Uncle Baldwyn was a great favorite among the children of the Sunday School. He’d been to university at Bangor where he’d excelled at hockey (of all things), and had also learned French. But home he came to help his father run his coal business, and to write about life in Cwm Mawddwy. He praised his native area’s beauty as if he were praising God himself.
Here is my favorite englyn by him, which compares dreams to smoke rising from the “altar” of a pillow:
“THE PILLOW”
The pillow’s a white altar—slowly
The day’s late sacrifices smolder,
And light smoke rises softly
As dreams to happy realms.
He was a frail man, but full of fun, and he loved the company of children and young people. He adored the Romantics—the poetry of Keats, Shelley, Tennyson and T. Gwynn Jones—and the novels of Daniel Owen. Indeed, he was compared once with the novelist’s most famous character, the likable and bubbly Wil Bryan.
Baldwyn translated poems from French to Welsh, he composed articles on Welsh literature and wrote stories, and also turned his hand to drama, portraying characters suffering social injustice in an almost “syndicalist” manner, according to one commentator.
However, his health was delicate. He did not go to fight in the Great War. But like so many of his peers, John Baldwyn Jones died during it, a young man of twenty-nine.
I have a volume of his poetry beside me, with an introduction by the great poet R. Williams Parry. There is a picture of Uncle Baldwyn, frozen by the eye of the camera. But his face is animated, as if he were in the middle of saying something.
Memories of my childhood reach me in a continuous flow: smells and tastes and sights converging in a surging current. And just like the stream at Maesglasau, these recollections are a product of the landscape in our part of rural mid-Wales at the beginning of the twentieth century. Its familiar bubbling comforts me.
It was not really like that, of course. The flow was halted frequently. Indeed a stream is not the best metaphor for life’s irregular flow between one dam and the next.
I have not mentioned the reservoirs. In these the emotions congregate. I approach them with hesitation. I stare into the still waters, fearing their hold on my memories. In terror I see my own history in the bottomless depths.
Swimming against the current, I venture to the first dam. For this changed the course of our family life at Tynybraich.
I see my mother in bed with a baby in her arms. Father leans over her. The light of the candle shines on their faces, and on the dark beams of the big bedroom’s ceiling.
I am three years old and I have climbed out of bed, seeking out my parents’ voices. There is a cry. It comes from our new baby brother, Gruffydd.
Bob is still sleeping soundly.
I walk across the creaky floorboards and look through the gap in the door. Mother, Father and baby are caught in a halo of light. All I can hear is soft conversation. My parents’ closeness unnerves me.
There is concern on their faces as they gaze down at my dark-haired brother who is but a few weeks old. I shiver in my nightdress.
I see Father take out a watch from his waistcoat pocket. Grasping the chain, he allows the golden disc to swing to and fro in front of the baby’s eyes. He checks the chain’s motion. He clasps the watch in the palm of his hand before putting it away.
In a cracked voice, he says:
“I’m afraid, Beca, that the little boy can’t see.”
A silence. And I am paralyzed, though my legs are shaking.
I hear my mother’s voice. She raises her eyes to her husband’s face:
“I’m not so sure, Evan. He’ll be all right. You know he was early …”
Further silence.
I don’t know how long I stand there, listening to the ticking of the grandfather clock down below in the hallway. In a while my mother’s voice speaks again. It seems to come from far away.
“I’m afraid to say it Evan, but I think you may be right.”
“No, come on now, it’s too early for us to give up hope …”
I cannot remember turning away from their mutual comforting. Neither do I remember re-crossing the floorboards and returning to the bedroom. I cannot remember getting into bed again. But I remember turning to look at Bob, and with all the passion of a three-year-old, begrudging him his sleep.
And I remember lying there as the dam burst, and as the tears drowned me, because my baby brother, Gruffydd, had been born blind.
*
With the dignity and grace which characterized her whole life, my mother soon came to accept Gruff’s blindness. Understandably, Father’s reaction was one of anger and confusion. He wanted to know the cause of the blindness. He would not believe that “nothing could be done” to give sight to his son. He took the baby boy to a doctor near Aberystwyth, but left without aid or explanation. The doctor just confirmed that Gruffydd was blind for life.
In time our lives returned to normality. I played with my new brother: feeding him and playing mother, while Mother was working. I washed and dressed Gruff every day, with the help of Aunt Sarah, and he was a more willing plaything than Bob had ever been. At night he slept between his brother and big sister: three raven-haired heads under one white cover.
I helped him learn to walk, leading him carefully by the hand and showing him the way around the house and its furniture, avoiding the fireplace. I taught him new words and was thrilled when he repeated them. Gruff had a brighter and a sharper mind than any of us.
Bob had to go about his business on the farm while I completed these duties. As for the mud pies and the moss cakes, he did not once admit to missing them.
But then, Bob had always been proud.
*
In 1910, when I was five years old and Bob four, and Gruffydd just learning to walk and to count, we were told by Aunt Sarah that another baby brother had arrived. Bob huffed and inquired about his breakfast. My own response was to draw Gruff closer.
He was called William. The family at Tynybraich now numbered six.
Again I see my mother in her bed. The beams in the ceiling are low and dark. I see my father looking into the candle-flame with the eyes of a stunned man.
I push the door open and go to my mother. I sit beside her and open my arms to receive the little one, with all the maternal love of a five-year-old girl.
William was a healthy child with a round, pink face. He was a beautiful boy, with hair and lashes as black as night. But from the moment he was thrust into the light of this world, William, like his brother, was blind.
The stream begins her journey high on the crag above Maesglasau, rising from an underground seam up to the peaty uplands. Quietly, purposefully she flows to the edge of the precipice before plunging in a foamy, powerful waterfall hundreds of feet downward. The water breaks into a hundred thousand shards in a rocky ravine, then falls toward the valley floor, over the still stones of the screefall, over jutting rocks and stone-strewn moraines, through them, past them and under them in a baptismal flood.
The bracken on the banks arcs toward her, our stream. The fox regards her from its den in the woods. The oak stands beside her. The rowan stoops over her. The hawthorn flees from her and the rushes tickle her.
Houses were positioned to make use of her.
But there’s no stopping her now. The stream obeys the earth’s primal forces, her silvery dance ceaseless, effervescent. How to separate the dancer from the dance, as a poet once said? How to separate the stream from the flow of her own water?
She passes the ruins of Tyddyn Uchaf, and the old house at Maesglasau Bach, where I live, and where the men raised a dam to form a dipping pool for the spring flocks. Today the stream flows unhindered through a breach in the wall, under a gate, past the ruin of Maesglasau, where swallows nest and sheep shelter from the rain and the sun. She avoids Llidiart y Dŵr and the remains of Tyddyn Berth, turning away, instead, by the cwm’s fifth ruin and meandering toward the big field.
On the valley floor she flows below Bwlch y Siglen—the Pass of the Bog—reaching a spot where she once satisfied the demands of a lead mine, known as the quarry of the blue mark, with its “bottomless pit.” Here she slows down in a flat furrow: the children would paddle here; men and women would wash their hands during haymaking. She’s at her laziest here, a tranquil lagoon. The cows quench their thirst from her banks. The children ford her with slabs of stone. She glitters in the August sunshine, an oasis in the parched fields.
As the valley narrows the stream accelerates again, rushing along the boundary between the land of Tynybraich and Ffridd Gulcwm. Here, sunk below her banks, fishermen enter her to tickle the trout. She flows in the shadow of Foel Dinas, through the water turbine which has provided electricity for my family for half a century, under the bridge and on toward the old bungalow where my mother and William lived. And then, in an eternal and absolute marriage, she merges with another stream flowing from Cwm yr Eglwys.
She is never the same again, losing her name as she flows out of Cwm Maesglasau. At the base of the Oerddrws Pass she is doubly lost in the rout of the rivers Cerist and Dyfi.
She could not be blamed. How could she avoid the force of gravity? Every height contains a fall; descent is what the terrain demands of her.
Like the poet Taliesin she is a quicksilver creature, transforming herself countless times during her journey through the cwm.
But she has her moods, like all of us, and is transparent by nature. Never did I see a stream so responsive to time. When the first sunny rays of March arrive she’s a maiden, a young madam, impulsive and cheeky in Spring, merciless on her flinty rockbed.
In June’s warmth she can be febrile and delicate, licking the meandering banks with her tongue. During Autumn’s tempests she’s ruddy and tempestuous, breaching her banks. When December comes she’s a recluse, her cataracts frozen into a hoary beard, yielding to nothing except a young adventurer’s ice ax. A few seconds of thaw and he falls to oblivion. The emergency services arrive. A young body lies mangled in the ravine. In the flashing blue and red lights of the rescue vehicles, we listen to our midwinter murderess cackling coldly to herself.
She’s never the same, the stream in Cwm Maesglasau, changing from one day to the next. Having lived with her throughout my life, and despite all her transformations, I know her more intimately than the blood in my own veins. When the stream’s flow comes to an end, so will my own life.
Knowing this is what gives me peace.
2
Behold, the winter has waned, the rains have passed by and are gone; the flowers of the earth are seen again, and the birds are heard to sing: the light lingers longer every day and the sun emerges oft from his tent above us in the heavens; and there is nought that can hide from his heat.
Hugh Jones, 1774
There is a photograph, in faded black-and-white, showing the family at Tynybraich in their Sunday best.
My father looks impatient, with an out-thrust elbow and restless feet. His coat pocket is bulging; his collar and tie are askew. Iron nails are seen on the soles of his boots. He is a handsome figure, standing there, his hand barely touching William’s shoulder. There is sadness in his eyes, as though he were already sensing the finality of that scene.
Lithe as a willow, my Mother leans toward her family. Her kind eyes regard the camera with respectful distance. She is wearing her dark dress, which accentuates her pale and flawless complexion. Her only adornments are her aunt’s slim, gold brooch and her wedding ring. Her hair is swept back in a dark wave; her narrow waist and the acute angle of her elbow create a natural diamond. She cradles the head of her baby, William, gently turning it toward the unseen presence of the photographer.
William is a cherub of two, raised up between his parents, his face round and soft. He wears a new suit: its broad lace collar gives the impression of wings. His tiny hand clutches the hand of his father, his unseeing eyes turned away, as if some commotion elsewhere had captured his attention.
In front of him stands Gruffydd, also with a wing-like collar of lace. He, too, wears a dark suit with the substantial belt of a nobleman. His arms are held out and his eyes point downward, fixed on a point of promise. Confidently—reassuringly—he grips the hands of his brother and sister; a last touch before leaving; a final lingering. His older brother’s hand rests on his shoulder, as if attempting to hold him back; to defer his departure.
I see Bob rather as a smart squire in a new white-collared suit and a bow tie, waistcoat, and knickerbockers. His “best” shoes bear witness to scrabbling and climbing. His look is determined; his level gaze challenging the photographer’s authority.
The Tynybraich family, c.1912—Evan and Rebecca Jones, William (between his father and mother), Robert, Gruff and Rebecca
I stand in the narrow gap between my mother and my brothers, perched on the edge of a stool. My two feet are splayed as I make room for my brother while attempting to keep my balance. Gruffydd’s hand covers mine. My mother’s left hand barely touches my shoulder. Hidden from sight, my brother William’s hand grips my long tresses. Two bows of lace lie on either side of my head, like two dragonflies resting on my hair. I am wearing a new pinstripe frock with a starched collar and four silver buttons: lady, baby, gypsy, queen … And a cameo brooch passed down from my mother.
I was never so proud! My joy is evident. The excitement of the picture-taking shimmers in my eyes: the pomp of the setting; the camera’s awesome technology; the miracle of the end-product.
I have that photograph in a frame by my bed. It was taken before Gruff was sent away to our relatives in London, to accustom him to noisy crowds and traffic.
He, this small boy from rural Wales, returned from the capital of England with his confidence intact, his independent nature having long since formed.
A year passes. My father is called upon to accompany his two sons to a preparatory school for blind children at Rhyl. Gruff is five, William three and a half.
At daybreak on a Saturday morning in 1913 we stand in an unfinished circle on the farmyard at Tynybraich. Gruff and William each have a bag slung across their shoulder containing essentials: a few clothes, socks, a parcel of food, a woolen scarf, a flannel, a piece of soap and a comb.
Mother kisses each son on the cheek. Bob shakes hands manfully. I kiss them too, before stepping back.
They climb into the cart and sit behind my father. Nestling against each other, they hold hands. They are allies now. My father does not utter a word. His mute back says it all.
He prompts the mare and the journey begins, across the farmyard and down along the mountain road, away from Tynybraich. Neither of the boys turns to look back as we stand there in our own darkness. Why should they, when seeing has always been a matter of feeling?
We stand in the early blueness of the day, watching the cart’s departure. We are three gray idols, staring into the valley’s great emptiness; staring at three other idols fading into the distance.
Finally, they vanish from sight. And at that moment we are blinded by the sun’s first rays coming over Ffridd mountain, casting long shadows behind us.
I turn and run into the house, groping my way through hot tears up to my room. Through the window, down below, I catch a glimpse of my mother, still staring in front of her, as if trying to comprehend the breaking of day.
I cannot begin to understand what my parents went through at that time. There were no welfare benefits, no social workers, no advice for the “disabled” and their families. Rebecca and Evan Jones, Tynybraich, were given to understand that the only way they could educate their two blind sons was by sending them away to a special school. They saved what little money they had to pay for that education. We lived on virtually nothing for years.
In my hand now I have a shriveled invoice bearing the following words:
Received from Evan Jones Esq. of Dinas Mawddwy the sum of £5 for education of little boys.
My mother showed great courage in sending
her blind sons away at such an early age. If faith could cure everyone, as it cured Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, then the sons of Rebecca Jones of Tynybraich would have had their sight.
Gruffydd and William’s journey toward education would be irreversible, taking them away from the Welsh language and its culture to another language and culture; away from Wales to another country. We would not see them again until that process was well advanced.
When he returned from Rhyl two days later, my father did not speak about his two infant sons. I think that the pain of that parting stayed with him forever.
The preparatory school at Rhyl was a homely and welcoming establishment, run by two sisters. But from there Gruffydd and William went to another school in Liverpool. Here they complained that “the classes were cold, the food bad and the people worse.” In their teens, they went to England’s deepest interior, to Worcester and its College for the Blind: a school for blind boys modeled on the English public school.
There they learned the virtues of hierarchy, discipline and independence. They learned the meaning of words such as “fellow” and “master” and “prep.” They learned about classical music, about the richness of European literature, about the glorious history of English kings and queens. They learned how to play chess and how to play the piano. They learned about cricket and football. And they learned about the chill of the dorm.
They learned the value of toughness, and the price of being homesick. They learned to live without a family; without the embrace of a mother and the word of a father; without the care of brother and sister.
They learned to worship in the Anglican way. And they learned how to talk with God—and with each other—in the formal English of the day.
Three times every year they came home to Tynybraich: a month at Christmas, a month at Easter and two months in the summer. They were welcomed back like prodigal sons.
The Life of Rebecca Jones Page 3