“Pray, sir, is this official punctuality?”
But I threw the blame on my guide, and when my steed had been surveyed, and measured, the excuse was admitted: peace was made, and we lunched at the Vicarage.
Everywhere hospitality was abundant. The clergy fed me on old port: the dissenting ministers on their choicest butter-milk. The squires offered me cigars: the elders an orthodox brand of Anglesey tobacco, which would have soon repelled Suetonius, if the Druids had been in a position to try it on him; and which was called “tobacco yr achos,” or “tobacco of The Cause.”
Here I should not omit to say that the port wine was a serious question to a moderate man. Especially in Anglesey there lurked danger in the bowl. Some of the College incumbents had so far profited by a University education as to have acquired a pretty taste in vintages. One of these excellent men, having feasted me royally, after dinner brought out a bottle of port that remembered Tract 90. We finished the bottle: if I drank my share, and I feel sure I did my best, I must have had five glasses. The Rector rose to ring for another bottle. I implored him to have mercy: I had to get back to my hotel, and my appointment was tenable only during good behaviour: what if I were found in the gutter? The good man looked at me more in anger than in sorrow: “Well,” he said, “you are the first man ever dined here that didn’t like my port.”
The laity were not behindhand. Arriving at one village where I had hoped to meet the usual incumbent and overseers, I found the squire only. He told me that no one else was coming; and that I was to come at once to the Hall to discuss the school supply, and to dine and sleep. It was some one’s birthday and relations were there to honour the occasion. The subsequent proceedings reminded me of Dean Ramsay’s Scotch stories. We had much port; many bottles: and we wound up with Family Prayers. I forget who read them: “it wasn’t me.” I only remember the Squire throwing in ‘Amens’ far more frequently than had been contemplated by the compiler. We all got safely to bed, and as I was not offered the chance of smoking, and did not expect another invitation to the Hall, I had a final pipe out of my bedroom window, risking detection, as I feasted my eyes on the beauty of the June night. Did my host glare at me in the morning, or was it my guilty conscience? Tobacco was often glared at in those days.
With one possible exception all that festive party has passed away, and the tale may be told.
These were oases in the desert of a life spent in hotels. And yet there is much fun in the desert, when there are good fellow-travellers. In those days at hotel dinners we sat at long tables, instead of the “separate tables” now general in this country: and at dinner, or in the smoking-room, one picked up many pleasant acquaintances. It was not always hotels; sometimes it was inns, and the inns gave one more insight into the life of the country. There after dinner we usually adjourned to the bar-parlour as a smoking-room, where the local chief citizens would assemble to discuss the affairs of their neighbours.
It was in such assemblies that I learned how little importance is attached to a surname in Wales. We all know that hundreds of years ago people in England acquired surnames by adding to their Christian name the name of their house, or of their town, or of their trade, or what not. Thus John of Chester became John Chester, and William the Miller became William Miller, thereby being differentiated from William Tailor. In Wales, the process was on other lines. John, son of William, was William’s John, or John Williams. But the next generation reverted: William, son of John Williams, became William Jones, because he was John’s William. This may still be the custom in remote parts of Wales. It was not extinct in West Carnarvonshire in 1871, where an incumbent told me of the difficulty he had in explaining the method to the Admiralty, or the Board of Trade, when his seafaring parishioners got drowned. “If William Jones was the son of this John Williams, who claims to be next of kin to the deceased, how is it that he was called Jones, and not Williams? I am to request that a declaration may be filed.”
I can imagine the annoyance of a Government Office at this departure from the normal.
But as the possible Welsh surnames were limited to the derivatives from possible Christian names, it followed that they ceased to be sufficiently distinctive, and the local habitation, or the trade had to be appended to the surname, as in England it was once appended to the Christian name. I once asked a friend whether John Davies, whom we had just left, was any relation to William Davies, whom we had seen a week ago.