Penelope Brandling: A Tale of the Welsh coast in the Eighteenth Century

September 29, 1772.

This is my first night in what, henceforward, is going to be my home. The thought should be a happy and a solemn one; but it merely goes on and on in my head like the words of a song in some unknown language. Eustace has gone below to his uncles; and I am alone in this great room, and also, I imagine, in the whole wing of this great house. The wax lights on the dressing-table, and the unsnuffed dip with which the old housekeeper lit us through endless passages, leave all the corners dark. But the moonlight pours in through the vast, cage-like window. The moon is shining on a strip of sea above the tree-tops, and the noise of the sea is quite close; a noise quite unlike that of any running water, and methinks very melancholy and hopeless in expression. I tried to enjoy it like a play, or a romance which one reads; and indeed, the whole impression of this castle is marvellously romantic.

When Eustace had unstrapped my packages, and in his tender manner placed all my little properties in order, he took me in his arms, meaning thereby to welcome me to my new home and the house of his fathers. We were standing by the window, and I tried, foolishly it seems, to hide my weakness of spirit (for I confess to having felt a great longing to cry) by pointing to that piece of moonlit sea, and repeating a line of Ossian, at the beginning of the description of the pirates crossing the sea to the house of Erved. Foolishly, for although that passage is a favourite with Eustace, indeed one we often read during our courtship, he was annoyed at my thinking of such matters, I suppose, at such a moment; and answered with that kind of irritated deprecation that is so new to me; embracing me indeed once more, but leaving me immediately to go to his uncles.

Foolish Penelope! It is this no doubt which makes me feel lonely just now; and I can hear you, dearest mother, chiding me laughingly, for giving so much weight to such an incident. Eustace will return presently, as gentle and sympathising as ever, and all will be right with me. Meanwhile, I will note down the events of this day, so memorable in my life.

We seemed to ride for innumerable hours, I in the hired chaise, and my husband on the horse he had bought at Bristol. The road wound endlessly up and down, through a green country, with barely a pale patch of reaped field, and all veiled in mist and driving rain. There seemed no villages anywhere, only at distances of miles, a scant cottage or two of grey stone and thatch; and once or twice during all those hours, a desolate square tower among distant trees; and all along rough hedges and grey walls with stones projecting like battlements. Inland mountain lines like cliffs, dim in the rain; and at last, over the pale green fields, the sea-quite pale, almost white. We had to ask our way more than once, losing it again in this vague country without landmarks, where everything appeared and disappeared in mist. I had begun to feel as if St. Salvat's had no real existence, when Eustace rode up to the chaise window and pointed out the top of a tower, and a piece of battlemented wall, emerging from the misty woods, and a minute after we were at a tall gate tower, with a broken escutcheon and a drawbridge, which clanked up behind us so soon as we were over. We stopped in a great castle yard, with paved paths across a kind of bowling green, and at the steps of the house, built unevenly all round, battlemented and turreted, with huge projecting windows made of little panes.

There were a lot of men upon the steps, who surrounded the postchaise; they were roughly and variously dressed, some like fishermen and keepers, but none as I had hitherto seen the gentlemen of this country. But as we stopped, another came down the steps with a masterful air, pushed them aside, opened the chaise, lifted me out, and made me a very fine bow as I stood quite astonished at the suddenness of his ways. He was dressed entirely in black broadcloth, with a frizzled wig and bands, as clergymen are dressed here, and black cloth gaiters.

"May it please the fair Lady Brandling," he said, with a fine gesture, "to accept the hearty welcome of her old Uncle Hubert, and of her other kinsmen." The others came trooping round awkwardly, with little show of manners. But the one called Hubert, the clergyman, gave me his arm, waived them away, said something about my being tired from the long ride, and swept, nay, almost carried me up the great staircase and through the passages to the room where dinner was spread. Of this he excused himself from partaking, alleging the lateness of the hour and his feeble digestion; but he sat over against my husband and me while we were eating, drank wine with me, and kept up a ceaseless flow of conversation, rather fulsomely affable methought and packed with needless witticisms; but which freed me from the embarrassment produced by the novelty of the situation, by my husband's almost utter silence, and also, I must add, by the man's own scrutinising examination of me. I was heartily glad when, the glasses being removed, he summoned the housekeeper, and with another very fine bow, committed me to her charge. Eustace begged to be excused for accompanying me to my chamber, and promised to return and drink his wine presently with his kinsmen.

And now, dear mother, I have told you of our arrival at St. Salvat's; and I have confessed to you my childish fear of I know not what. "Mere bodily fatigue!" I hear you briskly exclaiming, and chiding me for such childish feelings. But if you were here, dearest mother, you would take me also in your arms, and I should know that you knew it was not all foolishness and cowardice, that you would know what it is, for the first time in my little life, to be without you.

October 5, 1772.

It has stopped raining at last, and Eustace, who is again the kindest and most considerate of men, has taken me all over the castle and the grounds, or at least a great part. St. Salvat's is even more romantically situated than I had thought; and with its towers and battlements hidden in deep woods, it makes one think of castles, like that of Otranto, which one reads of in novels; nay, I was the more reminded of the latter work of fiction (which Eustace believes to be from the pen of the accomplished Mr. Walpole, whom we knew in Paris), that there are, let into the stonework on either side of the porch, huge heads of warriors, filleted and crowned with laurel, which though purporting to be those of the Emperors Augustus and Trajan, yet look as if they might fit into some gigantic helmet such as we read of in that admirable tale.

From the house, which has been built at various times (Eustace is of opinion mainly in the time of the famous Cardinal Wolsey, as the architecture, it appears, is similar to that of His Majesty's palace at Hampton Court), into the old castle; from the house, as I say, the gardens descend in great terraces and steps into the woods and to the sea. The gardens are indeed very much neglected, and will require no doubt, a considerable expenditure of labour; but I am secretly charmed by their wild luxuriance: a great vine and a pear tree hang about the mullioned windows almost unpruned, and the box and bay trees have grown into thickets in the extraordinary kindliness of this warm, moist climate. There is in the middle of the terraces, a pond all overgrown with lilies, and with a broken leaden statue of a nymph. Here, when he was a child, Eustace was wont to watch for the transformation into a fairy of a great water snake which was said to have lived in that pond for centuries; but I well remember his awakening my compassion by telling me how, one day, his brother Thomas, wishing to displease him, trapped the poor harmless creature and cruelly skinned it alive. "That is the place of my poor water snake," Eustace said to-day; and it was the first time since our coming, that he has alluded to his own or his family's past. Poor Eustace! I am deeply touched by the evident painful memories awakened by return to St. Salvat's, which have over-clouded his reserved and sensitive nature, in a manner I had not noticed (thank Heaven) since our marriage. But to return to the castle, or rather its grounds. What chiefly delights my romantic temper are the woods in which it is hidden, and its singular position, on an utterly isolated little bay of this wild and dangerous coast. You go down the terraces into a narrow ravine, lined with every manner of fern, and full of venerable trees; past the little church of which our Uncle Hubert is the incumbent, alongside some ruined buildings, once the quarters of the Brandlings' troopers, across a field full of yellow bog flowers, and on to a high wall. And on the other side of that wall, quite unexpected, is the white, misty sea, dashing against a bit of sand and low pale rocks, where our uncles' fishing boats are drawn up, and chafing, further off against the sunken reefs of this murderous coast. And to the right and the left, great clumps of wind-bent trees and sharp cliffs appear and disappear in the faint, misty sunshine.

As we stood on the sea wall, listening to the rustle of the waves, a ship, with three masts and full sail, passed slowly at a great distance, to my very great pleasure.

"Where is she going, do you know?" I asked rather childishly.

"To Bristol," answered Eustace curtly. "It is perhaps, some West Indiaman, laden with sugar, and spirits, and coffee and cotton. All the vessels bound for Bristol sail in front of St. Salvat's."

"And is not the coast very dangerous?" I asked, for the sight of that gallant ship had fascinated me. "Are there not wrecks sometimes along those reefs we see there?"

"Sometimes!" exclaimed Eustace sadly. "Why at seasons, almost daily. All that wood which makes the blue flame you like so much, is the timber of wrecked vessels, picked up along this coast."

My eye rested on the boats drawn up on the sand of the little cove: stout black boats, such as Eustace had pointed out to me at Bristol as pilchard boats.

"And when there is a wreck?" I asked, "do your uncles go out to save the poor people with those boats?"

"Alas, dear Lady Brandling," answered an unexpected voice at my elbow, "it is not given to poor weak mortals like us to contend with the decrees of a just, though wrathful Providence."

I turned round and there stood, leaning on the sea wall, with his big liquorice-coloured eyes fixed on me, and a smile (methought) of polite acquiescence in shipwrecks, our uncle, the Reverend Hubert, in his fine black coat and frizzled white wig.

October 12, 1772.

We have been here over a fortnight now, and although it feels as if I never could grow accustomed to all this strangeness, it seems months; and those years at Grandfey, all my life before my marriage, and before our journey, a vivid dream.

Where shall I begin? During the first week Eustace and I had our meals, as seemed but natural, in the great hall with his uncles and his one cousin. For two days things went decently enough. The uncles-Simon, Edward, Gwyn, David, and the cousin, Evan, son of David, were evidently under considerable restraint, and fear (methought) of the Reverend Hubert, who seems somehow a creature from another planet. The latter sat by Eustace and me, at the high end of the table; the others, and with them the Bailiff Lloyd, at the lower. The service was rough but clean, and the behaviour, although gloomily constrained, decent and gentlemanly. But little by little a spirit of rebellion seemed to arise. It began by young Evan, a sandy-haired lad of seventeen, coming to dinner with hands unwashed and red from skinning, as he told us, an otter; and on the Reverend Hubert bidding him go wash before appearing in my presence, his father, David, taking his part, forcing the lad into his chair, and saying something in the unintelligible Welsh language, which contained some rudeness towards me, for he plainly nodded in my direction and struck the table with his fist. At this the Reverend Hubert got up, took the boy Evan by the shoulders and led him to the door, without one of the party demurring. "The lovely Lady Brandling," he said, turning to me as he resumed his place, "must forgive this young Caliban, unaccustomed like the one of the play, to beautiful princesses." I notice he loves to lard his speech with literary reminiscences, and is indeed a better read person than one would expect to meet in such a place. This was, however, only the beginning. Uncle David appeared next night undoubtedly in liquor, and was with difficulty constrained to decent behaviour. Simon, a heavy, lubberly creature, arrived all covered with mud, in shirtsleeves, and smelling vilely of stale fish. Then it was the turn of Edward, a great black man, with a scar on his cheek, to light his pipe at table, and pinch the Welsh serving wench as she passed, and whisper to her in Welsh some jest which made the others roar. Eustace and Hubert, between whom I sat at the far end, pretended not to notice, though Eustace reddened visibly, and Hubert took an odd green colour, which seems to be the complexion of his anger. And then while our clergyman uncle and Eustace busily fell to discussing literature, and even (in a manner which, under other circumstances, would have made me laugh) quoting the classics, the conversation at the lower end became loud and violent in Welsh.

"They are discussing the likelihood of a shoal of pilchards," said Hubert to me with a faint uneasy smile. "My brothers, I grieve to say, dear Lady Brandling, are but country bred, and very rough diamonds; and the Saxon, as they call our Christian language, is a difficulty to their heathenishness."

"So great a difficulty, apparently," I answered, suddenly rising from the table, for I felt indignant with the want of spirit of my two gentlemen, "that methinks I shall in future leave them to their familiar Welsh, and order my meals in my parlour, where you two gentlemen may, if you choose, have them with me." Eustace turned crimson, bit his lip; Uncle Hubert went very green; and I own I myself was astonished at my decision of tone and attitude: it was like an unknown me speaking with my voice.

Contrary to my expectation, neither Eustace nor Hubert manifested any vexation with me. We went upstairs and sat down to cards as if nothing had happened. But the next day Hubert brought me a long message of apology, which I confess sounded very much of his making up, from Uncle David. But added that he quite agreed that it was better that Eustace and I should have our meals above, "and leave the hogs to their wash." "Only," he said, with that politeness which I like so little (though Heaven knows politeness ought to be a welcome drug in this place), "I trust my dear young niece will not cast me out of the paradise I have, after so many years, tasted of; and allow her old rough Uncle Hubert occasionally to breathe the air of refinement she has brought to this castle."

Yet I notice he has but rarely eaten with Eustace and me; coming up, however, to drink wine (or pretend, for he never empties his glass and complains he has but a weak head), or play cards, or hear me sing to the harpsichord, a performance of which he seems inordinately fond.

I cannot help wondering what Eustace and he discuss, besides literature, over their wine. For Eustace must surely intend, sooner or later, to resume his position of master of St. Salvat's, and dispose, some way, of the crew of Caliban uncles.

October 18, 1772.

I ought to say something to my dear mother (though I am getting doubtful of distressing her with my small and temporary troubles) about the domestic economy of St. Salvat's. This is odd enough, to my thinking. The greater part of the castle is unoccupied, and from what I have seen, quite out of repair; nor should I have deemed it possible that so many fine dwelling-rooms could ever have been filled and choked up, as is here the case, with lumber, and, indeed, litter, of all kinds. The uncles, all except Hubert, are lodged in the great south wing, and I should guess in a manner more suitable to their looks than to their birth, while Eustace and I occupy his mother's apartments, done up in the late reign, in the north wing looking on the sea. The centre of the castle is taken up by the great hall, going from ground to ceiling, so that the two halves are virtually isolated; certainly isolated so far as I am concerned, since the fear of eavesdropping on my uncles' brawling has already stopped my using the gallery which runs under the ceiling of the hall, and connects my apartments with the main staircase. The dairy, still-room, pantry, and even the kitchen are in outhouses, from which the serving men bring in the food often in pouring rain in an incredibly reckless manner. I say "serving men," because one of the peculiarities of St. Salvat's (for I can scarce believe it to be an universal practice in England or even in Wales) is the predominance of the male sex. But let not your fancy construe this as a sign of grandeur, or conjure up bevies of lacqueys in long coats and silver badges! Like master, like man; the men at St. Salvat's have the same unkempt, sea-wolfish look as the masters, are equally foul in their habits and possess even less English. By some strange freak the cook only is not of these parts, indeed, a mulatto, knowing only Spanish. "All good sea-faring folk, able to man the boats on a stormy night," explained Uncle Gwyn, as if it were quite natural that the castle of St. Salvat's should be a headquarters of pilchard fishing! I have only seen the mulatto at a distance, and at first believed him to be an invention of Uncle Simon's, the wag of the family, who informed me he had him off a notorious pirate ship, where he had learnt to grill d--d French frogs during the late war and serve them up with capers.

The small number of women servants is scarce to be regretted, judging by the few there are. Though whether, indeed, these sluts should be judged at all as serving women I feel inclined to doubt; for no secret is made of the dairymaid and the laundress being the sultanas of Uncles Simon and Gwyn, with whom they often sit to meals; while the little waiting wench at first allotted to me was too obviously courted by the oaf Evan to be kept in my service. Uncle Hubert had indeed thought it needful to explain to me that the gentry of these parts all live worse than heathens, and has attempted (but the subject gave me little satisfaction) to confirm this by the chronique galante of the neighbourhood; 'tis wonderful how quick the man is at taking a hint, and adapting his views to his listeners', at least to mine. To come back to the maids, if such a name can be applied here, I find the only reputable woman in the castle (her age, and something in her manner give her a claim to such an adjective) is Mrs. Davies, the supposed housekeeper, who now attends on my (luckily very simple) wants. She was the foster-mother and nurse of my brother-in-law, the late Baronet; and 'tis plain there was no love lost betwixt Eustace and her. Indeed, I seem to guess she may have helped to make his infancy the sad and solitary one it was. Yet, for all this suspicion, and a confused impression (which I can't account for) that the woman is set over us to spy, I am bound to say that of all people here, not excepting Uncle Hubert here, Mrs. Davies is the one most to my taste. She has been notably beautiful, and despite considerable age, has an uncommon active and erect bearing; and there is about her harsh, dark face, and silent, abrupt manners, something which puts me at ease by its strength and straightforwardness. This seems curious after saying she has been set to spy; but 'tis my impression that in this heathenish country spying, aye, and I can fancy robbing and murdering, might be done with a clean conscience as a duty towards one's masters; and Hubert, and the memory of Sir Thomas, are the real masters, and not Eustace and I.... Will it always be so? Things look like it; and yet, at the bottom of my soul, I find a hope, almost an expectation, that with God's grace I shall clean out this Augean stable, and burn out these wasp's nests....

October 29.

On my asking about prayers, a practice I had noticed in every family since my arrival in England, Uncle Hubert excused himself by explaining that most of the common folk about here had followed Mr. Wesley's sect, and for the rest few of the household understood English. The same reason methought prevented his fulfilling his clergyman's office in public; and when three Sundays had passed, I got to think that the church in the glen was never opened at all. To my surprise last night, being Saturday, the Reverend Hubert invited us very solemnly to Divine Service the following morning; invited, for his manner was very much that of a man requesting one's company at a concert or theatrical entertainment. I am just returned, and I confess my astonishment. Uncle Hubert, though in a style by no means to my taste, and with no kind of real religious spirit, is undoubtedly a preacher of uncommon genius, nor was there any possibility, methought, that his extempore sermon was learned by heart. The flowing rhetorical style, more like that of Romish divines, was of a piece also with his conversation, and he had the look of enjoyment of one conscious of his own powers. I own the interest of the performance (for such I felt it) was so great that it was only on reflection I perceived the utter and almost indecent inappropriateness thereof. Despite the lack of English, the entire household, save the mulatto, were present, mostly asleep in constrained attitudes; and the other uncles, all except David and Gwyn, lay snoring in their pews.

My own impression was oddly disagreeable; but on the service ending, I brought myself to compliment our uncle. "You should have been a bishop," I said, "at your age, Uncle Hubert."

He sighed deeply, "A bishop? I ought to have-I might have been-everything, anything-save for this cursed place and my own weakness. But doubtless," he added, hypocritically, "it is a just decree of Providence that has decided thus. But it is hard sometimes. There are two natures in us, occasionally, and the one vanquishes and overwhelms the other. In me," and here he began to laugh, "the fisherman for pilchards has got the better of the fisherman for souls."

"Fishing appears to have wondrous attractions," I answered negligently.

He turned and looked at me scrutinisingly. "We have all had the passion, we Brandlings," he said, "except that superfine gentleman yonder," nodding at Eustace. And added, in a loud, emphatic voice, "And none of us has been a more devoted fisherman, you will admit, dear Eustace, than your lamented father."

Eustace, I thought, turned pale, but it might have been the greenish light through the bottle-glass windows of the little church, on whose damp floor we three were standing before the tombs of the Brandlings of former times, quaint pyramids of kneeling figures, sons and daughters tapering downwards from the kneeling father and mother; and recumbent knights, obliterated by centuries in the ruined roofless chapel, so that the dog at their feet, the sword by their side, let alone their poor washed features, were scarce distinguishable....

"They look like drowned people," I said, and indeed the green light through the trees and the bottle glass, and the greenish damp stains all round, made the church seem like a sea cave, with the sea moaning round it.

"Where have you seen drowned people, Penelope?" asked Eustace, and I felt a little reproved for the horridness of my imaginings.

"Nowhere," I hastily answered; "just a fancy that passed through my head. And you said there are so many wrecks on this coast, you know."

"We are all wrecks on the ocean of Time," remarked the Reverend Hubert, "overwhelmed by its flood."

"You are the bishop now," I laughed, "not the pilchard fisher," and we went through the damp churchyard of huddled grassy mounds and crooked gravestones under the big trees of the glen.

"Eustace," I said that evening, "I wish I might not be buried down there," and then, considering that all his ancestors were, I felt sorry.

But he clasped my arm very tenderly, and exclaimed with a look of deep pain, "For God's sake do not speak of such things, my love. Even in jest the words make me feel faint and sick."

Poor Eustace! I fear he is not well; and that what he has found at St. Salvat's is eating into his spirits.

November 15, 1772.

I have been feeling doubtful, for some days past, whether to send my diary regularly to my mother, lest she should be distressed (at that great distance) by my account of this place and our life here. Yet I felt as if something had suddenly happened, a window suddenly closed or a door slammed in my face, when Eustace begged me to-day to be very reserved in anything I wrote in my letters.

"These country postmasters," he said, not without hesitation, "are not to be trusted with any secrets; they are known to amuse their leisure and entertain their gossips with the letters which pass through their hands." He laughed, but not very naturally. "Some day," he said, "I will be sending a special messenger to Cardiff, and then your diary-for I know that you are keeping one-shall go to your mother. But for the present I would not say more than needful about ... about our surroundings, my dear Penelope."

I felt childishly vexed.

"'Tis that hateful Uncle Hubert;" I cried, "that reads our letters, Eustace! I feel sure of it!"

"Nonsense," answered Eustace. "I tell you that it is a well-known habit among postmasters and postmistresses in this country," and he went away a little displeased, as I thought.

My poor journal! And yet I shall continue writing it, and perhaps even more frankly now it will be read only by me; for while I write I seem to be talking to my dearest mother, and to be a little less solitary....

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