Llanyglo

“ An hour later, coming out again, he passed away to Lancashire. All was over. Folk might now take down their bunting as soon as they pleased. The trick was virtually done for Llanyglo. A loop at Sarn or a new junction, and a realisation on the part of those in authority that there were things that paid better than Abercelyn manganese, and Llanyglo would be "linked up" with rigid iron to the rest of the world. ”

“ Railhead was now to him what the building of the Llanyglo house had formerly been, and the fence-burning, and rugby football, and many another interest of the days when he had been a kid and immature. It was in the summer of 1884 that the snail's antennæ approached within sight of Llanyglo, and, rain or shine, permitted or forbidden, John Willie spent most of his waking hours among the masons and smiths and navvies and plate-layers who formed the population of that nomad town of wood and earth and sleepers and rolling stock and escaping steam and corrugated iron. He knew half the men by name. ”

“ And all this time the eye still saw nothing to purchase but bents and blown sand, blue and lemon butterflies, nodding harebells, a few tidemarks of black seaweed, a wooden jetty, a cluster of thatched kerb, the three Chapels, Edward Garden's house, and Ty Kerr.
But something was coming to Llanyglo.
On the whole they did not talk very much about it. Each had his reason for reticence, or brooding, or resentment, or calculation, as the case might be. Nevertheless, with Railhead still many miles away, they began to become accustomed to the coming and going of strangers. ”

“ They want to dodge, not only everybody else, but themselves also, something they're perhaps afraid of in themselves, for a fortnight, three weeks, a month. You see, they've persuaded themselves (and Llanyglo's done too well out of them to undeceive them) that things done here somehow 'don't count.' If you want to do something you'd never dare to do in a place where you were known, you come to Llanyglo to do it. If you can imagine the oasis in the desert with exactly the contrary meaning—that's us. We're an asylum for those who've lost their moral memories. ”

“ There are a good many things about Llanyglo now that I've had to keep out of my Guide, you see. But I'll tell you what I can.
"And I don't want to give you any false impression. Don't forget that scores and hundreds of families come here and bathe, and picnic, and dance, and go for drives, and enjoy themselves, and go away again without a notion that everybody here isn't exactly like themselves. And there's no harm in the Wakes people either. ”

“ There seemed to be more than a chance that Llanyglo, its heathery Trwyn and its purple mountains, its unproductive sandhills and its non dividend-paying sea, would be written off by Terry's Syndicate as a total loss.
Then, all in a night, something astonishing happened at Llanyglo.
The words "all in a night" are to be understood in their very plainest sense. Granted that it was a winter's night, and therefore a long one, with the darkness setting in soon after four and the sun not coming up behind the mountains again until nearly eight ”

“ Llanyglo handles its own sewage.... Ah! There goes the Promenade lights; three jumps, and the two miles are lighted up from end to end; the kite-string's a necklace now; pretty, isn't it?... And there goes the Pier.... There'll be a glare behind us like a shout of light in a moment—the Trwyn Light....
"The mountains are dark now, but how the day lingers on the sea! To-night it's like ribbon-grass.... Hear the post-horns? Those are the chars-à-bancs coming in. The last tripper's running for the station now.... Now the light's dying on the sea; it's a new moon and a spring tide. ”

“ Sometimes, on the edge of the dark, a fantastic irregular shape would be seen, rising and dipping and lurching as it approached over the sandhills; it was Dafydd Dafis, carrying on his back the wooden case that contained his harp. Save for these infrequent diversions, the winter was a dead time at Llanyglo. The hamlet rolled itself up and hibernated. Mrs. Garden sometimes sighed for a Hallé concert, or a dance, or "a few friends in the evening," but she bore up for the sake of the dry and sunny and exhilarating days and the good they did Minetta. ”

“ No: Tommy Kerr's unconscious soft carolling of Glan Meddwdod Mwyn as he had crossed the sandhills on that torrid Sunday afternoon had held no real personal reproach for Llanyglo. For Porth Neigr, perhaps yes; for other places, yes; but not for Llanyglo.
But since then things had changed. Things had changed since they had been able to tell themselves that what went on in the "Cambrian" lounge was no concern of theirs. They had begun to change when Llanyglo had been no longer able to shut its eyes to the beer-drinking of the navvies and bricklayers and the brothers Kerr. ”

“ Now it befell towards the end of the July of that year that the Welshmen of Llanyglo held an open-air service for the young in one of the hollows of the sandhills. It was a blazing Sunday afternoon, with the sea like silk and the pale mountains seeming thrice their distance away. They had brought a small moveable platform and reading-desk from the Baptist Chapel, and first John Pritchard, and then Howell Gruffydd had mounted it. The sun beat on the bare heads and best bonnets and black-coated shoulders of parents ”

“ We have the money, the men, powers under the new Act ample as our hearts could wish, and the certainty of the coming reward.
Llanyglo itself found it difficult to realise what was happening. It all came in such strides. Where the stake-and-wire-enclosed roads had been, a giant hoarding would rise, twenty, forty, fifty yards long. On this hoarding, by means of the railway posters, Llanyglo would be told all about itself—its climate, its mild winters, its accessibility from all parts, and its "unrivalled attractions." It read Gilbert Smythe's signature there. ”

“ The older folk gather round the head of the T, and down the stalk stretch the children. These will rise before their parents, just as they go out of Church after the Second Lesson; they will break off just below John Willie Garden and the Misses Euonyma and Wygelia there—who, by the way, are more usually called June and Wy. The flowers are chosen to "last well," for Llanyglo is almost as short of flowers as it is of trees; but the linen and plate and other appointments are all good—these actors in Llanyglo's little fore-piece are not accustomed to roughing it, even on a holiday. ”

“ She differed from the children of other novelists who grow up to be men and women, because she was made of bricks and mortar and iron girders and romantic scenery and ozone (especially ozone) , and the people who lived with her or took trips to see her are treated as a mere emblematical garnish of her character and growth. Llanyglo is a daughter of Wales, but she is not any town that you may happen to have seen, although possibly Blackpool and Douglas and Llandudno have met her, and turned up their noses at her, as she turned up her nose at them. ”

“ And now it had come to this: that while these came to Llanyglo for a change of air, John Willie Garden, who spent his days among lime and mortar and wheeling-planks and newly dressed stone, frequently turned his back on Llanyglo for precisely the same reason. Once a week or so he was seen to drive past Pritchard's Corner in a light yellow trap at nine o'clock in the morning. He was off to see to another of his father's interests—that "catchment area" far away up in the mountains. ”

“ Something deeper and more solemn than the machinations of man took a hand in the making of Llanyglo. This was the wind. It began to get up at about three o'clock that afternoon; all day there had been a swell; and Dafydd Dafis and others, returning from Howell Gruffydd's house (where a second letter to Mr. Tudor Williams Ponteglwys had been written, as urgent as Eesaac Oliver's pen could make it) , saw all four of the brothers on the roof, trying to secure the tarpaulin in which the wind volleyed; their roof-slates were not expected till the following Wednesday. ”

“ That's a job done, at all events.
"But I think we shall one and all admit that we've a great deal to learn about Llanyglo yet. There'd still be something to learn if we were to come here six, ten, twenty times. That's the grand thing about knowledge—we need never be afraid we shall come to the end of it. When we've read fifty books there's always fifty more. Ay, and there'll be another fifty after that.
"But we've got other things besides knowledge at Llanyglo. We've got health, health to keep us going for another year. And we've got friends, new friends. ”

“ It was said that Sheard, the Porth Neigr solicitor, who had moved to new premises opposite the Llanyglo Town Hall, sat up five nights in the week, making actuarial calculations, estimating yields, measuring margins, and balancing all with the possibility of the town's bankruptcy. Edward Garden was once more at Llanyglo, and closeted frequently with Mr. Tudor Williams and Howell Gruffydd.... Even the two projected hotels were not much more than a detail as matters now stood; the whole town must now be given a tremendous upward heave or collapse with a crash. ”

“ But while the march of events drove the aborigines of Llanyglo ever more and more closely together, as the reaping of a field of corn drives the mice and snakes and rabbits to the narrowing square in the centre, at the same time something of the opposite process went on. Two or three stood aloof, Welsh when it suited them to be Welsh, less Welsh at other times. One of these was Mr. Tudor Williams, the Member of Parliament. Another was Howell Gruffydd, the grocer. ”

“ Some of them must have taken an hour or two with a hammer and chisel, but I've been up here countless times and never seen anybody at it yet.
"Yes, that's Llanyglo; but look at the mountains first. This isn't the best time of the day for seeing them; the morning or the evening's the best time; the sun isn't far enough round yet. But sometimes, when the light's just right, they start out into folds and wrinkles almost as quickly as you could snap your fingers—it's quite dramatic. Foels and Moels and Pens and Mynedds, look—half the North Cambrian Range. ”

“ Llanyglo was going, in a manner of speaking, to be married. It was turning over, had turned over, a new leaf. Soon it would be a churlish thing to reproach it for a past that it had lived down; it was becoming sadder and wiser, and better able to distinguish between the things that would "do" and the things that would not. The less talk ... (here John Willie began to realise that he was not a fly, and to collect his nerves for the turn-over to the under side of that H that a few yards away dropped over, with a little gleam, into nothing) ... the less talk the soonest mended. ”

“ The Resort or Spa that could provide the most amusement would get the lion's share. Amusements were a more urgent necessity than chairs and tables and roofs.
So it was that, between this place and that, the people who intended to have a better time than their fathers had had were in some danger of being pampered.
The project for the Llanyglo Big Wheel was set a-going.
The promise that Howell Gruffydd had made behind his hand to John Pritchard had already begun to be redeemed. The Town Hall was not three months old before a Grand Bazaar was held there in aid of the Llanyglo Joint Chapels. ”

“ Now when the Wakes people come to Llanyglo, and the pleasant family parties yield place a little, and drive in the mountains more frequently, and leave the Pier and Promenade a little earlier, and gather more often at one another's hotels—even then that dancing-hall is so vast that twenty different elements can be accommodated there without mixing or encroachment. ”

“ Llanyglo had for some time been far from exacting; it was now, in certain of its phases, at any rate, almost exacting in the opposite direction. As many social allowances were made for the young man who had something "on" as liberties were granted to properly affianced couples who had got their certificate that it would "do." Percy Briggs would have gone off alone, with his hat on the back of his head and cheerfully whistling, at the least hint that John Willie had something "on." ... But this that had come so suddenly and overmasteringly over John Willie was a different thing altogether. ”

“ Dafydd Dafis, whose head for a day and a half had drooped like a wet head of corn, gave a quick gleaming glance.
"They not build it any more quick than it can be pulled down again," he said quickly. "They come out of the house sometime to work, I think. They not gentry with lot of money, whatever."
And that was true. The Kerrs could hardly earn their living by drinking beer and having continually to mount guard over the house they had made.
"There will be no peace in Llanyglo now till Mr. Tudor Williams has been." ”

“ All (as afterwards at the Llanyglo P.S.A. Meetings) were to be welcome. The project was talked over, at first informally at the Llanyglo Stores, afterwards more seriously at the "Montgomery"; and a few days later the rumour was confirmed by print. Eesaac Oliver Gruffydd and Hugh Morgan distributed a number of handbills, thrusting them into folk's hands in the stake-and-wire-enclosed streets, pushing them under doors, and even entering that Reservation on the shore where the Cambrians sat stiffly, reading their novels, toying with their fancy-work, or dozing after lunch. ”