LIII
Very few are the old travellers or modern writers who have a good word to say for Anglesey. It is “flat, dull, monotonous, barren, treeless, wind-swept,” and many more things expressed by adjectives in the uncomplimentary sort; but will the present historian be credited when, with his hand upon his heart, and if necessary—should his bare word not be held to deserve credit when opposed to that bulk of damnatory evidence—his lips upon the Book he declares that Anglesey is none of these things? A recent traveller finds in the word “Mona” what he calls a “soft-sounding name, well suited to the present aspect” of the island. What does he mean? “In all the bare, flat fields,” he continues, “you scarcely see a tree.” To this the returned traveller from Anglesey may reply, in the inelegant but expressive schoolboy phrase, “What rot!” But then that writer traversed Anglesey by train, as he confesses, and therefore has no locus standi in topographical criticism. Probably the others explored the island as little as he.
It is a high table-land of an island, mounted atop of rugged cliffs for a goodly part of its jagged and irregular circumference, and divided athwart by the Malldraeth Marsh, a valley almost deep enough to admit the sea, which would in that case divide the isle in two unequal parts. Even the modern and easy high road, made by Telford in 1825 for a direct line from Menai Bridge to Holyhead, is by no means flat; while the old coach road is not only hilly but mountainous. Along its course lies Penmynydd, whose very name, meaning “mountain-head,” should have checked the pen that talked of flatness in Anglesey. This was the place where the mails and the stages were commonly upset: the place that so alarmed London coachmen imported for the duty of driving the mails, that they refused to remain. Penmynydd is the worst spot on that old road, but hills along its course are the almost invariable rule, and flat stretches the very infrequent exceptions.
Now as to the barrenness of Anglesey. That is a contention no Anglesey farmer will support, for the island is a quite celebrated dairying district; and the best of butter and milk are not usually obtainable from barren wildernesses. From one or other of the numerous tor-like granite-crowned hillocks that plentifully stud the Anglesey landscape, and give it a close resemblance to Cornwall, fertile farms and numerous scattered white farmsteads and cottages are seen. They paint prosperity in the mind’s eye, small though many of the holdings and cottages be, and although in a proportion of them lives a mining class. These whitewashed granite cottages and the stone walls that fence the fields render the resemblance to Cornwall very close: and no one yet has been found to apply such disparaging remarks as those quoted above to that county. As in Cornwall, too, the myrtle, the hydrangea, and the tree-fuchsia flourish all the year round in the cottagers’ gardens, and few sights are so lovely as that of a lowly, granite one-storeyed cottage, its walls and garden-walls alike whitewashed, and its garden luxuriating with the myriad red and purple blooms of the fuchsia, the pale mauve or pink blossoms of the hydrangea, or the more delicate petals of the myrtle. Wind-swept the hills of Anglesey are in winter, but in the warm and sheltered valleys these alien creatures of the garden live unharmed.
Nor even is the isle treeless. So little so is it that the pine-woods of Menai village might reasonably for their beauty and extent be envied by Bournemouth itself; while peculiarly characteristic of Anglesey are the strange groups of trees, looking like lineal descendants of Druidical groves, that are everywhere to be seen; generally very line umbrageous trees, and often hiding in their midst some old mansion or farmstead of the larger kind.
LIV
The first two miles into Anglesey command the whole range of the Snowdonian mountains; but nothing could be more monumentally striking than the Anglesey Column that shoots up from the wooded, rock-strewn hill of Craig-y-Dinas on the way to the village of “Llanfairpwllgwyngyll,” as a board on the post office amiably shortens that terrific place-name. The column, itself 100 feet in height, designed in the Doric style, rises from a crest 260 feet above the waters of the Straits, and commemorates the first Marquis of Anglesey; he who, as “Lord Paget” and “Lord Uxbridge,” warred with Wellington in the Peninsula and at Waterloo, where he left a leg, shot off towards the close of that famous victory. He was created Marquis of Anglesey three weeks after the battle, and lived to enjoy his title until 1854. He saw the column rise, long years before, but the bronze statue of him was not erected until 1860. It represents him in hussar uniform, standing with contemplative gaze across the water, towards England. The curious old uniform and the green stains with which the storms and rains of over forty years have coloured the metal give the bronze Marquis quite an awful Arabian Nights kind of blood-curdling uncanniness in certain conditions of light and shade. It is possible to make closer acquaintance with him by climbing the staircase within the column, and to see from that eyrie the family seat of Plas Newydd down below, by the waterside—the name of it latterly altered by the present Marquis, of jewel-robbery fame, to “Anglesey Castle.” It was there that George IV. stayed in 1821, and heard of the death of his Queen. Doubtless the bluff Marquis congratulated him on the event, for he was no adherent of Caroline, having, indeed, the worst opinion of that more or less injured lady. Time was, indeed, when his house in London had been assailed by a mob clamouring in her favour. They insisted upon his drinking the Queen’s health, and he did. “The Queen,” he said, with bitter sarcasm, “and may all your wives be like her!” What more could champions desire? Yet it is possible that they were not satisfied.
THE ANGLESEY COLUMN.
The full name of the village that now comes in view at a bend of the road presents an unparalleled array of grotesquely assorted letters to the bewildered Saxon. It is without doubt by far the longest place-name in the United Kingdom, and can probably challenge the whole world. It is Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerchwyrndrobwlltysiliogogogoch. The stationers and booksellers of Bangor and Menai Village sell for the modest price of one penny what is described as the “Englishman’s cure for lock-jaw”—a printed sheet with this fearsome word divided into its proper syllables, and the translation into English underneath. Enterprising tourists, at pains to master the pronunciation of Welsh, go forth into Anglesey, and, having caught a Welshman who can be made to understand a little English, parade their version; but when the native can be induced to pronounce it at all the name sounds very different. He generally, however, calls it “Llanfairpwllgwyngyll”; while the signposts, not provided with longer arms than usual, are models of compression, with “Llanfair P G”; the London and North-Western Railway recklessly naming the station “Llanfair,” careless of the fact that Llanfair, meaning “St. Mary’s Church,” is as common a Welsh place-name as Jones is among Welshmen.