VI
In fact, there was not much more room that day in the Plas Mawr, than in the Smallest House in the World, which is the next chiefest attraction of Conway. This, too, was crammed with damp enthusiasts, passionately eager to sign their names in the guest-book. They scarcely left space in the sitting-room of ten by twelve feet for the merry old hostess selling photographs and ironically inviting her visitors’ guests to a glimpse of the chamber overhead, or so much of it as the bed allowed to be seen. She seemed not to believe in her abode as a practicable tenement, and could not be got to say that she actually lived in it; as to why it was built so small she was equally vague. But there it was, to like or to leave, and there, not far off, was the “briny beach” where the Walrus and the Carpenter walked together,—
“And wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand.”
For it was in Conway, as history or tradition is, that Through the Looking-Glass was written.
There are very few places in those storied British Isles which are not hallowed by some association with literature; but I suppose that Llandudno is as exempt as any can be, and I will not try to invoke any dear and honored shade from its doubtful obscurity. We once varied the even tenor of our days there by driving to Penmaenmawr, and wreaking our love of literary associations so far as we might by connecting the place with the memory of Gladstone, who was literary as well as political. We thought with him that Penmaenmawr was “the most charming watering-place in Wales,” and as you drive into the place, the eye of faith will detect the house, on the right, in which he spent many happy summers. We contented ourselves with driving direct to the principal hotel, where I know not what kept us from placing ourselves for life. We had tea and jam en the pretty lawn, and the society of a large company of wasps of the yellow-jacket variety, which must have been true Welsh wasps, as peaceful as they were musical, and no interloping Scotch or Irish, for they did not offer to attack us, but confined themselves altogether to our jam: to be sure, we thought best to leave it to them.
It is said that the purple year is not purpler at any point on the southernmost shores of England than it is at Llandudno. In proof of the mildness of its winter climate, the presence of many sorts of tender evergreens is alleged, and the persistence of flowers in blooming from Christmas to Easter. But those who have known the deceitful habits of flowers on the Riviera, where they bloom in any but an arctic degree of cold, will not perhaps hurry to Llandudno much later than November. All the way to Penmaenmawr the flowers showed us what they could do in summer, whether in field or garden, and there was one beautiful hill on which immense sweeps and slopes of yellow gorse and purple heather boldly stretched separately, or mingled their dyes in the fearlessness of nature when she spurns the canons of art. I suppose there is no upholsterer or paperhanger who would advise mixing or matching yellow and purple in the decoration of a room, but here the outdoor effect rapt the eye in a transport of delight. It was indeed a day when almost any arrangement of colors would have pleased.