UPHOLSTERED PEARL

LOVE SOMEHOW : (CAITLIN MACNAMARA THOMAS DRAMA) MISTRESS MANIFESTO FILM REVIEW

The film LOVE SOMEHOW is an unconventional composition, a monologue of about half an hour.  It presents the widowed wife of Dylan Thomas, Caitlin Macnamara Thomas, as well performed by actress Sally George.  The film is full of beautiful images of Wales and the exterior of the rather ramshackle house the couple lived in.  (I'm not sure the interior shots were done in this house.) Caitlin tells that she was a dancer, following in the footsteps of Isadora Duncan*, and met Dylan in Paris in a bar. He searched her eyes and put his head on her lap. You could say love at first sight.  She is portrayed as boozing herself.  She mentions that he lies, and lies, and lies. What was her reason for staying with him?  Love.

Here is some information on Dylan Thomas and his wife from various other sources.

Caitlin Macnamara was born in 1913 and died in 1994.

The couple married in 1937 and stayed married until his death in 1953.  He broke her heart before he died, it seems repeatedly. They both had affairs. After he died, she gave up drinking and moved to Italy.  She also authored a book called Leftover Life to Kill.

It seems to me that being married to a genius has some difficulties, a famous genius even more. This was never a sober relationship and so her choice to give up drinking and face life without a substance in her system came after this marriage.

I notice that there have been many Dylan Thomas inspired films in recent years, including one called A poet in New York (circa 2012) which perhaps portrays our Mistress of the Month, Pearl Kazin  There is also another film called Set Fire to the Stars with a focus on Dylan Thomas in New York, the Big Apple.  Ditto. Should I get to see one or both of these films, I will try to include my review or what I learned in this blog.

Missy

AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER : JOSH GROBIN

HE FORGETS HER BIRTHDAY and VALENTINES BUT IS GENEROUS FOR NO GOOD REASON : SHOULD SHE BE CONCERNED? : QUESTIONS FOR MISSY

QUESTION FOR MISSY

Missy,

I've been having an affair with a married man for almost two years. I'm upset because he forgets my birthday and he forgets Valentine's Day.  When we first met, my birthday was a couple weeks away.  I told him about it because he called wanting to meet up and I said I had birthday plans with my friends. I didn't expect a gift so early on. This year however, I was in tears. "Michael" is generous otherwise. He has shown up with flowers for no good reason.  He sometimes brings me a gift from his travels. Am I wrong to expect a special gift for these special days? My friends say if he was at all serious about me there is no way he would forget like this.

Mandy

Alabama

ANSWER FROM MISSY

Mandy,

Through the years I've met many a wife who has an "unromantic " husband who also fails to acknowledge their special days forgetting, ignoring, or not prioritizing their birthday, anniversary, or Valentine's Day. These men are hardworking and otherwise financially supportive. They are good men without any sentimentality. One woman told me that when her father bought her mother a new frying pan as a birthday gift, she was so mad she got in the car and kept driving, not snapping out of her funk until she found herself in Vegas! She stayed there a couple days before returning.  Did he do better the next year?  No!

I personally want to be honored on special days, so it would be difficult for me to deal with such a person.  I'm the type who goes shopping for a little something for a man and has it wrapped and set aside in case he gifts me, not wanting to be caught without a gift to give as well. So, check in with yourself on your personal tolerance and if this is an issue for you, break with him.

Do you expect expensive gifts?

I personally do not think expensive gifts are appropriate for early or not serious relationships.  What do you mean by serious?  Do you have gift-giving and receiving tied in with how serious he is about you? Do you expect him to leave his wife for you? Have you talked about it?

Here is what I think you need to do.  Call a time out on this relationship.  Get busy with your life as an unmarried woman. There is no reason to be especially loyal, faithful, or obligated to wait around when the other person has a wife, unless you want to share a man, and many women do, for a while. You can date.  You might meet someone better to your liking.

Next time your birthday comes around, treat yourself to a couple days out of town with your friends. 

If he finds he misses you and can't live without you, it's time for him to declare himself and take action.

I wish you the best, Mandy!

Missy

BOUNTIFUL PINK

 

EMILY IN PARIS : DEPICTION OF A MISTRESS IN A NETFLIX SERIES

 EMILY IN PARIS

The series takes place in contemporary Paris, France.  An all American young woman, Emily, who has a Masters degree and a career and boyfriend in Chicago, goes to Paris to join the team - as she sees it - of a firm that is considered Old School - and works to promote exclusivity of their client's products. Emily is brilliant and ambitious, but she encounters generational and cultural clashes.

Does this series rely too heavily on stereotypes of American values versus French values?

Perhaps.

Emily is no virgin. She had a serious relationship in America. She has affairs in France. French men have no issues with having sex with the American even if doing so is potentially complicated.  She isn't up for the bluntness of the man who tells her outright he wants American p****. She learns her female boss, who says she is a woman not a feminist, and that expectations of happiness are not realistic, is the mistress of a wealthy client Emily is trying to woo in business.  Her co-workers clues her in that his wife knows. She is startled and doesn't know what to do when a gift shows up for her at work, the most expensive lingerie in the world, from this same man.  And what about sex with a good friend's boyfriend? Or sex with someone who proves to be underage?  Is it funny when the kid's mother only confronts her to know if her son is good at sex?

Perhaps the most interesting dilemma she finds herself in is how to turn down the proposition implied in the lingerie and keep the client, who clearly finds her American brashness charming. His wife knows about this too.  She tells Emily that she approves and thinks she would be a good mistress for her husband.

You may want to read around Paris and France in MISTRESS MANIFESTO BLOGSPOT, using the tags beneath the posts or going through the archives here.

Though I do think the French attitude about Mistresses and Sex in general has long been different than the American, I'm personally sitting on the fence when it comes to this Netflix series.  Are you a fan?  Why?  Let me know in Comments!

Missy

ALL THE SECONDS BEFORE AND SINCE YOUR LOVELY LAST LETTER...

 "All the seconds before and since your lovely last letter (oh, thank you, Pearl darling) I've tried to write to you, I've tried to say who and what you are to me, but I didn't know the words."

ITVCOM: DYLAN THOMAS LOVE LETTERS PUBLISHED (Good Photo too!)

VALENTINE

DYLAN THOMAS to PEARL KAZIN : IT'S TAKEN SO LONG

 "It's taken so long to write your name.  Pearl, dear Pearl.  And every moment of every day I think of you, feel you, want you."

WALES NEWS 2014 : DYLAN THOMAS LOVE LETTERS PUBLISHED FOR THE FIRST TIME (includes photos of the lovers)   has photo of pearl and dylan

WRITE YOUR OWN LOVE POETRY - POETRY FOUNDATION ADVICE!

POETRY FOUNDATION : HOW TO WRITE A LOVE POEM 

You don't want it too sticky sweet.  You may not want to promise the world.

How do you write a love poem to the current Love of Your Life?

In this article there's a few poets taking their turns at giving advice.

Get that beautiful paper and a flowing pen out!

Excerpt: But as always, this Valentine's Day will prompt reams of gushy, heartfelt doggerel, reminding us that the greeting card industry relies on mass consumption of singsong rhymes to accompany the roses and chocolate-covered cherries.

DYLAN THOMAS : IF I WERE TICKLED BY THE RUB OF LOVE

DYLAN THOMAS was contemporary enough that there are many recordings of the poet reciting his own poems. His voice is compelling.

PERFECT GIFTS FOR THE SWEETHEART MISTRESS

 

Here is my 2021 Guide to the Perfect Gift For the Sweetheart Mistress

If it should be gift-wrapped, try to do it  yourself.

If she is traditional, flowers, chocolates, and loving cards will do. Try to provide beautiful and expensive ones, and give her favorites, if you know what they are. The language of roses is that yellow is for friendship, pink is for affection, and red is for romantic love - the deeper the love the deeper the color.  But you know, roses have thorns and aren't the symbol of love for no reason, so consider a bouquet of flowers with no thorns, flowers that have a scent.  Avoid those scentless long stemmed roses. Cut flowers from your own garden or pick them from the fields - that is, if you are sure you aren't picking in an ecology sensitive area.  

Music, in sound of music in these days of downloads, is not so adjustable but some old style stereo-systems that play vinyl are amazing, so avoid the tinny player and give her a sound system. Excellent earphones are also be a happy gift.  Caution: Please don't gift anyone music that has trashy or abusive to women lyrics. If you must error, error on the Old School side. The Temptations, for instance.

An upgrade of her cell phone, especially if hers is more than two years old.

Jewelry.  There are only two kinds of rings gifted.  Friendship rings which can be or include semiprecious stones and be outsized, or proposal rings.  Therefore, I think it best, if you are not intending to marry this other person just yet, to avoid the gifting of rings.  However, earrings, bracelets, and necklaces, are good romantic gifts.  Birthstone jewelry is for birthdays.  However rubys and amethysts, all white, clear, and pink and gold toned jewelry is perfect for the season and the Valentine's Day.  So if you have the money, a pink diamond set in pink gold can be terrific. Consider her first initial.

Create original poetry, even if it is silly and rhymes.  Sign it "Your Secret Admirer."

Covid-19 restrictions have made things difficult on those who are not partnered and living in, but, depending on your situation, a special delivery that is not U.S. Mail, UPS, Amazon, or any other usual service, can be a wonderful surprise.  If there is a good place to safely leave it, ask a friend to take over a crystal vase of flowers and leave them on her porch or take over a sumptuous meal ordered from a good restaurant.

Avoid gift cards.  Giving one communicates that you have no idea what a person might like because you've spent no time getting to know them.

Here's hoping that next year is not so restrictive!

Missy

C 2021 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

All Rights Reserved

AN EXTRAORDINARY LITERARY AND PUBLIC SCANDAL : DYLAN THOMAS' AFFAIR WITH PEARL KAZIN

WALES ART REVIEW on LETTER OF THOMAS TO KAZIN

Excerpt:  Their affair is chronicled in John Malcolm Brinnn's Dylan Thomas IN America which scandalized the literary world when it was published in 1955 (to the extent Thomas' friend and fellow poet Vernon Watkins moved to refuse permission for publication of his correspondence with Dylan Thomas).  Yet far from taking easy advantage of any apparent sacrificial longings, Brinnin makes the point that Kazin's professional sophistication, her dark handsomeness and social poise 'made her precisely the sort of women from whom one would expect Dylan Thomas only to flee'.

LIKE AN OYSTER AND IT'S PEARL

 

PEARL KAZIN - MISTRESS RECIPIENT OF IMPASSIONED LOVE LETTERS FROM WELSH POET DYLAN THOMAS

PEARL KAZIN

October 1922-June 2011

Dylan Thomas is one of my favorite poets and so I wondered about his muses, his inspirations, and learned that Pearl Kazin was his last great romance. Because the poet died rather young of alcoholism and in New York City - America - in 1953 at age 39, he was not to have another. But as opinions go, some felt that his affairs were a search for his soul mate, a better wife than the only one he had, Caitlin, a wife of many years that he never divorced, and that Pearl Kazin could have been that woman. Was Thomas aware he was drinking himself to death? Was he self treating a mental illness? Was this the affair to end all affairs? Perhaps there is only speculation.  Mine is that perhaps the relationship had that feeling of eternal hope as well as inevitable doom to it. 

Here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot we know that affairs are common and having an affair does not make you a Mistress. We also know that not all Mistresses are Kept.  Pearl Kazin was not a Kept Woman.  She was probably financially in better shape that Dylan Thomas, who met her when he called upon her to buy a short story he wanted published, A child's Christmas in Wales.

Thomas' passionate letters to Pearl were published in the book A Pearl of Great Price, not to be confused with the Latter Day Saints religious book with a similar title, in 2014. Her letters in response to his are lost or otherwise unavailable.

Pearl Kazin was of Jewish heritage and a career woman in a New York City of the 1950's that was new to career women when she met Dylan Thomas. Though Dylan Thomas and Pearl Kazin have been portrayed in film in recent years, searching for facts about Pearl the career woman through news articles and web sites on the Internet proves there's some confusion about her career. In one article she is called "An American Journalist." In others she is called an "Editor."  Her obituary says she was a writer and critic who worked as an assistant literary editor at Harper's Bazaar magazine, as a copy editor at The New Yorker, and that she was also a fiction critic through the years for such literary publications such as The New Leader, Commentary, and Partisan Review.

Pearl came from the world of words and stories. Thomas's personal letters and poetry to her qualify her as a literary muse. The literary or the merely curious can read over what is left of those letters In A Pearl Of Great Price and come to a conclusion.  

There was passion.  There was intent. There was the ache of long distance.

The first letter by Dylan to Pearl was sent from the Savage Gentlemens Club (an oxymoron?) in London in April 1950.  He referred to his drinking and said "The world is empty this side of the damned sea."  In February 1951 he wrote the last letter Pearl received which was sent from Iran, where Thomas was working on a film script. *** No one ever said he was lazy or that he stayed put.  According to the Daily Mail article linked below, this affair destroyed his marriage (though it seems to me he had been destroying it since it began) because this one was quite public.  It was a scandal.

And there were those who were especially surprised because they felt that no way was Pearl, Dylan's type.

Like many women who have had affairs, married at the time or not, and many women who have been the muses of creative men, Pearl's public affair did not prevent her from becoming married. She married Daniel Bell, had a son, and became a grandmother.

As mid February is the place where there is sometimes a hint that the worst of winter is over and we begin to look forward to spring, and Valentine's Day is an opportunity to express our love of others, not just romances, but friends and family, perhaps this is the time to begin to imagine a better future for us all.

There are so many ways to love.

Missy

As a note, Dylan Marlais Thomas was born in Sansea, Wales in 1914 and died in November of 1953 in New York. *** This information comes from a wonderful article in Daily Mail UK which you can link to here:DAILY MAIL : DYLAN THOMAS SAUCY LOVE LETTERS TO AMERICAN... Caitlin was portrayed by Sienna Miller in the 2008 biopic The Edge of Love.

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All Rights including International and Internet Rights reserved.