Caitlin's Literary Family: The Majoliers

The last time I was in Port Talbot, I walked the Richard Burton Trail. My first stop was the park, which boasts the rather underwhelming Burton Memorial Flowerbed. Then on to Connaught Street to plaqueless number six, where Burton once lodged. Both he and I spent our teenage years in these sulphurous back streets. Across the road is the school we went to, though not at the same time. There’s little else we have in common, except that we’ve both kissed Liz Taylor, he quite a lot, but me only a peck on the cheek in the bar of the Aberavon rugby club.

So the other day when Stevie suggested we celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary by going on a Quaker retreat down in wet and windy west Wales, I demurred, thinking how much nicer a Burton international trail would be. “Let’s go to Positano,” I suggested, a town that hangs on the cliffs of the Amalfi coast, just south of Naples.

“Camping?”

“How about the Sirenuse? I’ll book Richie Burton’s old suite.”

Caitlin had fetched up at the Sirenuse in the spring of 1956. Both the hotel and the town had become increasingly popular after John Steinbeck’s 1953 article in Harper’s Bazaar: “Positano bites deep. It is a dream place…” Caitlin took a different view, calling it an “icy, touristy, snob fool’s clip joint…neither fashionable nor primitive enough…”

The American poet, Joseph Langland, was already resident in the hotel with his family. Soon the Langlands and Caitlin were on the beach together, and partying in the evening. Dylan inevitably came up in conversation. The Langland children had grown up with A Child’s Christmas in Wales. Joseph admired Dylan’s work, but it was all too much for Caitlin:

One day, the artsy gang was on the beach. My parents, Caitlin and others were there. Caitlin, herself a very good writer and very competitive with Dylan, suddenly charged at full sprint to the water and dived in screaming ‘Jealousy is difficult, but posthumous jealousy is intolerable!’ ¹

But she was already working on it. The following year, Leftover Life to Kill was published and three more books came after, earning her a place in the impressive literary pedigree of her mother’s extended family. It‘s a pedigree that we’ve grievously neglected; and that’s a pity, because it contains some intriguing names such as Mary Poppins and Gertrude Stein, as well as Anton Dolin, Mrs Feather and many other illustrious characters including, perhaps, Charles Darwin.

Caitlin was brought up by her mother, Mary Yvonne Macnamara née Majolier, who had spent much of her early life in France. Her house in the New Forest overflowed with books, both French and English, as well as literary magazines such as the Nouvelle Revue Française, which she prized for its instalments of Proust. Yvonne was intelligent and widely read; an indulgent French father, an expensive education (French governesses and Heathfield), as well as improving holidays every year in Cannes, “made of her une femme cultivée.” So well read that in a café in Arles, as a young bride, she recognised the poet Frédéric Mistral, and asked him to inscribe a copy of Le Poème du Rhône. Not surprisingly, Yvonne attracted a stream of interesting visitors: “I cannot remember a single regular visitor who was not either a writer or painter,” said one of her daughters.²

Caitlin’s father, Francis, largely absent, was a minor poet and essayist. Perhaps the best we can say of him is that without his philandering we might never have had Mary Poppins. The book's author, Pamela Travers, was one of his lovers; without his approval, it’s doubtful she would have been confident enough to send it to a publisher. He warned her he disliked children’s books. She sent a draft to him all the same. Reluctantly, Francis read it, and his response had a lasting effect on her self-confidence: “Why didn’t you tell me? Mary Poppins, with her cool green core of sex, has me enthralled forever.” ³

In contrast to her father, Caitlin’s maternal cousin, Joseph Maunsell Hone, was one of Ireland’s literary giants, a distinguished historian, publisher and biographer of George Moore and W.B. Yeats, and close enough to the family to write Francis’ obituary. His grandson, also Joseph Hone and more Aeronwy’s generation than Caitlin’s, was a broadcaster, travel writer and spy novelist. The Hones, were not just literary but sporty, too, one of whom was the first Irish player to turn out for England in a Test match.

And then there were the many scribbling Graves in the family; Caitlin’s maternal great-uncle, Alfred Perceval Graves, was a poet, essayist, anthologist, playwright, song writer and President of the Irish Literary Society. Honoured at the 1902 National Eisteddfod, he devoted his later life to Welsh literature and music. Caitlin’s cousin, Philip Graves (half-brother to Rosaleen, Clarissa, Charles and Robert Graves, all scribblers four), was a journalist on The Times and a prolific author, including twenty-one volumes on the Second World War, learned articles on butterflies and a book of poetry with Faber in 1930.

Nicolette Devas, Caitlin’s sister, published six books, including one about the Majoliers, who were the French and Quaker side of the family from Congénies, near Nîmes. From the age of eight, Caitlin went on holiday to the Majolier home, Bel Ombre, and had even attended the village school. Her great-grandfather, Edouard Majolier, had left there to settle in London in the early 1840s, following in the steps of both his sister Christine (who later married the London Quaker, Robert Alsop) and his brother, Antoine Georges Majolier, who had been smuggled across in 1814, disguised as a girl, by the Welsh Quaker, Evan Rees of Neath.

Helped by his family’s Quaker business and banking contacts, Edouard soon prospered as a corn merchant, building up a comfortable fortune, as Devas called it, and acquiring a splendid house in The Boltons in south Kensington. He became President of the French National Society in Britain, and of the French Chamber of Commerce, a man esteemed for his philanthropy. He was a founder in 1867 of the French Hospital in London, set up “for the benefit of distressed foreigners of all nations.” It’s now the Covent Garden Hotel, and the plaque with his name on it has long gone.

Edouard’s son, also Edouard but known as Ted, was Caitlin’s maternal grandfather; he followed his father as a board member of the French hospital, and in his membership of the Huguenot Society which, on his death, said of him: “He had more than any of us preserved the French side of his character, and a great part of his time was spent on the family estate at Congénies.” Ted also followed in the family business as a corn merchant. He married Susannah Cooper of Limerick, the daughter of a family with over a thousand acres to its name, though probably not much ready cash. Ted had plenty of that and, to mark the wedding, he commissioned a portrait of his bride from John Hanson Walker; it was shown at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1886 and then again at the 1889 international exposition in Paris.

Quite a change for Susannah! Just a few years earlier, she had been working in Huddersfield, as a maid for Alfred Perceval Graves, who had married her sister, Jane. Well-read and well-met, Jane had known Ruskin before her marriage. After her death, it was her younger sister, Ruth, who came to housekeep for Alfred. And it was to one of Alfred’s sons that Ted trusted his secrets about his library of erotica. Who can doubt that his interest in such matters was purely aesthetic? Indeed, he was the first Majolier to publish, bringing out Bibliotheca Ropsica, a scholarly work, said a granddaughter, that described his collection of erotica from the Belgian artist, Felicien Rops. To be fair, a Sotheby’s catalogue reveals that Ted’s library also included books on numismatics, as well as editions of Voltaire, Shaw, Dickens, Galsworthy, Beatrix Potter and various ancient Greek and Roman authors.

The Graves and the Majolier/Coopers were thus closely intertwined. As Alfred describes in his autobiography, the Graves’ summer house had been within calling distance of the Cooper’s Limerick estate; in fact, so convenient that Alfred, whilst still courting Jane, had helped one of her sisters find a husband. Alfred was also glad to have the Coopers visit at his home in Wimbledon. When Susannah’s sister, Lady Grace Pontifex, came to visit, “her very Irish combination of ferocious, if humorous, candour, personal charm and good looks, were more than enough to cause a pleasant flutter.” Alfred also mourns the death of one of Susannah’s brothers, and then notes a conversation with her about the state of feeling in the south of France during the Great War.

In later years, Susannah welcomed the Graves children to Congénies, where she lived for much of her married and widowed life. An English Quaker visiting France in the early 1900s noted:

Madame Majolier most hospitably entertained us. We stayed all day, walking about her pretty garden, where a cousin (or niece) of hers acted as gardener….as I was passing an arbutus tree full of flower and fruit, I said to this girl, ‘I wonder if you know that lovely song The Arbutus Tree?’ ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I ought to know it, for my father wrote it.’ So I found I was talking to the daughter [Mary] of Alfred Perceval Graves, who also wrote Father O’Flynn.⁴

This was no paper family. The Majolier home in Kensington, 20, Bramham Gardens, became the centre for family gatherings, particularly musical evenings when “batches of brothers and sisters” would come to listen, for example, to Luigi Denza in the ballroom, or to enjoy the dancing of one of the family’s Irish cousins, the young Anton Dolin. Wedding receptions in the ballroom were another of the Majolier specialities, and that of Dolin’s aunt Chippie had been one of the first that Susannah organised. Nicolette Devas recalls that Dolin was the first man she fell in love with, when she was just ten years old; perhaps he was also the first to inspire the even younger Caitlin to take up dancing.

It was a family, as Caitlin put it, where “there were always aunts and uncles, cousins and relatives all around us.” This was largely due to Susannah. In between social events and charitable work for distressed Irish ladies, she also organised an annual “great muster of relations”, including those from France and Ireland; it sometimes lasted a week and was once held in a rented boarding school. And there lie a few questions; one of the families that attended the great musters was “the Darwins and their progeny from London.” Were these descendents of Charles Darwin? If so, who were they and how were they related to the Majolier/Coopers?

There is no record of the Beaumonts turning up for the musters, but they must have come to some. When Susannah’s sister, Honoria, had married William Spencer-Beaumont in 1876 (in Port Talbot, of all places), it lifted the Majoliers socially, as did the marriage of Honoria’s daughter, Elizabeth, to a grandson of the Duke of Somerset. Things got even better in 1903 with the marriage of another of Honoria’s daughters, the brightly-named Violet Rachel Villiers-Tuthill Beaumont. The officiating minister was Lord William Cecil; the guests at the reception, hosted by the Majoliers, included not just the Unionist politician Sir Edward Carson, but also a splendid confection of earls, knights and dowager countesses. But amongst those absent was Honoria’s son, Dudley, who had recently married Sibyl Collings, Dame of Sark and its 21^stSeigneur. Caitlin’s grandchild, Hannah, is a fourth cousin to the present Seigneur.

The last of Susannah’s family gatherings was a grand reception that she hosted for the marriage in 1937 of her nephew, Philip Graves, to her great-niece, Kitty Dewar. Her father, a bankrupt horse trainer, was long dead, so Kitty was given away by another of Susannah’s nephews, Sir Robert Uchtred Eyre Knox, the civil service’s undisputed honours expert. If you wanted a gong, he was the man to know. His father, Alexander, had published Differential Calculus for Beginners; he was a private tutor preparing young men for Army examinations, pointing out that learning need not interfere with gentlemanly pursuits: “Country Advantages. Evening study. Cricket. Fishing. Stabling for Horses.”

Let’s now have a look at Caitlin’s five maternal aunts and uncles. Further details of the spouses and children of Paddy, Christine, Suzanne and Michael are given at the very end of this paper.

1. Caitlin’s eldest uncle, Paddy, went to Eton and Oxford; he had no literary pretensions but his name appears in one or two books, not least because he was in the university eight that won the 1910 Boat Race. He made the papers, too, both for playing cricket in Ireland (in the same team as his cousins, the Hones,) and for being a cast member of the Baltic Amateur Dramatic and Operatic Society. Paddy's daughter, Peggy, married Leslie Cameron and their children include the author Jeremy Cameron (and possibly the actor Susan Majolier. This is still being checked). Paddy's other daughter, Dr. Chloe Majolier, married Charles Rycroft, the eminent post-Freudian psychoanalyst. It’s a pleasing thought that when Chloe sold her grandfather’s erotica at Sothebys in 1950, the money helped support the hard-pressed Rycrofts whilst they were both starting up as analysts.

2. After Heathfield, Caitlin’s eldest aunt, Christine, worked as a nurse in the Hôpital Majolier, which her mother, Susannah, had set up in Congénies during the Great War. One of those who brought them medical supplies from Nîmes was an American woman called Gertrude Stein, and her companion, Alice. Christine asked her cousin, Joseph Hone, about her and was told she was an up-and-coming writer of some promise. She continued to exchange letters with Stein, now living in Paris, for another ten years or so.

As the war ended, Christine married René Methol, an antiques dealer; their home in Cannes would soon become a bolt-hole for the teenage Caitlin and her sisters, as did Susannah’s own flat in the town. Her heart set on a literary career, Christine published reviews for The Dublin Magazine, as well as an article on the gypsies of the Carmargue. She also published a novel in 1925; but she was having difficulties with her short stories. The magazine’s editor thought they were too revolutionary for the Irish people. Christine, writing as often from her Paris house as from Cannes, sent them to Stein for her advice, who held nothing back, calling them superficial. Her last letter to Stein in 1929 reported that she was busy preparing another novel, as well as“doing translation & scenario work for some one in America.” After this, we have little more, just tantalising hints of Christine’s wider social and literary circle. She knew, for example, Antoinette Alston née Tarn, sister of the English poet, Renée Vivien who, like Dylan, is remembered as much for her lifestyle, and the manner of her dying, as her work. ⁵

3. Next up, Caitlin’s middle aunt, Grace. She married into a talented family of innovators, who lived in the village right next to Congénies: “As children,” wrote Devas, “I and my sisters followed the paths between the vineyards that separated Bel Ombre from the Maroger’s Château….”

Grace’s husband, Sam Maroger, was an ingenious inventor of pumps, whose designs was as distinguished as his company’s art deco adverts. His brother, Jacques, was technical director at the Louvre, and wrote an influential book on the techniques of the Old Masters. Their father, Ernest, published a ground-breaking book on the cultivation of vines. Sam’s uncle Jean-Jacques was a poet and a writer on the French theatre, whilst Sam’s aunt Marthe, who made the front page of Le Figaro as the first French woman to gain a hospital internship, published a book and several papers on women’s health.

4. I’ve searched high and low on Caitlin’s youngest aunt, Suzanne (aka Suzette) Majolier; all I could find was the following letter to Peter Pan’s Wendy. Before you read it, you need to know that her mother Susannah was very much alive and well;

My dear Wendy Thank you so much for writing your name in my birthday book and signin your postcard. Do you collect postcards. I do....Have you a mummy. I have not. I have a nurse. I would like you for my mummy but daddy says you don’t want me and he would not let me go and of course I don’t want to leave him (sic) ⁶

You can really hear what Suzanne is saying about family life if you look back to the April 1891 census at the plight of her three older siblings. Whilst their very well-off parents were at their palatial, five-storey and ballroomed Kensington home, Yvonne (4yrs), Paddy (2yrs) and Christine (1yr), were with two nurses, sharing a two-bedroom terraced house in Eastbourne with a carpenter, his wife and her sister.

Well, that brings us nicely back to Suzanne, and the De Pury brassière. Her husband was Roger Emile Casalis De Pury, whose father was a surgeon and successful corset retailer in France. Not very glamorous, perhaps, but a money-spinner, at a time when Barkers of Kensington had its very own Ladies’ Corsetry. Roger himself patented a design for this rather odd bra, as well as one for an india rubber sheet, neither of which, as far as we know, were ever used by Suzanne.

Their marriage brought another well-known figure into the family; Roger’s sister, Jeanne de Casalis, was not only a glamorous film star, and a very close friend of Vivien Leigh and Noel Coward, but an author as well. In the 1930s, she published two books on the dithering Mrs Feather, a radio character she had created. She also wrote and directed Dearly Beloved Wife, and co-authored, St Helena, a play about Napoleon, which Churchill praised in a letter to The Times. After her appearance on Desert Island Discs in 1952, Heinemann published two collections of her short stories.

5. Finally, Caitlin’s youngest uncle, Michael Majolier, who was yet another author in the family. He went to Kenya to farm, went bust and returned penniless to England. He married Nathalie Mamontova, step-neice of Tsar Nicholas II, but times were tough. He took to writing stories to eke out his income, and published three detective novels in the late 1930s, whilst Nathalie published a book of reminiscences. But after life in the Russian court, an attic flat in Battersea was quite a come-down, a Cinderella in reverse, as one newspaper put it:

Mrs. Majolier lights a coal fire, scrubs lino, climbs five flights of stairs each morning with her shopping basket…darns socks, types her husband's reports, peels potatoes, cooks and washes up. “I don’t pine for the old life of luxury because I am happy as I am,” she says. “We dine out twice a year at a Chinese cafe in Soho and enjoy that better than Czarist Russian caviar and champagne suppers. I still love my husband…he is now a traveller for a cement company.” ⁷

And what remains? Memories, books, paintings, a French pine growing in the New Forest from a Congénies cone, an Irish snowdrop, Galanthus Mrs Macnamara (aka Milkwood) as beguiling as ever, Pompes Maroger still thriving and la source Perrier still bubbling. It’s an intriguing thought that in 1903 the Majoliers might possibly have been go-betweens, interpreters perhaps, when Dr Louis Perrier decided to sell his now-famous spring, which is just down the road from Congénies. It was bought by an enterprising English gentleman with substantial resources to invest but with very little, if any, French to speak of:

My father knew Yvonne when she was Yvonne Majolier and lived at the beginning of the 20th century at Congenies. He was then organising the purchase of what became Perrier water on behalf of St. John Rothermere [Harmsworth]. ⁸

Not long after, in 1908, Ted Majolier died at the very young age of fifty; Susannah quickly found out that money was now in short supply. Most likely with a heavy heart, she advertised Bel Ombre, their Congénies home, as a winter let:

Proper drainage? Good educational advantages? Who could possibly resist? Not us. We’ve decided that, for our 30th wedding anniversary trip, we should go to Bel Ombre, now a Quaker centre, no Burton-style suites, just plain but comfortable rooms, and only a ten-minute drive to the Perrier museum and bottling plant in Vergèze. What could be better?

Being at Congénies will also give me time to read more about Caitlin’s great-grt-grt-aunt who left the village, aged twelve, to live in London as the adopted child of the Quaker, William Allen. This was Christine Majolier-Alsop (1805-1879), who became one of Europe’s most influential Quaker emissaries, on familiar terms not just with the French, Prussian and Russian royal families but Queen Victoria as well. Not to mention Wilberforce, who came to chat, and Elizabeth Fry, a good friend to the end, a weighty Quaker who had once stayed in the Congénies post office house.

And like many Majoliers, Christine could also write; her journal has been selling well for over a hundred years, and has recently become available in French. And while I’m in Congénies, I’ll also mug up on the Quakers. I’m sure there weren’t any in Port Talbot in my time. As Dylan so rightly said, we all thought sects were what the coal came in.

David N. Thomas © April 2017. First published at: http://www.discoverdylanthomas.com/majoliers-caitlins-literary-relatives-guest-blog-david-n-thomas

1. The Coopers: Susannah and her sisters

Jane (1848-1886), Susannah (1861-1942), Sarah (1857-1887), Honoria (1852-1932), Ruth (1863-1889).

Anton Dolin (1904-1983), born as Sydney Francis Patrick Chippendall Healey-Kay. His great-grandfather was Joseph Robert Reeves (1802-1866) of Athgarvan House, Newbridge, Kildare, and Fitzwilliam Place, Dublin, who was an uncle to Susannah Majolier’s father, James Cooper. Robert Reeve’s daughter, Fanny, married Captain John Henry Chippendall Healey in 1863. Their daughter, Helen Maude Chippendall Healey of Athgarven House, (1868-1960), who married George Henry Kay, was Dolin’s mother. Susannah and Helen were second cousins, Yvonne and Anton were third cousins.

Alfred Perceval Graves (1846-1931) poet, song writer, essayist, anthologist. On his daughter Mary and her gardening, see http://www.botanicgardens.ie/glasra/ns4_4.pdf

Philip Graves (1870-1953) half-brother to Robert, a journalist on The Times and a prolific author. First married Millicent Knox Gilchrist. Philip was Susannah Majolier’s nephew but he was also related to the Majolier/Coopers through his second marriage to Susannah’s great-niece, Katherine Eleanor (Kitty) Dewar née Palmer.

Kitty Graves (b. c1896) was the granddaughter of Susannah’s sister, Honoria, and her husband, Capt. W.H.F. Palmer, who had married Honoria in 1872. Two years later, he died, leaving her with two children: (1) Elizabeth Mary Palmer, who married Maj. Richard Harold St Maur in 1891, the grandson of the 12^th Duke of Somerset. (2) William Henry Eyre Hollingsworth Palmer. Kitty was William Henry Eyre’s daughter by his first marriage to Hannah Ellinor Roberts. During the Great War, Kitty worked in the Hôpital Majolier alongside Christine, Grace and Suzanne Majolier. She married Peter Dewar in 1923 and Philip Graves in 1937. In her book, Nathalie Majolier notes that Kitty and Peter Dewar had a villa in Grasse and would meet up with the Majolier/Methols in Cannes.

William Hone (1842-1919) cricketer, as were his brothers.

Joseph Maunsell Hone (1882-1959) writer, literary historian and biographer. He married Vera Brewster, niece of the Shakespearean actor, Julia Marlowe. Vera’s portrait was done several times by Sir William Orpen.

Joseph Hone (1937-2016) broadcaster, travel writer and spy novelist.

Camillus Hone (d. 2011) brother of Joseph Hone, adopted by Pamela Travers, author of the Mary Poppins books and lover of Francis Macnamara, Caitlin’s father.

William Spencer Beaumont (1848-1926). Married Honoria Palmer née Cooper in 1876 at Margam, Port Talbot. They had Nora, Dudley and Violet Rachel Villiers-Tuthill, as well as bringing up Elizabeth Mary Palmer and William Henry Eyre Hollingsworth Palmer. William Beaumont was a soldier, London county councillor and Deputy Lieutenant for Tower Hamlets. He was the son of Caroline and John Augustus Beaumont, insurance magnate and property developer (eg Wimbledon), and grandson of Sophia and John Thomas Barber Beaumont, painter, author and philanthropist whose work helped in the setting up of Queen Mary College, London, where today there is the Barber Beaumont Chair of Humanities.

Dudley John Beaumont (1877-1918), soldier and painter. In 1901, he married Sibyl Collings, Dame of Sark and its 21^st Seigneur from 1927 to 1974.

Francis William Beaumont (1903-1941), film producer and married to (1) Enid Corinne Ripleyand (2) the actor Mary Lawson.

Michael Beaumont (1927-2016), 22^nd Seigneur of Sark, son of Francis and Enid. Married Diana La Trobe-Bateman.

Christopher Beaumont (1957-), 23^nd Seigneur of Sark.

Alexander Knox (b.1849) married Ruth Cooper in 1887. Educated at Cambridge, he was a private tutor at his home, Norton Court, Somerset, and author of Differential Calculus for Beginners (1884, Macmillan). His brother was Sir Ralph H. Knox, Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the War Office. Alexander and Ruth had two children (i) Mary Sybella Knox and (ii) Robert Uchtred Eyre Knox (1889-1965) K.C.B., K.C.V.O., D.S.O., who married Dorothy Margaret Hill, the daughter of James Duke Hill, D.L., of Terlings, Harlow in 1924.

2. The Majoliers

* Louis-Antoine Majolier of Congénies was a leading figure in southern French Protestantism and Quakerism. He was a land surveyor, notary, weaver and school teacher. He is credited with introducing the growing of potatoes to farmers in the south of France. His other children included Alix, Christophe, Elisabeth and Lydie.

* Antoine Georges Majolier b.1805, left Congénies in 1814. Described as a merchant in 1826. He married, first, Louisa King in London in April 1826 and, second, Marie Isaline Bres in June 1845 at Nîmes. Antoine and Louisa had:

(1) Louis Antoine Majolier b. December 1826, who attended Croydon Quaker school 1841-43. He was described as a merchant in a patent application of 1863, and living in Stoke Newington, London. He married Anne Fourmaud in Congénies, and had a son Edmond, b.1868 in Congénies.

(2) Marie Louise Majolier (1830-1857), who married Thomas Cannell Dixon in 1851, a wine and spirits merchant of Whitehaven. Their children were: (i) Louisa Margaret Dixon b.1852, who married William Pierson, schoolmaster, Speldhurst, Kent, in 1880; their children included Victor Majolier Pierson b.1887 who married Sarah Stephenson in 1919. (ii) George Herbert Dixon b.1855, a solicitor, married Eleanor Martina Dodgson and (iii) Tom Majolier Dixon (1856-1883) died in Melbourne.

Both Marie Louise Majolier and her daughter, Louisa Margaret Dixon, were brought up by their aunt, Christine Majolier-Alsop, and her husband, Robert. See Christine’s Memorials, ed. M. Braithwaite (1881), in which Louisa also describes Christine’s visits to Buckingham Palace.

* Edouard, Caitlin's maternal great-grandfather, attended the Quaker school at Croydon 1843-45, before joining the corn-chandlers, Harris Bros. on the Baltic Exchange, eventually becoming a partner. His wife, Elizabeth, was the daughter of John Keyte, a master butcher in London. They lived at two addresses in Islington (3, Woodville Terrace 1861 census and 143, Highbury New Park, 1871 census) before moving to 25, The Boltons, Kensington (1891, 1901), each move representing a significant improvement in their economic position and social status. Their next door neighbour at no. 24 was, for a year or two, W.S. Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan fame.

* Adelaide married Arthur Urmston, grandson of Sir James Brabazon Urmston in 1889, and had Adelaide Majolier and Edward Arthur.

And now, Caitlin's maternal grandparents:

Edouard Majolier (1858-1908) and Susannah Cooper (1861-1942) who married in October 1885. By 1891, they had set up home at 20, Bramham Gardens, Kensington. Edouard and Susannah's six children were:

*Mary Yvonne (1886-1973) married Francis Macnamara (1886-1946). Their four children were:

John (1908-1963) m. Henriette Buffard of Valleraugue, Les Cévennes.

Nicolette (1911-1987) who married the painters Anthony Devas and Rupert Shephard.

Brigit (1915-?)

Caitlin (1914-1994) who married Dylan Thomas. They had Llewelyn, Aeronwy and Colm.

* Edouard (Paddy) (1888-1918) married Geraldine Briggs (1889-1945) and had Chloe, 1917, and Peggy, 1918. Chloe married, first, Peter J. Rosenfeld in 1940 and then, second, Charles Rycroft in 1947, the son of Sir Richard Rycroft and Emily Mary Lowry-Corry. They had Alice (1947), Catherine (1949) and Francis (1950), whose marriages and children can be found at http://www.thepeerage.com/p56416.htm. Charles Rycroft's career as a pyschoanalyst is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Rycroft.

Peggy married Leslie Cameron and had Michael (1942), Jeremy (1947), Susan (1949) and Caroline (1954). For Jeremy's publications, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Cameron_(author). (Susan Cameron may have been the actor Susan Majolier see https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0538165/ This is still being checked).

* Christine (1890-1969) m. René Methol, and had at least one child, Jerome.

* Grace (1891-1945) m. Sam Maroger of Château de Livières, Calvisson. They had Christine, Francine and Pierre. For the family's involvement in the French Resistence during WW2, see N. Devas' Susannah's Nightingales, with another account by Grace's nephew, Jeremy Cameron, in his book, Never Again: A Walk from Hook of Holland to Istanbul, pp31-32.

* Suzanne (aka Suzette, 1894-1955) m. Roger Emile Casalis de Pury had Roger James Casalis de Pury. Roger Emile's sister was the actor, Jeanne de Casalis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_de_Casalis

* Christopher Michael (1901-1967) enlisted in the Navy when he was thirteen and fought in the Great War. He and his wife, Nathalie Mamontova, had Alexandra Majolier, b.1935, who married Cyril Crowson. Nathalie had been previously married to Val Gielgud and Cecil Gray, the composer. There is more on Nathalie in the "Exile" section of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalia_Brasova

To read about Ted Majolier's two children with the actress Florence Nightingale Maclean, please go to the next page on this site, Majolier Secrets: Caitlin's American Cousins.

______________________________

Publications mentioned in the text:

Jeremy Cameron (2014) Never Again: A Walk from Hook of Holland to Istanbul.

Jeanne de Casalis: St Helena (1936), Mrs Feather’s Diary (1936), Mrs Feather, Duologues (1938), Things I don’t Remember (1953), Never shall she be Unfaithful (1954).

Nicolette Devas: Two Flamboyant Fathers (1966) and Susannah’s Nightingales (1978).

A.P. Graves: To Return to All That (1930)

Alexander Knox: Differential Calculus for Beginners (1884)

Marthe Francillon-Lobre: Hygiène de la femme et de la jeune fille (1909) and see https://criticartt.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/la-doctora-marthe-francillon-vs-el.html

Christine Majolier: Content (1925).

Michael Majolier (written under the name of James Street): Death in an Armchair (1936), Carbon Monoxide (1937), A Wastrel Goes West (1937).

Nathalie Majolier: Step-daughter of Imperial Russia (1940).

Christine Majolier-Alsop: Memorials, ed. M. Braithwaite (1881), Mémoires d'une missionnaire (2012). Available online in English.

Ernest Maroger: La Goutte D’Eau (1924).

Jacques Maroger: The Secret Formulas and Techniques of the Masters (1948) and see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Maroger

Jean-Jacques Olivier: see https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Olivier

Caitlin Thomas: Leftover Life to Kill (1957)

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