prosaic-looking literary magazines of the 1930s. Yet, little has
been written on this prominent wartime editor who gave so much pleasure to his readers and who
was, undoubtedly, an inspiration to other contemporary editors.5
The objective of this article, therefore, is to examine the innovations introduced by Tambimuttu
in his publications and to address influences that would have shaped his editorial policy. Much has
been written about the controversies that arose in the wake of his departure from Britain in 1949,
but little on the nature and scope of his achievements during the ten years spent in London as a
successful editor. Since the 1950s, unfortunately, Tambimuttu’s legacy has been belittled, where
Fig. 1. Tambimuttu. Photograph
taken during WW2.
Throughout this essay Ceylon will be used in place of Sri Lanka.
Chris Beckett, ‘Tambimuttu and the Poetry London Papers at the British Library: Reputation and Evidence’,
eBLJ (2009), art. 9, p. 21 <www.bl.uk/eblj/2009articles/article9.html>.
3
Tambimuttu, Poetry, ed. Anthony Dickins (London, 1939), First Letter.
4
Mount Allison University, Mary Mellish Archibald Memorial Library, MS. Prof. R. C. Archibald, batch 4,
5501-5/7/8.
5
For example, Sheila Shannon and W. J. Turner, who started editing New Excursions into English Poetry in 1944.
1
2
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Tambimuttu: Re-Inventing the Art of Poetry Illustration
it has been discussed at all, and his reputation as editor distorted, tarnished by those who failed to
understand his way of working. Hopefully, this dismal appreciation will gradually give way to a
more scholarly and therefore more qualified approach to his merits as editor. In the eyes of many
of his contemporaries, however, he was a foreigner from an exotic country who could not be taken
seriously, when, in fact, he was devoted to the quest of poets and artists, each one contributing in his
own unique way to universal truth.
On the face of it he appeared to be the most improbable person to carry forth the banner of
British poetry and art throughout the Second World War; particularly, when one considers that
he had left Ceylon for London towards the end of 1937, apparently intent on joining Miriam
Peiris, a dancer; his mind, at that point, oblivious to the fate of English poetry magazines. And
yet the 23-year-old youth – a Catholic who had received an English education at a Jesuit-run
school in his country – felt passionate about poetry. One of his earliest volumes of verse,
the surrealist Tone Patterns,6 was dedicated to Peiris, the first woman to study Ceylonese
traditional dancing. By then, he also had composed songs – one of which was recorded and sold
at Woolworth’s7 – and one jazz musical comedy, Tea Time in Ceylon, part of which had been
played at the Regal Theatre in Colombo,8 possibly with the help of Peiris, whose family was
extremely well connected in the world of arts.
Tambimuttu never explained explicitly the reasons for leaving Ceylon but one can safely
assume from his descriptions of life there that he felt stifled by its traditions, his literary
ambitions hampered by parochialism and clannishness; in other words he was at odds with the
colonial mentalities of family and friends. He was also at odds with his own cultural heritage
based on oral history which, as far as he was concerned, paled into insignificance beside British
culture. It was a necessity for the young man to break free from his milieu if he were to fulfil
himself intellectually; to become part of the cultural and literary world of London he believed
would offer him ‘unity of spirit and atmosphere’.9 His imagination would have been fired by the
International Surrealist Exhibition held in London in 1936 which surely inspired some of his
own surrealist poems in Tone Patterns published the same year. Miriam Peiris, when she sailed
to England to take part in a film,10 would have given him the perfect excuse he was seeking to
leave his country.
If in truth it had been Tambimuttu’s intention to join Miriam Peiris on reaching England, the
young man certainly would not have let himself be sidetracked by his first encounter with an
eccentric Englishman in a nightclub, who within days introduced him to London’s bohemian
life.11 When he first met Redvers Grey he probably had no specific goal in mind; however, exalted
by his new environment, the young foreigner would have come to realize that their fortuitous
encounter coincided with the opportunity he was seeking of meeting the poets whose names
were familiar to him from the literary periodicals available in Ceylon. Within three months,
Tambimuttu’s keen sense of observation led him to the conclusion that English poets were in
search of a new forum that would allow imagination to break free from politics. His youthful
enthusiasm and intelligence meant that he quickly made friends among people who mattered
such as T. S. Eliot or Herbert Read, two of the most respected figures in the world of letters and
art, both of whom were included as potential contributors in Tambimuttu’s first manifesto:
printed mid-1938, it announced the creation of Poetry London as a platform for poets. It is
intriguing to think that Herbert Read befriended the young foreigner, for here was a man who had
(Colombo: Slave Island Printing Works, 1936).
R. C. Archibald, ‘The Ceylon Poet Thurairajah Tambimuttu’, Mount Allison University Bulletin, vol. v, no. 5
(April 1955), p. 1.
8
Ibid. p. 2.
9
Tambimuttu, ‘Fitzrovia’, in Jane Williams (ed.), Tambimuttu – Bridge Between Two Worlds (London, 1989),
p. 223.
10
The Drum, directed by Zoltan Korda, released in April 1938.
11
Tambimuttu, ‘Fitzrovia’, Harpers & Queen (February 1975), p. 88.
6
7
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made his mark since the end of the First World War both as poet and critic of the arts. What was
it about Tambimuttu that attracted people of such renown? It can be suggested that in the case of
Herbert Read, who divided people into ‘characters’ and ‘personalities’,12 the young editor from
the East fitted into his ‘personality’ slot: experimental combined with an aesthetic approach,
both attributions consistent with Tambimuttu’s poetry project. When Read’s poem ‘Emblem’
appeared in Poetry’s first number, he was still the editor of The Burlington Magazine. His
decision to publish in Tambimuttu’s new journal was perhaps a sign that the latter no longer
coincided with what Read was seeking; maybe like his friend, Peggy Guggenheim, he found The
Burlington ‘stuffy’,13 since he resigned in 1939. His proximity to artists such as Henry Moore,
Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson or Naum Gabo during the thirties would have brought to a
head his predilection for poetic imagination, for what was intrinsically indestructible in human
beings. Almost certainly Read would have wholeheartedly sympathized with Tambimuttu’s
cri de coeur that poetry would be killed by pure ‘intellectualization’,14 although, conversely, as
a thinker, Read believed that one’s life could not be ruled only by feeling. Neither, however,
could exist without the other, if poetic creativity was to survive.
The first issue of Poetry London (February 1939) demonstrated the editor’s commitment to its
aesthetic presentation with its thick paper, uncluttered pages, and attractive tail pieces by Diana
Gardner. Hector Whistler’s drawing of Tambimuttu’s dark bouncy hair for the cover surely
conveyed – by omitting the young man’s physiognomy – the editor’s belief that the individual
poet should remain anonymous, subordinated to the common cause of Poetry in true Surrealist
fashion. The first number, furthermore, demonstrated that the young editor possessed an indepth knowledge of English poetry. It was conveyed by the carefully organized sequencing of
the poems: the first section included Walter de la Mare, John Cawsworth and Lawrence Whistler
among others, the second section, the imagists like Herbert Read and George Reavey; then
followed the Auden group – Spender and MacNeice –, the Transition group, Durrell, Nicholas
Moore and lastly the Dylan Thomas group.15 Despite his limited resources, the editor forged
ahead with a definite plan for his magazine which he described as ‘An Enquiry into Modern
Verse’.16 Whether young or mature, poets found a resonance in his message that ‘the intellect
should not override […] Poetry’.17 Such a tenet to many of his early contributors, including
Herbert Read, David Gascoyne or Henry Moore – all three involved with the organization
of London’s first English International Surrealist Exhibition held in 1936 – would have met
with their full support. Whether in verbal or visual form, poetry was the ultimate goal, by
circumventing the thinking mind.
Why was there such enthusiasm among the literary world for what was to become known
as Poetry London? Indeed, there were many other literary periodicals on the market before
the war, run by well-established editors and intellectuals such as T. S. Eliot and The Criterion,
John Lehmann and New Writing or Geoffrey Grigson editor of New Verse. But, unlike Poetry
London, none were entirely devoted to poetry and its criticism; furthermore, they gave the
impression that their contents were strictly intended for high-brow readers, their print and
layout austere. An exception to that rule was Seven run by a young Cambridge graduate, poet
and editor, Nicholas Moore, son of the philosopher G. E. Moore. The cover of his magazine,
unlike the others, was attractively decorated by a pattern of tumbling 7s; its spacious layout
and typographically pleasant articles or verse welcomed its readers, denoting a similar artistic
Herbert Read, Annals of Innocence and Experience (London, 1940), pp. 88-91. For Read, those described by
him as ‘characters’ were ‘rational rather than aesthetic’ whereas a ‘personality’ offers ‘the values of mysticism
and of art’.
13
Peggy Guggenheim, Out of This Century (London, 1999), p. 196.
14
Tambimuttu, ed. Dickins, First Letter.
15
Archibald, batch 4 550/5/7/8.
16
Title of his first manifesto printed probably some time between March and April 1938.
17
Tambimuttu, ed. Dickins, ‘First Letter’.
12
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approach to Tambimuttu’s. He was also, despite his youth, able to attract avant-garde contributors
of the highest order, such as Lawrence Durrell, Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, Henry Treece, Dylan
Thomas or the Greek poet Seferis among others. Unfortunately, by his own admission, Nicholas
Moore’s venture had to close down owing to his lack of business sense.18
The two like-minded young men met some time in 1939 and Nicholas became Tambimuttu’s
assistant in 1943 but, meanwhile, they remained in constant touch. In 1941, one of their first
joint efforts, under the imprint of Poetry (London), was a pamphlet of Nicholas Moore’s
poems entitled Buzzing around with a Bee, its delightful cover designed by Cecil Collins at
the poet’s request.19 An added asset was Moore’s connections with the Anglo-French little
magazine, Booster20 – co-edited by Henry Miller, Alfred Perles and Lawrence Durrell – which
must have given important additional impetus to the launching of the first issue of Poetry, as it
was first known. Surely, Moore’s many contributions and guidance should not be overlooked.
Besides Nicholas Moore’s cohort of poets and writers, Tambimuttu met more or less within a
month of his arrival, at pubs and parties, a number of young people who turned out to be poets,
among them, Stephen Spender, Bernard Spencer, Ruthven Todd and Philip O’Connor as well
as a very youthful Lucian Freud who designed a clumsy-looking lyre-bird for the November
1940 cover of PL, no. 3. The 18-year-old must have sensed that the lyre-bird concurred with the
editor’s wish to serve lyrical imagination and indeed it would become Tambimuttu’s signature
emblem for the rest of his life. Being virtually penniless, however, prevented the young man
from Ceylon from publishing on a regular basis even though his periodical attracted serious
attention from the likes of Francis Scarfe who wrote two chapters devoted to Poetry London
in Auden and After – The Liberation of Poetry 1930-1941.21 The interval between publications
lengthened, reaching a peak between between no. 6 and no. 7 dated respectively May/June
1941 and October/ November 1942; meanwhile the only work that cropped up was an
occasional poetry editorial job for Selected Writing – edited by Reginald Moore and published
by Nicholson & Watson – or the publication of some of his verse, neither of which could allay
poverty. Fortunately, the young editor found in T. S. Eliot a staunch friend-cum-father figure
who saved him from destitution and a nervous breakdown by engaging him as the editor of
Faber & Faber’s anthology of recent verse, Poetry in Wartime, thus establishing Tambimuttu’s
reputation as a first-rate editor by 1942. The young man was forever grateful to Eliot for his
moral support.23
Tambimuttu regained his self-confidence and was able to negotiate the same year an agreement
with the publishers Nicholson & Watson (N&W) under the management of John Roberts, who
backed his editor loyally until the end of the war, when the firm apparently was no longer able
to meet its debts. Roberts also acted on behalf of a firm of printers, Love and Malcomson Ltd,
that had at their disposal a large allocation of paper, a material very hard to come by during the
war. For five years Tambimuttu was able to build up his business and reputation as editor not
only in Britain but also in Europe and the United States. The financial backing provided by
Nicholson and Watson enabled him to pay artists of the calibre of Henry Moore and Graham
Sutherland to illustrate his PL periodicals. Its covers carried Tambimuttu’s favourite leitmotiv,
essentially designed by Moore, for which the artist had drafted eight different sketches of the
lyrebird cover, using each time pencil, wax crayon, coloured crayon, coloured wash, and for
the bird’s tail feathers, pen and ink (fig. 2).24 Presumably, Herbert Read introduced the editor to
Henry Moore and many other artists from his circle such as Naum Gabo, Ben Nicholson, and
Barbara Hepworth, who would all contribute to Tambimuttu’s publications.
20
21
22
23
24
18
19
4
icholas Moore, ‘Tambi the Knife’, in Jane Williams (ed.), Tambimuttu – Bridge Between Two Worlds, p. 59.
N
Hyman Dreitman Research Centre, Tate Britain, London, Cecil Collins, 923-4-2-1213.
Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller, A Private Correspondence (London, 1963), p. 137.
Francis Scarfe, Auden and After – The Liberation of Poetry 1930-1941 (London, 1942), pp. 184-92, 200-8.
Poetry in Wartime, ed. Tambimuttu (London, 1942).
Nicholas Moore, in Jane Williams (ed.), Tambimuttu – Bridge Between Two Worlds, p. 62.
The Henry Moore Foundation, ‘The Lyre Bird: Cover Design for Poetry 1942’, HMF 2056-63.
eBLJ 2016, Article 10
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Fig. 2. Henry Moore, Lyre Bird, Poetry London, no. 11 (1947), cover. BL, PP. 5126.bbi. With permission of
the Henry Moore Foundations.
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Thanks to his new-found financial security and editorial office – located in the same building
as his publisher – Poetry London became a periodical that helped the young editor fulfil his
desire to unite poetry and art, a concept close to the hearts of the surrealists, whereby poets
and artists remained individuals in their own right, each one entitled to assert their personal
subjectivity. This belief, furthermore, concurred with Tambimuttu’s Hindu sense of wholeness
described by Mulk Raj Anand as a compulsion to combine ‘the poet’s pen with the artist’s
brush’.25 The cultural bonding of East and West – probably encouraged by Herbert Read –
brought about a renewed interpretation of illustrated verse within the pages of Poetry London.
Its editor commissioned Gerald Wilde to create three lithographs to illustrate extracts from T. S.
Eliot’s poem ‘Rhapsody on a Windy Night’ (PL, no. 10) (fig. 3); Ceri Richards also accepted
the challenge of adorning for the first time ‘The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the
Flower’ by Dylan Thomas (PL, no. 11). Graham Sutherland’s three original lithographs, though,
attracted most attention, each one illustrating an extract from Quarles’s ‘Hieroglyphics’ (fig. 4).
It was singled out by the organizers of English Book Illustration since 1800, an exhibition held
between 1943 and 1944 at the Victoria and Albert Museum. These lithographs published by
Poetry London, no. 9 (May1943) were admired for the ‘harmonious effect […] obtained by the
lithographic reproduction of the poem as a calligraphic accompaniment to Graham Sutherland’s
designs’.26 Obviously, Tambimuttu had offered these excellent artists a new means of displaying
their artistic skills which coincided with the spirit of the times.
Tambimuttu demonstrated his business acumen by reproducing 50 signed sets at 10s 6d each
of Sutherland’s illustrations. He was able to continue his collaboration with Sutherland the
same year thanks to his new imprint Editions Poetry London which gave him the opportunity
of associating the artist with David Gascoyne’s book of verse Poems 1937-1942 published in
December 1943. This was the moment chosen for Nicholas Moore to join the new company as
assistant editor in order to help Tambimuttu with the selection of manuscripts and publishing
books. It was a happy collaboration since the two men agreed to disagree over their respective
choices. His presence at 26 Manchester Square, London W1, was a steadying influence in the
chaotic office, his editorial experience most valuable, his temperament and his way of life a far
cry from the one led by his friend. Though they would discuss matters related, for example, to
the presence or not of the lyre bird on the cover of the magazine or the choice of a book, Moore
accepted without qualms his editor’s final decisions as he knew that, unlike some other editors,
Tambimuttu had the courage of his convictions.
The chaos mentioned above, often associated with the editor’s name and an intrinsic part
of his legend, was the mainspring of his personality which thrived on the way of life offered
by pubs where he found warmth and met many of his long-standing friends, most of whom
were as impecunious as he was; they were a refuge from his freezing London bedsitter, too
small to contain his vitality and too lonely for a gregarious spirit such as his. He managed to
turn a disadvantage into a creative asset, his numerous encounters coalescing to form a circle
of contributors, their talents joined in a fruitful collaboration between poets and artists. Their
support for Poetry London was unconditional but by 1941, Tambimuttu’s ambition was not
to confine the poetry and art work of his fellow ‘vagabonds’27 to his periodical but to expand
their fame in book form.28 The only way to attain this objective was to find a publisher ready to
invest in his ambitious project, a feat achieved in 1942. An agreement was contracted with the
directors of Nicholson and Watson, obviously undeterred by the apparent chaos linked to his
reputation. They must have sensed the underlying order in his personality and his determination
to take up the challenge of becoming a professional editor. In their eyes, furthermore, he had
the double advantage of possessing the printing expertise acquired at his grandfather’s press
Mulk Raj Anand with Jane Williams, ‘Talking of Tambi’, in Jane Williams (ed.), Tambimuttu – Bridge
Between Two Worlds, p. 191.
26
Philip James, English Book Illustration since 1800 (London: Council for the Encouragement of Music and the
Arts, CEMA), p. 28.
27
Tambimuttu, ‘Fitzrovia’, Harpers & Queen (February 1975), p. 91
28
Nicholas Moore. in Jane Williams (ed.), Tambimuttu – Bridge Between Two Worlds, p. 59.
25
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Fig. 3. Gerald Wilde, illustration for ‘Extracts from T. S. Eliot’s “Rhapsody on a Windy Night”,
Poetry London, no. 10 (1944), facing p. 97. BL, PP .5126.bbi. Courtesy of October Gallery.
7
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Fig. 4. Graham Sutherland, illustration for ‘Extracts from Quarles’ Hieroglyphics’, Poetry London, no. 9.
BL, PP .5126.bbi. Copyright Estate of Graham Sutherland.
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enhanced by the editorial experience of his first six numbers of PL. An added asset would
have been his prestigious list of contacts, two or three of whom were household names. N&W
felt confident enough to entrust him with the job of developing and producing not only his
periodical Poetry London but also a collection of books under the imprint Editions Poetry
London. Order had emerged from chaos.
His office became a centre of attraction for artists, poets and would-be talents such as John
Craxton, Denton Welch or Lucian Freud, who was given his first opportunity to prove his worth
thanks to Tambimuttu’s commission in 1943 to illustrate Nicholas Moore’s The Glass Tower.29
It would become one of Tambimuttu’s favourite illustrated books though Freud considered that
his drawings had been ‘arbitrarily inserted’.30 In 2012, however, William Feaver’s catalogue
Lucian Freud Drawings 31 refers to the 14 drawings being ‘tenuously’ related to the poetry. That
was the whole point: to depict the mood of the poems rather than being a faithful reproduction
of the poems since the artist was an individual in his own right, entitled to convey his emotional
reaction to a poem which could turn out to be ‘a totally unrelated subject or design’.32 With
regards to the shiny thin wartime paper, another of Lucian Freud’s complaints, this was due to
the fact that the editor was bound by his agreement to his publishers whose main partner was
also chairman of Love and Malcomson, a large printing firm. Freud, true to himself, was never
grateful to the editor of PL who had given an inexperienced young artist carte blanche to
illustrate a volume of poems, including its jacket, title page and binding, under the assumption
that what mattered was Freud’s inner dimension. And he was probably right to do so, since
some of his disconcertingly realistic drawings, in particular the ones of dead monkeys, gave
the full breadth of the poet’s deep concern for the horrors of war.
Whatever the reasons for Lucian’s recriminations, there is no doubt that the war was a propitious
time for Editions Poetry London books and Poetry London periodicals; they were read with
eagerness, a way of acknowledging that Britain was defending its values through its cultural
heritage, a policy encouraged by the Ministry of Information. Tambimuttu’s war effort was all the
more remarkable given that he had been a poverty-stricken foreigner alone in London, who within
three short years had managed to bring together ‘poets new and old into happy conjunction with our
imaginative younger artists’.33 Besides the Nicholas Moore and Lucian Freud volume, Tambimuttu
was particularly proud of three other illustrated books, two of which appeared within six months
of each other. Both were first-time collections of verse by young poets and adorned by well-known
artists, a rare blessing. Undoubtedly, Editions Poetry London wanted to make a major impression
on the critics with these two books. The first volume was Stone and Flower (1943) by Kathleen
Raine which included four geometrical drawings by Barbara Hepworth (fig. 5). The other book was
David Gascoyne’s Poems 1937-1942 which attracted enthusiastic reviews for the quality of both the
poet’s verse and Graham Sutherland’s sombre illustrations, a combination which according to Cyril
Connolly ‘makes the book a delight to possess and which holds out a wonderful prospect of future
collaboration between publishers, poets and artists’ (fig. 6).34
In the case of Poems 1937-1942 such a collaboration could only have taken place under the
patient guidance of Tambimuttu who had had to negotiate with an unreliable Gascoyne touring
England as an actor for plays organized by ENSA, with a suitcase packed with amphetamines.35
It was finally decided that Graham Sutherland would be the painter to accompany the poet’s verse
owing to their mutual affinity, and though on friendly terms, a silent understanding had been reached
Nicholas Moore, The Glass Tower (London: Editions Poetry London, 1944).
William Feaver (ed.), Lucian Freud (London, 2007), p. 16.
31
William Feaver (ed.), catalogue for the Aquavella Galleries (New York, 2012), p. 13.
32
Diana Gardner in Jane Williams (ed.), Tambimuttu – Bridge Between Two Worlds, p. 49.
33
Philip James, English Book Illustration since 1800, p. 10.
34
Add. MS. 88908/10/1. Typed extract from a BBC talk given by Cyril Connolly: ‘What I’m Reading Now’.
35
David Gascoyne, Collected Journals 1936–42 (London, 1991), pp. 380, 386.
29
30
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Fig. 5. Barbara Hepworth, illustration for Kathleen Raine’s Stone and Flower. BL, 011653.h.65.
Copyright Bowness.
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Fig. 6. Graham Sutherland, illustration for David Gascoyne’s Poems 1937 – 1942: ‘Metaphysical II’.
BL, 11656.d.77. Copyright Estate of Graham Sutherland.
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‘regarding the nature of the illustration’.36 Indeed it is clear that throughout the poet’s description of
Sutherland’s designs in his tribute to Tambimuttu ‘PL Editions and Graham Sutherland’, Gascoyne
shows admiration for the work accomplished but remains perplexed by the artist’s response to his
poems, to the extent that: ‘The title illustration of the second section [Metaphysical] is to me the most
mysterious of the set’.37 Despite the inscrutability of the drawings accompanying his poems, the poet
found them ‘appropriate to the subliminal depths’ of some of his verse.38 The final responsibility,
however, for the lithographs rested entirely on Tambimuttu who acknowledged that these insets
were ‘his idea and in that sense I had that much to do with’ them.39
Gascoyne had originally intended his poems to be divided into two parts: ‘The Open Tomb’ and
‘The Conquest of Defeat’.40 The poems, however, were reshuffled so that the collection of Poems
1937-1942 could be sequenced into five parts by Sutherland’s drawings, each one bearing a caption
across it: ‘Miserere’, ‘Metaphysical’, ‘Elegiac’, ‘Personal’ and ‘Time & Place’. It is interesting to
note that the attribution of the heading ‘Miserere’ to the first eight poems entailed changing the title
of the poem ‘Miserere’ – see Poetry London, no. 3 and Poetry in Wartime – by renaming it ‘Ecce
Homo’, an anomaly that had been overlooked until the planning of Poems 1937-1942. Actually, the
Miserere sequence had previously undergone modification under Tambimuttu’s editorship of Poetry
in Wartime: the first poem of the ‘Miserere’ ensemble, instead of being entitled ‘The Last Hour’ as
it is referred to in Poetry London, no. 2 dated April 1939, became known as ‘Tenebrae’.41 Thanks to
the editor the first group of poems, Miserere, now formed a balanced whole with its liturgical titles,
and together with the four other sections would henceforth serve as a matrix for future publications.
A tour de force had been achieved by the trio who had produced in the words of Sutherland a volume
designed ‘as something to be read and carried about in the pocket. At the same time I think it will
look rather nice. Something like a sketchbook perhaps in feeling.’42
Whether Kathleen Raine had a part in choosing the artist, Barbara Hepworth, to illustrate her first
volume of collected verse remains a moot question, though according to David Gascoyne ‘Kathy
Raine got Barbara Hepworth to do drawings for her Stone and Flower’.43 It was an unlikely choice for
Raine or Tambimuttu who were both at odds with wartime politically inspired movements ‘in which
the majority had never given serious thought to the spiritual nature of man, of which truly imaginative
poetry is the expression’;44 yet one or the other or both had opted for Hepworth, a constructivist
artist, well known for her abstract work. Did Raine have second thoughts when confronted with the
drawings? It would seem that the conjunction for the poet of her lyrical verse with the geometric
abstract designs was stretching Tambimuttu’s policy of ‘illustrating tangentially’45 beyond Raine’s
comprehension. Could one associate poetry dedicated to spirituality with four constructivist designs
totally devoid of any apparent emotion? A view she upheld in her Autobiographies, written prior to
Tambimuttu’s death in 1983, that she and Hepworth did not share a common aesthetic vision, that
her ‘poems were out of sympathy with Hepworth’s drawings’.46 As far as Hepworth was concerned,
her ‘works had been made in response to the poems’.47 Her geometric abstract drawings, therefore,
could be understood as conveying the poet’s inner vision of the ‘immortal world, the reality within
David Gascoyne, ‘PL Editions and Graham Sutherland’, in Selected Prose 1934-1996 (London, 1998), p. 264.
37
David Gascoyne, ibid, pp. 264-5.
38
David Gascoyne, ibid, p. 265.
39
Archibald, 24 February 1955, 2nd batch, ref. 5501- 5/7/8.
40
David Gascoyne, Poems 1937–1942 (Editions Poetry London, 1943), ‘Note’ by Gascoyne dated September, 1942.
41
Tambimuttu (ed.), Poetry in Wartime, p. 67.
42
Hyman Dreitman Research Centre, Tate Britain, London, Graham Sutherland, 7 February 1943, 200817/4/1/45.
43
David Gascoyne, British Library Sounds transcript, ref. C466/0304 [F1383] Side A, p.62.
44
Kathleen Raine in Jane Williams (ed.), Tambimuttu – Bridge Between Two Worlds, p. 67.
45
Nicholas Moore, in Jane Williams (ed.), Tambimuttu – Bridge Between Two Worlds, p. 62.
46
Stella Halkyard, ‘Kathleen Raine, Barbara Hepworth, Stone and Flower’, PN Review, vol. xxxiii, no. 174
(4 March – April 2007).
47
Chris Stephens, Dame Barbara Hepworth, ‘Drawing for ‘Sculpture with Colour’, Tate catalogue (March 1998)
<http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hepworth-drawing-for-sculpture-with-colour-forms-withcolour-t07010/
text-catalogue-entry>.
36
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and beyond appearances’,48 her drawings crystallizing those fleeting perceptions so difficult to
apprehend and retain; their abstractionist design may have been the only way for the artist to express
the poet’s anguish at being confronted with words and concepts that are but shadows on our minds,
a recurring theme in Kathleen Raine’s poems between 1935 and 1943. Despite Raine’s reticence, the
poet must have realized that her volume of collected verse enclosed within its pages two concepts
at once unlikely and yet inevitable. By 1945, she was more than willing for Stone and Flower to be
reprinted by Poetry London Editions.49
Tambimuttu’s favourite fourth book was the Shelter Sketch Book by Henry Moore. It was an
art book comprising 84 reproductions in colour and half-tone taken from the artist’s notebook
of drawings; they captured the resignation and patience of Londoners seeking night shelter in
the Underground during the Blitz in 1940/41. Though the rights had been acquired by 1943, its
numerous colour blocks had to be stashed under the desk of Tambimuttu’s secretary until 1945,50
when the work finally appeared in August under the Editions Poetry London imprint. Its oblong
shape and the design of its jacket reproduced as closely as possible Henry Moore’s cheap,
tear-off pads of thin paper, thus preserving in book form the informality of the artist’s pads,
its contents revealing facsimile reproductions of enduring crowds and the artist’s annotations
while walking along the chock-a-block stations. Reviews acclaimed unanimously the artist’s
rendition of the infinite stoicism of the people of London and praised PL for having produced
such an attractive volume.
The relationship between Henry Moore and his editor was one of friendship and mutual
esteem. In a letter to Tambimuttu in January 1944, the sculptor expressed his approval of the
proof sent him as being ‘as good as it could be’,51 maybe in reference to Tambimuttu’s jacket
design for the Shelter Sketch Book. On the strength of his success the editor started to expand his
list of potential art books stating rashly to the American ‘Boris Mirski Art Gallery’, that ‘when
conditions improve he shall become a publisher of lithographs and other prints on a large scale’.52
Meanwhile, the PL editor mailed the gallery copies of the Shelter Sketch Book and The Glass
Tower as examples of what typified his editorial line. The Gallery was so impressed by Lucian
Freud’s drawings illustrating Nicholas Moore’s verse, that it wanted to hold an exhibition of the
young artist’s work, an offer passed on but seemingly not acted upon. Realizing that abstract art
was very popular in the States, Tambimuttu communicated the addresses of Ben Nicholson, John
Wells and John Tunnard, so that the Gallery could contact them directly.53
The profusion of letters received by PL in 1945-1946, available at the British Library, is
evidence that peace had given rise to a surge of contacts with intellectually starved reviewers and
editors on the Continent and elsewhere; eager to catch up on lost time, they requested mainly free
of charge copies of works published by Editions Poetry London and submitted, in return, works
for the imprint to translate and produce.54 This burst of activity and expenses, paradoxically,
may have contributed to Tambimuttu’s undoing, compounded by ambitious projects to produce
Ben Nicholson or Jankel Adler, both of whom expected from Tambimuttu the highest standards
of editorship and reproduction. For instance, in the case of Ben Nicholson’s monograph, the
editor had all the blocks made at great expense but the ‘printing cost itself would have been
about £ 4,000’,55 a sum, unfortunately, which the bank would not guarantee.56 Heartbroken,
Tambimuttu had to resign himself to selling the blocks to his printers, Lund Humphries. The
printers dedicated the volume when it first appeared in 1948 to Tambimuttu ‘who originally
Kathleen Raine, Autobiographies (London, 1991), p. 271.
Add. MS. 88907/7/17/2: 1939-1947
50
Helen Irwin, in Jane Williams (ed.), Tambimuttu – Bridge Between Two Worlds, p. 91.
51
Add. MS. 88907/11/4.
52
Add. MS. 88907/8/7.
53
Ibid.
54
Add. MS. 88907/8/7.
55
Archibald, 16 XXXX 1955, Batch 3, 5501-5/7/8.
56
Richard March, correspondence with John Roberts, Add. MS 88908/7/3.
48
49
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conceived the idea of this publication’. Not surprisingly rumour spread rapidly among artists
and writers like Nahum Gabo or Wyndham Lewis that Tambimuttu’s publishers, Nicholson
& Watson, were on the verge of bankruptcy, their respective contracts at risk of not being
honoured by the company.
Tambimuttu’s fame as an editor is indisputable. It was a great shame that the editor’s heyday
in 1945 and 1946 was marred by financial worries, at just a time when his work was receiving
homage from foreign critics and prestigious magazines such as Graphis, a Swiss graphic journal.57
The latter had issued a special number in 1946 to honour Britain’s courage throughout the war,
an attribute best expressed, in the eyes of its editors, by Henry Moore’s Shelter Drawings.
With the permission of Editions Poetry London, seven Shelter Sketch Book facsimiles were
reproduced to accompany an introduction written by the critic A. D. B. Sylvestre; a text that
some critics felt had been missing at the time of its publication. In the same issue two drawings
by Graham Sutherland, taken from David Gascoyne’s Poems 1937-1942, illustrated an article
entitled ‘Recent Trends in English Illustration’, lauding the poetic inventiveness of British
artists. One final tribute was paid by Graphis to Editions Poetry London by selecting three of
their book jackets for their calligraphic attractiveness which comprised Michael Swan’s design
for Vladimir Nabokov’s The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, The Glass Tower by Lucian Freud
and Jankel Adler’s jacket design for Henry Miller’s The Cosmological Eye. These wrappers
and others were also selected by the Victoria & Albert Museum for its 1949 exhibition, The Art
of the Book Jacket.
Regardless of the high esteem in which Tambimuttu’s publications were held, in the eyes
of Nicholson & Watson it would appear that the Ceylonese editor, once the war was over,
had served his purpose. It is more than likely that the main shareholder of the publishing firm,
Duncan MacIntosh, considered that his elitist Poetry London and Editions Poetry London were
no longer money-spinners: too much capital was tied up in stocks and work in progress, both
factors surely aggravated by spiralling costs and rapidly dwindling readers. Meanwhile, the
editorial office, at 26 Manchester Square in London, was a bustle of activity with clattering
typewriters, apparently unaware that in the office downstairs, N&W’s business manager,
John Roberts, was now intent on phasing out his Poetry London editor by withdrawing the
financial support of his company. The managers, in the course of 1945, had come up with a
new niche for their publishing house in French-speaking post-war Europe, among readers avid
for foreign literature suppressed by the German Occupation. Seeking more profitable outlets
on the Continent, N&W would have required fresh cash flow for their new project in order to
publish under their own imprint – first in Belgium and then in France – a wide selection of
translated fiction by English and American authors, that consisted of novels,58 adventure stories
for adolescents,59 and an ambitious collection of thrillers under the title La Tour de Londres.
The latter was a daring move which was obviously well thought out, each thriller to appear on a
monthly basis as an attractive paperback with an illustrated plastic bound cover, its first number
available by January 1947.60 For several years, La Tour de Londres was to become one of the
best thriller collections on the French market until the country’s own publishers realized the
potential of such literature.
Could this new evidence provide one of the reasons why, in November 1945, Tambimuttu
requested from the Colonial Office a visa to return home ‘immediately to revive my grandfather’s
firm of S. Tambimuttu & Sons’?61 In view of his notability, his sudden wish to leave England
must have been provoked by something seriously untoward such as N&W’s desire to seek
fortune elsewhere. The spirit of comradeship which had prevailed throughout the war had given
way to individualism and profits of a different nature, both fatal to Tambimuttu’s expectations
59
60
61
57
58
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International Journal of Graphic Art and Applied Art, xiv (1946).
Kate O’Brien’s novel, L’Espace d’un Eté (London- Brussels: Nicholson & Watson, 1946).
John Masefield, Jim Davis, ‘Collection du Wigwam’ (London- Brussels: Nicholson & Watson, November 1946).
Dorothy Sayers, Lord Peter en Ecosse (London-Brussels: Nicholson & Watson Ltd, 1947).
Add. MS. 88907/1/2, General Personal Correspondence B-D (1939-1948).
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for poetry and art in the aftermath.62 It could explain, furthermore, why the editor became
increasingly temperamental, on the verge of depression; no doubt the strain of his disappointment
increased his propensity towards wildness and chaos. It led to cantankerous relations with some
of his contributors such as Wyndham Lewis, dismayed by his bouts of inactivity alternating
with unreasonable rages.63 Tambimuttu’s slow descent into Hell lasted from mid-1945 until
December 1949 when he finally returned to Ceylon. Those final four years had laid him open
to attacks from his detractors, his reputation and self-esteem irreparably damaged by Richard
March, the new owner of Editions Poetry London who dismissed Tambimuttu during a board
meeting on the grounds of his ‘extremely unsatisfactory behaviour’.64 His dream of unity among
the arts was not to be and remained a chimera that he would chase sporadically for the rest of
his life.
Tambimuttu had been the right man in the right place in 1938 but by 1945, despite his
eminence, his decline was only a matter of time. Inevitably, in the midst of the economic
postwar upheaval, Editions Poetry London books and the Poetry London periodical were no
longer viable, unable to compete with methods of production intended for a new age of the
mass market. Surely, however, ‘the service he had rendered to young writers and artists by his
editorial work deserves some recognition’,65 a service that could have been commemorated in
2015 for his centenary. A reappraisal of one of Britain’s most influential literary figures in warntorn Britain is long overdue.
J. M. Tambimuttu, ‘The Man in the Street’, in George Orwell (ed.), Talking to India (London, 1943), pp. 34-9.
Wyndham Lewis, Box 75 and 76, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.
64
Add. MS. 88908/7/3.
65
Manya Harari, Add. MS. 88908/7/1/12.
62
63
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