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16mo; 138 & ads pages; Publisher's dark green cloth, title on front cover lettered in gilt on a central decorative plakat in black surrounded by an elaborate gilt arabesque framework -- title lettered in gilt on the spine, floral endpapers with a subtle "silk" texture, all edges gilt. With the bookplate of Scofield Thayer [1889-1982] -- co-owner and editor of the Dial Magazine during its most important period in the 1920's. Thayer was a Milton Academy, and later Harvard, with T. S. Eliot. While at Harvard, Thayer worked on the staff of the 'Harvard Monthly.' At college, he came to know E. E. Cummings, Alan Seeger, Lincoln MacVeagh, Arthur Wilson (later known as Winslow Wilson) and Gilbert Seldes, and James Sibley Watson Jr. Both Thayer and Watson were wealthy heirs; together they purchased 'The Dial.' "Their" first issue was January, 1920, and before the magazine ceased publication in 1929, it became a key repository of modernism in literature and art. An issue from 1922, much sought by collectors, contains the initial appearance of T. S. Eliot's 'The Wasteland.' Even after he sailed off to Europe in the summer of 1921, Thayer continued to provide editorial work and advice for the magazine. He settled in Vienna, where he became a patient of Dr. Sigmund Freud. This fact suggests both that Thayer's wealth allowed him to pay for the very best, and that his German was sufficiently fluent to conduct an analysis in that language. By the middle of the 1920's Thayer admitted to himself and associates that he was undergoing a serious mental breakdown. He pulled back from the 'Dial' and spent the rest of a long life travelling between residences in Bermuda, Florida, Boston, and his family's compound on Martha's Vineyard. His art collection was left to the Metropolitan Museum, his collection of Aubrey Beardsley drawings is now at Harvard's Fogg Museum. Yale has his papers, (including some Dial archives) -- a collection of about 100 boxes, most of which spent many decades in the Worcester Storage Company. Yale notes that there is no evidence that Thayer answered any letters from any of his many friends received after February of 1926. A biography of his unusual life was published eight years ago ['The Tortured Life of Scofield Thayer' by James Dempsey]. His charming bookplate with a striking image of a pomegranate was designed in 1913 by the artist Sydney Lawton Smith [1845-1929 -- thanks are in order to the Boston Athenaeum, whose webpage confirm the identity of the artist who designed Thayer's bookplate ]. The plate includes the motto: "Sub cortice dulcedo" -- under the bark is sweetness. An appropriate motto for a bookplate, if one considers the "bark" to be emblematic of the covers of a book, and "sweetness" a characterization of the book's contents. It is easy to see why this little gem of Jugendstil design, elegantly containing one of Theodor Storm's best novellas in his late realistic manner might have appealed to Scofield Thayer. Certainly, he could instead have bought an inexpensive edition of this text from Insel Verlag as a new book during his time residing in Vienna. Indeed, it is possible, or even likely, that Thayer acquired this 1905 edition during his earlier school days as a new book; accompanied by his tutor, he traveled extensively in France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy during the summer before he entered Harvard College in 1909. He continued spending summers in Germany and Italy during his years at Harvard. At Magdalen, Oxford in 1913 he renewed his relationship with old schoolmate T. S. Eliot -- in fact, Thayer is reported to have introduced Eliot to Vivien Heigh-Wood who would become the poet's first wife.
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