YEATS, W.B. | The Wind Among the Reeds, two copies including one inscribed to Mabel Beardsley, 1899-1911

YEATS, W.B.

Two copies of The Wind Among the Reeds, comprising:

The Wind Among the Reeds. Elkin Mathews, 1911, 8vo, “sixth edition”, PRESENTATION COPY INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR TO MABEL BEARDSLEY (“Mabel | from her friend. | WBYeats March 1913” on front free endpaper, original cloth-backed boards, some spotting and browning, binding soiled[together with:]

The Wind Among the Reeds. Elkin Mathews, 1899, 8vo, FIRST EDITION, original dark blue cloth with design by Althea Gyles in gilt, some spotting and browning, binding worn and soiled

[together with:]

The Wind Among the Reeds. Elkin Mathews, 1899, 8vo, FIRST EDITION, original dark blue cloth with design by Althea Gyles in gilt, some spotting and browning, binding worn and soiled

INSCRIBED BY YEATS TO A TRAGIC MUSE

Mabel Beardsley (1871-1916) was the elder sister of Aubrey Beardsley and an actress (she married the actor George Bealby in 1902). Yeats would note, in reference to the Rhymers’ Club, that she was “practically one of us” and she became a regular at Yeats’ Monday evenings at Woburn Buildings. Yeats recalled their introduction to each other “like meeting King Arthur”. R.F. Foster notes that “as Aubrey’s sister, Mabel inherited a certain mystique”.

Yeats had lost touch with Mabel but just before Christmas 1912 heard that she had been diagnosed with cancer. Yeats wrote “I have never seen as much of you as I would” and he began to visit her bedside. As noted by Foster, “As her strength slowly declined, Mabel kept Sunday afternoon for WBY alone; the invalid’s ‘passion for reality’ and the gaiety with which she approached death inspired him to a sequence of short poems, ‘On a Dying Lady’… These poems, he told Farr, were ‘among my best and very unlike anything I have written before’…” (see Foster, W.B. Yeats – A Life, 1998, p. 486).

LITERATURE:

Wade 27 and 29 (reprint)