“E’en children follow’d with endearing wile,
And pluck’d his gown to share the good man’s smile.”
—_Oliver Goldsmith._
“I must tell you this indeed,” as the Reverend John Hopkins, Rector of
Rhoscolyn, always began his stories; but I wish I could tell you what
I have to tell in his own delightful accent. For the form of words, “I
must tell you this indeed,” was only, I think, a trick of speech he used
in order to give himself time to translate his Welsh thought into the
English tongue, and his English tongue, when it spoke, gave something of
the rhythm and music of the Welsh to the foreign language he was using.
His was a curious Welsh accent, unlike any I have heard. For though he
had lived in the pure and bracing atmosphere of Anglesey—where, as in
all the Welsh counties I have been in, they assure me the most classical
Welsh is spoken—yet the rector did not speak with the Anglesey tongue,
being a South Wales man himself, a “Hwntw” in the phrase of the North, or
“man from beyond.” And the beyond he had sprung from was, I believe, in
the neighbourhood of Merthyr. He was a son of the soil and of the school
of Lampeter, and—the rectory of Rhoscolyn being in the gift of the
Bishop of Llandaff—he had, when I first knew him, been sent some twenty
years ago to minister on this out-of-way rock, and there he remained to
the day of his death. The rector’s duties included ministering in two
distant chapels, Llanfair-yn-Neubwll and Llanfihangel-y-Traeth, which
was performed by deputy, but wholly or partly at his cost. In the days
of Elizabeth, the whole of the duties were performed for ten pounds five
shillings; nowadays, I believe, the living is worth nearly two hundred
pounds.
But though, as I said, there was the song in his words that there is in
all right-spoken Welsh, and the high note lovingly dwelt on towards the
end of the sentence, which only a Welshman can produce without effort,
yet I am not artist enough to describe to you in words the difference of
the rector’s speech from that of his neighbours, only, “I must tell you
this indeed,” that so it was and always is, I am told, with the “men from
beyond.”
The Rector of Rhoscolyn was a bachelor, a man of stout build and middle
stature. He had the air of a Friar Tuck about him. His eyes were merry
and kindly. If he had changed his long rusty black coat and clerical hat
for a cassock and cowl, he would have been a monk after Dendy Sadler’s
own heart. He loved his pipe and his glass, when the day’s work was done,
and the talk of books and men, with those who had lived in the outer
world, was to him the rarest and most delightful of pleasures. He was
outspoken, simple, and generous, an earnest believer in his creed and his
Church, a lover of music, and above and beyond all, a man who attracted
to himself animals and little children as if by instinct, and gained
their love as only those who suffer them to come without affectation
can do. He seemed, as far as I could see, to have no enemies. I think
it was a weakness in his character—a Christian weakness—that he shrank
from causing annoyance or hurt to anyone’s susceptibilities. I was his
neighbour for some seven summer weeks, and five evenings out of seven
we smoked our pipes together, and he poured out to very willing ears
the tales of his lonely parish, but I scarce remember an unkindly story
among them all. If there was a tale that he feared might give pain in the
repetition, it was always prefaced by a smile of great candour, and as he
began, “I must tell you this indeed,” he placed his fore-finger on his
broad nostril and said in a sly merry whisper, with a great rolling of
the letter “r”: “This is _inter-r-r nos_.” That is why some of his best
stories cannot be set down here.
But, to understand the man and his ways, you must know how and where he
lived. For the surroundings and the man were as if Nature had designed
the one for the other, and he was as much in his place in his rectory,
on the side of the Mynydd Rhoscolyn, as the Sarn Cromlech is on the
slopes of Cefnamlwch. Rhoscolyn is a typical Anglesey parish. No doubt,
when Mona was one of the Fortunate Islands, it had a Druid temple and a
Druid priest, and if the latter had come back to the site of his temple
he would have found little of change. A church, a plâs, a post-office, a
rectory, a life-boat, and a few farmhouses in sheltered corners; but the
rest is as it always was. The eternal rocks, the restless waves rushing
up into the black water caves, the steep cliffs crumbling a little day by
day, the cruel, sharp island rocks hidden at high water and marked by the
spray and swirl of the tide as it sinks away from the shore, the purple
heather and yellow gorse clothing the cliffs to the edge of the sky, the
samphire finding a fearful footway between earth and sea, and, above all,
the wild bees humming their eternal summer song, and the fresh breezes,
always pure, always sweet, always sweeping backwards and forwards across
the promontory. Those things were there in the day of the Druids and they
are there to-day.
And in Roman times Rhoscolyn was of more note than it is now, for some
say that the name of it is derived from a Roman column that was placed
here to signify the utmost bounds of Roman victories. Whether this be
true or not, we have in the name Bodiar—which is still the squire’s
house—the governor’s habitation, and in the neighbouring Prieddfod the
Præsidii Locus; or, at least, this is what antiquaries tell us, and it
is comfortable to believe these things. Telford and his new road thrust
Rhoscolyn further away from civilisation, and the railway brought it no
nearer as it sneaked into Holyhead, across the Traeth-y-grubyn, behind
the shelter of the road embankment. For Holyhead is on an island, and
the old main road, with that instinct for the line of least resistance
which in old highways tends to such picturesque results, kept south of
the wide marsh and crossed the water at Four Mile Bridge—Rhyd-y-bont
Pennant calls it, and he rode over it, and knew at least as much of Wales
as an ordnance surveyor of to-day. There you can see the most beautiful
sunset views of the Holyhead Mountain, at the head of the open water,
when the tide is high; and if you turn your back to the town, you will
find Rhoscolyn within a couple of miles of Four Mile Bridge and six miles
south of Holyhead.
The rectory stands on the slope of the Rhoscolyn Mountain—there are no
hills in Wales to speak of, for we speak of them all as mountains. It
is four-square, whitewashed, and has a slate roof. There are no trees
round it. The only trees in Rhoscolyn are an imported plantation at the
plâs. There are a few thorn bushes in the hedgerows, but the wind has
carved them into finger-posts, pointing consistently eastward, and they
scarcely look like trees at all. The rectory is surrounded by substantial
farm buildings, for the rector is a farmer. His old mare, Polly, and
the low gig are well-known figures in Holyhead market, and he tells you
with a farmer’s pride that all through the winter his evening supper is
oatmeal porridge and milk, the produce of his own farming. He had no
relish, he told me, for oatmeal that was bought at a shop, for he had a
countryman’s delight and belief in the home-made. His was a good herd of
cows, and he knew each by name, and, like all true Welshmen, could call
them to him as he walked through his fields. Different Welsh districts
seem to have different calls for their cattle, and the real Nevin call,
for instance, is another thing altogether from the Rhoscolyn call. These
things are a mystery, and are well understood by the cows themselves, who
will shake their heads contemptuously at the Saxon imitator.
The church is a pretty modern building, with a belfry, standing on an
eminence away from other buildings. The post-office where I was living
is its nearest neighbour. There are no streets in Rhoscolyn, nor has it
any centre square. It is a parish rather than a village, and its few
hundred inhabitants live in scattered farms and cottages. There are
generally a few artist visitors, for Rhoscolyn is almost another Sark
for the rock-painter, and one or two families find summer homes in the
neighbouring farms. There is bathing out of your tent, which you leave
on the grass at the edge of the tiny bay, at the mercy of the winds and
the little black bullocks that roam about in the flat marshes inland.
There are rambles among the cliffs and the heather. An ideal place for a
holiday for those who really want a holiday and are content with oxygen
and rest.
I think, perhaps, I should have found seven weeks of Rhoscolyn more than
enough, if it had not been for the rector. I had met him casually on
an earlier visit, and looked forward to meeting him again. One evening,
soon after I had arrived, I was walking for some distance behind him. He
was in company with a Nonconformist minister, and at a turn in the road
the two parted very amicably with a kindly shake of the hand. It is not
always so in Wales. I ventured, when I got up to the rector, to make some
remark to this effect. He did not at that time know whether or not I had
any ecclesiastical leanings, and with great simplicity he remarked, “I
must tell you this indeed, Judge Parry: we must be charitable, you know,
even to Dissenters.” I have often wondered whether the phrase would be
acceptable to the authorities if it were inserted in the Welsh Church
Catechism. As it was uttered and acted upon by the Rector of Rhoscolyn,
it could give offence to no one who had the least charity and sense of
humour.
The post-office was between the rectory and the outer world, and so the
rector came in that evening, and many another evening afterwards, and
I was always glad to hear the heavy scrunch of his boots on the loose
gravel in the front of the door. Seated in an armchair with a pipe, he
would proceed to discourse at length of the affairs of the world and his
parish with great simplicity and humour.
The recent Disestablishment Bill of Mr. Asquith had troubled him very
much. “I must tell you this,” he said: “it has given rise to a great
deal of ill-feeling. Very wicked things have been said indeed, and the
pulpit has been used in chapels on the Liberal side.”
I was glad to meet a clergyman of the Church of England in Wales who
did not approve of this use of the pulpit, and asked him the kind of
thing that had happened. “I must tell you this indeed, though you will
hardly believe it,” he began. “There was a preacher at the Calvinistic
Methodist Chapel at Llan——, who, on the eve of the election, told his
congregation this. He said he had once been at a hanging—I suppose,” said
the rector with a pleasant smile, “that was the hanging of a late member
of his congregation, but I do not know—and he went on to say it had been
a terrible ordeal for him, and had made him very sick and ill. But he
told his congregation quite solemnly that, if he knew any of them on the
morrow were going to vote for the Conservatives, he would not only go to
his hanging with pleasure, but he would be there to pull his legs.”
I am afraid I was more amused than shocked, for he added quickly, “I must
tell you it was terrible, and it sounds very much worse in Welsh indeed.”
I dare say the story had little foundation in fact; but, like all these
election stories, each side firmly believes them for the moment, and as
the rector said, “it makes it very difficult not to be angry.”
The bitterness of the election seemed, however, to have quite passed
away. By nature, the Welshman is Conservative, almost to the point of
bigotry. This is particularly noticeable in his methods of agriculture,
horticulture, and sanitation. When he is emancipated, and, like the Jew
and the Catholic, his grievance is gone, it will be very interesting to
note his further political development.
The rector was a great theologian, and enforced his views with liberal
quotations from the Greek Testament, which he could recite in great
quantity. He took a simple pride in his knowledge of the Greek, and used
it on occasions, I must say, in a somewhat unsportsmanlike manner. He had
much sympathy with the Baptists, and was an upholder of the ceremony of
total immersion. He told me, more in sorrow than in anger, of the wicked
outburst of a Particular Baptist whom he had encountered in a third-class
carriage between Holyhead and Bangor.
“I must tell you this, Judge Parry—for you know I have a great weakness
for the Baptists, and I should see no objection to the ceremony of total
immersion being performed in our Church; well, to-day I met an old
gentleman, a grave reverend man, with a white beard, in the train, and
he asked me what views I had about baptism. Well, I told him, and then I
found he wanted to speak very evil things about the ceremony of baptism
in the English Church. So I quoted the Greek Testament to him to explain
it, and I could see he did not understand it, so then I quoted a whole
chapter to the fellow in Greek, and he got in a terrible rage and jumped
up and shook his fist in my face, and said, ‘I will tell you what you
are! You are nothing but a damned sprinkler. That’s what you are!’ Dear
me, it was terrible for a reverend old gentleman with a white beard to
use such language to a rector, was it not?”
I asked him if he had ever performed a ceremony of total immersion as a
minister of the Church of England, and he told me he had not, but he was
very near it on one occasion. “I must tell you this,” he continued; “it
was when I was curate in Glamorganshire, a fellow, named Evan Jones, came
to me and wanted to be baptized. Well, I knew he was a poacher and a bad
fellow, and a Presbyterian, but he said he had never been baptized, so I
said I would baptize him.
“‘But I want to be baptized like the Baptists do it,’ says he.
“‘Total immersion, you mean,’ says I. ‘Well, I will do it then for you,
if my vicar will let me.’
“‘Where will you do it?’ asked Evan.
“‘It would be good to do it at the pond in the middle of the village on a
Saturday afternoon, when the school children are there to see, and we can
have a hymn,’ said I.
“Well, Evan did not like that idea at all, and wanted me to go up to a
pool on the hills by a little bridge on the old mountain road; and I did
not care to go up the hills with him alone, for he was a bad fellow.
But he did not want anyone to come with us, for his wife objected to him
being baptized, and he was afraid she might get to hear of it and cause
a disturbance. Well, I decided it was my duty to go with the fellow, and
I told him I would do so if my vicar would allow me. Now my vicar was a
very shrewd, wise old man, and I was very eager to do this if it was for
the good of the Church, so I went to him at once.
“‘What is it, Hopkins, my boy?’ he said, looking up from a sermon he was
writing.
“‘Evan Jones wants to be baptized.’
“‘Who is Evan Jones?’ asked the vicar.
“‘He is a poacher and a Presbyterian, and has never been baptized,’ I
said.
“‘Well baptize him then,’ said the vicar.
“‘But he wants to be immersed.’
“‘Oh, indeed,’ cries the vicar; ‘Well, why not? Immerse him, if you like.’
“‘But he wants me to go up on the hills and baptize him all alone in the
pool by the bridge.’
“‘What does he want that for?’
“‘I don’t know,’ said I.
“‘But I do,’ said the vicar. ‘He will just be drowning you in the pool,
and we shall have all the Dissenters going about saying Hopkins fell in
the pool late at night, when he was coming home drunk, and that will be a
very bad thing for the Church. No, I will have none of it at all.’
“‘But what shall I tell him then?’ I asked.
“‘Tell him to go to—the Presbyterians,’ says the vicar, and I knew well
what he meant.”
You rarely saw the rector going through the lanes without a few of the
children of the parish at his heels. For they all loved him. He stuffed
the pockets of his long black coat with sweets, and was never in too
much of a hurry to have a chat with his young parishioners and hear the
news of their families, and listen to the recital of a text from the
Welsh Bible. He knew even more of his Welsh Bible by heart than his Greek
Testament and would correct the least slips in the recital. But when the
text was said, it was duly rewarded by bull’s-eyes and toffee, and a few
kindly words of encouragement. I heard that, when he was dying, several
of the shyest and wildest lads in the place used to haunt the rectory for
news of their friend, and when the end came they would not believe that
he was gone until they saw the coffin being carried from the house, and
then they burst into a dismal howl of mourning and despair. Certainly,
the Rector of Rhoscolyn was a friend to all the children under his care.
He did not shine as an English preacher, for to him it always remained a
foreign language, though he was a great student of the English classics
and always seeking to improve his English. Milton was a favourite author.
His idea of winter happiness was to draw by the fire after his porridge
supper and read Milton. As a Welsh preacher he was sought after and I
have heard the chanting song of his eloquence through the open windows
of the church, as I sat upon the hillside, many fields away, on a still
summer evening. He read the service in English fairly well, with some
curious tricks of pronunciation, and I remember that we “hurried and
strayed from thy ways” rather than “erred,” which in these modern days
sounded a very reasonable reading. But in a sermon, the foreign tongue
with which he wrestled bravely and visibly sometimes threw him, and one
still remembers with a smile phrases such as “I must tell you this, said
St. Peter,” and “Excuse me”—another favourite form of words to gain time
for translation—“Excuse me, but we are all mortal.” I think, in the use
of the last phrase, there was an expression of his constant desire not to
give pain, and perhaps a feeling that the well-dressed West-End English
congregation that filled his little church from many miles round in
the summer holidays were unused to hear these home truths in their own
elegant tongue.
But the great charm of the service was the welcome he gave you. The Welsh
service was ended, and the English service started at half-past eleven.
The rector stood at the door of his church in a prehistoric but very
square and dignified top-hat, shaking hands with all as they arrived. He
used to scandalise the stricter brethren somewhat by his greeting to me.
“Good morning Judge Parry, I am glad to see you. I saw you going down to
bathe. I was afraid you would not be back in time for church. How was
the water this morning?”
I think he was—like many another good man—at his very best in his own
home. Many a visitor to Rhoscolyn will have taken part in one of his
picnic cricket matches. We played in a field in front of the rectory,
from which the grass had been recently mown with scythes. The pitch was
of the nature of rough stubble; but as everyone played between the ages
of two and seventy, without restraint of sex, there was, of course, no
swift bowling, and the science of the game as we play it in the east was
neither wanted nor missed. For there was great excitement and enthusiasm,
and the heartiest cheering when the rector thundered across from wicket
to wicket, and this was redoubled when, at length—having been technically
out on several occasions—he gave up his bat from sheer fatigue, and
hurried off to look after the preparations for his tea. His anxiety
that the buns should arrive in time from Holyhead, and that the butter
should be put on thickly, and that the tea should be well-brewed, makes
his feasts more memorable to me than many an important banquet I have
assisted at.
But in his own study, when two or three were gathered together, he was
even more at ease and at home. He had never been a rich man, and had
always been a lover of books, and his shelves were crowded with the most
unkempt collection of dear friends that ever a book-lover had gathered
together. Bindings were in many cases conspicuous by their absence, and
in a series of volumes one or two were often missing. These were bargains
he had picked up on some of his rare visits to English towns. The most of
his books were theological, and many were Welsh; but the English classics
were well represented. There were no decorative books. Favourite volumes
were placed lengthways on the shelves instead of upright, with slips of
paper in them, so that the passages he wished to read again could be
readily found. He was, I fancy, a slow reader and a thoughtful one. I was
often astonished at the passages from Milton and Shakespeare he could
quote. These he translated in thought, he told me, into Welsh, to get
their real meaning into his mind.
I have heard say that he was eloquent in extempore prayer, and I can well
believe it. He used to be very indignant over the alleged shortcomings
of some of the Nonconformists in this respect. “I must tell you this
indeed,” he said: “there are fellows who will repeat the most beautiful
passages of our beautiful Prayer-book in a chapel, and pretend to the
poor people it is extempore prayer. I wonder what they think! Do they
think God has never heard our Prayer-book at all?” Then he would speak
with great respect of the powers of extempore prayer of some of the
great Welsh Nonconformist divines, but he always wound up in a spirit
of sportsmanlike churchmanship rather than boasting: “Excuse me, but I
think I could pray extempore against any of them.”
One of the sights of the rectory was the kitchen. It was a bright example
of cleanliness, comfort, and hospitable warmth. In it was the only
musical instrument in the house, an harmonium, and here, of an evening,
the rector came to play over the Welsh hymns which he and his servants
loved to sing. The rector was always rather in fear of his housekeeper
and spoke of her with the affectionate awe that a capable domestic
rightly inspires in a confirmed old bachelor. I have no doubt that his
habit of friendliness with all the children of the parish who visited the
rectory freely, and at their own moments, made dirt and trouble for the
household authorities, whose views of children were more practical than
the rector’s, and born of a wider and different experience of their ways
and habits.
I remember him telling me, one Sunday evening, a story that, I think,
must have been very characteristic of the man and his methods with the
little ones about his gate. The story arose quite naturally, and he told
it with pleasure, but without the least suspicion that it was in any way
a story to his own credit.
“Did you see that young fellow at the church door this morning with a
top-hat and a black coat, and a gold watch-chain?” he asked.
“I did not notice him,” I said.
“Dear me! I must tell you this,” he said. “Have I never told you of
‘Schoni-bach’?”
The name “Schoni-bach”—the “Sch” was soft, and the “o” moderately
long—was, I felt sure, a Welsh equivalent for Little Johnny, and I waited
with interest to hear more about him.
“It is a long time ago,” continued the rector, “since Schoni’s father
died. You know the thatched cottage on the shore! Well, he lived there.
He was the strongest man in the parish, and he could get underneath a
cart, a big farm cart, and lift it on his back. On market day, he would
go to Holyhead and make bets he could lift a cart, and he would win a lot
of money, as much as half-a-crown or three shillings sometimes. But he
was not a temperate man, and one day he had been drinking in Holyhead,
and they got him to lift a cart, when he slipped, and the cart broke
his back, and he died. Well, his widow had three little children, and
Schoni-bach was the eldest. And they wanted her to go to the workhouse,
but she would not go. And they were very poor, for she was not strong,
poor woman, and there was very little work for her to do, and the little
children were often starving. They were wild, naked, shy little things,
and would never come near anyone. The poor mother had frightened them by
telling them that they would be taken to the workhouse, and if a stranger
came near the house, they ran up to the mountain-side and hid among the
heather. However, one day I found little Schoni on the hillside near
the rectory. He looked very thin and starved, so I brought him down the
hill, and gave him a slice of bread and some butter-milk, and he ate it
like a dog, I tell you. I told him to come down again, but I was out
next day, and he came with his wet, bare feet into the kitchen, and my
housekeeper sent him off, I think. However, the day after, I was writing
my sermon, and there came a tap at my own side-door—a very gentle, little
tap—and I went to the door, and there was Schoni-bach, a little ragged,
yellow-haired urchin with bare feet. So I went round to the kitchen, and
got a loaf and some butter-milk, for the housekeeper was in the laundry,
and the coast was clear. So I asked him where his little brother and
sister were, and he went behind the laurel bush and dragged them out.
For there they were in hiding all the time, more like little wild foxes
than children. Well, indeed, after that, Schoni-bach would always bring
them down and tap at my side-door, and he always found out when the
housekeeper was away; but how he did it I don’t know. He must often have
been lying hid about the house, waiting for an hour or more, but he was
good friends with my dog, Gelert, who never barked at him at all. But he
was very frightened of the housekeeper, who had scolded him for his dirty
feet.
“Well, in the summer, they did not come so often, for there were
bilberries and blackberries to gather, and more chances of work and food,
and before winter came Schoni’s uncle, who was a farmer in Canada, sent
for him and paid his passage out, and a little after that he sent for his
mother and the other children, and so they went away, and a very good
thing it was, too, for all of them.
“Well, all this was many years ago. And last Thursday I was writing my
sermon, and I heard old Gel start up and growl, and there was quite a
gentle little tap at my side-door. I went to the door, for my housekeeper
was out, and there was a big fellow with a top-hat and a black coat, and
a gold watch-chain. I knew what he would be after, so I said to him, ‘It
is no use coming here to sell cattle spice and patent foods and gold
watches, for we don’t want them, indeed, in Rhoscolyn!’
“The fellow laughed a bit, and said: ‘Don’t you know me, Mr. Hopkins?’
“‘Not a bit of it,’ I said.
“‘I have often knocked at this door before,’ he said.
“‘I don’t believe you, indeed,’ I replied.
“‘Well, it is true,’ he said. And he looked straight at me, and I
looked at him, and then I began to see him again just a little ragged,
yellow-haired boy, and I cried out: ‘It is Schoni-bach! Little Schoni
come back!’ And I must tell you this, that I was so full of joy to see
him again, I could have fallen on his neck and wept. Dear me, but I was
glad to see him yet alive!”
The rector sighed to think of the old days, and then went on; “Yes, that
was little Schoni outside the church this morning. He was a great fellow
among all the young men there, indeed. ‘What do you think of Canada,
Schoni?’ they kept asking him. And all he did was to keep his hands in
his pockets and rattle his money. That made them stare, I can tell you.
Schoni-bach, with a black coat and a top-hat, and a gold watch-chain, and
his hands in his pockets rattling his money. That was something for these
fellows who have stayed at home to see, wasn’t it? Schoni-bach rattling
his money—or, perhaps, it was only a bunch of keys. He was always a smart
lad, was Schoni-bach.”
These stories of the old rector’s seem very colourless without the
music of his accent, the constant pauses for the whiff of the tobacco,
and the kindly smile that accompanied them. To those who never knew
him, any written portrait of the man must give but a faint echo of his
personality; but to the many English visitors, artists, sportsmen, and
others, who have found their way beyond the Four Mile Bridge to the
ultimate corner of Anglesey, and there been made welcome by the rector,
these recollections will, I doubt not, call to mind the memory of a kind
friend, and a holiday made the brighter by his cheerful hospitality.
Characters such as his seem to grow rarer day by day. Few men of his
energy and enthusiasm would remain nowadays for a quarter of a century in
so narrow a sphere, content with such a simple life. But the Reverend
John Hopkins was more than content—he was happy. He had sprung from the
people, and was by nature a farmer, and to live upon the land was to
him to be at home. But, above all things, he was enthusiastic in his
ministry. His qualities are set out without flattery on a bronze tablet
that his friends erected in the church he loved so well:
“A servant of God, in true simplicity of soul, he loved books, music,
and happy human faces, but his chief delight was in the services of the
Church.”
I have written what I remember of the man, and not of the priest, and
though I should have no right to chronicle or criticise his ministerial
career, I saw enough of him to understand that the keynote to the
cheerfulness and simplicity of his character is sounded in the text that
the friends amongst his congregation have chosen for his memorial:
“Llawenychais pan ddywedent wrthyf: Awn i dy’r Arglwydd.”
“I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord.”