Historical Notes

Asthma Among the Famous

A Continuing Series

Sheldon G. Cohen, M.D.* and Philip L. Rizzo, Ph.D.t

DYLAN THOMAS (1914-1953)

WELSH POET AND AUTHOR

*Scientific Advisor, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious

Diseases (NIAID)
Scholar, National Library of Medicine (NLM)
National Institutes of Health (NIH) Bethesda, Maryland
fEmeritus Professor of English, Wilkes University, Wilkes-Barre,
Pennsylvania
An invited collaborative contribution from PL Rizzo

Allergy and Asthma Proc. 185

Delivered by Publishing Technology to: Hinari - Peru IP: 190.222.237.144 On: Sat, 05 Jun 2010 20:31:53
Copyright (c) Oceanside Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.
For permission to copy go to www.copyright.com
DYLAN THOMAS (1914-1953) fields of my youth I stomped pun-shod and neigh-nonnied
WELSH POET AND AUTHOR in a nosebag of adjectives. I had to imitate I had to try
to learn what made words tick, beat, blaze ,,7

"Cough! cough! cough! My death is marching on

... A misanthropic doctor has given me four years
to live. I don't believe it ... You should hear me cough,
though. ,,\
In February of 1936, while in search of a pub with a
friend, Dylan coughed, spat, regarded the spittle, and
said to his companion, "Blood, boy! That's the stuff!,,2
Of Dylan's time at Grammar School, between 1925 and
1931, a friend judged that Dylan "was very clever but
intellectually almost incredibly lazy.,,7 Dylan, troubled by
asthma, was also one of the youngest, smallest, and weakest
among 400 boys, learning how to ingratiate himself, or fight
back if necessary. At 12, he was described by a physician as
"slight ... with large soft eyes and full lips; he looked

D ylan Marlais Thomas was born in 1914 in Swansea,

Wales. He was the only son and one of two children
of a grammar schoolmaster; his sister was eight years older.
almost effeminate, but he was tough."s Dylan in this period
had no wish to be the sickly boy his parents and his
appearance told him he was.
From his mother, who was the daughter of a Welsh Besides fighting, and mostly losing, there were other
farmer, Dylan early on learned chapel-going and an indis- coping devices, which he learned very early. He could
tinct but pervasive sense of the presence of God (called accommodate to the moment. He could be as others desired
"totally unformulated" by one biographer).3 He also inher- him to be-like the conquered Celt-who in the process
ited her gaiety, sweetness, and generosity. Although Dylan earned a reputation for lying, by giving complicit answers to
may have found her untutored spirit and conventional views his conquerors. Through another approach, he could devise
exasperating, he did deeply care for her in her old age. on demand multiple facades and stratagems, a technique
Always referring to herself as "Dylan's mam" in her letters that came to be known as "instant Dylan." The stories that
and in many respects childish, she gave her son "measure- have accumulated in his short lifetime seem to be about not
less and uncriticallove.,,4 one, but six or eight Dylan personalities.s
Dylan's daughter called attention to the influence of her
grandmother on her son and that it had been underestimated.
Her perception was more telling and accurate about Dylan
than she fairly was credited with. She "was no fool and
much more intelligent than people thought.,,4
Nevertheless, the consensus of biographers is that Dylan
inherited his intellect and literary talents from his father. Dy-
lan's earliest education was hit-and-miss, more misses along
the way than hits: except for mastering language. His mother
used to read to him when he was ill in bed but she ordinarily
couldn't spare much time to do so. It was his father who read
to him in earnest, from babyhood on, essentially Shakespeare.
When his mother would protest that Dylan was only four years
old, his father persisted, saying the boy would understand.
Thus he was brought up-nearly exclusively-on the Bard.s
The effect on the boy in his sickbed and before sleep was
profound and lasting.
The little boy who looks out from [Dylan's] first pic-
ture-when he was about four-is already and unmistak-
ably Dylan, although the curly brown hair was still golden-
yellow in those days. The weak chin, though, the loose
mouth, and above all the questing, haunting, slightly hooded
eyes, with their hint of timidity mingled with wonderment,
were to change little in the years to come. Only his nose, his
Shand yean nose as he used to call it, did not then exist, for
it was broken a year or so after this photograph was taken.s

From early on, to the neglect of all his other studies,

Dylan in his own words "bulldozed through print, tore
open the babbling dead [De Quincey, Blake, Marlowe,
Poe, the brothers Grimm, and especially Keats, Shelley,
and Byron]6like a tank with a memory. On the very green Dylan Thomas (1914-1953). Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

186 May-June 2000, Vol. 21, NO.3

Delivered by Publishing Technology to: Hinari - Peru IP: 190.222.237.144 On: Sat, 05 Jun 2010 20:31:53
Copyright (c) Oceanside Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.
For permission to copy go to www.copyright.com
 Subterfuges of smoking behind the bushes and drinking
alcohol whenever he could do so joined his teen habits of
writing poems-half of them comic-for the school mag-
azine. In 1931, at age 16, Dylan, affected by health prob-
lems, left Swansea Grammar School. All formal education
then ended.9
The more Dylan thought of himself as a poet, the less
attention he paid to school work. In the Central Welsh
Board Examination, his results were disastrous; he floun-
dered in every subject except the English language. His
mother ascribed his troubles at 15 to poor health, a "rather
bad [chest] hemorrhage." At 16, in 1931, he had to be sent
to a farm to recover after a breakdown in health. 10Accord-
ing to his wife Caitlin, recuperation in a rural setting was
also for a "hemorrhage." I 1
John Keats,6 with his brief life of 26 years, and Arthur
Rimbaud,12 with his somewhat longer turbulent 37 years,
would serve Dylan as his models of the proper poetic type,
desperate and dying early. On more than one occasion he
called himself "the Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive" (Laugh-
arne). 13Rimbaud came from a poor background, debauched
himself, 14and produced all his vivid symbolist poetic out-
put by the time he was 20 (The Drunken Boat, 1871; A
Season in Hell, 1873).
The tuberculosis that afflicted Keats mayor may not have
been part of Dylan's bronchial woes, but those woes nev-
ertheless underlay and compelled his expression which,
from the very outset, embedded a distinctive signature of
death. Once, stopping at a chemist's shop, he kept repeating:
"I've got death in me.,,14
In a 1931 poem, Dylan wrote when he was 17:
Feeding the worm Who do / blame? ... Mother / blame
... Who gave me life and then the grave, Here is her
labour's end, Dead limb and mind, All love and sweat
Gone now to rot. 15
And in a 1933 poem:
/n the Beginning ... was the word ... The word flowed
up, translating to the heart First characters of birth and
death. 16
In another piece, the same year, That Sanity Be Kept (also
titled Twelve):
My house would fall like bread about my homage; And
/ would choke the heavens with my hymn, That men
might see the devil in the crumb And the death in a
starving image. 17
Also, in one of his early poems, published before Dylan
was 19, by the New English Weekly in May of 1933:
And death shall have no dominion. Dead men naked
they shall be one With the man in the wind and the west
Allergy and Asthma Proc.
Delivered by Publishing Technology to: Hinari - Peru IP: 190.222.237.144 On: Sat, 05 Jun 2010 20:31:53
Copyright (c) Oceanside Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.
For permission to copy go to www.copyright.com
moon; When their bones are picked clean and the clean
bones gone, They shall have stars at elbow andfoot ...
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not . .. Twisting on
racks when sinews give way, Strapped to a wheel, yet
they shall not break ... 18
A long-time friend-who would be at his bed-side just
before he died-asserted that Dylan "had always seen him-
self in the role of the tubercular poet ... As Caitlin wrote,
'Dylan and dying, Dylan and dying, they don't go together;
or is it that they were bound to go together; he said so often
enough, but 1 did not heed him.',,'9
Dylan's mother characterized him-and his sister Nan-
cy-as "chesty," given to ailments afflicting weak chests, a
family trait. Also, he may possibly have had a liver disor-
der,20 a pathophysiologic reason to explain his never having
had a high tolerance for alcohol. More than one biographer
has advised caution concerning judgment about his imbib-
ing to drunken excess. Swansea "drinking buddies" of Dy-
lan's youth said Dylan's eyes, after a couple of pints of beer,
would glaze over, and he'd "be sliding under the table."
Dylan "liked to pretend" he had the capacity for heavy
drinking, but he did no1.21 A fellow poet, David Lougee,
maintained that Dylan "wasn't used to whiskey. Actually,
he preferred beer. But he wasn't a drunk.'>22 Later, when in
America, before Dylan faced his first American audience, it
was reported that he asked for a beer, which was brought.
"Before going on stage, Dylan was overtaken by a coughing
attack so violent I had to hold him to enable him to keep his
feet ... While I tried to help ... he retched into a basin as
if he would never stop.'>23
Additionally citing the sometimes curious drinking mode
of Dylan:
/ became aware of a fact for which / still cannot
account: the fact that, without liquor at all, or with a
glass or two of beer, he would often move into a state
of euphoria precisely like that state of uninhibited gai-
ety common to people who depend upon liquor. His talk
was ... wild, fanciful, funny and drunken, and yet he
had had nothing to drink but two small glasses of
beer. 24
Examining a number of sources, one biographer has
written: "Dylan would sit in a pub with a friend and make
a glass or two of beer last for hours. This was true to the end
of his life, and is one reason it is difficult to tell if he was
a dependent alcoholic. Hard-drinking was part of an image
he wished to projec1.,,25
Dylan also may have suffered from a sugar metabolic
deficiency; he had a craving for sweets. Other symptoms,
from childhood on, are consistent with asthma that his
mother believed certainly he had. She fussed about his
health and that of his sister Nancy, with TB her bugbear; her
anxieties over them were constant, about "wheezy chests,
187
pale cheeks, and flushed brows." Fact is, Nancy was dead
before she was 50, and Dylan before 40. "The fussing
mother have had something to fuss about.,,26
Dylan wheezed and coughed, complained of pain, and
smoked at least 40 cigarettes daily?7 He had a bronchitic
illness in his midteens, which necessitated a period of con-
valescence. Weak lungs or not, however, Dylan won the
school 220-yard dash at the age of 12. His photo appeared
in the local paper; he carried it ... for the rest of his life ...
it was found in his pocket when he died in New York.27 It
was noted that Dylan, after musing over this "grimy scrap of
a photograph" of a thin serious little boy, "very carefully
folded ... and inserted it into his wallet.,,28
But by teenage he had already turned into a sickly intro-
spective youngster, avoiding the more muscular games ...
and inclined to the affectations of Wilde or Beardsley,29
wearing colorful shorts and floppy scarves. Self-conscious
about height, standing only 5'2" or 5'3", according to his
wife Caitlin, he wore the thickest heels he could find.3o
With weak lungs, Dylan as a little boy may have had
complicating tuberculosis in addition to asthma, as his par-
ents and he himself may have believed. The disease was,
"after all ... common .. , even endemic in many urban
areas. This was a time when x-ray facilities were not readily
available, and antibiotics [for its treatment] had yet to be
discovered. In Dylan's case, with his [vulnerability] to
bronchitis and his habitual asthma," he could have been
diagnosed in error. Such a medical error would be compre-
hensible. "Even so, it is incredible that any doctor would
have told Dylan in 1933 that this disease would kill him in
four years. ,,31
Another biographer doubts the four-year warning by a
physician. However, although Dylan was not as "broken" as
he'd suggested, and perhaps not tubercular, after all-as
indicated in postmortem examination findings- he cer-
tainly suffered from a tendency to be "weak-chested" and
asthmatic. His respiratory problem was further aggravated
by a large intake of cigarette smoke from the age of II. "A
gargantuan 'smoker's cough' was one of his trademarks.
Dylan's mother told a friend in 1954, 'Dylan used to get
asthma very badly as a little boy. If one of his masters spoke
sharply to him at the Grammar School he'd come home
gasping ... ,32 Towards the end of his life he suffered from
breathlessness.,,33 A physician's look backward (in 1997)
suggested, "In Dylan's case breathlessness was easily ex-
plained by his history of asthma and bronchitis aggravated
by incessant smoking .... ,,34
Dylan made a virtue of the feeling of frailty. Perhaps to
be smaIl (or a mouse or a pig) was to be safe and baby-like
again. In a 1933 letter, he wrote "I'm an odd little person ...
smoking too many cigarettes, with a crocked lung ... little,
with no health at all ... I look about fourteen." "I have a
large round nose and broke it ... lonely little person ...
little Welsh ear little feet ... little poet.,,35
In foIlow-up correspondence the foIlowing year, Dylan
told of his father's spending three months undergoing treat-
188 Delivered by Publishing Technology to: Hinari - Peru IP: 190.222.237.144 On: Sat, May-June
Copyright (c) Oceanside Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.
For permission to copy go to www.copyright.com
ment for cancer of the throat, and had a "time limit even
shorter than mine (!)... ,,35 Dylan's father died in 1952 (at
age 76) and Dylan (just turned 39) expired within a year, in
1953. Dylan's sister Nancy would die at age 47 of liver
cancer in 1953, in Bombay?6
In correspondence of this period, 1933-1934, Dylan lied
about seeing a doctor, which had been urged. He avoided
doctors if he could, either to consult with them in Swansea
or elsewhere about his health, or as a poet to read to them
or otherwise address them from the lectern. In his view,
doctors were to be gone around, if not shunned.37 Although
Dylan made no secret of his chronic lung woes and it would
be hard to document, he may have considered those diffi-
culties a private matter and not to be interfered with. After
1933, he did not seek professional medical help except in
the aftermath of bone-breaking; his mother said he had
"chicken-bones.,,38
Dylan at 19 had "shared the cruel struwwelpeter myth
then current" that masturbating drove boys mad. With no
reason to disbelieve it, he once years later told his close
friend39 John Davenport that he had engaged in that practice
all his life and to excess. His first sexual relation occurred
at 15. He said he had contracted gonorrhea as a teenager,
that it took a month to get over, and that it had to be
concealed from his family.4o
Meantime, other single poems appeared here and there: in
1933, The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the
Flower; in the following spring, Light Breaks Where No Sun
Shines. Then his first volume, Eighteen Poems (1934) was
published jointly by the Sunday Referee and the Parton
Press, including the above two, and among others showing
vigor and talent, I See the Boys of Summer. The volume
steamed with sexual energy, with the by now usual death-
images co-mingled: the "rainy hammer of his father's penis
against the womb"; the boy who masturbates "rehearsing
heat upon a raw-edged nerve"; "We summer boys ... let us
summon death from a summer woman, a muscling life from
lovers in their cramp.,,41
In 1936, Twenty-Five Poems was published, which in-
cluded the very early And Death Shall Have No Dominion,
Altar- Wise by Owl-Light, and Today, This Insect. From an
important review: "No other poet ... shows so great a
promise, and even so great an achievement.,,42 Still, despite
this favorable endorsement, the total number of copies was
then 1500. Dylan was finding a wider public, but it was a
tiny one by commercial trade standards; no money was to be
made. Though reprinted three times, "from start to finish [to
1950] the book earned just fifty-eight pounds.,,43 It would
be hard times ahead, for a poet determined to be one.
No respite from his usual bronchial problems, either. In
1936, with Caitlin MacNamara, a spirited Irish young wom-
an-soon to become his wife, in 1937-while hospitalized, he
wrote, "I've been indoors all ... week, with a wicked cold,
coughing and snivelling, too full of phlegm and aspirin to
write to a girl in hospital ... even the ink would carry
sadness and influenza ... ,,44
05 Jun 2000, Vol. 21, NO.3
2010 20:31:53
 Other occasions during this period, with dates not exact,
report numerous other bouts of flu and bronchitis. Early in
1937, in a letter to Caitlin from London, he wrote, "I've
been in a nursing home with bronchitis and laryngitis or
something, no voice at all, no will, all weakness and croak-
ing and spitting ... ,,44
When Caitlin and Dylan finally went to bed, she found
him eager but unskilled. He was "shy and careful not to let
her see him naked, though she noticed his clothes were
stinking" ... he had no knowledge of foreplay ... he was a
[sexual] incompetent. Yet for years after he boasted of this
"conquest." Dylan was not a man of his own dreams; Caitlin
confirmed that he was hopeless in bed and that she "did not
discover until after his death that it was possible for women
to have a sexual climax.,,45 Her own direct statement came
at the outset of interviews that developed into Caitlin: Life
With Dylan Thomas: "I never had an orgasm in all my years
with Dylan, and that lies at the heart of our problems ... ,,46
No paternity suits-ever-for Dylan, and no tales told by
women of his prowess between the sheets. In one instance,
troublesome for their marriage, Caitlin took a night off for a
tryst in a hotel with William Glock, a local music critic and
classical pianist, "tall, blond, and handsome; a fine-featured
man who was altogether far more imposing than her tiny, fat,
and far-from-fastidious husband.,,47 As it developed, however,
having believed herself to have fallen in love with Glock,
Caitlin-all perfumed and romantic-came to a rude awaken-
ing with Glock, who turned out in bed to be a dud of duds, with
absolutely nothing happening.48
As for other such heady and unconsummated desires,
there was that of a Margaret Taylor (always very generous
in financial aid to Dylan, with or without the consent of her
husband Alan who, not long after, divorced her). Margaret's
obsession with Dylan included a note saying to him, "to
sleep with you would be like sleeping with a god." Appar-
ently she never did.49 Caitlin herself testified that in bed
with Dylan (and no god in the vicinity) "it was like em-
bracing a child rather than a man ... he wasn't aggressive
in a masculine way; he wasn't strong enough ... he had an
almost juvenile approach to sex ... strange that a grown
man should have wanted baby comforts ... ,,50
The sexual component would get its strong and striking
expression in poem after poem, however, and also in the
later dramatic revelatory sketches of Under Milk WOOd.51
The actor Richard Burton,52 speaking of that drama, said he
had "spoken the words over a thousand times waking and
sleeping, and that to him the whole play was about religion,
sex and death.,,53 Dylan's version of Ulysses (by James
Joyce),54 Under Milk Wood is the "rendering of a life of a
small Welsh town by the sea from the middle of one night
to the middle of the next, by voices, and using two com-
mentators. The happenings in one spring day in Llaregyb
are recounted, by a kind of 'dramatized gossip' .,,55
Dylan had several published volumes to his credit and
had become increasingly popular. However, his work
Allergy and Asthma
Delivered Proc.
by Publishing Technology to: Hinari - Peru IP: 190.222.237.144 On: Sat, 05 Jun 2010 20:31:53
Copyright (c) Oceanside Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.
For permission to copy go to www.copyright.com
earned an income of too few pounds. Besides Caitlin, there
were three children, two sons and a daughter, to support.
With the advent of World War II, Dylan in May 1940 set
off from Laugharne to L1andilo to volunteer for service in
the British military forces, but rejected, he returned in
depression. The examining doctors finding "weak lungs"
placed him in C-3 classification. The outcome upset him.
Although the reason he was declared C-3 was almost
certainly asthma and his "bronchial condition," Dylan may
have construed it as "tuberculosis.,,56 His mother explained
that he was unfit because of "punctured lungs." A fellow
Welsh writer and friend said it was "scarred !ungs.,,57
Thus rejected for military service, Dylan Thomas-with
several published volumes by then which, though increas-
ingly popular, earned him few pounds-found another av-
enue for creative endeavor. Success came first as a per-
former in British Broadcasting Company (BBC) radio
dramas, next reading the work of other authors, then gen-
erating ideas for BBC programs, and finally launching him-
self into what would become a second, more immediately
remunerative, career as a sonorous resonant voice. His
presentations were especially welcome and appreciated in
Britain's trying times. Through arranged lecture tours, he
would become increasingly familiar to growing audiences.
Eventually his escalating career offerings would create im-
mense enthusiasm in America for presentations of his own
materials and outstanding excerpts from the works of others.
One of his favorite authors to read from was Djuna
Barnes, particularly her novel Nightwood.58 In a 1939 letter
referring to Henry Miller's59 Tropic of Cancer, Dylan said,
"The only recent prose I've had as much pleasure out of,
loud, meaty pleasure, has been another American book,
Nightwood (far different, with original writing too). I re-
member you said, in Laugharne, that you hadn't read it:
would you like to?,,60 Caitlin, in relating to authors Dylan
used in his American tours, also speaks of his raving about
Nightwood, arguing that it was the finest work of literature
ever written by a woman.61
Dylan was brought to America for tours by John Malcolm
Brinnin. Beginning in 1950 in New York as reader/per-
former, he would become an early "rock star" type. In fact
he constituted "a first" in what was to evolve into a tremen-
dously profitable and popular field.62 One biographer has
provided an appendix list of over 150 Dylan broadcasts of
readings from 1940 to 1953.63
Still, old problems persisted. In 1944, William Saroyan,64
with two other writers, met him on a dreary day in February.
According to his observation, Dylan "seemed to be swollen
by sleeplessness, nervousness, boredom, bad eating, and
general poor health." Dylan also seemed "to need a bath and
a change of clothing.,,65
In 1947, Dylan wrote to his American sponsor, John
Brinnin, that he'd been ill with influenza "so perfectly
bloody that I just groaned at all my obligations and put my
head under the blankets.,,66
189
 In the last four years of his life ... Dylan's body had
thickened ... he remained as "chesty" as in childhood,
smoking constantly and coughing at great lengths. His
family doctor said he rarely ever saw Dylan. 67
In the winter of 1949-1950, before flying to America, in
a letter to Margaret Taylor he wrote that he "fell down again
and cracked some ribs ... also I have gout in my toe,
phlegm in my lungs, misery in my head.,,68 To submit to
bone x rays was acceptable, but not much more. Beyond the
fractured ribs, Dylan-when an old friend saw him again
after many years-had teeth that were not good, "which he
tried to conceal in smiling, his nose had become enormous,
his face bloated and pale.,,68
Igor Stravinsky, who after the war wished Dylan to
collaborate with him on an opera, confided in an interview.
"As soon as I saw him ... the only thing to do was to love
him ... he was a shorter man than I expected ... with a
large protuberant behind and belly. His nose was a red bulb
and his eyes were glazed ... ,,69
In time Dylan did manage to have some interaction with
doctors, to obtain some medications: for instance, a jar of
insomnia tablets; he took them for his hangovers. On the
first American tour, in March 1950, contemporary poet
David Daiches was alarmed at Dylan's behavior, seeing him
pass a fountain, cram pills into his mouth, and swallow them
because "Dylan was feeling queasy" prior to a scheduled
poetry reading at Bryn Mawr College.7o Brinnin himself
reports that on the way to that Bryn Mawr site outside
Philadelphia, the trip was "punctuated by several bad
coughing spells." The next day, arriving in Washington,
D.C., he was ill and downcast in the morning as he coughed
and flushed his way through breakfast ... ,,71 On that tour it
was reported that, while in Iowa, he coughed and retched
every morning.70 In a sum-up, one biographer has pointed
out that no one knows what other drugs Dylan was taking
for his difficulties apart from benzedrine, although he had
started to boast about his drug-taking. Caitlin-although she
said at the end, in New York "there was a lot of talk about
drugs"-did not pursue the matter of what drugs he may
have tried or used, since by then he was already dead.72
Back at the Boat House in Laugharne, in early October of
1951, Dylan wrote, "I have gout, a strained back, bronchitis,
[coughing] fits, and a sense of disaster, otherwise very ill."
In a later letter he adds, "Day after day I grow lazier and
fatter and sadder and older and deafer and duller ... I fall
downstairs; I frighten myself in the night, my own plump
banshee ... and next week I shall be thirty-seven horrors
0Id.,,73
Caitlin claimed his father-like his mother, certainly no
fool either in this respect, in observations of their son-
"used to say that Dylan would never make it to forty. His
father was right. I heard Dylan say that, too ., .,,74 She
perceived his coughing fits, and trying to cough up blood, as
efforts to convince her he "had something serious.,,75 Cait-
lin viewed much of Dylan's behavior-his claims of iII-
190 Delivered by Publishing Technology to: Hinari - Peru IP: 190.222.237.144 On: Sat, May-June 2000, Vol. 21, NO.3
Copyright (c) Oceanside Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.
For permission to copy go to www.copyright.com
health-as hypochondria, "mainly attempts to get sympa-
thy, what he was always after.,,74 It may have suited her to
believe so, but she sometimes in her accounts both believed
and disbelieved alternately, perhaps needing to think, as she
often said, that he was very strong, only done in by the three
vices of drink, cigarettes, and women, with her maintaining
"he was very tough." Caitlin continued:
Every morning he would cough violently: he had al-
ways done that over the years but the coughing got
worse with all the drink and the cigarettes. Laugharne
may have been the wrong place for someone with his
cough: it's so damp there in autumn and winter, espe-
cially living where we were, right over the estuary.
Dylan hardly ever went to see a doctor; he didn't like
them. [The family doctor, Dr. Hughes ... when Dylan
had broken a bone, one of his arms ... would come and
do what had to be done ... setting Dylan's arm] ... but
Dylan would never go to a doctor if he could possibly
avoid it, probably because he was terrified of being told
to cut down on his smoking and drinking. He did suffer
from gout. I don't know how bad it was, but he cou1dn't
bear anyone knocking against his leg, and of course the
children sometimes did. 76
On Dylan's second American tour, with Caitlin along,
Brinnin reports Dylan stopped on the sidewalk to "cough
himself out of a paroxysm once or twice.,,77 In the months
following his return from America in June 1952, Dylan was
frequently ill. In that one month, exhausted, he suffered
what he called "sunstroke," followed by what he called
"pleurisy." He went home to Laugharne. In October, he
wrote: "I've had pneumonia, and worse." In November, "in
bed with bronchitis." And in February, "down with flu."
And his gouty toe had gotten worse.78 During August 1953,
Brinnin visited Dylan and Caitlin in the Boat House, report-
ing "Dylan asked me how I could possibly bear the contrast
between life on the Riviera and life with him in the gloom
of God-forsaken Laugharne.,,79
For all that, Laugharne-and Caitlin and family-repre-
sented Dylan's beloved roots. His best work, including the
much revised Under Milk Wood, a radio play commissioned
by the BBC, reflected those origins, the Swansea place, and
its inimitable people, however poor. "Dylan loved Wales
and sang its countryside more clearly than any other bard or
minstrel had done.,,8o Dylan's were longing recollections of
his boy's time on the farm at Fern Hill or being invited to
Aunt Dosie's manse at Newton ... and at L1angain, where
the remote farm stood under Fern Hill, Dylan was really
"young and easy under the apple boughs about the lilting
house and happy as the grass was green ... "
Like Cwmdonkin Park, the farmhouse was surrounded
by tall old trees, the survivors of ,hat Milk Wood which
once used to cover nearly all of ancient Wales. Al-
though the house smelt of rotten wood and damp and
05 Jun 2010 20:31:53
 animals, the kitchen was lamp-lit and warm, and Aunt
Annie loved Dylan ... 81
When Dylan, in the fretful period of 1940-1943, was
obliged to sell something-any thing-to scramble for his
debts, he sold his exercise-books, containing the early po-
ems together with a prose book and some worksheets, to the
State University of New York at Buffalo for 41 pounds.
This was at about the same age as Keats at his death, 26:
Certainly Dylan must have been aware of a break. He
felt himself being separated from his past, whether it
was long Sundays with strawberry jelly at the Tricks' or
Swansea before the fires. Nostalgia came easily all his
life; at seventeen he was already contemplating his
vanished past, remarking (in a poem in one of the
exercise-books now up for sale) on "how much was
happy while it lasted"; he had the Welsh weakness for
backward glances. 82
Still, in this period, for a variety of depressing reasons,
only three new (minor) poems came into being, as he spent
time scribbling, struggling, and collaborating on film
scripts. In London, their house was a broken-down studio in
Chelsea, "one large room with a kitchen behind a curtain,
with a leaking roof, hearing mice and rain and air-raid
sirens.,,83 Caitlin said it was their London base for years
after.84
Financial scrape: In 1939, Dylan made a plea for employ-
ment to Edward Marsh, secretary to the British statesman
Winston Churchill, who in the following year would move
up to his wartime tenure of leadership as prime minister.
"I've been a journalist and an actor in a repertory theatre; I
have broadcast, and lectured. I am twenty-five years old" (in
response Marsh sent Dylan perhaps 10 or 20 pounds).85
Also in that month a plea to Bert Trick, a fellow poet and
radical: "Help; we're living in my father's house; he's a
very poor man; we're almost an intolerable burden on him
... I'm writing only poems now, those extremely slowly,
and can expect very little money for them.,,86
In an ineffectual scheme proposed to friend John Daven-
port in May of 1939, Dylan promoted regular receipt of five
shillings each from a group of acquaintances (including
Davenport and Peggy Guggenheim, and Richard Hughes,
among others). "Of course they won't all agree. I want more
possibilities for this Trifling Subscription."87
Again, to Davenport, from Glamorgan, in January of
1941, "We're waiting for little sums to carry us over ...
Today the pipes burst, and Caitlin, in a man's hat, has been
running all day with a mop from w.c. to flooded parlor,
while I've been sitting down trying to write a poem about a
man who fished with a woman for bait and caught a horrible
collection" (eventually Ballad of the Long-Legged Bait,"
220 lines).88
Friends and family, did help; John Davenport provided a
haven for the young family; Margaret Taylor bought one
Allergy and Asthma Proc.
Delivered by Publishing Technology to: Hinari - Peru IP: 190.222.237.144 On: Sat, 05 Jun 2010 20:31:53
Copyright (c) Oceanside Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.
For permission to copy go to www.copyright.com
place for Dylan and his family, then another in Laugharne-
the Boat House-in 1948. The Thomases' fortunes would
improve somewhat, and the poetry drought was finally
broken in 1944 with Poem in October ("it was my thirtieth
year to heaven") followed by others like Fern Hill, Over Sir
John's Hill, and A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of
a Child in London. ,,89
It would take the lecture tours in America, however, to
provide real financial opportunity. Irony of ironies: on the
day before Dylan's collapse in New York in the fall of
1953-on his fourth American lecture tour-he had signed
a contract with a lecture agent that would have guaranteed
him $1000 a week.9o
His popularity by then had increased exponentially.
[Dylan had] found and kept an audience that does not
usually read poetry, buy books of short stories, or
"quality" papers. He was a people's poet who caught
the ear of the people through radio in that brief post-
war period when wireless was the main form of family
entertainment. Men and women of all ages somehow
identify with him as they do not identify with the Eliots
and Audens. They talk of his voice. And it is impressive
to observe their emotional reactions to this humble,
shy, confused, fearful and in many ways objectionable
man who was great fun in a smoky pub on a winter's
night but neglectful of his family and a poor lover; a
selfish man who believed himself touched by angels,
one of the chosen ones.91
The critical consensus seems to be that-mostly-all this
derives from a rather small oeuvre of actual work, not much,
perhaps two dozen poems (including all those cited in this
essay), a few short stories from Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Dog (1940), and Under Milk Wood.
The poet John Betjeman once asserted, "Dylan is not only
the best living Welsh poet, but is a great poet. He is
sometimes difficult but always rewarding, rich, and arrest-
ing."92
David Daiches adds In the white giant's thigh and In
country sleep to the group of "really first-rate poems." At
"his best he is magnificent, as well as original in tone and
technique."93 Not to be left out, from the same 1952 Col-
lected Poems, is Do not go gentle into that good night.
John Ackerman maintains, "The distinctive characteris-
tics of his work are its lyrical quality, its strict formal
control, a romantic conception of the poet's function, and a
religious attitude toward experience." The Welsh influence
on Dylan was strong, though he "knew no Welsh." Vernon
Watkins, fellow Welsh poet, added "When [Dylan] said he
was a Puritan he was not believed; but it really was true."
Elder Olson took the time and trouble to uncomplicate
Dylan's going beyond metaphor and simile-though Dylan
exploited the basic powers in those- by exploring the sym-
bols in his poems, because symbols have greater range and
power. "His imagination is a strange one, an odd one ... we
191
should see flowers on a grave; he sees 'the dead who
periscope through flowers to the sky' ... we should see
geese high in the air; he sees 'geese nearly in heaven.",95
John Bayley points out Dylan's relations to the surrealist
Arthur Rimbaud and the metaphysical Gerard Manley Hop-
kins in the use of single words as symbols, with a "natural
momentum of syntax": the chitterlings of a clock ... the
puffed birds hopping and hunting ... socket and grave, the
brassy blood. 96
And beyond those word-symbol occurrences, Dylan's
word choices-as Bayley demonstrates-often exemplify
synaesthesia, the merging of senses, transformations in
which the senses are compressed and interchanged-matter
of the air, a voice itching, thoughts smell in the rain.97 (Such
effects can be illuminating. To those of us without breathing
problems, air is never a conscious presence. For an asth-
matic, however, air is palpable, a thing, matter, often need-
ing a strenuous reaching for.)
Dylan Thomas' last days were extremely difficult-be-
ginning October 24, 1953 through his 39th birthday three
days later and after-with some remaining controversy
about the real cause(s) for his death. During a rehearsal of
Under Milk Wood, Dylan was "restless, sometimes too hot
and then freezing; all the symptoms of a chill. Later he
became nauseated and had to vomit, retching so violently he
lost his balance and fell to the floor." He said, "I'm too tired
to do anything ... I'm too sick too much of the time." In the
morning, on being asked "Sick this way, how long?" he
replied, "Never this sick ... I've come to the melancholy
conclusion that my health is totally gone. I can't drink at all.
I always could before ... but now most of the time I can't
even swallow beer without being sick ... ,,98
Liz Reitel, a Brinnin associate, and the man (Herb Han-
num) who would become her husband, took Dylan to see a
Dr. Milton Feltenstein, whom Dylan nicknamed "the man
with the winking needle" because of his inclination to use
injections. He gave Dylan "a shot of cortisone, which was
then a relatively new drug with unknown side effects."
Brinnin remarks on his own reaction of shock on observing
Dylan shortly after at rehearsal. "His face was lime-white,
his lips loose and twisted, his eyes dulled, gelid, and sunk in
his head. He showed the countenance of a man who had
been appalled by something beyond comprehension." Dylan
seemed to recover afterward ("by then the cortisone would
have worn off,,).98
Partying: he ate little (other than the candies Tootsie
Rolls and Milky Ways).99 On November 3rd, on awaking,
he told Liz Reitel, "I want to go to the Garden of Eden ...
to die, to be forever unconscious ... I adore my little boy
[Llewellyn] ... I can't bear the thought of not seeing him
again. Poor little bugger, he doesn't deserve this." "Deserve
what?" "He doesn't deserve my wanting to die. I truly want
to die ... ,,100
November 4th, at 2 a.m., Dylan awoke and left the hotel
for an hour and a half, coming back saying he'd drunk 18
whiskeys. 101 He fell asleep, then on awakening complained
192
Delivered by Publishing Technology to: Hinari - Peru IP: 190.222.237.144 On: Sat, 05 Jun 2010 20:31:53
Copyright (c) Oceanside Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.
For permission to copy go to www.copyright.com
that "he was having trouble breathing, that he must get
outside right away."
Liz took him for a brief walk. At his insistence, they
stopped at the White Horse [where he had downed a
third of his purported 18 whiskies the previous night],
but this morning he could scarcely hold down a single
beer, and even it so nauseated him that they had to
hurry back to the hotel. At Liz's insistence, Dr. Felten-
stein was summoned and gave Thomas "medication
that eased his suffering sufficiently for him to sleep. "
By late afternoon, however, his nausea returned and he
began retching violently. Again Feltenstein was sum-
moned.,,99
This time he gave Thomas an injection of ACTH. Once
more Thomas fell asleep. Later-the ,details are difficult to
corroborate-Dylan asked to be "put out." Feltenstein gave
him an injection of half a grain of morphine sulfate.
A normal dose to relieve acute pain is one-sixth of a
grain ... The "breathlessness" from which Thomas
had suffered in Wales was probably the result of
asthma and smoking, which impaired the function of his
lungs. (Alcohol could depress his breathing ... or he
might have aspirated particles of vomit.) /fThomas was
suffering from any difficulty in breathing, the effect of
half a grain of morphine could be catastrophic. 102
Unconscious, he was taken by ambulance to St. Vincent's
hospital, November 5, 1953. "By night-time, mucus had
begun to obstruct Thomas' breathing, and an emergency
tracheotomy had to be performed." Diagnosed with "acute
and chronic ethylism" (alcoholism) and "hypostatic bron-
chopneumonia," his death at age 39 followed soon after.
In retrospect:
Of Dylan Thomas' Illness: His projected image can be
viewed as that of a gifted man who used many stratagems to
achieve sometimes contradictory goals, i.e., to be a public
figure, but also to remain private in areas he reserved for
himself, such as his "bronchial condition." In this regard he
was misapprehended by many, including his wife, but not
by his parents, who had shared the scene and circumstances
of his childhood asthmatic attacks and bouts of coughing.
Although information relevant to causative factors and the
nature of his asthma is not apparent in biographical sources,
it might have been possible that his respiratory symptoms
could have responded to one or another of the medications
available in his time. Unfortunately, he resisted-even was
hostile to-physicians. In the same way some affected by
neuroses would resist a Freud, 103 he "cleaved to his condi-
tion" fearing that to do otherwise-consistent with psycho-
logical concept-runs the risk of impairment, even loss, of
creativity.
May-June 2000, Vol. 21, NO.3
 Of particular interest is the part that the circumstance of
asthma played in the genesis of Dylan Thomas' initiatives in
radio broadcasting and book reading tours. As an indirect
consequence of his rejection for military service because of
physical disability, he sought an alternative outlet for war-
time contribution. In this regard the outcome was similar to
the experiences of Djuna Barnes and Francis Bacon; 104
because of their asthma, new careers were evolved.
Had Dylan Thomas sought appropriate medical assis-
tance before the onset of his serious illness while on tour in
New York, early incipient diabetes might have been de-
tected and treated. Tragically, irreversibility was the price
paid for the first finding of markedly elevated blood and
spinal fluid sugar levels during his terminal comatose state.
The exact cause of his death is difficult to ascertain in a
consideration of the multiplicity of identified clinical fac-
tors.105 Pertinent were cerebral edema (swelling of the brain
cells, diagnosed post mortem), presumed secondary to re-
spiratory tract disease with consequently impaired oxygen-
ation, and excessively elevated blood sugar levels leading to
a serious metabolic disorder with progression to a poten-
tially fatal comatose state ("diabetic shock").106
Although not known for certain, possible contributing
roles for adverse effects of drugs-administered prior to
hospital admission and definitive diagnostic study-cannot
be ruled out, i.e., injections of 1) cortisone, with secondary
side effects of elevated blood sugar; and 2) morphine sul-
fate, with side effects of depression of respiration. In the
treatment of asthma, the double-edge (beneficial and ad-
verse) actions of corticosteroids became increasingly well
known after their introduction into clinical medicine in
1949,107 just four years before Dylan Thomas' death.
Regarding contraindication of morphine, as early as the
12th century, Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), while con-
currently serving as a Cairo rabbi and physician in the
Egyptian court of Saladin-in a treatise addressed to his
asthmatic patient, the Sultan's son Al-AfdalI04-cautioned
against the use of opiates.108 Some 500 years later in the
English medical world, Thomas Willis-with first-hand
knowledge of the problems of treating asthma from his own
casel04-wrote of his prudent use of opiates only when all
else failed. "Whereas more or less they hinder breathing
(already difficult and too impaired), they frequently bring
the patient into danger of life.,,109
There is the likelihood that relevant knowledge of those
works might have been limited primarily to historians of
medicine, and in the instance of Maimonides, to Hebraic
and Islamic scholars, even after translation of his text into
English in 1963.108 Nevertheless, the point at issue had not
been neglected in mainstream medical literature. Particu-
larly in 1860, there were the published pertinent observa-
tions and experiences of Henry Hyde Salter, the London
physician whose clinical studies and books were foremost in
providing teaching and insights on asthma. Like Willis,
Salter also was affected by asthma,103 and similarly warned
against its uncritical use ... " I am not certain that I have
Allergy and Asthma Proc.
Delivered by Publishing Technology to: Hinari - Peru IP: 190.222.237.144 On: Sat, 05 Jun 2010 20:31:53
Copyright (c) Oceanside Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.
For permission to copy go to www.copyright.com
ever seen (opium) do good ... I have often seen it do harm
... by lowering sensibility (opium) prevents acute and
prompt perception of normal (respiratory) stimulus (to)
breathing efforts (that are) necessary to restore balance ...
Not only have I seen asthma worse for it when given during
a fit, but I have seen it brought on when it did not previously
exist. I would say ... prefer any other sedative to opium,
and, unless there is some special complication that indicates
it, never give it at all." 110
Of Dylan Thomas' Cultural Heritage: acclaim for his
work may not be universal; no modern poet can claim that,
but he has left a body of material which, admittedly modest
in size, will endure. In the process he created a genre: poetry
whose effects appreciably increased what has never been a
very large popular audience for such literature. The reader-
ship of this Welshman (and his voice-recorded works must
be included) holds steady, even in multiples, nearly half a
century after his death.
Of Dylan Thomas' pragmatic heritage: In a follow-up
biographical note:
His fame has not diminished in the years since his
death .... His home in Laugharne, The Boat House, is
now a museum restored with funds provided by the
European Economic Community, and there is a market
for Dylan Thomas memorabilia of every kind. There are
posters, postcards, plaques, mugs, sculptured busts,
tableware, thimbles, trays and tea towels carrying ei-
ther the Dylan Thomas or Boat House motif[or both] as
well as a wide array of books, video films and record-
ings. One entrepreneur even marketed glass phials of
what was claimed to be Dylan Thomas's sweat. I I I
Would this often amusing Swansea Welshman be
amused? Probably, but, knowing what he knew, he likely
would not be surprised.
NOTES
1. Ferris, Biography, p. ]01.
2. Ibid, p. 138.
3. Fitzgibbon, Life, p. 17.
4. Tremlett, Mercy of Means, p. ]9.
5. Fitzgibbon, p. 33.
6. William Blake (1757-]827), English poet, painter, engraver, and
visionary mystic; noted for ]yrical and epic poems; one of the
earliest and highest regarded tigures of Romanticism. Thomas De
Quincey (1785-1859), English essayist and critic; best know for
work, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (addiction for relief
of pain of facia] neuralgia). Christopher Marlow (1564-1593),
English poet and most important pre-Shakesperean dramatist. Edgar
Allan Poe (1809-]849), U.S. poet, critic, and short story writer;
internationally famous for fictional mystery and macabre works.
Jacob (1785-1863) and Wilhelm (1786-]859) Grimm, German
brothers, famous for classic folk songs and folklore (Grimm's Fairy
Tales); also historical linguistics and Germanic philology. John
Keats (1795-182]), English poet, noted for Romantic lyric verse
characterized by imagery, sensuous tone, and classical legend as
medium for philosophic expression. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-
1822), English romantic poet; noted for lyrical verse and liberal
193
 values. Lord (George Gordon) Byron (1738-1824), English poet 40. Ferris, p. 303. One biographer degrades the matter of gonorrhea to
and satirist; preeminent representative of the Romantic movement. a suggestion only that Dylan may have caught the disease from a girl
6a. Biographical sketch of Wilhelm Grimm as an asthma sufferer ap- he met at an exhibition in 1936. Dylan himself boasted in London
pears in an earlier section of this book. that he "caught a dose of clap." He wrote, "I have battled with a
7. Fitzgibbon, pp. 40-41. venomous doctor who wanted me to go places with him and do
8. Ibid, p. 45-47. things but ... I won by a short lung. [ have to stay indoors for six
9. Ibid, p. 59. to eight weeks; don't tell the details of my present indispositions ...
10. Ferris, pp. 67-68. they might ruin my lecherous chances. No, I shan't begin dying
II. Caitlin Thomas, Life. p. 90. yet." In a 1936 letter to Geoffrey Grigson, quoted by Ferris, pp.
12. Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbraud (1854-1891), French poet. 136-137.
13. Ferris, p. 178. 41. Jones, pp. 92-93; Ferris, p. 98.
14. Ibid, p. 139. 42. Tremlett, p. xvi. Review by Dame Edith Sitwell.
15. Jones, Poems, p. 26. 43. Ferris, p. 146.
16. [bid, p. 93. 44. Ibid, pp. 151-152.
17. Ibid, p. 96. 45. Tremlett, pp. 60-64.
18. Ibid, p. 49. 46. Caitlin Thomas, p. xi.
19. Sinclair, More Magical, p. 197. 47. Tremletl, p. 89.
20. Tremlett, p. 19. 48. Caitlin Thomas, pp. 73-75.
21. Ibid, p. 60. 49. Tremlett, p. 116.
22. [bid, p. 142. 50. Ibid, pp. 121-122.
23. Brinnin, In America, p. 23. 5!. Ferris, p. 288. One ingenious critic suggested a connection to milk
24. Ibid, p. 48. wood trees, which secrete latex. The implication-since the wood is
25. Ferris, pp. 189-190. a haunt of courting couples-is that Thomas was making a private
26. Ibid, p. 32. joke about condoms; the "milk" could also be semen. Given his
27. Tremlett, pp. 24-27. sense of humor and fondness for wordplay, this is not impossible.
28. Brinnin, pp. 46-47. 52. Richard Burton (Richard Walters Jenkins, Jr.) (1925-1984), leading
29. Oscar Wilde (Fingal O'Flahertie Wills) (1854-1900), Irish wit, British stage and motion picture actor of his time; known for
poet, and dramatist; noted for comic masterpieces. Aubrey (Vincent) premier performances in historical and Shakespearean roles.
Beardsley (1872-1898), foremost English illustrator of the I 890s; 53. Sinclair, p. 197.
illustrated work of Oscar Wilde with whom he shared prominence in 54. James Joyce (1882-1941), Irish novelist, noted for experimental
the Aestheticism movement (doctrine that art exists for the sake of approaches to language usage and exploring new literary methods in
solely its beauty). large fictional works.
30. Tremlett, pp. 26-27. 55. Cox, Collection of Essays, pp. 99-100.
31. Fitzgibbon, p. 106. 56. Fitzgibbon, p. 239.
32. Ferris, p. 55. 57. Ferris, p. 172. Vernon Watkins, fellow Welsh writer and friend.
33. Ferris, p. 102. 58. Djuna Bames (1892-1982), American author whose biographical
34. Nashold and Tremlett, Death of Dylan Thomas, p. 114. sketch appears in an earlier section of this book.
35. Letter to Pamela Hansford Johnson; Ferris, pp. 101-102. 59. Henry (Valentine) Miller (1891-1980), U.S. author; novels noted
36. Tremlett, p. xxi. for free and easy style and sexual frankness.
37. Ferris, pp. 229-230. 60. To Glyn Jones; Fitzgibbon, Letters, p. 236.
38. Tremlett, p. [43. 61. Caitlin Thomas, p. 67.
39. Fitzgibbon, pp. 108,241. John Davenport was a few years older than 62. Tremletl, pp. 179, 182.
Dylan. A heavily built and immensely strong man, at Cambridge 63. Fitzgibbon, pp. 347-350.
had acquired a considerable reputation both as a boxer and a poet. 64. William Saroyan (1908-1981), U.S. author; noted for irreverent
But he abandoned boxing and poetry sadly abandoned him, though tenor of stories dealing with joy of living regardless of trials of
in 1940 he was not yet fully aware of this. (In 193], when he felt poverty, insecurity, and hunger.
poetic inspiration flagging, he had asked T. S. Eliot for advice. Eliot 65. Ferris, p. 188.
had recommended that he not force his muse, and that he return to 66. Ibid, p. 226.
her in ten years' time. This advice he accepted, but when he sought 67. Tremletl, p. 143.
her again in 1941 she had fled.) He has since become one of the 68. Letter to Margaret Taylor; Ferris, pp. 230-231. Thomas knew [his
best-known non-academic critics of literature writing in English; a teeth] were unsightly ... In Peter de Vries's Reuben, his [Dylan]
man of immensely wide culture, multilingual, a pianist of distinc- Thomas-figure, McGland, suffers "the agonies of hell" worrying
tion, a connoisseur of painting, and a wit. Both physically and about his teeth, and commits suicide when he hears he must have
intellectually this great bull-of-a-man whose mind is so fastidious them all out. This is an odd fancy to get from nowhere. De Vries
that it has prevented him from any commitment other than occa- says (in a letter): "An interview with Dylan Thomas, I think in the
sional criticism is almost the exact opposite of bone-snapping, New York (Sunday) Times Book Review, in which he said something
coughing, cocky Dylan, who gave himself away in every sense, and like, 'say I'm balding and toothlessing', put me on the track of his
in almost every line he ever wrote. They had met and become probably acute dental problems. He was ostensibly satirizing Amer-
friends in the very early Parton Street bookshop, days. When John ican journalese, which makes verbs of nouns and adjectives, but
had gone to America with his first wife, Clement, the daughter of a publicly betraying an actual private obsession-so I surmised. It
rich Bostonian, he wrote to Dylan: "I went to Hollywood to write a was only a step, or leap, of the imagination to make me suspect what
fi 1m for Robert Donat (also an asthma sufferer whose biographical a horror terminal tooth loss might be to a chronic womanizer,
sketch appears in this book) ... RKO bought a thing ... the something tantamount to emasculation .... We've all suffered
producer discovered that the Young Pretender wasn't Charles II. enough in a dentist's chair to know that dental can become mental,
He'd got the two Charlies mixed up ... Luckily Donat broke his and hindsight makes me seriously suspect clairvoyance in my div-
contract at about that time, and I moved to another studio. I finished ination of Dylan's teeth woes and anxieties vis-a-vis McGland's."
up with $750 a week." (Ferris, p. 357.)

194 May-June 2000, Vol. 21, NO.3

Delivered by Publishing Technology to: Hinari - Peru IP: 190.222.237.144 On: Sat, 05 Jun 2010 20:31:53
Copyright (c) Oceanside Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.
For permission to copy go to www.copyright.com
69. Igor (Fyodorovich) Stravinski (1882-1971), Russian-born composer going to commit suicide. Elizabeth Lutyens and I left the Boat
especially renowned for ballet scores. House ... and found him in a pub ... drunk. I really went for
70. Ferris, pp. 242-244. him, shouting " (Caitlin Thomas, pp. 160-161). About Dy-
71. Brinnin, pp. 44-45. lan's children L1ewe]yn (b. 1939) attended Harvard, then
72. Tremlett, p. 12. joined J. Walter Thompson, the advertising agency, in London,
73. Ferris, pp. 267-268. where he became a successful copywriter, and currently works
74. Caitlin Thomas, p. 90. for the same company in Australia ... Colin (b. ]949) attended
75. [bid, pp. 67-68. an Australian university; like his brother, settled in that country
76. Ibid, pp. 174-175. and is in Government service ... Aeronwy (b. 1943) lives in a
77. Brinnin, p. 149. London suburb and is married to a Welsh social worker ... A
78. Fitzgibbon, p. 335. book of her poems, Later than Laugharne. was published in
79. Brenner, p. 225. 1976, under her married name of Aeronwy Thomas-Ellis. (Ferris,
80. Sinclair, p. 212. p. 370).
81. Ibid, p. 25. 101. Fitzgibbon, p. 345.
82. Ferris, p. 177. 102. Ferris, pp. 306-308.
83. [bid, p. 185. 103. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Austrian neurologist and pioneering
84. Caitlin Thomas, p. 200. psychiatrist; founder of the psychoanalytic school.
85. Fitzgibbon, Letters, p. 238. Sir Winston (Leonard Spenser) 104. See their biographical sketches as asthma sufferers in corresponding
Churchill (1874-1965), World War II British prime minister; as titled sections of this book.
author received the 1953 Nobel prize for literature. Sir Edward 105. Nashold and Tremlett, pp. 164-168.
Howard Marsh (1872-1953), British man of letters and art collector, 106. "diabetic shock," the diagnosis given in his case analysis. The term
editor, translator and biographer; served as Churchill's private sec- likely was used to denote commonly fatal diabetic coma eventuating
retary for 20 years. from the metabolic disorder of inadequately treated and severe
86. Ibid, p. 248. diabetes; resultant development of toxic chemical (ketoacidosis) and
87. Ibid, p. 229. Not on this list was Kingsley Amis (Lucky Jim, 1954; disturbance of water and electrolyte balance affecting the central
That Uncertain Feeling, 1955; Collected Poems. 1944-1979, 1979). nervous system.
As late as 1991, Amis still flailed away at Dylan, feeling no pity for 107. Hench P, Kendall E et al. The effect of a hormone ... on rheumatoid
struggling poor boy Thomas making a mess of things: ''Thomas was arthritis. Proc Soc Meetings Mayo Clinic 24: 181, 1949.
an outstandingly unpleasant man ... a pernicious figure, one who 108. Munter M, ed. Maimonides M. Treatise on Asthma. Philadelphia:
helped to get Wales and Welsh poetry a bad name he cheated Lippincott; 1962, p. 64.
and stole from his friends and peed on their carpets " (Tremlett, 109. Willis T. Pharmaceutice Rationalis: Or an Exercitation of the Op-
p. xxxiii). John Davenport, see note 39. Peggy Guggenheim (1898- erations of Medicines in Humane Bodies. London: 1878, T. Dring,
1979), U.S. art collector and patron; owned and operated galleries in C. Harper, and J. Leigh, p. ]47.
England, New York, and London. Richard (Arthur Warren) Hughes 110. Salter HH. On Asthma: Its Pathology and Treatment, 2nd ed.
(1900-1976); noted for plays, poetry and novels. London: Churchill, ] 860. (Philadelphia: Blanchard and Lea, 1864,
88. Ibid, p. 250. pp. 137-138).
89. Ferris, p. 192. 111. Tremlett, p. 181.
90. Brinnin, p. 270.
91. Tremlett, p. 2. T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot (1888-1965), American-
born English poet, playwright, literary critic, and editor; leader of
poetry's modernist movement and author of poetic dramas. W(ys- BIBLIOGRAPHY
tan) H(ugh) Auden (1907-1973), British and subsequently natural- Brinnin JM. Dylan Thomas in America. Boston: Little, Brown, 1955.
ized American poet; man of letters and critic; work had leftist Cox CB, ed. Dylan Thomas: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood
orientation dealing with society's ills, intellectual and mora] prob- Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966.
lems of public concern. Ferris P. Dylan Thomas, A Biography. New York: Dial, 1977.
92. Ibid, p. 102. Fitzgibbon C. The Life of Dylan Thomas. Boston: Little, Brown, 1965.
93. Cox, p. 24. Fitzgibbon C, ed. Selected Letters of Dylan Thomas. New York: New
94. Ibid, p. 27. Directions, 1965.
95. Ibid, p. 54. Jones D, ed. The Poems of Dylan Thomas. New York: New Directions,
96. Ibid, pp. 140-141. John Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), 1971.
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1879). Nashold J, and Tremlett G. The Death of Dylan Thomas. Edinburgh:
97. Ibid, p. 158. Mainstream, 1997.
98. Tremlett, pp. 168-169. Prochnik L. Endings. New York: Crown, 1980.
99. Prochnik, pp. 176-180. Sinclair A. Dylan Thomas: No Man More Magical. New York: Henry Holt,
100. Brinnin, pp. 271-272. Another instance of such suicidal talk, in Rinehart & Winston, 1975.
1940, in a letter to Vernon Watkins: "in stinking and friendless Thomas C, and Tremlett G. Caitlin: Life With Dylan Thomas. New York:
London, we've been having an awful time, and I have felt like Henry Holt, 1986.
killing myself." (Ferris, p. 179). And, in Caitlin's telling, late Tremlett G. Dylan Thomas: ]n the Mercy of His Means. New York: St.
summer of 1951, "Dylan telephoned, and announced he was Martin's, 1991.

Allergy and Asthma Proc. 195

Delivered by Publishing Technology to: Hinari - Peru IP: 190.222.237.144 On: Sat, 05 Jun 2010 20:31:53
Copyright (c) Oceanside Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.
For permission to copy go to www.copyright.com