Caitlin Macnamara - DylanThomas.com

Caitlin Macnamara (1913 – 1994)

Caitlin Thomas, copyright Jeff Towns and Dylan's bookstore

Caitlin’s upbringing was far more bohemian than Dylan’s. Her father Francis’ family had been Protestant landowners in County Clare, Ireland, and his father, Henry Valentine Macnamara, had inherited an estate worth £10,000 a year. Francis was born in 1884, and it soon became apparent that he was more interested in the arts than running a family estate. He moved to London and lived on an allowance from his father. In 1907 he eloped with and married Yvonne Majolier, who had a French father and an Irish mother. They had a son and three daughters, John, Nicolette, Brigit and Caitlin. When his youngest daughter was three or four, Francis left his family to pursue a literary career, which never prospered. Yvonne raised the children herself, with financial help from her father. They eventually settled at Blashford, Hampshire, on the edge of the New Forest and close to Augustus John’s large family. Nicolette wrote a book about their childhood, Two Flamboyant Fathers (1966) in which she described the twelve year old Caitlin as having:

Francis’s bright blue eyes, thick mass of curly gold hair, her vitality and her wit that later on was to become no less than brutally cruel. As a child she was a sentimental, cuddly, chocolate-box beauty, a hard centre to Brigit’s soft, sweet cream. Though determined, she was no more wild than any spirited girl with not enough to do. At this time there was no indication of the underlying savagery in her character. (Reproduced in Paul Ferris, Dylan Thomas: The Biography.London: Phoenix, 1999, pp 151-2)

With encouragement from the womanising Francis, Yvonne conducted an affair with the painter and photographer Nora Summers, who was later to take some striking photographs of Dylan and Caitlin. The children enjoyed a carefree childhood with little restraint, and when Caitlin was forced to attend a boarding school in Bournemouth she ran away to become a dancer in London with Augustus John’s daughter Vivien. Although she was soon sent back to school, her mother allowed her to return to London after she’d finished her education and attend the Dillon School of Dancing. During this time, she was painted by Augustus John and became his mistress. Around 1933 she spent some time in Ireland with her father, but their relationship continued to be troubled and she escaped to Dublin where she met Vera Gribben. They spent some time dancing in France and London, and in 1936 she was drinking in the Wheatsheaf with Augustus John when she met Dylan Thomas. They met again in Laugharne in the July and a few days after this Dylan wrote “ I love you Caitlin. I love you more than anyone in the world …. Write to me very soon, and tell me you really meant the things you said about loving me too; if you don’t I shall cut my throat or go to the pictures.”(letter, 15 July 1936 in Paul Ferris, Collected Letters (London: Paladin, 1987)

They saw each other in London, as Dylan moved between his London flat and his parents’ home in Swansea and Caitlin returned, briefly, to Ireland. Dylan was trying desperately to earn enough money to allow them to marry. In the meantime, Dylan’s father DJ had retired from the Grammar School, and in March 1937 DJ and Florence moved to Bishopston in Gower, leaving Dylan’s childhood home. Against the wishes of his parents – DJ in particular – Dylan and Caitlin married on 11 July 1937 in Mousehole, Cornwall. Dyaln wrote to a friend “My wife is Irish and French, she is two months younger than I am, has seas of golden hair, two blue eyes, two brown arms, two dancing legs, is untidy and vague and un-reclamatory. I am lost in love and poverty and my work is shocking.” (Letter to Desmond Hawkins July 1937?)

After Dylan’s death, Caitlin remained in the Boat House until October 1954, when she returned to Elba, Italy. She spent the next few years moving between Italy and Britain, while her children stayed in boarding school in England. In 1957 she settled in Rome with Giuseppe Fazio. In the 1960s she attempted to give up alcohol, not least in 1963 when she became unexpectedly pregnant at the age of 49 and gave birth to Francesco Fazio. She died in 1994 and is buried in Laugharne with Dylan.