But when of smoke the room is clear,
It is a sign we shan’t stay here.
Thus his notes run on: “Dined like a king all alone for seven days. Whoever would wish to live long should live here, for a day is longer than a week, and, if the weather be foul, as long as a fortnight. Pray pity poor Wat, for he is called Dunce, Puppy, and Liar five hundred times an hour; and yet he means not ill, for he means nothing.” Wat he ordered to wipe his wet gown and cassock, and he did so with a meal-bag, with the result that it was caked thickly with a kind of meal-plaster. When at last the Dean did leave Holyhead, he carried with him memories not likely to be speedily effaced.
Wesley had something like these experiences in 1748, when he was storm-bound for eleven days. He spent the time mainly in preaching, but for all practical purposes might just as well have stayed within doors, for he laments that his congregations did not understand English. It is difficult to decide whose was the greater foolishness—that of the preacher who preached in a strange tongue, or that of those who listened to words they could not comprehend. Two years later he was at Holyhead, detained for three days, and then, obliged by storms to return for another eight, he “expounded the story of Dives and Lazarus to a room full of men daubed with gold and silver.” They, at any rate, seemed to understand, for they “took it in ill part, and went away railing and blaspheming.” These “sons of Belial,” as he calls them, returned, and would have seriously injured him, but that he was locked in the room. They were at last dispersed by a courageous maidservant, who threw a bucket of water over them.
No longer is it necessary for travellers to wait shivering for days before winds and weather permit of the Channel being crossed. They arrive nowadays for the most part at dark and ungodly hours, at railway terminus or harbour, and are at once whisked away to Dublin or to London. Some may make acquaintance with the Railway Hotel, but, beyond that, Holyhead merely stands for a name and an hour in the time-tables. It was different before the steam packets began from July 1st, 1819, to make the sixty-four miles passage in 7½ hours. To wait a week at Holyhead before the crossing could be made was no unusual experience in the old sailing days, when a good average passage took fifteen hours, and a very bad one more than double the time. Even the journey by steamer has been cut down to half its duration, and now takes only from 3½ to 4 hours, so that the passengers who halt at Holyhead are few and far between, and the town lives only in an indirect way on the traffic between the kingdoms. It remains no more than a fringe of hilly, gaunt, and aimless streets gathered round the harbour and railway station, with the old church of St. Cybi in their midst, its central tower surmounted by what has been described as “a low, flat spire.” The traveller will doubtless be as eager to see this curiosity of a flat spire as he would to discover a round square, a square angle, or anything else equally unknown to Euclid.
LVII
There still stands, at the entrance to the Pier, the granite archway erected to commemorate the landing of George IV. in 1821. Severely classical, in the Doric sort, it resembles (save that it is not so large and not so black) the funereal entrance to the Euston terminus of the London and North-Western Railway. It bears an inscription in Welsh—“Cof-Adail i Ymweliad y Brenin Gior y IV. ag ynys fôn. Awst VII., MDCCCXXI.”—which those whose Pentecostal attainments render it possible may translate.
Holyhead was a proud town that day, August 7th, when George IV. landed, on his trip to Ireland. He had come, aboard the yacht Royal George, round by St. George’s Channel, escorted by a squadron, and spent five days in the Isle of Anglesey, detained by contrary winds. “His Majesty,” says a contemporary report, “was struck with admiration at the appearance of the town”; and we in our turn might well be struck with astonishment, were it not that modern monarchs are the best of actors and can smile approval to order.
But, in spite of this admiration, the King did not stop at Holyhead. That battered warrior, the Marquis of Anglesey, took him across the island to Plas Newydd. The next day died Queen Caroline, at Hammersmith, and the news by incredible efforts reached the squadron lying off Holyhead the day after. The King was freed at last from the wife he hated, and his feeling towards her was sufficiently marked by the facts that the squadron did not fire the salute of minute-guns usual on such occasions, and that the trip to Ireland, with its attendant banquets and rejoicings, was not interrupted.
The winds that could in those days detain a fleet, and kept the King’s yacht and his escort swinging for days idly at their anchorage, made a vast difference to Holyhead. The Times correspondent on that occasion tells how scarce provisions grew, and to what extravagant prices ordinary articles of food rose. Eggs, he wails, were sixpence each, and for neither love nor money could he obtain any Welsh mutton for his dinner. He was, accordingly, truly thankful when the squadron sailed and plenty reigned once more. The King left, however, before his escort. He had observed how the Dublin new steam-packets crossed, irrespective of weather, and took passage on the 12th, aboard the Lightning, named afterwards, in honour of the occasion, the Royal George the Fourth.