A Mixture of Frailties – Salterton Trilogy 03 by Robertson Davies

“I made a terrible boob of myself on the train,” said he, as they set off in the pony-trap. “I was trying to speak Welsh to the porter at Trallwm. I’d been studying this book, you see — Welsh in a Week — and I wanted to say “A wnewch chwi edrych ar ol fy nheithglud?” — thought I’d surprise him. But it all died in my throat. Of course I knew he’d speak English, but I thought I’d try it. I always like to try everything. Much Welsh spoken around here, Miss Griffiths?”

“No, hardly at all. A little on market days, when the people come in from the hills. And they wouldn’t have spoken to you, except in English; it makes Welsh people shy, hearing it spoken by English-speaking people.”

“Do you speak it at all?”

“Annhebig i’r mis dig du.

A gerydd i bawb garu;

A bair tristlaw a byrddydd

A gwynt i ysbeiliaw gwydd;

— do you follow?”

“No, but it sounds great.”

“That’s a comment on today’s weather by one of our old poets; you won’t find it in Welsh in a Week. But I’m not a fair example. My father’s quite a well-known Celtic scholar.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful! Then it’ll be an even greater pleasure to meet him.”

“You won’t meet him. I’m staying with Uncle Griff and Aunt Dolly; they’re dears, too, but not the least bit Celtic scholars. You’ll see.”

“But it was an understandable mistake. You see, I’ve looked your uncle up in Burke’s Landed Gentry. Terrific ancestry, so I thought he might be very hot on Welsh history, and customs and whatnot.”

“You’ve been doing your homework, haven’t you? Uncle Griff will talk to you about genealogy all night, but any Welshman will do that. No, Uncle Griff’s not a scholar, but he’s a landed gent.”

“Unbroken tenancy of the Neuadd Goch estate since 1488, the book said.”

“Oh, how beautifully you say Neuadd Goch!”

“No kidding?”

“Well — not very much kidding.”

Miss Ceinwen Griffiths, it appeared, was not only very attractive but an accomplished flirt. Monica began to feel reservations about her.

They had mounted a steep hill, and were now driving along a ridge. Because the pony cart was high, they could see over the hedges on both sides of the road, toward England on the right, and toward the mountains of Wales on the left. It was such country as Monica had never seen before, rolling, gentle, quiet in its winter sleep, yet with an air of mystery which could not be explained. Perhaps it was the quality of the light, which varied so greatly within the range of her vision. Where they were it was not quite so fine a day as Miss Griffiths had said; as the pony trotted through the lanes the air was wet and chilly on their faces. But a mile or two away on the English side of the ridge the sun shone in golden patches, moving slowly across the side of another hill. On the Welsh side it seemed to be raining in the middle distance, for there the land was purplish, as though it had been bruised, but near these darkened patches were stretches of grey obscurity, which occasionally stirred and heaved, for it was mist. But beyond the purple, and the mist, and a few pools of tearful sunlight, rose mountains which caught a little wintry glory from an unseen setting sun, and were otherwise deepest blue-black. Their heads were in cloud.

“On a good day you can see the two peaks of Cadeir Idris from here,” said Ceinwen, “but not often in winter.”

“Marvellous!” said Ripon. “Just the country for Morte d’Arthur.”

“We like it very well,” said Ceinwen.

“Oh, come on. Miss Griffiths, that won’t do! It’s absolutely terrific, and you know it. Leave understatement to the English. I’m an enthusiast; they say all Americans are, but it’s not true. But I am. I enjoy things while I’ve got ’em. I’m a romantic. Don’t discourage me.”

“I won’t. Wales always seems very beautiful to people when they first come to it. Perhaps we try to restrain our own feelings so as not to seem to be boasting. Now we leave the Cefn, and drop into this little wooded place. It’s called Cwm Bau.”

“Cwm, a valley, and bau — let’s see, wait till I get out Welsh in a Week — or will you tell us?”

“In English it means the Dirty Dingle — though why nobody knows, because it’s very pretty, as you see. And then we go up the hill on the other side to Neuadd Goch. You haven’t said anything, Miss Gall; I hope you don’t find your first sight of Wales disappointing?”

“I’m an enthusiast, too,” said Monica; “but I’m not very good at words. I think it’s the loveliest landscape I’ve ever seen.”

“I truly hope that it will be kind to you.”

[TEN]

Life at Neuadd Goch was kind indeed. Monica knew nothing of country life; in Canada she had had the usual experiences of cottage life at lakesides with the joys of insects, privies, boiled water and the thunder of rain on the roof, but an ordered and comfortable existence in the midst of natural beauty was utterly new to her. In this house there was no window which did not look out upon a view of the beautiful valley on one lift of which it stood, and the variations of light changed these views from hour to hour, and sometimes from minute to minute. The farms and cottages in the landscape, thatched and built of white plaster and blackened oak beam, were so picturesquely pretty that she could not believe that they were real farms at all, for her only experience had been of the plain-faced farmsteads of her own part of Ontario. She fell immediately and deeply in love with North Wales, and in this affair she was rivalled by John Scott Ripon. As for the family at Neuadd Goch, they were everything that was kind and charming. No awesome butler, but two maids so obliging that Monica suspected them briefly of hypocrisy, managed affairs. She liked Ceinwen better than any girl she had met since leaving home, and desperately wanted her as a “best girl friend” — but Ceinwen was not aware of this North American relationship, and was quite as flirtatious in her behaviour toward Monica as she was toward Ripon. And Mr and Mrs Hopkin-Griffiths were very old hands at entertaining house guests, and knew that the art lies in leaving them to themselves a great part of the time. Monica and Ripon arrived on the afternoon of the twenty-first of December; by tea time the day following they felt as though they had been at Neuadd Goch for a glorious year, and on the morning of the twenty-third they were such seasoned country folk that they went for a walk after breakfast, wonderfully happy. Ripon was bursting with talk.

“I’ve got it straightened out now,” said he. “Ceinwen is the daughter of Professor Morgan Griffiths, who is only a half-brother of our host, who is Hopkin-Griffiths, and very big stuff in this part of Wales, and a timber man in a large way. That’s where the money comes from. He doesn’t seem to work, but that’s his craftiness. Dolly was a widow when she married him; she’s English and has a son — that’s the son she’s always talking about who may come for Christmas. The Squire seems very fond of the boy, but I think I detect a note of worry in his voice when he talks about him. It makes it interesting, I think, everybody being halves and steps. Now in my family we’re all fully related, and I can’t say it makes either for interest or good feeling. What about your family?”

“Oh my family hasn’t got any specially interesting relationships. It seems to make them interesting, being Welsh. When I was a child I sometimes used to wish we had a romantic foreign strain of some sort, to cheer things up.”

“That’s what I don’t understand. Ceinwen seems to make a lot of being Welsh, but the Squire, who is the real thing, and can trace his ancestry back to Bleddyn ap Cynfyn, takes it very lightly. You heard what happened last night when I asked him about it at dinner; he just laughed and said he supposed it was true, but that it had never made much difference one way or another. He likes me calling him ‘Squire’ though, especially when I explained about my fondness for Gryll Grange and Squire Gryll. I was astonished he’d never heard of it. D’you know, Monica, I don’t think these people understand or value what they have. I don’t suppose it’s twenty-five miles from here to the Mary Webb country, but would you believe that when I asked Mrs Hopkin-Griffiths about it, she had never heard of Mary Webb? And they’ve lived all their lives close to Shropshire, but they don’t seem to know anything about Housman. George Herbert? Unknown! Of course I don’t mean that they ought to develop those things as we do in the States. God forbid! But you’d think they’d know about them, wouldn’t you? I mean, what do you suppose gives shape and focus to their lives?”

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