SOME WELSH CHILDREN
 
 i^ 7^ 
 
 <MH>I^<N 
 
 .&Y M AUTf\Ot< OF FRAT< I^N ITY 
 
 l/ONOON 
 UI<aO S' 
 
 /^<
 
 TO LILY 
 
 DARLING sister, dearest friend, I lay 
 the little book you loved upon the 
 grave where you once more sleep by Anna's 
 side, together with the little brothers and 
 our father. 
 
 ' There is no need for words between us 
 two,'' you wrote me once.
 
 Contents 
 
 I. On A * London Spelling Book' in a 
 Welsh Farmhouse 
 
 II. My Country. 
 
 III. Gentle Savages . 
 
 IV. The Child Kingdom of Play 
 V. The Little Brothers 
 
 VI. Nursery Myths . 
 
 VII. The Nursery Bookshelf . 
 
 VIII. Nursery Furniture . 
 
 IX. My Lord Taff . 
 
 X. Tommy : a Sketch 
 
 I 
 
 30 
 50 
 61 
 80 
 
 113 
 
 128 
 
 145 
 156 
 169
 
 On a * London Spelling Book ' 
 in a Welsh Farmhouse. 
 
 I 
 
 THE NEW LONDON SPELLING 
 BOOK; 
 
 OR, THE YOUNG GENTLEMEN AND 
 
 LADIES' GUIDE TO THE ENGLISH 
 
 TONGUE ; 
 
 Containing such a Variety of really useful Matter 
 as to enable Teachers to instruct their Scholai's to 
 spell and read the English language with propriety, 
 without the assistance of any other Book. 
 
 In which great care has been taken to collect what 
 may teach youth their Duty and Behaviour towards 
 God and Man, and to avoid the numerous Tempta- 
 tions of Life, and of their own ungovernable 
 Passions.' 
 
 SO runs the title-page of a little, faintly- 
 musty, leather-bound volume, of worn 
 yellow leaves and startHng black type, that 
 has sojourned for well-nigh a century in this 
 
 B
 
 2 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 remote corner of civilisation, where the 
 English tongue still continues very much at a 
 discount, to be resorted to only in case of 
 necessity, and gladly exchanged, at the 
 earliest opportunity, for the vernacular 
 Welsh. 
 
 A magnificent prospect its possession must 
 have seemed to open out to the owner. 
 Even a mother's ambition for her first-born 
 could ask little more than the fulfilment of 
 this glowing title-page. 
 
 The volume was, no doubt, enshrined in 
 the little parlour of the farmhouse, about 
 which a certain odour of gentility must 
 always have hung. For though the dimen- 
 sions of this Welsh farm were modest, its 
 owners and occupiers were accustomed, each 
 Sunday, to regard with complacency the 
 monumental slab over their family pew in the 
 old parish church, whereon the names of 
 their forefathers were handed down to pos- 
 terity, as : Gents of this Parish. 
 
 The frontispiece presents us with a start- 
 ling representation of the author of this most 
 desirable spelling-book — a countenance cal- 
 culated to strike terror into the heart of the 
 boldest youth. A deeply scowling brow — -
 
 ON A 'LONDON SPELLING BOOK' 3 
 
 beneath a luxuriant curled wig — fierce, glaring, 
 heavy-lidded eyes, and the cruel cut lips and 
 rounded chin of a Roman Emperor. So he 
 looks out of the medallion portrait, flanked 
 by an open volume of the famous spelling 
 book, we suppose, on the one side, and a coat 
 of armorial bearings on the other, and an 
 old-fashioned ink-horn, with two elegantly 
 disposed quills, beneath the two. 
 
 It is a face that would undoubtedly possess 
 a horrid fascination for the infant mind. It 
 forms a fitting introduction to the philosophy 
 of life contained between these leathern 
 boards, a dark and dyspeptic philosophy, 
 filled with a profound distrust, so it seems to 
 us, of God and man. 
 
 Involuntarily the words of a quaint old 
 monument in a neighbouring church occur to 
 my mind, wherein the deceased magistrate, a 
 contemporary of the author, is somewhat 
 ominously described as * A severe Reprover 
 of all Vices,' and I fancy that gentleman 
 must have looked out on life from above his 
 frilled shirt and rolled-backed collar with 
 much the same expression of suppressed 
 ferocity and dull resentment that Charles 
 Vyse wears in his portrait.
 
 4 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 Perhaps this reproving of our fellow-sinners 
 is no very healthy calling for any one of us, 
 and the habit of mind that its constant 
 profession induces is no less detrimental to 
 our happiness than to theirs. 
 
 The title-page of the Spelling Book is un- 
 dated. The 'Short Account of the Kings of 
 England ' terminates with the reign of George 
 IL But a model letter 'from Master Jackey 
 Curious in London to his Mamma in the 
 Country,' furnishes a clue to the time of 
 publication, inasmuch as the young gentle- 
 man refers in it to the recent interment of 
 ' that great Statesman, the Right Hon. 
 William Pitt' This * new edition ' of the 
 spelling book, then, 'issued with latest im- 
 provements and additions,' appeared not long 
 after 1806, we may conclude. 
 
 John Owen Williams, 
 s Book, 
 May 20, Aged 3 Years, 
 
 stands in bold flowing characters on the fly- 
 leaf The handwriting is not that of an 
 uneducated person, and the fact that John 
 Owen Williams was to be introduced to the 
 intricacies of the English tongue at the
 
 ON A 'LONDON SPELLING BOOK' 5 
 
 tender age of three years shows that his 
 Welsh parents set no small value on educa- 
 tion. For many years his mother would 
 probably be his teacher, for the farmhouse 
 lay far distant from dame or grammar school, 
 and the neighbouring village did not boast 
 a schoolhouse till far on in the fifties. 
 
 A quaint little Welsh homestead it must 
 have been from all that I can gather. No 
 part of the outer walls now remains standing, 
 and only one t ny sitting-room — the ' parlour ' 
 of those days — has been incorporated into 
 the modern building that occupies the site 
 of the old farmhouse, and still bears its 
 name. 
 
 A musty air hangs about this little room — 
 as children we believed it haunted. Certainly 
 the wind has a way of moaning in its 
 chimney, with a sound of ghostly reminis- 
 cences, that is foreign to the other rooms 
 of the house. 
 
 In this sanctum hung the tapestried repre- 
 sentation of Christ at the Well of Samaria, 
 which was vv^orked by John Owen's grand- 
 mother, and the samplers that his mother 
 had brought back from her school in Shrews- 
 bury. Here, on the round table, lay Vyse's
 
 6 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 Spelling Book, no doubt duly impressing 
 occasional visitors with an air of erudition 
 and culture. Very few houses in this neigh- 
 bourhood boasted the possession of a London 
 Spelling Book at the beginning of the 
 century, and I can imagine John Owen and 
 his mother fluttering the ' words in seven 
 syllables ' in a way that took away the 
 breath of their less accomplished acquaint- 
 ance, perhaps gaining for themselves a 
 reputation of some pride and vain glory 
 thereby. 
 
 Harlech lies pretty nearly south of our 
 farmhouse, and over Snowdon hangs the 
 Northern star. 
 
 The building faces the long tract of wet 
 sands and gleaming salt-water channels that 
 we call the Traeth, where the Dwryd runs 
 from east to west, threading its fanciful way 
 to the sea with a thousand twists and 
 turns. 
 
 All around are the mountains. Against 
 the western sky springs the bold outline of 
 the Carnarvonshire hills, with the lone islets 
 and long promontories of Lleyn, sweeping up 
 into the great range of northern giants that 
 stretches away eastwards in a vast semi-
 
 ON A 'LONDON SPELLING EOOK' 7 
 
 circle, and dips down towards the south 
 behind our hillside, running out to that last 
 headland where the ruined towers of Harlech 
 Castle are silhouetted against the shining 
 waters of Cardigan Bay. 
 
 The farmhouse stood on the open hillside, 
 rocky and heath-clad, not wooded as it is to- 
 day, A belt of ragged fir trees bore the 
 brunt of the wet west wind, and the old lime 
 tree, of which we are so proud, guarded the 
 entrance to the premises. The two oak trees 
 in the steep field, the tall beeches near the 
 well, and some of the venerable hollies must 
 have been there at the beginning of the 
 century. 
 
 Behind the house, a little orchard straggled 
 up the hill. One of my earliest recollections 
 is the felling of those antique plum and 
 damson trees that had not borne fruit within 
 the memory of man. 
 
 Over all blew the soft Welsh air, offspring 
 of sea and mountain. Truly it was a very 
 paradise for a youth aged three, wherein he 
 disported himself with a gaiety of heart that 
 remained untroubled, we trust, by the dis- 
 tressful tidings of the New Spelling Book, 
 that he should now consider himself as
 
 8 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 ' advancing to the Borders of the Grave, and 
 stepping down into the Funeral Vault.' 
 
 I can readily picture the little Welsh lad 
 — a spoiled mother's darling — with sunny 
 eyes and bright hair, an active, wagging 
 tongue, and mischievous little fingers, and 
 a pair of nimble feet that fairly skipped and 
 ran tov/ards that Tomb so persistently set 
 before him by his Mentor. 
 
 I am sure that ' no tired Horse was ever 
 more glad to get rid of his Burden,' as Vyse 
 with a peevish prevision foretells, than was 
 John Owen bach, when his lesson was over, 
 and he himself set loose, ' under the false 
 Notion of being more happy by being out 
 of the Power of Correction.' 
 
 I can almost hear his shout of merry 
 laughter as he dashed through the little 
 garden where his mother bleached the clothes 
 on the privet hedge, chasing the cocks and 
 hens before him in pure light-heartedness. 
 What fond Welsh names she called him as 
 she tried to snatch a kiss from him, panting 
 and struggling in her arms! — Her ' Cnlofi 
 aur' her Heart of gold ; her * Cariad bach,' 
 her little Sweetheart. 
 
 ' Simple his Thoughts, vain his Desires,
 
 ON A 'LONDON SPELLING BOOK' 9 
 
 Toys his Delight' So Vyse sums him up in 
 sick disgust. 
 
 * Be up and doing ; apply thyself with In- 
 dustry to thy Calling.' 
 
 The inmates of the little farmhouse ful- 
 filled this precept at least. Despite their 
 claim to gentle birth, the master and mistress 
 worked through the long day at the side of 
 men and maids, worked with their own hands 
 in the field and in the barn, in the cool slated 
 dairy and the cheerful kitchen. John Owen 
 assisted at the making of many a pale Welsh 
 cheese, hard and tough as leather, of the 
 colour and opacity of horn. He watched the 
 mixing of the ' bara ceirchl and the baking 
 of the kettle-loaf in the great old chimney, 
 where ' crcvipogaul too, could be turned out 
 on rare occasions of festivity ; and no doubt 
 Vyse's Spelling was often fetched from its 
 proud seclusion in the parlour to some such 
 simple scene of domestic activity, to which it 
 strove in vain to impart the bitter flavour of 
 its superior scorn. 
 
 He worked his way through the book, de- 
 spite its state of excellent preservation to-day. 
 The print of an indented finger-nail — his 
 mother's probably — at regular intervals dov/n
 
 lo SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 the long columns of spelling, marks his slow 
 progress from the ' Easy Words of one Syl- 
 lable ' in large type, to the ' Collection of 
 Words nearly the same in Sound but dif- 
 ferent in Spelling and Signification,' towards 
 the end of the volume. This latter seems to 
 have been somewhat of a stumbling-block to 
 him, for he tackles but a small portion at a 
 time. And I fancy the little Welsh boy, 
 strong in aspirates, must indeed have been 
 sore puzzled by the insistency with which the 
 London Spelling Book dwelt on the differ- 
 ence between ' Ate, did eat,' and * Hate, dis- 
 like,' or ' Anchor, an Instrument," (!) and 
 * Hanker, to long.' 
 
 But no doubt the youth — ' Native of the 
 Skies,' as Vyse, in an unwonted fit of gra- 
 ciousness, apostrophises him — soon became 
 accustomed to much that long remained 
 mysterious in his English readings. 
 
 'Let thy Recreations be few and innocent; 
 debase not thyself in the Pursuit of sensual 
 Pleasures, nor place thyself on a Level with 
 the Beasts that Perish,' he is warned on pro- 
 motion to words of four syllables. And a 
 little later : ' Avoid the Embraces of the 
 Harlot, nor defile thyself with the Prostitute.'
 
 ON A 'LONDON SPELLING BOOK' ii 
 
 * Squander not thy Money at the Gaming- 
 Table, nor hazard thy Fortune on a Card.' 
 ' Drown not thy Senses in Wine, nor intoxi- 
 cate thyself with the Juice of the Grape.' 
 
 We can scarcely imagine the words con- 
 veyed much meaning to the mind of the 
 simple country child. Probably his lessons 
 were to him, as the Rector's Sunday discourse, 
 
 * Words, %vords, woi'ds,' not to be regarded as 
 having any practical bearing on the real 
 business of life as he understood it. For him 
 a thousand pleasures burgeoned with each 
 spring. There were days all winds and sun- 
 shine and rain-washed skies, when the moun- 
 tains gleamed gold and purple in the lights 
 and shadows that followed the passage of 
 floating clouds above. Days when the air in 
 this dear corner of the dear earth bears heal- 
 ing in its wings, and seems to blow right 
 through you with its fresh and balmy breath. 
 Then there were new-born lambs with tender, 
 piercing voices, and little foals with straggling 
 legs and woolly manes, that ran in the fields 
 by their mothers' sides, and birds' nests to be 
 visited in every wood and copse. 
 
 ' It behoveth thee, O Child of Calamity ! 
 early to fortify thy Mind with Courage and
 
 12 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 Patience, that thou mayst support with a be- 
 coming Resolution thy allotted Portion of 
 Human Evil,' 
 
 Meaningless as the buzzing of the bees in 
 the little garden, the sententious nonsense 
 must have sounded in the ears of the young 
 reader, his busy brain planning an excursion 
 to the great rocks north-east of his dwelling 
 where young jackdaws may yet be abducted 
 from their nests by adventurous climbers. Or 
 perhaps the Tracth drew him forth by the 
 magic of its warm shallows and shelving 
 channels, where worthless pigmy shrimps and 
 uneatable soft-shelled green crabs and blun- 
 dering flat fish may be caught by those who 
 know how. Or some fascinating operation 
 was going on at home. It was ^ amser cnei- 
 fu\ the time of sheep-shearing. The elder 
 bushes were heavy with fragrant blossoms, 
 and the smell of boiling pitch hung on the 
 soft June air where the shearers sat beneath 
 the spreading oaks at the bottom of the steep 
 field, beside the red-flamed fire, where the 
 pitch pot brooded on the embers like a 
 phoenix on his pyre. 
 
 Or it was the hay harvest. The mowers 
 with their tall Welsh scythes bent to their
 
 ON A 'LONDON SPELLING BOOK' 13 
 
 work with a rhythmic cadence, and Little 
 John and his mother carried their dinner to 
 them — potatoes and buttermilk with oatmeal 
 in it. They ate it in the shelter of the 
 loosely-piled stone walls that divided one 
 small field from another. And above them 
 the other ' natives of the sky,' the tiny larks, 
 sang high in heaven with fluttering wings 
 that seemed to shake down ecstasy to their 
 little brother below as he took his ease on the 
 sweet-smelling hay, looking up towards them 
 with eyes as blue as speedwells and just as 
 innocent. 
 
 Or it was corn harvest ; or — better still — the 
 gathering of the dried fern in the autumn, 
 right away on the mountain-side, whence it 
 was brought down to the farm on rude sleighs 
 to be stored for winter forage. 
 
 Then there was the firing of gorse, the 
 burning of weeds. What should the author 
 of the London Spelling Book know of these 
 joys, at once intense and delicate, belonging 
 to an open-air life lived close to Nature ? 
 
 In the winter evenings it was cosy sitting 
 in the chimney-corner while the wind howled 
 round the farmstead, and the rain drove 
 against the window panes. The peat fire
 
 14 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 burned with a steady glow, the knitting- 
 needles of the farm girls flew to and fro, or 
 hung suspended on the words of some old 
 labourer, who vouched for it that a strange 
 singing had been heard in the * bendy ' when 
 he had sat up tending the sick cow at nights. 
 
 The neighbourhood is rich in ghosts to- 
 day. At the beginning of the century goblins 
 were also about, I fancy John Owen bach 
 clasped his mother's skirt very tightly when 
 they had occasion to issue forth those black 
 winter evenings, dimly illuminated by the 
 antique lanthorn. There were dark corners 
 in the bendy where the turnips were stored for 
 the cattle, where rats lurked, passing which 
 the heart of the little boy beat loudly. It 
 was indeed as haunted a looking place as you 
 could have found, that antique cowhouse with 
 long lancet windows, piled up with stones and 
 stuffed with weeds and clay, that kept out 
 the cold and wet from the warm, sweet- 
 breathed obscurity within. 
 
 But the short dark days and the long dark 
 nights had their own peculiar charm. The 
 never-ceasing rain wrapped the inhabitants 
 of the farmhouse in a soporific calm. The 
 wind sang a hoarse lullaby to the sleeping
 
 ON A 'LONDON SPELLING BOOK' 15 
 
 child at nights, and the sound of the waves 
 from the sandy bar across the entrance to 
 the Traeth came up from the west murmur- 
 ing unutterable things. 
 
 Sometimes when John Owen rose on a 
 winter's morning the masts of a shipwrecked 
 vessel stood up against the inky sky above 
 the long, low line of sandhills two miles dis- 
 tant. No thought of lessons on such a day ! 
 None save the women-folk remained in the 
 farm when a ship lay breaking on the cruel 
 rocks of Sarn Badrig, or stranded helpless on 
 the Harlech Sands. 
 
 Then there was Christmas Eve, when, 
 shortly after midnight, many a lanthorn- 
 lighted party might be seen wending its way 
 to the parish church for the Plygain ; John 
 Owen would not miss that nocturnal adven- 
 ture, we may be sure. 
 
 Early on the morning of the first day of 
 the year, too, he was up betimes, hurrying 
 with his contemporary ' Probationers for 
 Heaven ' over the darkling hills from house 
 to house to shout ' Calcnig ' at each door, 
 and to reap largesse thereby. 
 
 ' Lord, what is Man ? ' ejaculates the dys- 
 peptic tutor. ' Originally Dust, engendered
 
 1 6 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 in Sin, brought forth with Sorrow, helpless in 
 his Infancy, extravagantly wild in his Youth, 
 mad in his Manhood, decrepit in his Age.' 
 
 Did John Owen Williams ever come to 
 believe the gloomy prophet ? I trow not. 
 
 But his after-life is unknown to me. When 
 he was almost twelve years old his parents 
 removed to a farm in Anglesey, where his 
 descendants continue to this day. 
 
 And, oh. Ingratitude of the Human Heart! 
 In the hurry of departure, surely, the London 
 Spelling Book was left behind ! 
 
 Whether its first owner were permanently 
 affected by its dark philosophy seems, there- 
 fore, extremely doubtful. He evidently could 
 not be said to love his book, though his 
 efforts to embellish it still remain visible in 
 the shape of several faded pencil drawings on 
 the blank pages at the end of it. There may 
 be seen a spirited sketch, entitled, * Mr. Owen,* 
 — probably a fancy portrait of the figure the 
 artist himself hoped to cut at some future 
 date. It represents a man on horseback, and 
 witnesses to the purity of John Owen's Celtic 
 blood by its highly imaginative treatment 
 combined with a pre-Raphaelitish attention to 
 detail. Here, too, are several studies of birds,
 
 ON A 'LONDON SPELLING BOOK' 17 
 
 described simply as ' Dcrynl from which we 
 infer that the draughtsman was long in at- 
 taining proficiency in the English tongue. 
 No trace of Celtic melancholy is revealed in 
 these artistic first-fruits ; the birds, the rider, 
 and the uncouth steed are all * natives of the 
 Skies,' and tread on air — emblematic, let us 
 hope, of a buoyancy and light-hcartedness 
 that utterly refused to be affected by some 
 years' intercourse with that cheerless peda- 
 gogue Charles Vyse. 
 
 II 
 
 The 'London Spelling Book' has not known 
 many owners, or it would not be here to-day. 
 After its heartless abandonment by John 
 Owen Williams, it probably sank into obscu- 
 rity for more than one generation. Then it 
 seems to have fallen into the possession of 
 one Jane Edwards, aged eleven in 1850 — I 
 trust I am not indiscreet. Who Jane 
 Edwards was I have not been able to deter- 
 mine. Some juvenile relative paying a visit 
 to the old farmhouse 1 imagine, as it was 
 
 C
 
 i8 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 never held by a family of that name. She 
 was an idle Miss, I fear, with a passion for 
 scribbling her name in every available blank, 
 occasionally adding the address of the farm 
 in which she sojourned. Her spelling is 
 eccentric, but reveals a generous nature, for 
 utterly reckless as to the number of vowels 
 and consonants to be supplied to each word, 
 she is determined they shall not lack. She 
 wrote a poor hand, and affected a fine pointed 
 pen. I doubt if she profited much from the 
 • Young Gentlemen and Ladies' Guide.' 
 
 Yet it was a marvellous Compendium of 
 learning. The ' Geography of the Earth' is 
 condensed into one page. The Introduction 
 to English Grammar occupies six. Then 
 there are * certain speeches from Shake- 
 speare ' to ' bring Youth acquainted with the 
 higher and poetical Style of their own Lan- 
 guage,' together with three Letters from 
 Master Jackey Curious in London, and the 
 Short Account of the Kings of England. 
 
 Concerning these gentleman, Vyse's His- 
 toric Muse blows a trumpet of no uncertain 
 sound. His criticisms are trenchant, his 
 judgments absolutely without appeal. The 
 weak vacillation of the modern historian is
 
 ON A 'LONDON SPELLING BOOK' 19 
 
 totally absent from his pages, and philosophic 
 doubt holds no place there. 
 
 The bulk of the Spelling Book being de- 
 voted, after the spelling, to ' Directions for 
 an agreeable Behaviour and polite Address,' 
 the Kings had to be disposed of cursorily, but 
 no point of real interest was left unnoticed. 
 We subjoin the account of John in proof 
 thereof, and as giving a specimen of the 
 graphic and picturesque images conveyed in 
 a few words by the author. 
 
 'John, surnamed Lackland, was the fourth 
 son of Henry IL, and after the death of his 
 brother, Richard L, he ascended the throne in 
 1 199. His reign was disturbed by a variety of 
 vexations and disappointments; and at length 
 grief and fatigue threw him into a fever, 
 which was augmented by eating peaches and 
 drinking new ale. He died at Newark, on 
 October iS, 12 16, in the 51st year of his age, 
 and the 17th of his reign. In his person he 
 was tall, of a good shape, and an agreeable 
 countenance ; but his general character was 
 such that he was contemned and hated by 
 his subjects, abhorred by the Clergy, and 
 despised by all the neighbouring princes of 
 Europe.'
 
 20 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 As an after-thought, it is added that 
 * Magna Charta was granted by the King 
 at Runnymede.' And had it occurred to 
 John Owen or Jane Edwards to inquire, Who 
 or what was Magna Charta ? I doubt if 
 they could have obtained an answer through- 
 out the parish. But I fancy the * peaches 
 and new ale ' interested them more deeply, 
 that touch of Nature lending a tenderness to 
 their feeling for the unpopular monarch. 
 
 And where historical information was 
 concerned, I imagine John Owen carried out 
 faithfully the precept of his tutor. ' Never 
 desire more after your parents tell you that 
 you have had enough.' 
 
 What did he make of the rules of Polite 
 Life, I wonder? 
 
 ' The first Rule of Wisdom,' says the 
 Spelling Book with confidence, ' is to know 
 yourself, and in order to this you are to 
 consider your Station and Rank. 
 
 * You are placed above vulgar Children 
 (who run wild about the streets) by being 
 brought up at School. 
 
 ' Be not proud because you are above the 
 Vulgar, for there are others above you.' 
 
 With all of which the little boy and his
 
 ON A 'LONDON SPELLING BOOK' 21 
 
 parents would probably agree, with cheerful- 
 ness, for if there were others above them 
 they never sailed into their ken, unless some 
 social superiority were to be allowed to the 
 Rector, by reason of his sacred calling. 
 
 No breath of Radicalism had yet invaded 
 their mountain fastness of contented Conser- 
 vatism. Dissent indeed existed, but it led a 
 precarious existence among the vulgar in the 
 Northern portion of the Principality, long 
 after it had firm footing in the South. 
 
 It is strange to think how John Owen was 
 laying to heart the precepts of Charles Vyse 
 in our Welsh farmhouse, while, a few miles 
 off, on the other side of the shining traeth, 
 Shelley may have been walking hand in hand 
 with Harriet, 
 
 The little boy in simple faith conned the 
 magical recipe, whereby deportment may be 
 shaped ' so as to gain universal respect.' 
 ' Towards Superiors, Humility void of Mean- 
 ness,' and * to Inferiors, an affable Behaviour, 
 avoiding Familiarity,' what time across the 
 water the young poet in rapt vision beheld 
 that * Happy Earth, reality of Heaven,' for 
 which we are still waiting and longing at the 
 end of the century : Wherein ' the man of
 
 22 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys ' ; 
 where no man shall be called ' Master ' 
 because all are brethren ; wherein shall be no 
 talk of superior and inferior, but men shall 
 be equal though different. 
 
 The one-and-twenty rules for Behaviour in 
 School are a masterpiece of complicated 
 ceremonial, in which the making of genteel 
 Bows and discreet Reverences plays an all- 
 important part. 
 
 A profound Obeisance opened the day on 
 entering the School-house, which edifice had 
 been ' attained ' by ' decently advancing.' 
 Such vulgarity as running was not to be 
 thought of. 
 
 A graceful Bow or Courtsey greeted the 
 entrance of a stranger, and was the usual and 
 necessary preliminary to speech with the 
 schoolmaster. Indeed, a Genuflexion never 
 came amiss, whatever the business on hand. 
 It was clearly to be understood, that in an 
 attitude of humility lay man's only hope of 
 propitiating the superior Powers, from the 
 great Jehovah above to Charles Vyse himself 
 below. And what more natural and becom- 
 ing in a ' poor unworthy worm ' than that it 
 should srovel in the dust before the foot that
 
 ON A 'LONDON SPELLING BOOK' 23 
 
 had power to crush it? It was the theology 
 of the period. 
 
 The autocratic Schoolmaster had recourse 
 to the usual methods of despotion. Tale- 
 bearing, direct and indirect, was distinctly 
 encouraged in the Spelling Book. 
 
 If a scholar had occasion to complain of a 
 school-fellow's conduct, he was first to ' speak 
 of him softly' — in the hope of being over- 
 heard by the Master, we presume — 'desiring 
 him to desist' In case of obduracy the 
 plaintiff was * to rise up and wait an Oppor- 
 tunity'; and 'when the Master or Usher's Eye 
 is upon you, Bow, and say softly and in a few 
 words what your Complaint is.' 
 
 Above all things the pupil was ' never to 
 speak at Home or elsewhere, of what has been 
 done in School i^for nothing that passes there 
 should be told abroad).^ 
 
 This sharp touch of military discipline re- 
 calls our Teutonic neighbours to mind, and 
 presents a vivid contrast to the troubled life 
 of the Board School master of to-day. 
 
 Behaviour in Church was regulated with an 
 equally elaborate ritual. The Sacred Build- 
 ing was of course to be ' approached with 
 Decency ; do not run, but walk discreetly.'
 
 24 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 On entering, the young Gentleman is direc- 
 ted to take off his Hat and 'look up seriously 
 and devoutly towards Heaven' while he ad- 
 vances slowly towards his Pew, where having 
 repeated a short form of prayer, he is to rise 
 and bow to all those to whom he owes re- 
 spect, the Master, Usher, or Teacher, having 
 precedence of his Parents, Relatives, and Guar- 
 dians, and those who are seated in his 
 immediate vicinity. 
 
 These respectful salutations were to be 
 repeated at the conclusion of the service, when 
 the youth is requested to make his exit 
 ' softly and discreetly,* and to return ' in the 
 same decent Manner' to his Home. But, 
 alas ! could the faithful disciple of this 
 Master of Ceremonies ever be said to be ' at 
 home ' ? 
 
 He was to * come softly up to the Door ' 
 of the paternal mansion, and ' knock at it 
 once, and not too loud.' And on entering 
 the room where his parents and relatives 
 were, he must carefully bow, standing near 
 the Door till told where to sit. Never on any 
 account is he to take the liberty of sitting 
 down until desired to do so, and then not 
 until the favour has been handsomely ac- 
 knowledged by a grateful bow.
 
 ON A 'LONDON SPELLING BOOK' 25 
 
 ' When any one calls to you, go up to him 
 without running.' How those winged feet 
 of youth teased the imagination of the crab- 
 bed old pedagogue ! ' And when you are 
 come near him, stand still, and fixing your 
 Eyes modestly upon his Face, wait till he is 
 pleased to speak to you.' 
 
 When the young Gentleman himself wishes 
 to address one of his superiors, he is darkly 
 warned ' to be careful' 
 
 He is to begin his speech with ' Sir, or 
 Madam,' and when he has spoken to wait 
 patiently for an answer. Before and after 
 speaking a Bow or Courtesy is necessary, 
 and the answer is to be received in like 
 manner, ' but with Discretion.' 
 
 Hampered in every movement, perpetually 
 harassed by the exigencies of polite life, we 
 are not surprised that Vyse suspends his 
 directions for a moment, foreseeing the neces- 
 sity of forbidding his victim to 'slip out 
 private ' from the Room. ' That,' he remarks 
 emphatically, ' is mean and unhandsome.' 
 
 Leave must be asked and obtained ere 
 the young Gentleman may withdraw himself 
 to the enviable privacy of his own room. The 
 desired permission having been received, he
 
 26 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 is to bow and * take leave ' ere making his 
 * decent exit' 
 
 A good deal of policy is observable in the 
 rules regulating Behaviour to the Family. 
 It is pointed out that an undutiful answer 
 brings punishment and disgrace, while an 
 obedient and respectful one obtains forgive- 
 ness and praise. If you are ready to give 
 your Sisters or Brothers anything that is in 
 your Power, they will give you what you 
 desire. If they are cross to you, silence and 
 gentleness should first be tried, 'but if that 
 do not make them kind,' the old remedy 
 is at once resorted to : ' complain to your 
 Father, Mother, or Relatives.' 
 
 For above all things we are not to revenge 
 ourselves — partly because ' that is wicked,' 
 but mainly because it is impolitic — for the 
 higher authorities *■ ivill aways take your Part 
 if you behave with Quietness.' There is quite 
 a Parliamentary ring about the words, they 
 seem the echo of superior journalism. 
 
 The Servants of the household are to be 
 addressed with a civility equally remote from 
 haughtiness and familiarity. 
 
 ' If they refuse to do what you desire, do 
 not dispute with them, but tell it to your
 
 ON A 'LONDON SPELLING BOOK' 27 
 
 Parents ; if you are in the right, they will 
 chide them and make them to observe you 
 at other times.' 
 
 But even in those days the servant question 
 was a ticklish one, and, foreseeing household 
 jars, Vyse hastens to add a warning word : 
 ' Be not too fond of making complaints ; 
 for then neither your Parents nor the Servants 
 will regard you.' 
 
 No less than forty precepts are devoted 
 to the business of polite bearing at meals, 
 for : ' Nothing shows the difference between 
 a young Gentleman and a vulgar Boy so 
 much as the behaviour in eating.' 
 
 Many are the quaint recommendations 
 towards an elegant deportment during the 
 repast, many the whimsical niceties with 
 which it was to be savoured. 
 
 The young Gentleman is to eat * silently 
 and decently, not making a noise with 
 lips or mouth as vulgar boys use, stoop- 
 ing a little to his plate as he takes each 
 mouthful, and ere he drinks he is to bow to 
 some one of the company, saying Sir, or 
 Madam, 
 
 Never must he observe what another has 
 on his plate : 'it looks as if you wanted it'
 
 28 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 Neither are his eyes to be kept upon those 
 who are eating ; it is unmannerly. 
 
 Those roving, boyish eyes ! Vyse held 
 them in abhorrence hardly less than the 
 restless feet. He is constantly directing their 
 movements. In church they are to be kept 
 out of harm's way by being ' modestly fixed 
 upon the Minister.' At school they are to 
 be kept upon the Book, * not regarding any 
 that are present'; and at a meal they may 
 not stray from off the Plate. 
 
 * Do not laugh at table, much less sneeze, 
 cough, or yawn ; but if you cannot avoid it 
 hold up the napkin or your handkerchief 
 before your face, and turn aside from the 
 table,' to hide the disgraceful exhibition 
 from the company ! 
 
 These were hard sayings surely for the 
 natural man or boy, who is bidden to sit 
 in a ' genteel and easy posture ' — surely an 
 impossible combination — the youth being 
 further directed not to stretch out his legs 
 or loll, but to put one hand in the bosom 
 of his waistcoat, and to let the other fall 
 easily upon his knee. 
 
 He is to make ' no childish motion ' ; and 
 if he have occasion to laugh, to turn from the
 
 ON A 'LONDON SPELLING BOOK' 29 
 
 company. ' Never Liugh at what the com- 
 pany do not know ' — a sound piece of 
 wisdom this — ' it will seem as if you laughed 
 at them.' We have probably all suffered 
 in youth from such unkind misconstruction. 
 
 And here again the learned author of the 
 Spelling Book has a gleam of swift pre- 
 vision, bidding the victim sharply not to yawn 
 in company : * it looks as if you were tired 
 of being with them.' * If you cannot con- 
 quer it,' he adds with gloomy foreboding, 
 ' turn aside and hide it as much as possible.' 
 
 Finally the Book of Etiquette closes with 
 an airy injunction to always appear * easy 
 and pleased ' when in company. In return, 
 the faithful disciple will be * amply rewarded ' 
 by the company being pleased with him ! 
 — a recompense that seems to us somewhat 
 poor and precarious in return for the labours 
 and sufferings imposed upon the conscientious 
 follower of Charles Vyse. Never was such 
 found in our Welsh farmhouse, of that we 
 rest assured.
 
 II 
 
 My Country 
 
 ' Cas gwr na charo'r wlad ai maco.' 
 ' 'Tis an ill sort of man that loves not his own 
 country.' 
 
 Old Welsh Proverb. 
 
 ' Canmol dy fro, a thiig yno.' 
 ' Praise thy country, and tarry there.' 
 
 Old Welsh Proverb. 
 
 WHEN my grandfather lay a-dying, 
 one beside him saw his lips move, 
 and bending closer caught the tender breath- 
 ing : * O mam bach / ' — ' O little mother ! ' 
 He had lost his mother in early childhood, 
 and his long and busy life had been spent far 
 from little Wales, almost entirely among 
 English folk, and in an English town. He 
 had married a wife from the Isle of Man, and 
 their children had grown up ignorant of their 
 father's native tongue. 
 
 30
 
 MY COUNTRY 31 
 
 But in those last hours of his earthly life 
 the old man dying in the bustling town, 
 wandered, once more a little fair-haired lad, 
 by the side of his little Welsh mother, and 
 ' babbled of green fields ' — the tiny stone- 
 walled fields of Merionethshire. 
 
 As the love of the Jew towards Jerusalem, 
 so is the desire of the Welshman toward 'j'f 
 Hen Wlad ' — ' t/ie Old Country ' — his ' /ir//e 
 motJiej'! And, however far he may wander 
 from her, however long he may live away 
 from her, at the hour of death his supreme 
 desire is to die at home — on her bosom — ■ 
 the sound of Welsh voices waning faint and 
 fainter through the gathering clouds of sleep, 
 till his hold on life relaxes as gently as the 
 falling away of baby fingers from a mother's 
 breast. 
 
 And, I think, that at the end each Welsh- 
 man is thus caught back to the mountains, 
 and sinks to sleep in his mother's arms to 
 the sound of her singing. 
 
 The first thing that I can remember is an 
 old Welsh lullaby that my mother sang 
 to each baby in turn as it lay on her lap 
 before the fire. 
 
 She sat on a low rocking-chair, and if she
 
 32 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 sang any words to that plaintive air they 
 must have been English, for she knew no 
 Welsh. But while I was yet unwitting of 
 words, the music flowed into me with my 
 mother's milk, mingling with my being, 
 fashioning my unshaped brain after its Celtic 
 fancy. 
 
 For all through my sleep the golden melody 
 ran, and wrought fantastic patterns as the 
 sunlight shifts strange shapes on silver sands 
 beneath translucent seas. 
 
 The lullaby was interwoven with my 
 dreams, so that when it ceased I started from 
 them, and as it waxed loud again the azure 
 waves closed once more over my downy 
 head, until at last, still cradled by the 
 melody, I sank down with it into the very 
 heart of that blue immensity of unconscious- 
 ness whence I was first called into being, 
 whither I shall some day return to the sound 
 of that selfsame singing. 
 
 How can I choose but love my country ? 
 — my little mother whose life pulses in my 
 veins — she who has made and fashioned me 
 body and soul ? As a child loves its mother 
 unreasoningly, instinctively, with all its senses 
 — its eyes, its ears, its hands its mouth —
 
 MY COUNTRY 33 
 
 because it cannot do otherwise, so I must 
 ever love her. 
 
 And yet I think in English ; I speak and 
 write in English. If Wales has made me, 
 body and soul, England, no less, has nurtured 
 and informed my mind. 
 
 And certain well-loved English books, read 
 and re-read in Welsh woods, on Welsh hill- 
 sides, or beside Welsh waters, have long since 
 set my Welsh imagination aflame with the 
 glorious vision of heroic England — the 
 England Shakespeare loved, and Chaucer ; 
 Spenser's * deare countrey,' Milton's ' noble 
 and puissant Nation,' his * mansion house ot 
 liberty.' 
 
 So that to-day England stands to me in 
 the light of a noble friend whom, of my own 
 freewill, with open mind, I elect to love, not 
 unreasoningly, or uncritically — as a child 
 loves its mother — but frankly, thoughtfully, 
 open-eyed — as a woman her lover ; not 
 unconscious of manifold faults, defects, and 
 absurdities, but glorying in certain resplendent 
 qualities which command her love, deeming 
 him worthy by reason of them, by reason 
 also of those vast potentialities for good 
 which she surely discerns in him. 
 
 D
 
 34 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 Wales with my heart, England with my 
 mind, I love. The one is my mother, the 
 other my friend. Sometimes my friend 
 fails to comprehend me — my mother never. 
 And though the words be English, the voice 
 is the voice of Wales. And I can but utter 
 her meaning in whatever language I speak. 
 
 How can I choose but love her ? What 
 am I myself but a tiny throbbing pulse of 
 her, my Country, my ' little mother ' ? I 
 love every stone on her mountains. I love 
 every blade of Welsh grass. 
 
 As children our patriotism stopped little 
 short of mania. I do not remember the time 
 when I was unconscious of my nationality, 
 boasting myself emphatically Welsh and not 
 English. 
 
 Long before the days of * Little Arthur ' 
 and ' Mrs. Markham * I cherished a bitter 
 and unrelenting hatred towards the Saxon 
 oppressors of my race. 
 
 The fact that I spoke their tongue, and 
 that my patriotic sentiments were perforce 
 expressed in that alien language, was merci- 
 fully long hidden from my simplicity until 
 that day when it became the cheap and ready 
 taunt of many an English tormentor, and a 
 source of bitter anguish to myself
 
 MY COUNTRY 35 
 
 We were a conquered nation. At an early- 
 age I brooded over that tragic fact. My 
 childish heart bled when I thought on the 
 wrongs of my people, and I nursed dark 
 dreams of vengeance. 
 
 It was a personal matter to ' us children. 
 We were dead in earnest over it. We threw 
 a passion of energy into our hatred of Eng- 
 land. 
 
 Were we not ourselves descended from 
 Llewelyn, last prince of Wales ? Was not 
 the great Glendwr among our ancestors ? 
 Had we our rights, we should ourselves have 
 been Princesses of Wales, living in Harlech 
 Castle maybe, our father King of Wales. 
 Well, not King perhaps — the claims of Sir 
 Watkin Wynn had of course to be considered 
 — but Prince of Meirionydd at least. 
 
 Ah, we had a thousand brave schemes in 
 our heads for the liberation of our country ! 
 If only we could have imparted some spark 
 of our enthusiasm to the dull lymphatic 
 grown-ups, much might yet have been done. 
 
 We knew of hiding-places in the woods 
 and behind the pigsties, where no English 
 soldier would have courage to penetrate. We 
 were never tired of secretly rehearsing the
 
 36 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 campaign. Alas ! the initial difficulty ever 
 remained — opening the eyes of the people in 
 general, and our father in particular, to the 
 ignominy of their position. 
 
 The Saxon yoke had apparently become 
 light and easy to them ; we alone were galled 
 and fretted by it. 
 
 We suffered a total lack of sympathy 
 where our relatives were concerned. On 
 occasions our father laughed so heartily at 
 our patriotic propaganda that tears came to 
 his eyes. But once the tears were in our 
 eyes, for having gone so far as to speak of 
 our Sovereign Lady Queen Victoria as a 
 Thief and Usurper, we drew down such severe 
 rebuke as effectually quenched all missionary 
 spirit where our father was concerned. 
 
 We had to conclude that he was the sub- 
 ject of some strange infatuation on this 
 point, while our mother's indifference was 
 only to be explained by the sickening recol- 
 lection that she was not herself wholly 
 Welsh, and could not speak a word of the 
 language. 
 
 She teased and fretted us not a little by 
 constant reference to her Manx blood, and 
 often expressed a perverse preference for
 
 MY COUNTRY 37 
 
 English life and English character, bidding 
 us be thankful that Wales had been con- 
 quered, and that we were part of so great 
 and glorious a nation. 
 
 It was all very sad and perplexing, but 
 neither reproof or ridicule weakened one whit 
 our convictions. We kept all these things, 
 and pondered them in our sensitive, proud 
 little Welsh hearts, reserving our efforts at 
 proselytism for our humbler friends. 
 
 Our nurse was hopelessly contented with 
 the existing order of things. She was sup- 
 posed to instruct us in her language, but was 
 more intent on acquiring ours. We never 
 wasted much time on her. But there was a 
 faithful dairyman who was willing to spend 
 long hours in inaction, drinking in our views. 
 I see him now, supporting his idle back 
 against the pigsty wall, scratching reflectively 
 his frowsy head, ejaculating from time to 
 time a weak and chuckling ' We//, we// ! ' 
 
 Our pleasure in his receptivity was some- 
 what marred by the uneasy suspicion that he 
 was considered by the grown-ups as of weak 
 intelligence. 
 
 One worthy friend we had, however — a real 
 Bard, winner of more than one bardic chair,
 
 38 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 a celebrated character at local eisteddfodau. 
 He was a house-painter by trade, and when 
 he deigned to visit us there was joy in our 
 dwelling. While he compounded his white 
 lead and turpentine in the outhouse, we chil- 
 dren stood around him, and he recited to us 
 his prize poems — recited them with all the 
 fire and tenderness of an ideal Bard, they ap- 
 pearing the more splendid, perhaps, because 
 of our imperfect comprehension of the lan- 
 guage. For we had the most glorious ima- 
 ginations in those days. How the gold and 
 purple fades out of the sky as the sun ap- 
 proaches the meridian ! 
 
 The only fault we had to find with our 
 friend's poems was that they dealt almost 
 exclusively with Scriptural subjects. We 
 preferred Welsh heroes to Jewish any day. 
 
 With the latter we were familiar to satiety 
 from daily study of their histories in ' Line 
 upon Line ' and ' Peep of Day.' My dear 
 mother was oftentimes depressed at our strange 
 indifference to religious teaching. We had no 
 religious enthusiasm. Each Sunday we heard 
 with hardened hearts the story of ' Little 
 Franky,' or the ' Twin Brothers,' who at our 
 ages were advanced Christians, and sang
 
 MY COUNTRY 39 
 
 hymns as they lay on their little death-beds. 
 VVc listened with incredulity and dislike. 
 
 But for our Welsh heroes, concerning whom 
 we knew so little beyond the meagre details 
 furnished by ' Mrs. Markham,' and ' Little 
 Arthur,' for Llewelyn and for Glendwr we 
 cherished a perfect cult. 
 
 The former was our Martyr, a character 
 almost too sacred to be openly talked of. 
 His pale and noble head, crowned by derisive 
 enemies with willow, shone out a ghastly 
 light through the darkness of past ages, and 
 we felt that nothing should obliterate that 
 vision. Our love for him was nothing less 
 than adoration, and fell little short of wor- 
 ship. 
 
 I have before me, in the ragged MS. of a 
 sister bard, a poem written at the age of eight 
 or nine years, in which she wildly invokes 
 our hero : — 
 
 ' Llewelyn the nobel, Llewelyn the brave, 
 Llewelyn, Llewelyn, oh, where is thy grave ? ' 
 
 And after many gloomy surmises as to the 
 locality of his sepulture, she passionately 
 declares : — 
 
 ' I love thee, I love thee, my one earthly King ; 
 I love thee, Llewelyn, whatever it may bri)tg.
 
 40 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 I look at the mountains, dear Snowdon thy home ; 
 I'll always consider dear Wales as thy own.' 
 
 Could the religious effusions of little Franky 
 himself better the spirit of intense devotion 
 that breathes from these lines ? 
 
 Our poor dear mother might well be per- 
 plexed. Had she perused our poetical effu- 
 sions, she would have found us contemplating 
 our death-beds with a pagan patriotism such 
 as would have disgraced the hero or heroine 
 of any Christian memoir. 
 
 ' As long as a word my tongue can speak, 
 May it be of Llewelyn and the old Welsh leek ! ' 
 
 sings one young lady ; while another tells us 
 that she * has vowed and vowed, — 
 
 ' Never, oh never to forget thee, 
 But I hope in time thy face to see. 
 Now, Llewelyn, Llewelyn, good-bye, 
 And let the time draw nigh 
 When I shall look upon thy handsome eye.' 
 
 And while we tended the sacred flame of 
 our romantic attachment to the murdered 
 Prince, we fanned the embers of wrath against 
 his betrayers and destroyers : — 
 
 * Oh, Llewelyn, oh, brave prince, 
 ]''ve never forgotten the English since 
 They so crulily put an end to thy life 
 With that horrid instrument the knife.'
 
 MY COUNTRY 41 
 
 Our orthography might be uncertani, not 
 so our sentiments. We had ' never forgotten 
 the English since.' By many a quaint oath 
 we bound ourselves never to do so. Our 
 parents would indeed have been horrified had 
 they realized the unchristian nature of our 
 feelings. I fancy the Psalmist might have 
 sympathized. 
 
 From time to time some unsuspecting 
 visitor would, with the tactlessness peculiar 
 to adults of the Saxon race, take upon him- 
 self or herself to banter us upon our nation- 
 ality. We were addressed as * Taffy,' and our 
 Welsh ' accents ' were commented on. Many 
 such found it difficult to make their peace 
 with us, and very often speedily desired to do 
 so. There were shallow wits among them, 
 however, who, with foolish amusement at the 
 storm they had raised, proceeded to taunt us 
 with being a conquered nation, or, worse still, 
 with speaking the language of our brutal 
 conquerors. What a bitter thought that was! 
 It invariably proved too much for our feel- 
 ings, and casting prudence to the winds, we 
 would fall upon the foolhardy guest, so that 
 he retained for some days the marks of our 
 resentment. A set of regular little Wild Cats
 
 42 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 we were called on more than one such occa- 
 sion, but neither our mother's vexation at our 
 conduct, nor its after punishment, checked our 
 triumphant appreciation of the impression 
 which Welsh arms — teeth, and nails ^ if the 
 truth be told — had produced upon Saxon 
 phlegm. In such moments we felt ourselves 
 worthy descendants of the great Glendwr. 
 
 We were all Bards in those days, filling 
 penny account-books, bought at the village 
 shop, with English doggerel that caused us 
 the most perfect satisfaction. 
 
 One venturous spirit dubbed herself, in 
 sadly corrupted Welsh, Eos y Garret (Night- 
 ingale of the Garret), and, proceeding straight- 
 way to live up to her name, ascended by 
 means of a ladder into regions uninhabited, 
 and ordinarily supposed to be inaccessible, 
 beneath the roof. We watched her ascension 
 awestruck and envious. She bade us a cheer- 
 ful farewell, and vanished from our ken. Hers 
 was a bold, ambitious nature, fitted to dwell 
 in the heights had it not been for certain 
 human frailties. 
 
 A slender store of provisions, and the pos- 
 session of some hoarded candle-ends, together 
 with a box of matches — dishonestly come by,
 
 MY COUNTRY 43 
 
 I fear — for a time prevented her fears in her 
 new and darksome dwelling. But she had 
 not calculated on the trial in store for her. A 
 vision of mice — rats, she always declared — 
 sent her shrieking to the ladder, and the poor 
 nightingale was dragged from her retreat by 
 an irate nurse in a tear-stained and bedraggled 
 condition piteous to contemplate. 
 
 Perhaps Dick-the-Rocking-Horse — always 
 named thus in full — knew most of our hearts 
 in those days. For we were wont to ride to 
 battle on his broad back, chanting loud war- 
 songs in the English tongue to the tune of 
 ' Men of Harlech,' ' Forth to the Battle,' or 
 the weird wail of ' Marsh Rhuddlan.' 
 
 The old Welsh war-songs ran like fire 
 through our veins ; there was not one of them 
 but was familiar to us. To this day they 
 move me as no other music can. In them, 
 above the lament of a conquered people, 
 flashes the splendour of untamed souls, the 
 grandeur of a forlorn hope, the sombre glory 
 of death and defeat, the divine madness of 
 dying patriots, warriors, priests, kings, and 
 bards. 
 
 It was a black day for me when I found 
 myself transplanted to English soil, to droop
 
 44 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 in the confined precincts of a Ladies' School 
 in the ugly suburb of an English city. Far 
 from my blue mountains and green woods, 
 the paved roads and dreary vistas of new red 
 brick houses brought a strange choking to my 
 throat, and a horrible sinking took my heart. 
 
 I was sick with longing for my Welsh 
 people and my Welsh country, and the elo- 
 quence inspired by patriotism and home sick- 
 ness combined was such as to create no small 
 stir among my schoolmates. They regarded 
 me doubtfully. I was * peculiar,' a terrible 
 stigma in a Ladies' School. My elder sister, 
 a ' head girl,' accustomed to be treated with 
 respect by all who knew her, and appearing 
 strange and awfully distant to me in this new 
 world, admonished me severely in private. 
 I had been guilty of the childish error of 
 boasting of our royal ancestry on one occa- 
 sion ; it was my first experience of school life, 
 and my sister was reduced to tears of morti- 
 fication. She accused me of making our 
 family ridiculous ! How absurd the accusation 
 sounded to me. 
 
 ' But it is quite true,' I began. 
 
 'And if it ivox quite true,' she retorted 
 with asperity.
 
 MY COUNTRY 45 
 
 I did not realize the rest. Those words 
 haunted me : ' IF it were true.' My sister 
 was removed from me by a bridgeless chasm. 
 She continued to address me with all the 
 hateful common-sense of a grown-up person. 
 I promised to be ' more sensible ' in future, 
 and went away to weep bitterly, the last wild 
 hope of ever seeing my country freed from 
 the Saxon yoke dying in my bosom. Should 
 we all become like my sister as we grew up ? 
 I wondered darkly. Surely a curse was on us. 
 
 Deprived of free speech, my concentrated 
 hatred against the English for some time 
 found a vent in the passionate recitation of 
 such pieces as Gray's ' Bard,' and Cowper's 
 'Boadicea,' while I displayed a personal 
 animosity against Henry II. and Edward I., 
 which astonished our teacher of History, and 
 persisted in raking up all the weak points 
 of Henry IV. and V. 
 
 Yet it was in the History class that light 
 came to me at last. There the glorious 
 Tudors finally consoled me. One happy day 
 the conviction flashed home to me : we were 
 no conquered people after all ! We — the 
 Welsh — had conquered England, in the per- 
 son of Henry^Tudor. Three Welshmen and
 
 46 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 two Welsh women had reigned over England, 
 and their reigns had become her everlasting 
 glory. 
 
 How had it not struck me before ? Perhaps 
 I really was very ' peculiar.' 
 
 But from that day began a new era. I 
 could no longer continue to hate a conquered 
 nation. We were quits, England and Wales, 
 at last. I decided to let the slaughtered bards 
 sleep in peace, and gave way to a long-stand- 
 ing secret fondness for Robin Hood, Coeur de 
 Lion, and Ivanhoe. 
 
 England began to set my intellect aflame, 
 England under the auspices of the great 
 Tudors, England at her best : Elizabethan 
 England. 
 
 I found myself on Welsh soil again, the 
 same, and yet how changed. I was just as 
 much Welsh as ever, but I was English too. 
 I had a Shakespeare of my own. I loved to 
 talk of English literature with my mother in 
 our Welsh garden. I felt I should not have 
 minded so very much if she had happened to 
 be partly English. And yet I first realized 
 the delicious power that knowledge confers 
 when I was able to meet her mischievous 
 references to her Manx blood, with the calm
 
 MY COUNTRY 47 
 
 assurance that it was none the less Celtic 
 for that. 
 
 To-day I need only cross the Channel to 
 become aware that I am intensely English. 
 But there are many Frenchmen and women 
 who know me well enough to have found out 
 that the very heart of me is Welsh. 
 
 A few months' sojourn on the Continent 
 sends my thoughts flying homesick back to 
 England. But I no sooner set foot on Eng- 
 lish soil than I realize that I am not yet at 
 home. It is Wales that I am wanting — my 
 little mother ! 
 
 How the sight of the first mountain takes 
 one's breath away when the Wrekin rises like 
 a double-peaked island from Shrewsbury 
 plain. And how the blood rushes to one's 
 heart at the first wayside station where one 
 hears Welsh spoken. 
 
 Dear little country, nestling between the 
 purple mountains and the silver sea ! I 
 behold it decked out in its Bardic colours — 
 all blue, and green, and white. Against the 
 azure sky, green hills dotted with tiny white- 
 washed cottages. White leaping waters 
 glancing through green woods, wet rocks 
 mirroring the blue above. Blue distant
 
 48 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 mountains set in the green and white of a 
 hawthorn tree in blossom. White clouds 
 sailing through the blue heavens, white sheep 
 moving over the green meadows, white butter- 
 flies flitting over the daisies, white sails out 
 at sea. 
 
 All is soft and pure, cool and fresh, with an 
 ineffable sense of a virginal and rustic charm. 
 
 Is she not pleasant to the eye — my ' little 
 mother ' ? Does not ' Yr Hen Wlad ' seem 
 to possess the secret of eternal youth ? 
 
 Fragments of her ancient lore come float- 
 ing back into my mind, and I behold the 
 fluttering blue robes of the bards, signifying : 
 peace and tranquillity, ' the colour of the 
 heavens in sunshine and serenity, without 
 mist, without a cloud.' 
 
 And the green garments of the ovates, for 
 * green is the symbol of learning, and the 
 wisdom of sciences which spring and grow 
 beautifully like the green herbs of the fields, 
 rejoicing the owners of the eyes that behold 
 them.' 
 
 And the Druids clad in white, symbol of: 
 truth and purity ; * for these are of the same 
 colour as the Sun — glitteringly and splendidly 
 white.'
 
 MY COUNTRY 49 
 
 The Bard, the Ovate, and the Druid — the 
 singer, the student, and the teacher. Of 
 whom * one cannot be better than the other, 
 or one superior to another ; but they are 
 co-equal, and of like dignity.' 
 
 Is she not wise — my little mother ? Has 
 she not held up a better ideal to her children 
 than that symbolized by the red -coated 
 soldier, or the judge in his scarlet robes ? 
 
 Is it not significant that no harvest of 
 recruits is gathered from her villages ? Is 
 there no meaning in the white gloves which 
 await the judge year after year in her law- 
 courts ? 
 
 Peace be to her green pastures ! May the 
 heavens above her be for ever clear and 
 serene ! May the white light of truth pour 
 down upon the sons and daughters of Wales ! 
 
 Far from her borders be all violence and 
 bloodshed, and cruelty, in every shape or 
 form, whether authorized by law, sanctioned 
 by custom, or accepted by public opinion. 
 
 Let every Welshman say : Amen !
 
 Ill 
 Gentle Savages 
 
 WHAT a pleasant state of things it 
 was when the world was young, 
 and we children ran down to the shore at 
 Llandudno some fine spring morning, fell in 
 love at first sight with a group of small 
 strangers, and five minutes later were work- 
 ing side by side with them at the construction 
 of their castle, the best of friends. No call for 
 introductions, no presenting of credentials in 
 those days, no clandestine examination of the 
 visitors' book on the hotel table, or ques- 
 tioning of the waiters prior to a tentative 
 interchange of civilities. 
 
 The mode of procedure was beautifully 
 simple. The new-comers for a while gazed 
 silently at the objects of their admiration, 
 who worked on in affected unconsciousness 
 of the presence of four small figures in holland 
 blouses and sailor hats, each furnished with 
 
 50
 
 GENTLE SAVAGES 51 
 
 the implements of their trade, the inevitable 
 spade and bucket, without which no reason- 
 able child would have had a hope of being 
 admitted to a group of strangers. 
 
 Then from the lips of our eldest would 
 burst forth the simple offer : ' Shall we play 
 with you ? ' or : ' Let's be friends.' And the 
 matter was settled. We spent the mornings 
 toiling under the direction of our new com- 
 panions, delving deep moats, or piling up 
 proud castles, while our respective nurses sat 
 together on the beach, or wheeled their per- 
 ambulators side by side down the parade. 
 
 In the afternoons we went for donkey rides 
 with our new friends, and we invited each 
 other to tea at our various lodging-houses. 
 The friendship lasted sometimes the whole 
 length of the fortnight spent at the sea-side : 
 a fortnight in those days was a period of time 
 so lengthy as to be almost impossible to be 
 grasped, save as a portion of eternity. 
 
 Finally it fell to the lot of one nursery 
 party to escort the other to the railway 
 station, and there with warm embraces, and 
 the presentation of parting gifts purchased 
 at the penny market, they parted with the 
 healthy callousness of childhood. Those who
 
 52 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 were left behind wended their way back to 
 the famih'ar shore, and ere the morning was 
 out had made another circle of acquaintances. 
 
 That was a fine, open-hearted fashion of 
 facing life. No idle repining. The shore was 
 covered with boys in knickerbockers, with 
 iron spades, and little girls in frilled skirts 
 with long hair ; the main question was not to 
 lose any time in setting to work in their 
 company. 
 
 It was a thrilling moment when, busied in 
 some great engineering operation, we became 
 conscious of the silent proximity of two pairs 
 of knickerbockers and a frilled skirt. Our 
 hearts glowed with the pride of the chosen, 
 and we redoubled our efforts, till one of the 
 knickerbockers, with a lordly air, seeing we 
 were all little girls, advanced with careless 
 benevolence : ' You'd better let us help you. 
 We^ve got iron spades ! ' 
 
 Ah, those iron spades ! VVe were accus- 
 tomed to knock under to their possessors 
 with becoming feminine deference, knowing 
 well the inferiority of our wooden ones, 
 however large and strong. 
 
 These spontaneous proffers of partnership 
 were not always accepted, however. Even on
 
 GENTLE SAVAGES 53 
 
 the free beach of Llandudno, where social 
 considerations might have been expected to 
 be thrown to the winds, we had a certain 
 code of requirements which we exacted from 
 our associates. 
 
 A spadeless stranger had no chance at all 
 of being admitted to a self-respecting nursery, 
 and the absence of a bucket weighed heavily 
 against a candidate. 
 
 * No, I don't think you can play with us,' 
 was the decided answer of our spokeswoman 
 on such occasions. And in case the applicant 
 declined to take a refusal, which sometimes 
 happened, we proceeded to be more explicit. 
 
 ' Nurse says we are not to play with com- 
 mon children ! ' Which naturally often led to 
 the interchange of active hostilities and such 
 ' common ' behaviour as the shovelling up 
 and throwing at each other large spadefuls of 
 sand, or the demolition of a morning's work 
 by the irate intruder. 
 
 Or, sometimes a child of prepossessing 
 appearance, duly provided with spade and 
 pail, was accepted as our partner for a single 
 morning, and being found wanting was 
 thenceforth relentlessly ' cut.' Children are 
 undoubtedly very cruel in such matters. I
 
 54 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 remember one such case which long weighed 
 heavily on my conscience, though I clung to 
 it obstinately that we could not possibly have 
 acted otherwise. 
 
 She was a little girl of wistful countenance, 
 and mild manners. We felt slightly doubt- 
 ful concerning her when we discovered that 
 she was one of those shore pariahs who roam 
 the beach without the protection of a nurse, 
 one of those small freebooters always so 
 touchingly eager to attach themselves to 
 some group of children, generally, alas ! so 
 coldly received. 
 
 She was, however, so anxious to please us, 
 so industrious a carrier of water and delver 
 of sand, that all might have gone well had 
 she not in the innocence of her heart confided 
 to us that her father kept a shop ! 
 
 ' Not a little mean shop, dearies,' she cried 
 aloud, terrified at the chilly disgust reflected 
 in our faces. * A right large shop, full of 
 curran's and raisins, and biscuits and candied 
 peel.' 
 
 I can see her now, stopping short, breath- 
 less, her eyes dilated with horror at what she 
 had done, and beginning to swim with tears 
 at the consequences she foresaw all too late.
 
 GENTLE SAVAGES 55 
 
 Alas ! our imaginations were not to be 
 bribed by the material splendours of that 
 * right large shop.' Vainly she prayed for a 
 continuance of the friendship on which she set 
 such a fancy price. Her tearful pleading 
 strove awhile against our haughty coldness. 
 Finally she withdrew in floods of tears to rear 
 a solitary castle, which she watered with her 
 tears for several mornings ere she disappeared 
 from our ken for ever. 
 
 Whence we derived our unbounded con- 
 tempt for 'shopkeepers,' I know not. We 
 were singularly innocent of all other class 
 distinctions, and were in such ignorance con- 
 cerning our own social status as to be sorely 
 puzzled by the questions of some of our new 
 friends. For instance, what was our father ? 
 A gentleman^ was deemed too vague and in- 
 sufficient, and we were sore perplexed until 
 we decided that he must be a farmer because 
 we had a farm ! 
 
 * How many rooms had we in our house ? ' 
 was generally the next inquiry, and much 
 conscientious calculation ensued, together 
 with anxious debate as to whether the lum- 
 ber room could fairly be counted. 
 
 But our crown of glory as a family lay in
 
 56 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 the golden halo that surrounded our uncle, 
 and we reserved him always to the end of our 
 examination, feeling that the mention of 
 his name would have opened the doors of 
 Buckingham Palace itself. 
 
 'My father is an M.P.' I remember one 
 little girl assuring us proudly. 
 
 ' Ah ! but 07ir Uncle is a Merchant^ we 
 answered, and felt confident that, whatever an 
 M.P. might signify, we had taken the wind 
 out of his sails. 
 
 What a Merchant was we did not precisely 
 know either. We were in doubt as to whether 
 there were any more of them beside our 
 uncle. A knicker-bockcred inquisitor once 
 inquired : ' Merchant of what ? ' but the 
 ready answer : ' Of Liverpool,' seemed to 
 satisfy him completely. We could hardly 
 believe that our uncle's name was unknown 
 to any one. His wealth was fabulous, and we 
 thought there was nothing in Llandudno or 
 anywhere else that he could not buy. 
 
 He was richer, wc decided, than our father, 
 but of course not so powerful or celebrated a 
 personage. 
 
 I remember one day when we children 
 were proing into Harlech Castle with our
 
 GENTLE SAVAGES 57 
 
 nurse, and the doorkeeper jocosely asked my 
 sister for her ticket of admission. She was a 
 stately little lady of perhaps six years of age. 
 Regarding him with wide grey eyes, she drew 
 herself up in the most dignified manner as 
 she replied with crushing hauteur, — 
 * Pa's my father^ 
 
 Ah, the potency of that fact ! It was an 
 * Open Sesame ' before which the walls of 
 Jericho might have fallen flat, and we should 
 not have been surprised. Even beyond the 
 gates of Death our father's influence ex- 
 tended ; and though becomingly doubtful as 
 to our own merits, we relied comfortably on 
 those of our parents as securing us a distin- 
 guished position in Heaven. 
 
 Hence arose our fears of dying before 
 them, and having to present ourselves alone 
 to the Keeper of the Heavenly Gates, who 
 might possibly be as stupid as the caretaker 
 at Harlech Castle, and affect not to know us. 
 We had a great dread, too, of the End of the 
 World arriving while our father and mother 
 were absent from home, for we knew, of 
 course, that they would be snatched up to the 
 clouds willy-nilly, the very first of all the 
 elect, ' us children' being left to follow as best 
 we might.
 
 58 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 We prayed every night that we might all 
 die together, and together enter Heaven, 
 beneath the shelter of our mother's skirt or 
 holding our father's hand. 
 
 Ours was a very lonely neighbourhood. 
 The only children we were accustomed to see 
 were the children of poor and humble par- 
 ents. 'Village children' we called them, or 
 'common children,' regarding them with a lofty 
 patronage that must have amused our elders. 
 The ' village girls ' dropped curtseys to us 
 when we met them on our walks, and the 
 ' common boys ' saluted us with a semi-circu- 
 lar sweep of the arm above the head, which 
 we considered highly proper and gratifying. 
 We were tenacious of this show of respect, 
 and bitterly resented its omission. 
 
 ' Don't you know who I am ? ' cried one of 
 us, a small seven-year-old tyrant, to a humble 
 contemporary who had, one day, forgotten 
 her curtsey. And she proceeded to teach her 
 in so undignified a fashion, that in the tussle 
 that ensued the pail of milk that the recalci- 
 trant damsel was carrying was overturned, 
 and its contents spilt. Thereupon both com- 
 batants dissolved in tears, and the little lady 
 hastened wailing home to seek out amonsf
 
 GENTLE SAVAGES 59 
 
 her treasures some offering sufficiently pre- 
 cious to repair the mischief she had done. 
 
 She was the same young person who, seeing 
 one day a gentleman approaching the house 
 while she was playing in the garden, ran hel- 
 ter-skelter to her mother with the news that 
 Mr. H was at the door. 
 
 'Really? Why did you not ask him to 
 come in, dear, and take him to the drawing- 
 room } ' 
 
 ' Oh, Mamma, I was afraid he might take 
 me for the housemaid ! ' 
 
 Once an old lady living some six miles dis- 
 tant invited ' us children ' to tea with her, 
 and the legend still lives how, on entering her 
 sitting-room, we exclaimed aloud in jiai've 
 astonishment and horror, — 
 
 * What ? Ha.vej'07i got a piano ! ! ' 
 
 We had hitherto fondly imagined our- 
 selves to be the unique possessors of a piano. 
 And no doubt the old lady's participation 
 in the distinction this article conferred, was 
 resented by us as highly unbecoming, and 
 darkly indicative of what the world was 
 coming to. 
 
 Those were brave days when we strutted 
 about big with the sense of our self-import-
 
 6o SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 ance ; when in the spring-time we surprised 
 great boys, twice our size, bird-nesting in our 
 woods, and chased them from our territory ; 
 when in the autumn bands of school-children 
 after our chestnuts, engaged with us in hand- 
 to-hand fights over the coveted booty. 
 
 Many an inoffensive tourist found trespass- 
 ing by our intrepid Amazonian band, must 
 have carried away a laughable image of Wild 
 Wales from the brief encounter, with its proud 
 brusque opening : * TJiis is our ground ! ' 
 
 Like gallant feudal chieftains, we exercised 
 our scigncurial rights, and claimed our dues. 
 While, when it came to making raids on ad- 
 joining properties, six-foot boundary walls 
 were insufficient to keep us out if blackberries 
 were concerned. 
 
 Those were brave days, I say. How sadly 
 shrunken in our own estimation we are be- 
 come in these degenerate times !
 
 IV 
 The Child Kingdom of Play 
 
 SURELY children at play arc the true 
 Olympians ; they are gods, not men 
 For them the inevitable, the impossible, the 
 irretrievable, exist not. 
 
 * Let's pretend ! ' cries the young magician. 
 And straightway a new creation flashes into 
 being, and he sees that it is good. 
 
 Or, ' No ! that didn't happen. That was 
 just a dream.' 
 
 And the elaborated structure vanishes In a 
 breath ; is swallowed up into Aunzuii — region 
 of nothingness and void — and the work of 
 creation again goes gaily forward. 
 
 A veritable Penelope's web Is children's 
 play, a continual making and unmaking, 
 killing and making alive. 
 
 Omnipotent Creators, irresponsible De- 
 stroyers, strong in the knowledge that no 
 
 61
 
 62 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 situation could ever pass beyond our control, 
 we children indulged our inborn bent for 
 tragedy, conjuring up the most desperate 
 crises, the most thrilling catastrophes, piling 
 the agony up to that supreme moment of 
 climax. Then, with a wave of the wand, the 
 magician dominated the spirits she had raised, 
 just as the fisherman rebottled the genie ere 
 consigning him to the waters of oblivion, and 
 all went merry as a marriage bell. 
 
 It may be thought that the habit of cancel- 
 ling our work at the end of a long day's play 
 was calculated to rob it of interest, and make 
 the 'pretence' half-hearted. On the con- 
 trary, only thus were we enabled to enter 
 heart and soul into our games with a courage 
 that was absolutely innocent of fear. 
 
 How we enjoyed those deathbed scenes, 
 when the whole doll house was plunged into 
 mourning and real tears ran down the chubby 
 cheeks of the deceased doll's owner. 
 
 For just at the moment when the feelings 
 of the bereaved mother threatened to become 
 too much for her — it was a point of honour to 
 hold out as long as possible against such 
 weakness — ^just at that moment salvation was 
 at hand.
 
 THE CHILD KINGDOM OF PLAY 63 
 
 • No, that's too sad ! That didn't happen. 
 All this was a dream ! ' 
 
 And our darlhig ' Lance ' was not dead at 
 all ; no, not though he had just been solemnly 
 interred with all the customary honours. At 
 once the sun broke out. While the tears 
 evoked by the eloquence of the funeral oration 
 were yet undried, the mourners hastily 
 grubbed up the new-made grave ; the pins 
 that secured the lid of the coffin were with- 
 drawn, and the lately bereaved mother once 
 more clasped her darling to her breast. 
 
 Thoroughly satisfied with their morning's 
 work, the nursery party hurried into the house 
 to be washed and brushed and generally 
 tidied ere descending, cheerful and hungry, 
 to the luncheon table. 
 
 With radiant faces, conscious of time well- 
 spent, we took our accustomed places. 
 
 * What have you been doing this morning ? 
 You all look very bright,' one of the grown- 
 ups would remark. 
 
 ' We have been burying Lancelot.' 
 
 ' Oh, so Lancelot is dead, is he ? 
 
 Those hopelessly stupid grown-ups ! Vmd f 
 Who had said anything about that ? As if 
 that followed ! Had not they seen the funeral
 
 64 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 cortege of Lancelot pass a dozen times at 
 least? Did they not know that he always 
 came alive again ? 
 
 It was as though they never could grasp 
 the laws that governed the world we lived in ; 
 the total absence of grim Necessity, the 
 charming inconsequence of cause and effect, 
 the pervading atmosphere of improbability, 
 the absolute ignoring of impossibility. 
 
 A mighty poor affair their world beside 
 ours. They seemed to have no control over 
 it whatever. Like so many galley-slaves 
 chained to the oar, they were, by their own 
 account, mere devotees of duty ; fools of cir- 
 cumstance, ever hotly pursued by conse- 
 quences, or the fear of them. An unpleasant, 
 remorseless world was theirs,keeping its steady 
 course regardless of their wishes. Why, they 
 had not yet arrived at controlling so much as 
 the weather ! They declared themselves un- 
 able to arrange for two Christmas Days in 
 the year, or with the best will in the world 
 for more than one birthday. Nobody had 
 ever been known to ' come alive ' again after 
 being once consigned to their churchyard. 
 No wonder we took refuge in our pretences 
 from the brutality of a life where stolen plums
 
 THE CHILD KINGDOM OF PLAY 65 
 
 invariably produced sickness, where the clan- 
 destine ' paddle ' led up to mustard poultices, 
 where the slightest deed or word once set going 
 seemed to become independent of its author, 
 obstinately bent upon carrying out its original 
 intention, defying his repentance, not to be 
 diverted from its malevolent progression by 
 tears or prayers. 
 
 We did not like it, this Iron World of 
 Reality, where we saw people get old con- 
 fessedly against their will ; where actually our 
 parents professed themselves unable to insist 
 on having a boy when the new baby arrived 
 instead of the tiny girl that was year after year 
 palmed off on us by Nurse Lloyd. 
 
 Gladly we escaped into the Child's Play 
 World, where time and space were obedient 
 to our caprice. There we navigated Arctic 
 seas on Dick the Rocking-Horse, or explored 
 tropical forests in the belt of trees below the 
 garden. We jostled the centuries at our will, 
 — were alternately Red Indians, French 
 Huguenots, Ancient Britons, or mediaeval 
 Welsh patriots. 
 
 We had but to sing out : ' In the morning, 
 in the morning, in the morning ! ' and it was 
 day ; or, ' In the night, in the night, in the 
 
 F
 
 66 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 night ! ' and darkness fell, and lasted just as 
 long as we felt inclined to simulate snoring. 
 
 Our dolls seemed growing old too rapidly, 
 and we knocked off ten years in a breath ; 
 marriages were disannulled, whole families 
 were resolved into their component parts and 
 built up again in new combinations, untroubled 
 by haunting thoughts of the Past. A favourite 
 doll lost an arm or shed a leg, a new limb 
 could be supplied by post — nay, even a new 
 head. Nothing was hopeless for a doll, 
 nothing irretrievable. How frail did human 
 beings show beside them ; how much more 
 uncertain their tenure of life! We knew an 
 an old sailor, indeed, who had a wooden leg, 
 and the church clerk bore a ghastly iron hook 
 where his left hand should have been, but who 
 had ever heard of a man or woman setting up 
 with a new head ? The vexed question of sex 
 was, as we well knew, merely a matter of dress. 
 We had but to manufacture knickers if we 
 wanted a boy-doll, or skirts if a girl were 
 desired. It must be confessed that we 
 thought our parents wanting in enterprise and 
 ingenuity not to have thought of this simple 
 plan where they and we were concerned. 
 More than one of us had personally volun-
 
 THE CHILD KINGDOM OF PLAY 67 
 
 teered to be a boy if they would only provide 
 the knickers ; but our parents seemed broken- 
 spirited by the cruel world they lived in, and 
 incapable of opposing their will to the 
 mysterious powers that ruled it. They would 
 not so much as make an effort. What, for 
 instance, could have been more idiotic than 
 their persistent patronage of Nurse Lloyd, 
 who plainly had laid in a large stock of little 
 girl babies and appeared incapable of fur- 
 nishing a boy to order, though she knew — oh 
 yes, she well knew how much we wished for 
 a little brother ! But grown-ups generally 
 appeared paralysed by the knowledge of their 
 pitiful weakness. We could have done better 
 in their places, we were confident of it. 
 
 Alas, there has never existed a Paradise 
 wherein the serpent has not penetrated. Even 
 our world was not wholly secure from mis- 
 chance. 
 
 In order that any ' pretence ' should be suc- 
 cessfully carried out, perfect unanimity was 
 necessary in the nursery, where a dissentient 
 voice was fatal to success as it would be at 
 that crucial moment when the Arch-Druid at 
 the Gorsedd calls aloud: ^ Yr oes heddwch?' 
 and the crowd responds with one voice : ' It is 
 Peace-'
 
 6S SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 The two elder members of the nursery- 
 party whose voices swayed our counsels were, 
 I grieve to record it, not incapable of treachery. 
 On more than one occasion the impressive 
 funeral of a humble but dear-loved doll belong- 
 ing to one of the ' little ones ' was not followed 
 by that speedy and glorious resurrection 
 which she had been led to expect. 
 
 With hypocritical expressions of regret the 
 conspirators announced that owing to ' peculiar 
 circumstances ' this particular pretence could 
 not be undone. The decisive moment for the 
 accustomed disannulling of the past had gone 
 by — Lance was really dead at last, and there 
 was no help for it. 
 
 And when the outraged mother flung herself 
 in tears upon the grave, the tormentors merely 
 continued their pretence, remarking that 
 ' poor Mrs. May had gone mad with grief.' 
 
 Heartrending scenes followed, and the nur- 
 sery was torn by civil war for days after. ' Mrs. 
 May ' and her friends might resuscitate Lance 
 indeed, and strive to play with him as though 
 nothing had happened, their relentless enemies 
 persisted in speaking of him as a ' corpse ' ; 
 the doors of the dolls' house were closed to 
 him, he became a pariah among dolls ; even
 
 THE CHILD KINGDOM OF PLAY 69 
 
 his own mother had an uncanny feeling about 
 him, struggle as she might against it. 
 
 Such a tragic occurrence naturally shook 
 our faith for a time, and funerals languished. 
 It became as difficult to procure a ' body ' as 
 in the days before the Anatomical Acts. 
 
 Violent asseverations of good faith were 
 required from every member of our little band 
 ere a doll was again suffered to draw its last 
 breath and ride in state in the common coffin 
 to the doll-house cemetery in the forest. 
 
 And the worst of it was that one had to be 
 so desperately careful as to the wording of a 
 promise. A spirit of sophistry was abroad ; 
 there was a system of mental reservation in 
 vogue that rendered a verbal compact a tick- 
 lish matter to conclude. We stood upon the 
 letter of our law and refused to be bound by 
 the spirit. 
 
 Thus the most emphatic declaration of our 
 intentions went for nothing unless the word 
 ^promise ' had been actually employed. And 
 the two ' elders ' had even been known to back 
 out of a ' promise ' on the pretext that it had 
 not been given * ?i/fon their zvord and honour! 
 Save the mark ! 
 
 Or, their lips were observed to move in a
 
 70 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 silent mutter after their word had been passed, 
 and we younger ones knew at once that they 
 were saying : ' Over the left', a sinister phrase 
 of dire import that rendered all that had 
 gone before null and void. 
 
 Nevertheless, the term * Breaker-Promise ' 
 was one of opprobrium in the nursery, only 
 equalled by that of ' Tell-tale-tit,' or 'Copier.' 
 
 Why this last should have conveyed such a 
 sense of disgrace, I know not. We valued per- 
 sonal initiative highly in our world, and if 
 imitation be the greatest flattery it is cer- 
 tainly the most provoking. 
 
 It was sickening to invent a new process ot 
 cultivating one's garden, or doing one's doll's 
 hair, and to find the whole nursery following 
 suit. It had to be checked. 
 
 ' Copier, Copier ! ' was the fierce cry with 
 which the pioneer turned on her would-be 
 followers. And, * I'm not copying, I thought 
 just the same idea myself, before you did it,' 
 was the invariable reply; and battle raged. 
 
 Considerable subtilty was developed in the 
 adaptation of happy thoughts, some trifling 
 alteration or saving difference always having 
 to be introduced as a safeguard against in- 
 fringement of patent.
 
 THE CHILD KINGDOM OF PLAY 71 
 
 This spirit of proud exclusiveness, this 
 strange dislike to being * copied,' gave rise 
 to a multitude of ' secrets ' which played an 
 important part in our life. 
 
 To have a secret was great riches ; to be 
 admitted to one was to be lifted to the 
 seventh heaven ; to know of the existence of 
 one and to be debarred from sharing it was 
 gall and wormwood, and outer darkness, 
 weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. 
 
 The two elders shared a wealth of secrets, 
 and rarely deigned to admit one of us to 
 their counsels without carefully explaining 
 that they were not going to tell us all the 
 secret — much remained behind, the best of 
 all, of course, remaining untold. 
 
 I am unable to recall with accuracy a 
 single secret of my youth. I know that they 
 concerned matters of such vast importance 
 as a lucky find of kittens in the barn, the 
 discovery of a robin's nest near the cistern, 
 or of some spot on the mynyddyn where white 
 heather grew, or the purchase of Christmas 
 presents — exhaustless theme for private con- 
 fabulation when autumn days set in. 
 
 I remember also that we had a terrible 
 dread of betraying our secrets in our sleep,
 
 72 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 or talking about them in delirium should we 
 fall ill. 
 
 We had several secret languages, the Gree- 
 gro-gra being the one principally in favour. 
 By means of it we could discuss our high 
 affairs of state with perfect safety in the 
 presence of the uninitiated. Who could, un- 
 assisted, have guessed the meaning of: Gra 
 groo groing grin gre graden ? 
 
 Invented by the two elders for their own 
 use, this mysterious tongue was long an oc- 
 casion of fretting to me ere that happy day 
 when I cried aloud in triumph : Gri grun- 
 derstand groo ! and was perforce made free 
 of the language. 
 
 It is true that they at once invented an- 
 other, but I was not long to be baffled by 
 the Blee-blo-bla. They were fain to apply 
 themselves to the study of French, which was 
 all unknown to me, and in which they made 
 but slow progress. 
 
 What recked they ? They shared a bed- 
 room, and could talk secrets in bed, while I 
 slept with the little ones in the night- nursery. 
 I strove in vain to keep up with them. 
 
 They had secret hiding-places, these two, 
 in wood and garden and farm premises, and
 
 THE CHILD KINGDOM OF PLAY 73 
 
 as they grew older their love of retirement 
 increased, and they were constantly dis- 
 appearing, leaving us younger ones to seek 
 and call for them in vain. 
 
 Loud and long they boasted of the delights 
 of ^ Hcsperides^ one of these secret haunts, 
 and we younger ones exhausted ourselves in 
 fruitless guesses as to its whereabouts, until 
 the glorious day when my dogged patience 
 was rewarded by the happy accident which 
 revealed it to me. 
 
 Hesperides was but the long slope of the 
 washhouse roof, the back of which slanted 
 down to within a few feet of our little gar- 
 dens, whence it might be attained, not with- 
 out considerable risk. 
 
 For some time my knowledge profited 
 me little. I could indeed behold the sunny 
 heights of dazzling slates, but my diminutive 
 stature and feeble make forbade all hope of 
 arriving there unaided. 
 
 I was, however, an eloquent pleader, and 
 finally the proprietors of that blest abode 
 consented to haul me up. 
 
 The feat was accomplished by Lily, the 
 taller of the two, lying prone on the slates, 
 hanging from the frame of an open skylight ;
 
 74 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 while Anna, who was stout and strong as 
 any boy, raised me up on to the lower edge 
 of the roof, pushing me upwards till I could 
 grasp the pendant legs above, and drag 
 myself up by means of them to the level of 
 the skylight. Keeping one hand within the 
 frame, Lily then pulled herself up to the 
 coping at the top of the roof, when again I 
 seized her feet and followed. 
 
 What delightful hours we spent basking 
 in Hesperides, looking over the other side 
 of the roof into the backyard below, where 
 the servants walked to and fro, undreaming 
 of our silent watch. At the first alarm we 
 ducked our heads ; only our clinging fingers 
 remained clutching the tiled coping of the 
 roof, till, relaxing our hold altogether, we 
 went sliding down the incline — the most de- 
 licious sensation, swift and terrible, ending in 
 a drop of three feet, which deposited us on 
 the soft soil of our little gardens. Then the 
 slow ascent commenced again. 
 
 Could we but attain Hesperides to-day, I 
 suppose we should find our names cut out 
 on the topmost row of slates. I remember 
 the proud day when mine was inscribed there, 
 as a reward, no doubt, for some service ren- 
 dered by me to my chiefs
 
 THE CHILD KINGDOM OF PLAY 75 
 
 Our names, together with our several ' crests 
 and mottoes.' My eldest sister, who had a 
 great idea of dressing up as a boy and run- 
 ning away to sea, had early in life adopted 
 an anchor as her emblem, with the cheering 
 motto : Hope on, hope ever ! 
 
 Her companion, who was of a more feminine 
 and sentimental make, selected a lily, with 
 the words : Lys, garde ta blancheur ! which 
 we all thought very beautiful, though we did 
 not quite know what it meant. 
 
 As for me, in accordance with the hardness 
 of my lot, I chose a simple cross for my 
 device. It was very easy to draw, a con- 
 sideration, and my proud and gloomy motto 
 was : Wounded, but not conquered ! 
 
 I fear it is undeniable that I was of morbid 
 tendencies in youth, apt to repining, bearing 
 the yoke and obeying the master spirits of 
 the nursery with a very rebellious heart. 
 
 I felt that Providence had dealt hardly 
 with me ; not only was I miserably small 
 and puny, but I was constantly ailing. I 
 admired my elder sisters with all my heart. 
 Vainly I strove to imitate them : the spirit 
 was willing, but the flesh was weak. 
 
 Not ■ only without but within I was differ-
 
 76 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 ently fashioned from those robust young crea- 
 tures. They had the digestions of ostriches, 
 deh'ghting in raw peas, green gooseberries, or 
 freshly uprooted carrots. With heroic forti- 
 tude I strove to emulate their appetite, affect- 
 ing to relish those dainties with a rising gorge. 
 Vainly did I endeavour to conceal the dis- 
 astrous consequences of my temerity from 
 their scornful eyes ; the sequel to such gas- 
 tronomic feats admitted no concealment 
 The feeble stomach of the little invalid al- 
 lowed of no trifling. 
 
 It was understood in the nursery that I 
 was a peculiar being, set apart from others. 
 Our father had been heard to speak of me 
 as ' our little invalid.' He introduced me so 
 to the notice of strange grown-ups : ' This 
 is our eldest ; this is our tom-boy ; and this 
 is our little invalid! 
 
 The title seemed to confer a certain melan- 
 choly distinction. The stranger generally 
 treated me with marked respect, as one 
 mysteriously visited by Providence ; but I 
 shed in secret bitter tears over my fate. 
 Why had I been chosen as a victim? It 
 was the Will of God — that I was taught at 
 an early age ; but what a strange, unnatural
 
 THE CHILD KINGDOM OF PLAY 77 
 
 Will to have concerning me ! I brooded 
 over the problem in vain. Why should God 
 have made the others simple children, and 
 me *an invalid ' ? 
 
 True, I enjoyed many privileges on score 
 of my position. I had tea and toast for 
 breakfast, when the others had porridge ; I 
 was not obliged to learn lessons as they were, 
 and I spent long hours downstairs with the 
 grown-ups, while they were relegated to the 
 nursery ; but from how many joys was I 
 shut out ? From our wildest schemes of 
 mischief and daring activity I was invariably 
 excluded, save as a mere onlooker. I saw my 
 juniors, sturdy-legged and strong-armed, pro- 
 moted over my head by our leaders, and 
 life was bitter to me. And I was horribly 
 haunted by the fear of death, poor little weak- 
 ling ; I knew well enough that ' invalids 
 were peculiarly liable to it. 
 
 In those days we had an idea that each 
 family had an invalid of its own, just as in- 
 variably as an ' eldest,' and a baby. 
 
 When we made friends with strange chil- 
 dren on Llandudno beach, I often inquired 
 with interest : ' Which is the invalid ? ' 
 
 And when our new acquaintances stared,
 
 78 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 and said, * What do you mean ? ' I under- 
 stood well enough that their invalid had 
 * passed away,' as our dear mother put it, 
 and they did not care to be reminded of her. 
 It sent a shudder through me at times to 
 find so few invalids extant. 
 
 In our families of dolls we were accus- 
 tomed to have as many as three or four of 
 these suffering creatures. A doll might lose 
 her legs, her arms, her hair, her scalp, all 
 save her trunk and some semblance of a 
 face. ' Never mind ! ' we said ; ' she will do 
 beautifully for an invalid \ ' 
 
 Then she was dressed in a long white gar- 
 ment, straight and sleeveless, gathered about 
 the neck, and girt at the waist by a doll's 
 sash ; a cap supplied the place of a wig, 
 and she started life in her new capacity, and 
 I wondered if she felt as rebellious, as ill- 
 used as I did. 
 
 ' What an idle child you are ! ' Nurse used 
 frequently to exclaim, as I swayed myself 
 to and fro on the little rocking-chair. And 
 I was wont to retort with dignity : ' I am 
 noi doing nothing ; I am thinking ! ' 
 
 So I was — the strange, shrewd, confused, 
 innocent thoughts of a little invalid bred up
 
 THE CHILD KINGDOM OF PLAY 79 
 
 in Evangelical tenets, sorely puzzled by all 
 that she saw in the discomfortable World of 
 Reality, and only too ready to escape from 
 it into the Children's Kingdom of Play, the 
 friendly realm of ' Pretence,' where my hap- 
 piest hours have perhaps been passed all the 
 days of my life.
 
 V 
 
 The Little Brothers 
 
 ' It is not growing like a tree 
 In bulk doth make Man better be ; 
 Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, 
 To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere : 
 A lily of a day 
 Is fairer far in May, 
 Although it fall and die that night — 
 It was the plant and flower of Light ! 
 In small proportions we just beauties see. 
 And in short measures life may perfect be.' 
 
 Ben Jonson. 
 
 ' Gwell migwrn o wr na mynedd o wraig.' 
 ' Better is a sprig of a man than a mountain of a 
 woman.' 
 
 THUS — I blush to record it — runs one 
 of our old Welsh Proverbs. We had 
 not always been an insignificant troup of 
 little girls. Our family had once, for a brief 
 space, been blessed with the presence of a 
 baby boy — little Lewis, an unreal visionary 
 
 80
 
 THE LITTLE BROTHERS 8i 
 
 being of superior essence to ourselves, of 
 whom the world was not worthy. He had 
 sojourned with us but eighteen months, and 
 then had gone to be an angel in heaven. So 
 the legend ran. 
 
 Not one of us children could recollect this 
 little brother, but we knew from earliest times 
 that our mother had never before or since 
 had a baby like him, so tall, so beautiful, so 
 intelligent, sweet-tempered, and loving. He 
 had never known sin. God had taken him 
 away from us because we were not ' worthy,' 
 our mother gave us to understand. Had she 
 been found ' faithful,' had we been more suit- 
 able companions for our angel-brother, he 
 had been left with us, and our lives had been 
 different. But God knew best, and had taken 
 him away from this dark and evil world in 
 His infinite love and mercy. 
 
 It was impossible to feel much warmth of 
 sisterly affection for this spotless being. And 
 while we felt the slight implied to ourselves, 
 we fully concurred in our secret hearts with 
 the wisdom which had ordained his removal 
 from our midst. We knew well enough that 
 we were no fit companions for immaculate 
 purity. But we liked the distinction con- 
 
 G
 
 82 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 ferred by an angel-brother, and heaven was 
 the right place for him. 
 
 We were but human. Impossible to love 
 a winged being who bore a gold crown on 
 his head, and was clad in spotless white, and 
 was perfectly holy within. The golden harp 
 that he carried in his hand was the most 
 attractive thing about him, but we had our 
 doubts as to whether it was a * real Welsh 
 harp,' and when we learned that he never 
 played anything but hymns on it we felt our 
 hopeless difference from him. 
 
 Besides which nurse had a disagreeable 
 habit of saying in her unctuous tones : ' How 
 shocked your little brother would be if he 
 could see you now ! Perhaps he is looking 
 at you at this very moment' 
 
 The thought of this spiritual espionage 
 v/as unpleasant in the extreme. If it were 
 his habit to look down from heaven at awk- 
 ward moments and be shocked by what he 
 saw, we could only feel such conduct mean 
 and unhandsome in a relative. But what 
 could we expect of one who had already 
 shown his disapproval of us so emphatically 
 as to refuse to live with us ? 
 
 What would he have been, what would he
 
 THE LITTLE BROTHERS S^ 
 
 have become, had our parents been judged 
 sufficiently faithful to have been entrusted 
 with his education and upbringing ? It was 
 rumoured that he might have actually been 
 a Missionary, like Moffat, or Judson, or Henry 
 Martyn ! Our dear mother imagined no more 
 glorious career for her only son than that of 
 preaching the Gospel to the Heathen. 
 
 But God took him. And one little girl 
 after another filled the baby's cradle till the 
 nursery held five of them. Clearly she was 
 found sufficiently faithful for the rearing of 
 daughters. Vaguely we felt ourselves as 
 silver in the days of Solomon. We knew 
 our Old Testament history ; Hannah's prayer 
 for a ' man-child ' was familiar unto us. Ar- 
 dently we desired a little brother to take 
 away our reproach among men. 
 
 We desired a little brother. Not an angel- 
 brother, but a real boy-baby, with short curly 
 hair like our boy-dolls ; a brother who would 
 be a sailor when he grew up, and take us to 
 sea in his ship, and bring us presents from 
 foreign countries ; a brother who would fight 
 with the village boys for us ; a brother to 
 whom we might proudly point when twitted 
 with the taunt that we were only girls.
 
 84 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 We prayed for his advent in our evening 
 prayers. We were for ever sending messages 
 to Nurse Lloyd to ' bring us a boy this time, 
 please, with blue eyes and golden hair.' We 
 tormented our parents with suggestions as 
 to how such an one should be procured. 
 
 Many a time we dashed in hot and breath- 
 less from our walk with the news : ' They've 
 got a boy-baby at Penybryn ! Mayn't we 
 have it ? ' 
 
 But our parents were punctilious. The 
 boy-baby must be brought to our very door 
 before they could be certain it was the will 
 of God that we should have him. And boy 
 babies continued to rain down from heaven 
 into every household but our own. There 
 were even too many of them in some houses 
 in the neighbourhood. 
 
 What a teasing poor old Nurse Lloyd got 
 whenever she set foot within our dwelling ! 
 Every box and every bundle was felt over by 
 our inquisitive fingers. ' Is the baby in 
 there?' or, 'Can the baby breathe in your 
 tin box ? ' 
 
 She used to laugh at us till the tears ran 
 down her jolly red face, 
 
 ' /$• it a boy this time ? ' Vain our cajoling 
 tones, our lavish caresses.
 
 THE LITTLE BROTHERS 85 
 
 * We'll see ; we'll see ! All in good time ! ' 
 she used to say. She always pretended that 
 she did not know herself. 
 
 But each time that the country folk stayed 
 us in our walks to ask nurse concerning the 
 new arrival, came the same melancholy 
 answer : ' GcnetJi facJi ! ' and the old Welsh 
 people went on their way shaking their heads 
 and ejaculating, ' Pit — ty, pit — ty ! ' over the 
 advent of another little girl. 
 
 Until one twelfth of August, after years of 
 disappointed hopes, deep awe fell over the 
 nursery as the news was announced that we 
 had, once more, a dear little brother. Our 
 mamma was ill — how unfortunate that she 
 should be ill on such an occasion ! — so we 
 must be very good, and keep very quiet, lest 
 God should take back our little brother as he 
 had done before with Lewis. 
 
 We crept about like mice. It seemed as 
 though our hearts must burst with joy and 
 pride. At last ! At last ! W^e sat close to- 
 gether in the nursery, we did not care to go 
 out. We wanted to realize this wonderful 
 thing, we hardly wanted to talk. It seemed 
 to take our breath away. 
 
 Some one suggested that the new baby
 
 86 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 might be Lewis come back to earth. I re- 
 member shuddering at the idea. If we had 
 not suited our angel-brother, equally certain 
 did it appear to a thoughtful mind that he 
 would not have suited us. 
 
 We fell to discussing what name he should 
 be called by. Nurse had no idea beyond 
 Lezuis, of course. But that was ridiculous. 
 Of course, if our mother and Nurse Lloyd 
 recognised him, if his identity with our new 
 brother were proven beyond doubt, we should 
 have to bow to the inevitable. But, other- 
 wise, what an absurd suggestion ! How could 
 we have iiuo Lewises in the family ? 
 
 We hoped for Llewelyn, or Cadwallon, or 
 Owain Glendwr, some brave Welsh name. 
 But when we heard that he was to be called 
 after our dear Uncle Richard, we acquiesced 
 very cheerfully. The baby brother seemed 
 at once to gain social standing and to be 
 solidly linked to earth. For our Uncle 
 Richard was the greatest man we knew after 
 our father. No shadowy Missionary he, but a 
 very substantial merchant, celebrated through- 
 out the world, we fondly believed, for his 
 wealth, his wisdom, and his exquisite wit. 
 ' Our little brother Richard.' How well it
 
 THE LITTLE BROTHERS 87 
 
 sounded! No angelic visitant this of unruffled 
 sweetness and calm. From out our mother's 
 bedroom issued the sound of his mighty roar- 
 ing voice, and we felt a comfortable assurance 
 that he was not too good for this world. 
 
 * Hark to the Old Adam in him ! ' cried 
 Nurse Lloyd exultingly, as she slapped his 
 broad red naked back till he roared again. 
 
 We stood before her, by the fire in the 
 back spare-room, where she exhibited to us 
 the beauties of our little brother as he lay on 
 her knees sprawling on the flannel apron, 
 with tiny clenched fists and tears of passion 
 in his eyes. He was terribly put out about 
 something or other. 
 
 A keen pang of disappointment smote m}' 
 heart, and a feeling of bitter resentment 
 against Nurse Lloyd. It seemed to me that 
 she must have picked out the very ugliest 
 boy-baby in her whole stock. She might, she 
 ought to have taken more pains about it. 
 
 Far from resembling our pink and white 
 waxy-complexioned boy-dolls, this infant was 
 of a thick mottled reddish tint, that deepened 
 almost to purple when he screamed. And 
 not a single golden curl to cover the naked- 
 ness of his enormous head. It was as bald
 
 88 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 and smooth as that of our Uncle Richard 
 himself ; perhaps that was why he was to be 
 named after him. The only respect in which 
 he came up to our expectations, was in the 
 possession of a pair of blue eyes. But no one 
 could see his eyes when he was crying, they 
 disappeared into innumerable creases and 
 wrinkles, and whenever he was not crying or 
 imbibing nourishment he was sleeping. He 
 had two great ears besides, and such a 
 mouth ! only worthy of the volume of sound 
 that came out of it as he bellowed forth his 
 angry discontent. 
 
 I returned to the nursery sadly disillusioned, 
 though I would not own to it. We fell to 
 discussing our brother's future, when he 
 should be better furnished and equipped for 
 the business of life, for Nurse Lloyd had 
 comforted us by assurances that the hair on 
 his head, and teeth in his gums, were merely 
 a matter of time. 
 
 As a baby he never was a success. His 
 miserable crop of fine silver - gold hairs 
 scantily covered his immense head. He 
 would not grow white. He continued crimson 
 as with suppressed passion. He was very 
 strong ; he would throw himself back and
 
 THE LITTLE BROTHERS 89 
 
 stiffen with rage, twisting and contorting 
 himself till we were fairly frightened. He 
 did not cry ; he bellowed. It seemed as 
 though he were beside himself with temper. 
 But he was a fine boy. Every one said so. 
 He was exulted over in the kitchen, and 
 throughout the village, and we were congratu- 
 lated on the possession of such a splendid 
 fellow. He was said to have a 'fine spirit'; 
 and seeing the universal admiration he 
 excited, wc began to be very proud of 
 him. 
 
 By the time that he was beginning to 
 toddle about, his appearance had begun to 
 alter for the better. He would condescend 
 to laugh, throwing back his head, showing 
 the sweetest little milk-white teeth piercing 
 his long expanse of gums. His strange 
 swarthy complexion gave way to a fairer tint, 
 save when he was agitated, which still 
 occurred with perilous frequency. His large 
 blue eyes began to look out inquiringly and 
 with intelligence on life. We managed to 
 scrape his thin hairs into a little crest on top 
 of his head that fell away weakly to one side 
 like a tiny sea wave. He was very slow in 
 learning to talk, and extremely impatient if
 
 90 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 his strange language were not immediately 
 understood, and his unintelligible commands 
 forthwith executed. He used to wear little 
 tunic frocks at this stage, and the adoration 
 of our little brother now became a regular 
 cult with us. 
 
 He was too active an individual to stand 
 much cossetting, however, and soon wriggled 
 himself free from the ardent embraces of his 
 little sisters. 
 
 Later on he grew into a little boy in sailor 
 suits, blue serge in winter, linen or cotton in 
 summer. Sailor suits and sailor hats which 
 became ragged and dirty with a rapidity that 
 was little short of the miraculous. It seemed 
 as if he had wept away all his bitterness in 
 babyhood, and exhausted all his passion, for 
 never was there a more sunny-tempered little 
 chap, nor a merrier countenance than his. 
 His mischievous blue eyes overflowed with 
 fun ; his parted lips, constantly shaped for 
 laughter, disclosed two rows of dazzling teeth, 
 while the play of two irregularly placed 
 dimples made his smile irresistible. 
 
 In the early days of the sailor suits Richard 
 retained somewhat of his babyish plumpness, 
 and continued to wear his hair in a crest.
 
 THE LITTLE BROTHERS 91 
 
 But later on he insisted on a close-cropped 
 head of hair, which barely permitted a parting 
 on one side ' like papa's.' Long, level eye- 
 brows, jetty black, gave a strange character to 
 the boyish face, and the dark long curled 
 lashes sometimes cast a mysterious shadow 
 over the laughing eyes. 
 
 An essentially human child, this limber elf, 
 a tricksy sprite who seemed to be constantly 
 dancing in and out of mischief Of fearless 
 temper and inventive brain, active feet, and 
 nimble fingers. 
 
 A glance at knees and elbows proclaimed 
 him of the earth, earthy. He held strange 
 views concerning the proper use of the nursery 
 nailbrush, constantly employing it in the 
 scrubbing of his wooden horses, or even in 
 the beautifying of our Newfoundland's shaggy 
 locks. His toothbrush was frequently dis- 
 covered in the most unexpected quarters, in a 
 dry and thirsty condition. Against having 
 his hair brushed he utterly rebelled. 
 
 A ' naughty child,' he was more than once 
 styled by aunts and uncles. His mother, who 
 knew the heart of her little boy, saw that it 
 was very good. A heart of gold, a generous 
 loving nature, brave and truthful, simple and
 
 92 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 trustful. Of what might he not be capable in 
 the years to come ? 
 
 There was no idea of his ever being a 
 missionary. He was for long divided in his 
 mind as to whether he would be a station- 
 master when he grew up, or an engine-driver, 
 or go about the country with the threshing- 
 machine men, his devoted friends and 
 admirers. He followed them from farm to 
 farm. It was impossible to keep him indoors 
 when the sound of the threshing machine was 
 heard in the land. What a mournful sound 
 it has to-day, and how it recalls the little 
 figure stealing through the garden, late for 
 dinner, with a conscience-stricken face, the 
 gutta-percha soles of his shoes burnt through 
 by the hot cinders on which he had in- 
 cautiously taken his stand. 
 
 He could always get round his mother with 
 his coaxing ways and pleading eyes. ' Indeed, 
 I quite forgot ! You're not really angry with 
 me ? I won't do it again.' No one could 
 long resist his penitence. 
 
 Nevertheless, he did not find it quite so 
 easy to come round his father. On more 
 than one occasion there was a sharp tussle 
 between the two. Master Richard consoled
 
 THE LITTLE BROTHERS 93 
 
 himself for his defeat by making special 
 mention of papa in his evening prayer in loud 
 and unctuous tones. ' Grant, O Lord, that 
 my dear father may be forgiven for his sinful 
 temper this day, and give him grace to con- 
 trol his passion ; soften his heart, O Lord,' 
 etc., etc. 
 
 The edification of the household may be 
 imagined, and the small imp sank to rest 
 with a roguish smile of triumph on his lips, 
 quite belying his attempted expression of 
 injured innocence. He was very great at 
 extempore prayer. Long before Christmas 
 time he began his petitions to the Almighty 
 concerning the gifts he desired to receive 
 from each member of the family, the most 
 explicit directions being given regarding each 
 wished-for possession, so that the purchasers 
 might be * guided ' in their choice. 
 
 ' Little rascal, he always asks for what, 
 he wants ! ' I remember my father saying 
 one day when Richard had annoyed him 
 intensely. 
 
 He had taken the child with him to in- 
 quire after the health of a distant cousin of 
 ours, a sweet and gentle maiden lady who was 
 then near her end. She loved my father very
 
 94 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 tenderly, and was fond of all his children, 
 but her pride in 'the little boy' was almost 
 maternal. 
 
 My father had been pleased by Richard's 
 willingness to accompany him to the invalid's 
 room, and was gratified with the engaging 
 spontaneity of the child's embraces. 
 
 Imagine his horror when his first eager 
 v/ords fell upon his ear. 
 
 ' Alay I go to your funeral, please? Do ask 
 Papa to promise to take me to your funeral!' 
 
 Poor creature, how she laughed ! Laughed 
 till the relentless cough took hold of her and 
 put a grim stop to her merriment. 
 
 ' Don't scold the little fellow, Lewis,' she 
 said to my father as soon as she could speak. 
 ' And let him come to my funeral ; I should 
 like the darling to follow me.' 
 
 She was Welsh herself, and thought the 
 desire to attend a funeral extremely natural. 
 But I do not think Richard enjoyed his walk 
 home from her house. 
 
 After her death a small packet was found 
 containing a little hat band for the child, to- 
 gether with crape for his sleeve, and a tiny 
 pair of black kid gloves. 
 
 How terribly proud he was when, arrayed
 
 THE LITTLE BROTHERS 95 
 
 in this funereal pomp, he rode by our father's 
 side in the old phaeton, vainly striving to 
 banish the dimples from his cheek, and the 
 delight from his eyes, hiding his irrepressible 
 smiles as best he might behind his small 
 gloved hand, out of respect to the deep sad- 
 ness of his father's face. 
 
 His little sisters regarded him with envy 
 from between the laths of the Venetian 
 blinds, where they watched the funeral pro- 
 cession from the nursery window. But for 
 the disabilities attendant on their sex, theirs 
 too might have been that supreme delight of 
 figuring in the cortege. It was a constant 
 wonder to us that our father so rarely allowed 
 himself this pleasure. Never a funeral 
 wended its way to the old churchyard by 
 the sea, without some of the servants asked 
 leave to follow it ; and to have refused 
 permission would have been unheard of on 
 our parents' part — a piece of high-handed 
 cruelty, of indecorous tyranny, which would 
 have been resented by the whole countryside. 
 
 Richard's ' first funeral ' was a great occa- 
 sion, and his presence there gave pleasure, I 
 fancy, to many beside himself. For he was 
 widely known, and everyv/here the frank.
 
 96 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 manly little lad made friends. He ruled the 
 nursery and was adored in the kitchen. He 
 was at once the plague and the delight of the 
 workmen and farm-labourers. Everywhere 
 the ' little Squire,' as he was called, found 
 welcome. Utterly unaffected by the aristo- 
 cratic notions of his sisters, he early displayed 
 a preference for the society of * common chil- 
 dren.' His best friend was the son of the 
 farm bailiff, a mischievous young monkey, 
 some years his senior — Little-Richard, we 
 called him. Together the two urchins fell 
 into many a scrape ere that fatal day when it 
 was decided that Master Richard was really 
 incorrigible, and must be sent away to school 
 to be kept out of mischief 
 
 There was nothing else for it. Early each 
 morning he was up and away, sometimes not 
 troubling even to return for dinner. He 
 would dine with his friends at a neighbouring 
 farmhouse, or under a hedge in a field, or in 
 a gipsy encampment, or at the hospitable 
 board of Little-Richard's family. It was so 
 much more amusing than having dinner at 
 home. Instead of tapping their eggs with a 
 spoon in our inanely elegant fashion, these 
 simple folk knocked their eggs on the table.
 
 THE LITTLE BROTHERS 97 
 
 I remember this greatly took my brother's 
 fancy, and he persisted, despite reproof and 
 remonstrance, on always manipulating his egg 
 in this fashion at nursery tea. He had, too, 
 a peculiar method of drinking tea out of his 
 saucer, that he had noticed and admired in 
 the bailiff's wife. He constantly played tru- 
 ant from his lessons. It was impossible to 
 lay hold on him ; he slipped through one's 
 fingers like a bit of quicksilver, and was off 
 and away with his boon companions, the 
 sound of their eager Welsh utterance floating 
 back to his envious little sisters as they were 
 caught and swept into the schoolroom, to be 
 confronted with ' Little Arthur,' or ' Butter's 
 Spelling,' 'Mary's Grammar,' or 'Le Petit 
 Prcceptcur,' What long golden days he 
 passed, our little brother — full of changeful 
 adventures, bright imaginations, and brave 
 deeds ! 
 
 Twice he was chased by an infuriated bull. 
 His hands and knees were chronically scarred 
 and scratched by thorn and stone. He nar- 
 rowly escaped the loss of a finger owing 
 to his manipulation of the turnip-cutting 
 machine, and was all but suffocated through 
 falling down the shoot that carried the chaff 
 
 H
 
 98 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 from the chaff-cutter in the loft down to the 
 stable below. 
 
 Our mother's nerves must have been 
 severely tried ere she consented to send her 
 darling from her. When in company with 
 Little-Richard he had set fire to the hay- 
 stack, his cup was full, and the fiat went 
 forth : Master Richard was to go to school. 
 
 It was indeed a pure accident. The two 
 friends had merely been employed in 'making 
 food for the pigs,' always the object of their 
 dear solicitude. They had found an old 
 iron pot, Little-Richard had stolen a handful 
 of * blawiV from the kist in the boiler-house, 
 which, together with a few handfuls of grass 
 and green leaves, would make the most deli- 
 cious dish imaginable. The fire was lighted 
 in a sunk ditch, beneath the shelter of the 
 hay-stack, well hidden from the view of 
 grown-up spoil-sports, so the boys fondly be- 
 lieved. The beautiful out-of-doors fire, with 
 its enchantment of crimson red flame and 
 azure smoke ! 
 
 How the sticks crackled beneath the old 
 pot ! How the sparks flew upwards ! How 
 cheerful and poetic at once the scene ! 
 
 The two cooks fell to dreaming of running
 
 THE LITTLE BROTHERS 99 
 
 away to sea, or of embarking upon a free life 
 out on the mountains. 
 
 They were rudely aroused from their reveries 
 by the loud shouts of the cowman, who, pass- 
 ing by at that moment, suddenly became 
 aware of their incendiary operations. Help 
 was summoned only just in time to extinguish 
 the smouldering hay, and the culprits, pale and 
 sobered, were dragged from their lair to 
 receive the due reward of their deeds. Little- 
 Richard took his chastisement on the spot 
 from the hands of his irate sire, despite the 
 valiant efforts of Master Richard to effect his 
 rescue by the vigorous application of his 
 gutta-percha soles to the bailiff's shins. Our 
 little brother heard his own sentence that 
 evening, and received it with a brave show of 
 cheerfulness. Every boy must go to School 
 sooner or later, unless like ' little Seymour,' he 
 had a governess, like a girl. 
 
 Little Seymour was the only child of some 
 neighbours of ours, and had been brought up 
 with the greatest care and propriety from his 
 earliest days. Our dear mother vainly desired 
 to foster a friendship between this really good 
 child and her own perverse offspring. Little 
 Seymour used to spend long days in our.
 
 loo SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 nursery — long days they must have seemed to 
 him ! His every action was turned into ridi- 
 cule by Richard, who was a merciless mimic, 
 and could not endure the spectacle of Little 
 Seymour's superiority. He wore gloves 
 when he went out ! He was almost beneath 
 contempt. When he was not addressed as 
 Miss Seymour, he went by the name of 'Mis- 
 sionary.' 
 
 Alas ! that that glorious title should thus 
 have come to be looked upon as a term of 
 reproach. 
 
 Our little brother was, from my earliest 
 observation of him, unorthodox, a questioner 
 and a critic. He listened to our mother as 
 she expounded the Scriptures to us on 
 Sunday evenings with an attitude of mental 
 detachedness that was quite new in our circle. 
 At times he fairly took our breath away. 
 We had imbibed our theology much as we 
 took our daily allowance of bread and milk, 
 without relish, but without question, as some- 
 thing inevitable and incapable of improvement. 
 
 We had each and all a wholesome dread of 
 the wiles of the Evil One. The thought of that 
 lurking Presence, seeking whom he might 
 devour, sped me through the dark nursery pas-
 
 THE LITTLE BROTHERS loi 
 
 sage on winter evenings past shadowy corners 
 with a fast-beating heart. 
 
 Very early in life Richard stoutly refused to 
 believe the Devil as black as he was painted. 
 
 And when our mother answered gravely : 
 * It is written in God's Holy Word,' he al- 
 ways persisted : — 
 
 • It was written a long time ago, at any 
 rate. He may have changed by now. I 
 daresay he is sorry, and God has forgiven 
 him long ago.' 
 
 The sorrows of Satan seemed to lay fast 
 hold on his imagination, for he insisted on in- 
 cluding him in his prayers. ' There can be 
 no harm in praying for him ! ' he sagely 
 remarked. ' And if he really is our Enemy, 
 Jesus said we luere to pray for our enemies.' 
 
 Our mother could not silence him by argu- 
 ment, though strongly expressing her own 
 opinion as to that Evil One's chances of ulti- 
 mate happiness. 
 
 A quaint addition to Richard's prayers 
 petitioned insistently that we might all go up 
 to heaven together, ' in a big smoke, and the 
 Devil too.' 
 
 What put the idea into the child's head ? 
 
 Those were days before the echoes of Eter-
 
 102 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 nal Hope had penetrated our stern mountain 
 fastnesses. Maurice, Robertson, and Kings- 
 ley were yet unknown to us. I look back 
 upon the brave independent little mind, in- 
 sisting on fair play for the Devil himself, and 
 I wonder what the after-life of our little 
 brother should have been. 
 
 I think he would have been a missionary 
 too in his way, a witness for the truth, per- 
 haps a martyr in its cause. For the child is 
 father to the man, and young as he was he 
 stood erect, and persistently refused to be 
 made afraid. He was not yet ten years old 
 when he fronted death opcn-cycd and un- 
 flinching. It is of such stuff that heroes are 
 made. And well I know on which side this 
 ' free and knowing spirit ' should have ranged 
 itself in the great battle which is everywhere 
 raging round us, between free thought and 
 tradition, free expression and convention. 
 
 Each one of us had read our ' Line upon 
 Line' and ' Peep of Day' in turn, and been 
 made uncomfortable by certain awful warn- 
 ings contained therein, dark histories for the 
 edification of sinners, reading which we 
 believed and trembled. 
 
 When Richard heard of the terrible fate
 
 THE LITTLE BROTHERS 103 
 
 which overtook the laughing children who 
 mocked Elisha's baldness, he hesitated long 
 between incredulity and indignation. 
 
 His sympathies were naturally entirely with 
 the children. ' It was too bad ! ' he declared 
 with deep disgust. 
 
 And the history of Ananias and Sapphira, 
 which haunted me in my youth with a sick 
 obsession — for I was of a troubled mind and 
 feared many things — that awful history only 
 seemed to anger him against the apostles. 
 
 * Peter hadn't been so very good himself,' 
 he gloomily remarked. Then going to the 
 very root of the matter, after a moment's 
 reflection : 'Jesus ivould never have done 
 that ! ' 
 
 Richard was eight years old when he began 
 his school life. There was mourning and 
 lamentation throughout the household and 
 the village when he was escorted to the station. 
 Few there were who did not present him with 
 some small memento of affection. His heart 
 was full, for he was leaving his mother whom 
 he adored and the home that he so dearly 
 loved. But he held up manfully to the last 
 moment when the train steamed away from 
 the little wayside station on the Cambrian line.
 
 I04 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 Cheerful and self-reliant, he looked forward 
 to his new life without fear. He had a box of 
 his own, with his surname painted on it, and 
 pocket-money — these were notable consola- 
 tions. He was to come home each mid-term, 
 for his school was not far distant, and half the 
 village was going to write to him. 
 
 He asked intending correspondents to print 
 their letters, or write large and round, so that 
 he might read them himself His mother gave 
 him a Bible before he left her, and he promised 
 to read a little in it every day. The pencil- 
 marks that show his daily portion are still 
 there. 
 
 About the prospect of regular lessons 
 Richard was very dubious. Like many another 
 clever child, he had the reputation of being a 
 dunce at his books. His bright little mind 
 was perpetually dancing away from the 
 printed page before him. 
 
 Fortunately the requirements of his teachers 
 were by no means excessive. The principal 
 of the school was a dreamy scholar of the 
 mildest temper, who believed in the natural 
 development of young minds. The little lads 
 led a free and happy life, haunting the sea- 
 shore for the most part, bringing back to their
 
 THE LITTLE BROTHERS 105 
 
 playroom large collections of shells, pebbles, 
 and sea-weeds. Sea anenomes, jelly fish, and 
 tiny crabs lived in bucketfiils of salt water 
 daily renewed. The boys had little gardens 
 and kept rabbits, guinea-pigs, and ferrets. 
 
 Richard came back for his first holidays 
 accompanied by a horrible monster, Scrabble 
 by name, a large white rat with ruby eyes, 
 that terrified his sisters. 
 
 He also brought a prize for reading, which 
 astonished and delighted his parents. He gave 
 us a display of his prowess in the art, reading 
 'Bruce and the Spider' and the 'Two Goats' 
 with the greatest fluency from the Royal 
 Reader. We thought it of sinister omen that 
 he found his places in the book entirely by 
 means of the pictures, and that he stoutly 
 refused to read us aught save ' Bruce and the 
 Spider' and the ' Two Goats,' both of which it 
 was discovered later he knew by heart. 
 
 But he also brought home a violin, the 
 pride of his heart, and it was wonderful what 
 he could do with it. The vision of him rises 
 now before me as he played, his shining eyes, 
 his rapt and serious face. 
 
 I was myself a school girl in those days, 
 very much taken up with Oxford and Cam-
 
 io6 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 bridge local examinations and such-like vani- 
 ties. I considered my brother clever, but 
 ' backward,' I remember. 
 
 In the spring of the year the whole family 
 migrated to the seaside town where he was at 
 school. I have never visited it since, that gay 
 sunshiny little Welsh watering-place. It 
 seems to me that if I could return there I 
 should be greeted by that little figure in the 
 sailor suit coming up from the beach with his 
 chums. There was a general fraternisation 
 between our nursery party and Richard's 
 school friends ; they played together on the 
 shore, they went long walks together into the 
 country. Our baby — for another baby-girl 
 had followed Richard into the family — was a 
 little queen among them, adored by all the 
 boys. They were nice little lads, full of life and 
 spirit, bubbling over with innocent mischief 
 
 I remember a day when Richard and two 
 sisters disappeared in company with Tudor, 
 perhaps our favourite of our brother's friends. 
 They disappeared for a long afternoon, 
 returning home in a pitiable condition — Tudor 
 ghastly green and white, and Richard not 
 much better. One of the little girls related 
 the adventure. It had been Richard's idea.
 
 THE LITTLE BROTHERS 107 
 
 he had always hankered after smoking. 
 Before he went to school he had indulged his 
 passion in the company of Little-Richard 
 puffing at large rolls of brown-paper cigars in 
 secluded spots. But unfortunately Tudor had 
 more ambitious designs, and having purchased 
 a pipe would be satisfied with nothing less 
 than real tobacco, Richard's little sisters 
 were Invited to see the show, and full of pride 
 and excitement In the secret accompanied the 
 boys to buy tobacco, Tudor wished to go to 
 a shop, but Richard insisted that nothing less 
 than a public-house would do, and led the way 
 to a very low little inn, if appearances might 
 be trusted in the seaport. 
 
 It was kept by an old salt, who received 
 the four children with no small surprise. With 
 preternatural gravity he received their order. 
 With a horrible grin and chuckle he tendered 
 back the proffered payment. 
 
 'You just try how you like it first, young 
 gentlemen ; I wouldn't let the little ladies 
 smoke. But you just tyy my tobacco ; it would 
 be a pity to buy a large stock if you didn't 
 like the brand,' 
 
 He presented the boys with two portions of 
 black tobacco, which after some hesitating
 
 io8 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 they accepted. They swaggered forth out of 
 the inn, wondering hotly why the foolish old 
 man laughed so loudly. They retired to an 
 orchard behind the house. The little sisters 
 looked on admiringly as the two heroes lighted 
 up. Poor Tudor was carried home as one 
 dead, while Richard staggered forth from that 
 fatal spot like a drunken fly, accompanied by 
 his weeping and terrified sisters. 
 
 School life did not change him much. He re- 
 mained a child while he aspired each day more 
 ardently to be a man. He had great ideas on 
 that score. Tudor's one fault was a deficiency 
 in manliness : he cried for pain, which greatly 
 shocked Richard, who could not understand 
 such weakness, especially in one who hoped to 
 be a soldier. For that was Tudor's desire in 
 those days. 
 
 Richard at that time was almost doubting 
 as to whether he would not be an artist. He 
 was learning drawing at school and had a 
 paint-box. Two little water-colour sketches 
 hang to-day in my mother's bedroom, full of 
 the qualities which shone out in the little 
 painter ; full of truthful observation, fearless 
 rendering. Ah, what should he not have 
 done, that frank, bright little soul !
 
 THE LITTLE BROTHERS 109 
 
 Next door to the boys' school was an estab- 
 lishment for young ladies. There dwelt the 
 object of Richard's young affections. She 
 was a blooming Welsh girl of perhaps seven- 
 teen years, the head girl of the school, with a 
 good-tempered laughing face, slightly freckled, 
 and merry eyes. Richard long adored her 
 from afar. They met at a bazaar, I think, and 
 the young girl made much of her little admirer. 
 After that he used to see her daily ; she had 
 little brothers of her own. May life deal 
 kindly with her ! 
 
 My little brother and I only met in the 
 holidays. Each time I found him taller, 
 slighter, with a more thoughtful air. A bonny 
 sunburnt face that could look betimes wonder- 
 fully sweet and serious. Still laughter-loving, 
 a strain of deeper feeling constantly revealed 
 itself Richard, at nine years of age, was 
 apt to dream. Often he would fall into a 
 brown study, absorbed in thought, his dark 
 brows knit with the intensity of his medita- 
 tion. I was struck by the questions he asked. 
 
 * Why do beautiful things make us so sad?' 
 he asked his mother one summer evening. *I 
 cannot look at Snowdon without wanting to 
 cry. It is too beautiful ! '
 
 no SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 The sinking sun had set the mountains 
 aglow. The sound of music floated out through 
 the open drawing-room windows to the garden 
 where we sat. ' It's just the same with music,' 
 my Httle brother added ; ' it's too beautiful, it 
 makes me sad.' 
 
 How the words come back to me as I think 
 of his short life ! Only sweet and tender 
 memories hang about his grave ; no sins, no 
 mistakes, no regrets, no remorse lie buried 
 there. Like a bright ray of sunlight he came 
 into the house. He passed away, and it has 
 never been the same bright dwelling since. 
 
 Richard was not quite ten years old when 
 they wrote me that he was ill of rheumatic 
 fever. ' Dangerously ill,' that laughing child 
 so full of life, so active, so loving. The idea 
 was impossible to grasp. 
 
 Our little brother in danger of death? It 
 was monstrous, incredible ! It could not be. 
 Lewis, indeed, had died. Nay, for us Lewis 
 had never lived ; he was to us no more real 
 than the hero of some bright Bible story. 
 
 But Richard, whose arms had clung about 
 our necks, he who was one of ourselves, what 
 had he to do with death ? We would not let 
 him go. We could not spare him.
 
 THE LITTLE BROTHERS iii 
 
 But a day dawned when we saw that Love 
 could no longer hold off Death, and the dark 
 shadow fell across our threshold. 
 
 The child knew that he was going to die. 
 Throughout his little life his mother had never 
 hidden the truth from him. She knew his 
 brave and trustful heart. 
 
 Together they talked of the approaching 
 separation, just as two years before they had 
 spoken of his going away to school. 
 
 And just as he had then braced up his child- 
 ish courage to leave that dear mother and his 
 dear home, so now he resolutely set about 
 preparing for that lonesome journey from 
 which strong men have shrunk back in fear. 
 
 He was sad, for he was parting from his 
 mother and from all whom he knew and loved ; 
 and Richard had loved as he had lived, with 
 all his heart and strength. 
 
 But he knew no fear. 
 
 * It does seem strange that I should die 
 when there are so many old people in the 
 village,' he said, half wonderingly. ' I should 
 think they'll be surprised to see me in heaven 
 before Papa. You had better send down to 
 the village to ask if any one has any message 
 they would like me to take for them. It's a
 
 112 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 good thing I can speak Welsh. It's a long 
 time since any one died here, isn't it ? ' 
 
 It was July. The air was heavy with the 
 scent of white clove pinks and flowering 
 laurel. The mountains, veiled and mysteri- 
 ous in the summer haze, were faintly out- 
 lined against an opalescent sky. And in the 
 traeth the tide stood on the turn. 
 
 His mother told him of that Heavenly 
 Jerusalem, where the harpers harp upon their 
 golden harps beside the sea of glass, and 
 where the shining streets of the City are filled 
 with the sound of boys and girls at play. 
 
 And the child looked out on the solemn 
 Welsh mountains and said : ' I hope that it 
 will be something like this ! ' 
 
 So our little brother went from us, and the 
 years that he sojourned here have become to- 
 day as a bright sweet dream. 
 
 There is no bitterness in the memory. The 
 little life was an unmixed blessing, and his 
 death was as little terrible as the death of a 
 flower. It was as a tranquil evening crowning 
 a day of joyous play. 
 
 Like a strain of music he passed through 
 our lives, like a wind laden with fragrance, 
 that came to us from afar, and has passed we 
 know not whither.
 
 VI 
 Nursery Myths 
 
 THERE are a few of us who have not 
 spent n:iany happy hours over the nur- 
 sery myths of nations and peoples. The well- 
 worn pages of ' Grimm's Fairy Tales ' or the 
 ' Tanglewood Tales ' testify to the eternal 
 fascination of the Old World nursery myths, 
 which the children of men have never ceased 
 telling in every clime and in every age since 
 they first opened wondering eyes on the great 
 mysterious world around them. 
 
 In our own day, in our own country this 
 endless weaving of fanciful legend still con- 
 tinues. Wherever there are children, nursery 
 myths exist, often a mere mass of traditions 
 changed and corrupted according to the 
 imaginative taste of each individual nursery, 
 subject to constant addition and embellish- 
 ment. 
 
 The nature-worship, so distinctive a mark 
 of our Aryan origin, is generally clearly to be 
 
 113 J
 
 114 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 traced therein, and they lack not humour or 
 poetry, these modern nursery myths. What 
 though the high priestess of the cult be the 
 head-nurse ? What though the ' black man 
 up the chimney' and the policeman round the 
 corner play therein a prominent part ? None 
 the less have human souls, little sisters and 
 brothers sitting round the high nursery fen- 
 der, shuddered with fear and shaken with 
 laughter under their influence. 
 
 The nature of these myths depends perhaps 
 less on the creative faculty of their makers and 
 believers than on the character of the coun- 
 try in which they live, and the surroundings 
 of their daily life. 
 
 In town the sweep must inevitably continue 
 the popular bete noir. In the country every 
 natural object plays a part in the edification 
 of small sinners. 
 
 There were too many of us in our nursery 
 to realize the loneliness of our Welsh home. 
 We were hampered with very few lessons, and 
 our active little brains had leisure to gradu- 
 ally build up, if not another world, at least 
 another set of beings, spiritual, supernatural, 
 and invisible, inhabiting the same v/orld as 
 ourselves.
 
 NURSERY MYTHS 115 
 
 They condescended to interest themselves 
 in us, poor little mortals — though them- 
 selves immortal as the mountains that 
 stretched up around us, or the sea that 
 rushed up the traeth in winter storms, or lay 
 moaning on the sandy bar in calmer weather. 
 
 The first great Nature-Personification that 
 I can remember is known and loved in every 
 nursery in Britain : — dear good Jack Frost, 
 that world-renowned, prolific artist, mystic yet 
 ever popular, who with his icy finger covers 
 the shining nursery window with enchanted 
 forest and peaked mountain, with seas and 
 icebergs, ships, and flowers, and castles, and 
 tall cathedrals, and strange shapes of the 
 figures and faces of men. 
 
 Jack Frost was a much-loved, a good- 
 natured daemon. We felt a glow of gratitude 
 in our hearts to the lonely draughtsman who 
 stole outside in the cold dead night, — when 
 we were afraid to be even awake, — to make 
 our windows beautiful. 
 
 We fancied we could hear him on those 
 frosty mornings laughing softly to himself at 
 our surprise and delight in his handiwork. 
 And we glanced at the snow-laden laures- 
 tinus or behind the frosted fir trees with
 
 ii6 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 mingled hope and fear, lest we should catch 
 sight of him lurking there. 
 
 When Jack Frost came to stay in our 
 neighbourhood, we gave him joyous welcome. 
 For there never was a more generous guest, 
 nor one more entertaining. He spread the 
 ponds and puddles with ice so that we chil- 
 dren could slide to our hearts' delight, while 
 he laid slippery traps for the grown-ups that 
 made short work of their dignity. He tricked 
 the rocks and branches with long icicles, and 
 trimmed the cattle-trough with a crystal fringe. 
 He turned the waterfall into a grotto cut 
 out of diamond, and hung the fir trees with 
 the daintiest morsels of ice imaginable, just 
 the size to be grasped by small woolly- 
 gloved fingers, while they disappeared in 
 tiny fragments down ' red lane,' with infinite 
 gusto. 
 
 Our friend had one weakness. He was 
 perhaps too fond of a joke ; we had to keep a 
 look-out for our toes and fingers when he was 
 about, for he could give a sharp nip when he 
 chose. Nay, the grown-ups said he could 
 bite. But we were sure he would never bite 
 children. 
 
 Jack Frost, however, was by no means the
 
 NURSERY MYTHS 117 
 
 principal hero of our nursery mythology. He 
 was but the mischief-loving son of the great 
 Morris-the-Wind. 
 
 Despite much diligent sifting of tradition 
 and philological evidence, the origin of Morris 
 remains shrouded in mystery. I believe we 
 may claim him as our own creation, but when 
 or how he first was evolved has hitherto defied 
 research. 
 
 Who was this Morris, who came to be 
 identified with the Wind ? 
 
 Some have suggested that his name was 
 derived from the Welsh : vwr, the sea, the 
 roaring of which, mingled with the voice of 
 the wind, was so constantly in our ears 
 through the long Welsh winters that stretch 
 out so far on either side into Spring and 
 Autumn. 
 
 It is more probable that the prototype of 
 our deus maximus was some humble local 
 celebrity, some ' village Hampden ' long since 
 forgotten. Some uncouth Morris Jones, or 
 crabbed Griffith Morris, whose unprepossess- 
 ing outward semblance, gruff voice, or cross 
 temper was calculated to strike terror to an 
 infant's breast. The name of such would, no 
 doubt often be invoked by irate nurse or house-
 
 ii8 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 maid in hours of need, long after Morris had 
 ' left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,' 
 and while his small victims were yet too 
 young to retain the recollection of his awe- 
 some personality. 
 
 Certain it is that whether we whimpered as 
 our short hair was ' parted ' painfully, or cried 
 at nights for a lighted candle to be left in the 
 night nursery, the constant threat of our ex- 
 asperated handmaid was that ' Morris ' would 
 come for us. 
 
 'There he is, calling for you,' she would 
 say, as the Vv'ind roared through the trees and 
 in the chimney. So Morris and the Wind 
 became one and the same. The sound of the 
 Wind was his terrible voice. 
 
 A wicked, powerful Enemy was Morris- 
 the-Wind. From our warm beds we lis- 
 tened shuddering as he raged without. He 
 dashed great ships on the cruel rocks of Sarn 
 Badrig, or drove them up high on Harlech 
 beach. He picked out our father's oldest, 
 best-loved trees, and wrestled with them 
 night after night, ere he tore them finally 
 from their rocky ledges and hurled them 
 crashing down. He was not too proud to 
 waylay us children on the mynyddyji, or open
 
 NURSERY MYTHS 119 
 
 hillside, to bully and knock us about. He 
 tore our hats from our close-cropped heads, 
 snapping derisively the ' elastics ' beneath 
 our chins. He flung our cloaks over our 
 heads, made balloons of our skirts, beat the 
 breath from our poor little bodies, hustled us, 
 buffetted us, fairly knocked us over at times. 
 So spiteful was he that we were not safe from 
 him even in the nursery. He made sudden 
 raids down the chimney, sending showers of 
 soot into the toffee that nurse was making 
 over the fire, or he would dash in through 
 the open windows and whisk away whole 
 families of paper dolls into the rain-soaked 
 garden. He was never too busy to snatch 
 an open door from our feeble fingers, to bang 
 it shut with deafening clamour, calling down 
 upon our heads the constant reproofs of our 
 ciders. 
 
 Many a long hour we knelt on the three 
 horsehair-cushioned chairs that stood beneath 
 the high nursery window, leaning our elbows 
 on the sill, and gazing fascinated at the flying 
 spectral shapes that fled before Morris with 
 such incredible swiftness up the traeth to 
 their mountain fastnesses, there to be swal- 
 lowed up in the misty rain -clouds that shut
 
 I20 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 out Snowdon from our sight for weeks to- 
 gether. 
 
 Or, we watched him drive the tide full in, 
 like an infuriated madman lashing the white 
 steeds until they leaped in fury, springing 
 clean over the embankment that shut the 
 waters from the ' flat ' — the morfa^ or culti- 
 vated sea-marsh. 
 
 Then my father would call for his Welling- 
 ton boots, and be off on horseback with men 
 and boys, and half the village after him, to 
 fight the elements hand to hand, with stakes 
 and stones, and sods and brushwood, strength- 
 ening their barricades against the onslaught 
 of the sea till the tide turned and fled, and 
 Morris retired in disgust. 
 
 Very different in character was the tyrant's 
 daughter, Betty Snow, sister to our dear Jack 
 Frost. 
 
 As the starry snow-flakes floated down, 
 and whirled upward and round on the gusts 
 of wind, we never tired of watching the wild 
 dances of the beautiful Betty with her awful 
 sire. 
 
 She was passionately fond of waltzing ; it 
 used to make us giddy to look at her. Like 
 her brother, she was of an amiable and frivo-
 
 NURSERY MYTHS 121 
 
 lous turn. We greatly relied on the protec- 
 tion of this kindly couple, should Morris ever 
 fulfil the oft-repeated threat of carrying us 
 away. 
 
 For Jack Frost and Betty Snow managed 
 all the business of the ethereal household, 
 save in summer, when he retired to other 
 climes, and she rarely ventured out even to 
 lie upon her dear-loved Snowdon. Together 
 they worked through the long winter, shaking 
 out their feather beds when the snow fell 
 slowly in huge feathery flakes, or spreading 
 their new-washed sheets to bleach on the 
 dazzling slopes of the mountains, or plucking 
 their snow-white poultry, casting great hand- 
 fuls of the feathers down to earth. 
 
 They were not the only occupants of the 
 vast halls of Morris ; there was yet another, 
 a being, half human, half supernatural, fascin- 
 ating to us as an awful example of what our 
 own fate might be. 
 
 The origin of this myth is clear in the 
 memory of several witnesses, and is a good 
 illustration of the process of myth manufac- 
 ture. 
 
 One far-off day a grown-up sister — her 
 own children, alas ! are now beyond the age
 
 122 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 of nursery lore — told us some incidents of a 
 fearful hurricane which had recently visited 
 the Tropics, Just one of Morris's wild out- 
 breaks of temper, so we understood it. 
 
 One detail struck us with an awful horror, 
 rooting in our minds, growing and fructifying 
 until it came to form at last an all-important 
 article of our belief. 
 
 My sister professed to read the paragraph 
 from the Times. I do not know whether 
 she embellished it for our edification. It 
 stated that the wind had been so violent as to 
 sweep away a lady and the piano on which 
 she had been playing at the time. 
 
 At once the lady, the piano, the music- 
 stool, the very piece of music which she had 
 been playing at the fatal moment, were 
 absorbed into our mythology, where they 
 occupied a position analogous to that of the 
 Flying Dutchman and his spectral ship. 
 
 For ever she sat in the realms of Morris 
 playing her mystic tune, a terrible warning of 
 his power. Many a stormy night has the 
 chilly hand of a little sister wakened me to 
 listen to her dread music. 
 
 Poor lady ! Hers was a difficult position. 
 Morris was in love with her, and she would
 
 NURSERY MYTHS 123 
 
 have none of him. Betty Snow was known 
 to be of a somewhat jealous temper, and Jack 
 Frost, if good humoured, was indifferent and 
 careless. We used to hear her singing some- 
 times, and I never heard anything more 
 mournful than the sound of her improvisa- 
 tions. 
 
 I cannot but regard it as strange that we 
 never had a Rain Spirit. From sea to moun- 
 tain the rain clouds passed for days together, 
 like a long procession of fettered captives, 
 driven by the irresistible Morris. But the 
 rain was never personified. According to the 
 opinion of our family philosopher, a con- 
 tinuous downfall of rain soon lulls asleep the 
 imaginative faculty, numbing and depressing 
 the creative genius, which is so peculiarly 
 susceptible to the influence of the sounding 
 and invisible v/ind, or the suggestive mystery 
 of floating mists. 
 
 At any rate we watched the rain fall, dis- 
 consolate and stupid, occasionally chanting to 
 a monotonous refrain : 
 
 * Rain, Rain, go to Spain ! 
 When we want you, come again.' 
 
 But then, as now, it paid little heed to our 
 wishes, Sun-God we had none. But in
 
 124 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 summer Morris retired, or was in a good 
 temper. Then the fairies came out, and elves 
 and gobHns, and a thousand dainty creatures 
 that haunted the fern and heather on our 
 hillsides. 
 
 A hundred fanciful legends did we believe 
 concerning them. Our great-grandmother, 
 from the Isle of Man, had herself known a 
 man who had seen and talked with Manx 
 fairies. We never did more than find the 
 fresh green rings on the mountain turf, where 
 they danced to the sound of swinging hare- 
 bells beneath the silver moon. But in the 
 wood behind our house was the Fairies' Well, 
 in the hollow bole of an ash tree, where we 
 took many a wish, throwing a crooked pin 
 the while into the fairy water. And many a 
 mountain pass and many a wooded dell was 
 known to us, as the haunt of the Tyhvytli Teg, 
 the Fair People. 
 
 Indeed, our surroundings could hardly have 
 been more favourable for the growth of 
 nursery myths. The neighbourhood lacked 
 not well-authenticated ghosts, and many a 
 thrilling tale could our Welsh nurse have 
 supplied to the Psychical Research Society. 
 There was a certain wood, passed every
 
 NURSERY MYTHS 125 
 
 Sunday on our way to church, inhabited by a 
 race of snakes, the horrors of which fell little 
 short of those dire serpents who threatened 
 the infant Hercules. Flaming eyes, of ruby 
 red, had these terrible creatures, and long, 
 flowing manes. They could rear themselves 
 up from the ground to a height of six feet, 
 and generally advanced in this manner upon 
 their victims. Nurse's father had actually 
 encountered one of these monsters, and, 
 according to tradition, fought with and con- 
 quered it, in consequence of which we revered 
 his memory as that of a demi-god. 
 
 As for witches, or wise-women, they were 
 personally known to us, for in our very village 
 lived an aged crone, the seventh child of a 
 seventh child, who, having eaten of an eagle 
 from Snowdon, was undoubtedly possessed of 
 occult powers. 
 
 Several curious instances of her second 
 sight are upon record, and she was treated 
 with the greatest respect by all her neigh- 
 bours as the fortunate possessor of an ' evil 
 eye,' whereby cattle might be visited with 
 sudden death, whole crops blighted, and even 
 men and women afflicted with fits, and 
 strange wasting diseases, which refused to
 
 126 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 yield to the medical resources of the neigh- 
 bourhood. 
 
 Often have we accompanied our nurse to 
 the abode of this ugly old woman, and greatly 
 did we dislike it, though we rarely entered 
 the cottage, where nurse probably received 
 advice on her love affairs, while we remained 
 outside in the garden under the supervision of 
 an uncanny parrot, antiquated and malignant 
 as its mistress. Our chief dread was that the 
 latter should discover and avenge our aversion 
 to herself, her powers of vengeance being 
 absolutely limitless, we believed. It was with 
 a feeling of horror, not unmixed with triumph, 
 that I heard that this terrible old woman was 
 really dead at last. 
 
 One more peculiar daemon, and I close this 
 brief summary of our nursery myths. 
 
 He was a house-sprite, who bore the awful 
 name of ' Evanrodenaczul always so pro- 
 nounced in a single awe-struck breath. He 
 lived in the attic above the nursery, and 
 sometimes grew so loud and agitated as to 
 strike terror to our hearts as we listened to 
 his choking sobs, and loud, gasping struggles 
 for breath. 
 
 Our playthings would drop from our hands,
 
 NURSERY MYTHS 127 
 
 and we would look at each other too 
 frightened for speech. Then, if nurse were 
 in the kitchen, the sound of bitter wailing and 
 loud cries would bring her up in no sweet 
 temper to afford us, in spite of her scolding, 
 some sense of protection and refuge. 
 
 To-day I know that Evaiwodeiiacw is but 
 the hot-water cistern ; but at this very hour I 
 feel a half-shudder at the weird sounds he 
 emits as I sit and write in the room below, 
 which once was the nursery — that room which 
 is haunted by sadder shadows than ever fell 
 across its untidy floor in those far-off days. 
 
 It is long years since I was relieved of the 
 thoughts of the Wise- Woman's proximity. 
 The immortal Morris still roars o' nights, Jack 
 Frost paints as generously as of yore, and 
 Betty Snow dances untired for ever. But the 
 nursery days live only in our memory. The 
 nursery pinafores are worn out, the heel-less 
 ' ankle-bands ' have ceased to patter through 
 the house. The children are gone — clean 
 vanished from this earth together with the 
 fairies.
 
 VII 
 
 The Nursery Bookshelf 
 
 S there anything on earth at once more 
 absurd and pathetic than that row of 
 ragged volumes that once represented to us 
 all the wit and wisdom of the great unex- 
 plored world of literature ? 
 
 Those veteran books bear the marks of 
 having been greatly loved, pored over in the 
 nursery, smuggled surreptitiously into bed 
 with a view to early morning readings — alas ! 
 how times have changed ! They have been 
 carried from room to room tucked under a 
 protecting arm, borne aloft to haystack sum- 
 mits, suspended with their reader from the 
 swaying bough of oak or apple trees. Even 
 to our meals they were used to accompany us 
 — beneath our pinafores — those enchanting 
 tomes. If we could not manage to snatch a 
 glance at their thrilling pages, we could at 
 least secretly caress the volume as it lay 
 beneath the serviette on our laps.
 
 THE NURSERY BOOKSHELF 129 
 
 No wonder that the varied adventures of 
 their heroes and heroines, who to us were 
 then just as much ahve as we ourselves, still 
 remain tenaciously rooted in our memory 
 with a fi-eshness and accuracy that we can 
 only sigh after when striving to recall an 
 historical date, a geographical item, or some 
 past event of our own experience. 
 
 Our nursery bookshelf was stocked, for the 
 most part, with old-fashioned favourites — 
 books that had delighted our mother in her 
 youth. It seems almost impossible to believe 
 that their prim pages could ever have moved 
 us to tears or laughter. 
 
 But the favourite volumes of our school- 
 days, do not they appear as ridiculous to us 
 to-day ? The tears shed over ' The Heir of 
 Redclyffe,' are no less incredible than those 
 called forth by the sorrows of ' Ellen Mont- 
 gomery.' And what of the books we loved 
 when we first left school ? Nay, what of 
 some of our favourites of five, or even three 
 years ago ? What of to-day's, five years hence ? 
 
 It must be acknowledged that the vast 
 army of favourite books which has constantly 
 attended us through life seems, throughout 
 all time, to have been mainly composed of 
 
 K
 
 I30 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 deserters, who have fallen out of the ranks at 
 every stage of the journey, their places being 
 as perpetually filled up by ever-ready recruits. 
 And these latter have always had a way of 
 making their predecessors seem foolish and 
 antiquated, quite unworthy of the position 
 they formerly occupied in our affections. 
 
 Few, indeed, are the honoured veterans 
 who have kept their places from nursery days 
 right up to the present time — so few that I 
 can count them on one hand. Don Quixote 
 and Hans Andersen, and perhaps some of 
 Sir Walter Scott's were already dear to me 
 ere my age was writ in two numbers. They 
 are life friends, and I do not think of them 
 when I speak of ' nursery books,' but of those 
 beloved tomes over which we ate bread and 
 butter, clad in nursery pinafores, which 
 straightway ceased to please us when we 
 crossed the threshold of the schoolroom, and 
 have disappeared from our bookshelves for 
 ever. Some of their tattered remains are 
 still to be found in waste places and lumber- 
 rooms. I came the other day upon one of 
 them, a modest-sized volume, in a terrible un- 
 aesthetic green cover, entitled : * Anna Ross, 
 or the Orphan of Waterloo.'
 
 THE NURSERY BOOKSHELF 131 
 
 It is an ancient story, but I have recently 
 seen a new edition, with the same quaint 
 illustrations, wherein Anna is represented, at 
 the age of nine, attired in a crinoline, her hair 
 neatly parted, falling in ringlets on a tippet 
 or fichu — her ' spencer,' I believe she called 
 it — and her unchildlike legs clothed in long 
 frilled drawers which brushed the tops of her 
 shoes. 
 
 The plot was at once simple and con- 
 vincing, the choice of her guardian being left 
 to the discretion of Anna at the age of ten. 
 Terrible was the struggle between the amiable 
 but worldly Uncle Ross and the evangelical, 
 but slightly forbidding, Uncle Murray over 
 this captivating young creature. Towards 
 the end of the book Anna decides satis- 
 factorily in favour of Uncle Murray, and all 
 Scotland was illuminated in honour of her 
 return to the Manse, while Uncle Ross was 
 left to bang his door ' so violently as to make 
 the whole house shake ' in his pardonable 
 vexation at the event. 
 
 I wonder whether other readers of this 
 exciting tale secretly regretted Anna's choice, 
 and the joys that she forsook. We thought 
 she misht have remained with her missruided
 
 132 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 relatives, if only with a view to their con- 
 version, and yet have managed to retain her 
 evangelical principles whilst driving in that 
 elegant little cuyricle. We bitterly regretted 
 that the welfare of her soul seemed insepar- 
 ably connected with the darning of stockings 
 and washing of teacups at the Manse. The 
 Murrays needed no missionary ; she might 
 have done great things at the Rosses, bear- 
 ing witness for the truth on occasions, and 
 riding in the curricle betimes. 
 
 By the side of ' The Orphan of Waterloo ' 
 stood the world-famed * Fairchild Family,' 
 a book of which we never tired. 
 
 Was there ever such an unnatural parent 
 as Mr. Fairchild, who conducted his innocent 
 babes, aged nine, eight, and six years respect- 
 ively, to the gruesome sight of a ' gibbet on 
 which a body hung in chains,' apropos of a 
 childish quarrel, which had already been more 
 than expiated, one might have thought, by 
 the customary scourging with rods and the 
 loss of their breakfasts ? 
 
 ' This bod}',' we read shudderingly, ' had 
 not yet fallen to pieces. It had on a blue 
 coat, a silk handkerchief round the neck, with 
 shoes and stockings and every other part of
 
 THE NURSERY BOOKSHELF 133 
 
 the dress still entire ; but the face of the 
 corpse was so shocking that the children 
 could not bear to look upon it' 
 
 The vision haunted us, together with many 
 a realistic death-bed from the same pages. 
 Many a terrible nightmare, many a wakeful 
 hour, dark with death-fears and the horror 
 of the grave, do I owe to the perusal of the 
 ' Fairchild Family.' 
 
 Yet it contained delightful pages. The 
 three children, despite the constant discipline 
 to which they were subjected, were ever ready 
 not only to * say some verses about mankind 
 having bad hearts,' but to proceed straight- 
 way to amply justify the sweeping indictment. 
 
 Hastily we skipped over the prayer and 
 hymn that concludes each chapter of the 
 original edition, revelling in the abnormally 
 sinful hearts of Lucy, Emily, and Henry, that 
 defied the joint efforts of Mr. and Mrs. Fair- 
 child and their faithful servitors John and 
 Betty towards their betterment. 
 
 Henry was our favourite ; his accident in 
 connection with the pig-wash a very master- 
 piece of humour. He opposed a bold front 
 on occasions to his fanatic father, who, how- 
 ever, always got the better of him by dint
 
 134 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 of superior force, to say nothing of the back- 
 ing-up that the Scriptures afforded him. 
 
 Were children ever treated so inhumanly ? 
 The little Henry was kept locked up in a 
 small room through one long day without 
 breakfast or dinner, ' to save his soul from 
 hell,' as his father put it, along with the ap- 
 plication of Solomon's receipt for the pre- 
 vention of such disaster. And there is some- 
 thing pathetic about the child's despair as 
 he reflects : '' Suppose my father should never 
 take me into favour again ? ' One seems to 
 catch an echo of the grim theology of that 
 period. 
 
 Little Lucy and Emily passed their days 
 in the humble occupations suitable to their 
 sex. There was much making of beds, rub- 
 bing of chairs and tables, and interminable 
 sewing to be done, while Henry read aloud 
 one of the really charming tales from the 
 * gilt books ' brought by John or Betty from 
 the fair. 
 
 The little girls were anxious about their 
 brother's spiritual condition. Consulting their 
 mother as to his state, they are told darkly 
 that he is still, alas ! ' very young and very 
 giddy.'
 
 THE NURSERY BOOKSHELF 135 
 
 What spirits that boy must have had ! 
 
 Bessy Goodriche we dearly loved, rejoicing 
 in Betty's peevish dictum : ' Those who have 
 the care of you have their hands full ! ' 
 
 A surly, cross-grained pair, John and Betty, 
 of almost democratic tendencies. John tied 
 the three children under the kitchen table 
 one day to keep them out of mischief, and 
 he was as good a hand at a prayer or sermon 
 as his master. 
 
 Nevertheless, the adventures of that strange 
 household were read and re-read with un- 
 flagging interest, and the popularity of the 
 ' Fairchild Family ' was only rivalled by that 
 of ' Sandford and Merton.' 
 
 Tommy Merton and Harry Sandford were, 
 I think, healthier companions for us on the 
 whole, despite the air of priggishness that 
 hung about them, and the constant instruc- 
 tiveness of their conversations. There was 
 nothing morbid about Mr. Barlow, though 
 we considered him tiresome at times, full of 
 a trite philosophy, and influenced by the 
 same mildly sententious radicalism that per- 
 vades the pages of Edgeworth's * Frank,' or 
 ' Rosamond,' the softened echo of the French 
 Revolution, the first breath of that humaner
 
 136 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 sentiment of Christian socialism, which is, 
 perhaps, the best thing our century has de- 
 veloped. 
 
 Frank and Rosamond, Harry and Lucy, 
 Tommy Merton and Harry Sandford were 
 indeed embryo philosophers, but they were 
 children for all that, not altogether without 
 human weaknesses. Frank had his ' day of 
 disgrace,' and Rosamond her ' day of mis- 
 fortunes.' 
 
 Frank's father and Rosamond's mother 
 were an aggravating couple. Rousseau him- 
 self could hardly have desired two more per- 
 fectly regulated machines for the production 
 and rearing of young Stoics. Rosamond 
 being led aside from the paths of prudence 
 by the witching glamour of the purple jar — 
 at the advanced age of seven she was ex- 
 pected to know better — had to hobble pain- 
 fully along with a hole in her shoe, or bide 
 indoors till her error was expiated. Cruel 
 traps were laid for her by her mother ; the 
 unfortunate child was torn with indecision 
 on being offered her choice between an esti- 
 mable leather housewife and a meretricious 
 stone plum, purple also — a fatal colour appar- 
 ently where she was cor^cerned.
 
 THE NURSERY BOOKSHELF 137 
 
 And what conundrums those unearthly 
 parents propounded to their innocent off- 
 spring ! 
 
 ' Thatl says Rosamond, sorely tempted 
 by the ingenious stone plum, ' would last 
 for ever.' 
 
 ' Which do you mean, my dear,' inquires 
 her mother frigidly, * that the stone would 
 last for ever, or that the pleasure of having 
 that stone plum would last for ever ? 
 
 To which the puzzled little girl, after due 
 consideration, replied : 'I don't know, mamma, 
 exactly which I meant ; but I mean now that 
 I should have a great deal of pleasure in 
 showing that stone plum to Laura and to 
 my brother, and that I should like to have it 
 for my own.' A truthful, childlike answer, 
 calculated, one might think, to melt the heart 
 of any mother, unless it were stony as the 
 celebrated plum itself. 
 
 Was it quite out of the question that 
 Rosamond should have been blessed with 
 both the housewife and the plum ? I fear it 
 was utterly inconsistent with her mamma's 
 principles, but we never knew the end of that 
 episode, as several pages were missing from 
 our book at that point, the narrative being
 
 138 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 picked up only at the little story of ' The 
 Injured Ass,' — a fine title ! often singularly 
 appropriate to Rosamond and her kind, so 
 it seemed to us. 
 
 By the side of Mr. Fairchild, however, her 
 parents showed as sane and agreeable com- 
 panions. It is true that her father refused 
 to take her out walking ' slip-shod ' with him, 
 but he was not incapable of generosity. On 
 one occasion, ' to reward Jicr for keeping her 
 good resolutions^ he actually ' lent her a niee 
 little machine of Ids for drawing perspective ; 
 she zuas allozued to nse it before breakfast only, 
 and she felt the advantage of getting up in 
 proper time! Was not that an incentive to 
 virtue ? 
 
 * Little Harry and Lucy ' were always 
 very shadowy personages, never much in our 
 favour. Adventures they had none ; they 
 never fell from a state of Grace, and their 
 conversations were little better than the 
 * Child's Guide to Knowledge.' Edgeworth 
 and Day were certainly the wisest teachers 
 we had in our youth. Both inculcated the 
 same sterling virtues of self-control and for- 
 titude, humanity, tolerance, and common 
 sense, while their pages were crammed with
 
 THE NURSERY BOOKSHELF 139 
 
 information on every imaginable subject — 
 astronomy, geography, natural history, — 
 nothing came amiss. 
 
 We read straight through. ' Sandford and 
 Merton ' did not seem dull to us ; I ' vow 
 and protest ' I was never guilty of skipping 
 its pages. To this day I retain my affection 
 for that work. Despite the antique cut of 
 their eighteenth-century garments, Mr. Bar- 
 low and his pupils express in their prim 
 English much the same sentiments as Tolstoi" 
 proclaims to-day. They believed in the same 
 Gospel of Simplicity, Fraternity, and Equality, 
 and they strove to give practical expression 
 to it in their lives. Thus Tommy Merton, 
 the ' Little Gentleman,' learned to labour with 
 his own hands cultivating the soil at the side 
 of the farmer's son, and ere the end of the 
 volume he has divested himself of powdered 
 curls and paste buckles, having learned how 
 much better it is to be ' good than great, 
 useful than fine or rich.' 
 
 By the side of these tranquil philosophers, 
 the ' Fairchild Family ' shows as a survival of a 
 period already so remote as to be almost in- 
 comprehensible, products of the Dark Ages 
 of Theology. Yet Edgeworth's Frank was
 
 I40 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 contemporary, we suppose, with Henry 
 Fairchild. Compare the different methods 
 adopted by their several parents at that 
 crucial period when the little boys came to 
 their first serious tussle with the Latin 
 grammar. 
 
 Frank — treated by his father as a ' reason- 
 able being' — ashamed of his fit of laziness, 
 resolutely locks up his story-books until the 
 day's lesson has been learned, and the next 
 day's too, in order to show his father that he 
 has not been mistaken in him, that he can 
 ' punish himself, and manage himself.' 
 
 While Henry Fairchild, after being held by 
 John to be horsewhipped by his father, spends 
 a couple of miserable days and nights on a 
 bread and water rcgbnc^ ere he can summon 
 resolution to fall on his knees before his papa 
 and entreat his forgiveness. Only the greater 
 fear of dying in that state, and forthwith 
 proceeding to Hell — the horrors of which were 
 opportunely described to him by Charles 
 Trueman — spurred him to the act of sub- 
 mission and reconciliation. For, as Charles 
 sagely remarked : ' Who can dwell with ever- 
 lasting burning? ' and ' My father,' he added, 
 'has often talked to us children about hell.
 
 THE NURSERY BOOKSHELF 141 
 
 as we have been sitting round the fire on a 
 Sunday evening, till we have all been in a 
 quake.' 
 
 There were more modern books than these 
 on the nursery bookshelf, where neither this 
 world nor the next were taken so much an 
 grand scrieux, the strangest productions of 
 Transatlantic origin. 
 
 I cannot but smile as I flutter the well- 
 worn pages of the ' Wide, Wide World,' or 
 ' Daisy Randolph,' or ' Ellen Montgomery's 
 Bookshelf,' and their kin. 
 
 These books delighted in graphic descrip- 
 tions of good eating, and presented a strange 
 medley of sensuous materialism and religious 
 sentimentality, with a strong savour of snob- 
 bishness. 
 
 We were too young to be critical. Ellen 
 Montgomery was dear to us, as also that 
 sensational young creature, Daisy Randolph. 
 The former is even now surrounded by the 
 fragrance of buckwheat cakes, the latter rises 
 in vision dipping her sponge cake in a glass 
 of milk. And for old sakes' sake they must 
 ever be dear friends, the one in her ' flat hat ' 
 and elegant white robes, the other in the 
 famous dyed stockings.
 
 142 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 They had a trick of dissolving into tears, 
 these American heroines, at every page, and 
 every boy or man throughout the book be- 
 came at once subjugated by the charms of 
 which they alone remained unconscious. But 
 if we did not get much good from their society, 
 neither did we learn much harm, I fancy. 
 We very much enjoyed reading of their per- 
 verse or misguided relatives ; grown-ups were 
 not then all perfection ! We severely con- 
 demned the savagery of Mrs. Randolph 
 towards that martyr Daisy, and we greatly 
 relished the thorough-going wickedness of 
 Aunt Fortune towards Ellen Montgomery. 
 As for ' Mr. John '—Ellen's Mr. John— he 
 was for long years our ideal of manly perfec- 
 tion, until the time when the ' Heir of Red- 
 clyffe ' ousted him from that proud position in 
 the days when the schoolroom bookshelf had 
 succeeded that of the nursery. 
 
 The ' Adventures of Robin Hood ' came 
 next in popularity to * Don Quixote,' both 
 occupying a very high place in our esteem. 
 Concerning the latter we had a confused 
 notion that our father was in part the author, 
 at any rate he could read it in Spanish ; the 
 volume might be seen among his favourite
 
 THE NURSERY BOOKSHELF 143 
 
 books. It was grand to read the same book 
 as Papa ; one felt almost grown-up one's self 
 when he quoted a saying of Sancho's to one 
 as to an equal. An acquaintance with Robin- 
 son Crusoe conferred the same distinction. 
 
 But dearest of all our much-loved books 
 was the volume of Fairy Tales written by 
 Hans Andersen, he who has been as an angel 
 friend to many a sensitive little child's heart. 
 We could not then appreciate the beauty of 
 those simple stories as now we do, but we 
 loved to wander with him through that 
 bright world of fresh air and genial sunshine, 
 of scented roses and cooing pigeons, waving 
 cornfields and twittering swallows, forest 
 solitudes and strange sea kingdoms. We 
 heard the distant chiming of church bells, 
 and the solemn roll of the organ, as we fared 
 with Gerda through enchanted fields in search 
 of Little Kay, or followed the Ugly Duckling 
 to his glorious end. It was good for us to be 
 there, for over all the land was an atmosphere 
 of simple childlike trust in a Universal 
 Father who bore the tenderest love to all his 
 creatures, great and small. 
 
 As I take up the book to-day, the sorrows 
 and sighings of humanity seem to breathe
 
 144 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 out of every page ; cold and darkness, sorrow 
 and sickness, poverty, pain, and death, all 
 these dark mysteries of life are there, but all 
 are made beautiful by faith, by resignation, 
 by the joy of the Christ-child. 
 
 ' Roses bloom, and roses decay, 
 But we the Christ-child shall see some day,' 
 
 sing little Kay and Gerda. 
 
 And it seems to me the very sweetest echo 
 of our childhood, the utterance of one who 
 through a sad and troublous life retained to 
 the end his childlike heart. Of such is the 
 Kingdom of Heaven. For of such it may 
 truly be said : — 
 
 'They make the heaven they hope, indeed their 
 home.'
 
 VIII 
 Nursery Furniture 
 
 OFTEN as I lie awake at night I gaze 
 round my room, which was once the 
 nursery, with a feeling of wonder, it looks so 
 strange and foreign to me. And I ponder : 
 Where has the old furniture gone to ? What 
 was it that used to stand here, and what 
 there, in the old days? Surely not that 
 easel with the unfinished picture ? 
 
 Ah, no ! There, long ago, stood a tall, 
 gaunt Nursery Cupboard, about which 
 sinister memories cluster. For, in the upper 
 portion, where our little cloaks and garden 
 hats were hung, nurse had a horrid custom of 
 shutting up naughty children, ' to have their 
 scream out.' 
 
 Well do I remember the choking sensation 
 of a fit of crying inside the cupboard, and the 
 horrid thump of nurse's fist on the closed 
 
 145 L
 
 146 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 door, as she reiterated her stupid question : 
 ' Are you sorry ? ' 
 
 Who would not have been sorry in such 
 miserable plight ? ' Then stop crying this 
 minute.' Not so easy that. 
 
 ' Take away thy opinion, and then there is 
 taken away the complaint : I have been 
 harmed. Take away the complaint : I have 
 been harmed, and the harm is taken away,' 
 writes the Imperial Stoic. And in later days, 
 incarceration in the nursery cupboard became 
 so popular a punishment as to fall into 
 gradual disuse. It was the brilliant discovery 
 of our little brother that it was the place of 
 all others in which to play family coach, and 
 from that day it lost its terrors. So much 
 lies in opinion ! 
 
 The lower part of the cupboard held the 
 nursery tea-things and certain stores — tea, 
 sugar, and jam. It was wisely secured by 
 the stiffest of hooks, which defied the efforts 
 of baby fingers, but was sometimes forced to 
 yield to the determined attack of those who 
 had reached the age when they ought to 
 have known better. Such raids, generally on 
 behalf of a dolls' tea-party, being made when 
 nurse's back was turned, of course.
 
 NURSERY FURNITURE 147 
 
 Opposite to the cupboard, on the other 
 side of the window, stood a substantial ward- 
 robe, which never interested us in the least. 
 It contained all our clothes, and whatever our 
 faults may have been in those days, personal 
 vanity never was one of them. For my part 
 a new frock was ever donned with tears and 
 wailing, so bigotted a conservative was I. 
 
 The top shelf of the wardrobe held our 
 best toys and our most valuable possessions 
 in the way of dolls. We regarded them 
 coldly. * Eva,' who had come from the Paris 
 Exhibition, and * Muriel,' a guinea-doll, 
 never were our friends. It irked us that we 
 might not smite them at our will, nor comb 
 their locks nor kiss them heartily in like 
 fashion as we treated our hideous rag-doll 
 Rosa, or her sisters Topsy and Molly, who 
 shared our every-day life, and whom we loved 
 and chastened with equal warmth and energy. 
 These French beauties were to be played with 
 only in the drawing-room, in the constraining 
 presence of grown-ups. We saw them packed 
 av;ay in the wardrobe shelf with a sentiment 
 of relief. They still survive, antiquated 
 beauties, to be despised by the present gener- 
 ation. Rosa and Topsy have vanished like 
 the children v/ho played with them.
 
 148 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 Ah, now the room begins to look its old 
 self again. For as I lie here dreaming, the 
 door bursts open and ' Dick-the-Rocking- 
 Horse ' prances in to his accustomed place 
 against the wall. Terribly dilapidated is his 
 harness, scant and thin his mane and tail 
 from frequent combings with the night-nur- 
 sery comb. Surely some one has been 
 shearing those jagged locks ! Which of us 
 was it who thought of applying to Dick-the- 
 Rocking-Horse the treatment our own 
 cropped heads received ? I remember the 
 look of the tiny culprit when she was dis- 
 covered at her sacrilegious work with the big 
 scissors in one hand and a severed lock in 
 the other, and a terrible fear awakening in 
 her three-year-old heart at the chilly gleam 
 of Dick's cold glass eye. 
 
 Noble steed ! Many a boisterous ride have 
 the lot of us enjoyed together on various 
 parts of his grey body and green stand. One 
 at each end of the rockers, one on his back, and 
 two below in the steerage, all singing lustily 
 sea-songs, we ploughed imaginary waters on 
 our way to unknown lands. We met terrific 
 storms, when Dick reared up on end, and a 
 crushed finger beneath the rocker often added
 
 NURSERY FURNITURE 149 
 
 to the horrors of the situation, as the shrieks 
 of the wounded drowned the tumult of the 
 storm. 
 
 But whence comes that mysterious rushing 
 sound as he moves to and fro with his grace- 
 ful swing ? 
 
 That is the sound of the bright coloured 
 slate pencils, the small glass marbles, and 
 little dolls and thimbles that roll from end to 
 end of his dappled body with a hollow 
 rumble. 
 
 We were surely possessed by some strange 
 fascination when wc dropped our dearest 
 treasures through the pommel-hole of Dick's 
 saddle. Some idea of a propitiatory offering 
 haunted us, and the dearer the offering the 
 more meritorious the sacrifice was considered. 
 We consoled ourselves for the loss of our 
 favourite marble or prettiest penholder by 
 many a fanciful tale of their after-life, and we 
 loved to identify the movement of each one 
 as Dick reared and plunged and they rolled 
 or slid within. 
 
 Yes, this is once more the nursery ! There 
 stands the black horse-hair sofa, with its 
 stout sausage pillow that was so dangerous a 
 weapon in a battle, or made so good a nigger
 
 150 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 baby. Over the high end of the sofa many a 
 graceful somersault has been turned. And 
 from its giddy height we were wont to jump 
 one after another, as from a spring-board, 
 into an imaginary sea, where we bathed and 
 swam and ' dipped under ' with vast enjoy- 
 ment on the nursery floor. 
 
 Then there was the nursery table, which, 
 run against a wall, and properly draped with 
 tablecloth and blanket made so pleasant a 
 residence for the mother of a large family of 
 dolls. A slight difference in its decoration, 
 and it was the wigwam of a Red Indian and 
 his squaw, or a mountain cave where Welsh 
 patriots lay in hiding ready to burst forth on 
 the Saxon foe. But what were the uses to 
 which that noble table was not turned ? Up- 
 side down it formed a sledge, turned up on 
 its side it was the front of my brother's 
 pulpit when he officiated in ' Toy Church.' 
 And merely standing at ease, it was the most 
 delightful eisteddfod platform whereon petti- 
 coated bards recited their odes and elegies, 
 and Mde. Edith Wynne and Miss Mary 
 Davis gave forth song after song to an im- 
 patient audience that, far from desiring an 
 affable response to their perfunctory encores,
 
 NURSERY FURNITURE 151 
 
 was perpetually starting from its seat, crying : 
 * Now it's 77iy turn ! ' 
 
 There certainly was a magical quality 
 about our nursery furniture. Things were 
 not what they seemed, having each a score 
 of uses unsuspected by those dullards, the 
 grown-ups. How often, for instance, has 
 nurse deposited her work-basket right on the 
 top of the chimney of our little house, or 
 pulled away the half of our carriage, mistaking 
 it for an ordinary chair, or reft from us our 
 best boat on the pretence that it was needed 
 for a bath ! 
 
 Before the fireplace stood a high fender, 
 like a great wire cage, securely fastened to the 
 wall. How we despaired of ever attaining an 
 altitude which should enable us to pass an 
 arm over the shining brass rail at the top to 
 grasp the poker, that coveted article of fur- 
 niture. Poor weaklings as we were, we could 
 but patiently drag the wires apart in various 
 places till we had made a hole wide enough 
 to admit the passage of a hand, which 
 slipping through might seize and withdraw 
 the poker. This feat accomplished, we were 
 supremely blest, jerking red cinders out of 
 the lower bars of the grate, or punching the
 
 152 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 bubbles of gas that puffed up out of the coal, 
 or enlarging our gaps in the fender, working 
 the poker like a lever, as we had learned from 
 the pages of ' Sandford and Merton.' 
 
 Sometimes when nurse was safe in the 
 kitchen we had a most delightful game of 
 'Martyrs' — a regular auto da fe, when pro- 
 cessions of heretical paper dolls were com- 
 mitted to the flames, fluttering red-hot up the 
 chimney sooner than abjure their faith. 
 
 Of course all such pastimes were clandes- 
 tine, playing with fire being a capital sin. 
 Nothing was more strictly forbidden to us. 
 
 And * Disobedience brings trouble ' was 
 the favourite proverb of our nurse, one which 
 she frequently quoted, and always proceeded 
 to make good. So like her shallow wisdom ! 
 We knew well at an early age that it was 
 detection which brought trouble. But on 
 looking back, I think we may thank the 
 height of our nursery fender for preserving us 
 from the fate of our ' martyrs.' 
 
 In that far corner stood the Toy-box, full 
 of ghastly wrecks, headless dolls and broken 
 treasures. Near it were stabled several 
 wooden steeds with determined square jaws 
 and dull black nail eyes. There, too, lived
 
 NURSERY FURNITURE 153 
 
 our hoops and skipping ropes, and the nine- 
 pins that people were always giving us, and 
 that no one knew how to play with. 
 
 The nursery chairs were companions of 
 the horse-hair and mahogany sofa. They 
 were much admired by the servants, and, tied 
 together by our pocket-handkerchiefs and 
 neck-ties, made almost any sort of carriage, 
 or a railway train if desired. They were 
 rather heavy to move — a serious disadvantage 
 — and stood generally beneath the window or 
 around the table. Sometimes, however, we 
 would find one pushed incautiously near the 
 fireplace. Then there was mounting in hot 
 haste, and the precipitation of a small body 
 across the fender bar, while, despite a terrible 
 aching pain that resulted from that perilous 
 position, some happy mortal knew for a few 
 brief moments the unhallowed delights of 
 poking the fire ! 
 
 But beside the mahogany herd there were 
 several notables among the nursery chairs. 
 There was the ' Rocking-Chair,' where 
 grandmamma had rocked our mother as a 
 child, and where our mother sang each 
 one of us to sleep in turn. Every evening 
 saw her there before the nursery fire, with
 
 154 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 the baby washed, and fed, and violet- 
 powdered, the picture of lordly content, un- 
 curling its pink toes to the blaze, waving 
 a tiny fist aloft or clasping tight the finger of 
 a small sister, who, adorably sleepy, delici- 
 ously clean, stood in her little flannel night- 
 gown by her mother's knee ready to say her 
 evening prayers ere being carried off to bed. 
 
 Then there was the ' High Chair,' which 
 descended from baby to baby, despite the 
 jealous screams of the deposed monarch, who 
 again had to be consoled by the * Little 
 Rocking-Chair,' always the property of the 
 ex-baby. It played an important part on 
 our eisteddfod platforms, where it repre- 
 sented the Bardic Chair. Decked out with 
 sashes and hair-ribbons, it formed a Throne 
 for Birthday Queens ; and attached to our 
 most elaborate make of chariot, it became 
 a precarious ' dickey,' slung on to the back of 
 a common chair by cunningly knotted pocket- 
 handkerchiefs. 
 
 Perhaps the nicest thing in our nursery 
 was the baby's bassinet, with its periodically 
 renewed draping of shining chintz or clear 
 muslin. We never tired of rocking the ' new 
 baby' in its cradle, always accompanying
 
 NURSERY FURNITURE 155 
 
 the exercise with some cheerful tune. And 
 sometimes so fierce an excess of affection 
 took us that the rocking became fast and 
 furious, until the innocent object of our 
 devotion was bodily rocked out of the cradle 
 and landed screaming on the farther side, to 
 the horror of its devotee, and the righteous 
 wrath of nurse. 
 
 All round the room hung painted pictures, 
 of Scriptural characters mostly, in cumbrous 
 clothing held together with many loops and 
 girdles. 
 
 A roll of texts hung at the end of the 
 cupboard, and a list of registered voters for 
 the county of Merioneth was pasted on the 
 wardrobe. We were ardent politicians in 
 the nursery. 
 
 Yes ; that was how the room looked some 
 twenty years ago. That was how it was 
 furnished. I often gaze pensively at Dick- 
 the-Rocking- Horse, as he stands idle in the 
 lumber-room, and wonder whether he, too, 
 regrets those vanished days, and loves to 
 recall the memory of his youth.
 
 IX 
 My Lord Taff 
 
 MY LORD TAFF is of the purest 
 Welsh descent, and knows it. He 
 prides himself on his birth scarcely less than 
 on his personal appearance. He has been 
 used to admiration all his life, and even 
 to-day, when the ' new man ' disagreeably 
 surprises us by brutally designating him as 
 the ' old pony,' even to-day he is undeniably 
 a very handsome fellow, as the new man 
 hastens to add in propitiatory clause. 
 
 He was very young when he entered our 
 family circle — how many years ago is best 
 forgotten — and he had formerly inhabited a 
 lower sphere. I hardly like to mention it, but 
 my Lord Tafif was actually actively engaged 
 in trade when my father, making his acquaint- 
 ance, recognised the absurdity of his position, 
 and ransomed him from it. 
 
 Then he took up his abode with us, taking 
 possession of a loose box, two fields, and a
 
 MY LORD TAFF 157 
 
 bordering strip of woodland with perfect 
 sang- fyoid, as one to the manner born, and 
 without the slightest manifestation of grati- 
 tude. We were disappointed even then, I 
 remember ; but we attributed his indifference 
 to our caresses to the exigencies of a large 
 appetite, which seemed hitherto to have been 
 constantly unsatisfied. We were young and 
 enthusiastic, and had been educated in the 
 false ideas inculcated in the ballad of Mary 
 and her little lamb. We long continued 
 to lavish the warmth of our young affections 
 upon my Lord Taff, hoping to kindle in his 
 cold heart an answering flame. Some of us 
 continue to wait to this day. I am not 
 among them. I look at the vain, well-pre- 
 served old dandy, somewhat sourly : ' Kind 
 hearts are more than coronets,' I mutter to 
 myself. And I wish — oh, how often I have 
 wished— that instead of that dazzling bright 
 chestnut creature, for whom we have had 
 so many offers from would-be purchasers, 
 my father had given us a companion less 
 beautiful and more loving. I have never 
 been a great admirer of what is termed 
 ' spirit ' in those with whom I have had to do. 
 I prefer sympathy any day, and gentleness,
 
 158 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 and responsiveness ; none of which have I 
 met with from my Lord Taff. Seated upon 
 his back, dragged by a sudden caprice under 
 the low-sweeping branches of the trees that 
 border the drive in his hurry to be home, 
 often have I bitterly owned to myself that 
 I were better off with some modest Christian 
 donkey, of weakly intellect but kindly nature. 
 
 There be equestrians, I believe, whose idea 
 of enjoyment consists in the subduing of 
 their steed. Would that any such could 
 have met v/ith my Lord Taff in the hey-day 
 of his youth and strength ! Nay, I would 
 back him to win to-day, at his advanced age, 
 by sleight or might, did it come to a struggle 
 with his rider. Capricious as a pig, obstinate 
 as a mule, cunning as only a Welsh pony 
 can be cunning, he has got the better of me 
 on each and every occasion of difference. 
 I tire so readily of contest, while he delights 
 in it, finding a perverse pleasure in fretting 
 and subduing his rider's will. 
 
 Yes, as I look at him to-day, I sorrowfully 
 confess that little pleasure have I had of our 
 rambles together. A more unsympathetic 
 companion I never met with, nor one more 
 systematically contradictory.
 
 MY LORD TAFF 159 
 
 What glorious times we might have had 
 on those bright, enchanted, frosty mornings, 
 when the blood flowed so fast in our veins ! 
 How we ought to have flown together through 
 the sharp clear air, over the clean, ringing 
 roads, under the crackling branches of the 
 ice-tricked trees. And those spring days, 
 when we were both so young ! How gladly 
 would I have dropped the reins, and sung 
 aloud in sheer delight on the lonely road 
 that winds up the empty valley, skirting 
 the estuary below. We two, the only living 
 things in that fairy world, save for the tiny 
 mountain sheep that wandered on the hill- 
 side. The air was full of a thousand scents 
 and sounds of Spring. The sky was like an 
 azure dream, the glassy water in the estuary 
 below mirrored the depths in an intenser blue. 
 And my Lord Taff, cross-grained and sullen, 
 walked sideways like a crab, his one thought, 
 when would I be tired of it and let him get 
 back to his dinner. 
 
 Those resplendent afternoons of Autumn ! 
 How we might have sauntered dreaming 
 through the changed world, when the sun 
 hastened to his rest in a sombre glory and 
 the woods glowed till it seemed as if they
 
 i6o SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 must break out into speech, and the moun- 
 tains stood up strong and delicate against the 
 golden sky. 
 
 My Lord Taff cared for none of these 
 things. Never once did he respond to my 
 mood. Well, I soon ceased to ask for re- 
 sponse ; but he might have respected it at 
 least. Not he ! A violent shy nearly pre- 
 cipitating me over his wicked head, a vicious 
 pull at the reins almost dislocating my weak 
 arms, soon dissipated light-hearted fancies or 
 pensive musings. Not for five minutes to- 
 gether would this tyrannical egoist permit 
 the rider's thoughts to stray from him. 
 
 How he crawled along the road on the 
 outward journey ! No amount of coaxing 
 or scolding, nothing but the touch of the 
 whip induced him to quicken his steps for 
 more than a few moments at a time ; his 
 only variation from a snail's pace being a 
 terrible jolting trot that shook every bone 
 of the rider's body. Occasionally he woke 
 up to give chase to a rambling pig, or the 
 terrified cocks and hens belonging to some 
 wayside cottage, entirely for his own amuse- 
 ment and quite in opposition to my will ; 
 but his general demeanour was that of a
 
 MY LORD TAFF i6i 
 
 worn-out, over-ridden creature, until the 
 moment when, wearied with his sullenness, 
 I turned his head towards home. Then 
 what a change came over him ! Down went 
 his head, up flew his hoofs ; off we went at a 
 mad gallop that soon left me helpless, cling- 
 ing on for dear life, almost in tears at his 
 heartless conduct. Like the wind we dashed 
 up the gravelled drive, and I do not know 
 which of us regarded the other with the 
 greater hatred when I slipped from his back 
 and entered the house, while he was led away 
 fresh and unwearied to the stables. 
 
 As the years went on it was observed that 
 few of us cared to ride my Lord Taff, and the 
 idea of driving him in a light dog-cart was 
 hailed with enthusiasm. We were sickened 
 of single combats, but felt hopefully that our 
 united wills might oppose a more substantial 
 resistance to his. 
 
 During that first period of his existence, 
 to which my Lord Taff never alludes, he 
 had been wont to run in the shafts of the 
 butcher's cart, under the vulgar appellation 
 of ' Tommy.' He had been sold to us as 
 trained to run in harness. We soon dis- 
 covered that he was resolved never again 
 to submit to such an indignity, 
 
 M
 
 i62 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 ' But for the unfair interference of the 
 postman and a brute of an Englishman who 
 was staying with the family at the time, I 
 certainly should have broken their ugly cart 
 to pieces,' he tells his little companion, 
 Darkie. ' But, of course, I soon recognised 
 the impossibility of arguing with a low-born 
 Englishman. Rather than stoop to that, I 
 affected to give in, though I certainly gave 
 them a fright or two first,' he adds pensively. 
 ' And then it was that I decided upon your 
 advent. I visited a great many applicants 
 for the situation before selecting you. I 
 should have preferred an associate of higher 
 birth, no doubt ; but your parentage, though 
 humble, is respectable ; and as regards manner, 
 I venture to think you have a model before 
 you worthy of your imitation ! ' 
 
 Alas, for my Lord Taff! Every day he 
 notes a shrewder twinkle in Darkie's eyes. 
 The simplicity of the youngster is fast wear- 
 ing off. He is becoming a bad listener to 
 twice-told tales, frequently walking away 
 from a stale anecdote to a fresh tuft of grass, 
 and never for a moment suspending his 
 munching to listen to a lecture. 
 
 My Lord Taff has tried sulking and digni-
 
 MY LORD TAFF 163 
 
 fied silence, but being an inveterate proser 
 cannot long endure his own company, and 
 always ends by rejoining the impervious 
 Darkie with the air of one who magnani- 
 mously accepts an unspoken apology. 
 
 An engaging little fellow this Darkie is, 
 with an infantile, confiding way about him 
 which redeems his occasional naughtiness, 
 and never fails to get round the heart of his 
 attendants. ' I didn't know it was wrong, — 
 really, truly ! Taffy told me to,' he con- 
 stantly explains to the indignant groom, and 
 he rubs his head against the man's shoulder, 
 and wags his tail like an affectionate dog. 
 
 ' It's the old pony learns him his bad 
 tricks,' the stableman declares ; and though 
 Darkie's innocence appears to me at times 
 a trifle overdrawn, I have no doubt as to 
 the truth of the statement. 
 
 In the days of his first arrival Darkie had 
 much to bear. My Lord Taff has never 
 manifested any affection towards the family ; 
 rarely has he spoken of us, I fancy, without a 
 sneer on his lip; but he displays a very pretty 
 show of jealousy whenever we lavish our at- 
 tentions on his companion. With ears laid 
 back and gleaming yellow teeth, and a squeal
 
 1 64 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 that would not disg^race a pig, he charges his 
 rival, chasing him far from the proffered sugar 
 or piece of bread. 
 
 But, like most young things, Darkie finds it 
 easy to forgive and forget ; and though the 
 respect with which he first treated his patron 
 grows scant apace, it is replaced by a good- 
 humoured pity that is untinged with contempt 
 ' Poor old creature ! it must be horrid to be 
 old,' he says good-humouredly ; ' / don't mind 
 him.' 
 
 Several dynasties have held sway in the 
 stables since the day when my Lord Taff 
 took possession. With each new attendant 
 his exigencies and caprices have increased. 
 Since the arrival of the last he has assumed 
 the title — re-assumed it, he tells Darkie, 
 having for many years suffered us to address 
 him simply as Taff. But in these days of 
 rampant radicalism, he finds it does not do to 
 lay aside one's dignity. 
 
 Of his rights he is more tenacious than ever. 
 Bigoted conservative as he is, no innovation 
 is suffered in his domain. 
 
 Owing to the dry season this summer, the 
 ' new man ' has deemed it necessary to shut 
 up an extra meadow for hay, confining the
 
 MY LORD TAFF 165 
 
 ponies to the woodland for a time. Both 
 showed at first some natural indignation ; but 
 after they had forced their way into the field 
 through the weak places in the hedge some 
 four or five times, and been as often taken 
 back to the wood, Darkie, realizing what our 
 wishes were, gave way to them with his usual 
 sweet temper. 
 
 'The grass here is really better than in 
 the field,' he remarks to my Lord Taff, ' and 
 it is much cooler under the trees.' 
 
 ' I dare say,' snaps the veteran in reply. 
 
 ' You'll hurt yourself pushing against that 
 hurdle.' 
 
 ' Ah, they'll be sorry then ! ' 
 
 * Well, you'll end by making Robert angry.' 
 
 * Making Robert angry ! ' My Lord Taff 
 shivers with indignation at such an argument 
 applied to him, and the hurdle falls prostrate 
 beneath his charge. For the tenth time in 
 the morning he careers into the hayfield, 
 Darkie remaining a little sadly on his own 
 side of the hedge. 
 
 ' I am really sorry for the family,' he 
 begins presently ; * they'll want that hay in 
 winter.' 
 
 ' Let them buy their hay ! '
 
 i66 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 Silence falls between the two, broken only 
 by the sound of tearing and munching, and 
 my Lord Taff having asserted his dignity 
 becomes more good humoured and anxious 
 to regain the good opinion of his companion. 
 
 ' I act on principle,' he explains to him. 
 ' It is hotter here than in the wood, and the 
 grass is not much better here than there ; but 
 having once intimated to Robert what my 
 wishes are, do you think I shall submit to 
 his insolent opposition ? Never ! No, no. 
 Noblesse oblige, my young friend : a motto 
 that perhaps hardly concerns you.' 
 
 And Darkle walks away to the further edge 
 of the wood in disgust, muttering something 
 about beastly selfishness. 
 
 Since the arrival of Robert, my Lord Taff 
 has utterly refused to do any work whatever. 
 We ought to have guessed as much when he 
 assumed the title. 
 
 Plump and shining as a ripe chestnut, he 
 wanders through the cool depths of the wood 
 or scampers after Darkie, a trifle stiffly per- 
 haps, over the meadow. But bring him into 
 the stable yard and confront him with the 
 sight of harness, and his cough nearly shakes 
 him to pieces.
 
 MY LORD TAFF 167 
 
 ' He will soon get tired of that if you take 
 him out as usual,' said some one who did not 
 know him. 
 
 The theory was tested by having him 
 saddled and starting for a ride. Thankful 
 was the rider to return and hide a diminished 
 head from my Lord Taff's triumph. 
 
 He would cough himself to death sooner 
 than yield. 
 
 So he lives at ease — in the hayfield, if he 
 will, and has many years of prosperous life 
 before him, the wicked old sinner ! He has 
 certainly conquered us. Selfish cold-hearted- 
 ness is safe to win in the long run. 
 
 I have known more than one gentle old 
 farm horse that was sold for hounds' meat 
 after twenty-five years of loving service and 
 patient labour. I have met with saints in the 
 shape of donkeys who have suffered martyr- 
 dom daily. But I know no one who has en- 
 joyed a happier life than my Lord Taff, and 
 no one who has done less to deserve it. 
 
 And yet — having vented my spleen, I must 
 go out and give him some sugar. He is 
 waiting at the fence for it, Darkie hanging 
 about discreetly in the background. 
 
 ' Give me a piece when Taffy is not looking.
 
 1 68 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 He's not as bad as you think him, and it must 
 be horrid to be getting old ! I'll take you out 
 in the cart ; I like it. It's fun, you know.' 
 
 Dear little Darkie ! 
 
 Poor old Taff !
 
 X 
 
 Tommy : a Sketch 
 
 WHEN Tommy first presented himself 
 to my mother as the ' new boy,' she 
 was filled with doubt and misgiving. 
 
 ' Why, he cannot be thirteen ! ' she ex- 
 claimed. 
 
 ' Yes, mam ! Thirteen, mam ! I Jiad it, 
 mam ; / had it ! In January, mam ! ' 
 
 The response was prompt, and agonized in 
 its vehemence. Tommy had set his heart on 
 working in our garden, so his mother in- 
 formed us. 
 
 Certainly no one would take him for more 
 than nine or ten years of age, even in this land 
 of the ' Httle-and-good.' 
 
 He reminds me irresistibly of a young 
 thrush — this small boy — with his great 
 lustrous eyes and wide mouth. His hair is 
 dank and tumbled, his small thin face thickly
 
 I70 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 freckled ; he has a mere slip of a body set up 
 on the weakest make of leg imaginable, thin 
 and straight as two sticks. 
 
 No wonder that his mistress prophesied 
 dolefully that he could never do the work. 
 
 His whole outfit proclaimed the man of 
 business. No youthful vanity, no juvenile 
 frivolity was betrayed in his bearing. A por- 
 tentous gravity sat on his brow. He had 
 ' had thirteen,' and childish things were put 
 away when he donned his workmanlike white 
 jacket and corduroy trousers, and the huge 
 heavy boots that fetter his poor little feet. 
 
 Tommy thus equipped, armed with the 
 garden rake or stable broom, appears to me 
 the feeblest thing alive. It is as if we had 
 pressed some fragile Daddy-long-legs into 
 our service when I see him crumple up 
 beneath the heavy watering cans or laden 
 stable buckets. But sooner than admit 
 fatigue, he would die, I think. Truly his is a 
 great soul, bearing about a little body. 
 
 Not one of the tools which he wields but 
 appears his superior in weight or magnitude. 
 Right manfully he struggles with them each 
 and all — the long-handled rake that is always 
 trying to trip him up, the brimming watering
 
 TOMMY: A SKETCH 171 
 
 can that pitches down towards earth as 
 though it would tear his arm from out his 
 body, and the giant wheelbarrow manufac- 
 tured by the village wheelwright in a humor- 
 ous moment, to propel which calls for more 
 than human strength. Indeed, it fairly runs 
 away with Tommy down the hills, and 
 utterly defies him on an upward slope. I 
 think he tries to have as little to do with it 
 as may be. He suspects something uncanny 
 about it, and I have my own suspicions about 
 the creature. 
 
 Concerning his strength Tommy has no 
 mean opinion. There is nothing that he will 
 not undertake to do, or to fetch and carry, 
 from lifting the long house-ladder some ten 
 times his length, which I heard him volunteer 
 to do the other day, to driving Darkie or 
 Taff. 
 
 ' I cannot bear to see that child at work ! ' 
 was our constant cry during the first days 
 following his instalment with us. And the 
 only consolation was the knowledge that he 
 was better off with us than working on a 
 farm. A little further experience soon al- 
 layed our fears on his behalf It was dis- 
 covered that his brave show of toil was
 
 172 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 quickly laid aside when we had left the gar- 
 den, and only taken up again at our re- 
 appearance — a delicate compliment greatly 
 in vogue among our fellow-countrymen. 
 
 I remember this child's great-grandfather, 
 working for our family in the very fields 
 where Tommy labours to-day. He was 
 much like an aged chimpanzee, his body 
 bowed and bent with years of toil and rheu- 
 matism, his visage wrinkled and yellow, blear- 
 eyed, unshaved, with a perpetually wobbling 
 chin. He looked just as old as the moun- 
 tains, and he worked generally by the side of 
 an ancient crony equally awesome to us 
 children. The sound of their high, tremulous 
 voices constantly rose from the green-crop 
 field as the old men leaned on their hoes, 
 suspending their labours while they ex- 
 changed ideas. For they never could work 
 while they were talking. I observe the same 
 trait in Tommy to-day — and they were incur- 
 ably garrulous — as he is. 
 
 Occasionally the farm bailiff lost patience 
 with the interminable conversations and un- 
 completed labours, and the friends were 
 separated, the one sent to work on the hill- 
 side, the other on the ' flat.' That was a
 
 TOMMY: A SKETCH 173 
 
 terrible punishment, and led to prolonged 
 sulkiness on their part, They had occasional 
 fierce quarrels, which never seemed to loosen 
 the bonds of their friendship ; and when at an 
 advanced age Tommy's great-grandfather 
 died, his old companion took to his bed, and 
 only survived him a few weeks. 
 
 Tommy's grandfather was at that time 
 considerably over middle age — in other coun- 
 tries he would have been an old man. He 
 lived in a little cottage on the edge of our 
 woods, where is Tommy's home to-day. 
 About him hung a mystery. He had been 
 many years absent from his birthplace — never 
 a sign for good, we take it — and as he dis- 
 couraged all reference to this period of 
 absence, it was widely believed that some 
 portion of it had been spent in gaol. Cer- 
 tainly he was a gloomy, taciturn old man, 
 who had evidently been soured by some 
 bitter experience. He never darkened church 
 or chapel, and was reputed to be an atheist. 
 By trade a cobbler, we children were wont 
 to visit him bearing the merry-thoughts of 
 Christmas geese, which he converted for us 
 into the most beautiful Jump-jacks by means 
 of cobblers' wax, that coveted article a lump
 
 174 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 of which came only second to a bit of ' putty ' 
 in our affections. 
 
 His daughter, Tommy's mother, was early 
 widowed, and has had hard work to bring up 
 her family to the happy stage when boys 
 and girls may be planted out in little places 
 over the neighbourhood. An honest, hard- 
 working woman, toiling all day in the fields, 
 old before her time, her youth and comeliness 
 are forgotten things, unregretted because she 
 has kept her little ones from out the Work- 
 house. 
 
 She tells me that Tommy, since entering 
 office with us, gives himself no small airs at 
 home. He has become the vieistr, lord or 
 master, since the first Saturday when he 
 brought his wages to her. 
 
 For his chief, the 'new man,' he entertains 
 a friendly contempt, similar, I fancy, to that 
 which Taff and Darkie feel for one who 
 comes from uncouth Saxon parts, and does 
 not understand Welsh. Fortunately for him- 
 self. Tommy has learned English at the 
 Board School, and his little tongue rarely 
 ceases wagging through the day unless we 
 are in his immediate vicinity. Cheerfully he 
 lays down his hoe on our approach, draws
 
 TOMMY: A SKETCH 175 
 
 himself up to his full height, and salutes us 
 with the graceful sweep of the arm above the 
 head in vogue amongst the village boys, and 
 a loud : ' Good morning, mam ! ' 
 
 Then he returns with a terrible show of 
 energy to his work. ' Scuffling ' seems to 
 have become his principal employment, a 
 process of weeding with the hoe — the most 
 amenable of his tools — which obviates stoop- 
 ing, and produces the most slovenly-looking 
 bed or walk imaginable. 
 
 I believe he regards us, from the height of 
 his masculine superiority, with philosophical 
 toleration as beings who have our uses — on 
 Saturday nights — but are otherwise of second- 
 ary importance to the cook. 
 
 His manner towards us is that of cheerful 
 politeness; he is willing to humour us as far 
 as in him lies, though he cannot conceal an 
 occasional feeling of annoyance at our stupid 
 inquiry as to whether he is not tired. 
 
 Despite his valiant bearing, he is of a peace- 
 loving nature, deeming discretion the better 
 part of valour, with a philosophic contempt 
 for brute-force, and a natural adroitness for 
 keeping out of its way. I recognise in him 
 my fellow-countryman. He has a shrewd
 
 176 SOME WELSH CHILDREN 
 
 twinkle in his large eyes, and his ready smile 
 flashes from one end of the garden to the 
 other, with the gleam of his strong equine 
 teeth. He greatly prefers the contemplative 
 to the active life. We no longer fear that he 
 will overwork himself He is a brilliant con- 
 versationalist, and in the kitchen is considered 
 a wit. On Sundays he attends his chapel 
 three times, as behoves one of liis age and 
 seriousness. 
 
 Such is Tommy, a poor weak fledgling 
 early tumbled out of the nest to shift for him- 
 self Full of joy and importance, hiring out 
 his childish strength at the rate of three 
 shillings and sixpence a week, and one good 
 meal a day ! 
 
 His little face has filled out wonderfully 
 since those meals began, and we fancy his 
 bird- like legs begin to thicken. He swaggers 
 through the village with a manly air, and no 
 longer deigns to consort with his school- 
 fellows of a few months past. 
 
 His dearest ambition now is to be allowed 
 to drive the ponies, but their consent has yet 
 to be obtained. 
 
 I look at Tommy and fall into a reverie 
 over the thoughts he suggests to me — our
 
 TOMMY: A SKETCH 177 
 
 little white slave — whose great-grandfather's 
 latest years were spent in our service, the 
 feeble strength of the little boy and the fail- 
 ing energies of the old man devoted alike to 
 the cultivation of our soil. 
 
 I know my father was good to the old 
 workman, and that the little boy deems him- 
 self in clover. They would have been worse 
 off without us, truly ; but that consolatory 
 reflection does not suffice. 
 
 Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Fromc, and London. 
 
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 THIRLMERE (Rowland). — Idylls of Spain. Var- 
 
 nished Pictures of Travel in the Peninsula. Crown Svo, i,s. 6d. 
 net. 
 
 "The book has roused many a pang of Reiselust." — Bookman. 
 
 " Here we have quality. . . . The author apologises for his little 
 book needlessly. He is a good traveller — a better impressionist. That 
 indescribable charm of Northern Spain, of its inns, its people, and its 
 romance, is one he can impart to us with signal success. There is here, 
 too, that flutter of the petticoat without which, as Stevenson told us, 
 even the strong book may fail to prove its strength. His meeting with 
 little Marguerita is a subtle and very sweet sketch. He sought out re- 
 mote inns : wherever romance was busy, there was his pen busy also. 
 . . . It is an enjoyable journey ; and we put down his volume with 
 the thought that if all who write books of travel were as well equipped, 
 life's way would be easier." — Daily Chronicle. 
 
 VAN DYKE (Henry).— The Poetry of Tennyson. 
 
 Seventh Edition, enlarged. Crown Svo, si. 6rf. net. 
 
 The Laureate himself gave valuable aid in correcting various 
 details. 
 
 " Mr. Elkin Mathews publishes a new edition, revised and enlarged, 
 of that excellent work, ' 'i'he Poetry of Tennyson,' by Henry Van Dyke. 
 The additions are considerable. It is extremely interesting to go over 
 the bibliographical notes to see the contemptuous or, at best, contempt- 
 uously patronising, tone of the reviewers in the early thirties gradually 
 turning to civility, to a loud chorus of applause." — Anti- Jacobin. 
 
 "Considered as an aid to the study of the Laureate, this labour of 
 love merits warm commendation. Its grouping of the poems, its biblio- 
 graphy and chronology, its catalogue of Biblical allusion and quotations, 
 are each and all substantial accessories to the knowledge of the author." 
 — Dk. Richard Gaknett, in the Illustrated London News. 
 2
 
 WATSON (E. n. Lacon).— An Attic in Bohemia: 
 
 A Diary without Dates. Crown 8vo, 3^. M. net. 
 " If there are still any who, in the present epidemic of fiction, have 
 any time to devote to that most delightful form of literature — the essay, 
 let them order Mr. Watson's volume from their bookseller. For Mr. 
 Watson has the rare talent of writing charmingly about nothing at all, 
 and his essays are a delicate exposition of the triumph of spirit over 
 matter — which is, after all, the crowning achievement of pure literature. 
 . . . Books like this make one realize regretfully how much most of 
 us miss in our daily life for lack of the observant eye. . . . VVe hope 
 Mr. Watson will give us some more of these charming ' causeries ' be- 
 fore long." — Maiichestey Guardian. 
 
 The Unconscious Humourist, and other 
 
 Essays. Crown 8vo, i,s. 6d. net. [Second Edition. 
 
 " 'The Unconscious Humourist ' is the title of the first essay in the 
 
 book, but the subjects are as varied as ' Bicycle Tours— and a Moral,' 
 
 'The Literature of Reminiscence,' ' Confidences,' ' The Specialist,' 
 
 ' On Love,' and ' Cacoethes Scribendi.' " 
 
 WICKSTEED (r. H.) — Dante: Six Sermons. 
 
 (Unaltered Reprint). Crown 8vo, 2i. net. [Fourth Edition. 
 
 " It is impossible not to be struck with the reality and earnestness 
 with which Mr. Wicksteed seeks to do justice to what are the supreme 
 elements of the Coininedia, its spiritual significance, and the depth and 
 insight of its moral teaching." — Gicardian. 
 
 "The book is one to be read slowly, carefully, lovingly, and those 
 who do not feel when they come to the last page, that their time has 
 been not only pleasantly, but profitably spent, must choose for their 
 amusement such literature as fits their need." — Lady's Pictorial, 
 
 POETRY. 
 ELKIN MATHEWS' SHILLING GARLAND. 
 
 Price One S/iilii/t^, net, each part. 
 
 No. I. London Visions. Book I. By Laurence 
 
 BiNVON. [Second Edition. 
 
 No. 2. Purcell Commemoration Ode, and other 
 
 Poems. By Robert Bridges. [Second Edition. 
 
 No. 3. Christ in Hades, and other Poems. By 
 
 Stephen Phillips. [Sixth Edition, with Additions. 
 
 " It is a wonderful dream, a dream that stirs the heart in almost every 
 line, though Christ himself never utters a word throughout the poem, 
 but only brings his sad countenance and bleeding brow and torn hands 
 into that imaginary world of half conceived and chaotic gloom." — 
 Spectator. 
 
 "The solemn music is matched by majestic words. The poignancy 
 of feeling which is in the litle-poem cries from the lyrics also." — 
 Speaker. 
 
 3
 
 No. 4. Aeromancy, and other Poems. By Mar- 
 garet L. Woods. [Sccanti Edition. 
 
 " Mrs. Woods is a poet of great power and originality." — Globe. 
 
 " ' Aeromancy ' is a fine poem, but there are others in the slim volume 
 likely to be more popular, 'The Mariner's Sleep by the Sea,' for in- 
 stance, and still more so, ' The Child Alone ' — the latter a delightful 
 picture of an imaginative child." — Sketch. 
 
 No. 5, 5ongs and Odes. By Richard Watson 
 
 Dixon (Author of " Mano"). Selected by Robert Bridges. 
 
 " The Odes have a sonorous stateliness, and a warmth of colour which 
 not infrequently reminds us of great masters." — Speaker. 
 
 "The present shilling book of lyrics shows the author at his best, and 
 should do something towards procuring him his due rank among living 
 poets. The poems are short and there are not many of them, but they 
 are sufficient to reveal the originality of thought and feeling, the lofti- 
 ness of attitude, and the fine observation which mark Canon Dixon's 
 work." — Saturday Review. 
 
 No. 6. The Praise of Life. By Laurence Binyon. 
 
 " Mr. Binyon is one of the most genuine and interesting of the 
 younger poets. He is not facile, not popular, and he may never learn 
 to be either. But he is of those about whom you never ask why he 
 writes poetry. As a craftsman he is worth study. He makes interest- 
 ing and often successful e.xperiments in metre." — Sketch. 
 
 "All are written with a solemn and a stately music of words." — 
 ScotsmaH. 
 
 No. 7. Fancy's Guerdon. By Anodos (Author of 
 
 " Fancy's Following"). [Second Edition. 
 
 " Certainly there is stuff of the true sort here. . . . Strange and 
 impressive is the ' Day Dream,' truly like a dream in the bright exact- 
 ness of its images, with its fine conclusion." — Saturday Revie^u. 
 
 No. 8. Admirals All, and other Verses. By 
 
 Henry Newbolt. {Sixth Thousand. 
 
 " It is, therefore, with the greatest possible pleasure that we notice 
 the delightful little collection of ballads. Mr. Newbolt has done a 
 notable thing. He has managed to write ballads full of ring and go, 
 and full also of patriotic feeling, without imitating Mr. Rudyard Kip- 
 ling." — Spectator. 
 
 This is a proud and spirited and inspiriting little book. l\Ir. New- 
 bolt strikes the heroic note worthily." — Speaker. 
 
 " Stirring ballads, written by a man who has spirit and force." — 
 Times. 
 
 " Looking back to recent achievements in the same line, and includ- 
 ing even Mr. Kipling's, we do not know where to find anything better 
 after its own kind than his ballad of ' Drake's Drum.'" — iVestininster 
 Gazette. 
 
 " Mr. Elkin Mathews has gained considerable renown for his ' Shilling 
 Garland' Series. His latest author, Mr. Newbolt, though in a style 
 entirely different from those who have preceded him, maintains the 
 tradition of the series in his ' Admirals All.' . . . Quite as good as 
 anything Mr. Kipling has done in the same style. A really good 
 ballad is a most rare production, but any who wish to feel something of 
 the real sting and thrill of the sea may be recommended to try Sir. 
 Newbolt's shillingsworth." — Illustrated London News. 
 4
 
 No, 8. Admirals All. By Henrv Newbolt, continued^ 
 
 The Daily Chronicle, in a review of a column and a half, headed 
 "Some Splendid Songs," says : — " Several of these songs, we venture 
 to say, will take an eminent and enduring place among, our patriotic 
 poetry. The literature of the Navy in particular is enriched with one 
 or two numbers more spirit-stirring than anything that has appeared 
 since Tennyson's immortal ballad of the ' Revenge.' . . . He en- 
 nobles the good old sea-song of our ancestors by adding to its swing 
 and spirit a fervour of imagination and a literary finish, in which it has 
 hitherto been lacking." 
 
 No. 9. Indian Elegies and Love Songs. By 
 
 Manmohan Ghose. [In the Press. 
 
 No. 10, Second Bool^ of London Visions. By 
 
 Laurence Binyon. _ _ [In the Press. 
 
 The Garland. Now Ready, Volume I., containing the first five 
 numbers of above, with General Title, Contents, and Wrappers bound 
 in. Clotk, gilt tops, 6^. net. 
 
 Volume II. will be issued in like manner after the publication of No. 
 10. 
 
 Notice. — The " Shilling Garland " will be suspended for a time, and 
 (not necessarily superseding it) The Garland of New Poetry : an 
 Authology of Unpublished Pieces, by various writers, will be issued 
 ANNUALLY in the autumn. 
 
 JOHNSON (Lionel).— Poems. With a title design and 
 colophon by H. P. HoRNE. Printed at the Chiswick Press, on 
 hand-made paper. Square post 8vo, $s. net. 
 
 " Full of delicate fancy, and display much lyrical grace and felicity." 
 — Titnes. 
 
 "An air of solidity, combined with something also of severity, is the 
 first impression one receives from these pages. . . . The poems are 
 more massive than most lyrics are; they aim at dignity and attain it. 
 This is, we believe.the first book of verse that Mr. Johnson has published ; 
 and we would say, on a first reading, that for a first book it was remark- 
 ably mature. And so it is, in its accomplishment, its reserve of strength, 
 its unfaltering style. . . . Whatever form his writing takes, it will 
 be the expression of a rich mind, and a rare talent." — Saturday Review. 
 
 Ireland, with other Poems. By Lionel 
 
 Johnson (Uniform with "Poems"). Crown Svo, $s. net. 
 
 "A high place amongst living poets must be assigned to Mr. Lionel 
 Johnson. The best poems in the volume before us, in their strength, 
 stateliness, and severe simplicity, resemble some of Tennyson's most 
 finished work. . . . His former volume of poems, as well as this, 
 will convince all appreciative readers that he possesses the creative 
 faculty in a very high degree." — Irish Daily Independent. 
 
 " Mr. Lionel Johnson is now a poet of established reputation. His 
 poems regarded at first as the austere exercises of a ripe scholar, have 
 now taken their proper place by reason of the real fire and imaginative 
 fervor which underlie their technical excellence." — IVestminsier 
 Review. 
 
 NEWBOLT (Henry).— &e The Garland. 
 Poems (to include "Admirals Ail"). 
 
 [In the Autumn.
 
 NEWBOLT (Henry).— Mordred : a Tragedy. Imperial 
 
 i6mo, 3^. 6d. net. 
 Transferred to the present publisher. 
 
 NOEL (Hon, Roden).— My Sea, and Other post- 
 humous Poems. With an Introduction by Stanley Addle- 
 SHAW. Crown 8vo, 3J. td. net. 
 
 "The volume now published from the materials the Hon. Roden Noel 
 left behind him will no way detract from his fame as a poet. We 
 have here notes of the same music that give so sweet and subtle a 
 charm to his best poetry." — Glassow Herald. 
 
 " The ' Nature Poems * have lines of great beauty and vigour." — 
 SkeU/i. 
 
 " Many of the poems in this slender volume are among the best, in 
 our opinion, that he ever wrote." — Commonwealth. 
 
 "A volume of strong and pathetic interest."— Me. A. E. Fletcher, 
 in the New Age. 
 
 ' ' Such poems as ' Wild Love on the Sea,' with its ringing rhythm 
 and the tender melodious 'To a Comrade,' leave httle to be desired." — 
 Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 Selected Poems from the Works of the Hon. 
 
 Roden Noel. With a Biographical and Critical Essay by Percy 
 Addleshaw. With Two Portraits. Crown 8vo, 4^. 6^. net. 
 
 " The chief value of this volume is, of course, the examples it presents 
 of Noel's poems. They are very fine. But the volume has an additional 
 charm in Mr. Addleshaw's admirable biographical sketch, and the two 
 beautiful portraits, which enable one much better to understand the 
 noble nature of the poet." — Glasgow Herald. 
 
 "The editor has selected pieces that are, for the most part, beautiful 
 and tender, and we can cordially advise lovers of poetry, who so far 
 have not given in their allegiance to Roden Noel, to study these pages. 
 What Tennyson and Browning admired with sincerity should surely 
 win our suffrages."— Literary IVbrld, 
 
 RADFORD (Dollie).— A Light Load : a Book of Songs. 
 
 With numerous full-page drawings and initial letters by Beatrice 
 Parsons. Small 8vo, 5s. net. 
 
 " No woman could write a sweeter verse than the dedicatory stanzas 
 of Dollie Radford's 'A Light Load.'" — Speaker. 
 
 " Of one piece, it should be said that it breathes the spirit of Mr. R. 
 L. Stevenson's ' A Child's Garden of Verses.' Indeed there is not a 
 song in this slender volume that would not bear quoting as an example 
 of what a lyric should be." — Daily Chronicle. 
 
 " The songs are full of instinctive music which soars naturally. They 
 have the choice unsought felicity of a nature essentially lyrical." — 
 Academy. 
 
 "There is a song to quote on every page, and we must desist, but we 
 are much mistaken if Mrs. Radford is not the possessor of a very rare 
 and exquisite lyric gift indeed."— Mr. Richard Le Gallienne, in 
 the Star. 
 
 " Miss Parsons' illustrations are all quite in harmony with the poems, 
 and we could almost fancy that poet and artist had sat down together 
 while the poems were being written and illustrated."— Bookseller' i 
 Review. 
 
 YEATS (W. B.).— The Wind Among the Reeds 
 
 With a Portrait and Cover Design by Althea Gyles. \In the Press. 
 
 London : ELKIN MATHEWS, Vigo Street, W. 
 
 •■*'C:
 
 399) 
 
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