Manuscript notebook.
Thomas, Caitlin. Autograph manuscript notebook. The Boathouse, Laugharne. Ca. mid-1950s.
12mo.; lined pages; printed wrappers; 41 pp. in ink.
Autograph manuscript by Dylan Thomas’s wife Caitlin, with significant autograph revisions and deletions, about herself and her life with Dylan, written in a school exercise book with “Caitlin Thomas, Boathouse” in her holograph on the upper wrapper.
Apparently unpublished, this may be part of an account of Caitlin’s life with Dylan which she entitled “Am I the Perfect Fool?” This portion of the manuscript was given by Dylan’s friend, writer Wyn Henderson, to Constantine FitzGibbon, a neighbour, friend and later official biographer of Dylan Thomas.
The text starts in full flow on page 397 (running through page 430) with the words: “no final assassinations; the next thing I can remember, Dylan and me were being lugged from the most deliciously swimming feather bed in the world ...” In language clearly influenced by Dylan's own, Caitlin talks of the couple's life together, her enduring love for her husband, their children, friendships, love, loneliness, being a widow, and money. Of her husband's death, she writes, “Oh God, oh Dylan, it must be cold down there; it is cold enough on top, in November: the dirtiest month of the year that killed you on the the [sic] ninth vile day. If only I could take you a bowl of your bread, and milk, and salt, that you always drank at night, to warm you up ... I am not going into that waste allotment of a T.S. Elliot [sic] elegy of a cemetary [sic]: Dylan will have to move up, in his single ditch, snug under the cliff, and make room for me; then we can keep each other warm, or cold, or maggot breeding.”
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