ABSTRACT
The dominant impression Francis Bacon conveyed was that he had been ill-starred from the start by being born into a family which took no interest in him, and a social class in which he felt himself to be an outsider. Bacon the painter made little of his family's traditional claim. His own recollections of his parents' marriage cast it in a most unflattering light. Disaster was the leitmotif of nearly every memory Bacon chose to bring up when he talked about his childhood. Captain Bacon had set his heart on Edward's going into the army, thereby continuing the family tradition, and he was devastated by his early death. Bacon's earliest memory went back to the eve of the First World War. The episodes which he chose to recount were usually accompanied by a manic laughter that invited his listeners to share his hilarity, as if the whole point of his childhood and his upbringing lay in their absurdity.
