IV

From another side we had ascended the mountain by the tram line which

climbs it to the top, and at every twist and turn lavishes some fresh

loveliness of landscape upon your vision. Near by, we noticed many

depressions and sinkages in the ground, and a conversable man in

well-oiled overalls who joined us at a power-house, said it was from the

giving way of the timbers in the disused copper-mines. Were they very

old, we asked, and he said they had not been worked for forty years; but

this, when you come to think of the abandoned Roman mines yet deeper

in the hill, was a thing of yesterday. The man in the oily overalls

had evidently not come to think of it, but he was otherwise a very

intelligent mechanic, and of a hospitable mind, like all the rest of our

chance acquaintance in Great Britain. I do not know that I like to think

of those Roman mines myself, where it is said the sea now surges back

and forth: they must have been worked by British slaves, who may be

fancied climbing purblindly out when the legions left Britain, and not

joining very loudly in the general lamentation at their withdrawal,

but probably tempering the popular grief with the reflection that the

heathen Saxons could not be much worse.

The hill-top was covered with the trippers who seem perpetually

holidaying on their island, and who were always kind to their children

when they had them, and to each other when they had not. They were

commonly in couples, very affectionate and inoffensively young. They

wandered about, and from time to time went and had tea at one of the

tea-houses which are always at hand over there. Except the view there

was not much to see; the ways were rough; now and then you came to a

pink cottage or a white one where the peasantry, again, sold tea. At one

place in our walk over the occiput of Great Orme’s Head into the Happy

Valley in its bosom, we fell a prey to a conspiracy of boys selling

mignonette: it appeared to be a mignonette trust, or syndicate,

confining its commerce to that flower.

I have no other statistics to offer concerning business on Great Orme’s

Head, or indeed in all Llandudno. One of the chief industries seemed to

be coaching, for a score of delightful places are to be easily reached

by the stages always departing from the hotels on the Parade. There was

no particularly noticeable traffic in leek, though I suppose that as I

did not see the national emblem in any Welshman’s hat--to be sure, it

was not St. David’s Day--it must have been boiling in every Welshman’s

pot. I am rather ashamed to be joining, even at this remove, in the poor

English joking which goes on about the Welsh, quite as much as about the

Scotch, the Irish having become too grave a matter for joking. There

are little burlesque manuals making merry with the language and its

agglutinative prolixity, which I shall certainly not quote; and

there are postal-cards representing Welsh dames drinking tea in tall

witch-hats, with one of them saying: “I wass enjoying myself shocking,

look you.” There was, of course, nothing serious in this joking; the

Welsh, who have all the small commerce in their hands, gladly sold the

manuals and postals, and I did not see one Englishman laughing over

them.

The Saeseneg visitors rather amused themselves with the sea and the

resources of the beach and the bathing. As contrasted with the visitors

at Aberystwyth, so distinctly in the earlier and later stages of

love-making, I should say those at Llandudno were domestic: fathers and

mothers who used the long phalanx of bathing-machines appointed to their

different sexes, and their children who played in the sand. I thought

the children charming, and I contributed tuppence to aid in the repair

of the sand castle of two nice little boys which had fallen down; it now

seems strange that I should have been asked for a subscription, but in

England subscriptions spare nobody; though I wonder if two such nice

little boys would have come to me for money in America. Besides the

entertainment of lying all afternoon on the beach, or sitting beside it

in canopied penny chairs, there was more active diversion for all ages

and sexes in the circus prevailing somewhere in the background,

and advertising itself every afternoon by a procession of six young

elephants neatly carrying each in his trunk the tail of the elephant

before him. There were also the delightful shows of the amusement pier

where one could go and see Pierrots to one’s heart’s content, if one can

ever get enough of Pierrots; I never can.

[Illustration: THE GREAT PIER, LLANDUDNO]

Besides all these daytime things there were two very good theatres, at

one of which I saw Mr. Barrie’s _Little Mary_ given better than in New

York (that was easy), and at the other a comic opera, with a bit of

comedy or tragedy in a stage-box, not announced in the bills. The

audience was otherwise decorous enough to be composed of Welsh Baptist

elders and their visiting friends, but in this box there were two young

men in evening dress, scuffling with a young woman in dinner décolletée,

and what appeared to be diamonds in her ears. They were trying,

after what seems the convention of English seaside flirtation, to get

something out of her hand, and allowing her successfully to resist them;

and their playful contest went on through a whole act to the distraction

of the spectators, who did not seem greatly scandalized. It suggested

the misgiving that perhaps bad people came to Llandudno for their summer

outing as well as good; but there was no interference by the police or

the management with this robust side-show. Were the actors in the scene,

all or any of them, too high in rank to be lightly molested in their

lively event; or were they too low? Perhaps they were merely tipsy,

but all the same their interlude was a contribution to the evening’s

entertainment which would not have been so placidly accepted in, say,

Atlantic City, or Coney Island, or even Newport, where people are said

to be more accustomed to the caprices of society persons, and more

indulgent of their whims.

V

A more improving, and on the whole more pleasing, phase of the

indigenous life, and also more like a phase of our own, showed itself

the day of our visit to Conway, a little way from Llandudno. There, on

our offering to see the ruins of the wonderful and beautiful old castle,

we were met at the entrance with a demand for an exceptional shilling

gate money, because of the fair for the local Wesleyan Chapel which was

holding in the interior. What seemed at first a hardship turned out a

chance which we would not have missed on any account. There was a large

tent set up in the old castle court, and a table spread with home-made

dainties of many sorts, and waited upon by gentle maids and matrons who

served one with tea or whatever else one liked, all for that generously

inclusive shilling. They were Welsh, they told us, and they were

speaking their language to right and left of us, while they were so

courteous to us in English. It was quite like a church fair in some

American village, where, however, it could not have had the advantage

of a ruined Norman castle for its scene, and where it would not have

provided a range for target practice with air-guns, or grounds for

running and jumping.

The place was filled with people young and old who were quietly amusing

themselves and were more taken up with the fair than with the castle.

I must myself comparatively slight the castle in the present study of

people rather than places, though I may note that if there is any

more interesting ruin in the world, I am satisfied with this which it

surpasses. Besides its beauty, what strikes one most is its perfect

adaptation to the original purpose of palace and fortress for which the

Normans planned their strongholds in Wales. The architect built not only

with a constant instinct of beauty, but with unsurpassable science and

skill. The skill and the science have gone the way of the need of them,

but the beauty remains indelible and as eternal as the hunger for it

in the human soul. Conway castle is not all a ruin, even as a fortress,

however. Great part of it still challenges decay, and is so entire in

its outward shape that it has inspired the railway running under its

shoulder to attempt a conformity of style in the bridge approaching it,

but without enabling it to an equal effect of grandeur. One would as

soon the bridge had not tried.

All Conway is worthy, within its ancient walls, of as much devotion as

one can render it in the rain, which begins as soon as you leave the

castle. The walls climb from the waters to the hills, and the streets

wander up and down and seem to the stranger mainly to seek that

beautiful old Tudor house, Plas Mawr, which like the castle is without

rival in its kind. It was full of reeking and streaming sight-seers,

among whom one could easily find one’s self incommoded without feeling

one’s self a part of the incommodation, but in spite of them there was

the assurance of comfort as well as splendor in the noble old mansion,

such as the Elizabethan houses so successfully studied. In the

dining-room a corner of the mantel has its sandstone deeply worn

away, and a much-elbowed architect, who was taking measurements of the

chimney, agreed that this carf was the effect of the host or the butler

flying to the place and sharpening his knife for whatever haunch of

venison or round of beef was toward. It was a fine memento of the

domestic past, and there was a secret chamber where the refugees of this

cause or that in other times were lodged in great discomfort. Besides,

there was a ghost which was fairly crowded out of its accustomed

quarters, where so far from being able to walk, it would have had much

ado to stand upright by flattening itself against the wall.