HOWLS & WHISPERS
After reading my analysis of the Howls & Whispers poems, Olwyn Hughes telephoned me with the following comments:
'Paris 1954' (THCP: 1173-4).
It was not Uncle Walter with whom Ted went to Paris in 1954, although they had been to Spain and other places together. Ted and his brother's wife, Joan, went to visit Olwyn who was working in Paris. Olwyn vividly remembers Ted's reaction to that first taste of wine.* * * * * * * *
'The Offers' (THCP: 1180).
The first woman: Yes, just seeing a loved one's likeness everywhere is common.
The second woman is one of Olwyn's oldest friends, named Shirley Smith, who worked with Olwyn in Paris. When Olwyn went to Court Green to help look after Frieda and Nicholas after Sylvia's death, Shirley visited her there. Like Sylvia, she had a Scorpio birthday. She was a couple of years younger than Sylvia would have been but "her character was very different, warmer, gentler, as in the poem". She did go to Hawaii and, from there, she sent postcards to Olwyn and Ted. "She is a bit of a designer and her cards would be drawn, with things stuck on, hats and so on. Amusing." Her parents lived close to the Hughes family in Yorkshire. Eventually she returned to live in Paris, where she still lives. She rang Olwyn when 'The Offers' was first published in The Sunday Times to say "There's a poem about me in paper".
The third woman: Olwyn once asked Ted if he had ever seen Sylvia's ghost. "Just Once", he said. "In the bath". He had expected there to be some communication with her after her death but there was "Nothing".