the village itself stands prominent on a knoll, with an old road going
to its bleak and hard-featured street, and the Holyhead Road just
skirting its fringe. Cerrig-y-Druidion means “the rock of the Druids.”
[Illustration: CERRIG-Y-DRUIDION.]
“This place,” says Warner, “as its name imports, was connected with the
awful superstitions of the ancient Britons, and exhibited some years
since vestiges of Druidical worship.” These vestiges were British stone
huts or tombs—the “kistvaens” of archæological literature. Warner and
the peasantry thought them to be prisons, but, whatever they were, they
have long since disappeared; only the rocky site—like a granite island
rising from the surrounding level—remaining to give a reason for
Cerrig’s name. It is curious to reflect that the village of Crick in
Northants, was originally Cerrig, and that the name of Carrick, in
Ireland, has a similar meaning. Only in England, where ages ago “the
coiling serpent” (as the Welsh call the advancing Saxon) established
himself and expelled the Celt, has the word been corrupted. When Borrow
came to Cerrig-y-Druidion he says he stayed at the “Lion—whether the
white, black, red, or green Lion I do not know.” It was, in fact, the
“White Lion,” which still protrudes a battered and weather-beaten sign
over the bye-street, while the “Saracen’s Head” stands boldly upon the
main road. How he met the Italian who spoke Welsh, and on the morrow met
the Irish fiddler with the game leg and the infernal cheek, let the
pages of _Wild Wales_ relate.
XLI
The scattered cottages and old toll-house of Glasfryn bring one to
Cernioge, the place to which the milestones have been insistently
directing, since Corwen. What, the stranger wonders, is this place
(“Kernioggy” the Welsh pronounce it) that it should be thus dignified?
Well, here it is, just a farmhouse lying back from the road, with a pond
beside it under the trees, a few outbuildings, and an older toll-house
than the Glasfryn one. Not, nowadays, a very striking spot, except for
its remote solitude; yet this, in the old days of road-travel, was a
quite famous inn and posting-house, a stage between Bettws-y-Coed and
the “Druid’s Head.” The inevitable reflection here is that if it was to
such lonely places as this that travellers of old were glad to come,
exclaiming with delight as to their comfort, how discomfortable must
travelling then have been!
The older toll-gate standing close by, and early deserted, was found to
be inconveniently close to the inn, and certainly no postboy, having
been halted at the gate for toll, could in the few remaining yards drive
his patrons up to the house with the flourish and circumstance that the
times demanded. It is all very well nowadays, when even a first-class
fare between London and Holyhead only costs a trifle over two guineas,
for the traveller to leave the railway station in the decent obscurity
of a cab; but, in times when a journey between those places might cost
anything from thirty to fifty pounds sterling, travellers liked some
pomp and circumstance for that expenditure. And they generally obtained
it, for when travelling was so costly that few but the well-to-do were
found upon the roads, and when the guest at an inn was wont to drink
many bottles of the best port, it was eminently desirable he should be
received and despatched with the greatest show of consideration.
[Illustration: CERNIOGE.]
“Cernioge Mawr”—or “Great Cernioge”—was the full name of the place.
George Borrow conceived it to have derived from “Corniawg,” which means
a place with many chimneys or turrets; certainly not descriptive of the
existing house, but perhaps so in remote days when an old mansion stood
here, its gables and clustered chimneys prominent to wayfarers in this
solitude while they were yet far off, down the road.
The accommodation at Cernioge, whose sign, by the way, was the “Prince
Llewelyn,” seems to have varied considerably at different times, and
somewhat over a hundred years ago it appears to have been very bad. Some
tourists in 1795, hearing that the inn kept three chaises and a
post-coach, assumed a larder to match, but found “not a single article
of food that even hungry appetites could relish.” Another, three years
later, in speaking of the house as “a solitary inn, in the midst of a
desert, chiefly intended for the accommodation of the coaches which run
this road,” talks bitterly of the larder “in unison with the population
of the country: nothing to be had but a leg of mutton, which it seems
was tripping over the dark brown heath about three hours ago.”
By 1836, however, a change had come over the scene, for another tourist
is found to speak of the “comforts and accommodations not being
exaggerated”; but by that time its day was almost done. Another ten
years saw the road exchanged for the rail, and Cernioge became what it
is now, a farm.
Beyond this sometime inn the road descends, and “Snowdonia”—a term
invented by Pennant a hundred and thirty years ago—opens up before the
advancing explorer; a majestic disarray of tumbled peaks and lesser
hills, smeared across with trailing mists. Then, in two miles, comes the
hamlet of Pentre Voelas, with the “Voelas Arms,” a slate-fronted inn, by
the way, displaying a very elaborately blazoned coat-of-arms over its
door. “Toujours Prest” says the motto under that family scutcheon, and a
very good motto too. Let us hope it has always been descriptive of the
inn also, and that it, unlike Cernioge, was “Always Ready.”
From this point it is a seven-mile descent to Bettws-y-Coed and the Vale
of Conway: a descent beginning gradually and gently, with pleasant
scenery on either side, and culminating in a two-mile length of steep
and winding road, with towering rocks overhanging on the one hand, and a
deep wood-enshrouded valley on the other. Beside the road stands an
inscribed stone that tells how Llewelyn ap Seicyllt, an obscure Prince
of Wales, was slain in 1021.
Passing Henresea toll-house at five and a half miles from Bettws, the
rocky chasm is skirted where the Conway boils and frets and splashes
over obstructing boulders, or flows swiftly and with an unwonted
calmness over some reach of smooth-slabbed rock. At the bridge of Glan
Conway, where the road is taken across, is one of these quiet
interludes. The water glides with a silent swiftness, infinitely
impressive, over rocks clothed in moss, as it were in green velvet: the
“Lincoln green” of Robin Hood and his merry men. Deep pools, a little
aside from the main current, have the hue of dilute stout and porter; as
though a raft freighted with Barclay and Perkins’ best had made grievous
shipwreck here; shallower pools resemble brown sherry, and the sliding
main stream, threaded with gold by the glancing sunlight, resembles some
god-like brew of nectar or ambrosia, tipped into the kennel and run to
waste by the fanaticism of some celestial Wilfrid Lawson.
The Conway presently plunges quite out of sight below the mountain road
that winds on a cornice at Dinas Hill, lodged midway between the depths
and the heights, and buttressed by sturdy masonry against sliding down
into the woods whose tree-tops are seen far below. Away ahead, blocking
a long valley, the great peaked mountain of Moel Siabod rises up and
pretends to be Snowdon; imposing on many a confiding stranger with its
2,800 feet and bold outline, and discounting the real view of Snowdon,
700 feet higher, but not so effectively seen, at Capel Curig.
[Illustration: THE WATERLOO BRIDGE.]
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.
XLII
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——!
[Illustration: THE OLD CHURCH, BETTWS-Y-COED.]
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.
XLIII
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.
[Illustration: SIGN OF THE “ROYAL OAK.”]
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.
XLIV
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.
[Illustration: PONT-Y-PAIR.]
XLV