NATIONAL LIFE STORIES ARTISTS’ LIVES Kyffin Williams Interviewed by Cathy Courtney C466/24 This transcript is copyright of the British Library Board. Please refer to the Oral History curators at the British Library prior to any publication or broadcast from this document. Oral History The British Library 96 Euston Road London NW1 2DB 020 7412 7404 [email protected] This transcript is accessible via the British Library’s Archival Sound Recordings website. Visit http://sounds.bl.uk for further information about the interview. © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk IMPORTANT Access to this interview and transcript is for private research only. Please refer to the Oral History curators at the British Library prior to any publication or broadcast from this document. 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Should you find any errors please inform the Oral History curators ( [email protected] ) © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk The British Library National Life Stories Interview Summary Sheet Title Page Ref no: C466/24 Digitised from cassette originals Collection title: Artists’ Lives Interviewee’s surname: Williams Title: Interviewee’s forename: Kyffin Sex: Male Occupation: Date and place of birth: 9th May 1918 Mother’s occupation: Father’s occupation: Dates of recording: 21 st – 22 nd March 1995 Location of interview: Interviewee’s home, Wales Name of interviewer: Cathy Courtney Type of recorder: Marantz CP430 Recording format: D60 Cassette F numbers of playback cassettes: F4540 - F4546 (7 cassettes) Total no. of digitised tracks: 14 Mono or stereo: Stereo Total Duration: Additional material: Catalogue 1993 Portreadau Portraits Exhibition, Anglesey Copyright/Clearance: open. © The British Library Interviewer’s comments: © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Kyffin Williams Page 1 C466/24/01 F4540A F4540 Side A .....begin absolutely at the beginning. Could you tell me where and when you were born please? I was born in Llangefni on the 9th of May 1918. And into what sort of family were you born? Well I suppose we were a sort of middle-class land-owning family who didn't own land any more. [BREAK IN RECORDING] .....child? No. So who had come before? I had a brother born eighteen months earlier. And his name? His name was Dick, or Owen Richard Inglis Williams. And what were you christened? I was christened John Kyffin. And you were just telling me about the derivation of Kyffin. Could you tell me for the tape? Kyffin is actually a Latin word, confinium, a border, a boundary, and it was corrupted in Welsh to Kyffin. And there was a small village called Pentre Kyffin and a few farms called Kyffin Ganol[ph]. And one of my ancestors in the 15th century, a Meredith Apmadog Abivanfahan[ph] was sent out to be nursed, as children were in those days, into the village of Pentrekyffin[ph], and it was just at a time when people were beginning to take surnames in © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Kyffin Williams Page 2 C466/24/01 F4540A Wales, because all the aps[ph] made things terribly complicated, and he took the name of Kyffin. My grandmother was a Miss Kyffin, so that's how I got to be called Kyffin. And you were also telling me that, as you grew up you were actually known as John and you had changed your name at a certain point. Yes, when I was young I was always called John, and when I started painting and started exhibiting in London, I found there was a John Williams who was exhibiting fairly regularly, so I had to use my second name, Kyffin, which has been extremely useful to me. And do you ever now think of yourself as John? Oh yes. I mean lots of my friends around here call me John, who knew me when I was young, and they call me John. And, do you have any memories of your grandparents? Did you know them? My only grandparent who was alive when I was born was my father's father, the Reverend Owen Lloyd Williams, and he christened me at the age of 90. And I was only the second child in all his long life he had christened in English, the first one being my brother. My mother, who was Welsh speaking, somehow she was brought up to believe that all Welsh people are vulgar and the Welsh language really should never be used by anybody respectable, so it was very very difficult, I was thoroughly brain-washed. And, obviously you were pretty small when you were christened, but do you actually remember your grandfather? Oh no, no he died not long after he christened me. He remarked that I was a nice clean- looking little boy, and then expired at the age of 90. And do you know much about your father's growing up? Do you know what his parents were like, what...? Oh I think his parents were wonderful parents; everybody always spoke tremendously warmly about them, and still do now, he died in 1919, and my grandfather is still known to the old people in his parish in Anglesey and always called him the old chancellor, he was Chancellor of Bangor Cathedral. And he was extremely unconventional, and he used to say things in church, he would say, `May the Lord have mercy upon you, you miserable sinners,' and he © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Kyffin Williams Page 3 C466/24/01 F4540A would never count himself in on that. And everybody came to him for all sorts of advice and things like that. And my father was brought up with his three brothers and two sisters without much money. I mean they would have driving in tandems and things like that with the harnesses always done up with string I think, and they careered round the roads of Anglesey, or the lanes of Anglesey in those days. But my father of course was born with a hereditary - not a hereditary, a congenital defect of the hip, so he always was terribly lame, and he didn't have much of a schooling, and he was sent away to a private school in Lancashire. And of course he couldn't do anything for a long time until eventually he was found a job with the North and South Wales Bank, because my family with their connections in Paris Mountain, copper mines, it was the biggest copper mine in the world, and one side of my family became immensely wealthy from the sale of copper. They cornered the whole of the copper of Britain. They had started a thing called Williams Chester and North Wales Bank, and that had sold out to the North and South Wales Bank, so my father in his thirties got his first job, it was with the North and South Wales Bank. And that's where he remained, was it? Well that was sold out to the Midland Bank, and he ended his very brief time in banking with the Midland Bank. And, obviously his father had been a churchman; did he grow up with a very deep religious conviction, was that...? Oh all my family have had very deep religious convictions I think. Maybe, I don't know how deep but anyhow it was considered that they should all be parsons, because my uncle, the Reverend O.K. Williams, Owen Kyffin Williams, he was a parson, and my two grandfathers, my four great-grandfathers and several great-great-grandfathers were all in the Church. Can you sum up at all, I know this is quite a difficult question, but can you sum up what your father's values would have been, and his morality? My father's main thing was people. He loved people, and he could see no difference between a duke and a farm labourer. Somehow there was no difference to him, he loved everybody, and he used to tell wonderful stories about people, and I fed on these stories. And, he could not believe that anybody was other than an absolutely wonderful person, and this meant of course occasionally he was desperately disappointed, and when he was disappointed he was terribly disappointed, he couldn't understand how people could be beastly. © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Kyffin Williams Page 4 C466/24/01 F4540A And did you get an impression of what the community was like when he was growing up, as opposed to what it's like now? Oh yes. He was born in the rectory at Boduan on the Lleyn Peninsula, but very soon they moved from there to Anglesey, to the north-west corner of Anglesey, to the next parish where my great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather were parsons. And what was interesting there, the only people there were the farmers really, and the cottagers, so all my father's friends as a boy were the farmers and the cottagers, and he was very very welcome, and when we used to go and stay there, when I was a boy, he was welcome in every cottage and farm in that part of the island. And of course he spoke Welsh fluently, as all my family have had to, because in the parishes they wouldn't have been able to get on if they couldn't have spoken Welsh.