Philosophy of the picturesque—Peculiarities of English scenery—Worcester—Immigration of peasant girls—The Devils’ Garden—The Rest on the Stones—Plinlimmon—Inhabitants of the summit—The Inn—Source of the Wye.
Foreigners have often expressed their surprise that the English should travel so far in search of picturesque scenery, when they have abundance at home: but the remark is conceived in an unphilosophical spirit. We do not travel for the mere scenery. We do not leave the Wye unexplored, and go abroad in search of some other river of its own identical character. What we gaze at in strange lands is not wood, and water, and rock, but all these seen through a new medium—accompanied by adjuncts which array universal nature herself in a foreign costume. A tree peculiar to the country—a peasant in an un-English garb—a cottage of unaccustomed form—the slightest peculiarity in national manners—even the traces of a different system of agriculture—all contribute to the impression of novelty in which consists the excitement of foreign travel.
The proof of this is our keener perception of the beauties of English scenery after returning from abroad. We are then capable of instituting a comparison; and our national manners are no longer the sole medium, but one of various media through which nature is viewed. An untravelled Englishman is ignorant of his own country. He must cross the seas before he can become acquainted with home. He must admire the romance of the Rhine—the sublimity of the (mountain) Rhone—the beauty of the Seine and the Loire—before he can tell what is the rank of the Wye, in picturesque character, among the rivers of Europe.The journey from London to Worcester, which is the direct route to the Upper part of the Wye, discloses many of the peculiarities of English scenery and character—peculiarities which to the natives are of so every day a kind, that it is only by reflection and comparison they learn to appreciate them. The country seats of the great land proprietors, with their accompaniments of lawn and plantation, extending as far as the eye can reach, form a part of the picture; and so do the cottages of the village peasantry, with their little gardens before the door, admitting a peep into the interior of the humble abode. In the aristocratical dwellings, half hidden in that paradise of groves and glades, we find every refinement that gold can purchase, or taste produce: in the huts, comfort, and its inseparable adjunct cleanliness, are the most striking characteristics.
The former speak of wealth, and the happiness that depends on wealth; the latter of comparative poverty, and the home pleasures that are compatible with poverty. On the continent, there is always something out of keeping in the picture. In the great chateaux and their grounds, there is always some meanness, some make-shift observable; while in the great country seats of England, on the contrary, all is uniform. In the cottages abroad, even those of a higher order, there are always dirt and slovenliness—inattention to the minute comforts of humble life—meals snatched anyhow and anywhere—sleep taken without an idea of the luxuries of sleep. In England, on the other hand, notwithstanding the irregularities of fortune, we find an absolute identity in the various classes of the population. The labourer—returned, perhaps, from mending the highway, sits down in state to dinner, with a clean white table-cloth, and the coarse ware nicely arranged before him. The floor is swept, perhaps washed, to do honour to the occasion; and his wife, who is at once the mistress and the servant of the feast, prides herself on making her husband (whom she calls her “master”)—comfortable.
We need not be told that this is not a universal picture. We need not be reminded of the want and misery which exist in numerous parts of the country, for with these we are well acquainted. The foreigner, however, to whom such scenes are new, will meet with them frequently enough, and especially on the road we are now travelling, to induce him to set them down as one of the grand characteristics of England.
The road presents, also, at various turnings, that truly English scene, a well-known specimen of which is viewed from Richmond Hill. A level country lies a few hundred feet below us, and extends in front, and on either side, till it is lost in the distance, or bound in by low and filmy hills which just mark the horizon with their waving line of shadow. This expanse is studded with towns, and villages, and seats, and cottages, and square towers, and tapering spires, rising amidst woods and groves, and surrounded by green fields and meadows. A great part of the peculiar character of the landscape is due to the enclosures of various kinds of foliage which separate one field from another. In most parts of the continent—and more especially in France—these are of very rare occurrence; and thus the beauty of the picture, when it has any beauty at all, depends upon the colours of the different kinds of grain or other productions, which make the vast expanse of vegetation resemble an immense and richly variegated carpet. In spring, therefore, before these colours have been fairly brought out, it may easily be conceived that France is one of the least interesting countries in Europe. With us, on the other hand, the face of the earth resembles a garden, and more especially in one of those flat landscapes we have alluded to. The changes of the seasons diversify without diminishing the beauty; and even winter presents, instead of a uniform and dreary waste, a varied picture executed in hoar frost and snow.
Worcester is one of the most aristocratic looking towns in England, and presents every token of being a wealthy and flourishing place. Its cathedral, an edifice of the beginning of the thirteenth century, has drawn hither many a pilgrim foot even from foreign countries. Our present business, however, is with the works of nature, or with those of art fallen into decay, and their fragments standing amidst the eternal youth of the hills and rivers, like monuments of the insignificance of man.Worcester is famous for its manufactures of porcelain and gloves; but our attention was more strongly attracted to exports of another kind, of which it appeared to be at least the entrepÔt, if it was not the original market. At a little distance from the town, several waggons had halted near a public house, and their freight, a numerous party of peasant girls, were breakfasting by the road side. They were eating and drinking as joyously as if their laps had been filled with far more enticing food than bread and ale. They were on their way to some greater mart—perhaps to the all-devouring metropolis; and when breakfast was over, they resumed their slow journey, some few who had mounted the waggons singing in parts, and the rest, walking by the side, joining in the chorus. They had no fears, poor girls, of the result of their adventure—or rather, no forethought.
But it is not till after we pass the little town of Kington, on the eastern borders of Herefordshire, that the picturesque commences, and we must hasten on to our more immediate task. Between Kington and New Radnor, are the Stanner Rocks, with the Devil’s Garden on their summit, luxuriously planted—of course by no human hand—with wild flowers. Beyond New Radnor (formerly the county town, but now a paltry village,) opens the Vale of Radnor on one side, and on the other, a rude mountain scene, distinguished by a waterfall of some celebrity, called Water-break-its-neck. The stream rushes down a precipitous descent of seventy feet, into a hollow with craggy and unequal sides. The spot of the cascade is marked by an insulated rock, eighteen or twenty feet high, standing erect above it like a monument.
After passing the village of Penybont, the Llanbadarn Vawr, or great church of Badarn, is to the left of the road, an edifice which dates from the time of the Conqueror; and nothing else of interest is observable till we reach Rhaiadyr, on the Banks of the Wye. As it will be more convenient, however, to examine the river in descending with the stream, we shall only say here, that the journey from Rhaiadyr to the summit of Plinlimmon lies through woods, and hill passes, becoming ruder and wilder at every step we advance. The character of the population seems to change in conformity with their physical circumstances. The want of tidiness which marks the British mountaineer is the more conspicuous from the contrast it presents to the opposite quality we have admired in the plains; and already the women have assumed the round hat of the ruder sex, and destroyed with its masculine associations the charms peculiar to their own. Against this absurdity we must protest, whether we meet with it in the Welsh girl, or the fair equestrian of Hyde Park. It betrays not only the most pitiful taste, but the most profound ignorance of nature, on which is founded the theory of female beauty.
Stedva Gerrig, or “the Rest on the Stones” now commonly called by the name of the mountain, is a hamlet of three or four houses situated on a stream which separates the counties of Montgomeryshire and Cardiganshire, in a nook of comparatively level land, into which abut several of the lower ridges of Plinlimmon. The spot has little of the wildness of mountain scenery, but its extreme solitude; for being here near the top of the mountainous group, and surrounded by its remaining elevations, we are insensible of our real altitude above the level of the country. These elevations, besides, have none of the ruggedness of character we usually find in such places. They are, in general, smoothly-swelling eminences, which if rising from the plain would receive the name of hills; they are wholly naked of trees, or even brushwood; and being covered with green herbage, they at first sight give one the idea of an extensive grass farm, rather than a sterile mountain. It is the altitude of the spot, however, and the nipping blasts to which it is exposed, that render it naked of the larger kinds of vegetation; and there is only a nook here and there capable of bearing even a scanty crop of oats. This region, therefore, excepting a few fields around Stedva Gerrig, supplies subsistence only to sheep; and the greater number even of these we found had been withdrawn to situations less exposed to the Welsh winds.
Of the few inhabitants of the hamlet, the principal man of course is the innkeeper; and the other fathers of families are shepherds. The latter class of men have wages amounting to twelve pounds a year, and enjoy their houses and little fields of corn and potatoes, with as much pasturage as they have use for free of rent. The husband, assisted by his sons, when young, tends the sheep on the mountain; the wife makes flannel, and knits stockings; and the daughters go out to service at an early age. Their little menage is comfortable. Their bread is barley cakes; they sometimes salt a pig; they provide themselves with a quarter of beef at one time, and, like their betters, “live at home, and kill their own mutton.” Nay, one of these flourishing shepherds is a rival of the innkeeper; his hut being duly licensed to sell ale, cyder, &c., and the sign-board having the following intimation:—“The notorious hill of Plinlimmon is on these premises, and it will be shown with pleasure to any gentlemen travellers who wishes to see it.” And this intimation (letting grammar alone) is correct; for although the notorious article in question, viz., the loftiest part of Plinlimmon is not entirely in the garden, curtained off, like the balloon at the Yorkshire Stingo, from the gaze of all who do not pay a shilling to see it, yet it is actually on the premises, about three or four miles—only a sheep walk—distant.
The Plinlimmon inn, undoubtedly, is the place for our money. It is now—although its character was very different only two years ago—neat, clean, and comfortable. We do not say that it affords the accommodation of a city on the top of a Welsh mountain, but yet to the traveller who has seen more of the world than the plains of England, it will make a very desirable resting-place. Such traveller, on dismounting from the Aberystwith mail, will be right glad to sit down by a clean and bright fire-side, and if the turf should not be lighted in the parlour, he will be proud of the privilege of the kitchen. There, if he has our own good fortune, he will find the landlady, a frank, cheerful, and kindly woman, with the table drawn in quite to the hearth, and reading “Elegant Extracts.” Materials of another kind will speedily grace the board, viz., bread, butter, cheese, eggs, and excellent home-brewed ale. Do you sneer at this bill of fare? A fico for thy travellership! Then will mine host enter in the midst, a bold, intelligent, yet modest fellow; and, bustling through the various parts of the scene, will “come, like a shadow, so depart” the substantial form of the serving maiden, her cheeks round, and flushed, her eye beaming with innocent gaiety, and her full and swelling chest seeming as if it were with difficulty withheld from bursting the corsage. These three, by the way, are the only inhabitants of the hamlet who speak English.
After supper, the traveller, if he be not of the heathen sect of Tee-totallers, takes a glass of brandy and water, for the reason assigned by St. Paul in his Epistle to Timothy, or any other orthodox reason; and finally, he will enter into a clean and comfortable bed, and sleep, not the less soundly it is to be presumed, that his meal had not involved the murder of a chicken, or of any other of his fellow creatures of the earth.
The next morning the landlord walked with us to the source of the Wye, about three miles distant. We ascended and descended several of the rounded summits already mentioned; and upon the whole, the little excursion is somewhat trying to the lungs. A rill flowed between every two eminences, destined soon or late to unite with the Wye, and at length the latter stream appeared, bubbling down the side of a slope in a volume which might be comprised in the circumference of a teacup. Higher up, a few rushes seem to hide the fountain from which it springs; but following for a brief space a line of damp, plashy earth above, we reach a tiny pool, little more than a hand-breadth across, supplied by droppings rather than gushes from a bank of black earth—and this is the source of the Wye. Looking down its tortuous valley, the view is majestic from the massive forms of the objects which surround it; but the solitude, the dreariness, the utter desolation of the scene, form the distinctive features of the picture.
Plinlimmon, or Pumlumon, is not, correctly speaking, a single mountain, but several distinct mountains rising from one base. Each of these distinct mountains, again, is subdivided into several others; but in the aggregate, there is little of the variety which might be expected from so extraordinary an assemblage. It is entirely destitute of wood. There are none of the craggy peaks and precipices which usually form the picturesque of mountain scenery. All is smooth but blackened turf, frequently undulating over fathomless bogs, the mysteries of which the traveller who ventures into this desolate region without a guide has a fair chance of exploring. The summit, of which the highest point is two thousand four hundred and sixty-three feet above the level of the sea, forms a plateau of several miles; whence the hills of Cardiganshire are seen to the south; Cardigan bay and Saint George’s channel to the west; to the north, the perpendicular brow of Cader Idris; to the north-west, the three-peaked Breidden hills; and to the east, the fertile plains of Herefordshire and Shropshire.
Besides the Wye, there are several other rivers which have their source on Plinlimmon, the most distinguished of which is the Severn. About two miles distant from where we now stand, this stream issues from a little bog-hole, in a volume which might be stepped across by a child. The whole mountain, in fact, seems a reservoir of water; and it is not surprising that Owen Glendwr should have been able to maintain himself here, as he did in 1401, even with so small a force as a hundred and twenty men. The entrenchments made by the hero may still be traced; and brazen spearheads, and other instruments of war, have been found within them in our own day.
