Vernon Watkins

Vernon Watkins (June 27, 1906 — October 8, 1967), was a Welsh poet, and a painter.

Family history and Upbringing

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 (known as Sally) daughter of Esther Thomas and James Phillips of Sarnau, Meidrim. Her father was a devoted Congregationalist and was reputed to know most of his Welsh bible by heart. Sarah had a great love of poetry and literature, her headmistress arranging for her to spend two years as a pupil-teacher in Germany. Sarah married William Watkins in 1902 and in addition to Vernon they had two daughters, Marjorie and Dorothy. William was a bank manager for Lloyds Bank at 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 4 and announced that he would be a poet at the age of 5, although he did not wish to be published until after his death. He wrote poetry and read widely from about eight or nine years of age and was especially fond of the works of Keats and Shelley (Evans 1994).

Education and a mental breakdown

He was educated at a preparatory school in Sussex and then sent to Repton School in Derbyshire, and Magdalene College, Cambridge. His headmaster at Repton was Dr.Fisher, who went on to become Archbishop of Canterbury. Despite his parents being strict Nonconformists, his school experiences influenced him to join the Church of England. He was reading modern languages at Cambridge: but left before completing his degree, the start of a very troubled period in his life at the end of the 1920s. His sister Dorothy later wrote that, "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]. He wanted to travel abroad, but family pressure made him take a bank job in Cardiff; it ended in a breakdown that marked him permanently. One Saturday evening he had been reading poetry when he started to become increasingly manic. He started shouting that he had conquered time and could now control both his own destiny and that of others. At this very moment he heard a crash outside and on going to the window he saw a motor-cyclist dead on the road and his bloodstained pillion passenger staggering up the path towards him. Vernon was convinced that he had willed this to happen and promptly collapsed. The next day he caught a train to Repton, attended chapel, then burst into Dr.Fisher's study and attacked him. He was committed to a mental hospital in Derbyshire, on one occasion trying to leap from a window to see if the angels would save him. After a year he returned home to Cardiff.

Career

He started work at Lloyds bank in Cardiff in the autumn of 1925 and after moving to the St. Helens Road branch in Swansea, he would remain there, with little responsibility, for much of his life. He used to joke that his father had been the Bank's youngest manager and he was its oldest cashier. He had many a battle with branch managers who wanted to promote him, however his only interest was having sufficient time to work on his poetry.

Friendship with Dylan Thomas and other poets

He met Dylan Thomas, who was to be a close friend, in 1935 when Watkins had returned to a job in a bank in Swansea. Dylan would come to Vernon's parents house, situated on the very top of the cliffs of the beautiful Gower peninsula, about once a week. Vernon was the only person from whom Dylan took advice when writing poetry and he was invariably the first to read his finished work. They remained life-long friends, despite Thomas's failure, in the capacity of best man, to turn up to the wedding of Vernon and Gwen in 1944. Dylan used to laugh affectionately at his friend's gossamer-like personality and extreme sensibility. A story is told that one evening in Chelsea, during the war time blackout, they were walking along and Vernon tripped over something and fell to the ground. Dylan looked with a torch to see what the offending object was and to his delight all that they could find was a small, black feather (FitzGibbon 1966). Vernon was godfather to Dylan's son Llewelyn, the others being Richard Hughes and Augustus John. Letters to Vernon Watkins by Thomas was published in 1957. The 1983 book Portrait of a Friend by Watkins' wife Gwen(doline) (nee Davies) deals with the relationship.

Others in the Swansea group known as the 'Kardomah boys' were the composer Daniel Jenkyn Jones, writer Charles Fisher and the artists Alfred Janes and Ceri Richards. Vernon wrote the obituary for Dylan Thomas and when he died, Philip Larkin wrote his obituary.

Bletchley Park and his marriage

Watkins had met Gwen, who came from Harborne, Birmingham at Bletchley Park, where he worked during World War II as part of the cryptographic team. They were married at the Church of St. Bartholomews the Great in London on 2 October 1944. The couple had five children, Rhiannon Mary, Gareth Vernon. William Tristran David, Dylan Valentine and Conrad Meredith.

Poetry

His ambitions were for his poetry; in critical terms they were not to be fulfilled. On the other hand, he became a major figure for the Anglo-Welsh poetry tradition, and his poems were included in major anthologies. During the war he was for a time associated with the New Apocalyptics group. With his first book Ballad of the Mari Llwyd (1941) accepted by Faber and Faber, he had a publisher with a policy of sticking by their authors. In his case this may be considered to have had an adverse long-term effect on his reputation, in that it is generally thought that he over-published. He wrote poetry for several hours every night and by way of contrast, Caitlin, Dylan Thomas's wife, could not recall her husband staying in even for one night during their whole married life! Vernon knew William Butler Yeats, T.S.Eliot and Philip Larkin. He was awarded a degree of Doctor of Literature from Swansea University in 1966 after retiring from the Bank. He was being considered for poet laureate at the time of his death.

That July morning when the poet's widow Stayed here, at breakfast looking through the window We saw young rabbits leap, and in a pother Frisk, dance and scurry, dodging one another, Returning always to the selfsame corner Between low beech-trees and the grassy border. They scattered when my children running out Found a young Redpoll injured on the ground. This sacrifice had made the rabbits dance. It had fallen from the fuschia bush or branch Of beech that shook down dewdrops on my head. I for a moment thought the brilliant red Of breast and crest had come from a hawk's wound, But found no blood. The heart beat faintly. Soon We had laid it in a box, propped upon silk. I touched the twig-like leg. White bread and milk We gave it, but the beak at once refused, After one drop, to drink, and the eyes closed. It woke when my warm hand, encircling, took it, Straining to perch; but whether claw was crooked Or the wing hurt, it could not fly or stand. We left it where life's ember might be fanned By sunlight through a window. It revived A little. But the warmth on which it lived Diminished then, in the late afternoon. It was so small, so quiet in my room, That when I turned to lift it from the sill And feel its weight upon my fingers, still I counted to awaken it, nor saw What breath had chilled the feathers, gripped the claw; Nor did the dainty bird with that red stain Seem dead at all, until I looked again. Watkins, The Redpoll, a later poem, never fully revised.

A poem by Vernon Watkins from the Anglo-Welsh Review. The widow mentioned may be Caitlin Thomas.

Death and memorial

Vernon had developed a serious heart condition which he made light of, insisting on playing his beloved tennis and squash with his usual vigour. He died on 8 October 1967, playing tennis in Seattle, where he had gone to teach a course in Modern Poetry at the University of Washington. He was buried in Pennard churchyard. A small granite memorial to him stands at Hunt's Bay, Gower, on which are quoted two lines from Vernon's poem, 'Taliesin in Gower'; 'I have been taught the script of stones, and I know the tongue of the wave'.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Evans, Philip, A History of the Thomas family, Privately published, 1994
• Fitzgibbon, Constantine, The Life of Dylan Thomas, Boston, Readers Union, 1965, OCLC 367245
• Watkins, Vernon, The Anglo-Welsh Review, Unpublished

External links

• Janes, Alfred, Portrait of Vernon Watkins, Swansea Heritage, Accessed March 16, 2007
• Webster, Loren, The Real Job, Lorenwebster, Accessed March 16, 2007

cy:Vernon Watkins

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