There is a moment in the introduction to this book, when, after the grand statement of its aim ‘to encapsulate a country’s material, natural and cultural essence’, you come on this, amongst the usual thanks being extended to archivists and professors: ‘To Roy Morgan of Mertec Evesham Ltd., Swansea, who kindly loaned the project a laptop computer.’ Just that, but from then on you suspect that this is going to be an encapsulation of a country’s material, natural and cultural essence unlike any other you have ever read.
For there in a single sentence you have the Welsh, a people little given to airs (their most popular jibe being ‘Who does he think he is?’, one directed at R. S. Thomas in his youth), or reverence (for Norman kings, at the heads of their armies, one of the most disturbing features of invading Wales was that passers-by engaged them in conversation), also a people, who, because of the scarce resources at their disposal, are used to making do. God bless Mr Morgan, and see he gets his laptop back.
But the Encyclopaedia’s most remarkable feature is that it, a reference work, is so readable. The Dictionary of Welsh Biography is a solemn march past of the great and good (and stuffed with 19th-century chapel ministers). This is a rout of everyone who has ever intrigued its four editors, John Davies, Nigel Jenkins, Menna Baines and Peredur Lynch.
‘EVANS, Margaret. Amazonian.’ Some- body has had a lot of fun classifying the entries. This 18th-century Margaret, whom Pennant met on his travels, was a wrestler, blacksmith, oarswoman, hunter and carpenter. ‘There is a tradition that her husband agreed to marry her after she beat him, and that after a second beating he gave up drinking and became prominent with the local Methodists.’
The very next entry is
EVANS, Rhys (Arise). Prognosticator . . . He became a figure of fun in the 1650s for predicting confidently the precise date of the return of the monarchy. Remarkably, he lived to see his prophecy come true; and his regard for the crown knew no bounds when the royal touch, in the person of Charles II, cured a hideously scrofulous growth on Evans’ nose.
There then follow ‘Evans, Richard, Lifeboatman’, responsible for saving 281 lives; ‘Evans, Roy and Nancy, Table Tennis players’, the Roy of whom, incredibly, was the man behind the breaking of the political deadlock between China and the United States, something which happened after he had persuaded Chou En Lai to invite table tennis teams into China; ‘Evans, Timothy John, Victim of injustice’, hanged for a murder committed by Christie, his landlord.
Interests which the editors may not share with most of their readers are indulged. On page 441 there is a group photograph of the Welsh women’s lacrosse team in the sun, showing, to considerable dramatic effect, their big, bare, brown, gleaming knees. Then there are the four entries on Willam Haggar, showman and maker of 35 short silent films before the first world war, all of which, even the hanging of Charlie Peace, he shot in Pembroke and Aberdare. Oh yes, and in 2001 the Lesbian, Gay and Bissexual Forum, established in part by the National Assembly for Wales, was founded.
There is even a roll-call of the strays, those Welshmen who have reinvented themselves, a process which, from Oliver Cromwell onwards (who in his youth used to refer to himself as ‘Cromwell alias Williams’), has involved them in raids on their surnames. Some scampered east to become Englishmen, some went the other way. Arthur Jones became the writer Arthur Machen, Ronald Jones the poet Keidrych Rhys (though there is no K in the Welsh language), Richard Lloyd the novelist Richard Llewellyn, Ivor Davies the songwriter Ivor Novello, and, most startling of all, Wayne Davies of Ynysybwl became Naunton Wayne, that most English of all light comedians, in films forever discussing cricket scores with Basil Radford in train compartments. Some splendid catty fun is had at their expense.
Thus the entry on Novello, who wrote ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’, refers to the time in the second world war when he was convicted of using black market petrol, ‘an incident commemorated in the satirical song Keep the Home Tyres Turning’. And that on the film of Richard Llewellyn’s novel How Green Was My Valley, directed in Hollywood by John Ford, cannot resist the comment that the coalmine featured in the film was sited on top of a mountain.
The sliest humour of all, as might be expected, is prompted by the Welshman who strayed furthest and fastest. Roy Jenkins from Abersychan in the industrial Valleys (though, the process accelerating, he informed his Oxford contemporaries he was from the Border) is included, but only as part of the entry on his father, the coal miner and MP Arthur Jenkins, for, whatever the political achievements of Jenkins junior, his countrymen find it hard to believe in him as anything but a posturing ponce. The English, of course, took him, and the exaggerated English accent he taught himself, at face value (people do when you imitate them), but the Encyclopaedia, while listing those achievements, adds this to them: ‘[He was] a ferocious croquet player.’ So sly, so quiet, so deadly. The French, it seems, were equally irritated by him, calling him, because of his acquired grandeur as President of the European Commission, ‘le Roi Jean Quinze.’ Geddit?
There is much fun to be got from this book, as in its entry, so delicately phrased, on the singer Dorothy Squires (‘Born in a vehicle’), and that on Queen Victoria, who ‘spent only seven nights in Wales, compared with seven weeks in Ireland and seven years in Scotland’. If nothing else, that computation does demonstrate the immense amount of work that has gone into the Encyclopaedia. English royalty, following its theft of the title Prince of Wales, is usually after something when it turns up in Wales — conquest in the case of Edward I, his sperm count in the case of James II, when he entered the waters at Holywell and prayed for an heir.
There is thus a cool precision about the entry on Edward VIII:
During a tour of the south Wales coalfield in November, 1936, Edward expressed sympathy for the plight of the unemployed; he abdicated less than a month later in order to marry the twice-divorced Wallis Simpson.
But the Encyclopaedia’s main value is as a work of reference, and just about everything you need to know about Wales is here: military defeats are listed, old heroes judiciously assessed and not crowed over, the colonial, then the Nonconformist night, described, from both of which the country is now emerging. It is all here. The most remarkable thing is that this has been made into bedside, and not just library, reading, for it is not all doom and gloom.
Let me leave you with Owain ap Cadwgan, 12th-century Welsh prince, from whom a Norman warlord Gerald de Windsor escaped by sliding down a castle privy. Nothing quite like that occurs in Welsh history, only there is more. ‘Owain then seduced Gerald’s wife . . . .’ Of course they got him in the end. They always did. But see him there for a moment, in the castle above the Teify, before the darkness closes in.