For the last four years of his life, the Welsh bard sought refuge in Laugharne, a coastal village 225 miles due west of his harried alter ego in London, that bastion of soused peers and their public houses the sybaritic poet was loath to resist. Thomas further exiled himself in Laugharne, eventually settling a good distance from the village center in the Boathouse, a whitewashed dwelling that hovers just above the estuary 100 paces from his writing shed. Standing on the top stair leading down from the village path to the Boathouse, I intend to retrace the bard’s fabled daily rituals, a routine to stir the envy of any writer who favors the “mussel pooled and heron priested shore” over the city’s incessant cacophony. Revelers now receive admission and gift shop discounts to the Boathouse, reduced lodging fees and specially priced pints at Browns Hotel, the poet’s favorite haunt. Thomas retrieved his wife of just nine months, Caitlin Macnamara, from London and relocated to a rented cottage in this quaint seaside village. The couple moved several times between England and Laugharne, finally retreating, in 1949, to the Boathouse where they could live outside the prying eyes and cocked ears of villagers. Like the poet, who was known for his sense of remove, the three-story Boathouse appears in isolation on the coastal landscape, perched like a great egret above a broad retaining wall that separates the dwelling from the rocky beach below and, just beyond, a tidal marsh. High and low paths, conjoined at the poet’s writing shed, lead to the steeply pitched stairs that descend into the home’s modest front garden. Many scholars contend he crafted his most famous poem, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” a eulogy for his dying father, from the third-floor sitting room. Imagining Dylan Thomas sequestered in his writing shed on a public path between an insular rural village and a bay of immense natural beauty, I understand why the author, who rewrote obsessively, never lacked for content. Sadly, Thomas is often cited more for his devotion to the pint than his prowess with the pen, a consequence of not only many lost bouts with the London pubs but his ultimate demise on Nov.
Comment on Dylan Thomas’ 'strangest town’
By Crai Bower, San Francisco Chronicle: Travel
Fri, 10/24/2014 - 9:15pm
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