A good deal is known about Dylan Thomas' last days in New York because they were keenly observed and recorded by a number of friends, and even by a private detective working for Time magazine. Not surprisingly, there is a consensus amongst his biographers about the details of Dylan's comings and goings, and we have used their accounts to compile the following chronology, including drawing circumspectly on John Brinnin's 1955 book.
Brinnin's account relies largely on Liz Reitell, whose own diary, unfortunately, ends on November 3. The letters of John Berryman and George Reavey also provide some data, as does Ruthven Todd's unpublished memoir. Parts of Nashold and Tremlett's 1997 book are also helpful, though one must be constantly alert for the transitions they make between reporting and reconstruction.
We have produced the chronology because we often found ourselves confused when reading the descriptions of these last days, partly because medical information was mixed up with observations about other matters, particularly the colourful circus of people and events that surrounded Dylan. We believe that important diagnostic evidence has been overlooked and mis-read.
October 1953
Dylan left Laugharne for America on October 9, breaking his journey in London. Various friends report he was unwell, including the comedian Harry Locke who noted his frequent coughing fits. Dylan drank a good deal of whisky before catching the plane: "I got on the plane and watched my watch, got drunk, and stayed frightened all the way here...really only a little booze on the plane but mostly frightened and sick with the thought of death. I felt as sick as death all the way here." Dylan arrived at Idlewild airport on October 20, where he was met by Liz Reitell, his lover, secretary, nurse and producer of the New York stage performances of Under Milk Wood. She noticed immediately that Dylan was very unwell.
Tuesday 20th: Dylan arrives with Reitell at his room at the Chelsea Hotel. They have dinner together, followed by the first rehearsal of Under Milk Wood (UMW) at which Brinnin finds him "in a sober and serious mood." Then drinks at the White Horse bar until 2am.
Wednesday 21st: Dylan relaxes and walks, with some drinking. He returns to his hotel feeling unwell and sleeps in the afternoon and for much of the evening.
Thursday 22nd: Sleeps late. He goes in the afternoon to the second rehearsal of UMW, where Brinnin reports he is "sober and professionally concentrated", though the cast notice he is ill, with bad breath and a sweating, blotchy face. The rehearsal is followed by a few drinks and a dinner at Herdt's restaurant, his last proper meal. Dylan then disappears.
Friday 23rd : Reappears for lunch with Reitell but he is unable to eat food. Reitell observes he is in "an acute state of nervous agitation". Dylan gets very drunk in the afternoon at a party in his hotel room which Reitell breaks up and asks his visitors to leave. Dylan sobers up, and works on the script of UMW and goes in the evening to the third rehearsal of the play. He is too ill to take part. He complains the room is too hot, and then freezing cold. He is covered in overcoats but he says he is still "shivering cold" and then burning with fever. He is given coffee, brandy and hot water-bottles. He is unable to fall asleep or "be rid of his spasmodic restlessness." Sitting upright every few minutes, he asks "What's going on now? What part are they reading now?"
He joins the rehearsal for the last twenty minutes but then becomes nauseous and vomits. He is gasping for breath. He tells his friend Herb Hannum: "I'm too tired to do anything. I can't fuck, I can't eat, I can't drink - I'm even too tired to sleep...I'm too sick too much of the time." Reitell takes Dylan back to the hotel and stays with him much of the night. He sleeps soundly.
Saturday 24th: Dylan has breakfast with Hannum and tells him "Never this sick, never this much before...I've come to the melancholy conclusion that my health is totally gone. I can't drink at all. I always could, before...but now most of the time I can't even swallow beer without being sick. I guess I just forgot to sleep and eat for too long...Without my health I'm frightened. I can't explain it. It's something I don't know about. I never felt this way before and it scares me." Dylan is persuaded to see Liz Reitell’s doctor, Milton Feltenstein, who injects ACTH
(a cortisone secretant) and prescribes Benzedrine (amphetamine).
Dylan attends an afternoon rehearsal of UMW. Brinnin describes him: "His face was lime-white, his lips loose and twisted, his eyes dulled, gelid, and sunk in his head." The actors notice he is sweating, has blotchy skin and unpleasant breath. He is still pale at an evening performance of UMW, after which he was again close to collapse, standing in his dressing room, clinging to the back of a chair. The play, he said, “has taken the life out of me…” He refuses drinks at a party afterwards.
Sunday 25th: Dylan has a meeting in the morning with Brinnin, followed by an afternoon performance of UMW. Nancy Wickwire, one of the cast, notices that “He was desperately ill…we didn’t think that he would be able to do the last performance because he was so ill…Dylan literally couldn’t speak he was so ill…still my greatest memory of it is that he had no voice.” Feltenstein is called and injects something, almost certainly ACTH. Dylan collapses again after the performance. He is drinking at a party afterwards and for most of the night, but the quantity is unknown.
Monday 26th: Reitell finds him drunk, and drinking whisky, in the Algonquin hotel in the afternoon. He goes into a "raving fantasy" about war, blood and death. Reitell takes him to the cinema and he calms down. A few drinks afterwards but Brinnin notes that "Dylan was too distressed and ill to stay for more than a few minutes" in the White Horse.
Tuesday 27th: Dylan's birthday. Drinks in the evening followed by a party when he complains of feeling sick and returns to his hotel.
Wednesday 28-Friday 30th: Speaking engagements, meetings, dinner parties, moderate drinking, mainly beer, sociable, lucid and friendly. According to George Reavey, Dylan looks "very sad and sick looking".
Saturday 31st: Moderate drinking through the day. He has lunch and dinner engagements but eats little. By 9pm he is in the White Horse bar with friends, already drunk, and drinking lager, whisky and beer. Observed taking Benzedrine at 2-30am.
November
Sunday 1st: Dylan wakes up with a hangover. Goes with Reitell to the White Horse at noon, drinks beer. Spends the rest of the day in the White Horse with friends, then a party in the evening when he gets drunk. At midnight, he goes to the flat of another friend for a night cap. He recites poetry for an hour. Leaves at 5am. Possibly took Benzedrine to keep himself going.
Monday 2nd: Air pollution rises to levels dangerous to those with chest problems. By the end of the month, over two hundred New Yorkers had died from the smog. Reitell later recalls that in these last few days Dylan was “enormously ill.”
Brinnin tells us that Dylan is unable to get up because of a bad hangover, that he is nursed by Reitell through the day and does not leave his hotel. Ruthven Todd, however, tells a different story: he turns up at the Chelsea "pretty early". Whilst Dylan "was not feeling at all bright", they talk, joke and drink beer. Todd notes that a bottle of Old Grandad whisky is unopened. Dylan goes to a gallery in the evening, followed by a restaurant (where he eats little) and a bar. Reavey observes that Dylan is looking sick and depressed.
Tuesday 3rd: Todd comes to the hotel again. Dylan "was still feeling miserable" but they have a beer. At Dylan's insistence, Todd opens the Old Grandad and pours a measure for the hotel maid. Reitell tells Todd that Feltenstein had warned Dylan "to go easy on everything - except food, of which he was to take a great deal more." Dylan has a few late morning drinks with Hanum and David Waggoner, but Reitell breaks up the session and then Dylan sleeps. In the afternoon, he meets with an American agent to discuss and sign a new contract. Sleeps again and goes to an early evening party but drinks moderately. He returns early to his hotel complaining he is exhausted and falls asleep.
Wednesday 4th: He wakes up about 2am and goes, without Reitell, to the White Horse for a drink. Todd describes a photograph taken in the bar in which Dylan appears "so awful and so bloated". Dylan returns after an hour and a half and tells Reitell that he has drunk eighteen whiskies. Biographers concur it was no more than eight whiskies and point out that had Dylan drunk eighteen American whiskies (which would be equivalent to drinking thirty-six British singles) he would have collapsed there and then.[1]
Todd phones in the morning and Dylan says "he was not feeling at all well. He sounded terrible." Dylan complains to Reitell that he is suffocating, that "he was having trouble breathing, that he must get outside right away." Dylan wakes up at noon. His voice is so low and hoarse that he sounded, said a friend, like Louis Armstrong. Reitell walks with him to the White Horse where he has two beers. Returns to the hotel feeling sick. He has "ghastly racking spasms."
Reitell calls Feltenstein. She tells him of Dylan's boast about drinking eighteen whiskies. Feltenstein injects ACTH and morphine (probably between one-eighth to one sixteenth of a grain). Dylan vomits then sleeps through the afternoon but wakes feeling nauseous and vomits again.
Reitell calls Feltenstein again who injects more ACTH and morphine, between 5pm and 7pm. Dylan continues to be unwell, with more vomiting and begins to see, he says, "abstractions, triangles and squares and circles." Perspiration breaks out on his face, and he retches. Reitell again summons Feltenstein and incorrectly tells him that Dylan has had delirium tremens. He injects a further eight units of ACTH. He also increases the dosage of morphine to half a grain (30 milligrams), and injects Dylan sometime between 11pm and midnight. The painter Jack Heliker arrives to help Reitell look after Dylan. Reitell remembers "we had sweet calm talks, the three of us..."[2]
Thursday 5th, about midnight: Reitell thinks Dylan is falling asleep and then hears "the terrible sound of this breathing". She also describes hearing "this funny sort of breathing."[3] Both she and Heliker hear "a gasping sound emerging from deep inside Dylan's throat...Reitell has described this 'dreadful gasping sound' as a stoppage of Dylan's normal breathing."[4] She feels his grip stiffen and observes Dylan's face turning blue. He is unconscious.
There is a delay of about an hour before an ambulance is called about 1am but it does not deliver Dylan to St Vincent's hospital until 1.58am. Feltenstein and Reitell arrive at the same time. Feltenstein tells the admitting doctors, McVeigh and Gilbertson, that Dylan has fallen into a coma after a bout of heavy drinking, and also informs them of his injection of morphine. Both Feltenstein and Reitell fail to tell them that Dylan has been unconscious and not breathing properly for about two hours.
The doctors observe he is "dry and clammy with blue lips and a splotchy, red and white face" and that the pupils of his eyes are small, not dilated.[5] Dylan is given artificial respiration and oxygen. It takes over an hour before he starts to breathe spontaneously. Blood samples are taken, and he is attached to a dextrose drip. An oxygen mask is placed over his face. A lumbar puncture is carried out that reveals no cerebral haemorrhage but doctors suspect a diabetic shock. Dylan is given a blood transfusion. Feltenstein argues that Dylan has been poisoned by alcohol and supervises Dylan's treatment in the hospital even though he has no authority there. Brinnin arrives early in the morning at the hospital. He describes Dylan: "his wild hair limp and wet, his face blotched with fever." In the late afternoon, Brinnin sets about hiring a brain specialist and, on Feltenstein's advice, contacts Dr Leo Davidoff of Beth Israel hospital.
Friday 6th: In the early afternoon, Brinnin is told that Davidoff is unavailable but has recommended St Vincent's own neurosurgeon, Dr C.G. Gutierrez-Mahoney, who arrives at the ward. He examines Dylan but some thirty-seven hours have now elapsed since Dylan's admission. Gutierrez-Mahoney agrees with Feltenstein's diagnosis that Dylan's brain has been damaged by alcohol. According to Nashold and Tremlett, doctors McVeigh and Gilbertson quarrel with Feltenstein over his diagnosis. They go to see Gutierrez-Mahoney and give him the results of blood and urine tests showing even higher levels of sugar. He issues orders, say Nashold and Tremlett, to switch off Dylan's dextrose supply and to begin giving insulin. Later, a tracheotomy is performed. Guttierrez-Mahoney instructs Feltenstein to play no further part in directing Dylan's care, though he is allowed to remain in attendance.
Saturday 7th: Daniel Jones sends the hospital information on Dylan's health. Brinnin observes that Dylan's "breathing was troubled and irregular; his temperature rose and fell in sudden changes that left his face alternately red and perspiring, blue and pallid...Dylan's now high and constant fever...at times reached 105.5°" Brinnin also describes Dylan's "struggling body as it fought for breath". Dr McVeigh confirms that Dylan is "sinking rapidly". Brinnin is advised by Feltenstein that "Dylan's death was not only next to inevitable, but that it was now also to be desired [because] the damage to the brain was so great." Both Brinnin and Rollie McKenna pay for private nurses to look after Dylan at the hospital. When Todd collects Dylan's possessions from the Chelsea, he notes that the level of whisky in the bottle of Old Grandad is the same as it was on November 3.
Sunday 8th: A second lumbar puncture is carried out. Dylan is now in an oxygen tent. Caitlin arrives at the hospital having flown out from London. Brinnin starts fundraising to pay for Dylan's medical expenses and funeral care, and together with James Laughlin and Philip Wittenberg they establish the Dylan Thomas Memorial Fund.[6]
Monday 9th: Dylan dies at 12.45pm. Daniel Jones sends a telegram to Gutierrez-Mahoney indicating that it had been Dylan's desire to be buried in Wales.
Tuesday 10th: The post-mortem is carried out. Letters are sent to prospective donors from the Dylan Thomas Fund Committee, signed by W.H. Auden, E.E. Cummings, Arthur Miller, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, Tennessee Williams and Thornton Wilder.
Wednesday 11th: The brain and liver are examined. The hospital's Telephone Notice of Death reveals that the diagnosis of toxic encephalopathy is unconfirmed. Dylan becomes an official statistic as the City's Department of Health issue permit H24268 to the undertakers, Daniel MacLean and Son, authorising burial. Dylan is embalmed and his cheeks rouged. He is dressed in a blue suit provided by MacLean and a blue-and-white polka dot bow tie bought by Ruthven Todd on Broadway.
Friday 13th: A memorial service, attended by some four hundred people, is held in St Luke's Chapel. The service is Protestant Episcopal, conducted by the Revs. Weed and Leach, who read from Chapter 15 of St Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians. Noah Greenberg and his Pro Musica Antiqua sing two motets by Thomas Morley, Agnus Dei and Primavera. Later, an announcement is made that contributions to the Dylan Thomas Memorial Fund were not yet generous enough "to pay the poet's medical and funeral expenses, and costs of Mrs Thomas' travel." In Chicago, the Modern Poetry Association has cancelled the reading of Under Milk Wood due to be given in the evening at the 1020 Art Center.
Dylan's body orifices are sealed with cotton wool ready for transportation. The coffin is placed inside a water-tight wooden box and taken to the SS United States, which later sets sail for Southampton. Caitlin is also on board.
St Vincent's waives all its fees for Dylan's care and treatment.
Tuesday 24th: Dylan is buried in St Martin’s Church, Laugharne.
Notes
[1] Soon after Dylan's death, Ruthven Todd showed Dylan's claim was false, and that the most he could have drunk was eight whiskies. John CuRoi also saw Dylan in the White Horse with "eight highballs before him" - quoted in Nashold and Tremlett, p151.
[2] The mid-day and early evening injections of morphine was confirmed by Dr Joseph Lehrman (a pseudonym) who was interviewed by Nashold and Tremlett (pp167-68) in 1996. Lehrman, a former colleague of Feltenstein, was a neurologist and psychiatrist at Beth Israel Hospital, New York. Feltenstein discussed Dylan's case with Lehrman in the spring of 1954.The third injection of eight units of ACTH is recorded in the Intern Notes seen by Murphy. The Intern Notes confirm that the injection of half a grain of morphine was approximately half an hour before Dylan lapsed into coma i.e. sometime between 11pm and midnight. When Feltenstein gave this injection he advised Reitell that someone should stay with her to look after Dylan. She phoned the painter, Jack Heliker who arrived around 11pm. When he arrived he "understood that Dylan had been given a sedative shortly before." Quoted in Ferris, p322. The Medical Summary also says that the injection was given shortly before admission. Reitell's memory of "sweet calm talks" is taken from notes that Paul Ferris made in his notebook when he interviewed Reitell in May 1975.
[3] These descriptions of the breathing are taken from the Ferris notebook.
[4] Rob Gittins, p162.
[5] This description is taken from Tremlett and Nashold, who interviewed one of the doctors in 1996.
[6] Nashold and Tremlett date this second lumbar puncture to November 6, as does Brinnin in his letter to John Davenport of November 15 1953 (NLW 14934E). The hospital record shows it was done on the 8th.