Part 11

As for the talk, the bridge over the Dee is the place to hear Welsh. That favourite lounging-place becomes on market-days as noisy as a parrot-house with the excited talk of Welshmen black-haired and Welshmen red. Who can shout like a Welshman, and who but a Taffy or Frenchman works himself up into such gesticulating rages on such trivial occasions? Feather-headed pride, conceit, insincerity, treachery, fickle enthusiasms, religiosity, falsehood, and superstition, have always characterised the Welsh in the pages of history; but the modern Welshman is not superstitious, and has no faith in the wild legends of his own land, nor belief in the _diablerie_ that was part of his grandparents’ creed. He regularly attends the services of his hideous Calvinist-Methodist Chapel, and is as completely, religiously and politically, under the thumb of the Boanerges who ministers within as is the Irish peasant beneath the sway of the Romish priest. The Welshman clings fanatically to his nationality and his language, and is saturated with matter-of-fact Radicalism; but although he does not believe in the fairies, is careful not to speak ill of the little people, lest evil come of it; and although so pious, is commonly a shameless and resourceful liar. Untruthfulness has always been a characteristic of Taffy, and judges have quite recently commented upon the prevalence of perjury in Welsh courts of law.

Education is advancing by leaps and bounds in the Principality, and sometimes lights heavily on the shoulders of some decent farmer’s son, and constrains him thenceforth to walk the world an example of the perfect prig. Culture, in fact, brings all the acrid defects of the Cymric character into prominence, and impels those who have taken it badly towards political nostrums of unpatriotic bias, or social “movements” where the faddist shrieks and has his being.

XXXV

Llangollen was “discovered” in 1788 by those feminine Robinson Crusoes commonly called the “Ladies of Llangollen.” Their singular story and the alliterative title have gone forth to all the world, and are familiar where the achievements of many worthier persons are unknown. If eccentricity may rightly be considered a proper passport to fame, then the Ladies of Llangollen are justly celebrated, but if the extraordinary mental obliquity that shaped their wasted lives be looked upon pathologically, the consideration they received in their time and the tolerant interest in them in later years must seem highly mischievous.

When the Ladies first came to Llangollen, the place was but a village on the post-road to Holyhead. The newly established mail-coaches went a different route, and only one inn—the “Hand”—existed for the accommodation of travellers. But, although the road was rough, and the accommodation matched it, this was the route by which travellers between London and Ireland came and went; and so although the village was less than one-tenth the size of the Llangollen of to-day, it could not have afforded that “romantic retirement from the world” the two Ladies are said to have desired.

These eccentrics were by no means of that age or those social surroundings that might reasonably be expected to dispose them to renounce the world, its pleasures, and its duties. One of them was extremely youthful; both enjoyed the advantages of good birth and social position. Lady Eleanor Butler, the elder, by some twelve years, of the two, was twenty-nine years of age, and was the daughter of that John Butler, Member of Parliament for Kilkenny, who in 1791 obtained the reversal of the attainder which had many years before deprived his family of the Earldom of Ormonde and Ossory: the Honourable Miss Ponsonby belonged to the Bessborough family. A favourite explanation of the friendship of the two is that they were disappointed in love, and thereafter determined to live for each other, apart from the world. It is an explanation that at any rate, if quite unfounded, is evidence of a not unpleasing desire to seek romance in the most unlikely places. Lady Eleanor Butler was the originator and moving spirit in this eremitical enterprise. Tiny in stature, _petite_ in figure, and overshadowed by the tall and commanding figure of her youthful friend, she at the same time possessed and retained during the whole of their career will-power for two. Several unsuccessful attempts to elope from their homes in the neighbourhood of Waterford took place before their relatives became unwillingly convinced that their eccentricity was quite unconquerable; but at last they were allowed to depart whither they would, their respective families doubtless expecting them back again so soon as the novelty of the escapade had worn off. In May, 1788, therefore, they left Waterford for Dublin, attended by their one servant, Mary Carryl, who shared their fortunes for upwards of forty years. Landing at Holyhead, they travelled for awhile in North Wales, seeking a suitable spot. That they did not readily find one seems to throw something of a sardonic side-light upon the scheme; for even nowadays, when the tourist plumbs the deepest valleys and scales peaks often thought inaccessible, solitude is not difficult to achieve in this part of the world. Robinson Crusoe’s island, or a solitary lighthouse, would not have suited their project, which, frankly, seems to have been the building up of a reputation for eccentricity in a spot where it could readily be observed. As well might one, in these times, attempt to set up a solitary cell on the platform of Willesden Junction, and escape observation, as in those days play the hermit at Llangollen. Why, it was a halting-place on the great road between two kingdoms; with kings and princes, lords-lieutenant, peers, members of Parliament, and the whole social circle to which those two humbugs belonged travelling constantly to and fro throughout the year, within hail of their windows.

On the hillside sloping down to the great road they found a modest cottage, which, with some adjoining land, they purchased and commenced to convert into the odd museum it is now. They called it “Plas Newydd,” and by that name it is now familiar to many thousands of summer visitors to Llangollen.

It was not long before the fame of this so-called “romantic” retreat spread to London; brought, doubtless, by some traveller whom the Ladies, as keenly alive to advertisement as any theatrical manager, had invited up from that not too comfortable hostelry, the “Hand.” From that time forward a constantly increasing stream of callers presented letters of introduction at Plas Newydd, on their passage along the great road. Every one who was any one found a welcome there. Rank, fashion, art and literature, politics, were all represented in their visitors-books. Artistic and literary visitors left sketches and sonnets, and presented autograph editions; rank and fashion gossipped and tittle-tattled and corresponded; and political and influential callers eventually made a Government pension possible to these precious “hermits.” It was in 1788 that Lord Mornington wrote them, somewhat mysteriously, about some “arrears” in that pension which “he will not fail to interest himself in despatching,” adding that “Mr. Pitt is acquainted with their situation and with the motive that so greatly recommends them to His Majesty’s favour.” What was that recommendation? What national service did the Ladies of Llangollen render that they should have received a Government subsidy? Is it possible that, in those palmy days of the Secret Service Fund, the Ladies were eavesdropping agents, gathering political gossip from Irish members travelling this road and reporting it to Downing Street?

In no real sense did these two friends retire from the world. Indeed, they visited all the best people within reach of a carriage-drive from Llangollen; but always, however far the distance, making it a point never to sleep away from home. Their costume was invariable, and strange. It consisted of riding-dress; with white stockings, shoes, beaver hats, stiff starched neckcloth, and short, powdered hair. Their coats were of decidedly masculine cut. Charles Mathews, who saw them occupying a box at the Oswestry Theatre when he was playing there in 1820, said they “looked exactly like two respectable superannuated old clergymen.” Their love of jewellery, however, was a distinctly feminine trait, and was carried an inordinate length. Lady Eleanor had the Cordon of the Order of St. Louis, presented by Louis XVIII.; and both wore a vulgar profusion of ribbons, brooches, and rings.

As time wore on, they came to know and be visited by every one of note. Wordsworth enjoyed their hospitality, and composed a sonnet, as a kind of votive offering, in the grounds: grounds graced by fonts and fragments of ancient crosses, stolen from Valle Crucis Abbey and other places, to fit the whim of these insatiable collectors of “curios.” Wordsworth’s offering was, sad to say, not accepted with enthusiasm. Why not? For the reason that he had dared to call their home a “low-roofed cot”:—

... Where faithful to a low-roofed cot, On Deva’s Banks, ye have abode so long: Sisters in love, a love allowed to climb, Even on this earth, above the reach of time.

The Ladies declared they could write better poetry themselves!

XXXVI

The great Duke of Wellington was, of course, well known to the Ladies. They had known him from a boy. It was from an old Spanish Prayer Book given him by Lady Eleanor that he learnt that language when going out to his campaigns in the Peninsula.

Reminiscences of this queer old couple abound in the published diaries and correspondence of old-time travellers; but none afford so good a picture as that drawn by Lockhart, who accompanied Sir Walter Scott on a visit to Llangollen in 1825. Lockhart, writing to his wife, says: “We proceeded up the hill, and found everything about them and their habitation odd and extravagant beyond report. Imagine two women—one apparently seventy and the other sixty-five—dressed in heavy blue riding habits, enormous shoes, and men’s hats, with their petticoats so tucked up that at the first glance of them, fussing and tottering about their porch in the agony of expectation, we took them for a couple of hazy or crazy old sailors. On nearer inspection they both wear a world of brooches, rings, etc., and Lady Eleanor positively _orders_—several stars and crosses, and a red ribbon, exactly like a K.C.B. To crown all, they have cropt heads, shaggy, rough, bushy, and as white as snow, the one with age alone, the other assisted by a sprinkling of powder. The elder lady is almost blind, and every way much decayed; the other in good preservation. But who could paint the prints, the dogs, the cats, the miniatures, the cram of cabinets, clocks, glass cases, books, bijouterie, dragon china, nodding mandarins, and whirligigs of every shape and hue—the whole house, outside and in (for we must see everything, to the dressing closets) _covered_ with carved oak, very rich and fine some of it; and the illustrated copies of Sir Walter’s poems, and the joking, simpering compliments about Waverley and the anxiety to know who Melvor really was, and the absolute devouring of the poor Unknown, who had to carry off, besides all the rest, one small bit of literal _butter_ dug up in a Milesian stone jar lately from the bottom of some Irish bog. Great romance (_i.e._, absurd innocence of character) one must have looked for; but it was confounding to find this mixed up with such eager curiosity and enormous knowledge of the tattle and scandal of the world they had so long left. Their tables were piled with newspapers from every corner of the kingdom, and they seemed to have the deaths and marriages of the antipodes at their fingers’ ends. Their albums and autographs, from Louis XVIII. and George IV. down to magazine poets and quack doctors, are a museum. I shall never see the spirit of blue stockingism again in such perfect incarnation. Peveril (a family name for Sir Walter) won’t get over their final kissing match for a week. Yet it is too bad to laugh at these good old girls; they have long been the guardian angels of the village, and are worshipped by every man, woman, and child about them.”

The collecting mania grew upon the old women with the passing of the years. They had long converted their cottage from a labourer’s dwelling to the likeness of a curiosity shop, and had begged or bought all the ancient Elizabethan, Carolean, and Jacobean carved wooden four-poster bedsteads within a circle of twenty miles from Llangollen, to decorate the interior and exterior of Plas Newydd; but their passion for old oak was insatiable. The posts of the black oak porch and the other profusely carved oak decorations that front the house to this day were placed here by them. Here is still the famous carved frieze of cat and acorns that they went into raptures over, and opposite is the little dog, also in black oak, with which, after years of anxious waiting and searching, they matched the cat. So wedded to this passion for old oak did the Ladies become that no one was welcome as a visitor who did not bring with him an offering of this sort. They were proud of their house. “When we fust came home,” Lady Eleanor was wont to say, drawing a word-picture of the place, “then and afterwards, we had only bare walls and a roof.” Then they would point out the trees they had planted in the garden; and the laylocks that made so fragrant a bank of blooms in the spring. (They, in common with others of their order, continued to say “fust,” and “laylock,” and “obleege” when merely common people had adopted what is now the usual pronunciation.)

Well, well: the trees are more beautiful now than ever they could have been before, but the ladies are gone. Their servant died in 1809; Lady Eleanor, in her 90th year, in 1829, and Miss Ponsonby two years later. But the interior of the house is much the same: rich in oak so black as to absorb much of the light; with a wealth of beautiful old china and miscellaneous odds and ends that would have delighted the soul of Horace Walpole. These collections owe much of their completeness to the late General Yorke, who had known the two ladies, and rescued the houseful of curiosities from utter dispersal at the sale by auction, conducted by that George Robins whose extravagant auctioneering eloquence has become a classic. In his words, the grounds of Plas Newydd occupied “a wooded knoll, overhanging a deep and hallowed glen”; language that may compare favourably with Wordsworth’s sonnet.

We have seen Lockhart excusing himself for laughing at these “good old girls,” as he calls them, and have his word for it that they were “the guardian angels of the village”; but whatever they may have done in their lifetime has been quite thrown into the background by the posthumous benefits their fame has conferred upon Llangollen. Local charities until recently benefited largely from the fees charged to visitors curious to see the collections at Plas Newydd; but since a party of thieves and vandals broke some of the objects and stole others the house has not been so readily accessible. It would be quite impossible for a stranger to visit Llangollen for even the shortest space of time and then to come away ignorant of the Ladies, for photographs of them, statuettes, and paintings abound at every turn, and must prove an important source of revenue. It is no more possible to flee from the Ladies of Llangollen in Llangollen than it is to avoid Lorna Doone at Ilfracombe, or Shakespeare at Stratford-on-Avon.

XXXVII

The settlement of “The Ladies” here synchronised with the appreciation of the picturesque in rural scenery, then a new-born and strange portent. The only travellers along this road into Wales had been those who were obliged to take the journey on business; pleasure in travelling—pleasure in such solitary and rugged scenery—was quite out of the question, and if travellers remembered Llangollen at all, it was as a place where the coach changed horses, and where the one inn afforded the worst cheer at the highest prices. But in the last quarter of the eighteenth century the tourist sprang suddenly into existence. None were more astonished than the Welsh peasantry at this strange spectacle of people who had riches and comfort in their own homes travelling for pleasure and delight in their mountains and rivers; aye, and often walking, not for economy, but for love of that exercise, in strange places. Sometimes the astonished Welshman was incredulous. He would ask, “Where do you come from?” “Why do you come here?” and “Where do you go to from hence?” and, dissatisfied with the answers received, would ask, “Are there, then, no mountains or rivers in England?”

One of these early tourists was Warner, author of a “Picturesque Tour.” Arriving at Llangollen on their walk through Wales of over a century ago, Warner and the companion of his pedestrian tour went, of course, to the “Hand.” But that then solitary inn of the place could not attend at once to the tired and hungry tourists. Much more important guests than dusty-footed travellers (always at that time regarded with suspicion) were occupying the attention of the establishment. These were the Margrave of Anspach and his suite, who came, undoubtedly, in carriages, and whose dinner the wearied couple could distinctly smell. Abashed, they went to contemplate the beauties of Valle Crucis, what time the Margrave dined. It is not surprising that they did not altogether care for the place. Empty bellies are not kindly critics of architectural ruins. But what _does_ surprise the reader of their tour is that they went on and explored the mighty hill of Dinas Bran before returning to the “Hand,” when, the Margrave and his suite, even down to the footmen and page-boys, having fed to repletion, they found, at last, some attention.

It would seem, judging from an expression used by Daniel O’Connell, that the hotel now called the “Royal,” but originally named the “King’s Head,” was established by some action on the part of the Ladies of Llangollen. The “Hand” was in those days notoriously ill-equipped, and O’Connell wrote in the visitors’ book of the “King’s Head”:—

I remember this village with very bad cheer, Ere the Ladies, God bless them, set this inn here; But the traveller now is sure of good fare, Let him stay at this inn, or go to that ’ere; But all who can read will sure understand How vastly superior’s the Head to the Hand.

The sign of the “King’s Head” was changed to the “Royal” after the visit of the Duchess of Kent with the Princess Victoria in 1832.

XXXVIII

When the traveller sets forth from Llangollen, he does so primed with stories of the excellence of the scenery and the road. The folded mountains, some clothed with pine and larch to their very summits, others stern and jagged with rocks, far exceed any word-picture, as do also the valleys and the glittering course of the Dee, dashing impetuously over boulders and pebbly beaches, or more rarely sliding quietly where the trout lurk in deep and darkling pools, where the Welshman still navigates that early British canoe or boat—whichever you like to call it—the “coracle,” a craft that no Saxon can master. The scenery is exquisite, the air cooler and more refreshing as you leave Llangollen, and the road broad and hard.

But as you come past Berwyn station, that picturesque little place on the railway line running so neighbourly and yet inoffensively parallel with the road and the Dee, you are conscious, whether awheel or afoot, that the road is not by any means flat. The old coachmen, indeed, knew this, although imperceptible to the casual eye, to be one of the most trying rises on the way to Holyhead; and the modern cyclist, who pedals bravely up its two miles, thinks sadly upon the debilitating air of Llangollen until its crest is reached and he perceives the true state of affairs. Telford was confronted by a dilemma here. He could do either of two things: carry the road thus steeply over the ridge of Rhysgog, or take it in more level fashion, but in three parts of a circle, following the great bend the Dee makes at this point—a bend so great that it almost coils back upon itself. He chose the first course, and so, although he saved more than a mile, has punished all travellers that have used the road since then.

Emerging from the sombre plantations that darken the greater part of the rise, the road, terraced on the shoulders of the hills, runs down to Glyndyfrdwy, passing the toll-house of that name, and coming to the village where the “Sun” inn stands on the left, on entering. This is the little “pot-house called the ‘Rising Sun,’” mentioned by Colonel Birch-Reynardson, one of the places where the Holyhead Mail changed horses when he took the reins. Across the river is Llansaintffraid, which gave a name to a toll-house here—one of the few that have been demolished.

At the other end of Glyndyfrdwy, passing that pretty, tree-shaded anglers’ house, the “Berwyn Arms,” the hills recede and the valley opens out. The Mail at one time changed here. In those days it was called the “New Inn.” Just before the scenery becomes comparatively homely, two strikingly prominent hills or tumuli, at a short distance from one another, are seen overhanging the Dee. The second of them, standing isolated and crowned with a spindly group of fir trees, is known as “Owain Glyndwr’s Mount,” and there are those among the great Owain’s worshippers who still affect to see the foundations of his house in the rolling meadow beneath.

Owain Glyndwr is one of the greatest and latest of Welsh national heroes, and the valley of the Dee is especially linked with his memory. It could scarce be otherwise, for his name of Glyndwr was a territorial one, and derived from his ancestral estate situated here at Glyndyfrdwy and for some miles along the Dee between Berwyn and Corwen.

It was in the year 1400 that Owain rose in rebellion and set all Wales aflame against the English. He was no hot-headed patriot, rising for the mere idea of throwing off a foreign yoke, but a man who had suffered wrongs and sought redress in vain. Lord Grey of Ruthin, one of the powerful Lords Marchers, had seized a portion of his land, held it by force of arms, despite the decision of the Courts in London, and represented the injured man to be a rebel who refused the feudal duty of sending help to aid the King against his opening campaign against the Scots. Hitherto he had been no rebel, but a loyal supporter of the English rule, at that time long established firmly in Wales. Not only so, but he had moved in the Court circles of that day, and was not only an educated gentleman, but a personage of wealth, consequence, and influence in his own country, and precisely one to be well treated by politic rulers.