February 8 1948 The Windrush Valley A BBC Country Magazine broadcast from The Fleece in Witney, with Dylan Thomas as the compere:
Now for myself, I’d better confess straightaway: I’m foreigner: I don’t belong: I’ve no right here at all: I come from another country, however geographically near, and, most of all, I like living by the sea. I like living by the sea so much that here I am living bang in the middle of England.
What little I know of the Windrush Valley, and the people who live in it, makes me want to know so much more. And that’s why I’m finding it particularly good and interesting, to be allowed to be here, on a Sunday, in a pub – as a Welshman I can never quite get over a deliciously guilty feeling that I shouldn’t be in a pub on a Sunday – in a town in the Windrush Valley, with proper – at least I think you’re all proper – Windrush people, listening to what they’ve got to say.
I always used to think I only liked wild country, great nobbly hills, grim windy moors, hissing and boiling seas – but there’s an awful lot to be said for a little English river like the Windrush, unassuming, lazy and lovely and tranquil, with its secret villages and hamlets, soft, flat, sleeping meadows, shady hollows and woods. The Cotswold country has been so much written about, painted, sketched, photographed, filmed – remember the Tawny Pipit? – that I’m in the nice position of not having to make any generalisations, any pretty little word pictures, about it – Everybody knows the Cotswolds, and the charm of it is that nobody really does, because the most beautiful small villages on the Windrush, for instance, are tucked away like secrets and confessions: so very quiet and private, so old and remote, and close, that nobody who lives in them wants anybody else to know about them...I like the names of the places on the Windrush: it rises above Cutsdean, trickles onto Temple Guiting, Guiting Power, or Lower Guiting, Kineton, Barton. Then there is Naunton…and Bourton-on-the Water. Then the Windrush meanders, hairpins, coils, glides, twists and ambles, lingers through the broad, flat valley, to Great, and Little, and Wyck Rissington...Ducklington, Hardwick, South Leigh, Stanton Harcourt, Standlake, Newbridge. And at Newbridge, and at the inn with the best name – the ‘Rose Revived’ – the Windrush goes into the Thames.
(with thanks to the BBC’s Written Archives Centre, Reading, and to The Trustees for the Copyrights of Dylan Thomas.)
Dylan, Caitlin and children had moved into the Manor House in South Leigh in August 1947.
June 4 1947 A letter to Margaret Taylor
And now the house, the home, the haven, the pound-a-week Manor! Thank you with all my heart, from the depth of my teapot, from the marrow of my slippers warm before the fire, for finding a house for us. It is what I want most. It sounds good…Can I get the house for a long time? I want to send Llewelyn to school either in Witney or Oxford, & Aeronwy somewhere near, and work at my crochet there. I am so glad about it; and so profoundly grateful to you. It means a heaven of a lot.
June 20 1947 A letter to Margaret Taylor
I do like the sound of Mr Hall, & Mr Bob Russell*, & the woman of 'San Remo', and 'The Retreat'. * Probably Bill Russell, gardener and odd job man.
August 3 1947 A letter to Margaret Taylor
You are good to, & for me. And the house! You find it, furnish it, scythe the garden, soften the bureaucrats; we are known before we go, to the coaled and carred publican. Salute Bob Russell!
September 24 1947 A letter to Gilbert Phelps
[I'll] give you the addresses when I can find them in the as yet unsorted muddle after moving into a new house: a fiveroomed cottage, lightless, waterless; the address is a credit-snarer.
September 24 1947 A letter to John Davenport
Our Manor is a cottage, but only five minutes from Witney and exactly twenty-five by train from Oxford. Do come down. Only one small single bed so far, but I think the new Davenport, that sveltie, could manage quite comfortably. One weekend snag is that the pub isn’t open on Sundays; but others are only two miles off.
October 7 1947 A letter to David Higham
Yesterday morning, comes a letter from the bank saying that, not only am I not as well off as I imagined but that I am overdrawn and, unless something happens immediately, several cheques made out to local tradesmen, will be returned. If they are returned, it will ruin us for ever in this village. Quite literally. It’s enormously important, in a narrow tiny community like this, to keep frightfully well in with everyone, especially tradesmen, farmers, publicans etc.
March 6 1948 A letter to John Ormond
A radio play I am writing has Laugharne, though not by name, as its setting.
April 1948 A letter to Robert Pocock
Caitlin has gone to London with Margaret Taylor & left me quite alone, the house beer has run out, I am 3 weeks behind with my filmscript, not having started it yet, my gas fire has just exploded, I have flooded the kitchen with boiling soup, I am broke, Caitlin has taken the cigarettes, I was suddenly sick in the middle of the night...rabbits have eaten the lettuce, and seven cows, who have opened the gate, are trying to get into the lavatory.
August 26 1948 A letter to John Davenport
I’m terribly sorry to hear about the money trouble. I cannot, at this moment, help in any way, and am, this morning, going to try a post-dated cheque at the village grocer’s: well post-dated too...the box on which I write is vulgar with bills. Llewelyn must have a complete set of school-clothes for Magdalen C.S. next term. Caitlin wants a pressure-cooker & a nightgown...I am to go to read in the Edinburgh Festival on the 4th, & must hire a suit. Last week I fell down & broke my front tooth & have to have it taken out in Oxford by a German dentist called Mr Pick...At the bottom of the garden, a man at 3/- an hour, is digging a new shitpit & and will dig on, he says, until he reaches water. By that time, I shall owe him this house, which is not mine.
November 23 1948 A letter to Vernon Watkins
Nothing happens to me. I go to London and bluster, come back and sigh, do a little scriptwriting, look at an unfinished poem, go out on my bicycle in the fog, go to London & bluster...I’m so cold this morning I could sing an opera, all the parts, and do the orchestra with my asthma.
December 21 1948 A letter to David Higham
Please forgive delay. I have been in an accident, was knocked off my bicycle by a lorry, and have badly broken arm & ribs. Also feeling shocked & bruised all over & have a wonderful black eye.
February 17 1949 A letter to Hector MacIver
I wish I could speedily return to Scotland: here it is low and sodden, moley and owly, rheumatic, cloddish, gustless...I do so hate it here in this toadish dungwilted valley among slow rabbits & sly cows. Oxford is near, but full of young men. Our pub is cold and wild with dominoes.
The Thomases left South Leigh for Laugharne in May 1949.
**With thanks to The Trustees for the Copyrights of Dylan Thomas.