These extracts are taken from the two volumes of Dylan Remembered (Seren 2003, 2004), supplemented with material from the Colin Edwards archive at the National Library of Wales. Editorial © 2019 D. N. Thomas. With thanks to Reg and Eileen Evans for images.
We used bicycles at Blashford – we hadn’t got cars in those days. We used to set off on bicycles. And buses. And we had a horse and cart for a bit...we were mad bird-nesters, and I know my sister would take him [Dylan] out...we used to have this passion for swimming, but he didn’t like that much...you’d put the bath water in the bath and put Dylan in and he’d just sit there. Wouldn’t wash, wouldn’t get wet all over. Caitlin used to very often splash him about and wash him...didn’t like water much.
We weren’t properly educated. Caitlin was sent to boarding school, briefly – hated it – I went to the local school, finished at fourteen, then we had French governesses. Nicolette went to school in France. She fought to be educated. We weren’t. We were country bumpkins...we had a French grandfather, so we used to go to the South, and we went to Cannes for some holidays, when I was about seven and Caitlin was about six.
You were educated largely by your parents?
Not by the parents, no; by French governesses, Swiss governesses, up to the age of about twelve, and then an English governess up to the age of about fourteen – that was me – and then I was finished, I went riding. Caitlin was educated up to the age of about fifteen. But she went to boarding school for about two years. She was a bit difficult and it didn’t do her much good; rather a lot of harm, I think...she did a lot of dancing. She ran away at fifteen to the stage in London - she didn’t need to run away, mother would have let her go, but anyhow she ran away – with Vivien John.
Your mother must have been a remarkable woman?
We were brought up rather free, you know. No moral sense, nothing...[my mother] was brought up so strictly by my grandmother, so strictly, she said they just did nothing but lie. That’s why she brought us up so - she reacted against this...we were brought up without any rules at all – no moral sense.
Your family is a very interesting one. Your father was a very talented writer, and a yacht-builder…
Yes, but he didn’t really work. He was one of those people who was always about to solve the world’s problems, but never quite did.
It must have been difficult for your mother?
Well, he left us when I was about three, we didn’t see him…we were brought up without him. I didn’t really see him until I was eighteen. And then he wasn’t like a father – you didn’t know him.
Where do you think they were happiest? Down at Laugharne?
They were very happy there. They were very devoted...in spite of fights and fisticuffs, there was a great, enormous love, and the most beautiful letters he used to write to her. Love letters. Which Caitlin always read aloud to us all…beautiful letters.
What about Caitlin’s attitude to Dylan’s poetry?
Well, in Italy I remember her – she was very good, she was very strict about what he wrote and would criticize quite firmly – don’t do this or don’t do that. Whether she was right or wrong, I don’t know, but she was for keeping the standards up always, Caitlin – very high standards.
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At one stage, my mother tried to take me to Carmarthen – I think I was getting rather old for primary school – she sent me to Carmarthen, which was fourteen miles away, and I had to go there by bus, and I always got very bus sick, every day. And I didn’t like the informal atmosphere there, I wasn’t doing very well. So my mother sent me to the Arts Educational School [Hertfordshire], because she felt that I should be given the chance that she wasn’t given. My mother only had a year’s formal schooling, and what she’d really wanted to do was become a famous dancer. In fact, when my mother married my father – or this is what she says now – she felt that he took her away from a promising career, as a dancer. She was dancing at the Palladium at the time, and she’d gone to Paris to dance for Isadora Duncan as one of her lead dancers...she wasn’t really tall enough for a Bluebell Girl, but she certainly was a good dancer.
But even then, I think before she knew my father, she had a drinking problem. Because her father, Francis, had drunk himself to death. Well, hadn’t by that time, but was an alcoholic...and my mother obviously had contracted some of the drinking habits. It’s no good saying that my father made my mother drink, because I don’t think that was true.
At what stage did you go for ballet training?
I went when I was ten. That was the year my father died, in fact...it was a boarding school.
Your mother encouraged you in this, because of her dancing?
Yes, it wasn’t my idea at all. Luckily they had an acting department as well, which I was much better at. I couldn’t co-ordinate my movements at all, so they just let me concentrate on the acting side. I enjoyed that, very much.
And your father more or less didn’t resist the plan to send you to ballet school, or acting school?
I think it’s rather sad that he didn’t – but he didn’t. Because then there was more fees to find, and he had a lot of debts anyway. My mother wasn’t very good on helping him pay his debts off. She had grand ideas about what she wanted for the children, and there was nothing to deter her. Nothing, no reasonable argument.
What is your earliest memory of your father? Is there something that stands out in your mind?
Not an early memory – no, nothing special. He just was a figure that was present in the family...I tended to see him around in the morning…
In the morning, would he come into your bedroom and play with you?
Oh no, no, not at all. My father was not that kind of father at all…he just would talk to our minds, not participate in our physical needs, as far as I can remember, just never helped me do up a shoelace or…nothing physical. He left that part completely to my mother. And if I wanted or needed something practical done, I was always told to go to my mother. But he would, on the other hand, read me stories and buy me books and talk to me about that sort of thing.
Did you read his own poems and stories?
He did quote bits of Under Milk Wood, all over the house, and he was discouraged from doing this. My mother wasn’t very encouraging. She always thought - she says now - that he was a great poet but she didn’t like him bringing it home.
…he’d go to the pub at six... as children, we were put to bed early...they went as soon as the pub was open. He would start off at about six, and my mother would join him, say, at seven...my mother would go and tuck us down, and leave us – again without a babysitter. We were always left in this house, all on our own, and it’s quarter of an hour’s walk from the village.
…of course, he died when I was ten. So that doesn’t give much time, does it, and during those last ten years he was predominantly visiting America. I can remember quite long absences. And always the anticipation of my father’s return. I was more aware of my mother’s moods and things.
I don’t suppose that you recall him talking about any particular works in progress, except you made a reference to Under Milk Wood.
He was always trying out different characters with my mother. We’d be sitting in the kitchen or something and he'd come down and try a new one. And she would chuck him out if she remembered. She tended to ignore a lot of it, but then she’d get annoyed. She didn’t give any obvious support but she did take the accepted role of being Mother Earth and she said that she had five children...the treasure was Dolly Long [the Thomases' maid]. She had her son, you see. And then there were three of us made four, and then my father was the fifth...my mother considered my father as another child – she treated him as such. She would wash his ears and when he was in the bath, she’d make quite sure he’d washed properly and would wash his hair and then oil it, with olive oil. And cut his nails. Do everything for him...I can remember there was quite a lot of washing and all sorts of things to keep him clean and tidy but, once he went up to London, she had no control.
Did your father use your mother as a sounding board for his poems? Did he feel that she had the necessary faculties at appreciating what is good in poetry?
Yes. He admired my mother very much. My mother, you know, was talented in her own right. And, because of looking after children, domestic duties, pressures and all the rest, she didn’t do…she could have done much more for herself which she didn’t do when she was young.
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We had borrowed this flat which didn’t appear to be occupied at the time, on top of the Laundry [in Swansea], and we had one of the gayest parties I ever remember. Dylan and Caitlin were there, and a member of the police force was also there, and they were all brewing up rum and milk in the kitchen…I can remember my sister, Vera, and Dylan singing opera together. The way in which they sang opera was to make up the words and the tune as they went along,
I can always remember Dylan and Caitlin doing a particularly brilliant dance together.
She was a dancer, yes, but Dylan also was dancing on this particular night and I can remember that all the rest of us dropped out of the dancing and just watched them doing a kind of strange ballet burlesque in the middle of the floor…this was almost a mime kind of dance.
And Dylan then wanted to sober Caitlin up before they went home to his mother’s in Bishopston, and they were taken home, I remember, by Josie Griffiths - Josie took them home to Bishopston…when he came back he said that they got out halfway and they tried to make Caitlin sick over a bridge, because they didn’t want her to go home not completely sober to Mrs Thomas, and she bit Dylan’s finger, apparently. He said, “You must be sick, Caitlin, you must be alright when you go home to my mother!” And she bit his finger, because he wanted her to be sick!
He put his finger on her tongue, was that it?
That’s right! And apparently Dylan said “She bites the hand that makes her sick!”
How was Caitlin dressed on that occasion?
She was inclined to wear full skirts, and full blouses, sometimes with this beautiful hair of hers taken up into a kind of loose bun on the crown of her head. When I say loose, I mean a sort of curly bun, not a tight bun, just mass of hair up the top. And sometimes she wore it down long…beautiful hair. And beautiful eyes, beautiful blue eyes, they were like – oh, sort of blue pebbles in a stream. Not soft eyes, but clear, rather hard, as I say, like pebbles, but very beautiful. And of course, she had this complexion – oh, like a milkmaid, you know. Beautiful pink and white skin.
She really was a very lovely girl…she didn’t have very good feet. Well, she probably had pretty feet without shoes, but one of the things I remember about her particularly was that she never got her shoes mended and she used to turn on the heels of her shoes. She used to buy expensive shoes – and during the War, of course, when shoes were scarce, this used to grieve me very much. She’d let them go down at heel, and I suppose then she’d throw them away and buy some more.
How did the relationship strike you between Caitlin and Dylan?
Well, during the time that I knew them, they seemed to be quite amicable. They seemed very, very fond of one another, actually. I can remember Caitlin was writing at the time she was in Gelli [Talsarn, Lampeter], and she told my mother that Dylan didn’t like her to write; that Dylan was rather jealous of the fact that she was writing.
What was she trying to write? You mean of literary quality?
I should think so. Whether it was autobiographical, I shouldn’t have thought it at that particular stage. She just said that she was trying to write, that she was writing quite a lot and that Dylan didn’t approve of this, that he rather felt that he was the writer in the family…she obviously felt that she had some writing propensities, or writing ambitions, before she ever travelled to America. I believe on one of her tours in America she was supposed to have written a diary, wasn’t she? I don’t think it was ever published.
They danced a good deal while they were there [at Gelli]. They had a rather poor gramophone, and a lot of records and Caitlin and Vera, who was also very keen on dancing and had done a little dancing, they danced a great deal. As far as I can see, they danced and they sang and they drank.
What about his attitude to his children, the responsibilities of being a parent and so forth? Caitlin actually tried to bring up the children as carefully as possible. She always saw they were fed, despite all the economic problems they had, didn’t she?
As far as I know, yes. She seemed quite devoted to Aeronwy. Aeronwy was the only one I ever saw Caitlin with. I never saw her with Llewelyn and, of course, Colm was born after.
What about Dylan’s feelings about being a father and the birth of the child, the children and so forth?
I think Dylan was quite thrilled to have children. I think this was one of the things that he felt was a fulfilment in life, and I remember hearing that Caitlin had Aeronwy in the Queen Charlotte Hospital, and they all went along to take her to the hospital, when the pains began. But instead of going straight in, of course, they found a little pub opposite the gates, and there they were drinking and Caitlin was very unwilling to go in and have this baby – and of course, I don’t blame her really because it’s an awfully miserable business getting there too soon, you know.
And Dylan was extremely anxious. “Don’t you think it’s about time you went now, Cait?” And he seemed far more anxious about the child, and about the child being born respectably than Caitlin. Caitlin seemed very unperturbed about it, and very unwilling to go into hospital. I don’t think she liked the lack of freedom which was forced upon here there.
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Certainly Aeronwy...was christened at the same time as Colm. I’m not quite sure whether Llewelyn was christened. I should remember, because I was there at the christening, but I don’t remember whether there were two or three of them. As a matter of fact, the proceedings were rather marred by a tendency to giggle on the part of several members of the party, who only just managed to contain themselves, until they stumbled out among the gravestones afterward to give vent to a lot of pent-up laughter. Which was contributed to by the priest-in-charge, who himself treated the whole exercise as rather amusing, rather than very serious...Dylan’s mother attended the christening and approved of it. I don’t know whether there was any reason or not for the christening taking place in a church. It might be that it was just a spot decision which was based on Dylan’s mother’s desire – I could imagine that she would be one that wanted the christening to take place. I can’t imagine that Dylan thought it was an important matter.
What about Caitlin?
I don’t think she took it very seriously...I never heard her express a word on religion, ever.
And what about Dylan’s feelings for his children?
Dylan’s children were extremely well fed and extremely well clothed, and they were brought up in a – not a prosaic manner, but a very normal manner. They were very little affected by any wild bohemian scenes. The ordinary domestic side of life went on smoothly. Children were bathed, they were put to bed clean, warm and dry incomfortable beds. They got up in the morning and they were dressed well and adequately, and in that way, indeed, it was a very prosaic, ordinary, middle class household.
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I think he was careless about himself in every way, and I suppose he must have given the impression to Caitlin sometimes that he was careless about his responsibility to his family. He certainly took on a wife on very little money. I can remember when they came to Laugharne first. They lived in one large room in an old house called Sea View...the only furniture they had was a double bed, and large packing cases. Large boxes, soap boxes, which acted as writing desk and dining table, and I can remember the first impression I had as I entered this room, and seeing burnt down candles stuck in the neck of Guinness bottles, and the floor round the box strewn with papers, and foolscaps on the box, showing the classic picture of an impecunious writer, and I felt, rather patronisingly, that this is another ostentatious attempt at greatness, because this is the classical picture of greatness as it begins to evolve.
I wasn’t even aware of his great potentiality. I was aware only of his eccentricity, and of his beautiful, extrovert wife. And I found it very difficult to believe and accept that it was necessary to live in quite such obvious and picturesque and abject poverty.
Even when he was an established figure, he he never adopted a supercilious attitude in talking to the doctor. There was always that deference and politeness, which I valued and one couldn’t help liking him.
The contrast, of course, in Caitlin, who was always superbly confident and superbly extrovert in everything – her colouring and her dress, in her manner, and the almost risqué statements which she would make…
She was very, very strong, very vigorous, very healthy woman. But I do remember her being seriously ill with pneumonia on one occasion.
He was content in his marriage.....
Ah, there is no doubt about it. There is no doubt about it…my summing up of Dylan is that he had no great masculinity to spare, to go round as a roué. I think there’s an awful lot in his poetry and in Under Milk Wood, which amounts to a sort of over-compensation.
He would have had to be extremely virile to manage any womanising, when he was drinking so steadily, even beer.
Oh, indeed, indeed…I’m sure, as far as the sexual side of marriage was concerned, that he had a wonderful partner.
Do you think he was, he was happy in his family life?
I don’t think so, really…it was not the average picture of domestic bliss – by no means, because occasionally there were physical exchanges, which sometimes were very distressing.
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It was a very easy birth. She wasn’t in five minutes. She was bathing – they were right down by the sea, swimming. They rushed her in and off to hospital and she had the baby [Colm] in no time.
...I was there for about a fortnight, I used to go everyday to bath the baby. And she had beautiful clothes for the baby and everything; lovely bath, and proper nursery and everything. She had it very, very nice, nicely done up.
...well, I thought that she was a kind of an actress, that’s what I thought. That’s the impression that I had about her...she always used to be entertaining artists and all that sort of thing. And bohemians. I remember telling Dr Hughes, the day I was there with the little boy when he’d burnt himself: “Well, doctor, for goodness sake, take a pair of glasses with you or something, or you’ll have a terrible shock,” I said. “You’ll think you’re in with the bohemians.”
...she dressed exactly like a gypsy, you know. No care of her clothes or anything...bright colours, exactly like a gypsy. And I remember in the carnival there, she went as a can-can girl...she was banned from all the dances; nobody would have her there...the Pendine establishment...they used to have this big dance, officers' dance and all that sort of thing – well, that’s where she was banned from. Because she was terrible.
...you didn’t know what they were doing sometimes. They’d be shouting and bawling and carrying on, and Caitlin would have these friendly bohemians as I call them, when he was there – didn’t matter what he said. She would have them there...they were her friends...artists and dancers and all that kind of thing, you know.
...the last time I went to see her...a priest came from Ireland. It is said that Dylan had a lot of beautiful poems about Our Lady – and I don’t know where, I’ve never seen them. But it’s quite possible it was true.
But he wasn’t a Catholic.
He wasn’t a Catholic, but he was very inclined that way...this priest came from Ireland to see him – of course, this was after he died – but he went up to see Caitlin. She was very good to him, and very hospitable, she would make you a meal, you know, awfully kind like that...very good-hearted. She made him a meal, and she told him to come to me....Father Kelly, his name was.
...that’s the one thing she was good with was the old lady...Dylan’s mother, yes. Caitlin was very, very, very kind she was – that’s the one redeeming feature I had for her... she was wonderful with the old lady. She used to push her about in a wheelchair... it’s wonderful how she was so fond of that old lady...she was very, very kind-hearted. If there was anything going on, or if you were selling anything, she’d always give to anything like that, she was very good in that way – and excellent with the old lady.
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Married to Caitlin, he produced this wonderful poetry that we all know about. They did quarrel, like children quarrel. But, fundamentally, they meant a tremendous amount to each other, and certainly in the early days of marriage, Caitlin made a big effort to see he had food as well as beer, and the same with the children. It was very difficult for her to make food and a regular life at all for them, but she made an effort.
They were certainly very much in love all the time we saw them. Caitlin never believed in the husband helping very much in the house. She always said it made it much, much more complicated, and in fact I remember her mocking when Diccon [Richard Hughes] was, one day, cooking one course of the dinner, or maybe the whole dinner.
Once she was ill with a poisoned finger - in Seaview – which was a very inconvenient house. She was in bed on the first floor, and the kitchen was in the basement and Dylan was anxious to do something for her, and she said she would like a cup of tea, and she told him how to do it. So he went down to the basement and he was there quite a long time, and he boiled a kettle, or nearly boiled it, and put the tea leaves in the teapot and then he poured the water on, but he couldn’t find a cover to put on, and he knew that there should be something over it, so he took a half a pound of cheese and put it on top, but he took the paper off the cheese first. And another time in the same illness, I remember her saying that she’d asked him to get her some hot water, and he hurried away to get it, but he came back without it, and he said “Well I did hurry to get it – you can’t expect everything.”
...when they first had a child, they hadn’t got into the way of very regular meals and times, but Caitlin did make tremendous efforts that the child should have a regular upbringing and all the right food. Which was very difficult for her, as they’d been accustomed to stay up very late at night and, if they wanted to, sleep on in the morning. But she was very keen on Llewelyn getting as good a start as possible.
...they always had more or less pot au feu or stew of some kind, which was practically necessary, as they had such very limited cooking arrangements, but it was always palatable, and there always seemed enough food in her house, however difficult it was to get it.
In the book that Brinnin wrote, he recounts a visit to Laugharne, and the turbulent atmosphere in the home, at that period at least. Would you say that this characterized the atmosphere in the Dylan household?
No, I certainly wouldn’t. Caitlin, in the early days, used to get a bit fed up sometimes when so many young people came from Swansea to see Dylan, and in the end stayed to three and four meals, and perhaps stayed the night, because it was difficult for her to cope with all the cooking and washing up and looking after her child. And that was the only thing that I remember that used to make her annoyed from time to time, and that was perfectly understandable.
I remember one occasion when I went to call on them in the afternoon, and they were all in bed and the baby, too, just reading novels and eating sweets, and I thought that was very beautifully happy and relaxed.
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...Caitlin used to use some of his poems for shopping lists...on the back of it, yes. The grocer and I read this piece of work. “Oh,” he said. “Shall we keep it?” and I said “I don’t know. I think we should do, because Caitlin’s quite likely to tear it up." Because the subject was unusual. You know how one has a peculiar tummy, one feels you’ve been eating and drinking too much for some time, and you know very well it’s inevitable that you have to take some sort of Epsom salts – and you know very well it wasn’t going to be pleasant, and your saliva sort of started in your mouth…it was beautifully done, and must have been about twelve or thirteen little verses – but it was beautifully done, they had the real feeling.
And you’ve never seen these appear in any of his published works?
Oh, no, no. It must have been just thrown away. It was a shame, because, although it was on a subject that most people wouldn’t have liked, there was nothing you could take offence at.
..my husband admired Caitlin terrifically, as it was obvious later, because to him she turned at the end, after Dylan’s death, he was the one that backed her up, he helped her right through her time, she tried to commit…and all that rest of it – he was one of the men that really did help her.
...I also saw her kindness to children - in all fairness...they always welcomed children, and the children were always fed if they came there. She was noted for always giving gifts to children, and sometimes the parents used to be rather annoyed...she’d bought a lovely costume for a little girl and this man returned it. He said ”We can afford to dress our own kids – we know your circumstances, and we won’t accept it.” But her heart was terribly good, you know.
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I usually went out for a couple of drinks in the evening and I never heard anything about Dylan being a drunkard or anything of that nature – and in a small community, whether you meet the person or not, the gossip goes around. But that was never said of Dylan. If you said it about Caitlin, that’s a different cup of tea altogether.
...he wasn’t a drunkard, but I’ve seen him get four or five pints, or maybe half-a-dozen pints and just get to the merry stage. But he was not a rumbustious type, you see. Whereas Caitlin was quite the opposite...anything could happen. She used to go around with a feller by the name of Howard Dark. Do you know the Commercial on the road to Tenby? Apparently they called there one night and it was a little pub cum farm They went in there about nine o’clock, Howard and her, and called a couple of drinks and she brought a drink for a few of the locals there, and apparently it come time and old Tom called time. And people there continued drinking, so Caitlin calls another drink, and he said “What’s the matter with you woman,” he said. “Haven’t you heard me call time? There’s no more sales,” he said. So she looks across at the clock on the wall - one of the old-fashioned wooden clocks - she goes across, picks it up, through the window. She said “Now can we have another drink?” He said “No, time’s gone now.” That’s the type Caitlin was.
...I think in some ways that Caitlin abused him to a certain extent. Dylan was a placid sort of man. Whereas Caitlin was the opposite. Turbulent nature. Her temper would rise like a flash.
But Dylan’s mother told me that she admired Caitlin’s attention to the children, keeping them clean and well fed.
Oh, she kept them well dressed and tidy and under control, there’s no question about that. They were firmly under her control.
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Did Caitlin attend church here at all?
No, she never attended…She was brought up in France, I think. Brought up by some relatives or other in France…younger days, she could speak French like a native.
What impression did you have of Caitlin?
Oh, they’re all bohemian type. We went over to Sea View one day for tea. And had cockles, the Laugharne cockles. And it was a table something similar to this - there was no cloth, it was all white, it was nice and clean – and when the cockles were ready, she brought the saucepan and tipped them all on top of the table, you see. Help yourself! Brought ‘em out then, with a chicken, and divided it up as well! Everything was spotlessly clean with her. There was no like dirty dishes or anything like that; she always was very clean.
Do you think Dylan and Caitlin had a happy marriage?
Well, they understood each other. Might have had a rough passage on times, but they understood one another – each was as good as the other.
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IW: He was very conventional. And all the children were christened and all the children went to church…he really and truly was a Welsh Baptist at heart.
And yet they were rather Bohemian…
IW: Yes, Caitlin was…but if Dylan had been left alone…
According to some of the accounts one reads, it was rather a tumultuous family life…
IW: Well, yes, I think it was, in a way, but a great tie between them…Caitlin was a very beautiful girl - she still is, a beautiful woman – but she’d always been number one until she married Dylan, and when she got married, Dylan was number one.
EW: Ah, he got in the limelight, see.
IW: and I think that
EW: Upset her.
IW: that was the cause of half of the trouble.
I suppose you saw this in the bar of Brown’s Hotel, when Dylan was telling some of his stories…
IW: Yes, but strangely enough, I’ve never heard Dylan tell stories. If you were talking to Dylan you wouldn’t know whether he was a road-sweeper or what he was, would you?
But when there was an occasion like this and Dylan became the centre of attraction…
EW: She was jealous.
Towards the end she tried to do something to bring attention to herself?
IW: Yes, well, she didn’t used to do it here, because I knew her too well, you know, we were too great a friend…but I know that in other places she would tip the table up, you know, smash a few glasses, things like that.
EW: Yes, I’ve seen so, too, many a time. She wasn’t supposed to go into The Savage Club, you know, but she poked in one night time…
What happened?
EW: Oh – shoved her out!
IW: She hadn’t got as far as the door…
EW: And poor old Dylan had to go out, too, you know, didn’t want to cause any kind of scene…She could be nasty if she wanted to.
IW: Well, I’m very fond of Caitlin.
EW: So am I, so am I.
IW: There was a great, great tie between them, they were terribly fond of each other.
EW: Dylan was getting in the limelight, you see, and she wasn’t…that was the argument.
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Dylan’s relationship with his children, at the time that I was there? Llewelyn was fourteen, I think, and there could be nothing more difficult than a fourteen year old girl or a boy who sits and sits and sits and stares and won’t say a word…this was a phase that Llewelyn was going through, and this made Dylan quite angry, quite furious.
I think it made it difficult for all of them. He wasn’t easy with his children, in public, anyway. I think there’s no question that he loved them, but he wasn’t the paterfamilias who was going to gather them all up and take them for an outing and so on…for instance, he did go off with John [Brinnin] and with me, but we didn’t take the children. I’d go with Caitlin and the children. Once he did go walking in the Castle with the two younger children…
Aeronwy and Colm?
Yes…I think, maybe, they were a little afraid of him.
He wasn’t a violent man, I mean, he wasn’t a brutal father or anything like that.
No, I’m sure he wasn’t a brutal father as such, but do remember they did have a violent life in many ways and I know the children saw this from time to time, and this would have been frightening to any child.
Did they have the same attitude to Caitlin?
No – no…they clung to her quite, quite closely. Quite closely. The two boys particularly…Aeron loved her grandmother and would go up to the village and be with her quite often.
What is happening now to the pictures and so forth that you’ve taken? Because they amount to quite a document, of Dylan.
They’re making a film of them, using mostly my own material.
The University of Texas has quite a collection.
Yes, they do. I think they have manuscripts and some photographs, too...there’s an awful lot of very bad material on him as well –
What do you mean?
Bad cartoons and things.
What about Dylan’s own little efforts at cartooning? Did you ever see those?
Yes, I’ve seen several of them. I don’t think he was as good a cartoonist as a poet, by far! Caitlin was a very good cartoonist.
Was she?
Yes, oh yes. She was quite a devastating one! I have a couple of them that she did – one of Dylan and scribbled just sitting around of an evening.
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I first met Dylan, I suppose, having a drink somewhere, and, well, I didn’t think much of him at all. I knew he was writing a bit of poetry but that’s as far as it went. But he was always very charming, kind, a gentle personality, unassuming and I liked Dylan very much.
…it was an extraordinary married life, hectic and bohemian, very bohemian - they lived very roughly [at Majoda]…it was all very rough and ready, dirty dishes piled up everywhere - a sink full of them, and she washed a couple of cups and we had a cup of beer each. Then we went in to see old Dylan who was lying in bed writing by candlelight, no sheets on the bed, no pillow-slips. Perfectly happy - just a couple of blankets thrown over him. I think they sat on the floor most of the time, as far as I could gather, on cushions. So, all very higgledy-piggledy - but that was their way of living, and they just washed up things as they wanted them.
I met Dylan in the Black Lion, and his wife, one Saturday evening…I said how much I’d enjoyed his poems - I’d read several of them, and I thought they were extremely good. There was something very much of the human touch about his poems. And then we met several times afterwards.
What impression did you have of their married life?
I don’t think that they were very happy together, but there were times when they were most affectionate...I think she rather bored him...she was very fierce at times, and he’d be very Platonic-like, and then they would probably have a row, and things would go right again in a day or so. She usually brought the children down to the Black Lion, and used to say to Dora, the girl there, “Have you got an empty room? Pop these two into bed, will you?” And they were charming little children – a boy and a girl – and then she’d collect them. She’d go off, nobody knew where she went, leave Dylan at the Black Lion, and she’d come back for them some time between eleven and twelve...but they were a charming couple to meet, socially. I enjoyed it very much.
...I think Caitlin and he were very happy when they were at Laugharne, at the beginning when they were married. But it all dwindled, and I felt very sorry for them.
What do you recall of Caitlin?
Very clever; very, very intelligent. Very amusing. I don’t think she’d make a Kay Kendall, you know. Or a Mrs Beeton, but apart from that, very amusing and a very good customer; a very, very good social customer. Interesting to everybody. Lackadaisical in dress. A slip to her would be as good as an Elizabethan crinoline.
What do you remember of Caitlin, and what about their relationship?
Sometimes they were real husband and wife, next time they were foreigners to one another. But on the whole I think she kept him in hand...and I think she was an ex-Windmill girl, according to her dancing – because she could really dance...I used to play the piano to them.
At your father’s house, in the post office?
Father’s house, yes, yes – she used to do all the dancing there...
I was in charge of the railway station here. He was very sociable. Nice to talk to. And he had a bit of an impediment in his speech. He used to sort of stutter now and again. Then when he went and started talking, it come out fluently.
What do you remember of Caitlin?
Oh, she was a lovely girl. She used to dance up in the pub, up on the tables in there...oh yes, lovely dancer – do the handstand, cartwheel on the table – yes...he encouraged it...Caitlin was quite an enjoyable person to be with...oh, she was a peach of a girl.
Did Caitlin come back here later?
Oh, she came back here two or three times.
To visit friends here?
Well, Mrs Green that used to be at the shop, where the post office is now. Just to see the people in the village, see people she knew...she never brought the children with her, I don’t think. I don’t remember seeing the kiddies after they went away.
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It was in the 1940s, the time he was living in Margaret Taylor's shack in her grounds in the house off Magdalen College [1946-47].
…you would hardly know he was in Oxford. It might have been anywhere. No reaction - I never heard him talk about the beauty of the place...of course, he was having great difficulty living with the Taylors. Alan Taylor was having enough; his wife was making him ridiculous with Dylan, and he had enough of that, having him living in the place, and coming up to the house…Mrs Taylor took over Dylan Thomas' children to look after them, too. I always remember Mrs Taylor with her children, the pram and the Dylan Thomases as well…the Dylan Thomas children were in the same pram as the Taylor children.
Did Caitlin accompany Dylan to most of the parties here?
Yes. Not always together, though. But they always ended up together. Or one left before the other.
What impression did you get of Caitlin and Dylan? Were they people who seemed ideally suited or were they….
Well, you couldn't have said so. This was a stormy period of their life, I should say, when they were in Oxford, and I saw them mostly rowing, but I gather from Caitlin’s own book that rowing was a great part of their life, and that it didn't really interfere with their happiness. I thought myself that she had literary ambitions - they were not fulfilled - or ambitions to be seen to shine in a literary manner, and that she was a little bit jealous of the attention to Dylan, because certainly she was never pushed forward as a literary figure in Oxford, and I think she would have liked that. I think she would quite like to share, she wouldn't have minded sharing. I think she would have liked a salon in which she shone. But, of course, she had none of the qualities that made her suitable for having a salon. She would never have had a salon.
Perhaps she wanted Dylan as a sort of protégé.
Yes, I think so.
Protégé husband.
Yes, I think so. I think she would have liked it to have been said that Dylan Thomas owed everything to her. And it has to be remembered, she came from a literary family and he didn't. I don't think anybody knew about his father...probably his father was much more literary than appears. He was a failed literary man, but then, Caitlin's father was not all that successful as a literary man, but he published quite a bit.
You knew Caitlin before, didn't you?
I didn't really know Caitlin well - my family knew her father's family, the Macnamaras…they were friends of my family and her mother was partly French – Majolier. Caitlin's mother and the other sisters were considered very fast by Dublin standards, and we were not really supposed to have too much to do with them because it was always supposed that they might, you know, corrupt us as children. But she was much nearer to the age of one of my younger sisters than my age. And so I didn't know her very well. I used to see her about when I was a child.
…she was very beautiful, I remember. She was very beautiful when I saw her in Oxford, too. That hair rather like, I don't know, ginger beer, that very fluffy, fair hair.
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Their relationship was rather turbulent at times. Do you think this became a strain on him?
I think it became a great strain on him. I think the real basis of the strain was Dylan's endless money troubles. I know that Dylan felt it was bad and wrong of him that he couldn't support his wife and children in a proper way. That Caitlin was constantly kept short of money and so on. She went for him about this…and I think that was the real basis of the strains and tensions that built up between them.
There was another basis of conflict, too, because of the attention that Dylan got in company.
Well, it's not quite as simple as that. There were some times when Caitlin would be in the best of spirits and be in a very good mood when Dylan was being amusing and talking a lot. At other times, this would obviously irritate her and then she would tend to go for Dylan and put up a sort of rival show of her own. Or sometimes just walk out. But she didn't like it if she thought Dylan was getting all the attention. I think that is undoubtedly true.
…Caitlin could be entertaining. She could be sullenly silent sometimes when she was in a poor mood. Just absolutely nothing for hours on end and sort of scowl at people. And at times she could be absolutely bloody but in general she was alright. She was good company in general. She was never amusing in the way that Dylan was, but she was alright.
…I remember Dylan staying with me in London, on more than one occasion, and Caitlin was coming up and Dylan was very pleased that she was coming. "Cait's coming up tomorrow and we must - I must - keep sober this evening and be in good shape when Cait comes up." And "I must have a clean shirt" and "Isn't it fine Cait's coming up tomorrow" and so on. There was no indifference there, as far as I saw…but on the other hand he would wander off sometimes, and so would she. Dylan prized his freedom very highly, you see.
What about Dylan's family life?
He spoke about his children quite a bit, and had a sense of guilt that he didn't provide for them as a provider should, that he didn't spend time with them as he should, but he had great love for them and therefore was obsessed by this sense of guilt….he talked about his marriage a good deal but I think there was no doubt about it, he really loved the woman with all his being.
Caitlin was difficult too, of course, for all kinds of very obvious reasons. He was not a good provider, and he was a womaniser and, furthermore, she had artistic ambitions herself, as a dancer, which she felt that her marriage had interrupted. There are all kinds of good reasons why she behaved in the strange way she did, but I think the fundamental thing was they were both terribly - and I use the word advisedly - terribly in love with each other…and this gave them an incredible power to hurt each other…they were like two very bright flames.
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I’m now with Augusto Livi who knew Dylan in Elba.
Yes, in July 1947. I was on honeymoon. I met Dylan, his wife, his son and his daughter and we lived very, very freely in the little town, Rio Marina. It was a town of miners, the nature was wonderful, the earth was blue, green, yellow because there were fragments of iron and sulphurous material and Dylan admired these colours and this nature...
...he worked all day, in a relatively little room in the hotel where we lived and generally walked in the afternoon...a very little hotel with a restaurant...
Did he like Italian food?
Yes. Practically, yes...I remember a curious particular. In Italy, we eat the octopus, and for an Englishman it’s horrible. When I proposed we eat the octopus, I remember that Caitlin told: “Oh, it’s repellent, it’s repellent.”
...he was a very interesting man, he spoke very rarely, he contemplated the landscape, and he was a little distracted in his thoughts. A very, very correct man. It’s strange, a very reserved man. And very alone, very alone.
We walked with him. Along the coast of Elba, one hour, two hours. Two times. I remember one of these promenades. They were practically a completely silent walk. Caitlin spoke but Dylan very, very little. He was [preoccupied] by poetical activity, I think.
He had very intense conversations with his wife, which lasted half an hour even. They were sitting apart from us at a table and talking together, without letting anyone else in on their secret, not even their children or his sister-in-law...my impression was that he was very united with his wife.
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What impression did you have of Caitlin and Dylan?
I didn’t get the impression that there was any friction between them. I remember that his wife was here with her sister, and they had lots of children and there seemed to be altogether quite a festive atmosphere. Maybe they didn’t give the impression, however, that there was a deep understanding between husband and wife, though they are just impressions, of course. It all seemed very friendly, cordial and rather festive; I think it was perhaps due to the children especially, and Thomas seemed very affectionate towards them. But there were no signs of disagreement or incompatibility; they were basically quite a noisy family, rather rowdy, I thought, but also happy and festive. That’s the impression I had.
It seemed that he left home very willingly, wandering around a while by himself, yes. But he also talked about his children with great affection and tenderness, though perhaps not in the same way about his wife. Not that there were exactly any obvious quarrels, but you could see that what tied him to home, what linked him to home, were his children. The main tie of affection seemed to be the children, certainly. On his part. Anyway, they looked rather like a gypsy troop...dominated by a sort of taste for life, I thought, or at least for adventure.
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What impression do you have of Dylan’s relationship with Caitlin?
Their relations were very cordial at that time. It was Dylan’s sister-in-law who did the housekeeping, because perhaps neither the husband nor the wife was much good at that. His sister-in-law did the shopping, then, and his wife did a little too. It was a holiday for Dylan. She didn’t seem to be a woman who had great problems and so they lived together perhaps rather idly, but all in all peacefully. There were two very pretty, blond children who were with them. There didn’t seem to be any tension...
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I turned Caitlin over to my friend, who was in charge of the dance department at the San Francisco State...there was a dancer here from Europe...
How did Caitlin like this dance performance?
She didn’t like at all, she was bored stiff, and let it be known to the girl who had so graciously taken her out to that dancing place...
...the last thing she wanted to hear was Dylan reading again. She was pretty bored with that. And I think she was also disturbed by it, because there was so much expressed adoration of him that she couldn’t stand it and her common remark used to be “How will I ever control him when I get him back to Wales?”
...I brought Dylan for a dinner party...and when we were approaching Carmel, Caitlin was very apprehensive of meeting a lot of people she didn’t know. Within ten minutes of the place, Caitlin said “I’m hungry and I want to eat now.”
I said “Caitlin, there are fifteen or twenty people waiting for us at Marie Short’s house for dinner and we’re probably late already and I don’t think we ought to stop.”
And then Dylan, in his perverse way, said “If she’s hungry now, let’s eat now.”
So it seemed to me I was torn between my role as a hostess - these are my guests – and my obligation to the person to whom we had given an acceptance for a dinner party. Well, anyway, my guests were right round my neck, so there was nothing I could do, but we stopped in a restaurant in Monterey, which is quite close to Carmel. And what did Caitlin order but a dish of spaghetti and a bottle of wine, to get ready for a dinner party! And I said “Thank you, I’m just going to have my dinner and I don’t want anything.” But I had to have some wine, of course. And so we all sat there...drinking the wine, and Caitlin and Dylan were eating the spaghetti!
...and then we had this lovely dinner, and after dinner...Caitlin spoke up and said ”And now we’ll have some fucking poetry.” So the game had started! I can’t tell you how many of those things I went through, but anyway - I’m not writing that down for anybody. So he gave her back an insult, which had to do with her “pea-brain”, her pea-sized brain, or something. And she stormed out of there...so he threw something at her, and stormed after her, and they never came back...it was a terrible situation for me.
...anyway, it was very disagreeable and very difficult. Because all those people were mature adults, who were interested in writing...I wondered how they would confront the crowd the next morning, because Marie had arranged for a picnic for all of us for the next morning. And people began to assemble about half past ten or eleven...and Dylan and Caitlin came out of their room like two lovebirds, like nothing you ever saw. Whatever had happened the night before was “gone with the wind”. They were perfectly happy together. And I had enough of those experiences to know that their quarrels were a kind of backhanded love quarrels, but I would have a suspicion – and I don’t want that to be recorded – that they didn’t make love unless they first had some violence.
What impression, did you have of the relationship between Caitlin and Dylan?
I think they were devoted to each other, and dependent on each other. Perhaps dependent is the best word. They were dependent on each other for what for them was a normal orientation. I think they would both have been diminished without each other.
Where did Dylan meet Pearl Kazin? It’s obvious she was completely in love with him.
Oh yes. But I really think there were other people who were, too. But being in love with Dylan and having a night with him here and there is one thing; living with Dylan the way Caitlin had to is an entirely different song and dance.
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I think they loved each other very much, they really did. She loved him and he loved her, and it was, well, it was a hot time for both of them, as they say. In the old town.
They were two burning fires, weren’t they?
Yes. I think she has a great deal of talent, she really has. She doesn’t have his stature for generosity, or his greatness, but she has a great deal of talent. And he felt that she could write as well as he, and I think she can too. I mean prose.