NATIONAL LIFE STORY COLLECTION Artists' Lives KENNETH ARMITAGE Part I-III interviewed by ...

386 Pages·2005·0.76 MB·English

IMPORTANT

Every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of this transcript, however no transcript is an exact
translation of the spoken word, and this document is intended to be a guide to the original
recording, not replace it.

NATIONAL LIFE STORY COLLECTION

Artists' Lives

KENNETH ARMITAGE
Part I-III

interviewed by John McEwen and
Tamsyn Woollcombe

Part I

interviewed by John McEwen and
Tamsyn Woollcombe
Kenneth Armitage
C466/08/01 F2396A Page 1
F2396 Side A

Kenneth Armitage, interviewed by John McEwen, at Kenneth Armitage's studio,
[address], on June the 8th, 1991.

Right, well I have been asked to speak about the past, and the things that went into
one's background so to speak. And the point is, how far does one go back. Well I'm
going to go very far back, but shoot over the ground very quickly, starting mainly
with my mother and father. My father's family I know hardly anything about, but my
mother's family I know a great deal. So I will start with her first, and she was called
Quin, QUIN, and she was born in Longford, a county in southern Ireland which is
very quiet. It has no particular features in it; it's pastural land, cattle and the like.
And originally it was occupied by the O'Quins and the O'Farrells. They were Catholic
landowners. Now my great-great-grandfather changed from being a Catholic to a
Protestant, which I as a young man was rather disgusted at; I thought he had given up
something he believed in for material gain. Now, one can't really judge him because
the penal laws in those days were harsh in the extreme.

This would have been what date?

The beginning of the 19th century, the end of the 18th century. And especially the
Catholics; all Irish people were subjugated to this sort of thing, but especially the
Catholics, which were really about 80 or 90 per cent of the population. And they
were prevented from political office of any kind; education had to be of the most
elementary kind, they were not allowed to have any advanced education. They were
allowed to be Catholic, but that was limited. There were no new priests, and you may
have seen photographs of the people taking mass in the mountains where no one could
see them. Great hordes. Have you ever seen that photograph? It's very exciting, a
great gang of people up a glen. But the main limitation was in ownership of the land,
and they were not allowed to own land, or very little. Now, as a landowner O'Quin,
the great-great-grandfather thought he would keep the land, and he did it by marrying
a dean's daughter. He made it quite clear that he had changed to Protestant, and to
make it even more clear he dropped one n off his name, so hitherto it was double n,
Kenneth Armitage
C466/08/01 F2396A Page 2
and so he became QUIN, one n only, and he brought his children up as Protestants.
So that shows the effort he made to keep the land, which alas was going to be lost by
his son...no, not my great-grandfather, he was OK, it was my grandfather that did the
damage. So he had a family of course, and my great-grandfather was William Henry
Quin, and he became a naval capitain, and he built Lackan, the house two Irish miles
from Edgeworthstown. The Irish mile is slightly longer than the English mile.

Lackan is spelt how?

LACKAN, and it means the house on the hill, but there are many Lackans in Ireland,
because there are many houses on hills. And it was two Irish miles from
Edgeworthstown, on the Longford road, and I'll talk about Edgeworthstown in a
minute. But he built the house; he was going to build a larger house behind my uncle,
set on a slight rise, but he never did. He had a job towards the end of his life, a
curious job in the Navy. The slave trade had been abolished by Wilberforce in a
parliament here, and also by the American Civil War, which was partly fought
because of that, the abolition of slavery. But there were still slavers going over the
Atlantic to try and still make a bit of money if they could, and his job was to intercept
them and escort them back to Africa, which he did. And there was a silly legend in
Ireland that he was given a huge gold ring from one of the chiefs he took back, but it
was lost in some rocks in the front of Lackan house, which I spent many hours trying
to find but no one could ever find it at all, and it was probably a tall story. However,
he was thrown from his horse very wildly, and he was very badly wounded, and they
took him aboard and they set sail for England, and they went via St. Helena, I don't
know why, and there he died at sea, just outside the port. So they put into St. Helena,
and they thought we'll bury him here, and the story goes, according to my mother and
my uncle, that Napoleon had just been taken out of his tomb on St. Helena where he
died, and was sent to Paris to be fitted in to what was then going to become Les
Invalides, which was the great tomb and mausoleum of Napoleon with all the bric- -
brac all round him. So the tomb was empty. I told one person this who didn't really
like me, and he said, 'Oh no, they would never do this, no no'. But they might well
have done. Anyhow, that's what my uncle and my...
Kenneth Armitage
C466/08/01 F2396A Page 3
Don't say he ended up in Napoleon's tomb in St. Helena?

Yes. And so he was shut up there. And there's no proof for this, unless of course one
went to St. Helena and had Napoleon's vault open. If there was a Captain Quin inside,
it's true; if there wasn't, he was buried somewhere else. But they said, and my
uncle...a very early film I went to in Dublin, one of the very earliest I ever saw in
O'Connell Street, and it was also about St. Helena. And my uncle said there is the
tomb where your great-grandfather is buried, and that tree behind, I think it was a
willow or a laburnum tree he said, his officers on the ship planted to honour his death,
or, you know, the sort of thing like that. So, there it is. And he had I think nine
children. The first one went to Belfast and was successful in business in Belfast, and
his son, my cousin, was made a senator there. And the next down the list, my
mother's eldest sister, was educated in Germany, and then she spent the rest of her life
in India. So then by this time however, my...oh, am I jumping it here?

Can I just get this straight. It was your great-grandfather Quin who landed up in
Napoleon's tomb.

That's right. And I've made a mistake here. My grandfather also went into the Navy.
I'm so sorry, I've made a mistake already. He was also called William Henry, and he
was sent to Nelson's flagship, HMS Victory, which was then moored at Portsmouth
and used as a training ship. The time lag in this is so enormous, it's hard to believe
that here I am, certainly an elderly person, that my grandfather could be trained on
Nelson's ship is hard to believe, but he was. I had until recently the list of his
requirements when he went as a cadet. I've lost it, like everything else. Now, he told
me when he was 90, lying on the sofa in Lackan, that he couldn't stand the harsh
discipline. All hands drummed on deck to witness a flogging, and my god, did they
flog 'em in those days, in the Navy and the Army. I mean people were flogged up to
800 lashes. There are instances of a thousand, in which the meat was whipped off
their backs and their ribcage showing, and how they survived we don't know.

Of course many of them didn't.
Kenneth Armitage
C466/08/01 F2396A Page 4
Many of them didn't. And he couldn't stand it, and he pulled out. I don't know if he
had to buy himself out, but he did, and he would go back and live on the land that his
father, my great-grandfather left him. But he did a job first. He was perhaps thinking
of being an engineer or something, and he built...he designed and had built the bridge
over the river at Ballymahon, a town near Longford. After that he packed it in, trying
to earn a living, and he lived, but he took as many Irish people do, he took to
gambling. And he...I'm trying to think.

And he fathered nine children?

He fathered nine, one of which was my mother.

Now, while we're on Admiral Quin, and he was buried...this is not Admiral Quin but
your great-grandfather.

Well she said he was a rear admiral at one point, but he was then back to Quin again,
captain.

So this is the father of your...

Grandfather, that's right.

He was a rear admiral.

No, he was a captain, but my mother did say, I didn't mention this myself, but she did
say at one point he was made a rear admiral, or an acting rear admiral, because he had
three ships in the Atlantic at one time. But he is always called as captain, Captain
Quin RN.

And wasn't there some talk of a sword?

Yes. When I used to go to Lackan as a child there was his naval ceremonial sword,
and they said, 'This will be yours one day'. And I thought, oh, that's great. Then, the
Kenneth Armitage
C466/08/01 F2396A Page 5
family died and my aunt moved away, and Lackan was sold, and one thing and
another, and I rang my aunt, who was my uncle's husband, the one who lived in
Lackan, and said, 'Whatever happened to the sword that you were going to let me...'
She had forgotten all about it, she didn't know. You know how you say to children,
this will be yours one day!

But that was his sword, that wasn't a family sword or anything like that?

That was his sword, and that went to my second cousin, who in fact had the better
portrait. I've got some tiny portraits upstairs but he had the real ones, and he also had
the painting of the Captain's first command, a sloop, HMS Britomart, and I never
knew who Britomart was until I read a little bit about the Fairie Queene, and the
Fairie Queene was one of the characters in...

Britomart was one of the characters in the Fairie Queene.

Yes. Now I don't know if I've got this straight. The naval captain built Lackan, then
my grandfather built the bridge over the...and also he was trained on Nelson's
flagship, got out of it, and lived in Lackan and became a gambler. And he gambled
on the land, he had no money really, not much, and he soon got rid of that. Gambled
on the land, and he wasn't very good at gambling and he lost all the time, until he got
down to about 60 acres, a kind of smallholding round the house. Then one last
desperate bid, he gambled on the house, and lost. And so my mother has the story of
how they had to...all the furniture was brought out, put on a wagon or wagons, and the
eight children, or nine children had to climb on top, and they were just going away
under the watchful eyes of the bailiffs when up rode at speed a relation with money to
pay the...

The debt.

The debt, or most of it; maybe not all, but enough for the bailiffs to say OK, let's
forget it, and so they moved back into the house again. Now this is something which
is very interesting about Ireland. My mother never criticized my grandfather for
Kenneth Armitage
C466/08/01 F2396A Page 6
losing every penny they had, gambling on the land, even on the house, whereas in
Yorkshire they would be tut-tutting and saying you know, how terrible it was. It was
rather interesting that she didn't, that it was something that happened to people, and
that was it. So, when he had then, by the time the older two children went off and
they were successful, by the time he got down to my mother they were very poor
indeed, and my mother anyhow had to look after the two young...

She was where in the family?

In Lackan, she was the sixth.

Sixth of the nine?

Yes, sixth of the eight or nine I think. Nine children I have here. And she had to look
after them, and so she hardly went to school at all; she was very badly educated and
always had difficulty with reading all her life. And so they wanted to get rid of her,
and so she was sent to Bradford as an under-nurse in a house with a big family. And
it must have been a shock to go there from carefree Ireland to the stone houses of
Bradford and the chimneys belching smoke and one thing and another. And it was
there that she met my father. Now, I get on to him, and...

And this would have been...I mean this was obviously shortly before you were born,
so this would have been round about the time of the First World War.

Well my eldest sister was 15 years older than I am, so that would be...it would be 16
years before I was born, 16 or 17.

So it would have been at the turn of the century almost?

Yes. And he was a strange man. He said that he really...he was almost an orphan.
His parents died when he was about 12, at very nearly the same age, and he had two
sisters slightly older, and he had to earn a living to help support them, because there
was no National Security of course in those days. And he wanted very much to take
Kenneth Armitage
C466/08/01 F2396A Page 7
up music; he was good at music. In fact his schoolteacher said that he should, and
somehow he came to the notice of the organist at York Minster, who said that he
would give him free lessons if he could get to York. Well he couldn't afford it, and he
got little jobs to begin with; he was probably an office boy at Lister's Mill or
something, and eventually he got a bit better, and eventually he moved to Leeds,
where he joined an oil firm.

He was born in Halifax?

Bradford. Yes, in Manningham in Bradford. And he was intelligent but reticent. He
was good with languages and chess and mathematics, and he loved music. And so
really he lost his way. He sacrificed his future. He had no alternative but to help his
sisters, and he more or less gave up after that. He married my mother, then he had
children, three children, and so he was...

So he was an intellectual really.

He was really. And he was very thoughtful, and moral, but not as dynamic as my
mother, who was the dynamic partner, although she was a bit crazy too being Irish.
So they were opposites.

What about their physique? Where do you think you get your physique from?

I don't know. Jo says I take after my father, but I have the what is called robust
physique of my mother, as she was later; she was once a sylph-like girl, young girl.
I've got a photograph somewhere of her. But she was stocky. And she liked people
who made things. Going past builders, she would always talk to builders. Strange
sort of...she had a link with building, and... Well, now, my father then got a job at an
oil refinery in Leeds, which in those days, at the beginning of motoring it was really,
it was quite well known; there were advertisements over bridges all over Yorkshire,
Filtrate Oils it was called. And it petered out, it couldn't compete with the big firms,
you know, like we know now. And about 20, 25 years ago it packed up. However, he
went on as cashier until nearly the end of his life when he became a director. I don't
Kenneth Armitage
C466/08/01 F2396A Page 8
think he was an organising director, I think it was more like an honour, an honorary
director. He may have done, I've no idea. He was a useful man in the firm anyhow,
because he understood the business side of it. And so there it was. I had two sisters,
one was 15 years older than I was, but I will start with the middle one, Nora, who died
when I was four. She had, like many people had, TB at the time, and I can remember
her with an inhaler. I don't know what was in it, but with a towel over her head,
breathing this stuff to try and clear her chest. And I remember sitting on the front
corner seat of her wicker invalid chair as she was wheeled out into the street, and that
sort of thing. And she was astonishingly talented. Although she died about 15, she
did that painting up in my bedroom, did you ever see it, of her still life? Which I can
only assume it must be a copy, but I didn't know they had coloured illustrations in
those days. And it is really beautifully drawn, so she had great skill.

I must have another look.

Have a look before you go, because I've had it lying around for years and I framed it I
like it so much. And tell me what you think.

Just hold on. She would have been born when, what year would she have been born?

She would have been then born '12, 1912.

1912. You were born 1916.

I was born...oh no no no, wait a minute. I was four when she died, and she must have
been about 14 or 15.

So she must have been born round about 1906.

Something like that. Anyhow, my mother was passionately fond of her, because a
sick person brings out immense nursing in mothers...

What was she called?
Kenneth Armitage
C466/08/01 F2396A Page 9

Nora. But the other sister, the oldest, didn't turn out very well.

Now she was called...

Doreen.

Doreen. And she was born in about 1900.

Yes, or before.

She was 16 years older than you were?

Yes, 15 or 16. Or 18...15 I think. I don't know, I forget. And because my mother's
affection went on to the daughter who died, she felt left out.

Or was invalid.

Or was invalid, and constantly had my mother's attention. And then I as the boy, I
was the next in line for her attention.

Both lots, because then you got both the boy and the loss, so you got the two...

Yes. So she felt absolutely left out, and it made her a bitter person all her life. And
she was in fact very...

She should have been away from home by the time...

She didn't leave for a long time, but she said that my father and mother made her
marry someone she didn't want, or...that first of all she was very much in love with
someone and my father said no, and then she married someone he said yes, and she
didn't like him very much. So she said. She managed anyhow. So, she died about 10
or 12 years ago, in Leeds. So that was the situation. Now an interesting thing about