In his poem ‘Song for Pythagoras’, Dannie Abse provides us with a somewhat quirky description of the lifelong dichotomy which existed between his medical work and his literary career:
‘White coat and purple coat
a sleeve from both he sews.
… White coat and purple coat
can each be worn in turn.’
Dannie Abse’s collection of papers at the National Library of Wales reveals this dichotomy on a regular basis, as in an article headed ‘Poet in a White Coat’, or in the title of his prose anthology The Two Roads Taken, published in 2003. In one of Abse’s early letters to his future wife Joan Mercer, we have a lively discussion on the part of the trainee doctor about his patients and colleagues whilst learning his craft on the busy wards of a London hospital; however, by the second paragraph of the same letter, he slips almost unconsciously into discussing his latest play and, equally enthusiastically, demands Joan’s opinion of it.
This, however, was not the only dichotomy apparent within the poet-doctor. Despite having been born in Wales’s capital city and having attained his early education in the schools and colleges of south Wales, Dannie Abse was born of Jewish heritage, the son of Rudolph (Rudy) and Kate Abse and younger brother to the Labour politician Leo Abse. Dannie and his wife Joan underwent a Jewish wedding ceremony in the West London Synagogue of British Jews – their marriage certificate, dated 26 October 1952, forming part of the December 2022 collected papers – and Joan was even received into the Jewish faith in a ceremony within the same synagogue on 1 October 1952. His parents’ religious faith was therefore obviously important to Dannie, as is apparent in many of his poetry and prose works, such as his collections Poems, Golders Green, published in 1962, and Running Late, published 2006, the numerous articles he contributed to the Jewish Chronicle, or the friendships he enjoyed with prominent Jewish figures within the arts world, such as the pioneering theatre manager Alfred Emmet and the artist Milein Cosman and her husband, musician and writer Hans Keller.
In a poem titled ‘Case History’, Abse responds to unknowingly offensive comments made by one of his medical patients, comments which target both aspects of the dual nature within him:
‘… He did not
know I was Welsh.
… did not know
I was a Jew.’
Abse’s autobiographical works often give vivid and humorous expression to this Welsh/Jewish dichotomy, as in his short story ‘Sorry, Miss Crouch’, where we have a highly descriptive portrait of Rudy, Abse’s father, playing a medley of pieces on his violin, which include ‘Men of Harlech, My Yiddisher Mama and Ash Grove’. Yet it is the horrendous history of his parents’ people which comes to the fore when Abse describes in his poem ‘In Llandough Hospital’ his dying father ‘thin as Auschwitz in that bed’.
Two revealing lines in the middle of ‘Song for Pythagoras’ imply that the diverse aspects of Abse’s life did not always smoothly intermingle:
‘white coat and purple coat
few men can reconcile.’
But when Dannie’s wife Joan died as the result of a car accident in June 2005, it was neither specifically a doctor, a poet, a Welshman nor a Jew who noted the bleak solitary word ‘Funeral’ as his diary entry for the 13th of that month but a man widowed in an instant by the loss of the one thing which succeeded in uniting each of these different aspects together in a single concordance. Joan’s loss is chronicled in The Presence, written by Dannie Abse as a tortuous record of the months following her death and published in 2007.
The white sleeve, or the purple sleeve …. which one will you give a pluck to as you browse through Dannie Abse’s papers?
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