The ashes of Thomas’s daughter, Aeronwy Thomas-Ellis, who died in August 2009, aged 66, were buried in the garden of the Boat House at Laugharne. That year’s Dylan Thomas Festival in Swansea in November was dedicated to her.
Aeronwy (sometimes ‘Aeron’), who married another Welshman(Huw Ellis), was more anxious than her siblings to promote her father’s memory. She lectured on him and read his poems in Britain and America; she also wrote poetry of her own.
Her relationship with her mother was turbulent, as were many people’s. When Aeronwy knew that I was going to Sicily in 1991, to see Caitlin with a view to writing her biography, she asked me to take a pound of English tea from Harrods. I duly handed it over, but all Caitlin did was roll her eyes and say it was typical of her daughter. Why send her English tea when she could buy it in Catania? Aeronwy also sent a tin of chocolate biscuits. They too were scorned; Catania had plenty of biscuits. Still, they got eaten.
Born in 1943, Aeronwy was 10 when her father died. Her recollections were genuine, if a bit on the thin side. Colm, the youngest child, was born in 1947. I met him once. He lives in Italy. The son who seemed more in the Dylan mode was the elder brother, Llewelyn (1939-2000), who inherited mischievousness from both his parents. He worked as an advertising copywriter for some years. Then he was a municipal gardener, and after that he drifted into doing not very much except put money on horses and go in for literary competitions. He was a betting man – as his father was, on a modest scale. At one time Llewelyn lived in Spain, where apparently he won a large sum, tens of thousands, on the national lottery, which exchange control might have prevented him taking out of the country. So he hiked across the border with the money in a haversack, under his sandwiches. Or so he said.
He was an entertaining companion, as long as you didn’t mind his habit of provocation. Once, when staying at my house, he decided he didn’t like the colour of the ankle-socks my wife was wearing as she sat on the sofa. He pulled them off with one masterly sweep and threw them on the log fire. Afterwards he made grovelling, entirely insincere apologies.
Like his siblings, Llewelyn benefited from a share in the copyright income of his father’s literary estate, which has generated £100,000 a year and is still flourishing. In Caitlin’s lifetime, half the money went to her and one-sixth each to the three children; later the children’s children had a share.
The surviving child of Dylan and Caitlin is Colm. He keeps a lower profile than his siblings ever managed.