One is his claim to have been born on Good Friday, 13 April The other is his repeated insistence that he had memories of life in his mother's womb. The idea that he had been born on Good Friday, the day of the Saviour's crucifixion, pleased him, more especially since Good Friday happened in to have been Friday the thirteenth.
What better birth-date could there be for someone so conscious of the suffering which underlies human existence; and conscious also that misfortune, in comic or tragic guise, awaited every venture and departure? In a late work, Company, which is highly autobiographical, the coincidence of his birth-date with the day of the Saviour's death is emphasized.
It is a little unfortunate therefore that his birth certificate shows him to have been born on the 13 May , which was a Sunday. The birth was not registered until a month later, on 13 June.
Since it was Irish custom to allow a clear four weeks to elapse between birth and registration, this fact would if anything tend to confirm the May rather than the April birth-date, but of course there is always the possibility of error -- even an error of immediate recollection on his father's part, or a slip of the tongue or the pen, neither of which was rare where registration was concerned.
Since Beckett was on the whole truthful about such matters and on at least one occasion claimed to have the authority of his mother for the Good Friday birth-date, the balance of probability is in its favour, but it is a pity nevertheless that there should be any doubt about it. The other difficulty about beginning on Friday the thirteenth is Beckett's claim to have had memories which preceded this date. I have a clear memory of my own foetal existence.
It was an existence where no voice, no possible movement could free me from the agony and darkness I was subjected to. He was constantly suffering from this and had awful crises, when he felt he was suffocating. But not only did he have these generalized memories; he had, he said, a particular memory of being at the dinner table in his mother's womb shortly before birth. There were guests present and the conversation was, perhaps needless to say, of the utmost banality.
In any case Samuel Beckett, son of William -- known as Bill in family circles, but generally to friends and associates as Willie -- and his wife Maria -- known as May -- was born at nightfall, in the family home at Foxrock, a prosperous suburb on the outskirts of Dublin.
At the time of his birth Bill and May Beckett had been married almost five years. A first child, Frank, had been born within eleven months of their marriage; the second, Samuel, was not conceived for three more years. The place of May's accouchement was the bedroom in which the conception had most likely taken place, a big room with a bow window facing the Dublin mountains.
It was a difficult labour, the pains lasting all day; and as soon as it began in the morning Bill absented himself, going for a tramp in the mountains with a packet of sandwiches and a flask of whiskey. He returned to find his wife still in labour, and being, like most fathers of the time, neither welcome nor anxious to hear or see anything of the delivery, he took himself off to the garage, where he sat in darkness in the driver's seat of his high De Dion Bouton until a maid came to tell him it was all over and that his wife had been happily delivered of a son.
Whereas Bill and May's first son, Frank, had been healthy and placid, Samuel was a sickly, thin baby who cried constantly. The Becketts were prosperous people and the house in which the birth took place reflected that prosperity, as did its situation in Foxrock, then a very exclusive suburb of Dublin.
Willie Beckett's father, also William, was a building contractor and what nowadays would be called a speculator who had acquired both money and house property in Dublin on a considerable scale. Among the contracts awarded to his firm were those for the new National Library and National Museum, flanking the Royal Dublin Society's headquarters in Leinster House in Kildare Street, which subsequently became the home of the Dail or Irish parliament.
These had been begun in and finished in There was fierce competition for the contract and some of William Beckett's enemies were pleased when it was established that the Mountcharles sandstone employed had been wrongly used: face-bedded instead of end-bedded, so that it began to crumble almost immediately, though this was never clearly established as the builder's mistake and may well have been the architect's.
The Becketts vaguely supposed themselves to be descended from Huguenot refugees who had come to Ireland from France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in , fleeing their homeland to escape persecution as Protestants and settling in a country where persecution of Catholics was just about to begin on a systematic scale.
The Huguenots had supplied Ireland with much of its industrial and business energy, bringing with them a knowledge of the linen and poplin trades as well as of banking; and they fitted in easily enough in a country which was in process of transition after the Williamite Wars a place where much was in the melting-pot and most business activity represented a new departure. Within a generation or two the Huguenots generally were as happy to forget their French origins as many other members of the land-owning and business classes were to forget their English; and by the early twentieth century no trace or definite knowledge of a former French connection remained.
Samuel Beckett's adoption of France as his homeland would have nothing to do with the French origins of his family: and in fact there is doubt that the Becketts really were Huguenots.
The name does not occur in early listings of Huguenot refugees and is not commonly regarded by historians of the Huguenot influx as a likely Huguenot one. The suggestion has therefore also been made that the Irish Becketts were of Norman origin, and those who like aristocratic lineages for their heroes have even claimed that Samuel Beckett's family were descended from the family of Thomas a Becket, the turbulent priest who was Henry II's Archbishop of Canterbury.
What makes the Huguenot connection the more likely is that originally the Becketts were silk- and poplin-weavers, a form of manufacture in which Huguenots certainly engaged, and in fact William Beckett senior's father, Samuel's great-grandfather, James Beckett, had been in the silk-weaving business.
By the time his son entered the building trade, Irish silk-weaving, which had once been important, was dying out. In William the builder had married Fannie or Frances Crothers -- Crowther in one family record, but certainly Crothers -- daughter of a Dublin merchant, Thomas Crothers, who was also of course a Protestant. A talented and sensitive woman, perhaps more talented and sensitive than William Beckett had bargained for, to some extent she broke the mould of philistine business success and introduced other elements into the make-up of the Becketts.
In later life she took to the drink and Dublin gossip was pleased to report on her eccentricities, including the fact that she would lock herself in her room, presumably with supplies of alcohol, for days on end. What in the course of time her grandson, Samuel, would remember best about her was the parrot who always perched on her shoulder and flew into a jealous rage when anyone kissed her.
Fannie and William Beckett had four sons, of whom one, Howard went into the family contracting business, J. A daughter, also Frances, but known because the boys called her that as Cissie, would have a somewhat less orthodox career, as a painter, member of Dublin's bohemia and wife to an unsuccessful Jewish art dealer. The fourth son, in fact the eldest and christened William after his father, was destined to be the father of Samuel Beckett.
William senior and Frances lived in a house called Earlsfield which was Number 7 Prince William Terrace in the fashionable district of Ballsbridge, and it was there that William junior was born in July He grew into a burly, athletic youth of a not very studious disposition and left school early to become apprenticed to a member of the trade or profession of quantity surveying.
Originally anybody could set up who had the right connections and thought he could get the work, but by the late nineteenth century entry was being increasingly if loosely regulated by-an apprenticeship and examination system. Willie Beckett was apprenticed to the firm of J. Pannister where he served the requisite five years, after which a partnership was purchased for him in a firm which had offices in Clare Street, near the back gate of Trinity College. Besides the fact that estimating could prove a lucrative extension of the activities of an already well-established building concern, William Beckett senior, like many successful business people at the time, was anxious that his eldest son should become a member of one or other of the professions.
This was a tendency everywhere, but it was especially the case in snobbish Dublin, which was keenly conscious of social gradations. Since William junior showed no interest in a prolonged period of academic study, quantity surveying was a good halfway house. His success, it was felt, would be almost automatically ensured by his connection with the firm of T.
Beckett, while at the same time it would be a step up in the world, since quantity surveying took rank as a profession, not a trade. The line between it, civil engineering and architecture was still rather blurred.
This information is not available. His birth name is William Eugene Beckett Jr. People born on February 11 fall under the zodiac sign of Aquarius.
His zodiac animal is Ox. While still in high school in , Beckett and guitarist Mike Carden came together from rival bands in Chicago to form The Academy Is…. In addition to founding the band, Beckett and Carden are credited as the primary songwriters. Continue to the next page to see William Beckett net worth, popularity trend, new videos and more. Home Search Sort.
Sign in. Log into your account. William Beckett Net Worth. Something for everyone interested in hair makeup style and body positivity.
Discover more posts about williambeckett. Bryan Bedder Getty Images. Amazing voice extremely talented one of the best performers ever. The lead singer for the amazing band The Academy Is. The first single About a Girl was added to the bands MySpace page on July 15 and was subsequently made available from various download sites. What does this all mean. He is not dating anyone currently.
Hes way cooler than you. William Beckett has not been previously engaged. Its the first sign of the apocalypse. I told her I swear we told her not to say anything. According to our records he has 1 children. Neither of their faces were in it since the pictures were cut off around their chins but you could clearly tell it was William Beckett by his long hair and slim figure. I loved William Becketts hair.
Williams birth flower is Violet and birthstone is Amethyst. See a recent post on Tumblr from biigheartlittlebody about williambeckett.
0コメント