Poor Cox was horrified. If he explained the why and the how of his work that day, it evidently did not make the impression of sincerity, for the stories of his painting the sign to wipe off a debt obviously derive from this chance meeting.
Two years later the painter retouched his work. In 1861, two years after his death, it was, at the request of many admirers, removed from the outside and placed in the hall of the house, then become a “hotel,” and beginning that series of rebuildings and extensions that have made it what it is to-day. In 1880 the then landlady became bankrupt, and the trustees of the estate claimed the old sign as a valuable asset, stating that a connoisseur had offered £1,000 for it, a statement that moved the late Cuthbert Bede to scandalised incredulity. It, however, would certainly bring bids of more than double that amount if put up to auction to-day.
The claim of the trustees was disputed by the freeholder, the Baroness Willoughby De Eresby, and the matter was decided in her favour, with costs. The famous sign was judged to be a fixture, and may yet be seen in the hall of the hotel, handsomely enshrined behind glass in a decorative overmantel.
It is a fine, bold piece of work, virile in its dashing brushmarks and impasto, and in a pleasing low key of colour; altogether very Old Masterish. An inscription beneath states that it “forms part of the freehold of the Hotel belonging to the Baroness Howard de Walden.” It now belongs to the Earl of Ancaster. Let those who will, and have the curiosity to it, trace the why and the wherefore of this devolution of property and titles from a De Eresby, through a Howard de Walden, to an Ancaster.
XLIV
If there were not so many dishonest people, and so many vulgar people, in the world, the visitors-books of the “Royal Oak” would be a delight to present-day travellers. Those books begin in 1855, and have in their time been filled with a very miscellaneous collection of autographs, criticisms, and sketches. In the old days, before the house was rebuilt, and its new magnificence and crowds of vulgar and artless rich frightened away the majority of artists, thoughtless fellows who had not “arrived” endowed these books with many signed sketches which in after years, when they had achieved reputations, became valuable in a commercial sense. Pencil sketches there were, pen-drawings, and water-colours; and autographs of other men since known to fame were scattered plentifully through those pages. Among and between them were many of the silly, offensive, and downright infamous things that one finds in every visitors-book; for the Howling Cad is a large and plentiful leaven. The productions of the Cad are there still, and later generations of cads and thieves have added their own sillinesses with one hand, while with the other they have cut out the things that really interested. As, according to Tennyson, “the lie that is half a lie is ever the blackest of lies,” so the Cad that has got sufficient culture to appreciate the worth of a thing, and then steals it, must be the caddiest of cads. It is as demonstrable a thing as a theorem in Euclid.
The visitors-books of the “Royal Oak” are therefore things of tatters and fragments, but in these remains the spirit of old-time touring may here and there be found. They walked mostly, those tourists, and sketches of them in peg-top trousers—very baggy in the upper part of the leg, tight at the foot, and very braidy at the seams—show how they roamed the country. Often they wore “Jemimas”—the brutes!
It is quite certain that the tourist who in these times should tour in that quaint guise would be mobbed, for, in addition to his weird nether garments, the gay young man of 1860 or thereabouts wore a felt hat like a pudding basin, with a flat brim and a button on the crown. Complete the picture with an eyeglass and a pair of “Piccadilly weepers,” and there you are. Yet they were consummate lady-killers, or so imagined themselves to be, and a reflection of their deathly oglings is found in these pages. “Look out for the girl in the village, just beyond the gate—such a stunner!” says one. (“Stunner” was a word characteristic of the sixties.) It is quite evident that those who followed took this amatory pilgrim’s advice, for “Not equal to our Mary Ann, though,” is appended by some disappointed swain.
Girl, gate, and pilgrims, where are they, and where is the Bettws of that era? Gone, my friends, and only the immemorial hills and these ragged visitors-books remain. For Bettws has been entirely rebuilt since then, and the “gate” referred to was brutally swept away some ten years since. Brutally, because it was an ivy and creeper-clad old toll-house, one of the charmingest landmarks in the place. It stood at the corner leading to Pont-y-Pair, where a boarding-house called “Carleton House” may now be seen.
But to return to our visitors-books. The verses found in them would scarce grace a poetic garland, but here is a sample, circa 1860:—