Thomas, Dylan

Autograph letter signed ("Dylan"), 2 pages (9 x 7 in.; 228 x 178 mm) in pencil, Blaen Cwm, Llangain, Wales, [? January or February 1948], to Caitlin Thomas; horizontal and vertical folds, some fraying at edges, lower right portion of recto creased and smudged.

Maurice Neville 

Dylan Thomas: The Collected Letters, ed. Paul Ferris, pp 666–67

Condition as described in catalogue entry.
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"I think of you all the time, in snow, in bed."  The poet writes to his wife from his parents home in Wales. In early 1948, Thomas had gone to be with his father while his mother was in hospital in Carmarthen.  His sister Nancy was also visiting from Devon at the same time.  "Here it's snowbound, dead, dull, damned; there's hockey-voiced Nancy being jolly over pans and primuses in the kitchen, and my father trembling and moaning all over the place, crying out sharply when the dog barks—Nancy's dog—weeping, despairing. My mother, in the Infirmary, with her leg steel-splinted up towards the ceiling and a 300 lb weight hanging from it, is good and cheerful and talks without stop about the removed ovaries, dropped wombs, amputated breasts, tubercular spines, & puerperal fevers of her new friends in the women's surgical ward. She will have to lie, trussed, on her back with her leg weighted, for at least two months, and then will be a long time learning, like a child, to walk again.

Thomas goes on to apologize for one of their dramatic quarrels and to announce his eminent return to London to seek a reconciliation. "I could come straightaway to you if—if you will have me. Christ, aren't we each other's? This time, this last time, darling, I promise you I shall not again be like that. You're beautiful. I love you. Oh, this Blaencwm [sic] room. Fire, pipe, whining, nerves, Sunday joint, wireless, no beer until one in the morning, death. And you aren't here. I think of you all the time, in snow, in bed."

A fine letter of remorse and cabin fever from a snowbound Dylan Thomas