Early Life and Studies
Vernon was born in Maesteg in Glamorgan, and brought up mainly in Swansea. His birth coincided with slight earth tremors; another baby born that night was christened John Earthquake Jones. His mother was Sarah ("Sally") daughter of Esther Thomas and James Phillips of Sarnau, Meidrim. Her father, a Congregationalist, was reputed to know most of the Welsh bible by heart. Sarah had a love of poetry and literature, her headmistress arranged for her to spend two years as a pupil-teacher in Germany. Sarah married William Watkins in 1902 they had three children, Vernon, Marjorie and Dorothy. William was a manager for Lloyds Bank in Wind Street, Swansea and the family lived at Redcliffe, Caswell Bay, a large Victorian house about four miles from Swansea.
Vernon read fluently by the age of four and at five announced he would be a poet, although he did not wish to be published until after his death. He wrote poetry and read widely from eight or nine years of age and was especially fond of the works of Keats and Shelley.
Vernon was educated at a preparatory school in Sussex, Repton School in Derbyshire, and Magdalene College, Cambridge. His headmaster at Repton was Dr Fisher, who became Archbishop of Canterbury. Despite his parents being Nonconformists, his school experiences influenced him to join the Church of England. He read modern languages at Cambridge: but left before completing his degree, the start of a troubled period in his life at the end of the 1920s. His sister Dorothy wrote,
Although intellectually advanced he was in most ways very immature. His absorption in poetry and total a lack of knowledge of all practical aspects of real life made him quite unfit to cope with the demands of self-sufficiency in university life –Vernon Watkins, the Early Years, a privately published booklet.
Read more about this topic: Vernon Watkins
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or studies:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“[In early adolescence] she becomes acutely aware of herself as a being perceived by others, judged by others, though she herself is the harshest judge, quick to list her physical flaws, quick to undervalue and under-rate herself not only in terms of physical appearance but across a wide range of talents, capacities and even social status, whereas boys of the same age will cite their abilities, their talents and their social status pretty accurately.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)
“I have three phobias which, could I mute them, would make my life as slick as a sonnet, but as dull as ditch water: I hate to go to bed, I hate to get up, and I hate to be alone.”
—Tallulah Bankhead (1903–1968)
“Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)