Caitlin Thomas - Life With Dylan Thomas

Life With Dylan Thomas

Caitlin Macnamara was introduced to Dylan Thomas in a pub, either the Wheatsheaf or the Fitzroy, in Fitzrovia, London, in 1936 by Augustus John. She and Dylan bonded immediately, and that summer he travelled to Laugharne in Wales where Caitlin and John were staying at Castle House where Richard Hughes lived. Dylan arrived with a friend, Fred Janes, and after the four travelled to Fishguard to view a painting exhibition, Dylan became drunk and jealous and started an argument with John. John punched Dylan and drove back to Laugharne with Macnamara. By the end of 1936, Caitlin and Dylan Thomas had begun a relationship through correspondence. By 21 April 1937 the couple were together in London and on 11 July 1937 they were married in Penzance, Cornwall. They had a peripatetic lifestyle, moving from Chelsea to Wales, then to Oxford, spending time in Ireland and Italy before returning to Oxfordshire. They eventually settled in a rented cottage in Laugharne in the spring of 1938, before moving into the 'Sea View' a couple of months later. In 1949 the house which would become the Thomas' family home, the Boat House, came on the market for £3000, and was purchased by Margaret Taylor, wife of historian A. J. P. Taylor, one of Dylan's benefactors. Caitlin Thomas had three children by Dylan, Llewelyn Edouard (1939–2000), Aeronwy Thomas-Ellis (1943–2009) and Colm Garan Hart (born 1949).

Although Dylan tried to portray himself as a bohemian character, it was Caitlin who was the true rebel. Vera Philips, a childhood friend of Dylan's from Swansea, recalled Dylan had the proper Welsh background, ... He was brought up like me, worrying "What will the neighbours think?" Whereas Caitlin didn't care a bugger what anyone thought.

Their marriage was a notoriously stormy affair, fuelled by alcohol and infidelity. Thomas once famously described their relationship as "raw, red bleeding meat". Despite their fiery marriage, she jealously protected both Dylan and his reputation, and tried to protect him from others and himself. Although Thomas was known for her belligerent personality, some writers have shown sympathy for a woman who was at the receiving end of Dylan's sometimes foul-mouthed abuse and pouting silences. Thomas became more and more resentful of her role as a stay-at-home mother, compounded by the run-down nature of their home, the Boat House, which had neither electricity nor running water.

The relationship between the couple deteriorated further when in 1950, Dylan undertook the first of his tours of America. The trips were arranged as a lucrative venture to gain capital to fund Dylan's poetry writing while back in Britain, though by the time of his return, the money he had accumulated did little more than repay outstanding debts. Furthermore, Thomas had become more and more frustrated at being left behind, dealing with the children and the bills, while her husband spent his time carousing in another country.

In 1953, Dylan travelled to New York without her, undertaking recitals of his poetry to American audiences. On 5 November Dylan collapsed with breathing difficulties and was admitted to hospital. Caitlin travelled to America to be with her husband, though her reaction on arriving at his death bed was aggressive, reportedly shouting "Is the bloody man dead yet?". In her autobiography, Caitlin: Life with Dylan Thomas, she states that she had no recollection of using the words, but she was, by her own words, "stinkin drunk" by the time she arrived. Other reports state that when Caitlin found another woman tending to her comatose husband, she flew into a fit of rage, biting an attendant and fighting with bystanders until she was subdued.

In 1957 Caitlin published a frank account of her later life and reflections on her life with Dylan, titled Leftover Life to Kill, though she refused to collaborate with most of her husband's biographers in later years. In a memoir published in 1982, she described her relationship with Dylan as "Predominantly a drink story because without the first-aid of drink it could never have got onto its rocking feet." Although their relationship was tempestuous, writings in a personal journal uncovered over fifty years after Dylan's death showed Thomas' passion and love for her husband.