Behind the Blue Door…
I came to London at the end of January to spend a few months on British soil, finishing my editing on the next book and experiencing London life as much as possible. England is rife with the ghosts of writers past, and I’m hoping to follow the paths some of them left on London’s streets. My first choice is Dylan Thomas, because I’ve always loved the beauty of his language and the images he creates for me. Is there anyone who hasn’t at one time been moved by his classic villanelle, written to his dying father, ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’?
But love for his father aside, Dylan was such a bad boy, along with so many of history’s writers and artists. It creates the difficulty in separating the artist from the art.
I went to Camden Market, and walked to 54 Delancey Street. It was there that Thomas, his wife Caitlin and their three children lived in a three-room basement flat for a short while in the early 1950s. It’s an innocent-looking row house, its door now painted a bright blue. But within the house there existed a simultaneously marvelous and terrible life. Thomas called it, at one time, the “house of horrors.” During daylight hours he wrote in a Romany caravan in the back garden, escaping the family chaos of impoverished domesticity. But when evening fell…I could imagine him, with his “cut-glass” Welsh voice and slightly angelic face – before it was ruined by alcohol – walking to the high street for nights of endless bouts of drinking and public brawls. He drank away the pittance he was paid for his work at the time, forcing him and Caitlin to beg and borrow (and occasionally steal) from friends and family to feed their children as well as their shared drinking habit. Dead at only 39, he left a long legacy of beautiful words and bitter memories for many who knew and loved him. It was poignant to stand on that sunny street and gaze at the blue door, envisioning the dramas and sorrows that had played out behind it.
