A London Girl of the Eighties

by Hughes, M. V. ;

§ 1

  THOSE expeditions were of the ‘private duty bound’ nature. Most of our days we just wasted gloriously, doing what we liked. Our likings were strictly limited by our means. We had to look at every penny, except in the matter of newspapers and tobacco, which I had known from childhood to be the breath of life to a man. Now the railway consumed money as well as time, and there was no other means of getting about to ‘see Wales’ than by long walks. I have seen more of it in one day in my son’s car than in all my visits to it in the last century.

  There were certain special bits of the Wales that Arthur loved which simply had to be visited whatever the cost, and for these a car would have been no use. The first charge on the estate was the ascent of Cader. ‘Cader Idris’, I learnt, meant ‘Arthur’s Seat.’ The mountain had dominated the valley and been the playground of Arthur and his brothers in their boyhood. They had been to the summit countless times, and more than once Arthur and Alfred had spent the night there to see the sun rise.

  So one fine morning we reached the foot of Cader by way of the toy railway from Towyn to Abergynolwyn. The early slopes were easy enough, and I pranced on heartily, thinking, ‘Well, if this is mountain climbing, why all the fuss about it?’ I had slackened my pace a bit by the time we reached the sinister shores of Llyn Cae, and Arthur suggested a rest and an attack on the sandwiches, before the real climbing began. He pointed out to me the ‘Fox’s Path’, away on the other side of the Lake.

  ‘Is that the path we have to follow?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ he laughed, ‘not quite so steep as that.’

  I found my stick of great use during the next half-hour’s climb, for it was no longer merely walking.

  ‘There’s the top, quite close!’ said I in triumph.

  ‘No, not yet by a long way. Old Cader has a way of telescoping out. Each “top” that you see turns out to be only a nice place to get a good view of the next.’

  I felt a fool, and determined to plod on without offering any further encouraging remarks, although I was pretty sure several times that the coming peak was really the top.

  Presently we found ourselves in a cloud, and Arthur was moving more cautiously. ‘Keep close up,’ he said, ‘we’re nearly there…ah, here it is. This little shed marks the top. I wish to goodness this mist would clear, or we shall get no view at all.’

  We fixed half an hour as the limit that we ought to wait. It brought us no lift, but rather a thickening of the mist. So very reluctantly we began the descent. Our plan was to catch the last train from Arthog at 7.30. We scrambled down the slopes well enough, stopping now and again to enjoy the evening views all the more splendid after the mist. When we reached the road in the valley it was nearly 7, and we quickened our pace.

  ‘How far to Arthog?’ I panted to a man we were passing.

  ‘Three miles.’

  ‘Good gracious!’ said I, ‘we can’t do it.’

  ‘They always say three miles,’ said Arthur, ‘it’s not a bit of good asking them.’ And sure enough, after some ten minutes hard walking, another man told me ‘three miles’, for I couldn’t resist asking. We laughed and took heart. When 7.30 had past Arthur threw out the comforting idea that the train was bound to be late, as it came from Dolgelly. He had hardly said this when he cried, ‘There’s the station’, pointing to something in the middle distance.

  ‘By George, yes, and the train is in it,’ and he broke into a headlong run. Although I knew he could hold it up for me if he got there before it started, I was impelled to run too. It was now getting dark, and among the few lights of the station I distinguished the ominous red rear-lamp of the train. I kept my eye on it, as if that would prevent it’s moving. When I panted on to the platform Arthur was waiting with a door open, and we flung ourselves in. That wretched train didn’t start for another ten minutes! At the time I think we were more annoyed at this than if we had missed it, though what we should have done in the latter case we never cared to discuss. But those who happen to know the kind of walk it is from Arthog to simply anywhere will guess what Arthur was worrying about as he ran.

  A still worse predicament threatened us another time. One hot day we determined to try to reach our old friend Glandovey by water. While Arthur went down to the shore to see whether he could bargain for a boat, I cut sandwiches, hard-boiled two eggs, and put some tea in a bottle (wrapped in a rug to keep it hot).

  ‘Let’s start at once,’ said Arthur on his return. ‘I’ve captured a boat. The tide will be high about 4, and if we can reach Glandovey by 3 we can have our tea there and come back on the ebb. Now have you got plenty to eat in that basket?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve put in enough for lunch on the way, and for tea when we get there. And I’m taking our sketching things too, as we shan’t have to carry them.’

  ‘And I got a bottle of beer from the inn. So off we go.’

  However happy one’s life has been, there are few days to which one can point and say, ‘I would like to live that over again, exactly as it was’. But every bit of that day had either its fun or its thrill, both at the time and in retrospect. Mrs. Hughes saw us off with some misgiving and urgent warnings not to be out late on the river. She was always full of warnings and misgivings, but she knew no more than we did of the difficulties in front of us. The Dovey estuary looks broad and beautiful and inviting, as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, but she is a lady of moods and asks for navigation, not just rowing up and down. She has sandbanks always shifting, and we had to follow the channels that seemed best. When we came to a fine stretch of deep water, up would go our sail, and if there was the least puff of breeze how lordly we felt floating along for a while without effort. But soon would come a dead calm and sagging of the sail, or a sandbank and a struggle with the oars again. It was hungry work, requiring the sandwiches and beer.

  As the river broadened out towards Glandovey the sailing was easier, and we laughed at the train puffing heavily along, while we were gliding serenely, coming into the almost lake-like expanse of water near Glandovey. Here a tongue of wooded land stretched out into the estuary, and as we spied a convenient post for mooring our boat we disembarked, having a good hour in hand before the tide would turn. First of all we reconnoitred round for a good subject to sketch. Not that there was any lack of subject in all directions, but we had to find something we could manage. We had to avoid trees, and confine our attempts to the hills and marshlands of Ynyslas. We dashed the cobalt about recklessly and jeered at each other’s results.

  While Arthur was enjoying his after-tea pipe, I went down to the water’s edge to see whether the tide had turned. Yes, it was an inch below the mark we had put, so I proposed our starting at once. Then came the best of the day, the tide and a gentle breeze both with us, and the perfection of Welsh scenery. A sandbank now and again would persuade us quite feelingly that we had better not linger, but a shove with an oar soon got us into a channel again. The tiller was hardly any use, for the wide stretch of water looked equally deep and our first notice of a sandbank was the actual sensation of the keel grinding into it. These banks soon became more frequent, and we ran on them so quickly with the breeze, that Arthur thought it safer to take the sail down—not so picturesque or so lordly, but safer.

  A spectacular sunset was thrown in for us, and we disguised our rhapsodies over it by discussing the colours that ought to be used for it. I was all for a ‘touch of rose-madder’, but Arthur scorned this as theatrical. He maintained that you can do everything in nature with light-red, cobalt, and yellow-ochre. ‘What about that bit of emerald green marsh-land over there?’ said I, and he gave in.

  ‘Sunset! By Jabers! he suddenly cried. ‘We must be getting on.’

  He was always late for everything, or only in time because. ‘the party of the second part’ was late. I soon came to know his three oaths, varying according to the seriousness of the situation. ‘By George’ was so common that I took no notice of it. ‘By Jabers’ was more cause for anxiety and set me rushing for a man’s f
our last things—hat, stick, bag, and baccy. But when I heard ‘By the piper that played before Moses’ I stood back, knowing that the pressing need was a clear field for a rush. In fact there was never time for the reference to Moses, and I only found out about his share in the oath when I asked Arthur one day (in tranquillity) who the piper was.

  Well, after the sun had disappeared we got on, but not very fast, and it was definitely evening when we slithered on to a rather obstinate bank. The more we got our oars to work and the more desperately we pushed, the more the keel snuggled comfortably into the sand.

  ‘By the piper!’ cried Arthur, and leapt into the water. And me too. Upon the word ‘piper’ I plunged in. But the old boat was not much lighter for our having relieved it, and there we were, one on each side, tugging with no effect. It was no occasion for being mealy-mouthed, and with a stronger expression than ‘the piper’ Arthur said,

  ‘We’re only making things worse. We must push her back instead of forward.’

  The tide had driven us on a bank we couldn’t cross, and now we had to go quickly into reverse and undo the little we had already done. For some time our pushing had no effect, for the tide was ebbing pretty fast. Then we agreed on a mighty effort—one, two, three—go. She moved. We hurried to another effort before the tide could get busy on us again, and then another and another, till at last she was free and in a channel again. We jumped in, but went along with the utmost caution, continually sounding. It was now getting dusk, but we could see a fight or two in the distance from the scattered houses of Aberdovey, and the channels grew broader and safer.

  We could now afford to laugh. I hadn’t dared to when we were pushing, because Arthur looked so fierce about it. I had not worried about the troubles attendant on our sticking on that sandbank; I could only see the funny side of our having to push our own vehicle.

  ‘Won’t mother be in a taking!’ was our main thought as we climbed our steep path. And indeed she was. She had placed the big lamp in the highest window, to guide us. She had put kettles of water on the kitchen fire, as a kind of general preparation for recovering people from drowning. She had looked out her reserve of brandy, and was pacing up and down the flags of our little Brynhyfryd Terrace. We hailed her cheerily, and came in very wet, dirty, and hungry, but not bad enough for brandy.

  §2

  Those sandbanks showed another of their ugly tricks a few days later. It was the bounden duty of Arthur’s brothers to come to see their future sister. The first to come was Alfred, the doctor. He was so charming that I was quite unaware of being inspected, and only felt that I had now collected another splendid brother. He was full of energy, and as he looked out over the estuary he had a shrewd notion that there would be cockles in all that sand. He was fond of singing ‘Molly Malone’, and perhaps that put it into his head that it would be jolly to go ‘cockling with Molly’. We consulted the old Aberdovey salts, who waved their hands towards the Borth shore, and told us that there were plenty of cockles to be had over there at low tide.

  ‘How do you catch cockles?’ said I, having no notion of what they even looked like.

  ‘Oh, quite easy,’ said Alfred, ‘you just pick them up and stow them in a bag or a pail, but they jump about like anything.’

  So while the boys went to hire a boat Mrs. Hughes looked out a kitchen pail, a canvas bag, and a fishing-basket, and as soon as the tide was about right we started across to the farther side of the river, stranded the boat, and strayed apart from one another with our receptacles in the grand pursuit of trying to get the biggest amount. The cockles certainly jumped astounding distances, by what internal mechanism I couldn’t make out. I was examining one intently to see how he did it, when I heard a shout from Alfred, a shout of that peculiar quality that suggests terror. Arthur and I, both far away absorbed in cockling, rushed towards him.

  ‘Keep away! For God’s sake keep away!’ he shouted. ‘If you come near you’ll make it worse. Get a rope.’

  But Arthur had already seen what was the matter, and had turned and rushed to the boat to fetch the rope. Meanwhile I was horrified to see Alfred dragging his feet with the utmost difficulty out of the sucking sand. He managed to get the better of it just as Arthur came up, but he told us that he had quite thought he was in for a ghastly death, till the mere sight of the rope gave him zip enough to keep calm and cease struggling and floundering wildly, which is fatal.

  This incident dashed our enthusiasm for cockles, but we took back our spoils to Mrs. Hughes, not telling her of the risks of the chase. She was quite equal to cooking them, although she had never faced them before. Only give me the food, was her slogan, and I’ll cook it. Seeing the quantities we had brought, she unearthed her largest cauldron, which might have come straight out of a fairy tale. Our little servant flew about making up the fire and pouring forth her excitement in Welsh. When the water came to the boil, in went all the cockles. How long should they have? Arthur and Alfred held a medico-legal consultation, and up and down they had it until Arthur stared into the cauldron and gave his considered opinion that the cockles were no longer fighting against fate. So they were decanted on to our plates, and by the time we had got them out of their shells our appetites were not critical, and we ate rather freely. But what with one thing and another we didn’t care if we never heard the word cockle again.

  ‘I’ll take you for a day’s real fishing.’ Thus Arthur to me a day or two later when we were alone again. As there was no stream near Aberdovey, the scene of the festival was to be Tal-y-llyn, another playground of his boyhood. Like my brother Dym, when he was ‘in trout’ all other interests went under. He buried himself for hours in preparations, testing his rod about the room, hunting out his other fishing-tackle, putting his extra-strong eyeglasses where he wouldn’t forget them, and going through his fly-book. This selection of flies amazed me. They all looked pretty much the same, and I had no idea that trout were so picksome about their food. It seemed that they would eagerly jump at some delicacy with a long Welsh name, meaning the red devil. I went to bed leaving Arthur buried in these intricacies. We were to be off by the first train in the morning, but there was no fear in this case of Arthur’s missing it. Throughout life I found that only two things would get him out of bed spontaneously—a day’s fishing or a case in Court.

  We started like two explorers, with everything needful slung about us, but no sandwiches this time, as we were to have lunch at the inn. To ordinary tourists a boat for the day at Tal-y-llyn is expensive, but we had one for nothing. Arthur was well-known to the people at the inn who let the boats out. They received us as honoured guests, offered us any boat we liked to choose, and wouldn’t take a farthing for the good lunch they gave us. The inter-relationship of these people was the most extraordinary I have ever come across. A widow with two children had married a widower with two children; two more children were born and were now grown up, and the parents were dead. These six lived together and carried on the inn, and their names and relationship to one another were an amusing puzzle to visitors, and a kind of extra attraction.

  One thing I did thoroughly know about fly-fishing; my brother Dym had taught me that trout don’t like petticoats. So I made it my business, while Arthur stood up in the flat-bottomed boat and flung his line, to say nothing and keep myself as small as possible. For this purpose I had secreted the little Greek text at which I was slaving for my next examination, and I calculated that during that stern afternoon I made out two (or three at most) sentences for every trout that Arthur caught.

  This was not so dull for me as it sounds. It was my first experience of being not only neglected by Arthur, but completely forgotten in the absorbing pursuit of his hobby. As time went on I caught myself hugging little neglects of all kinds, as great compliments. Evidently he trusted me not to mind, and not to be looking for trifling attentions and consideration. No doubt I had my brothers to thank for having early schooled me in the idea that a man has his own life to lead and there are times when he is like the tr
out in a distaste for ‘petticoats about’. But I had no one but our two selves to thank for discovering that such neglect over trifles is compatible with the deepest passion. It was a great pleasure to me, too, when Arthur would break out excitedly in the middle of one of our discussions with ‘But, my dear Sir!’

  Such arguments on every kind of topic we carried on usually during our tramps over the hills in sunshine, wind or rain. And yet not quite every topic; at least there were some things that we didn’t probe too deeply, tacitly assuming one another’s ideas and feelings about them, or preferring to leave closer discussions for the future. I regret now the many things I left unasked and unsaid. But on the whole perhaps the best rule for married life is the one that is imposed on Arctic explorers, who are forbidden to discourse to one another too freely on their private concerns and innermost thoughts. Arthur and I felt the amplitude of the life before us, and did not strive to express ourselves fully. Against our background of matter-of-fact talk an occasional breakout of deeper feeling took on a special emphasis. For instance, Arthur said to me once as he was stuffing the tobacco into his pipe, and apropos of nothing, ‘If we had met in such circumstances that we couldn’t be married we could never have been friends, could we?’

  In fact, we never did attempt to put our love for one another into words—until the end. After twenty years of married life, Arthur was run over at the foot of Chancery Lane and taken into Barts to die. I reached him in time for half an hour of life, which he spent entirely in pouring out all the pent-up expressions of love that he had strength to utter, in which the word ‘glorious’ was incessantly repeated. In my own anguish I hadn’t the sense to reply in the same language, but could only keep on imploring him to fight for life. ‘No, Molly, I’m done for,’ he said, and began again on his chant of triumph.

  §3

  Setting aside the few ‘expeditions’ of those holidays, our main amusements were sketching, walking, and bathing. When the tide was up the long stretch of shore beyond the bar was grand for Arthur’s bathing, but at low tide he said he had to walk half-way to Ireland to get a swim. Mixed bathing had never even been thought of. Women had to bathe in a secluded nook up the estuary, and only at stated times (varying according to the tide). The town crier walked up and down the front, proclaiming, first in Welsh and then in English: