Britain’s Last Romantic Poet: Dylan Thomas

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He must have been something of an oddity in Swansea, apart from his early addiction to heavy drinking. His contemporaries understood that only too well. He spoke no Welsh . . . he inherited the contradictions of the history of his country and his family. Speaking Welsh, in Swansea, was thought somehow a little common.

The future poet’s habit of writing and speaking in high English, the literary expression of the English middle class, was formed. It would have been unthinkable for Dylan to learn Welsh and to write using the convoluted techniques of the old Celtic bards. What he strove for was the technique of the great English poets and he worked harder than most to achieve it. Nevertheless, his rhythms and phrasings, his choice of metaphor and odd matchings of words, have that Celtic run and lilt . . . .

As a social animal, Dylan was a hidden Puritan. Yet, imprisoned always in his contradictory nature, he was a mighty drinker and rioter. Early in his youth, he sowed the seeds of his own future disaster. It has been said that Dylan Thomas had a death wish. He ran into the arms of death like a lover and put all the agonies of his journey toward dissolution into his poetry.

A great reader, he loved the verses of William Blake and George Herbert. These and the Romantics of the early 19th century shaped his future work. His father was there to help and advise. Dylan considered, at first, being a local journalist but abandoned the idea when he recognized where his true vocation lay. During his school days he published poems in the school magazine. By 1933 his poetry appeared in print in London.

After a youthful bout with bronchitis, Dylan’s health gave some cause for concern. He always believed he would meet a premature death and was a dedicated hypochondriac, with a firm conviction that he would die young of consumption. He did develop a fearsome cough, but it was from smoking. Asthma and excessive smoking from the age of 15 ruined his lungs. His obsession with the poet John Keats resulted in his identification with the young genius who died of tuberculosis. Whenever tuberculosis was mentioned, Dylan always said that he had already had more of it than Keats.

Dylan married in 1937, with no money and few prospects. Initially, he and his wife Caitlin Macnamara lived in London but Dylan hated the literary life of the capital and was a grotesque misfit there: an impecunious Welsh writer, badly dressed, often drunk, always trying to borrow money to pay his bills. Though his work was published, it was impossible to live on the proceeds of writing poetry.

Caitlin, too, was a Celt. She was not Welsh, however, but Irish. It was perhaps a fatal combination, yet their relationship was a close and passionate one. She possessed great beauty, as did Dylan at that time. There is a famous portrait of him by Augustus John. Though idealized, it gives a clear impression of his youthful charm. Slim, with a mop of thick curls, a cherubic face and retrousse nose, it contrasts sadly with photographs taken only a few years later of the aging, overweight poet.

Caitlin, on the other hand, did not age like Dylan. Her fine-boned, delicate beauty managed to rise above the poverty, the demands of a young family of two sons and a daughter, and the strain of supporting a dedicated poet throughout all his struggles to write. If Dylan Thomas became a legend, then the myth owes a debt to Caitlin, without whom he could not have survived as long as he did.

In 1949 they returned to Wales, where rents and living expenses were cheap. Their home was called The Boat House, and overlooked the sea at Laugharne, a South Wales fishing village on the coast beyond Carmarthen. Despite the proceeds of his work for the BBC, reading poetry, and writing scripts for films, there was never enough money. Dylan needed funds to support his twin addictions to nicotine and alcohol, apart from the needs of his family. Caitlin, despite her fragile appearance, displayed an iron will and tremendous character. Few women would have endured her circumstances.

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