Written by Peter Thabit Jones and Aeronwy Thomas, daughter of Dylan Thomas | In association with the Welsh Assembly Government

“At poor peace I sing
To you, strangers”
from Prologue

This is a self-guided walking tour of ten places in Greenwich Village that are connected with the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who visited and stayed in New York City while on four reading tours of North America between 1950 and 1953. The tour is designed to provide you with a strong sense of the real man behind the “brassy orator” with “the lovely gift of the gab,” as well as giving you a feel for Greenwich Village of the 1950s. We hope that you will find the walk both pleasurable and informative. Please follow the directions on this map. The tour will take around 1 hour and 30 minutes to 2 hours. Enjoy!

Map of Greenwich Village showing route of Dylan Thomas walking tour (Click Map to Enlarge)

1. CHURCH OF ST. LUKE’S IN THE FIELD EPISCOPALIAN CHURCH | 487 Hudson Street at the corner of Grove Street

“Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion”
from And death shall have no dominion

Memorial Service
On Friday, 13th November 1953, four days after Dylan Thomas had died, around four hundred people attended a memorial service for the poet here in the third oldest church in New York. His wife, Caitlin Thomas, along with other chief mourners, was at the front of the church. The gathering included poet e.e. cummings and sculptor David Slivka. It was also the day when a grieving Caitlin accompanied the coffined body of her husband, aboard the SS United States, on the long and lonely journey back to Britain. Dylan was one of the most famous poets in the English-speaking world; and his popular and electrifying tours had made him a much loved celebrity in America. While touring, he had found himself in the company of some of the Twentieth Century’s cultural greats, including Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe, Thomas Mann, Henry Miller and Max Ernst.

The sales of his books rivalled those of T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W.H. Auden and John Betjeman. Dylan’s Collected Poems, published on 10th November 1952, sold 30,000 hardback copies in Britain within a couple of years. The Collected Poems went on to be even more successful in America. His early and unexpected death was a great shock on both sides of the Atlantic. Leading British newspapers, such as the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, acknowledged his genius and his colourful poet’s lifestyle. The British poet Philip Larkin said, “I can’t believe that DT is truly dead. Three people who’ve altered the face of poetry and the youngest has to die.” The other two poets were Auden and Eliot.  Vernon Watkins, a close friend of Dylan and Larkin, was, in fact, asked to write an obituary before Dylan was actually dead. Interestingly, one of the founding wardens of St. Luke’s was Clement Clarke Moore, the author of the world-renowned poem ‘Twas the night before Christmas. He donated the land on which the church was built. Dylan Thomas, of course, wrote the very popular A Child’s Christmas in Wales.

2. CHUMLEY’S | 86 Bedford Street  (between Grove Street and Barrow Street)

“Dressed to die, the sensual strut begun”
from Twenty-four years

Chumley’s is an authentic speakeasy from the Prohibition era. Its previous notoriety is confirmed by the fact that it still has no sign and, as well as its main entrance, it offers a “secret entrance” on 58 Barrow Street, through the backyard called Pamela’s Court. Chumley’s is New York’s second oldest literary bar (the White Horse Tavern is the first). Its walls are covered with the framed pictures of its clientele of legendary writers and samples of their book covers. Dylan Thomas is one of many honoured, along with other literary greats such as John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay lived upstairs for a while. Note: Chumley’s is closed for renovation as we went to press 6/23/08

3. CHERRY LANE THEATRE | 38 Commerce Street (on Bedford Street, turn right on Barrow Street and the theatre will be opposite you on Commerce)

“I, in my intricate image, stride on two levels,
Forged in man’s minerals, the brassy orator”
from I, in my intricate image

Dylan’s Readings
The poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay founded Cherry Lane Theatre, which was originally Cherry Lane Playhouse, in 1924. As New York’s oldest off-Broadway Theatre, it has been at the forefront of providing innovative theatre for over eighty years. The Downtown Theatre movement, The Living Theatre, established by the actress and political activist Judith Malina, and the Theatre of the Absurd came out of the Playhouse. It showcased the early plays of Edward Albee and premiered Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Its list of renowned performers includes Gene Hackman, Bob Dylan and, of course, Dylan Thomas. Barbra Streisand was once an usher there. In 1952, on his second visit, Dylan did a special reading for the artistic community. Tickets were only $1 a head and Thomas had promised to read only his own poems.  However, the show was nearly canceled when he arrived claiming to have lost his copy of his poems. Judith Malina came to the rescue with a replacement that Dylan later returned, complete with the hand-written bookmarks he had used for the performance.

There is also another possible link between Edna St. Vincent Millay and Dylan. Millay, who was born in 1892 and died in 1951, wrote a poem Dirge without music. It has the following lines:

 “Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.”

It brings to mind Thomas’s famous villanelle Do not go gentle into that good night, which was drafted in March 1951. Millay’s poem, in fact, appeared in The New Pocket Anthology of American Verse, edited by Dylan’s American friend Oscar Williams, which contained some poems by Dylan.

4. MINETTA TAVERN | 113 MacDougal Street (on the corner of MacDougal Street and Minetta Lane)

 “His drinking was not a means of denying or fleeing life… but of fiercely embracing it.”
from Dylan Thomas in America by John Malcom Brinnin

The Minetta Tavern, which was a speakeasy during Prohibition, was known as The Black Rabbit until 1929. The Minetta Brook, which began on 23rd Street on its way to the Hudson, inspired its name. The brook still flows underground. The old wood paneling and time-honoured candelabra, which are still part of the attraction for today’s customers, appealed to decades of poets and writers, including Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Eugene O’Neill, e.e. cummings and Dylan Thomas. The black-and-white ink caricature drawings and aged photos, now yellowing, and the murals are testimony to its Bohemian days when celebrities sought out its convivial cosiness.
Dylan became a good friend of Joe Gould, who was known as “Professor Seagull.” A Harvard graduate, Gould claimed to understand continued on pg 3 the language of sea gulls and wrote several thousand pages of his imaginary great work, An Oral History of Our Time. It has been claimed that Reader’s Digest originated in the basement
of the property in 1923. More recently the Minetta was featured in the film Jimmy Blue Eyes, which is about the New York mobster Vincent “Jimmy Blue Eyes” Alo (1904-2001).

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5. CARPO’S CAFÉ (SAN REMO CAFÉ) | 93 MacDougal Street on the corner of Bleecker Street

 “We were killed in action, Manhattan Island, Spring 1952,
in a gallant battle against American generosity.
An American called Double Rye shot Caitlin to Death.
I was scalped by a Bourbon.”
from a postcard sent by Dylan to Swansea composer Daniel Jones

Favourite Bars/Drinking
After the preferred White Horse Tavern, San Remo was one of Dylan’s favourite bars in Manhattan. It was the desired hangout for a host of famous writers, artists, musicians and photographers, including Tennesee Williams, William Burroughs, the Beat poets Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso, W.H. Auden, James Baldwin, Frank O’Hara, William Styron, James Agee, Jackson Pollock, Miles Davis, and Weegee. Village character Maxwell Bodenheim was also a regular. Gore Vidal once tried to pick up Jack Kerouac in the San Remo. It is the setting of John Clellon Holmes’s 1952 Beat novel Go, and it also appears as The Masque in Kerouac’s 1958 The Subterraneans. Dylan met Allen Ginsberg in the Café. The Beat poet noted that Dylan played on his fame; and an invitation to him to visit Ginsberg’s attic at 206 East 7th Street was turned down after a friend reminded Dylan that Caitlin was waiting for them. Ginsberg left, sticking his tongue out playfully and later regretted that he had not made more of the encounter. Note: Carpo’s Café is no longer open as we went to press 6/23/08

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6. THE DOVE (THE GRAND TICINO) | 228 Thomson Street (between West 3rd Street and Bleecker Street)

“Once it was the colour of saying
Soaked my table…”
from Once it was the colour of saying

Favourite Restaurants
The Grand Ticino, at the time one of the finest Italian restaurants in Greenwich Village, is where Dylan is said to have experienced his first meal in America. John Malcolm Brinnin, the organizer of Dylan’s tours of the USA, took him there on his second day in New York, after they had been on a whistle-stop sightseeing tour of the city. Dylan spent time at the Ticino with British poet Ruthven Todd and New Zealand poet Allen Curnow. The white-table-clothed atmosphere and friendly hospitality obviously appealed to the Welsh poet. He wrote to his parents about American food. He had sampled milk shakes, fried shrimp and “a T-bone steak the size of a month’s ration
for an English family.”

He also liked to eat at a restaurant called the Little Shrimp, which was attached to the Hotel Chelsea. It was the place where one of the most significant recording deals was struck. Barbara Cohen (later Holdridge) and Marianne Roney (later Mantell) were two young women, college graduates, who nurtured the idea that recordings of poetry could sell in sufficient quantities to justify such a venture. They had decided that Dylan would be the ideal contemporary poet for them to record. Barbara worked for a small publisher and Marianne worked for a record company. After several unsuccessful approaches they finally got him to meet them at the Little Shrimp and he agreed to their request. “As far as Dylan was concerned,” said Mrs. Mantell later, “we were just two young girls with an idea and some money.” On 22nd February 1952, Dylan arrived for the recording at Steinway Hall on 57th Street. He had a sheaf of poems, but the engineer told him that they would only fill one side of a long-playing
record. Dylan found a copy of Harper’s Bazaar, which contained A Child’s Christmas in Wales, a story he had put together from two earlier writings. The finished
recording was released on 2nd April and sold modestly at first. The record of Dylan Thomas was the launch of Caedmon, a company formed by the two enterprising women and powered by their own money. It became one of the leading spoken-word recording labels and is now part of HarperCollins. It was also the beginning of the spoken-word recording industry. Since Dylan’s first recording many great and famous literary figures have committed their voices to Caedmon vinyl, including T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner, and actors such as Charlton Heston and Sir John Gielgud. The company eventually made the two women
very wealthy.

On the 50th anniversary of Dylan’s death, Caedmon released Dylan Thomas: The Caedmon Collection, which contained some previously unavailable recordings.

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7. WASHINGTON SQUARE HOTEL (HOTEL EARLE) | 103 Waverly Place (on the corner of MacDougal Street)

“A haven cosy as toast, cool as an icebox…”
from A visit to America

Dylan’s Hotels in New York
On the first tour John Malcolm Brinnin booked Dylan into the Beekman Hotel, on the corner of First Avenue and 49th Street, in a room at least twenty floors up. Dylan had wanted to stay in an apartment in New York, rather than a hotel, and he did not like the Beekman. As it was, the hotel management soon asked him to leave because of his partying and excessive demands on room service. He was booked here into the Hotel Earle, which was a cheaper place than the Beekman and also close to his favourite bars and restaurants in Greenwich Village. In the 1950s the Earle was a somewhat wellworn hotel. The atmosphere and the attitude of the management and staff was easy-going. Dylan wrote a letter to his parents in May 1950 in which he described the Earle as “right in Washington Square, a beautiful Square, which is right in the middle of Greenwich Village, the artists’ quarter of New York.”

Dylan and Caitlin, on the second tour in 1952, spent a couple of nights at the Hotel Earle before moving in to the Hotel Chelsea, where they had a one-room kitchenette apartment. The Hotel Chelsea is situated on West 23rd Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Constructed in 1883, it became Dylan’s “home” on his American tours. Other famous literary figures have stayed there, including O. Henry, Thomas Wolfe and Arthur Miller. Some famous people who lived there for a while include Sarah
Bernhardt, Jackson Pollack and the Welsh musician John Cale along with his then wife Betsey Johnson. It was at the Chelsea that Dylan worked on the final version of Under Milk Wood prior to its New York premiere. It was also from continued on pg 4 there that he was taken, unconscious, to St. Vincent’s Hospital, where he died after failing to come out of a coma. A plaque on the Hotel Chelsea reads: “Dylan Thomas lived and wrote at the Chelsea Hotel and from here he sailed out to die.”

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8. E.E. CUMMINGS’S APARTMENT | 4 Patchin Place (off West 10th Street between 6th Avenue and Greenwich Avenue)

“Time passes. Listen. Time passes”
from Under Milk Wood

Dylan’s Friendships
The American poet e.e. cummings (Edward Estlin Cummings) lived here, with his third wife Marion Morehouse, a photographer and fashion model, from 1923 until his death in 1962. Dylan really admired cummings and, on the first tour of New York, he made a special request to Brinnin to arrange a meeting with him. Brinnin, who was present when Dylan and e.e. met, wrote in Dylan Thomas in America: “…it seemed to me that some of their judgements showed the acerb, profound and confident insights of artists who in their work have defined a world within the world…” Cummings, in fact, had been in the audience at Dylan’s first reading at the Kaufmann Auditorium of the 92nd Street Y on February 23rd 1950, where Dylan delivered a spellbinding performance to an audience of more than a thousand people. The overwhelmed and  appreciative audience refused to let him leave the stage. According to Marion Morehouse, cummings was so moved he walked the streets for hours afterwards. The  following week or so Marion Morehouse invited Dylan here to Patchin Place to take his photograph. Dylan had had a few drinks and attempted a playful seduction. She described him as “Groucho Marx on a bad day.” After Dylan’s death a committee was formed by his American publisher James Laughlin to organise support for Caitlin and her family. Cummings was part of this committee, and an amount of $20,000 was raised. There is another connection between Patchin Place and Dylan. The writer Djuna Barnes lived in 5 Patchin Place from the 1940s onwards. She was an obsessive recluse. According to Constantine Fitzgibbon, Dylan’s first biographer, Barnes, along with James Joyce, influenced Dylan’s early prose writing. It has been noted by others that Dylan particularly liked her novel Nightwood, which was published in 1936.  Dylan made some very good friendships in New York, in particular with David Slivka, a sculptor, and his wife Rose, an art critic. Rose, in fact, became Caitlin’s closest friend in America. Rose said of Caitlin, “She was the artist’s wife, and that can be a terrible place to be.” The Slivkas lived in Greenwich Village. David was born on the same day and year as Dylan, 27th October 1914, and it was he and Rose who looked after Caitlin when Dylan was in a coma and after he died.

It was David who made Dylan’s death mask. The original mask is in an upstairs bedroom of the Boat House in Laugharne, Wales. The mask used to belong to Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor until it was sold after Burton’s death. The last bust cast from the mask is in the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea, Wales. David and Rose later divorced, but David, aged ninety-four years, still works and lives with his partner, Joan, in New York. Other New York friends included poet and anthologist Oscar Williams and his wife Gene Derwood, also a poet, New Zealand poet Allen Curnow and poet Jean Garrigue. Jean once held a party for Dylan where he met a very young Andy Warhol. Poet John Berryman and British poet Ruthven Todd were also friends; and both kept a vigil at St. Vincent’s when Dylan was hospitalized. Berryman was in Dylan’s room
when he died. It was he who rushed up to John Malcolm Brinnin and said, “He’s dead! He’s dead! Where were you?”

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9. ST. VINCENT’S HOSPITAL | 11th Street at 7th Avenue

“And my shining men no more alone
As I sail out to die”
from Poem on his birthday

Dylan’s Death.
St. Vincent’s Hospital is straight up 11th Street from the White Horse Tavern, Dylan’s favourite New York bar. Roman Catholics ran the hospital. when Dr. Milton Feltenstein, Liz Reitell’s doctor, ordered an ambulance to take an unconscious Dylan there. The myth is that Dylan died as a result of a drinking bout in the White Horse Tavern, when he declared to Liz Reitell back at the Hotel Chelsea “I’ve had eighteen straight whiskies. I think that’s a record.” The truth is more complex. When he arrived in New York on Monday, 19th October 1953, for his fourth tour, he was already desperately ill. Yet he still seemed to have no desire to curtail his drinking or smoking. There is evidence that he was becoming increasingly dependent on medication. He was also suffering blackouts, and his behaviour, at times, was erratic. On Tuesday, 3rd November, he started weeping in his bedroom at the Chelsea. He told Liz Reitell that he wanted to die and “go to the garden of Eden”. At two o’clock in the morning he told her he had to have a drink and left for the White Horse. He returned to the Chelsea and boasted about the whiskies. He slept until the middle of the morning of 4th November. He went with Liz Reitell to the White Horse, where he had two glasses of beer. On returning to the Chelsea he became so unwell that Dr. Feltenstein was called three times. Feltenstein’s fourth summoning to the Chelsea on Thursday, 5th November, resulted in Dylan’s being rushed to St. Vincent’s where he was admitted at two minutes before two a.m. Caitlin arrived at Idlewild Airport on Sunday morning, where she was met by David and Rose Slivka. When she saw Brinnin she asked, “Well, is the bloody man dead or alive?” She broke down when she saw Dylan and was taken by the Slivkas to their apartment on Washington Street, in order to calm herself and rest. When she returned to St. Vincent’s she dismayed the nurses by smoking near the oxygen tent and almost threatening Dylan’s breathing in a loving embrace. Her deep despair turned to violence and she started to abuse and attack Brinnin and hospital nuns and nurses. She was placed in a strait-jacket and taken to the Rivercrest Mental Institution in Astoria, Long Island. She later wrote, “I was possessed of ten thousand ravaging demons. My madness: an untutored broken heart.” Dylan died at lunchtime on 9th November 1953, while a nurse was giving him a bed bath. Poet John Berryman was the only other person present. To this day there is a controversy over what actually caused Dylan’s death. While his lifestyle of smoking and excessive drinking contributed to his bad health, it has been suggested that he suffered from undiagnosed diabetes. However, it is medical negligence, supported by a growing body of evidence, that most experts now claim was the real cause. Four days prior to Dylan’s death Dr. Feltenstein had given Dylan a high dose of morphine as a sedative. The post-mortem stated pneumonia as the primary source of death, with pressure on the brain and a fatty liver as contributing factors.

“And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one’
from And death shall have no dominion

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10. WHITE HORSE TAVERN | 567 Hudson Street at West 11th Street

“And Thou, I know, wilt be the first
To see our best side, not our worst”
from Under Milk Wood

Dylan lovingly called it “The Horse.” One of New York’s oldest bars, dating back to 1880, the White Horse’s “British pub atmosphere” made him feel very much at home. He would have seen the masts and funnels of ships in the Hudson River teasing the sky at the ends of streets, possibly reminding him of Swansea’s dockside area. He and
fellow writers would also have chatted and sat with the seamen and dockworkers who frequented the White Horse. It’s been said that Dylan liked to enjoy a light ale or a Scotch whisky.  In Dylan’s day an elderly German gentleman and his wife ran the Tavern. Many other writers, literary figures, and artists have also enjoyed a drink there, including Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, Jack Kerouac, the Clancy Brothers, Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison. It is Dylan Thomas, though, who is most associated with the bar. It is now famously linked to Dylan’s death. At two a.m. on Wednesday, 4th November, he inexplicably left Liz Reitell at the Hotel Chelsea and disappeared for around two hours. When he returned to her he made the claim that he had downed eighteen straight whiskies. However, when friends later questioned the proprietor, he said it was more likely that Dylan had had six whiskies. Even after the now legendary episode of the whiskies, Dylan, after sleeping until midday, returned with Liz Reitell to his beloved “The Horse” for a couple of beers, his final drinks there. They returned to the Hotel Chelsea – to the last pages of his incredible story.

“And freely he goes lost
In the unknown, famous light of great
And fabulous, dear God
Dark is a way and light is a place’
-from Poem on his birthday

 Dylan Thomas is often thought of as the “first rock ‘n’ roll poet”: he spent months away from home touring America, attracted huge audiences at his readings, and often got accosted when he appeared in public. He was also the subject of a lot of gossip, rumour, and legend, just like rock stars and celebrities are today. In spite of the rumours and gossip and the tragic narrative of his short life, he was a great and original poet, a master craftsman who did, indeed, “labour by singing light” to leave to the world a wonderful collection of poems and prose inspired by Wales.

 “I build my bellowing ark
To the best of my love…”
from Prologue

END OF TOUR

Information can be e-mailed to you on request to information@wales-uk.com

Dylan Thomas in Wales:
Every lover of Dylan Thomas and his work should visit Wales and the places most associated with him, such as Swansea, Laugharne and New Quay.
Please visit www.travelwales.org/dylan for more information.

The Dylan Thomas Prize for young writers:
The Dylan Thomas Prize of $120,000 is awarded to the best-published writer in English under the age of 30 from anywhere in the world. For further information
visit http://www.thedylanthomasprize.com

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