A London Girl of the Eighties

by Hughes, M. V. ;

  ‘By George! We’ve gone off the rails!’

  Few things can look more helpless than a Cambrian engine off the rails in such a remote spot. All the passengers climbed out to walk the few yards from the bridge to the platform, not attempting to disguise their glee at the disaster. All we had to do was to board the Aberystwyth train when it came in. But the poor station-master was at his wits’ end, not having any jack or any possible means at hand for replacing the engine. Completely losing control of himself he tore up and down the platform swearing in Welsh, to Arthur’s rapture. This was our last vision of him as the main-line train took us reluctantly away from the drama.

  The incident made grand conversation for our friends at Machynlleth, which we reached about 11. Our ‘early start’ and ‘dangerous journey’ were made the excuse for us to be plied with fruit and cake and wine. Then a stroll round the town, involving chats with almost every one we met, soon brought the time for 1 o’clock dinner. This was a serious meal of boiled mutton and vegetables, followed by apple pudding, everything garnished with copious sauces. Helpings were large, in spite of protests, and I sensed that feelings would be hurt if anything were left on the plate. Very welcome was a country walk after this, when I was able to enjoy the colours of the hills while Arthur conversed, for the most part in Welsh, with our host and his son. Tea-time was fixed for 4 o’clock, because our only possible return train started at 5, and it would never do to hurry a meal. A cup of tea would certainly have been welcome, but behold there was a real sit-down affair. The main dish was ‘light cakes’. This famous Welsh concoction is a kind of pancake, made with flour and eggs and buttermilk. You eat them hot, with sugar and butter, the very thing for a winter tea after a long tramp. But for a summer afternoon, hard upon such a massive dinner! The cook kept sending in fresh relays, straight from the pan, and they were piled on our plates, with the warning, ‘Remember there’s a journey before you’. I could only be thankful that the train started too early to permit a supper to follow.

  Of course it was only the timetable that ‘started’. The train for England was as usual about an hour late. Arthur was quite willing in this case to be at the station at the scheduled time, because there was a bookstall to which he glued himself. Mrs. Hughes was quietly triumphing in the booty she had captured in the shops, a cake and some cheese. As soon as the train was off Arthur said, ‘I couldn’t find anything decent on that bookstall, so we must fall back on our reserves’, taking out a little volume of Montaigne which he had put in his pocket when he started out. ‘The mere feel of it in my pocket,’ he said, ‘helps me to bear the plethora of physical and the lack of mental food one has to endure in Machynlleth.’ We settled down to read one of the essays together, and even the wait at Glandovey Junction (now in normal working order again) seemed quite short. I have never passed through that station since without recalling some of Montaigne’s advice on learning how to die.

  It was not many days after this that another invitation arrived for an outing that involved the same railway journey, but a very different kind of entertainment. An old friend of Arthur’s boyhood wrote to ask him to bring me to see his people in their home near Machynlleth, an old country mansion up among the hills and woods. He was a few years younger than Arthur, and known to us then as ‘Dick Atkin’, but he is now a Law Lord. His ‘people’ consisted of his mother and grandmother—a little alarming in prospect; but I had hardly been in the house an hour when I began to wonder which was the more delightful, and longing for my mother to meet them, for they seemed to be of her ‘make’. The grandmother, Mrs. Ruck, was all that one could imagine of queenly dignity combined with an engaging homeliness. She was undisguisedly keenly interested to know the girl whom her dear friend Arthur was to marry, and in some subtle way that women always understand but can’t describe, she made me feel that I was approved to the full. She showed me over the old house, talking cheerily of the deep happiness of married life, taking me into her room to see the four-poster of colossal size, on which all her children had been born. She interspersed her talk with enthusiastic praise of Arthur.

  ‘If I don’t tell you about him, nobody will,’ said she. ‘He has been so splendid to his mother. Although not the eldest, he has been the only one of her four sons to come to her help with time and money through that dreadful uprooting from her old home. One’s own home, why it’s heaven as one gets old! She looks to him for everything. And remember this, dear, a good son makes a good husband.’

  I listened greedily to this and much more, and she ended with, ‘I’m so glad that he is at the same Inn as Dick, and I’m sure they will both have a fine career at the Bar.’

  Her daughter regaled me in another fashion. She had travelled all over the world, and had gone through amazing adventures, which she related in a matter-of-fact, off-hand style, as if it were no more than walking down the road. But the one thing I remember best about her is the rate at which she knitted while she told her stories. When I commented on this, she said she could easily make a sock in a day, but that she much preferred mending an old one. Now I could believe her marvellous adventures, but showed open rejection of this statement.

  ‘You can’t possibly like mending!’

  ‘Yes, I do. Anyone can make a thing all new and nice. But to make a good thing out of an abandoned one is far more creative work—a work of redemption!’

  In the afternoon Dick took Arthur and me for a walk still farther up the hillside, and I listened in silence to the talk of the two men, always an engrossing occupation for me. Presently we reached a high point whence we had an extensive view of the valley and the sweep of the river. This was a favourite show-piece of Dick’s, and he was pleased at my enthusiasm. I ventured to say that my brother Dym thought that no view was perfect unless there were a river in it. This set a discussion going in true legal fashion: first whether Dym’s idea was true; second, if true, what was the reason. I forget the conclusion they came to, if any, although I have long since discovered why a river is necessary to complete satisfaction. It is odd that in the dream of heaven there was to be ‘no more sea’, while a river was to be the main feature; into what did it run?

  As for that visit, I forget about the journey there and the journey home. I forget what we had for dinner or tea. But the people, the house among the woods, the weather, the talk, the view of the river—all these remain as an abiding delight.

  § 3

  A third day’s outing involved the same Machynlleth opening, but in other respects was a striking contrast to the other two. Arthur wanted to show me the valley where he had spent his boyhood. No invitation was required; we were just to set out. I fancy that he had misgivings about it, for he told me afterwards that he had made up his mind never to marry anyone but a girl who knew all his home people and early surroundings. And here was I, a Londoner, and a complete stranger to everything and everybody. What if I should smile at the countrified ways, or show any airs of greater intelligence! He gave me no descriptions beforehand, but plunged me into an utterly new experience.

  At Machynlleth station we went down some wooden steps to the ‘terminus’ of a toy railway. After many social greetings with other intending passengers, we boarded one of the cars of which the train consisted, and in due time one of the engines of the Company began to agitate itself and eventually to start. A fig for your boasted ‘observation cars’ in America! Without advertisements or folders, or self-consciousness, the little train rattled away (for it cheered the lonely valley with plenty of mechanical noise) along the side of a heavenly trout-stream, overhung with tall trees and surrounded by mountains. Every now and again we had fresh peeps of the winding valley, ever changing in its colour effects. Arthur saw my delight and said, ‘This is the stream where we used to bathe and catch trout when we were boys.’ No wonder, I thought, that you poured scorn on our little stream near Reskadinnick.

  There were several stations, whose names I learnt to pronounce. In its even-handed justice Bradshaw awarded Ffridd Gate the same
size print as Aberystwyth, but it surely was the smallest station in the world. The gate was there all right, leading into a field, and beside it were a couple of planks for a platform, and on this was a kind of tiny sentry-box. If by some extraordinary chance a man wanted to get in here, he would signal his idea, and the engine-driver would pull up, unlock the little box, and issue a ticket to him. At least that was the scheme. In point of fact there was very little of this ticket nonsense at all on the railway. What money the Company received came almost entirely from strangers, English tourists, and other fools. All its Welsh patrons in the valley stepped off and on as they pleased. While we were in full swing plugging up the valley there was a sudden grinding of brakes and a jerky pull-up. ‘I know what’s the matter,’ cried Arthur, jumping out, ‘there’s a sheep on the line.’ He returned in a few moments to report all well—he had driven the sheep out of danger.

  At every station I seemed to make a new friend. Invariably the greeting at each introduction was, ‘Indeed, now! Well, well, indeed!’ And this can be made astonishingly warm and hearty. At Escairgailiog in breezed the doctor, who was overjoyed to see Arthur and immediately asked us to lunch with him at Corris, the metropolis of the valley. Here there was quite a crowd on the little platform, and I exclaimed at the number of travellers. Arthur laughed. ‘They’re not going by train; they’ve just come to see who has arrived, and get a bit of gossip; your appearance will be quite an item.’

  I gathered from the conversation during our lunch at the doctor’s that Arthur and his brothers were the main source of local interest. His eldest brother had lately become vicar of Portmadoc, and his youngest brother was about to start a medical practice in Flint. It was this youngest one, Alfred, in whom the doctor took most interest. When quite a boy he had accompanied the doctor on his rounds; for these the doctor’s only carriage was the railway, and the infrequency of the trains put him in many an awkward fix. He had sometimes been obliged to give sedatives to two expectant mothers while he attended a third. Of course, young Alfred picked up endless medical lore of a natural kind, and it was said that the patients preferred his visits to those of the doctor. When I came to know him (shortly after this luncheon party) I immediately understood this preference; for Alfred was a good-looking, sunny, jolly fellow, full of good stories, and no one could help feeling better for his mere presence. I may as well say here that he had a future of absorbing devotion to his work. In later years I went to meet him once in London, where he had come up for his F.R.C.S.

  ‘Are you funking it, Alfred?’ I asked.

  ‘No, Molly, I’m not. You just put your finger on any spot in your body, and I’ll tell you all that lies beneath it, right away down.’

  He had the reputation later still for being the best anatomist in the kingdom, and was in the middle of writing a three-volume work on Practical Anatomy when the Boer War put an end to his life, and it fell to Arthur (now Sir Arthur) Keith to edit and complete his book.

  As soon as our lunch was over we went off again to the station. Twice a day the train made a final lap to its terminus at the extreme head of the valley at Aberllefeni. Here was the large slate quarry of which Arthur’s father had been the manager. A broad-built, strong-willed man, he had been the terror of any delinquent quarryman. He carried a huge slate-whistle whose blast used to send the men scurrying to their work. Fronwen, the house that he built for his wife, lay on the hillside between the railway and the rushing stream, and had an orchard, garden, and chicken-run. What entranced me most was the littleness, and the fewness, and the remoteness of everything. I felt that I could take it all in, and love it, and that Arthur’s people were my people. At the tiny post office Annie and Bill (I never heard their surnames) received me rapturously with the very few words of English at their command. It was the same at every dwelling we entered, and I don’t think we missed any.

  That visit was only the first of innumerable others in later years. Meanwhile I sucked much more information about the valley from Mrs. Hughes. There had been no lack of food, although it mostly revolved round the sheep; they even had ‘mutton hams’. Mutton fat was used to make candles, the only artificial light obtainable. Mrs. Hughes showed me her old mould into which she used to pour the fat for them; this and her snuffers she had kept from sheer sentiment. For the clothing of her husband and sons a travelling tailor paid annual visits. Arthur could remember seeing him sitting tailor-wise on the kitchen table, usually staying a week to complete his job. By most of the inhabitants of the valley this tailor was regarded with awe, for he could read and write. One old woman begged him to read a chapter from her Bible to the assembled family when his day’s work was done. Now he had been annoyed to note that he had not been offered tea with his supper, although he had seen a pot on the hob. In those days tea was a great luxury, being ten to fifteen shillings a pound. So on the second evening he selected the latter part of Deuteronomy xxvii, and inserted a verse—‘Cursed be the housewife that bringeth not forth tea to the tailor’. When the reading was over the housewife approached him with, ‘Is that bit about tea really in the Bible?’ ‘Oh yes,’ said he, pretending to look for it, and at last running his finger over a verse and repeating it slowly. Tea was brought forth for him after that, every night.

  Recreation had to be provided by the valley itself, and it seemed to have consisted mainly of mountain walking and fishing in the summer, and singing, dancing, and card-playing in the winter. The scarcity of instrumental music can be guessed from one disaster that Arthur related to me: a big dance was arranged, people came from far and near, and the band (one fiddler) from a considerable distance. When all was in trim to start dancing it was found that the fiddler had left his bow behind! I expect they made up for it by singing, for that seems to be the Welshman’s supreme hobby.

  I hardly wonder at a country parson’s taking to drink. Often enough he is sufficiently educated to be dissatisfied with the mental capacity of his flock, but not sufficiently to content himself with books or a hobby. It was so in Corris. There the little church that serves the whole district stands in the loveliest surroundings. Thither, twice every Sunday, the whole Hughes family walked the long way from Aberllefeni. Mr. Hughes, as a churchwarden, sat in a front pew, with his wife and boys in a solid phalanx. Arthur had a vivid recollection of Alfred’s trying to play with a hassock once, and being taken out then and there and whipped in the churchyard. A little later Alfred was to figure in another scene; one Sunday morning the whole neighbourhood was duly mustered, but no parson. People began to look about them and whisper their wonder. The situation became tense. At last, by consultations and urgent gestures Mr. Hughes was induced to go over to the vicarage to see what was the matter (although the congregation had little doubt as to its nature). If anyone could manage a difficulty, he could. Another wait, more hopeful, but still rather too long. Mrs. Hughes then took a hand (knowing her husband). As Alfred was sitting at the end of the pew she leant over to him and told him to run to the vicarage and bring his father back, whatever. Again a long wait. I had this story from Alfred himself, and how he laughed at the recollection of that errand. As he came up to the vicarage he saw the old housekeeper standing at the door, looking very agitated.

  ‘Come in, come in, my little boy,’ she cried, obviously relieved that somebody had appeared in her trouble, and showed Alfred into the study. There sat his father and the vicar, both comfortably drinking, but too far gone to move.

  This will be credible enough to Welsh people, who know that nothing of a diplomatic nature can be done hurriedly. Mrs. Hughes told me that she once took the train into Machynlleth to have a bad tooth taken out. The dentist was distressed at the pain she was suffering, brought out sherry and chatted of livelier matters. ‘Indeed, Mrs. Hughes,’ said he, ‘I don’t think I need put you to the pain of taking out that tooth. I believe you are well enough to go home now.’ And she actually returned with the tooth and feeling all right. One wonders how he made a living. But there seemed to have been very little in the
way of actual money transactions, especially from a patient to a doctor. A good fat goose or a bottle of wine was a more common thank-offering.

  Of crime in the valley there seemed to be none. Once only did the well-known policeman, who patrolled the whole district, appear at Mrs. Hughes’s door. Some days previously a disreputable-looking tramp had come to her and begged for an old coat. She searched the house, but all she could find, that was not actually in use, was a richly embroidered waistcoat that her father had worn years ago at some civic function in Shrewsbury. Why keep things just for sentiment, thought she, and gave it to the tramp. It was an embarrassing gift, for if displayed it took away the look of poverty that was his chief asset. So he stripped and wore it next his skin until he should find a possible market for it. However, at his next casual home he was required to have a bath, and the waistcoat was discovered. ‘Mrs. Hughes of Fronwen gave it to me,’ he asserted. The idea of such a gift to a tramp was so ridiculous that the policeman had come all the way to have the story confirmed, but he might have guessed that no tramp in his senses would steal such an unnegotiable thing.

  That first visit of mine to the valley was over forty years ago, but a recent visit has shown me little change. The quarry works are deserted at Aberllefeni, and look as melancholy as the ghosts of the Cornish tin-mines. But Corris has the same two inns, shops, and up-and-down streets surrounding the station and the beautiful churchyard…. At a prominent corner of the village, where you can get a sight of Cader, stands a column, a monument to Alfred. To me a more touching memorial of him is a bundle of letters from South Africa, tied up with a bit of tape, and labelled in Arthur’s handwriting, ‘Dear Alfred’.

  XII. ‘A dwfn yw tonnau Dyfi’