Few people enjoyed a party quite like Dylan Thomas, and few people could write a letter quite like him, especially when he was annoyed. So imagine his disappointment when, returning to London from America in June 1953, he discovered that the city had been celebrating the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II without him. His friends had been partying for days, and Thomas, bursting with stories from his travels, arrived just as everyone was running out of steam. He was not amused.
Boat House
Laughame
Carmarthenshire
WalesJune 22 1953
Dear Oscar, Little dear Honourable Treasurer of mine, how are you?
I missed you a lot my last days, and was Lizzed away to the plane alone. I almost liked the plane-ride, though; it was stormy and dangerous, and only my iron will kept the big bird up; lightning looked wonderful through the little eyeholes in its underbelly; the bar was open all the way from Newfoundland; and the woman next to me was stonedeaf so I spoke to her all the way, more wildly and more wildly as the plane lurched on through dark and lion-thunder and the fire-water yelled through my blood, and she unheard all my delirium with a smile; and then it was London, and my iron will brought the bird down safely, with only one spine-cracking jar.
And, queasy, purple, maggoty, scalped, I weak-wormed through festoons, bunting, flags, great roses, sad spangles, paste and tinsel, the million cardboard simpers and ogrish plaster statuettes of the nincompoop queen, I crawled as early as sin in the chilly weeping morning through the city’s hushed hangover and all those miles of cock-deep orange-peel, nibbled sandwiches, broken bottles, discarded vests, vomit and condoms, lollipops, senile fish, blood lips, old towels, teeth, turds, soiled blowing newspapers by the unread mountain, all the spatter and bloody gravy and giant mousemess that go to show how a loyal and phlegmatic people enjoyed themselves like hell the day before.
And, my God, wouldn’t I have enjoyed it too! In the house where I stay in London, a party was still going on, at half-past seven in the wet, beige morning, that had started two nights before. Full of my news, of the latest American gossip from the intellectual underworld, of tall goings-on, of tiny victories and disasters, aching to gabble I found myself in a company of amiable, wrestling, maudlin, beetleskulled men, semi-men, and many kinds of women, who did not know or care I had been so far and wildly away but seemed to think I had been in the party all the whooping time. Sober, airsick, pancaked flat, I saw these intelligent old friends as a warrenfull of blockish stinkers, and sulked all morning over my warm beer as they clamoured and hiccupped, rolled rodgering down, fell gaily through windows, sang and splintered.
And in the afternoon, I stood—I was the only one who could—alone and disillusioned among the snorers and the dead. They grunted all around me, or went soughing and green to their Maker. I was close to crying there, in the chaotic middle of anticlimax. It was all too sordid. Oh how I hated these recumbent Bohemians! Slowly, I went upstairs to wash. There was a man asleep in the bath. And tears ran down my cheeks. Two creatures stretched dead in my bed. And, now, rain was boo-hooing too all over London.
Dylan
Letter reprinted from the fantastic book, Selected letters of Dylan Thomas, edited by Constantine Fitzgibbon. First published in 1965 by New Directions Publishing Corporation.
I csn honestly say that I've never reached that level of disconsolation over missing a celebration, nor would I have the imagination or impetus to pour such feelings into a letter that contains most of the adjectives in the English language.