b.
27 June 1906
, at
Maesteg, Glam.
, only son and second child of
William
Watkins
(a native of
Taff's Well
),
manager
of
Lloyd's Bank
, and
Sarah
Watkins
(née
Phillips
)
of
Sarnau, Carms.
Before
Vernon
was six the family had moved to
Bridgend
, to
Llanelli
and finally to
Swansea
. The boy entered
Swansea Grammar School
, but after one year was dispatched to prep. school at
Tyttenhanger Lodge
,
Seaford
,
Sussex
, and from there to
Repton School
,
Derbyshire
. Always, from a very early age, devoted to the English Romantic poets (for his
Welsh
-speaking parents had taught him no
Welsh
), he made of his last eighteen months at
Repton
a heroic golden age, and entry to
Magdalene College
,
Cambridge
, where he read
French
and
German
, proved a disappointing experience. Despite a successful examination, he went down after one year, irritated by the rigorously academic approach to literature, which he felt would be death to him as a poet, and proposed to his father, without prior notice, that he should travel in
Italy
for a year.
William
Watkins
, whose resources had been strained by his son's residence at
Cambridge
, put him into
Lloyd's Bank
,
Butetown
,
Cardiff
, as a
junior clerk
. Two years later, in
1927
,
Vernon
, overcome by ‘grief’ at the loss of the idyll of
Repton
and unable to adjust to the unliterary dullness of the adult world, had a
nervous breakdown
whose climax was a return visit to
Repton
. Six months in a nursing home at
Derby
were followed by transfer to the
St. Helens
(
Swansea
) branch of
Lloyd's Bank
, so that he could live at home (which was then ‘
Redcliffe
’,
Caswell Bay
, and later ‘
Heatherslade
’ on
Pennard Cliffs
). The spiritual convalescence was to last a dozen years and the poetry which emerged (after visits to
Germany
in the early
1930s
) was made from the ‘grief’. It was devoted, dialectically, to ‘the conquest of time’, by which the poet meant, first, that nobody need be forgotten whom poetry could keep immortal, and, second (as a Neo-Platonic and a more fully Christian view developed, successively from his earlier Romantic pagansim), that all are immortal because all are ‘justified’ and that the present moment must be seen as the microcosm of all moments, past and future.
Vernon
Watkins
went on to become one of the very few metaphysical
poets
of the twentieth century and probably the most distinguished. Overshadowed in his lifetime by his meteoric friend
Dylan
Thomas
(see above)
whose letters he published in
Letters to Vernon Watkins
(
1957
), he was at one with him only in his belief in the primacy of poetry. But not even when
Dylan
failed to turn up as
best man
on the occasion of his wedding in
London
in
1944
(to
Gwendoline Mary
Davies
, of
Harborne
,
Birmingham
, a colleague of his in the
Intelligence Service
) would
Vernon
break the friendship. He had developed an obstinacy of belief (in
poets
, for example, as ‘good’) that in personal relationships made of him a kind of unorthodox saint.
Vernon
Watkins
's volumes of poetry, exclusive of American editions and selections, were:
Ballad of the Mari Lwyd
(
1941
),
The Lamp and the Veil
(
1945
),
The Lady with the Unicorn
(
1948
),
The North Sea
(translations from
Heine
) (
1951
),
The Death Bell
(
1954
),
Cypress and Acacia
(
1959
),
Affinities
(
1962
) and
Fidelities
(published posthumously in
1968
).
Uncollected Poems
(
1969
) and
The Breaking of the Wave
(
1979
) were put together from the vast mass of material the
poet
's demanding eye had left unpublished, and two new selections,
I That Was Born in Wales
(
1976
) and
Unity of the Stream
(
1978
), were made from the printed oeuvre.
Apart from
war service
(
1941-46
) in the
R.A.F. Police and in Intelligence
,
Vernon
Watkins
lived all his adult life in
Gower
(after marriage at ‘
The Garth
’ on
Pennard Cliffs
), ‘
the oldest
cashier
’, as he was fond of claiming, in the banking service. The recipient of many literary prizes, he was awarded a
D.Litt.
by the
University of Wales
in
1966
and became a
Gulbenkian Scholar
at
University College
,
Swansea
. He died
8 Oct. 1967
while playing tennis soon after his arrival in
Seattle
,
U.S.A.
, for his second period (this time a year) as
Visiting Professor of Poetry
at the
University of Washington
.
The Times
, in reporting his death, revealed that his name was one of five or six under consideration for the
Poet Laureateship
.
