As Brinnin and anyone else who saw him recognised, Dylan was very excited. While he had reported in a low-key manner to Caitlin about the performance of Under Milk Wood, he was unable to contain his enthusiasm about the Stravinsky project. He wrote to tell her categorically that they were bound for Hollywood in July. They were going to stay for a month with Stravinsky in a ‘huge easy house in the hills’. (In fact the composer’s house was small and he was contemplating building an extension to accommodate the Thomases.) Dylan told Caitlin about his meeting in Boston: ‘we’ve thought of an opera and it is – for me – so simple that the libretto can be written in the time we’re out there.’ He promised that he was not making things up: ‘it can and will be.’ What was more, he had been promised an advance of £500, plus a first-class passage, another £500 when finished, ‘& then royalties until we die’. After that, they would go, as agreed, on their trip to Majorca.
Dylan may not have been writing poetry, but he was being creative, and that was a good sign. After dinner, washed down with a bottle of vin rosé that Stravinsky had given him, Dylan insisted on going to a south Boston nightclub to listen to the popular singer, Johnnie Ray, who he said was a favourite of Caitlin. Next morning, a Saturday, he sang pieces of opera all the way to the airport to catch his flight to New York. He was still in cheerful mood on Sunday afternoon when, with Liz Reitell in tow, he came to a boozy party prior to another particularly seamless reading at the Poetry Center. Afterwards he went to an Irish bar with the Mississippi-born novelist William Faulkner, but the two writers kept being interrupted and never had a proper conversation. Dylan later sloped off into the night with Liz.
He had been thinking of returning home on 26 May. But that was only two days off, and Dylan was keen to spend some time with his new lover. He informed Caitlin he had been unable to book his intended flight because so many ‘rich bitches’ were travelling to London for Queen Elizabeth II’s Coronation on 2 June. Professing his ‘eternal untouched love’, he claimed he had rebooked for the day before this event, but in fact he did not fly until the day after.
His last ten days in New York turned out rather differently from expected. On 26 May, he fell down the stairs while at dinner before a performance of Arthur Miller’s award-winning play The Crucible, which drew a chilling parallel between the seventeenth-century witch-hunts in Salem, Massachusetts, and the ongoing Congressional investigation into un-American activities. No doubt he had been drinking, because it was not until halfway through the play that he began to feel excruciating pain. When it became obvious he had again broken his arm, Liz took him to her fashionable doctor, Milton Feltenstein, who put the limb in plaster and eased Dylan’s discomfort by injecting him with some analgesic or narcotic. He also treated Dylan’s gout and gastritis, warning him that he needed to cut down his alcohol intake. But Dylan had gained a taste for what he called Feltenstein’s ‘winking needle’. Miller was unimpressed, later describing Dylan as methodically making his way out of the world.
Two days later, when Dylan participated in another reading of Under Milk Wood at the Poetry Center, he had his arm in a black sling. When Brinnin took the opportunity to ask Liz if Dylan had told her about his affections, she replied, ‘Of course. But what does that mean from a man in such obvious misery?’ The accident had clearly punctured his buoyancy, for he felt ill, and afterwards Liz had to hurry him back to the Chelsea. For his remaining few days in the United States, he seemed only to go through the motions, as he carried out necessary duties such as accompanying Liz on a brief trip to Washington to sort out his tax matters. When, on 2 June, his final day in New York, he turned up to record some further poems for Caedmon, he swore so profusely at the microphone that Barbara Cohen cut his expletives from the tape. That night Liz was so worried about Dylan’s health that she phoned Brinnin in Boston to say she did not think he could make it. He was watching the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II at the Bronowskis. He told her to let him go: ‘he always gets where he’s going.’ However the usual round of pre-departure celebrations did not materialise and, the next day, Dylan was spirited to the airport by Liz alone.
There was a familiar scene in London on Dylan’s return. Bored with Laugharne, where she had been painting the Boat House, Caitlin took the opportunity to travel to the capital to greet her husband. She also wanted to attend a Coronation party given by Margaret Taylor. When a travel-weary Dylan reached Maggs’s house, he found the celebrations still in progress after two days. The sight of his drunken friends depressed him, he was tired, and he wanted to return home immediately.
But Caitlin, as usual, was keen to stay and enjoy some sophisticated company. Since she easily won that round, Dylan did not reach a grey, wet Wales until the following week. By the time his arm had been recast in plaster, it was mid-June before he sat down at his desk. Among the first batch of letters he wrote was one to Liz which started, ‘I miss you terribly much,’ and continued, ‘We were together so much, sick, well, silly, happy, plagued, but with you I was happy all the time.’ He asked her to send any business letters to the Boat House, but personal ones to him, care of the Savage Club.
At first sight, his finances seemed reasonably healthy. Higham’s system of paying Caitlin’s bills directly had worked well. And, from a professional point of view, Dylan had had a successful American trip. He returned with an attractive financial incentive to finish Adventures in the Skin Trade for Victor Weybright; he had high expectations of going to California to work on an opera for Stravinsky; and, most promisingly, he had a passable manuscript of Under Milk Wood in his bag. Already, in New York, he had been offered $750 for serialisation rights to the finished version of this by Cyrilly Abels, managing editor of Mademoiselle, who had attended the premiere. In the expectation that Dent would be unwilling to publish a play with obvious bawdy references, he cheekily offered it to Charles Fry at Allen Wingate, probably as much from a sense of guilt at not having completed his American journal as from anything else. According to the word in publishing circles, Fry offered £1,000 for the manuscript, but his partner Anthony Gibbs said that was more than they could afford.
However David Higham had been alerted by New Directions that Under Milk Wood was a potentially valuable property. (After attending the New York premiere, James Laughlin sent a memo to his deputy, Bob MacGregor: ‘That “play” of Dylan’s is pretty good. Have you written to Higham about publishing it? “Under Milk Wood” that is.’) Higham communicated this to Dent, which had published The Doctor and the Devils during Dylan’s absence and had been agreeably surprised by the sales. Martin Dent, the chairman, was not too high-minded to pass on a commercial success. ‘As you say, it’s a bit broad in places,’ he told his editor Bozman, ‘but I’m sure it’s too good, too authentic Dylan Thomas to let it go.’ And he added that ‘to turn it down might be to lose the author.’
Within a short time visitors started appearing in Laugharne. Ruth Witt-Diamant, who had been on a sabbatical in Europe, arrived there at the end of June. When she went to Pelican, she was asked by Florrie Thomas: ‘Are you church or chapel?’ Having been brought up as a Jew, she replied she was not of any organised creed. After travelling around Wales on her own, she met up again with the Thomases at the International Musical Eisteddfod in Llangollen, on the river Dee, near Wrexham, during the second week of July. Dylan was there with journalistic accreditation from the BBC to make a programme about this annual jamboree of music and dance. He did a professional job of contrasting the ordinariness of the Welsh town with the unusual nature of participants from as far away as Java, decked out in full folk regalia. The scribbled notes he made as he sat at the bar in the vast 10,000-seat marquee give a sense of his wry amusement. He jotted down the name of the Breton bagpipe, reminded himself of the ‘lovely Czech dancers (specially one)’ and remarked on the autograph-hunters: ‘Do they swap three Ukrainians for an Indonesian?’ Despite the singing and dancing, it was a curious encounter: ‘Everyone so odd to the Welsh, and the Welsh certainly not the least odd as
they lie, squat, chew, spit etc.’ Witt-Diamant remembered the new Queen making an appearance and Dylan being close enough to touch her, but there was no mention of this in the broadcast piece.
Another friend spending the summer in Europe was Ted Roethke. Dylan had not seen him on his recent trip to the United States, though he had often drawn on his poetic contacts who provided a useful counterbalance to Brinnin’s. Learning that Roethke and his new wife Beatrice were hoping to go to Ireland, her ancestral home, Dylan suggested that they come to Laugharne, from where he and Caitlin might join them on a jaunt across the Irish Sea. As promised, Dylan recommended Roethke to John Davenport, who was working as a BBC producer, as a good speaker of his own poems on the wireless. When Roethke told a mutual acquaintance in New York about the proposed trip to Ireland, adding that it would ‘make literary history’, Oscar Williams got to hear of this and wrote asking Dylan if he was the ‘literary’ or the ‘history’. (He also sent news of his sale of Dylan’s lacklustre story ‘The Followers’ to Weybright’s New American Library.) Roethke never made the journey to Wales, let alone Ireland, as he became too caught up with Davenport and the metropolitan literary scene. When the Thomases came to London later in July, Caitlin was on top form with her put-downs. ‘Where’s your Irish accent?’ she asked Beatrice Roethke aggressively.
Caitlin may have scuppered the Irish trip for she had ideas of her own. She was determined that her ten-year-old daughter should have the opportunity of following the dancing career that she herself had been denied. Consequently, she had identified the Arts Educational School, a boarding establishment in Tring, Hertfordshire, as a suitable place for Aeronwy to go. The fees were £67 a term, slightly more than Llewelyn’s at Magdalen College School. It was typical of the Thomases’ extraordinary lifestyle that, despite financial hardships, they could still contemplate sending two children away to school. Caitlin persevered, even gaining David Higham’s agreement that he would pay the cost of Aeronwy’s school clothes (another £60) directly from Dylan’s earnings. Having got her child into school in September, Caitlin intended returning with Colm to Elba where she had contacted Giovanni Chiesa, the inn-keeper with whom she had started an affair when on the island six years earlier. He replied enthusiastically, ‘Carissima Signora Caterina, Your letter is very agreeable, and I thank you very much for your thoughts and recollection of me.’
With Maggs Taylor again making justifiable noises (through her solicitor) about wanting at least a fair rent from the Thomases’ use of the Boat House, Caitlin’s unilateral initiatives suggested she had finally had enough of living with Dylan and wanted to make her own way. But she was afraid to take the plunge, which led to a period of dangerous drift in Laugharne. Other factors entered the equation. For example, in June Bill McAlpine was posted to Tokyo by the British Council, which meant Caitlin’s best friend Helen would no longer be on hand to make clothes for the children and generally to keep her sane. Soon afterwards, Witt-Diamant’s visit reminded the Thomases that they had a place to stay in San Francisco. Ruth particularly took to Aeronwy and offered to look after her for six months.
In the background was the unfinished matter of Under Milk Wood. By mid-summer Dylan had at least four clients clamouring for it – Dent, Mademoiselle, the BBC and the patient Botteghe Oscure. On 23 July Dylan informed Higham he still had twenty pages of the manuscript to complete. Various notes which are not easy to date indicate that he was at least tinkering with the text: for example, introducing, ‘A new small character. Mrs Beynon’s Billy, who is always faking up signs of antiquity in caves and hills. See p 14. Flints and arrows. Cave paintings. Skulls. At the end he finds a real skull and comes screaming home.’ The boy is mentioned but is not developed as a character in the published play.
Around the same time Dylan received further bits of contrasting and confusing information. Boston University told him that it had been unable to raise the money for the proposed opera. Although Stravinsky was still keen to collaborate, funds would have to be found from elsewhere. A putative writers’ conference in Pittsburgh might underwrite Dylan’s, and perhaps Caitlin’s, passages, and they could also stay with Witt-Diamant in San Francisco. This became more feasible when he heard from a specialist New York agent who proposed to arrange him a lecture tour with a guaranteed gross income of over $1,000 a week. On the other hand, if he stayed in Britain, he was hoping, fancifully, that negotiations with Rank would lead to a high-paying contract to write a script of a film of the Odyssey.
These possibilities were playing around in Dylan’s mind when, in early September, at the end of a summer vacation in Europe, Brinnin again turned up in Laugharne. He had been commissioned by Mademoiselle to write a profile of Dylan to accompany its serialisation of an abridged script of Under Milk Wood. The magazine had also hired his friend Rollie McKenna to take the accompanying photographs. There was more than a hint of Mademoiselle attempting to steam-roll Dylan into producing the script, with Brinnin condoning these tactics in the hope that he might encourage Dylan to appear yet again at the Poetry Center.
On 5 September, Brinnin and McKenna motored to Laugharne, where she shot film of the Thomas family, their neighbours and environs. Caitlin celebrated their arrival by cooking a brace of duck (possibly the gift of a local lover, Howard Dark, who ran a sporting shop in Carmarthen). The meal was a disaster: with her ability to let her actions do her talking, she contrived to serve two bloody, undercooked birds which, with Llewelyn smirking at the far end of the table, had to be abandoned. Together with Dylan and Florrie, the two Americans drove to the Llanstephan side of the estuary to photograph places, such as Fernhill, which had been significant in Dylan’s life. The party visited various relations of Florrie’s, such as her cousins, the Morrises, at Llwyngwyn Farm. Returning down the road from there, they passed an old man whom Florrie, according to Brinnin’s account, introduced as her brother Tom, adding that he had lived alone since losing his wife forty years earlier. Since he was standing outside a house which could only have been Blaencwm, he must have been her brother Bob, and, of course, he had never married.
After speaking with Dylan, Brinnin realised his friend was plagued with indecision about his immediate future. Dylan seemed to want to move from Laugharne: a recent increase in weapons testing at Pendine was making life intolerable and writing impossible, he said, and the way the house shook from time to time confirmed this. Yet Dylan did not want to admit any desire to go to America. He sensed that danger lay that way. He also realised that Caitlin was opposed to his going alone, and any inkling that that was his preference would cause further friction. Some sort of consensus was reached only after Brinnin raised the possibility of further appearances, including productions of Under Milk Wood, at the Poetry Center, and said his travel budget might be stretched to include Caitlin. In Brinnin’s account, he is careful not to give any impression of forcing Dylan’s hand. However the circumstances, with the pending Mademoiselle profile, suggest more to the story.
Back at London’s Park Lane Hotel a few days later, Brinnin received a call from Dylan saying his film deal with Rank had fallen through and he was definitely coming to New York with Caitlin in mid-October. He would do the Under Milk Wood productions, as discussed, undertake a few more appearances, travel to California, and spend time with Stravinsky. Brinnin lost no time in scheduling Dylan’s first performance of the play for 24 October. When advised that it would be difficult to book two sea passages at such short notice, Brinnin cabled suggesting Dylan come by plane and Caitlin follow as intended by sea. Dylan replied that he was flying alone, leaving Caitlin’s intentions gapingly unclear.
A positive feature of Brinnin’s visit to Laugharne was that Dylan had recited some lines from ‘Elegy’, a short poem, with intriguing changes of rhythm, about his father. Significantly, at this stage in his life, he tried to make his peace with the father he had never been close to. His poem emphasised the kindness beneath D.J.’s proud unyielding exterior but, unlike ‘Do not go gentle into that good night
’, it bid him a peaceful passage to the next life. He hoped to send it to Stephen Spender at Encounter. But this proved only one of many projects Dylan could not finish. It lay in several drafts among the clutter on his desk in the shack, which included careful lists of people he had to contact, letters from various clubs which wanted him to talk, computations of amounts of money he owed, and, his latest diversion, details of horses to back and bets to place at the bookmaker’s. There was a diet from a Sunday tabloid newspaper, as well as details of medications he might or should be taking (codeine, fenox ‘for nose’ and ‘calomel’ [liver]). One feature of his parlous health at this time was a series of short blackouts, possibly linked to a blood clot on his temple. That could have resulted from falling again when drunk. But, along with the wheezing chest, gout, gastritis and general fatigue, it was more likely another symptom of deteriorating general health, which was exacerbated by his refusal to curtail his drinking or smoking.
On the Monday of his last week in Wales, Dylan travelled to Swansea to make another programme for the supportive Aneirin Talfan Davies at the BBC. The subject could not have been closer to home – the town of Laugharne. Taking a different tack from his recent depressed line, Dylan was in benevolent mood about ‘this timeless, mild, beguiling island of a town’. He noted appreciatively that, though still regarded as a foreigner, he was ‘hardly ever stoned in the streets any more, and can claim to be able to call several of the inhabitants, and a few of the herons, by their Christian names’. When he met Vernon Watkins briefly, he told him about Stravinsky and recited his unfinished Elegy.
Dylan Thomas: A New Life Page 51