sunshine and matter-of-fact, will, if his mind is of the proper critical
kind, be at once disappointed with the town and enthusiastic on its
setting. Around it, shutting out the noisy world, rise the great heights
of Barber’s Hill and Castell Dinas Bran, the last-named a mighty
eminence rising to a height of over a thousand feet, and diademed with a
circlet of very ancient and time-worn ruins. If any one were known to
have visited Llangollen and not to have climbed the steeps leading to
“Crow Castle”—as it is called in English—on him or her would fall the
righteous wrath of those who, much enduring, _have_ made that toilsome
pilgrimage. From this height you command not only the town of Llangollen
at its foot, diminished as though looked at through the wrong end of a
telescope, but mile upon mile of heaped-up or overthrown mountains,
tumbled and fantastic masses, growing at last indistinct in the
direction of Snowdon; or, looking eastwards, see the Eglwyseg Rocks, a
long range of mural precipices, curiously stratified, stretching towards
Ruabon, with the Vale below their unscalable crags. The slate-works of
bygone years have made little impression upon the scene, but they
sufficiently impressed Ruskin, who speaks of “the Works (whatever the
accursed business of them) on the north hillside.”
In the rear of this fortified hill extends the region eloquently called
the “World’s End,” where infrequent tracks lead to nowhere in
particular, and the craggy descent of one hill but to the immediate
toilsome ascent of another. Those who named the “World’s End,” named it
well. The ruined Castle itself on this blusterous height is only a
matter of rude walls; shapeless but for a tall fragment that shoots up
above the rest and shows against the sky as you near the summit, like
some gigantic cockerel in the act of crowing. Who built the Castle and
who destroyed it are equally uncertain matters. Eliseg, Prince of Powis,
occupied it in the eighth century and Gruffydd ap Madoc five hundred
years later; that false Gruffydd who sided with the English under Henry
III., and, later, founded Valle Crucis Abbey for the expiation of that
and many other sins and wickednesses. But when these walls were
unroofed, and by whom, no man knows.
[Illustration: LLANGOLLEN.]
The only architectural gem in these surroundings is that Abbey, two
miles away in the Vale of the Cross, a transverse valley opening on to
the Dee. There its ruins still nestle among the trees, just as Turner
has pictured them, surrounded by the most fertile land within many
miles. Men of Wrath might build themselves impregnable castles on
shivery hill-tops, but holy monks knew a better way, and mortified the
flesh in the fruitful and sheltered lowlands, where the fishponds were
unfailing, the kine came lowing into byre at eventide, the corn was
gathered in its season, and the fruit ripened early on sunny walls. But
the habitations of wrathy and peaceable are alike overthrown, and both
are the sport of the excursionist and the amateur photographer.
But now for more intimate grips with Llangollen, that “dirty, ill-built,
and disagreeable town,” as the Reverend Mr. Bingley described it in
1798. Many at that time told the same unflattering tale, and though it
be out of date to-day, Llangollen as a town cannot, with the exception
of the bridge across the Dee, be said to contain anything in the least
beautiful or interesting. Only the lovely vale and the encircling
mountainous hills render Llangollen endurable. One forgets the mean
houses in the beauty of the scenery. Dividing the place in half, the Dee
flows noisily over a bed of rocky slabs and under that old bridge once
regarded as one of the wonders of Wales. Engineering wonders are so
plentiful nowadays that the mind, supersaturated with them, and the eye,
accustomed to works on a gigantic scale, refuse to marvel at anything
more. Only one wonder is left to the modern visitor to Llangollen—the
wonder that Llangollen Bridge should ever have been considered a wonder.
One has mentally to project oneself into the period when the bridge was
built, over five hundred and fifty years ago, to understand why it was
so considered. It was built when times were always disturbed, and when
nothing in the nature of a town or a hard road existed here; and
certainly they wrought well who built, for though the Dee has come down
in floods innumerable, it still stands. It was doubled in width in 1873,
and modern times have witnessed the coming of the railway up the vale
along the course of the Dee, causing it to be lengthened by another
opening. Four old pointed stone arches and a stone and girder span now
make the total sum. Let the number here be specified, for the many
travellers who have written on Llangollen exhibit a curious inability to
give them correctly. Turner, whose view of Llangollen may be referred
to, gives six, and in addition, places a viaduct on a hillside possibly
intended for Castle Dinas Bran, in a place where no viaduct or aqueduct
ever was or could be. Those are, however, the merest trifles compared
with his dealings with the Dee, represented as flowing in the opposite
direction it takes in Nature, and upwards towards its source.
[Illustration: LLANGOLLEN. _After J. M. W. Turner, R.A._]
XXXIV
Llangollen owes its name to St. Collen, the patron saint of the parish
church. “The name,” says the Reverend W. Bingley, “is pretty enough, and
of no great length.” Sarcastic Mr. Bingley! Here is a portion of St.
Collen’s name, quoted by him:—“Collen ap Gwynawc, ap Clydawc, ap Cowrda,
ap Caradawc Freichpas ap Lleyr Meirion, ap Einion Urth, ap Cunedda
Wledig,” and so forth, like recurring decimals. “Ap” being Welsh for
“son of,” it becomes quite evident that Collen’s ancestry was, speaking
in the decimal manner, corrected to at least six places. Welshmen,
happily, have long ceased to thus trail their genealogical trees after
them, and life in the Principality becomes simplified by so much. Nay,
the “ap,” for all the tenacity with which the Welsh cling to their
nationality, is rarely in use nowadays, and has long been used as a kind
of alloy, wherewith to coin new family names. From this source come the
patronymics of Price, Prichard, Probert, and other common Welsh
surnames, once Christian; originally Ap Rhys, Ap Richard, and Ap Robert.
“Prothero,” too, derives from Ap Rhyddero, “Pugh” from Ap Hugh, and
Bevan and Bowen from Ab Evan and Ab Owen. In the case of the Thomases
and other names where the combination is impossible, the prefix has been
generally abandoned, and so while the Scot and the Irishman retain their
“Mac” and “Mc,” Taffy has in this respect at least Anglicised himself.
St. Collen’s Church is by no means beautiful or interesting, and its
crowded churchyard is damp and dismal. It is the first on the journey
along the Holyhead Road in which the Welsh language usurps the place of
English, and here certainly, if even other signs were wanting, the
Englishman—the “Saxon” as the Welsh called him—will find himself, to all
intents and purposes, in a foreign land. The average educated
Englishman, from whom the general sense, at least, of Latin epitaphs and
those in two or three Continental languages is not hidden, stands
mystified before these Cymric tombstones and, if he be of a reflective
nature, finds it not a little humiliating that even the ragged little
urchins in the streets of Welsh towns and villages are often bi-lingual,
and in this respect better educated than he.
Among the few English epitaphs is one not often met:—
Our life is but a winter’s day,
Some breakfast and away:
Others to dinner stay and are full fed;
The oldest man but sups and goes to bed.
Large is his debt who lingers out the day;
Who goes the soonest has the least to pay.
The subject of those lines had a short reckoning. He went (to pursue the
simile) after lunch, dying in his nineteenth year.
The chief monument in the churchyard (ornament it is not) is the
triangular pillar to those fantastical old frumps, the Ladies of
Llangollen, and their servant. On it you may read of the “Amiable
Condescension” of the one, the friendship of the other, and the faithful
service of the servant. “It is believed,” continues the epitaph, “they
are now enjoying their Eternal Reward.” Let us hope so—but what may be
the most appropriate reward in the hereafter for collecting old oak and
entertaining society travellers along the Holyhead Road to tea and
small-talk, it is not easy to imagine. Let us hope the Bricklayers,
Cabinet-makers, Blacksmiths, and Bakers who lie around, with their
trades all duly specified on their tombstones, also have _their_ reward
for well and truly bricklaying, cabinet-making, blacksmithing, and
baking.
That Llangollen is not only geographically but socially in Wales is very
evident, in the churchyard, in the names over the shops, and in the talk
of the streets. Griffiths, Jones, Williams, Roberts, and Evans have it
all their own way, and are repeated over and over again, recalling the
humorous story of how the Welsh originally got their names. Llewelyn—was
it?—had spent a long time in naming the clans, and at last, growing
weary of the work, said: “Let all the rest be called Jones!”
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.
[Illustration: THE LADIES OF LLANGOLLEN. _From an Old Print._]
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.
[Illustration: PLAS NEWYDD.]