Part 13

This profound valley, or rather, meeting-place of valleys, is a kind of rendezvous of many waters—the Machno, the Llugwy, the Lledr—pouring into the Conway. Fairy glens and waterfalls abound down below in those dense woods, and on still summer days, when the winds are hushed, one may hear the voices of those confluent streams and falls, mingled in a hoarse whisper. The pilgrim, strange to this road, adventuring afoot or awheel from these commanding heights onward and downwards to Bettws, is presently possessed with a curiosity to know how much further the descent goes. Downward and still down, meeting cyclists, carriages, and waggonettes crawling up, he goes and, passing another toll-house, comes at last to the valley, beside the Conway again. Here, where the road turns with a singular abruptness to the left, Telford has spanned that stream with the Waterloo Bridge, a single cast-iron arch, beautiful in itself, and, decorated with emblematic and symbolic representations of the Rose, Thistle, Shamrock, and Leek—the floral and vegetable badges of our composite kingdoms and principalities—proving that Telford had something of the artistic sense, as well as engineering genius. Cast-iron lettering, pierced and easily to be read, follows the course of the arch and explains why “Waterloo” Bridge was so named. “This arch,” it says, “was constructed in the same year the battle of Waterloo was fought.” The names of Telford, of the iron-founder, and of the foreman of works, are all recorded in cast iron.

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Across the bridge and we are in Bettws-y-Coed: “Bettws in the Wood.” Exactly how that name fits the situation of the place is instantly seen. It occupies the floor of a tiny valley hemmed in by great hills covered with trees, chiefly dwarf oaks. Through this valley runs the Conway, joined in its midst by the Llugwy. Close by this confluence still remains the old church, the “Bettws” that preceded the village itself, and whence the village obtains its name. Bettws is the Cymric corruption of the Anglo-Saxon bêd-hûs, or “house of prayer”; signifying a minor chapelry; and the ancient and quite humble building fully bears out that character. When a branch railway was made to Bettws from Llandudno some twenty years ago, the station was built beside the old church, robbing it of not a little of that quiet seclusion which belongs to the spot chosen by David Cox as the scene of his “Welsh Funeral.” Since then the primitive little place that served the simple needs of many generations of Welsh folk has been found neither good enough nor large enough for the fine flower of civilisation that now makes holiday at Bettws. Just as the long, long row of hotels and lodging-houses has replaced the original whitewashed granite cottages of the village, so a quite new, quite magnificent, and absolutely cathedral-like church in the Transitional-Norman style has been erected to serve the needs of the modern resort. It is an altogether admirable building, too, and could contain, perhaps, ten or twelve churches of the size of the old one; but——!

The old church remains, but little used. One enters the churchyard over a rugged stile of granite, and passing through a grave of yews of a peculiarly sombre shade—the yews that Cox painted—comes upon the neglected building with reverence. Across the way, the railway trucks are slamming and hanging in the goods-yard, and the shunters swearing in Welsh; in the “Royal Oak” and the other hotels the visitors are feeding as they would in London; on the road the waggonettes are plying with their loads to the Fairy Glen or the Swallow Waterfall: only in this little churchyard is there complete solitude.

The building is plain to barrenness within, and is more like some secular room than a church. The sole monument, or inscription, of any period, is the stone effigy of Grufyd ap Davyd Gôch, with his nose duly knocked off; his hands in prayer:—

For past omissions to atone By saying endless prayers in stone.

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The fame of Bettws was made by David Cox, that unassuming landscape painter who, appreciated inadequately in his lifetime, now keeps company with the Old Masters in the estimation of the discerning, and in the prices his works command at public auction. David Cox well knew the Holyhead Road: few so well, and perhaps none better. He was born beside it, in a cottage at Heath Mill Lane, Deritend, in 1783, and his favourite sketching grounds in North Wales lay along, or within sight of, the old highway. When he came to Bettws—when he, in the artistic sense, “discovered” it—the village was not a tenth part of the size it is now. No one ever thought of staying here in those days, and had travellers by any chance been compelled to halt at either of the two primitive inns, the “Royal Oak” or the “Waterloo,” the plainest country fare and the homeliest accommodation would have been theirs. No baronial dining-rooms, no odious German waiters whom one longs to wipe one’s feet upon, no wine lists then: just a simple choice between the parlour or the rustic kitchen; between _cwrw da_ (that is to say, good ale), and bread and cheese and eggs and bacon served by a Welsh lass, who probably understood not a word of English, but possessed cheeks like a rose, a waist some thirty inches round, and great flat feet—very trying to amateur poets given to rhyming about gazelles, Hebes, and tripping Phyllises.

To the then tiny whitewashed inn, the “Royal Oak,” came David Cox during a long series of years, almost, indeed, until 1859, the year of his death. It must not be supposed that Cox was a neglected or unsuccessful genius. It is true that his greatness has only been realised to the full since his death, but he was prosperous throughout almost the whole of his career, and the legends that tell how he painted the sign of the “Royal Oak” in order to pay his score are absolutely without foundation. At no time after his youthful days was Cox poor, and he never possessed those Bohemian habits that left many a successful but dissolute artist of those times stranded for lack of money.

Cox himself has told how he came to paint the sign. It was done in 1847, at a time when his art and his reputation were ripe. The old painted board, fixed against the wall of the house, had become faded with long exposure to the weather, and he volunteered to repaint it for his old friend the landlady. The long street of Bettws was infinitely quieter in 1847 than now. The houses were few and scattered, the railway had done away with the coaches, and tourists were uncommon, so that he not unreasonably expected to do the work without interruption. He had ascended a short ladder, and was working away with palette on thumb, and heaps of pigments and the largest brushes he could lay hands on, when it suddenly occurred to him that he was not in a very dignified position for a man of his standing; and that, should he be seen by any one passing through Bettws, a very ridiculous story might be put into circulation, not at all to his advantage. However, he summoned up courage, and comforted himself with the reflection that he would not be observed, or, if seen, would be taken for a common house-painter. But, when in the midst of his work, to his horror he heard a carriage approaching. “Now,” he thought, “I’m done for! Perhaps, though, it will pass by.” But, instead of passing, it halted beneath, a pretty face looked up at him from it, and a voice exclaimed: “Why, it _is_ Mr. Cox, I declare!” The lady was a former pupil of his who, recently married, was travelling in Wales on her honeymoon. “That is not the ladder of Fame you are on now,” she said.

Poor Cox was horrified. If he explained the why and the how of his work that day, it evidently did not make the impression of sincerity, for the stories of his painting the sign to wipe off a debt obviously derive from this chance meeting.

Two years later the painter retouched his work. In 1861, two years after his death, it was, at the request of many admirers, removed from the outside and placed in the hall of the house, then become a “hotel,” and beginning that series of rebuildings and extensions that have made it what it is to-day. In 1880 the then landlady became bankrupt, and the trustees of the estate claimed the old sign as a valuable asset, stating that a connoisseur had offered £1,000 for it, a statement that moved the late Cuthbert Bede to scandalised incredulity. It, however, would certainly bring bids of more than double that amount if put up to auction to-day.

The claim of the trustees was disputed by the freeholder, the Baroness Willoughby De Eresby, and the matter was decided in her favour, with costs. The famous sign was judged to be a fixture, and may yet be seen in the hall of the hotel, handsomely enshrined behind glass in a decorative overmantel.

It is a fine, bold piece of work, virile in its dashing brushmarks and impasto, and in a pleasing low key of colour; altogether very Old Masterish. An inscription beneath states that it “forms part of the freehold of the Hotel belonging to the Baroness Howard de Walden.” It now belongs to the Earl of Ancaster. Let those who will, and have the curiosity to it, trace the why and the wherefore of this devolution of property and titles from a De Eresby, through a Howard de Walden, to an Ancaster.

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If there were not so many dishonest people, and so many vulgar people, in the world, the visitors-books of the “Royal Oak” would be a delight to present-day travellers. Those books begin in 1855, and have in their time been filled with a very miscellaneous collection of autographs, criticisms, and sketches. In the old days, before the house was rebuilt, and its new magnificence and crowds of vulgar and artless rich frightened away the majority of artists, thoughtless fellows who had not “arrived” endowed these books with many signed sketches which in after years, when they had achieved reputations, became valuable in a commercial sense. Pencil sketches there were, pen-drawings, and water-colours; and autographs of other men since known to fame were scattered plentifully through those pages. Among and between them were many of the silly, offensive, and downright infamous things that one finds in every visitors-book; for the Howling Cad is a large and plentiful leaven. The productions of the Cad are there still, and later generations of cads and thieves have added their own sillinesses with one hand, while with the other they have cut out the things that really interested. As, according to Tennyson, “the lie that is half a lie is ever the blackest of lies,” so the Cad that has got sufficient culture to appreciate the worth of a thing, and then steals it, must be the caddiest of cads. It is as demonstrable a thing as a theorem in Euclid.

The visitors-books of the “Royal Oak” are therefore things of tatters and fragments, but in these remains the spirit of old-time touring may here and there be found. They walked mostly, those tourists, and sketches of them in peg-top trousers—very baggy in the upper part of the leg, tight at the foot, and very braidy at the seams—show how they roamed the country. Often they wore “Jemimas”—the brutes!

It is quite certain that the tourist who in these times should tour in that quaint guise would be mobbed, for, in addition to his weird nether garments, the gay young man of 1860 or thereabouts wore a felt hat like a pudding basin, with a flat brim and a button on the crown. Complete the picture with an eyeglass and a pair of “Piccadilly weepers,” and there you are. Yet they were consummate lady-killers, or so imagined themselves to be, and a reflection of their deathly oglings is found in these pages. “Look out for the girl in the village, just beyond the gate—such a stunner!” says one. (“Stunner” was a word characteristic of the sixties.) It is quite evident that those who followed took this amatory pilgrim’s advice, for “Not equal to our Mary Ann, though,” is appended by some disappointed swain.

Girl, gate, and pilgrims, where are they, and where is the Bettws of that era? Gone, my friends, and only the immemorial hills and these ragged visitors-books remain. For Bettws has been entirely rebuilt since then, and the “gate” referred to was brutally swept away some ten years since. Brutally, because it was an ivy and creeper-clad old toll-house, one of the charmingest landmarks in the place. It stood at the corner leading to Pont-y-Pair, where a boarding-house called “Carleton House” may now be seen.

But to return to our visitors-books. The verses found in them would scarce grace a poetic garland, but here is a sample, _circa_ 1860:—

Good reader, supposing you’ve looked through this book, Some fair verses no doubt you have read; Some good sketches, with bad ones—the latter but few; But did soliloquy enter your head?

How many are left who their names have inscribed In a mood both happy and free? How many in Britain, how many abroad? Some sleep ’neath the old willow tree.

A later scribbler appropriately asks this poet to “Cheer up!” He is followed by one who rhymes “spruce” with “Bettws,” which is a very close approximation to the correct pronunciation. Then comes the “Marquis of Alicampane,” and later a critic who implores some heterographical guest, “_Do_ cultivate a taste for spelling.” Then comes a shapeless scribble, signed and priced by some wag, “J. M. W. Turner, £450.”

The fate that follows distinguished visitors who gravely and pompously enter their names is seen in the comments on the entry, “Sir William Barlow, K.C.B., and Lady Barlow.” There was at that period a popular song called “Billy Barlow,” and with the hint thus afforded some idle artist has drawn in the margin his ideas of Sir William and his lady. They are not flattering.

David Cox did not live to see his beloved Bettws overrun by artists and excursionists and exploited to the _n_^{th} degree. It remained unspotted from the world. To those who only know the Bettws of to-day, and see the railway station and the hundreds of excursionists that pour out of it on every summer afternoon, it is incredible that a visitor who, like some exploring Columbus, or Livingstone, at the least of it, stumbled upon the place in 1855, at the close of the great struggle in the Crimea, should have found the villagers quite ignorant of there having been any war. To-day things are very different. Hotels, boarding-houses, lodging-houses, and cyclists’ rests, with a sprinkling of shops where photographs and guide-books are sold, occupy the whole street; and when lunch-time and the dinner-hour are come, the scent of other people’s meals wafted down the road is quite oppressive.

But let it not be thought that Bettws is spoilt. It is only changed. If no longer unsophisticated, it is yet delightful, and if the houses are all new, they are at least either in good taste, or, at the worst, inoffensive. And, after all, the glorious scenery remains. The artists, however, are gone to Trefriw, a village down the Conway, as yet untamed and unbroken to the harness of convention. Time was when one could not stir out of doors at Bettws without upsetting an easel. Passing a wall, you would be startled by a fellow with long hair and a velvet jacket, and with a portfolio under his arm, jumping over it; looking down a lane, many easels would be seen there; a glance at the rocks of Pont-y-Pair would reveal sketch-books and pencils busily at work; and wandering, hand in hand with your Aminta in the shady bye-ways, you would not find the seclusion that such romantic occasions demand.

Other times, other manners. The amateur photographer is now in possession of Bettws. That central spot, the very hub of the place, the bridge over the Llugwy—called Pont-y-Pair, or the “Bridge of the Cauldron,” in allusion to the seething water falling over the rocks—is the favoured shooting-ground, and all day long the excursionists who bask picturesquely on the sunny stones are the victims of snapshotters, or with their own cameras pick off the sharpshooters on the bridge. Under such a terrific cross-fire as this few can hope to escape.

XLV

The two miles leading from Bettws along the Holyhead Road to Rhaiadr-y-Wennol, or the “Swallow Falls,” conduct upwards, out of the hole in whose kindly shelter Bettws lies. Along this somewhat tiring incline a long procession of sight-seers may be seen toiling every day, from April to October, at any time between eight a.m. and seven in the evening, for the Falls have always been considered one of the sights best worth seeing in Wales, and even the Holyhead Mail used to pull up for five minutes to allow passengers to see them. They obtain their pretty name only, it is sad to reflect, by error, in an old confusion of “Wennol,” the Welsh word for “swallow,” with “Ewynol,” which means “foaming,” and is therefore a description merely Saxon in its unimaginative matter-of-fact. To those who would compare the Swallow Falls with Niagara or Alpine waterfalls, with intent to disparage this beautiful spot, we need have nothing to say. Let it be sufficient that these foaming waters, overhung with rocks and fantastically-rooted trees, are sufficiently lovely. The Falls are so close to the road as to be readily seen from it, between the trunks of the little fir plantation that intervenes, while their roaring can be heard far away. They begin with a tumbled race of the Llugwy between scattered rocks, developing into three distinct steps or falls, followed by a long slide. These masses of water, flung riotously upon one another, produce a curiously beautiful effect on the river immediately below, the element being so thoroughly aerated that for many yards onward it is full of air-bubbles as brilliant as the sparklets in champagne or mineral waters. The Swallow Falls have, of course, their legend. Beneath them is supposed to lie the spirit of Sir John Wynn, of Gwydyr, a canny baronet of the early seventeenth century, who was so “shrewd and successful in his dealings” that his Welsh neighbours, rightly or wrongly, thought him enriched by foul means at their expense. Accordingly, here his unhappy shade was sent “to be punished, purged, spouted upon, and purified from the foul deeds done in his days of nature.” According to latest advices, it is here yet, “damned moist, unpleasant.” If all erring shades were banished to such situations, it is to be feared there would not be waterfalls sufficient to go round; but, indeed, it is to a roomier and a drier place that they are generally thought to be consigned.

The Llugwy, more and more a mountain stream as we proceed, borders the road, on one side or the other, as far as Capel Curig. Half a mile beyond the Swallow Falls, it is crossed at Ty-Hyll bridge, and is thenceforward on the left-hand. The road still ascends, crosses a wild tract with an ancient fir-crowned tumulus, and comes steeply up to Pont-y-Cyfyng and the Cyfyng Falls, a pretty scene, among scrub oaks and silver birches, with one of Telford’s happily placed little alcoves, for the amateurs of the picturesque, built out from the breastwork protecting the road.

Here the great road enters upon its wildest and most impressive stretches, but not without such compensations to the traveller as the pretty, artist-haunted inns of Tan-y-Bwlch afford. Another toll-gate—never, surely, was there a great highway to vie with this in the number of them—blocked the way until the close of 1890, and the old house remains. Just beyond it, and full in view of the trim peaks of Snowdon, of Moel Siabod, and their great cloud-capped brethren, is the little village, or rather hamlet, of Capel Curig, lying in the valley where roads go off left to the stormy pass of Llanberis and so on to Carnarvon; and on the right to Holyhead. Capel Curig was, like Bettws, never more than a chapelry in the wilds; but, unlike Bettws, it has not grown with modern times. One may seek the reason with success in the fact that no railway comes near it. A contributory reason is perhaps found in the nature of its surroundings. Grandeur of scenery, and purity of air do not compensate holiday-folks for the mists, the furious storms, and the frequent rains that haunt the spot. Visitors to Capel Curig have been known to drive into it through the rain, to stay as indoor prisoners to stress of weather for a week; departing without ever once having seen the mists disperse that cling so fondly about Snowdon, and veil his majesty from many eyes.

A thunderstorm here is a terrific and appalling thing, with the encircling mountains acting as sounding-boards to the demoniacal peals of thunder that crash with ear-rending reverberations along the valleys. Fortunately for those who are unwilling witnesses of this elemental strife, Capel Curig possesses a very large and resourceful hotel, standing off the Holyhead Road, by the twin lakes in the valley. It was built about 1802 by the then Lord Penrhyn, one of the first to urge the improvement of the Holyhead Road and the adoption of this route, instead of the older and more circuitous one by Chester. He probably could not, with the best will in the world, have erected a plainer building.

When Borrow, tramping eighteen miles on a hot and dusty day, came here, he found the fashionable company in the grand saloon surveying him with looks of the most supercilious disdain. They thought him some poor fellow, tramping from motives of economy.

The poor little whitewashed church of Capel Curig—the original Chapel of St. Curig that gives the place its name—stands quite near the big hotel. It was dedicated to Curig and to Julitta, his mother. The missionary zeal that impelled them to come here, a thousand years or so ago, must have been at fever heat, for this was then a place of unutterable loneliness: not as now with a fine road running by, but a trackless country, deeply shadowed by the almost impenetrable oak woods that covered the mountain sides and the moorlands, now almost entirely innocent of trees of any sort. A mild specimen of what even eighteenth century roads were like will give some notion of the difficulties of approach that remained until 1820. This “awful example” is the four-mile length of deserted road between Capel Curig and Llyn Ogwen. It was once the only way, and the modern Holyhead Road between these two points is wholly of Telford’s making. The beginning of this track—for it was little better—may be sought between the Post Office and the whitewashed cottage that was once the “Tap” of the hotel down yonder. Passing immediately over a rugged bridge spanning a waterfall on the Llugwy, it mounts across the rising moorland, and climbs a boulder-strewn ridge; to descend to the shores of Ogwen under the beetling crags of Trifaen mountain. There is sufficient evidence that it is little less than the bed of a mountain torrent in winter-time, and even to pedestrians the exploration of it is difficult.

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