Dylan Thomas: A New Life

by Andrew Lycett

  As a result Dylan had plenty of time to attend to minor business matters. One was the issue of his representation in the United States. Ann Watkins no longer wanted to handle Higham’s British authors who were being taken on by the William Morris agency. However there were problems because, following an earlier row, James Laughlin refused to deal with Helen Strauss, the responsible executive at William Morris. A compromise was arrived at whereby Higham would deal directly with New Directions over existing authors such as Dylan. But Strauss wanted to earn her keep, selling Dylan’s poems to magazines – an area Dylan had entrusted on a bilateral basis to the commercial Oscar Williams. So, with Williams in tow, he visited Strauss and an unsatisfactory modus vivendi was reached.

  Dylan was able to spend longer than expected messing around with artist friends in the Village. There was an idea he might make a film with Len Lye, who ran several of his own coloured abstract movies for him, in the hope that one might provide the right backdrop for a poem. When nothing seemed right, Dylan offered to write something about a bicycle, Lye remembered.

  Suggestions of a film cropped up again when, in anticipation of New Directions’ publication of In Country Sleep and Other Poems at the end of February, Time magazine despatched Irving Berlin’s daughter, Mary Ellin Barrett, from its research department to interview Dylan with a view to a profile. Finding him hungover at the Chelsea, she took him first to a bar for a restorative drink and then to a nearby steakhouse where he toyed with a plate of oysters while a watchful Caitlin urged him to eat something more substantial. He told Barrett about two projects: one was the completion of his novel Adventures in the Skin Trade, the other a film based on the Odyssey. Caitlin was at pains to point out that, though the book existed, the film did not. She was being protective of her husband because, only in January, he had discussed such an idea with the film director Michael Powell. Dylan had advised him to talk to Louis MacNeice who had a better classical education, but relented when Powell countered that he was a much better poet than MacNeice.

  Within weeks Powell had visited Igor Stravinsky in Hollywood where, in the composer’s words, he proposed ‘to make a short film, a kind of masque, of a scene from the Odyssey; it would require two or three arias as well as pieces of pure instrumental music and recitations of pure poetry. Powell said that Thomas had agreed to write the verse; he asked me to compose the music.’ Stravinsky, who had been alerted to Dylan by Auden, offered to write a twelve-minute score for $12,000. Finance proved difficult to raise and the project did not progress, though Stravinsky retained the idea of working with the Welsh poet. At this stage, however, delicate negotiations were still under way, and Caitlin was determined that there should be no media leakage about a project which was not only dear to Dylan but which promised to steer his career in a new and potentially lucrative direction. As a result Barrett’s interview meandered in different directions without getting anywhere. Time did not run it as it was, though the poet’s evasiveness did interest its editors enough to commission a more substantial profile, with unexpected consequences.

  After an appearance at the Poetry Center, Dylan was approached by two young women, Barbara Cohen and Marianne Roney, who wanted to record him reading his poetry. They were unable to beat a path through his throng of admirers on that occasion but, encouraged by Brinnin, they telephoned Dylan regularly at the Chelsea. Eventually Cohen managed to speak to him at five o’clock one morning after he had stumbled back from a party. They agreed to meet at the Little Shrimp, the restaurant attached to the hotel. Caitlin again looked on suspiciously as the two women, both twenty-two years old and recently out of college, made their pitch. At the time they had not even set up their company, Caedmon Records, intending to distribute their records through Cohen’s employer, the publisher Liveright. But their enthusiasm, coupled with the offer of a $500 advance against the first 1,000 albums, with a 10 per cent royalty thereafter, helped sway Dylan.

  He missed his first scheduled recording session, but turned up at the Steinway Hall on 57th Street a week later, on the afternoon of Friday 22 February. He did not know that Laurence Olivier had been there earlier in the day recording a tribute to King George VI who had died a couple of weeks beforehand. Dylan had a sheaf of poems he intended reading, but the sound engineer Peter Bartók (son of the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók) said that these would only fill one side of a long-playing record. Without much ado, Dylan recalled he had recently written ‘A Child’s Christmas in Wales’ for Harper’s Bazaar. After some scurrying around, a copy of the magazine was obtained, and Dylan gave a lively rendition of his story. It was an astute move because, after the record was pressed by RCA and released on the Caedmon label on 2 April, it sold quietly. As Dylan’s name became more widely known, however, this sentimental story, in particular, captured the imagination of America.

  On the evening of the recording, the avant-garde film-maker Maya Deren threw a party for Dylan. Recently returned from Haiti, she was enthusiastic about its Voodoo religion, which struck her as both ancient and modern. The young Anatole Broyard, later a New York Times book critic, observed the extraordinary scene when Deren played tapes of rhythmic Haitian music. As the drumming reached a crescendo, two people remained dancing – one the squat Deren, the quintessential Manhattan artist with her minimal movement and understated appearance; the other Caitlin, bumping and grinding for Britain with her skirt lifted above her head to reveal legs, thighs and cotton knickers. Before long it was clear the two women were in fierce competition. When Deren tried to shoo her rival off the floor, Caitlin shot out a straight right that left a solicitous guest reeling. Then, spying the collection of small Haitian gods Deren had brought back, she began hurling them against the wall. Only Deren’s stricken cries woke a sleeping Dylan who grabbed hold of his wife and, as if suddenly magically empowered, swung her in one remarkable, deft movement through an open door onto a bed in the next room. Since Dylan was in no state to do anything else, Broyard was deputed to watch over her and hold her down if necessary. She threw her arms around his neck and demanded, ‘For God’s sake, man, love me, love me.’ Although he politely declined her invitation, he was one of the few people considered sober enough to take her home. In the car on the way to the Chelsea, she snuggled up to him. When he took her to her room, she asked him in for a drink. ‘Another time’ he said, preparing to dash. (She was trying to get her own back on Dylan by conducting her own affairs, but, in the circumstances, this was difficult. So, according to her friend Rose Slivka, Caitlin sometimes went to the water-front when she would pick up a sailor or longshoreman.)

  Soon the legend of the battling Thomases had reached the other side of the Atlantic, where the gossipy Edith Sitwell told a friend about their attendance at a party given by Mrs Murray Crane, the rich widow of a former US senator. A long-time patron of artistic causes, she had helped found the Museum of Modern Art, where she sat on the committee which arranged poetry readings. Her soirées were formal affairs where, as even Sitwell archly put it, the watchwords were ‘Decorum, Bonne Tenue, and the milder and more restrained forms of Evening Dress’. Undaunted, Dylan flew at Caitlin and, according to Sitwell’s informant, ‘kicked, punched and bloodily beat’ her. After being asked to leave, Dylan reappeared and asked for the money for a taxi.

  On the Saturday night after Maya Deren’s party, actress Judith Malina observed Dylan banging forlornly on the locked door of the San Remo after closing time. The following evening she saw him again, but this time in full verbal flight on stage at the Cherry Lane Theatre on 8th Street, where she and her husband Julian Beck had appeared with their Living Theater. Oscar Williams had arranged a special performance for the Village artistic community. Tickets were $1 a head, and Dylan had promised to read only his own poems. However the show was nearly cancelled when he arrived claiming to have lost his copy of his poems. Luckily Malina had one, which was duly returned with ten little bookmarks, each with the name of a poem in his meticulous hand. She was one of the few New Yorkers to recognise
that Dylan’s poetry had some intellectual content. As a result of a fever she heard his ‘priestly incantation through a veil of discomfort. Till I crossed into the depth of Thomas’ thought beyond the cavernous grandeur of his language.’

  Ten days later Dylan and Caitlin travelled north for engagements in the Boston area. They had been offered the use of Brinnin’s apartment on the campus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology where their host’s mother Frances was also staying. While Dylan gave his talks, Caitlin found her latest ally in the unlikely figure of Mrs Brinnin, a bland woman who cooked excellent meals and never disagreed with anything. At the weekend Brinnin took the Thomases to Salem for a lobster dinner which rivalled the one in Wales the previous year in its awfulness. By the end of the evening the whole outing had taken on a similar doomed air, after Dylan insisted on visiting a strip-tease show in Boston, and Caitlin sank menacingly into one of her silent moods.

  Once Dylan returned to find his wife contentedly playing with Frances’s make-up. When Brinnin’s mother apologised that this was her fault, Caitlin retorted, ‘If you want to know God’s truth, Dylan thinks all women should simply wash their faces in cold water, like nuns.’ ‘Why not?’ asked Dylan. ‘That’s what men do.’ ‘I’ve been looking for just this colour for years,’ said Caitlin, ignoring him. ‘What’s the name of it, Frances?’ ‘Slut pink,’ Dylan intervened.

  Next day the Harvard literary magazine, the Advocate, threw a party for the Thomases. With everything apparently in order, Brinnin was about to ask Caitlin if she was enjoying herself when, recalling her anguished plea to Broyard, she announced imperiously, ‘Is there no man in America worthy of me?’ Her behaviour became so unpleasant that, when Dylan was later asked to join a group of students and she wondered if she was invited too, he replied brazenly, ‘Only if you stop being so awful.’ She flounced off, saying she was returning home with Brinnin who, when he called at his apartment next morning, found a note on the Thomases’ bedroom door which read, ‘Stay out, you scum.’ Wondering for a moment how, once again, he might have offended her, Brinnin discovered Caitlin’s venom was directed at her husband whose entry had been barred when he returned in the early hours.

  During this second tour Dylan had been trying to extend his repertoire of readings to include not just modern British poets but also older ones such as Webster, Donne and Beddoes. That evening he was due to take this concept further by performing excerpts from Shakespeare and Marlowe. When he announced he was going to do Hamlet, Caitlin interjected scornfully, ‘You – read Hamlet. You can’t read Hamlet.’ Throwing a book at her, Dylan declared, ‘I am going to read Hamlet as Hamlet has never been read before.’ But his wife had a point. She realised he was moving steadily away from poetry to performance. She could see how attractive this was for him – a natural progression from his youthful thespian escapades. But she believed it brought out his worst exhibitionist traits, encouraging vulgar adulation and, of course, leaving her out of the limelight. She also realised it took him away from the boring business of sitting down and writing verse.

  Since Brinnin was himself in the middle of a relationship crisis suffering from migraines whenever he had to deal with the Thomases, he must have been relieved on 17 March to pack them off, with railway tickets and a further $400 spending money, on the first stage of their journey across America to the west coast. Their first stop was at Pennsylvania State University, where they were met off the train by a party which included Dylan’s poet friend David Wagoner. This time Dylan was sulking and Caitlin in an emollient mood. She tried to cheer him up by interesting him in a copy of Life magazine which he violently shoved aside. According to Wagoner, Dylan drank his supper and seemed incapable of doing anything further. But, as usual, his reading was perfect, and when he returned to where he was staying – the bachelor house of Phil Shelley, head of the German department – Caitlin, who had not accompanied him, was asleep. However she had washed all the dishes, tidied up and dusted the living room, and changed the sheets on another bed.

  From there the Thomases proceeded, via Chicago, to Flagstaff, Arizona. However by the time they reached Chicago they were tired of trains and wanted to spend a night in a bed. So they checked into an expensive hotel and then, finding their onward Pullman reservation out of date, were forced to buy a new one. As a result they arrived in Flagstaff with less than one dollar. Their hosts were Max Ernst and his artist wife Dorothea Tanning. Since Dylan had not met Ernst either at the 1936 surrealist exhibition in London or through the artist’s brief marriage to Peggy Guggenheim, his invitation almost certainly came through Oscar Williams and Gene Derwood who were friends of Tanning. Dylan and Ernst enjoyed each other’s company, drinking in bars in Cottonwood and Sedona, the nearest towns to the artist couple’s house. Enjoying his brief respite from the lecture treadmill, Dylan sent a postcard to Ebie Williams in Laugharne, announcing that he was in Poker Flat saloon in Sedona surrounded by genuine cowboys in ten-gallon stetsons and being treated to rye whisky by a sheriff with two pearl-handled revolvers in his belt. To Daniel Jones he and Caitlin sent a card with a more sardonic message: ‘We were killed in action, Manhattan Island, Spring, 1952, in a gallant battle against American hospitality. An American called Double Rye shot Caitlin to death. I was scalped by a Bourbon.’

  The Thomases were prevented from any great excesses by lack of funds. They wired Brinnin to send $100 immediately, but he was out of town and did not get the telegram for four days. In addition they were concerned that carefully engineered financial arrangements in England had broken down and Magdalen College School in Oxford was threatening to expel thirteen-year-old Llewelyn unless his fees were paid. At one stage on the east coast, Dylan had found a rich female well-wisher who was prepared to give him $1,000 towards the cost of his son’s schooling. But Caitlin, suspecting the woman’s motives, had been rude to her and the offer was withdrawn.

  She found these financial pressures more worrying than Dylan. In Arizona, her silence became a disappearing act. Her hostess noted how, whenever they were about to go on an expedition, Caitlin was nowhere to be found, and Dylan, like a fat Pan, would wander around calling for her. Tanning attributed this behaviour to a dislike of her small pampered dogs. ‘Ugh.’ Caitlin declared. ‘In England they make bloody little gods out of them.’ (The mangy mongrel Mably clearly did not come in that category. Tanning had a theory that Caitlin’s maternal instinct made her more partial to children than animals.) The first time the Thomases prepared to continue on their journey, they found they did not have enough money and had to turn back. Tanning gave them a couple of prints and Ernst inscribed his book, Misfortunes of the Immortals: ‘To Dylan and Caitlin. (They hastened back at the first sign) Hélas. Très cordialement Max Ernst.’

  Dylan’s first stop in San Francisco was the telegraph office where he needed to do some brisk financial juggling to ensure that Llewelyn did not lose his school place. He was able to wire $300 (or so he said) to Oxford, with the help of further sums from Brinnin and William Morris which sent him his Caedmon fee ($500, minus 10 per cent for the agency). David Higham held out the hope that he might be able to obtain a further £100 from Dent if Dylan immediately wrote a promised Prologue to his Collected Poems that his British publisher intended bringing out later in the year. However Dylan found it impossible to write on the road. He had made no progress with the American Journal he contracted to write for Allen Wingate (whose advance was even now paying Dolly Long £3 a week to look after Colm). And three scripts entitled ‘The Small Geography of a Youngish Writer’ which he had promised to write for the BBC on board the Queen Mary had fallen by the wayside.

  The Thomases stayed with Ruth Witt-Diamant, an arrangement that worked well. Dylan may have complained that the fridge in their hostess’s house was full of fruit juices rather than beers, while Caitlin was suspicious of the homosexuals who congregated round her husband, showing no interest in her. But the matronly Witt-Diamant had taken the trouble to send children’s clothes to her in Wales, and Ca
itlin was always grateful to people who showed an interest in her and her children. Over the Easter weekend all three were invited to stay with Mary Short, a member of the rich Carmel set who had met Dylan on his previous trip. The outing was similar to Dylan’s two years earlier, but for Caitlin’s unpredictable presence. Nearing their hostess’s house for dinner, she insisted on stopping and eating something because, she said, she would not know anyone there. In a restaurant in Monterey she downed a plate of spaghetti and a bottle of wine, ensuring that the party arrived late. Robinson Jeffers was again present, and Dylan was expected to sing for his supper. After they had eaten, Caitlin announced, ‘And now we’ll have some fucking poetry.’ When he responded with an insult about her ‘pea-sized brain’, she stormed out of the room. He threw something at her, and followed, never to return. The next day the couple emerged from their room as if nothing had happened. They were charming and Dylan entertained his fellow guests over a lunch-time picnic. On the way back they again stopped at the hot springs at Big Sur and briefly visited Henry Miller. Caitlin later insisted on buying some artichokes, which Miller had been eating and should, she felt, have offered her.

  As Brinnin soon learnt on the poets’ grapevine, there were other more alarming stories. When Dylan called on Kenneth Patchen, with whom he had corresponded at the start of the Second World War, he turned up drunk and began to cry, partly from the effects of liquor and partly he was upset at his inability to write. They were joined by Caitlin who, according to Patchen’s wife, Miriam, insisted that ‘I stop spoiling him, that she’d had all this horrible life with him … and nothing would help, and so on and so forth.’

  Returning east, Dylan and Caitlin stopped again in Chicago, from where he made a small tour of the mid-west. The highlight of this part of the trip was a reading sponsored by Poetry, the country’s leading ‘magazine of verse’, which had been started by Harriet Monroe in 1912. The editor Karl Shapiro found himself treading a fine line between encouraging a poet whom the magazine was keen to publish, and feeling aggrieved at Dylan’s minor misdemeanours, such as taking his two volumes of D. H. Lawrence’s Collected Poems, as well as a copy of a rhyming dictionary that he promised to review but never did. Dylan stayed with a local grandee, Ellen Borden Stevenson, former wife of the politician Adlai Stevenson. She invited one of Dylan’s favourite American authors, Nelson Algren, to join them. Algren, who had won the first National Book Award a couple of years earlier for his novel The Man with the Golden Arm, found both the Thomases amusing at first. However when Caitlin started drinking, he realised she had a big problem and could feel only pity for her. As for Dylan, Algren claimed to be ‘neither poet nor lush enough to appreciate him fully. You have to feel a certain desperation about everything either to write like that or to drink like that.’ He commended his hostess for her ‘tolerance of our friend, when he put on his small-boy-got-to-have-his-way-or-he’ll-bust-act’.