If there were not so many dishonest people, and so many vulgar people, in the world, the visitors-books of the “Royal Oak” would be a delight to present-day travellers. Those books begin in 1855, and have in their time been filled with a very miscellaneous collection of autographs, criticisms, and sketches. In the old days, before the house was rebuilt, and its new magnificence and crowds of vulgar and artless rich frightened away the majority of artists, thoughtless fellows who had not “arrived” endowed these books with many signed sketches which in after years, when they had achieved reputations, became valuable in a commercial sense. Pencil sketches there were, pen-drawings, and water-colours; and autographs of other men since known to fame were scattered plentifully through those pages. Among and between them were many of the silly, offensive, and downright infamous things that one finds in every visitors-book; for the Howling Cad is a large and plentiful leaven. The productions of the Cad are there still, and later generations of cads and thieves have added their own sillinesses with one hand, while with the other they have cut out the things that really interested. As, according to Tennyson, “the lie that is half a lie is ever the blackest of lies,” so the Cad that has got sufficient culture to appreciate the worth of a thing, and then steals it, must be the caddiest of cads. It is as demonstrable a thing as a theorem in Euclid.

The visitors-books of the “Royal Oak” are therefore things of tatters and fragments, but in these remains the spirit of old-time touring may here and there be found. They walked mostly, those tourists, and sketches of them in peg-top trousers—very baggy in the upper part of the leg, tight at the foot, and very braidy at the seams—show how they roamed the country. Often they wore “Jemimas”—the brutes!

It is quite certain that the tourist who in these times should tour in that quaint guise would be mobbed, for, in addition to his weird nether garments, the gay young man of 1860 or thereabouts wore a felt hat like a pudding basin, with a flat brim and a button on the crown. Complete the picture with an eyeglass and a pair of “Piccadilly weepers,” and there you are. Yet they were consummate lady-killers, or so imagined themselves to be, and a reflection of their deathly oglings is found in these pages. “Look out for the girl in the village, just beyond the gate—such a stunner!” says one. (“Stunner” was a word characteristic of the sixties.) It is quite evident that those who followed took this amatory pilgrim’s advice, for “Not equal to our Mary Ann, though,” is appended by some disappointed swain.

Girl, gate, and pilgrims, where are they, and where is the Bettws of that era? Gone, my friends, and only the immemorial hills and these ragged visitors-books remain. For Bettws has been entirely rebuilt since then, and the “gate” referred to was brutally swept away some ten years since. Brutally, because it was an ivy and creeper-clad old toll-house, one of the charmingest landmarks in the place. It stood at the corner leading to Pont-y-Pair, where a boarding-house called “Carleton House” may now be seen.

But to return to our visitors-books. The verses found in them would scarce grace a poetic garland, but here is a sample, circa 1860:—

A later scribbler appropriately asks this poet to “Cheer up!” He is followed by one who rhymes “spruce” with “Bettws,” which is a very close approximation to the correct pronunciation. Then comes the “Marquis of Alicampane,” and later a critic who implores some heterographical guest, “Do cultivate a taste for spelling.” Then comes a shapeless scribble, signed and priced by some wag, “J. M. W. Turner, £450.”

The fate that follows distinguished visitors who gravely and pompously enter their names is seen in the comments on the entry, “Sir William Barlow, K.C.B., and Lady Barlow.” There was at that period a popular song called “Billy Barlow,” and with the hint thus afforded some idle artist has drawn in the margin his ideas of Sir William and his lady. They are not flattering.

David Cox did not live to see his beloved Bettws overrun by artists and excursionists and exploited to the n^th degree. It remained unspotted from the world. To those who only know the Bettws of to-day, and see the railway station and the hundreds of excursionists that pour out of it on every summer afternoon, it is incredible that a visitor who, like some exploring Columbus, or Livingstone, at the least of it, stumbled upon the place in 1855, at the close of the great struggle in the Crimea, should have found the villagers quite ignorant of there having been any war. To-day things are very different. Hotels, boarding-houses, lodging-houses, and cyclists’ rests, with a sprinkling of shops where photographs and guide-books are sold, occupy the whole street; and when lunch-time and the dinner-hour are come, the scent of other people’s meals wafted down the road is quite oppressive.

But let it not be thought that Bettws is spoilt. It is only changed. If no longer unsophisticated, it is yet delightful, and if the houses are all new, they are at least either in good taste, or, at the worst, inoffensive. And, after all, the glorious scenery remains. The artists, however, are gone to Trefriw, a village down the Conway, as yet untamed and unbroken to the harness of convention. Time was when one could not stir out of doors at Bettws without upsetting an easel. Passing a wall, you would be startled by a fellow with long hair and a velvet jacket, and with a portfolio under his arm, jumping over it; looking down a lane, many easels would be seen there; a glance at the rocks of Pont-y-Pair would reveal sketch-books and pencils busily at work; and wandering, hand in hand with your Aminta in the shady bye-ways, you would not find the seclusion that such romantic occasions demand.

Other times, other manners. The amateur photographer is now in possession of Bettws. That central spot, the very hub of the place, the bridge over the Llugwy—called Pont-y-Pair, or the “Bridge of the Cauldron,” in allusion to the seething water falling over the rocks—is the favoured shooting-ground, and all day long the excursionists who bask picturesquely on the sunny stones are the victims of snapshotters, or with their own cameras pick off the sharpshooters on the bridge. Under such a terrific cross-fire as this few can hope to escape.