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 and/or studies:
“Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your childrens infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married! Thats total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art scientific parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?”
—Edgar Allan Poe (18091845)
“These studies which stimulate the young, divert the old, are an ornament in prosperity and a refuge and comfort in adversity; they delight us at home, are no impediment in public life, keep us company at night, in our travels, and whenever we retire to the country.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (10643 B.C.)