In the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth on Thursday afternoon – a distinctly 1930s grand edifice standing on the top of a steep! hill just outside what must have been the town boundary when it was built. It is recently restored, to within an inch of its life, down to wood veneer lockers matching the original fittings. (Perhaps a Welsh Assembly spending prioirty, not that I’m complaining.) And the sheep grazing in the field in front are a nice touch – a bit different to the Euston Road at the British Library.
It is slightly disconcerting to be here, in the UK, in foreign language territory – the signs have Welsh first, so I have to remember to look at the secondary text to make any sense of them. Everyone is also speaking Welsh – if, perhaps, you get the feeling, a trifle self-consciously, as a political statement rather than a natural habit. Down in the town, I will find, everyone speaks English, in the conversations you overhear.
The ones speaking so that I can pick out the sound of each word, if none of the meanings, are the ones working hardest at it. Previous exposure to Welsh has shown me that spoken by a real native speaker, it is just one long flow of apparently unbroken syllables. (When I rang the tourist office and was offered the name of a B&B I had to ask to have it spelt out before I had any hope of converting the sounds into something I could pronounce.)
One of the purposes for being here is to check out the original papers of the Lady of Quality, Miss Francis Williams Wynn, to see just how much the Victoian male editor bowdlerised them.
So I have two of them sitting before me as I write, two small leather-bound notebooks. One, NLW MS 2775A, is very simply bound, and a flowing FWW has been scratched into the front of it. The other, 2776B, has a library binding, moderately ornamented brown with a gold strip around the front and decoration along the spine.
Miss Williams Wynn’s hand is flowing, open, expansive, and immediately accessible. (Whew – makes life so much easier.) She’s hand-numbered each page (probably in one run after the text was written, judging by the way in places the text interferes with the numbers) and written her own index at the front – helping confirm the thought that this is more commonplace book than diary.
“B†has written in the front “F. William Wynn July 1824.” A has marbled front page with the binding and goes straight into theh unheade d index. In pencil, with “A. Haywood”, her editor, at the top.
Thrust into “B†is a tiny note, the paper no more than 10cm by 5cm, in a very small hand, reading.
My dear Miss Wynn,
I return you your book with many thanks for the pleasure which I have derived from its perusal. How much more interesting does Lady Nithsdale story become when we reads it as it was written, & not moderized. into a fashionable Novel.
I trust you will receive this in time before you start wishing you a bon voyage ????? sincerely
M. Fortescue Harriet (?)
Saturday morning
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