NATIONAL LIFE STORIES ARTISTS’ LIVES Kenneth Armitage Interviewed by John McEwen and Tamsyn Woollcombe C466/08 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] © 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. Oral History The British Library 96 Euston Road London NW1 2DB 020 7412 7404 [email protected] 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. 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: C466/08/01-16 Digitised from cassette originals Collection title: Interviewee’s surname: Armitage Title: Mr Interviewee’s forename: William Kenneth Sex: male (known as Kenneth) Occupation: Date and place of birth: 18th July 1916 Mother’s occupation: Father’s occupation: Dates of recording: 08.06.91; 16.06.91; 01.10.91; 08.10.91; 15.10.91; 28.10.91; 06.11.91; 12.11.91;10.12.91 Location of interview: The artist's studio/home Name of interviewer: John McEwen and Tamsyn Woollcombe Type of recorder: Marantz CP430 Recording format: D60 Cassette F numbers of playback cassettes: F2396-F2411 incl. Total no. of digitised tracks: Mono or stereo: Stereo Total Duration: Additional material: Photographs of works Copyright/Clearance: Full clearance given Interviewer’s comments: © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk 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, © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk 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... © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk 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.