farmer will support, for the island is a quite celebrated dairying
district; and the best of butter and milk are not usually obtainable
from barren wildernesses. From one or other of the numerous tor-like
granite-crowned hillocks that plentifully stud the Anglesey landscape,
and give it a close resemblance to Cornwall, fertile farms and numerous
scattered white farmsteads and cottages are seen. They paint prosperity
in the mind’s eye, small though many of the holdings and cottages be,
and although in a proportion of them lives a mining class. These
whitewashed granite cottages and the stone walls that fence the fields
render the resemblance to Cornwall very close: and no one yet has been
found to apply such disparaging remarks as those quoted above to that
county. As in Cornwall, too, the myrtle, the hydrangea, and the
tree-fuchsia flourish all the year round in the cottagers’ gardens, and
few sights are so lovely as that of a lowly, granite one-storeyed
cottage, its walls and garden-walls alike whitewashed, and its garden
luxuriating with the myriad red and purple blooms of the fuchsia, the
pale mauve or pink blossoms of the hydrangea, or the more delicate
petals of the myrtle. Wind-swept the hills of Anglesey are in winter,
but in the warm and sheltered valleys these alien creatures of the
garden live unharmed.
Nor even is the isle treeless. So little so is it that the pine-woods of
Menai village might reasonably for their beauty and extent be envied by
Bournemouth itself; while peculiarly characteristic of Anglesey are the
strange groups of trees, looking like lineal descendants of Druidical
groves, that are everywhere to be seen; generally very line umbrageous
trees, and often hiding in their midst some old mansion or farmstead of
the larger kind.
LIV
The first two miles into Anglesey command the whole range of the
Snowdonian mountains; but nothing could be more monumentally
striking than the Anglesey Column that shoots up from the wooded,
rock-strewn hill of Craig-y-Dinas on the way to the village of
“Llanfairpwllgwyngyll,” as a board on the post office amiably
shortens that terrific place-name. The column, itself 100 feet in
height, designed in the Doric style, rises from a crest 260 feet
above the waters of the Straits, and commemorates the first Marquis
of Anglesey; he who, as “Lord Paget” and “Lord Uxbridge,” warred
with Wellington in the Peninsula and at Waterloo, where he left a
leg, shot off towards the close of that famous victory. He was
created Marquis of Anglesey three weeks after the battle, and lived
to enjoy his title until 1854. He saw the column rise, long years
before, but the bronze statue of him was not erected until 1860. It
represents him in hussar uniform, standing with contemplative gaze
across the water, towards England. The curious old uniform and the
green stains with which the storms and rains of over forty years
have coloured the metal give the bronze Marquis quite an awful
Arabian Nights kind of blood-curdling uncanniness in certain
conditions of light and shade. It is possible to make closer
acquaintance with him by climbing the staircase within the column,
and to see from that eyrie the family seat of Plas Newydd down
below, by the waterside—the name of it latterly altered by the
present Marquis, of jewel-robbery fame, to “Anglesey Castle.” It was
there that George IV. stayed in 1821, and heard of the death of his
Queen. Doubtless the bluff Marquis congratulated him on the event,
for he was no adherent of Caroline, having, indeed, the worst
opinion of that more or less injured lady. Time was, indeed, when
his house in London had been assailed by a mob clamouring in her
favour. They insisted upon his drinking the Queen’s health, and he
did. “The Queen,” he said, with bitter sarcasm, “and may all your
wives be like her!” What more could champions desire? Yet it is
possible that they were not satisfied.
[Illustration: THE ANGLESEY COLUMN.]
The full name of the village that now comes in view at a bend of the
road presents an unparalleled array of grotesquely assorted letters to
the bewildered Saxon. It is without doubt by far the longest place-name
in the United Kingdom, and can probably challenge the whole world. It is
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerchwyrndrobwlltysiliogogogoch. The stationers
and booksellers of Bangor and Menai Village sell for the modest price of
one penny what is described as the “Englishman’s cure for lock-jaw”—a
printed sheet with this fearsome word divided into its proper syllables,
and the translation into English underneath. Enterprising tourists, at
pains to master the pronunciation of Welsh, go forth into Anglesey, and,
having caught a Welshman who can be made to understand a little English,
parade their version; but when the native can be induced to pronounce it
at all the name sounds very different. He generally, however, calls it
“Llanfairpwllgwyngyll”; while the signposts, not provided with longer
arms than usual, are models of compression, with “Llanfair P G”; the
London and North-Western Railway recklessly naming the station
“Llanfair,” careless of the fact that Llanfair, meaning “St. Mary’s
Church,” is as common a Welsh place-name as Jones is among Welshmen.
But this astonishing name, like most others in the Principality, is (or
was originally) descriptive, and contained almost as much local
information as a guide-book. Done into English it means “the church of
Saint Mary in the hollow of white hazel, near to the rapid whirlpool of
Saint Tysilio and a red cave.” The church of St. Mary may, indeed, be
found in the deep hollow at the foot of an incredibly steep lane and by
the shores of the Menai, where whirlpools of sorts are created by the
tides that set so strongly through the Straits, and rise and fall over
twenty feet; but the red cave is not now to be discovered, and they are
oaks and elms rather than white hazels that to-day enshroud the hollow.
Llanfair church has been rebuilt and is uninteresting. In its
churchyard, close to the shore and almost in the shadow of the great
Britannia Tubular Bridge that carries the mail trains between Anglesey
and the mainland, one may find the decaying monument, overgrown with
bushes, erected to the memory of fifteen men who lost their lives on the
bridge works between 1846 and 1850. The bridge itself, “that ’ere great,
long, ugly iron thing,” as the coachmen whom it drove off the last
length of road called it, bulks large from this point of view, with an
irrevocable air in its straight, clear-cut lines and massiveness, and a
stern and solemn grandeur—like that of some Egyptian monument; in sharp
contrast with the Menai Suspension Bridge, spanning the waters in the
distance like the product of some fairy wand.
[Illustration: THE BRITANNIA BRIDGE.]
It was in April 1846 that the foundation stone of this great structure
on the then Chester and Holyhead Railway was laid, on the Britannia Rock
in the middle of the Straits. The rock itself obtained its name from the
“Britannia,” a vessel wrecked some years before at this point, and in
its turn suggested the very appropriate title of the bridge. The width
of the Straits, here about 1,100 feet, presented an even graver problem
to Robert Stephenson than had been faced by Telford, over twenty years
before, for not merely a suspended road-bridge, but a rigid structure to
sustain the burden of trains weighing 200 tons had to be designed. The
Admiralty, jealous to preserve the navigation, forbade an arched bridge
of any less height than a clear hundred feet above high water, and
moreover refused to allow the interruption of the passage for a single
day during the construction. Arches were out of the question, and
eventually Stephenson resolved what was then the novelty of a bridge on
the beam principle, consisting of rectangular iron tubes supported at
intervals by giant masonry piers. There are three of these supports: the
Britannia pier and tower, midway, and one on either shore. The two
spans, or main tubes as they are called, across the water are each 472
feet in length, and that of the side spans 230 feet each; the whole
length of the bridge 1841 feet, the weight of iron 10,000 tons, and the
cost £602,000. The idea of this vast mass of riveted iron being elastic,
seems grotesque, but when Stephenson designed the bridge he had
sufficient forethought to allow for the expanding and contracting
properties of iron under extremes of heat and cold. This precaution for
securing free movement of the tubes, that would otherwise have broken
down the supporting piers, took the form of allowing their ends to rest
on cast-iron rollers and balls in a clear space left in the masonry.
Experience has shown the expansion and contraction to be fully twelve
inches. The first train ran through on March 5th, 1850, completing the
present railway route from London to Holyhead; and although the weight
of locomotives and trains has doubled since then, the bridge still
serves its purpose.
A near sight of the Bridge is generally sought for, and when one has
climbed the railway embankment and walked along the line to its gloomy
entrance, it can scarce be denied that the expedition is worth the
while. There are the two parallel tubes for up and down lines, and above
them the masonry of the Anglesey tower; on it deeply carved the name of
Robert Stephenson and the date. On either side the colossal granite
figure of an Egyptian lion crouches on its pedestal, guarding the
approach, and with sphinx-like inscrutable gaze seeming to bide the
coming of an appointed day. The impression of weird mysticism they give
at twilight; the inky blackness of the two railway tubes in between; the
evening mists gathering over the Snowdon heights in the background; and
the last rays of the setting sun flushing the Britannia tower with a
dusky red, is indescribable. Suddenly as one gazes, a hollow rumbling is
heard, gradually increasing until with a hellish clang and the
reverberation of a million echoes, a train dashes out, bringing with it
a taste of the sooty air that lingers in the tubes, the product of fifty
years, and abominably like that of an unswept chimney.
But the curiosities of Llanfairpwllgwyngyll are not yet exhausted. One
other remains, in the shape of a colossal granite statute of Lord
Nelson, claimed to have been “designed” by Lord Clarence Paget, placed
ridiculously on an undersized pedestal on the sea-weedy rocks by the
Menai. It is, as a matter of fact, an exact copy of the well-known
statue crowning the Nelson Column in Trafalgar Square, with empty sleeve
pinned across the breast and cocked hat on head. Here, lonely in a
meadow, beside the water he stands, with a very fine view of nothing in
particular, and looking as though left to be called for. The curious who
seek to know all about it may make the circuit of the slippery rocks and
find the date 1873, and, facing the water, Nelson’s famous signal,
“England expects that every man will do his duty.” But why the statue
should find a place here, in so remote a spot, is not revealed.
LV
From the old toll-house at Llanfairpwllgwyngyll to Holyhead it is only
twenty-one miles, but there are no fewer than five toll-houses on the
way, all in as good and sufficient repair as though they had only
retired from business yesterday. And indeed it is not so long since the
gates were swept out of existence, and this remote corner of the country
freed from these irritating taxes on the farmers and villagers. It is a
curious fact that to the Holyhead Road belongs the distinction of having
been under the control of turnpike trusts for a longer period than any
road in the kingdom. That portion of it lying in Bedfordshire and Bucks
was the first road placed in the care of trustees, instead of in the
hands of the parish surveyors, and is described in the Act of 1706,
handing it over to the new jurisdiction, as “now and for many years past
the common post-road towards Ireland.” The greater number of the gates
were swept away from 1860 to 1870, but Shropshire was not rid of them
until November 1st, 1883, nor Denbighshire and Merioneth until a year
later; while, under the Annual Turnpike Continuance Act of 1884, the
Carnarvonshire gates levied toll until November 1st, 1890, and by the
Act of that year the Anglesey gates were continued until November 1st,
1895.
[Illustration: NEAR MONA INN.]
[Illustration: LLANGRISTIOLUS.]
At Gaerwen village the road descends to Pentre Berw, the “Holland Arms,”
and the snipe-haunted Malldraeth Marsh; rising again to where the church
and isolated cottages of Llangristiolus stand overlooking a vast expanse
of mountains, marsh, and sea, from a curious rocky bluff, cleft by a
huge fissure; the effect, perhaps, of some prehistoric earthquake. The
name of Llangristiolus, grotesque though it sounds, means the “church of
the most worshipful Christ.” “Mona,” two miles beyond, the place
mentioned on all the Anglesey milestones, is—or was when such things
were—the half-way house between Bangor and Holyhead. The inn, for such
it was, is referred to by Telford in his reports to the Holyhead Road
Commissioners as having been a part of the work undertaken, and the cost
of building it is included in the estimates. Never anything but ugly, it
is a melancholy enough place in these days of railway travel: remote in
the middle of Anglesey, and now a farmhouse, encircled with trees.
Gwalchmai, by comparison with Mona, is a veritable metropolis, with
inns, aye, and shops, and a post-office. Between this and Bryngwran, a
stone-walled enclosure in midst of hillside fields marks the spot where
some one has chosen to be buried. Why that solitary place was selected
is hid from the Saxon by the Welsh inscription on the tombstone.
Now comes the village of Caer Ceiliog, with windmills and toll-house
overlooking the descent from Anglesey into Holy Island. When the gate
was first erected the Road Commissioners experienced some little trouble
at the hands of a certain Reverend Mr. Griffiths, who had objections
against paying tolls. It seems that when the parish had made all the
necessary legal arrangements with the Commissioners for the new road
constructed just here, the authority required for stopping up the old
one was forgotten and not applied for; so when the old way was abandoned
and fenced in, compelling travellers to pass through the gate and pay
toll, the Reverend Mr. Griffiths, learned in the law, pulled down the
obstructions and passed down the old road, toll free. Naturally, the
neighbours all followed his example, and the horrified lessee of the
tolls, who had bought them at auction for the year, saw his income
going. The trouble had to be remedied by a special Act.
[Illustration: CAER CEILIOG.]
From Caer Ceiliog the crest of Holyhead Mountain, ten miles distant, is
seen; a dark-blue mass suspended, to all appearance, in mid-air, like
some fabled scene of _Arabian Nights_ adventures. It is the original
Holy Head; in Welsh “Pen Caer Cybi,” or the Head of Cybi’s town—Cybi
himself a Welsh saint who somewhere about the year 500 founded a college
where Holyhead town now stands. That rugged mountain rises from the sea
to a height of 719 feet, and is rarely free from the dense sea-fogs that
make the neighbourhood of Holyhead so dangerous to mariners. The billowy
vapours, often leaving the upper part of the mountain clear, create this
startlingly complete illusion of a suspended island, and dispose the
stranger to come into Holyhead expectant of marvels.
Coming, thus expectant, down from Caer Ceiliog, the old road is crossed
at Valley, a modern village with a railway station. A quarter of a mile
beyond, road and rail go side by side across the Stanley Sands, dividing
Anglesey and Holy Island: the road on Telford’s great mile-long
embankment and the rail on the left, hid from sight by a dull masonry
wall some sixteen or twenty feet high. The scene is still as melancholy
as it was when Borrow tramped past, with the broad channel a waste of
sand at low tide, and a furious salt-water stream at the flood, rushing
with great force through the arches in the middle of the embankment. The
winds that boom and buzz across the flat shores and rank grasses, and
the waves lapping about the seaweed and rotting timbers of ancient
wrecks, give the place a sinister and mournful air.
At the Holy Island end of the embankment stands the last toll-house, and
thenceforward the town of Holyhead begins.
LVI
This destination of the Holyhead Road, its sponsor and reason for
existence, makes a very sorry ending to these two hundred and sixty
miles of picturesque and historic scenery. It is a squalid little town,
set down, to all appearance, at the edge of the known world, and only
existing on the traffic of its harbour. Described by Swift so long ago
as 1727 as “a scurvy, unprovided, comfortless place,” and in Ogilby’s
_Roads_, of 1749, as “consisting chiefly of houses for the entertainment
of such persons as are bound for Ireland, or just arrived thence,” it
has not advanced far in all the years that have passed since those
unflattering descriptions were penned.
Swift, to be sure, came to Holyhead in a fury. When, however, was he not
possessed of that “_saeva indignatio_” referred to even in his epitaph?
He had come by Penmynydd, where he had hoped to see Owain Tudor’s tomb,
but missed the place by the knavery of the guide, who wanted to be
moving on. Wearied with riding, he then rested two hours at Llangefni.
“Then I went on, very weary, but in a few miles more Wat’s horse lost
his two fore-shoes, so the horse had to limp after us. The Guide was
less concerned than I. In a few miles more my horse lost a fore-shoe,
and could not go on the rocky ways. I walked about two miles to spare
him. It was Sunday, and no smith to be got. At last there was a smith in
the way; we left the Guide to shoe the horses, and walked to a Hedge Inn
three miles from Holyhead. There I stayed an hour with no ale to be
drunk. A boat offered, and I went by sea, and sailed in it to Holyhead.
The Guide came about the same time. I dined with an old innkeeper, Mrs.
Welsh, about three, on a loyn of mutton, very good, but the worst ale in
the world, and no wines, for the day before I came here a vast number
went to Ireland, after having drunk out all the wine. There was stale
beer, and I tryed a receit of Oyster shells, which I got powdered on
purpose, but it was good for nothing. I walked on the rocks in the
evening, and then went to bed, and dreamt that I had got twenty falls
from my horse.”
Swift lay here for seven days waiting for the packet to sail. On the
28th of September it set forth, but was obliged by stress of weather to
return, and it does not appear how much longer he was detained. In these
empty days of waiting he wrote the verses:—
Lo, here I sit at holy head,
With muddy ale and mouldy bread ;
I’m fastened both by wind and tide,
I see the ships at anchor ride.
All Christian vittals stink of fish,
I’m where my enemyes would wish.
Convict of lies is ev’ry sign,
The Inn has not one drop of wine,
The Captain swears the sea’s too rough—
(He has not passengers enough.)
And thus the Dean is forc’d to stay.
Till others come to help the pay.
The room smoked, but it was too cold to be without a fire. “There is,”
he writes, “or should be, a Proverb here:”
When Mrs. Welsh’s chimney smokes,
’Tis a sign she’ll keep her folks;
But when of smoke the room is clear,
It is a sign we shan’t stay here.
Thus his notes run on: “Dined like a king all alone for seven days.
Whoever would wish to live long should live here, for a day is longer
than a week, and, if the weather be foul, as long as a fortnight. Pray
pity poor Wat, for he is called Dunce, Puppy, and Liar five hundred
times an hour; and yet he means not ill, for he means nothing.” Wat he
ordered to wipe his wet gown and cassock, and he did so with a meal-bag,
with the result that it was caked thickly with a kind of meal-plaster.
When at last the Dean did leave Holyhead, he carried with him memories
not likely to be speedily effaced.
Wesley had something like these experiences in 1748, when he was
storm-bound for eleven days. He spent the time mainly in preaching, but
for all practical purposes might just as well have stayed within doors,
for he laments that his congregations did not understand English. It is
difficult to decide whose was the greater foolishness—that of the
preacher who preached in a strange tongue, or that of those who listened
to words they could not comprehend. Two years later he was at Holyhead,
detained for three days, and then, obliged by storms to return for
another eight, he “expounded the story of Dives and Lazarus to a room
full of men daubed with gold and silver.” _They_, at any rate, seemed to
understand, for they “took it in ill part, and went away railing and
blaspheming.” These “sons of Belial,” as he calls them, returned, and
would have seriously injured him, but that he was locked in the room.
They were at last dispersed by a courageous maidservant, who threw a
bucket of water over them.
No longer is it necessary for travellers to wait shivering for days
before winds and weather permit of the Channel being crossed. They
arrive nowadays for the most part at dark and ungodly hours, at railway
terminus or harbour, and are at once whisked away to Dublin or to
London. Some may make acquaintance with the Railway Hotel, but, beyond
that, Holyhead merely stands for a name and an hour in the time-tables.
It was different before the steam packets began from July 1st, 1819, to
make the sixty-four miles passage in 7½ hours. To wait a week at
Holyhead before the crossing could be made was no unusual experience in
the old sailing days, when a good average passage took fifteen hours,
and a very bad one more than double the time. Even the journey by
steamer has been cut down to half its duration, and now takes only from
3½ to 4 hours, so that the passengers who halt at Holyhead are few and
far between, and the town lives only in an indirect way on the traffic
between the kingdoms. It remains no more than a fringe of hilly, gaunt,
and aimless streets gathered round the harbour and railway station, with
the old church of St. Cybi in their midst, its central tower surmounted
by what has been described as “a low, flat spire.” The traveller will
doubtless be as eager to see this curiosity of a flat spire as he would
to discover a round square, a square angle, or anything else equally
unknown to Euclid.
LVII
There still stands, at the entrance to the Pier, the granite archway
erected to commemorate the landing of George IV. in 1821. Severely
classical, in the Doric sort, it resembles (save that it is not so large
and not so black) the funereal entrance to the Euston terminus of the
London and North-Western Railway. It bears an inscription in
Welsh—“Cof-Adail i Ymweliad y Brenin Gior y IV. ag ynys fôn. Awst VII.,
MDCCCXXI.”—which those whose Pentecostal attainments render it possible
may translate.
Holyhead was a proud town that day, August 7th, when George IV. landed,
on his trip to Ireland. He had come, aboard the yacht _Royal George_,
round by St. George’s Channel, escorted by a squadron, and spent five
days in the Isle of Anglesey, detained by contrary winds. “His Majesty,”
says a contemporary report, “was struck with admiration at the
appearance of the town”; and we in our turn might well be struck with
astonishment, were it not that modern monarchs are the best of actors
and can smile approval to order.
But, in spite of this admiration, the King did not stop at Holyhead.
That battered warrior, the Marquis of Anglesey, took him across the
island to Plas Newydd. The next day died Queen Caroline, at Hammersmith,
and the news by incredible efforts reached the squadron lying off
Holyhead the day after. The King was freed at last from the wife he
hated, and his feeling towards her was sufficiently marked by the facts
that the squadron did not fire the salute of minute-guns usual on such
occasions, and that the trip to Ireland, with its attendant banquets and
rejoicings, was not interrupted.
The winds that could in those days detain a fleet, and kept the King’s
yacht and his escort swinging for days idly at their anchorage, made a
vast difference to Holyhead. The _Times_ correspondent on that occasion
tells how scarce provisions grew, and to what extravagant prices
ordinary articles of food rose. Eggs, he wails, were sixpence each, and
for neither love nor money could he obtain any Welsh mutton for his
dinner. He was, accordingly, truly thankful when the squadron sailed and
plenty reigned once more. The King left, however, before his escort. He
had observed how the Dublin new steam-packets crossed, irrespective of
weather, and took passage on the 12th, aboard the _Lightning_, named
afterwards, in honour of the occasion, the _Royal George the Fourth_.