BY Clay Larroy
Traveling has great
educational value and increases of our knowledge. While travelling, a person
comes across people of different races, religions, regions, etc. and also visits different places. Each place has
a historical importance of its own. Traveling is also a source of great
pleasure. It gives us respite from our dull and dreary routine. It relieves us
of our worries. It enables us to meet
new people and know their customs, habits and traditions. We can also know the different
kinds of food eaten by people belonging to different regions. When you want to plan a vacation contact
me!
WALES-ON
THE TRAIL OF DYLAN THOMAS
By
Allen Lee
Laugharne is dominated by a
ruined castle. There has been a castle here since the 11th century, but the one
you can see now is a relative newcomer at a mere 700 years old. The castle
overlooks the broad estuary of the River Taf. We parked just across from the
castle, in Grist Square. Stop for a Welsh tea if you can at one of the little
tearooms that cluster around the square. We had welshcakes that melt in your
mouth on their way to spending a lifetime on your hips. We sat in the sun,
beneath a climbing rose, lulled by the hum of visiting bees. When the weather
is right, this surely is one of the most blessed corners of the British Isles.
Refreshed from the tea, we walked
along the front of the castle, at the edge of the estuary. "Dylan Thomas
Boat House" is well signposted everywhere. Thomas moved here in 1938, the
year after he married his wife Caitlin, although he did not move into the Boat
House in 1949. The signposts point up away from the waterfront, along a narrow
lane which climbs up the cliffside.
The boat house that Thomas and
his family lived in is not one of those shed-like affairs that you might find
on a lakeside. This is a solid, stone building that clings on the cliff like a
limpet. It’s now a museum with a tearoom (more welshcakes to ruin that diet, I’m
afraid), set in a cottage garden.
For Thomas fans, the most
fascinating building is what looks like a converted garage, on the road above
the Boat House. This has been set up to look as if the writer had just stepped
away from his work for a moment. There are drafts on the floor and papers on
the desk. You can"t go in - you can just peer through a window. It looks
spartan, with only a wooden table and chair for furniture. With a view across
the estuary, this is where Dylan Thomas wrote some of his best known work,
including the iconic radio play "Under Milk Wood". A few
prints and drawings hang on the wall, and on the table is a beer bottle - a
hint of the problem that haunted Thomas and eventually killed him.
Alcohol was a pleasure he first
experimented with as a young reporter in Swansea, although his father was
reportedly a heavy drinker. He loved the image of being a "drunken
poet", and was prone to exaggerate his intake. His wife, Caitlin, blamed
alcoholism for his early death at the age of 39. He died in New York, and
although alcohol was said to be the cause, it now appears he may have been the
victim of a medical misadventure after he was given an unusually strong
sedative later described as "potentially lethal" for Thomas, who
suffered from asthma.
His body was brought home to
Wales, and he is buried in Laugharne, not far from the Boat House. No huge stone
memorial for him; a simple wooden cross marks his grave. His wife, who did not
die until 1994, is buried in the same plot.
The walk back from the Boat House
into the village is along a leafy lane. How many times did Thomas walk along
this quiet road to the pub in the village which now has his portrait as a sign?
Brown’s Hotel was his second home, where he spent most of his time when he wasn’t
writing. Today his favorite haunt has been bought by TV actor Neil Morrissey
(known to some as the voice of the children’s animated character Bob the
Builder), who has also snapped up two other hospitality properties in the
village. It’s a pleasant place to spend an afternoon people-watching, and it’s
not hard to imagine Thomas peopling the world of Under Milk Woodwith
characters he observed from the real-life Laugharne.
Although Laugharne was the
inspiration for Under Milk Wood and is the center of much of
Dylan Thomas" work, our final port of call is even further west, in
Fishguard.
Don’t be put off when you first
come into Fishguard. The upper town seems unimpressive. But follow the road
through, and just as you catch a glimpse of the port where ferries set off for
the Irish Republic, you’ll find it plunges down a wooded slope to the lower
town. This was the filming location for the movie of Under Milk Wood,
which was made in the early 70s and starred Richard Burton and Elizabeth
Taylor, along with the cream of the crop of British actors, including Peter O’Toole,
Glynis Johns, Vivien Merchant, and Sian Phillips.
While purists might prefer the
original radio version of the play, it is easy to see why the movie’s producers
chose this spot. Small cottages straggle along the harborside, snuggling up
against the steep hillside. The first line of the play - "It is spring,
moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobble streets
silent and the hunched, courters"-and-rabbits" wood limping invisible
down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishing boat-bobbing sea"
- seems to fit the view exactly.
My Dylan Thomas trail has come a
long way - from the city of Swansea, with its bustle and life and Laverbread,
to the quaint peculiarities of Laugharne, to the Hollywood vision of what the
fictional village of Llareggub should look like. But the man himself is still a
shadow. An incredible international talent, the darling of New York, a star at
the BBC... and yet his work revels in the ways of small-town rural Wales, in
the personalities and relationships that grow up in tiny communities. I have
learned plenty about him - but do I know the man himself any better? I have
seen the places he lived and loved and drank and wrote... but, to steal a quote
from Winston Churchill, Dylan Thomas remains a riddle wrapped in a mystery
inside an enigma.
And probably he would have liked
it that way.
The function of posterity is to look
after itself.
Dylan Thomas
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