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BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK
A RIDING TOUR IN NORTH WALES
BY
MARTIN ROSS
AND
E. Œ. SOMERVILLE
AUTHORS OF ‘AN IRISH COUSIN,’ ‘THROUGH CONNEMARA,’
‘THE REAL CHARLOTTE,’ ETC. ETC.
_WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS
BY E. Œ. SOMERVILLE_
[Illustration: E. OE. Somerville signature]
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCXCV
ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
SHE SAT ON THE TOP OF AN “EMPRESS” COTTAGE STOVE 4
THE OBLIGING IRONMONGER 5
“HE ISS A LITTLE UNUSED TO THE TOWN, MARM” 14
PACKING THE “HOLD-ALLS” 21
THE FAT OSTLER BOY 27
THE FIRST FLIES 30
NEXT MORNING MISS O’FLANNIGAN WENT OUT SKETCHING 33
“A YOUTH OF SHOP-WALKER BEAUTY, IN THE GUISE OF A
FISHERMAN” 43
“WE CAUGHT A GLIMPSE OF A GREY BEARD AND A
TYROLEAN HAT” 45
A DARK-FACED KELT 47
“MISS O’FLANNIGAN’S HAIR CAME DOWN” 51
HE WAS DRAGGED BY MISS O’FLANNIGAN DOWN THE IMMEASURABLE
LENGTHS OF STEEP ROAD 57
THE SEXTONESS OF DOLGELLY 67
THE TOURIST AT THE GRAPES INN, MAENTYWROG 75
BETWEEN TRAWSFYNYDD AND MAENTYWROG 77
MISS O’FLANNIGAN MADE A SKETCH FROM TOM’S BACK 79
“LUNE DE MIEL” BEDDGELERT 85
THE SNOWDON GUIDE OUTSIDE THE PARLOUR WINDOW 91
HALF-WAY MISS O’FLANNIGAN EXTENDED HERSELF AT FULL
LENGTH ON SOME CONTIGUOUS BOULDERS 99
THE ASCENT OF SNOWDON 105
“THE SPEAKER PERMITTED TO HIMSELF A DRAMATIC YAWN” 111
“A COSTUME MODELLED ON THAT OF THE MOST SUMPTUOUS
TOURIST” 122
THE COOK AT RHYDDU 124
THE ASCENT OF THE DEANS 132
“TWO OR THREE STARTLED, AUDACIOUS PONY FACES PEERING
ROUND A PILE OF BOULDERS” 133
“WE RETIRED INTO THE RAIN” 142
“I CLUTCHED THE SURFACE OF THE ROAD” 149
“THE PARAPET OF THE WOODED PRECIPICE, FROM WHOSE
EDGE WE WERE LOOKING BACK” 157
“THREE TALL WOMEN, DRESSED ALIKE IN WIDOWS’ WEEDS” 162
A FINAL SALUTE 183
VISITORS’ BOOK 186
[Illustration: BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK.]
CHAPTER I.
“Well, I’m not exactly sure,” said the ironmonger, gazing out into the
glaring street through a doorway festooned with tin mugs and gridirons,
“but I think it was the gentleman as played the kettle-drum that rode
him.” His eyes seemed to follow some half-remembered pageant, though
outwardly they rested on the languid salutations of the saddler’s dog
and the hotel collie on the opposite pavement.
Miss O’Flannigan, who looked and was too hot for conversation, remained
impassive where she sat, on the top of an “Empress” cottage stove, with
her gaze fixed on the zinc pails that hung like Chinese lanterns from
the ceiling.
“Unfortunately we shall not take a kettle-drum,” I replied,
hesitatingly.
“Well, no, of course,” admitted the ironmonger; “but I assure you that a
pony that’s bin in the yeomanry band won’t be partikler as to
traction-engines or sech. You ladies could play any instrument when
ridin’ ’im.”
Miss O’Flannigan laughed sardonically from the “Empress” stove, and Mr
Griffiths’ attitude of mild bewilderment changed to wounded dignity.
“Perhaps Mr Williams, the chemist, could oblige you with sech animals as
you require,” he said, with the stiffness of one of his own swing-door
hinges; “but there isn’t sech a cob in Welshpool as what my cob is.”
We temporised with Mr Griffiths and proceeded to the chemist’s, noticing
as we did so a determination of the inhabitants of Welshpool to their
shop doors, while the loafers round the stone pedestal of the gas lamp
that seems to form the focus of Welshpool life, turned to look after us
like sunflowers to the sun. Further away than ever went the memory of
the thud of ‘bus-horses’ feet on wood pavement, the hot glitter of
harness and livery buttons at Hyde Park Corner, the precarious dive
across Piccadilly, and all the other environments of yesterday. The heat
of noon lay here like a spell on the street, and Welshpool, for the most
part, sat in its shady back parlours in comfortable lethargy.
Like the other shops, Mr Williams, the chemist’s, was cool and empty,
with the air of a place where it is always dinner-hour hanging drowsily
over it. Indeed, the pimpled cheek of the apprentice--why are pimples
the common wear of chemists’ assistants?--was still inflated by a
mouthful when he made his appearance, and a sound as of dumpling impeded
the voice in which he told us that Mr Williams had a pony, and that the
mistress would speak to us herself.
“Mr Williams was away,” explained Mrs Williams, “drawing teeth and
measuring for new ones; and y’know what a job that is,” she concluded,
examining Miss O’Flannigan’s smile with the eye of a connoisseur. Miss
O’Flannigan relapsed somewhat abruptly into gloom.
[Illustration: _She sat on the top of an “Empress” cottage stove._]
[Illustration: _The obliging ironmonger._]
“I have a pair of real little beauties,” went on the chemist’s wife,
beaming at us between minarets of Eno’s Fruit Salt and Mellin’s Food,
“just the thing for London work. I’ll have them round at the hotel for
you in ten minutes.”
We were conscious of social shrinkage as the work for which we required
the ponies was explained; a fortnight’s road work in Wales, with the
proviso that the animals would have to carry packs--“large packs,” added
Miss O’Flannigan--held a suggestion of bagmen, not to say tinkers. But
Mrs Williams’ stable sank unhesitatingly to the level of our needs. She
had yet another pony, three years old, thirteen hands high, steady, “and
bin ridden with the Yeomanry,” she ended, reassuringly.
From the eye that Miss O’Flannigan cast upon me I knew that her mind
was, like mine, occupied with a vision of the Yeomanry mounted, like
cyclists, on “dwarf-safeties,” and we ventured to ask whether the St
Bernard, whose eyes gleamed from the dark corner of the shop where he
lay, pantingly protruding a tongue like a giant slice of ham, had been
ridden during the training. The jest had a high success, and a suetty
giggle from somewhere near the open door of the parlour apprised us
that this gem of Irish humour was not lost on the apprentice.
Before we returned to the hotel several things had been accomplished. We
were possessors of the chemist’s pony for a fortnight; we had bakingly
retraced our steps to the ironmonger, and by dint of remaining immutable
on the top of the cottage stove, had made a like bargain with him; and
we had interested Welshpool more whole-souledly than any event since the
election and the last circus. Coolness and peace awaited us at the Royal
Oak Inn, with its thick walls and polished floors, and its associations
of the old coaching days, wonderfully striking to an Irish eye,
accustomed to connect antiquity with dirt and dilapidation. We have
nothing hale and honourable like these hostelries, with their centuries
of landlord ancestry: we have the modern hotel after its kind, and also
the unspeakable pothouse, with creeping things after their kind; but
antiquity, if such there be, is a poor, musty ghost, lingering among
broken furniture and potsherds, to sadden the eyes of such as can
discern it.
Ireland seemed a long way off, while we lunched largely and languidly on
fruit and cream, and wondered how we were going to ride through four
counties in heat of this kind. A sense of inadequacy grew upon us like a
slight indigestion, or, perhaps, it came to us in that guise, and the
fussy clatter of ponies’ hoofs in the yard below had a ring in it of the
inexorable. Miss O’Flannigan sharpened a pencil and began to make notes,
evidently to restore her moral tone,--notes about Welshpool, she said,
antiquities, and such things; but as subsequently these proved to
consist of the entry, “Saturday, June 10, ‘Black and White,’ lunch,
Academy, headache, tea, tried on, &c.,” with a bulbous profile of the
ironmonger, her method of working back to ancient history must have been
mystic and gradual.
While we thus sat dubious of ourselves and all things, expecting to hear
that the chemist and the ironmonger had alike thought better of it,
there was a shuffling of many feet in the hall, and the door opened to
its widest to admit an immense old lady, advancing with the solemnity of
a hearse, while two daughters of some fifty-five or sixty hard-won years
moved beside her like pall-bearers, supporting each a weighty elbow on
their lean arms. A third daughter walked behind, carrying a white dog of
the Spitz breed. As a foundation-stone sinks to its resting-place, so,
and with a like deliberation, was the old lady lowered into the largest
and, indeed, the only possible chair; one daughter shut the window,
another rang the bell, and a meal of fried beef-steak, onions, and
bottled stout was ordered. The temperature of the room seemed
perceptibly to rise, and Miss O’Flannigan and I communed by glances as
to whether we had energy to get up and go away.
“Eh! it’s warm, vera warm,” said the old lady, addressing the company in
general, but ceaselessly examining Miss O’Flannigan and me with eyes as
blue and bright as those of any heroine of inexpensive fiction; “it
mak’s a body p’spire vera free, that it dew. But ye dew enjoy it----”
She spoke with a Yorkshire accent as broad as the foot which, in its
cloth shoe and white stocking, was handsomely displayed below her skirt
hem--and we apologise for probable mistakes in the reproduction by an
Irish hand of that sturdy, grumbling drawl.
“Ah’m come all the way oop fra’ Yorkshire for a too-er,” she went on;
“t’ yoong folks like a change,” she indicated her grey-haired
attendants, “but Wales is a bit dool when ye come out for a holiday. Eh,
Scarbro’s the gay, bonny place! Eh, but ye miss a treat if ye don’t see
Scarbro!”
She held us with her glittering eye, and the eulogy of Scarborough
proceeded with the burr of a noontide bee, by promenades, hotels, family
histories of friends who kept lodgings in the best terraces, and many
other highways and byways; while the three daughters and the white dog
sat and filled in the mesmeric effect, immovable as scenery. A message
that the ponies were in the yard came at last to our relief, like good
news from a far country, and with the activity of a hunting morning we
made our exit in the wake of the waitress, who, at the Royal Oak, as at
many other Welsh inns, has worthily replaced the waiter and the
cheerless glory of his evening suit. The needed fillip had been given;
the present moment, with its release and its ponies, sparkled suddenly,
and that Wales which the old Yorkshire woman found so “dool” by
comparison with Scarborough, lay awaiting us in restored glamour.
The large, clean yard, with its respectable coaching and fox-hunting
associations, was acquiring a new experience. The loafers had detached
themselves from the lamp-post, the tide of commerce had flowed from the
shops to stand round the stable doors, and discuss in the guttural,
shrewish Welsh tongue what manner of she-yeomanry they might be who thus
requisitioned Welshpool ponies for their own undivulged purposes. There
was a dead silence as we came forth, hobbling and waddling in our
fettering safety habit-skirts--a silence, as we hope, of admiration, but
we have not inquired into it. The ponies were there--a bay of a little
over fourteen hands, a chestnut dun of a hand smaller, both ill-fitted
by their big saddles, both possessed of a generous contour that told of
long summer days of revelling in the young grass, and summer nights of
serious gobbling of it when the flies were asleep. Mr Williams the
chemist, and Mr Griffiths the ironmonger, stood at their heads, and
began a species of funeral oration upon their virtues, and upon the
pangs of parting from them; while an attendant, with his knee against
the side of the bay, and his head buried under the flap of the saddle,
exerted what strength was in him to overcome the pangs of meeting
exhibited by the girths and their buckles: nothing remained for us
except to mount, and to trust that we should be spared disaster in the
eyes of Welshpool.
Miss O’Flannigan asked the name of the bay pony, and having ascertained
that it was Tom, commanded that he should be brought to the
mounting-block. Tom, a three-year-old of precocious gravity, erstwhile
bearer of the kettle-drum and possessed of the serious good looks of one
of Mrs Sherwood’s curates, reluctantly approached the hoary limestone
block, with a horrified eye fixed on Miss O’Flannigan as she awaited him
in her safety skirt. Persuasion failed to bring him within three yards
of a garment which, as he doubtless expressed it, would have made Mrs
Sherwood turn in her grave; and Miss O’Flannigan was finally pitched on
to his back from an indefinite spot near the stable door, whither, with
one foot in the stirrup, she had hopped in pursuit of her steed. It was
damping to find that the name of the chemist’s pony was Tommy, but we
felt sure that in the first few minutes of our first journey we should
think of something clever with which to re-christen both. We
subsequently spent several hours of several journeys in this endeavour,
but their baptismal names have not as yet been improved on.
“He iss a little unused to the town, marm,” said the chemist’s
stable-boy, as Tommy submitted with unexpected calm to the infliction of
my weight; “but he iss goot--yes, indeed!”
[Illustration: _“He iss a little unused to the town, marm._”]
The next moment I was pursuing Miss O’Flannigan up the street like the
conventional pattern of a flash of lightning. Happily, the houses,
carts, barrels, and other objects possessed of terrors for Tommy
alternated on either side with tolerable regularity, so that one shy
acted as a corrective to the last; but these advantages were denied to
Miss O’Flannigan. Her Tom fled along before me, cantering with the fore
and trotting widely with the hind legs, and making startling attempts to
turn in at unexpected side entrances--attempts that were only frustrated
by serious effort on the part of his rider.
It was somewhere during this rush through Welshpool and its environs,
while the saddles rolled and our faces blazed, that we were conscious of
passing a building like a Methodist chapel, from which came men’s and
women’s voices, singing in harmony. It was only a moment’s hearing, but
it lived, ringing and resonant, in our ears, and is notable still to us
as our first experience of Welsh voices. When, at sunset, we returned
dishevelled and hairpinless, but masters of the situation, Miss
O’Flannigan had remembered several quotations from the poets to express
the effect of these keen, strong voices flung out into the sleepy
afternoon. I, regarding the heat-stained coats of the Tommies and Miss
O’Flannigan’s back-hair, could remember nothing except the conversation
of two men at a race meeting in Galway--
“Did ye see them skelping round by Glan corner?”
“I did not, faith.”
“Then ye seen nothing.”