One of the great musical contests, the yearly national Eisteddfod, was
taking place that year at the neighboring town of Rhyl, but I did not go
to hear it, not being good for a week’s music without intermission.
At Llandudno there was only the music of the Pierrots and the Niggers,
which those simple-hearted English have borrowed, the one from
France and the other from these States. Their passion for our colored
minstrelsy is, in fact, something pathetic. They like Pierrots well
enough, and Pierrots _are_ amusing, there is no doubt of it; but they
dote upon Niggers, as they call them with a brutality unknown among us
except to the vulgarest white men and boys, and the negroes themselves
in moments of exasperation. Negro minstrelsy is almost extinct in the
land of its birth, but in the land of its adoption it flourishes in the
vigor of undying youth: no watering-place is genuine without it. Bands
of Niggers haunt the streets and suburbs of London, and apparently every
high day or holiday throughout the British Islands requires the stamp of
their presence as a nostrum requires the name of the patentee blown in
the bottle. The decay of their gay science began among us with the fall
of slavery, and the passing of the old plantation life; but as these
never existed in Great Britain the English version of negro minstrelsy
is not affected by their disappearance. It is like the English tradition
of the Red Skins, which has all but vanished from our superstition, but
remains as powerful as ever in the constant fancy of those islanders.
The English like their Niggers very, very black, and as their Niggers
are English they know how to gratify the national preference: such a
spread of scarlet lips over half the shining sable face is known nowhere
else in nature or art; and it must have been in despair of rivalling
their fellow-minstrels that the small American troupe we saw at
Aberystwyth went to the opposite extreme and frankly appeared as the
White Neegurs. At Llandudno the blackness of the Niggers was absolute,
so that it almost darkened the day as they passed our lodging, along the
crescent of the beach on their way to their open-air theatre beyond it.
They were followed by a joyous retinue of boys and girls, tradesmen’s
apprentices, donkeys, bath-chairs, and all the movable gladness of the
watering-place, to the music of their banjos and the sound of their
singing. They were going to a fold of the foot-hills called the Happy
Valley, bestowed on the public for such pleasures by the local nobleman
whose title is given to a principal street, and to other points and
places, I suppose out of the public pride and gratitude. It is a
charming amphitheatre overlooked by the lofty tops around, and there
on the green slope the Niggers had set up their stage, and ranged the
spectators’ chairs in the classification of first, second, and third so
dear to the British soul. There they cracked their jokes, and there they
sang their songs; the songs were newer than the jokes, but they were
both kinds delivered with a strong Cockney accent, and without an
aspirate in its place. But it was all richly acceptable to the audience,
who laughed and cheered and joined in the chorus when asked. Here,
as everywhere, the crowd delighted equally in songs of the sloppiest
sentimentality and of humor nighest indecency.
[Illustration: LLANDUDNO FROM GREAT ORME’S NECK]
On the afternoon of our visit the good lady next me could not contain
her peculiar pride in the entertainment, and confided that she knew the
leader of the troupe, who was an old friend of her husband’s. It was
indeed a time and place that invited to expansion. Nothing could have
been friendlier and livelier than the spectacle of the spectators spread
over the grassy slope, or sublimer than the rise of the hills around, or
more enchanting than the summer sea, with the large and little shipping
on it, and the passenger-steamers going and coming from Liverpool and
all the points in the region round. The two headlands which mark the
limits of the beautiful beach, Great Orme’s Head, and Little Orme’s
Head, are both of a nobleness tempered to kindliness by the soft and
manageable beauty of their forms. I never got quite so far as Little
Orme’s Head, for it was full two miles from our lodging, and a fortnight
was not long enough for the journey, but with Great Orme’s Head I was on
terms of very tolerable intimacy. A road of the excellence peculiar to
England passes round on the chin, so to speak, and though I never went
the length of it, I went far enough to know the majesty of the seaward
prospect. From the crown of the Head there is a view of perhaps all the
mountains in Wales, which from this point appears entirely composed of
mountains, blue, blue and enchantingly fair. On the townward side you
may descend into the Happy Valley, as we did, and find always a joyous
crowd listening to the Niggers. If, after some doubt of your way, you
have the favor of a nice boy and an intelligent collie dog, whom the boy
is helping herd home the evening cows of a pleasant farm, you will
have a charming glimpse of the local civilization; and perhaps you will
notice that the cows do not pay much attention to the boy, but obey the
dog implicitly; it is their Old World convention.