The fame of Bettws was made by David Cox, that unassuming landscape painter who, appreciated inadequately in his lifetime, now keeps company with the Old Masters in the estimation of the discerning, and in the prices his works command at public auction. David Cox well knew the Holyhead Road: few so well, and perhaps none better. He was born beside it, in a cottage at Heath Mill Lane, Deritend, in 1783, and his favourite sketching grounds in North Wales lay along, or within sight of, the old highway. When he came to Bettws—when he, in the artistic sense, “discovered” it—the village was not a tenth part of the size it is now. No one ever thought of staying here in those days, and had travellers by any chance been compelled to halt at either of the two primitive inns, the “Royal Oak” or the “Waterloo,” the plainest country fare and the homeliest accommodation would have been theirs. No baronial dining-rooms, no odious German waiters whom one longs to wipe one’s feet upon, no wine lists then: just a simple choice between the parlour or the rustic kitchen; between cwrw da (that is to say, good ale), and bread and cheese and eggs and bacon served by a Welsh lass, who probably understood not a word of English, but possessed cheeks like a rose, a waist some thirty inches round, and great flat feet—very trying to amateur poets given to rhyming about gazelles, Hebes, and tripping Phyllises.

To the then tiny whitewashed inn, the “Royal Oak,” came David Cox during a long series of years, almost, indeed, until 1859, the year of his death. It must not be supposed that Cox was a neglected or unsuccessful genius. It is true that his greatness has only been realised to the full since his death, but he was prosperous throughout almost the whole of his career, and the legends that tell how he painted the sign of the “Royal Oak” in order to pay his score are absolutely without foundation. At no time after his youthful days was Cox poor, and he never possessed those Bohemian habits that left many a successful but dissolute artist of those times stranded for lack of money.

Cox himself has told how he came to paint the sign. It was done in 1847, at a time when his art and his reputation were ripe. The old painted board, fixed against the wall of the house, had become faded with long exposure to the weather, and he volunteered to repaint it for his old friend the landlady. The long street of Bettws was infinitely quieter in 1847 than now. The houses were few and scattered, the railway had done away with the coaches, and tourists were uncommon, so that he not unreasonably expected to do the work without interruption. He had ascended a short ladder, and was working away with palette on thumb, and heaps of pigments and the largest brushes he could lay hands on, when it suddenly occurred to him that he was not in a very dignified position for a man of his standing; and that, should he be seen by any one passing through Bettws, a very ridiculous story might be put into circulation, not at all to his advantage. However, he summoned up courage, and comforted himself with the reflection that he would not be observed, or, if seen, would be taken for a common house-painter. But, when in the midst of his work, to his horror he heard a carriage approaching. “Now,” he thought, “I’m done for! Perhaps, though, it will pass by.” But, instead of passing, it halted beneath, a pretty face looked up at him from it, and a voice exclaimed: “Why, it is Mr. Cox, I declare!” The lady was a former pupil of his who, recently married, was travelling in Wales on her honeymoon. “That is not the ladder of Fame you are on now,” she said.

Poor Cox was horrified. If he explained the why and the how of his work that day, it evidently did not make the impression of sincerity, for the stories of his painting the sign to wipe off a debt obviously derive from this chance meeting.

Two years later the painter retouched his work. In 1861, two years after his death, it was, at the request of many admirers, removed from the outside and placed in the hall of the house, then become a “hotel,” and beginning that series of rebuildings and extensions that have made it what it is to-day. In 1880 the then landlady became bankrupt, and the trustees of the estate claimed the old sign as a valuable asset, stating that a connoisseur had offered £1,000 for it, a statement that moved the late Cuthbert Bede to scandalised incredulity. It, however, would certainly bring bids of more than double that amount if put up to auction to-day.

The claim of the trustees was disputed by the freeholder, the Baroness Willoughby De Eresby, and the matter was decided in her favour, with costs. The famous sign was judged to be a fixture, and may yet be seen in the hall of the hotel, handsomely enshrined behind glass in a decorative overmantel.

It is a fine, bold piece of work, virile in its dashing brushmarks and impasto, and in a pleasing low key of colour; altogether very Old Masterish. An inscription beneath states that it “forms part of the freehold of the Hotel belonging to the Baroness Howard de Walden.” It now belongs to the Earl of Ancaster. Let those who will, and have the curiosity to it, trace the why and the wherefore of this devolution of property and titles from a De Eresby, through a Howard de Walden, to an Ancaster.