THE LADIES OF LLANGOLLEN
Now compare this with the description given by Charles Mathews:—
“Oh! such curiosities! I was nearly convulsed. I could scarcely get on for the first ten minutes after my eye caught them. As they are seated there is not one point to distinguish them from men: the dressing and powdering of the hair; their well-starched neck-cloths; the upper part of their habits, which they always wear even at a dinner party, made precisely like men’s coats; and regular beaver black hats. They looked exactly like two respectable superannuated old clergymen.”
They were a century before their time. The lamp so admired, with its rosy light “like a volcano,” is now in every drawing-room; and as to the dressing like men!—why, every girl now tries to rig herself out like them and ape them in everything, even in bad manners.
Llangollen Church has been much altered by rebuilding, but it retains some points of interest. The south aisle and chancel are new, but the very fine roof has been retained, supposed to have been brought at the Dissolution from Vale Crucis Abbey.
This abbey may possibly take its name from the pillar stone of Eliseg that still stands after the abbey has been broken down. But the stone itself has suffered. Originally it was twelve feet high; now it is broken in half, and what remains is but a little over six feet in height. It bears an inscription testifying that it was set up by one Cyngen in memory of his great-grandfather Eliseg, a descendant of Brochwel, king of Powys.
The abbey was never very large. It was founded in 1200 by Madog ab Gruffydd Maelor, prince of Powys, and the remains of the church belong to the period when founded, or are but little subsequent.
The church was exquisitely beautiful, and in the dearth of really fine architectural specimens in Wales it is to be deeply deplored that it was wrecked. The west end has in it three double-light windows, with cusped circles enclosed within the arch, and below them is a beautiful doorway.