Vernon Watkins - Early Life and Studies

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:

    Foolish prater, What dost thou
    So early at my window do?
    Cruel bird, thou’st ta’en away
    A dream out of my arms to-day;
    A dream that ne’er must equall’d be
    By all that waking eyes may see.
    Thou this damage to repair
    Nothing half so sweet and fair,
    Nothing half so good, canst bring,
    Tho’ men say thou bring’st the Spring.
    Abraham Cowley (1618–1667)

    Mine honor is my life, both grow in one,
    Take honor from me, and my life is done.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    [B]y going to the College [William and Mary] I shall get a more universal Acquaintance, which may hereafter be serviceable to me; and I suppose I can pursue my Studies in the Greek and Latin as well there as here, and likewise learn something of the Mathematics.
    Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)