Walter Starkie - Life

Life

He was educated at Shrewsbury School and Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated in 1920, taking first-class honours in classics, history and political science. After winning first prize for violin at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in 1913, his father, wanting a more traditional career for his son, turned down an opportunity for Walter to audition for Sir Henry Wood, conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. His violin teacher was the celebrated Italian virtuoso and composer, Achille Simonetti, a master who had been taught by Camillo Sivori, the only pupil of Niccolo Paganini. He became the first Professor of Spanish at Trinity College in 1926; his position covered both Spanish and Italian (there was an earlier "Professorship of Modern Languages" created in 1776 also covering both Italian and Spanish ). One of his pupils at Trinity was Samuel Beckett who, however later took as his mentor, Thomas Rudmose-Brown, Professor of Modern Languages (French), described as "equally colourful" and probably more compatible.

As Starkie suffered with chronic asthma throughout his life, he was sent to the warmer climate of Italy during World War I where he joined the Y.M.C.A. providing entertainment for the British troops. After the armistice in November, 1918, in the town of Montebello Vicentino, he befriended five Hungarian Gypsy prisoners of war and aided them in acquiring wood to construct makeshift fiddles. To one of them, Farkas, he became a bloodbrother and he swore that he would someday visit Farkas in Hungary and mix with the Gypsy's tribe. This oath would later haunt him and affect the course of his life. While on tour in Northern Italy he met Italia Augusta Porchietti, an Italian Red Cross nurse and amateur opera singer who was singing to patients and wounded soldiers at a hospital ward in Genoa. They were married on August 10, 1921 and had a son, Landi William, and a daughter, Alma Delfina.