Education is advancing by leaps and bounds in the Principality, and sometimes lights heavily on the shoulders of some decent farmer’s son, and constrains him thenceforth to walk the world an example of the perfect prig. Culture, in fact, brings all the acrid defects of the Cymric character into prominence, and impels those who have taken it badly towards political nostrums of unpatriotic bias, or social “movements” where the faddist shrieks and has his being.
Llangollen was “discovered” in 1788 by those feminine Robinson Crusoes commonly called the “Ladies of Llangollen.” Their singular story and the alliterative title have gone forth to all the world, and are familiar where the achievements of many worthier persons are unknown. If eccentricity may rightly be considered a proper passport to fame, then the Ladies of Llangollen are justly celebrated, but if the extraordinary mental obliquity that shaped their wasted lives be looked upon pathologically, the consideration they received in their time and the tolerant interest in them in later years must seem highly mischievous.
When the Ladies first came to Llangollen, the place was but a village on the post-road to Holyhead. The newly established mail-coaches went a different route, and only one inn—the “Hand”—existed for the accommodation of travellers. But, although the road was rough, and the accommodation matched it, this was the route by which travellers between London and Ireland came and went; and so although the village was less than one-tenth the size of the Llangollen of to-day, it could not have afforded that “romantic retirement from the world” the two Ladies are said to have desired.
These eccentrics were by no means of that age or those social surroundings that might reasonably be expected to dispose them to renounce the world, its pleasures, and its duties. One of them was extremely youthful; both enjoyed the advantages of good birth and social position. Lady Eleanor Butler, the elder, by some twelve years, of the two, was twenty-nine years of age, and was the daughter of that John Butler, Member of Parliament for Kilkenny, who in 1791 obtained the reversal of the attainder which had many years before deprived his family of the Earldom of Ormonde and Ossory: the Honourable Miss Ponsonby belonged to the Bessborough family. A favourite explanation of the friendship of the two is that they were disappointed in love, and thereafter determined to live for each other, apart from the world. It is an explanation that at any rate, if quite unfounded, is evidence of a not unpleasing desire to seek romance in the most unlikely places. Lady Eleanor Butler was the originator and moving spirit in this eremitical enterprise. Tiny in stature, _petite_ in figure, and overshadowed by the tall and commanding figure of her youthful friend, she at the same time possessed and retained during the whole of their career will-power for two. Several unsuccessful attempts to elope from their homes in the neighbourhood of Waterford took place before their relatives became unwillingly convinced that their eccentricity was quite unconquerable; but at last they were allowed to depart whither they would, their respective families doubtless expecting them back again so soon as the novelty of the escapade had worn off. In May, 1788, therefore, they left Waterford for Dublin, attended by their one servant, Mary Carryl, who shared their fortunes for upwards of forty years. Landing at Holyhead, they travelled for awhile in North Wales, seeking a suitable spot. That they did not readily find one seems to throw something of a sardonic side-light upon the scheme; for even nowadays, when the tourist plumbs the deepest valleys and scales peaks often thought inaccessible, solitude is not difficult to achieve in this part of the world. Robinson Crusoe’s island, or a solitary lighthouse, would not have suited their project, which, frankly, seems to have been the building up of a reputation for eccentricity in a spot where it could readily be observed. As well might one, in these times, attempt to set up a solitary cell on the platform of Willesden Junction, and escape observation, as in those days play the hermit at Llangollen. Why, it was a halting-place on the great road between two kingdoms; with kings and princes, lords-lieutenant, peers, members of Parliament, and the whole social circle to which those two humbugs belonged travelling constantly to and fro throughout the year, within hail of their windows.