Teheuti
Waite (who was distantly related to Charles Dickens on his mother's side) describes his first experience of school in his autobiography:
"Backward, nervous, self-conscious and self-distrustful as I always was, I recollect nothing unfavourable in that class of quiet boys, though I made no friends among them. It is to be doubted even whether I spoke to any and they were content to let me alone, if that was so." On the next couple of pages he lists all the strange books that he came across in those early years.
As a young child he, his mother and sister moved a great deal and in one move he came across a chest full of copies of the London Journal. He goes on for several pages talking about how he read them "through and through." He lists particular articles and authors and gives details of the articles that still obsess him—like several on the difficulties of international copyright, one of which he says was "eloquent reading."
Next, he goes into how "the number four has served me always well." For instance, as he says, he had "four manners of schooling."
He made one good friend in his entire childhood: "I made a good friend also in Gilbert Bryant and loved him greatly." They would walk back and forth between their two houses for hours: "We repeated it over and over till moon and stars came out. It was thus—as might it be—for under two years; and then my Sister and I fell ill with scarlet fever and an end came to schools for months and months."
Regarding physical and communication difficulties that are typical of AS: "The truth is that I was not much more than twelve at sixteen years of age and had not reached intellectual puberty when I lived to be twenty-one. As a fact, I was poor and weak of body during my years of growth. But more than all it was the dreadful narrowness in all my ways of life that kept me stunted, alike within and without; and when something not myself moved me to make a beginning with verse, Salvator meus was prescribing a rule of life. It made for my redemption." He's saying that poetry "saved" him.
Poetry became his redeeming "rule of life" (and most ASs do well with rules). Now, I understand that AS includes a lack of understanding of metaphor, yet what we find in Waite, is an obsession with the rules of poetry, with the system of metaphor. We also find, that among the famous that have been named as having AS is the poet Gerard Manly Hopkins, possibly Bob Dylan and quite a few songwriters.
Maybe I'm making more of this then I should . . . but he seems to fit in with some of the other famous creative Aspergers (see several lists via google).
"Backward, nervous, self-conscious and self-distrustful as I always was, I recollect nothing unfavourable in that class of quiet boys, though I made no friends among them. It is to be doubted even whether I spoke to any and they were content to let me alone, if that was so." On the next couple of pages he lists all the strange books that he came across in those early years.
As a young child he, his mother and sister moved a great deal and in one move he came across a chest full of copies of the London Journal. He goes on for several pages talking about how he read them "through and through." He lists particular articles and authors and gives details of the articles that still obsess him—like several on the difficulties of international copyright, one of which he says was "eloquent reading."
Next, he goes into how "the number four has served me always well." For instance, as he says, he had "four manners of schooling."
He made one good friend in his entire childhood: "I made a good friend also in Gilbert Bryant and loved him greatly." They would walk back and forth between their two houses for hours: "We repeated it over and over till moon and stars came out. It was thus—as might it be—for under two years; and then my Sister and I fell ill with scarlet fever and an end came to schools for months and months."
Regarding physical and communication difficulties that are typical of AS: "The truth is that I was not much more than twelve at sixteen years of age and had not reached intellectual puberty when I lived to be twenty-one. As a fact, I was poor and weak of body during my years of growth. But more than all it was the dreadful narrowness in all my ways of life that kept me stunted, alike within and without; and when something not myself moved me to make a beginning with verse, Salvator meus was prescribing a rule of life. It made for my redemption." He's saying that poetry "saved" him.
Poetry became his redeeming "rule of life" (and most ASs do well with rules). Now, I understand that AS includes a lack of understanding of metaphor, yet what we find in Waite, is an obsession with the rules of poetry, with the system of metaphor. We also find, that among the famous that have been named as having AS is the poet Gerard Manly Hopkins, possibly Bob Dylan and quite a few songwriters.
Maybe I'm making more of this then I should . . . but he seems to fit in with some of the other famous creative Aspergers (see several lists via google).