Judgments in Vacation

by Sir Edward Abbott Parry

The Rector of Rhoscolyn was a bachelor, a man of stout build and middle stature. He had the air of a Friar Tuck about him. His eyes were merry and kindly. If he had changed his long rusty black coat and clerical hat for a cassock and cowl, he would have been a monk after Dendy Sadler’s own heart. He loved his pipe and his glass, when the day’s work was done, and the talk of books and men, with those who had lived in the outer world, was to him the rarest and most delightful of pleasures. He was outspoken, simple, and generous, an earnest believer in his creed and his Church, a lover of music, and above and beyond all, a man who attracted to himself animals and little children as if by instinct, and gained their love as only those who suffer them to come without affectation can do. He seemed, as far as I could see, to have no enemies. I think it was a weakness in his character—a Christian weakness—that he shrank from causing annoyance or hurt to anyone’s susceptibilities. I was his neighbour for some seven summer weeks, and five evenings out of seven we smoked our pipes together, and he poured out to very willing ears the tales of his lonely parish, but I scarce remember an unkindly story among them all. If there was a tale that he feared might give pain in the repetition, it was always prefaced by a smile of great candour, and as he began, “I must tell you this indeed,” he placed his fore-finger on his broad nostril and said in a sly merry whisper, with a great rolling of the letter “r”: “This is inter-r-r nos.” That is why some of his best stories cannot be set down here.

But, to understand the man and his ways, you must know how and where he lived. For the surroundings and the man were as if Nature had designed the one for the other, and he was as much in his place in his rectory, on the side of the Mynydd Rhoscolyn, as the Sarn Cromlech is on the slopes of Cefnamlwch. Rhoscolyn is a typical Anglesey parish. No doubt, when Mona was one of the Fortunate Islands, it had a Druid temple and a Druid priest, and if the latter had come back to the site of his temple he would have found little of change. A church, a plâs, a post-office, a rectory, a life-boat, and a few farmhouses in sheltered corners; but the rest is as it always was. The eternal rocks, the restless waves rushing up into the black water caves, the steep cliffs crumbling a little day by day, the cruel, sharp island rocks hidden at high water and marked by the spray and swirl of the tide as it sinks away from the shore, the purple heather and yellow gorse clothing the cliffs to the edge of the sky, the samphire finding a fearful footway between earth and sea, and, above all, the wild bees humming their eternal summer song, and the fresh breezes, always pure, always sweet, always sweeping backwards and forwards across the promontory. Those things were there in the day of the Druids and they are there to-day.

And in Roman times Rhoscolyn was of more note than it is now, for some say that the name of it is derived from a Roman column that was placed here to signify the utmost bounds of Roman victories. Whether this be true or not, we have in the name Bodiar—which is still the squire’s house—the governor’s habitation, and in the neighbouring Prieddfod the Præsidii Locus; or, at least, this is what antiquaries tell us, and it is comfortable to believe these things. Telford and his new road thrust Rhoscolyn further away from civilisation, and the railway brought it no nearer as it sneaked into Holyhead, across the Traeth-y-grubyn, behind the shelter of the road embankment. For Holyhead is on an island, and the old main road, with that instinct for the line of least resistance which in old highways tends to such picturesque results, kept south of the wide marsh and crossed the water at Four Mile Bridge—Rhyd-y-bont Pennant calls it, and he rode over it, and knew at least as much of Wales as an ordnance surveyor of to-day. There you can see the most beautiful sunset views of the Holyhead Mountain, at the head of the open water, when the tide is high; and if you turn your back to the town, you will find Rhoscolyn within a couple of miles of Four Mile Bridge and six miles south of Holyhead.

The rectory stands on the slope of the Rhoscolyn Mountain—there are no hills in Wales to speak of, for we speak of them all as mountains. It is four-square, whitewashed, and has a slate roof. There are no trees round it. The only trees in Rhoscolyn are an imported plantation at the plâs. There are a few thorn bushes in the hedgerows, but the wind has carved them into finger-posts, pointing consistently eastward, and they scarcely look like trees at all. The rectory is surrounded by substantial farm buildings, for the rector is a farmer. His old mare, Polly, and the low gig are well-known figures in Holyhead market, and he tells you with a farmer’s pride that all through the winter his evening supper is oatmeal porridge and milk, the produce of his own farming. He had no relish, he told me, for oatmeal that was bought at a shop, for he had a countryman’s delight and belief in the home-made. His was a good herd of cows, and he knew each by name, and, like all true Welshmen, could call them to him as he walked through his fields. Different Welsh districts seem to have different calls for their cattle, and the real Nevin call, for instance, is another thing altogether from the Rhoscolyn call. These things are a mystery, and are well understood by the cows themselves, who will shake their heads contemptuously at the Saxon imitator.

The church is a pretty modern building, with a belfry, standing on an eminence away from other buildings. The post-office where I was living is its nearest neighbour. There are no streets in Rhoscolyn, nor has it any centre square. It is a parish rather than a village, and its few hundred inhabitants live in scattered farms and cottages. There are generally a few artist visitors, for Rhoscolyn is almost another Sark for the rock-painter, and one or two families find summer homes in the neighbouring farms. There is bathing out of your tent, which you leave on the grass at the edge of the tiny bay, at the mercy of the winds and the little black bullocks that roam about in the flat marshes inland. There are rambles among the cliffs and the heather. An ideal place for a holiday for those who really want a holiday and are content with oxygen and rest.

I think, perhaps, I should have found seven weeks of Rhoscolyn more than enough, if it had not been for the rector. I had met him casually on an earlier visit, and looked forward to meeting him again. One evening, soon after I had arrived, I was walking for some distance behind him. He was in company with a Nonconformist minister, and at a turn in the road the two parted very amicably with a kindly shake of the hand. It is not always so in Wales. I ventured, when I got up to the rector, to make some remark to this effect. He did not at that time know whether or not I had any ecclesiastical leanings, and with great simplicity he remarked, “I must tell you this indeed, Judge Parry: we must be charitable, you know, even to Dissenters.” I have often wondered whether the phrase would be acceptable to the authorities if it were inserted in the Welsh Church Catechism. As it was uttered and acted upon by the Rector of Rhoscolyn, it could give offence to no one who had the least charity and sense of humour.

The post-office was between the rectory and the outer world, and so the rector came in that evening, and many another evening afterwards, and I was always glad to hear the heavy scrunch of his boots on the loose gravel in the front of the door. Seated in an armchair with a pipe, he would proceed to discourse at length of the affairs of the world and his parish with great simplicity and humour.

The recent Disestablishment Bill of Mr. Asquith had troubled him very much. “I must tell you this,” he said: “it has given rise to a great deal of ill-feeling. Very wicked things have been said indeed, and the pulpit has been used in chapels on the Liberal side.”

I was glad to meet a clergyman of the Church of England in Wales who did not approve of this use of the pulpit, and asked him the kind of thing that had happened. “I must tell you this indeed, though you will hardly believe it,” he began. “There was a preacher at the Calvinistic Methodist Chapel at Llan——, who, on the eve of the election, told his congregation this. He said he had once been at a hanging—I suppose,” said the rector with a pleasant smile, “that was the hanging of a late member of his congregation, but I do not know—and he went on to say it had been a terrible ordeal for him, and had made him very sick and ill. But he told his congregation quite solemnly that, if he knew any of them on the morrow were going to vote for the Conservatives, he would not only go to his hanging with pleasure, but he would be there to pull his legs.”

I am afraid I was more amused than shocked, for he added quickly, “I must tell you it was terrible, and it sounds very much worse in Welsh indeed.”