The Gossiping Guide to Wales, 1905 gives more details of the association, calling them ‘two queer old souls who, when they were young, vowed, as violently attached ladies do vow, for celibacy and a cottage, only with this difference — they fulfilled their vows. They were Irish, and they fled from matrimony as from a pestilence, and found in Llangollen a haven of rest, where, for more than half a century, they lived, and where their remains now repose under a tombstone in the churchyard near the church door. Mathews the Elder describes them as they first burst on his astonished vision in the Oswestry Theatre, which is now, by the way, a malthouse. “Oh, such curiosities! I was nearly convulsed. I could scarcely get on for the first ten minutes after my eye caught them. As they are seated, there is not one point to distinguish them from men: the dressing and powdering of the hair; their well starched neck-clothes; the upper part of their habits, which they always wear even at a dinner party, made precisely like men’s coats; and regular beaver black hats. They looked exactly like two respectable superannuated old clergymen.”’
Any distinguished visitor who passed that way a second time was expected to bring a present of carved oak. ‘The Duke of Wellington was here in 1814; and Wordsworth, who called on his tour through North Wales in 1824, composed a poem in the grounds, in which he called the house a “low-roofed cot,” greatly to the annoyance of the Ladies, who declared they could have written better poetry themselves! Amongst other visitors were Madame de Genlis, with the young Mademoiselle d’Orléans, in 1791, and Sir Walter Scott in 1825.’
Baddeley’s North Wales adds this intriguing detaiclass="underline" ‘In one of the bedrooms is a double secret cupboard containing authentic copies of the garments worn by the romantic pair.’ A French guidebook of 1914 gave the two ladies some philanthropic credit by remarking that ‘well before the beginning of the feminist movement they established in the district a refuge for young girls seeking to escape the deceits and wiles of men’.
For more upland scenery the traveller would go to Snowdon where, on its peak: ‘The visitor will be much mistaken if he comes prepared for mountain solitude, for in the season it is one of the most crowded spots in Wales. The guides have erected 2 or 3 huts on the highest point, where refreshments, such as eggs, cheese, tea, and bottled beer, may be obtained at tolerably reasonable prices, considering the labour of getting them up. In foggy or wet weather it is no slight relief to find a dry room and blazing fire. A charge of 6s. is made for bed and breakfast, to those who wish to see the sun rise.’ By 1914 the price had risen to ten shillings.
After a flying visit to Aberystwyth (‘the Biarritz of Wales’) we may track our way north again, to Liverpool. Hawthorne, the American consul for four years from 1853, said about the people, and the English in generaclass="underline" ‘I had been struck on my arrival by the very rough aspect of these John Bulls in their morning garb, their coarse frock-coats, gray hats, checked trousers, and stout shoes. At dinner-table it was not at first easy to recognise the same individuals in their white waistcoats, muslin cravats, thin black coats, with silk facings perhaps. But after a while you see the same rough figure through all the finery, and become sensible that John Bull cannot make himself fine, whatever he may put on. He is a rough animal, and his female is well adapted to him.’
Liverpool’s prosperity was founded, Black’s guidebook relates, on slaves and cotton. In 1874, it had a population of 500,000, and was the second city in the kingdom. Large scale manufactures included ‘sugar refineries, chemical works, foundries, wood and iron ship-building yards, steel works, anchor and chain cable foundries, and roperies’. Though the city’s five public parks had cost an immense amount of money the site of Liverpool was, from some unaccountable cause, ‘unhealthy. But between 1786 and 1868 upwards of three hundred million pounds have been expended in improving the town, in the formation of new streets, purchasing old obnoxious property, and in carrying out stringent sanitary improvements.’
W. H. Davies tells in his Autobiography of a Super Tramp how in the 1890s he lands at Liverpool after working his passage from the United States. The men who came with him intend to live by begging during their few days ashore: ‘They are an idle lot, but, coming from a land of plenty, they never allow themselves to feel the pangs of hunger until they land on the shores of England, when courage for begging is cooled by the sight of a greater poverty. Having kind hearts, they are soon rendered penniless by the importunities of beggars.’
Murray’s Yorkshire gives grim pictures of its industrial cities. ‘Sheffield is beyond all question the blackest, dirtiest, and least agreeable of towns. It is indeed impossible to walk through the streets without suffering from the dense clouds of smoke constantly pouring from great open furnaces in and around the town.’
As for a particular industry, we are treated to an account of saw manufacturing, ‘in which the grinder, holding the steel plate cut into the shape of a saw with both hands outstretched and nearly prostrate, leans his whole weight upon the grinding-stone, balancing himself on the points of his toes, and pressing the plate against the stone with his knees. There is a risk of being whirled over by the grindstone if he loses his balance.’
Guidebooks of thirty or forty years later give the same picture of pollution, which in any case lasted well into the present century. A tragedy which did not find an account in any guidebook comes from The Professional Papers of the Corps of Royal Engineers, 1883, telling of the collapse of a stone chimney at the Ripley Mills in Bradford on 28 December 1882. The structure, 255 feet high, was built over old coal workings. The only witness who saw the fall of the chimney reported that a few minutes after eight o’clock in the morning, ‘during a heavy gust of wind it burst out suddenly, at a considerable height above the ground, then the upper portion just settled down vertically, and finally seemed to turn slightly on its heel and fall, cutting down the Newland Mill, a four-storeyed building occupied by three different firms of worsted spinners and wool-top makers’.
The greater part of the building was razed to the ground, and some fifty-four people killed, in addition to many injured. ‘Had the chimney fallen but a few minutes sooner, the loss of life would have been far greater; fortunately it happened when most of the hands had left for breakfast. The failure of this chimney was undoubtedly due to the operation of straightening. The only wonder is that it survived that operation for twenty years.’
On our somewhat zig-zag way to the Lake District we will pass through Durham and Northumberland, with Murray’s handbook for 1890. Scenic beauty both counties have, but some of the route from Newcastle to Berwick is ‘blackened by the smoke of its innumerable coal-pits, and the unprotected plains in the upper part are blasted and parched by the fierce winds which sweep across them from the North Sea’. Now and then, however, as the traveller is hurried across the bridges, ‘he will catch glimpses of lovely valleys, with rich green meadows or deep woods’. An interesting break in the scenery might come at Haws Peel where a murderer was hanged in chains in 1792, ‘within sight of his victim’s abode, where a gibbet, a modern erection, but on the site of the original, still exists, with a wooden head (painted to imitate a dead man’s face) hanging from it’.