Invisible aunts

There’s a passage in Aeronwy Thomas’ book about her father, Dylan, in which she describes overhearing, when she was about five years old, a conversation between Florence and her sisters, Theodosia and Polly, that took place in Florence’s home, Pelican, in Laugharne. This conversation could not have happened. Dosie and Polly had both died well before Florence moved into Pelican. Indeed, Dosie had died before Aeronwy was born.[i]

The value of the passage, however, is that it captures a young girl’s appreciation that her father’s aunts had been important within the family, not least because they had together played a significant part in Dylan’s upbringing.

Dylan himself choose, with one exception, to say little about his four maternal aunts. They are barely mentioned in his letters – describing Polly as “snailing” is as good as it gets.[ii] The exception is Annie Fernhill whose death, spoiling and generosity feature prominently in an early letter.[iii] Annie is also portrayed in After the Funeral and in the short story The Peaches.

Polly and Theodosia, however, remain invisible. They are absent from Dylan’s list of family members who gave him Christmas presents in 1933.[iv] Polly is left out of the roll-call of family at Blaencwm in the summer of 1945.[v] The deaths of Polly (1946) and Theodosia (1941) also go unmentioned. There is a lot more information on Polly and Theodosia in Thomas 2003 chapters 3 and 4.

Dylan’s aunts are also invisible in his stories, in the sense that he reduces his fictional aunties to sexist caricatures. A Child’s Christmas in Wales depicts a “few small aunts, not wanted in the kitchen, nor anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edges of their chairs, poised and brittle, afraid to break, like faded cups and saucers.” There was auntie Dosie, who had to have three asprins, auntie Hannah, who liked port and laced her tea with rum “because it was only once a year”, and auntie Bessie, who had “already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse”.

But Dylan did give the three aunts names that can be found amongst his real aunts.

Auntie Dosie: perhaps from Florence's sister, Theodosia.
Auntie Hannah: Florence had a first cousin, Mary Hannah (Bal) of Ferryside and Pontardulais – see D. John and D. N. Thomas, 2010 for more on Bal.
Auntie Bessie: perhaps Florence's sister Mary Elizabeth (Polly); Florence also had a sister-in-law in St Thomas, Elizabeth Ann. Her husband John had died in 1911, so it would have been natural for the ever-hospitable Florence to invite her to join the family for Christmas Day. She moved to New Quay in the late 1920s. Florence also had a first cousin from Ferryside who was known as Bess, but she lived in Southsea and died in 1919.

In The Outing, the aunt sinks even further into the caricatures of the aunts in A Child’s Christmas, mouse-like creatures who are frail-limbed, weak-minded and usually overshadowed by their husbands.

Notes

[i] Florence and DJ Thomas moved into Pelican just before Dylan and his family moved into the Boat House in May 1949. The conversation is described in A. Thomas 2009, pp45-47.

[ii] August 29 1939 letter to D J Thomas.

[iii] February 8 1933 letter to Trevor Hughes.

[iv] December 25 1933 to Pamela Hansford Johnson.

[v] July 30 1945 letter to Oscar Williams.

References

D. John and D. N. Thomas (2010) From Fountain to River: Dylan Thomas and the Bont, in Cambria, autumn issue. It’s also athttps://sites.google.com/site/dylanthomaspontardulais/home/dylan-and-the-bont

A. Thomas (2009) My Father’s Places, Constable