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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I knew Pearl Kazin in my childhood. We lived in NYC for several years and my mother worked as a copy editor at Harpers Bazaar. My mother was very literary and a fish out of water at the magazine. Pearl who was young and vivacious was one of her favorite friends. I loved Pearl too. She would come for drinks sometimes and charm me with her animated with a rich voice and unusual beauty. She had white skin, black silky hair and dark eyes, and a generous smile -- beautiful, chic, cultured and warm. Sometimes she wore that bright red lipstick of the 1950s which looked great on her. I wasn't old enough to have an intellectual conversation with Pearl, but her depth and compassion reached me anyway.
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