Dafydd married Rebecca Samuel in 1824, when he was twenty-four and she was twenty-one. Rebecca was a practical, hard-working and capable woman, the perfect foil to her husband, who was an intellectual and a bit of a dreamer. They shared the same religious outlook; indeed, it is highly likely that their religion brought them together since it was uncommon to marry interdenominationally, the consequences of which could be as harsh as total exclusion from chapel and community life. Their daughter Elin was born in 1826, Betsy two years later. Each birth was proudly inscribed in the family Bible, as was that of Rebecca and Dafydd’s only son, Richard, in 1834.
Rebecca Llwyd had exceptional strength of character and was known for her independence of mind, her fierce protection of her family and her strict, almost puritanical views on religion. She was the matriarch, and took care of the practical, day-to-day care of the family. She believed in hard work, discipline and self-improvement, as did her husband. Dafydd set his family a stern example, putting in long hours at his shoemaking by day and sitting up until the early hours working on his sermons by candlelight. In 1820, Dafydd and his fellow local intellectuals set up a debating society in Criccieth. The ‘Cymreigyddion’ (the Welsh Scholars) gathered regularly to discuss religious and political issues.
Dafydd and Rebecca were devout, patriotic Welsh citizens, part of the largely self-educated, chapel-going, economically depressed but intellectually ambitious elite of mid-nineteenth-century Wales. Dafydd Llwyd may have been a working-class man who made shoes for a living, but at the same time he was a leader within his community by virtue of the fact that he was a minister and a man of learning.
Rebecca and Dafydd could not afford to indulge their children. They lived their lives in hope of reward in the next world. Rebecca’s faith was put to the test when in 1839, with Betsy only eleven years old, Dafydd fell seriously ill. He had been suffering from a stomach complaint periodically, but this time it was to prove fatal. With no money to pay for medical help, Dafydd tried to treat himself with ‘Morrison’s Universal Medicine’ pills, as advertised in one of his periodicals, but to no avail. He died on 25 October at the age of thirty-nine, and was buried in the tiny cemetery bordering Capel Ucha.
Dafydd’s death was both an emotional and a practical tragedy for Rebecca. Left alone with three small children, she could not afford to grieve for long. This determined and resourceful woman refused to accept the fate of many widows, who sold their possessions to settle mounting bills before going into service or accepting charity. She chose instead to take on her husband’s shoemaking business herself. Richard was only five years old, and Rebecca knew that she would have to carry the burden alone for many years, but she had courage and stamina. Until her son was old enough to take over she employed two cobblers, Robert and Richard Morris, who lived with the family in Highgate. The overcrowding was slightly eased by the fact that Elin had left home to work as a maid at a nearby farm, but life was still hard. Rebecca rose early to set the journeymen to work and supervised their labour during the day, walking a twelve-mile round trip to the neighbouring coastal town of Pwllheli if necessary to buy materials. Late at night when the family were asleep, she would work by candlelight preparing accounts which she would deliver on foot to neighbouring houses and farms the following day, walking for miles over open countryside. Her efforts alone could not sustain the whole family, so Betsy had to leave school. After a period at home helping her mother, she followed her sister into service.
As a young woman, Betsy was a mild character, a devout Baptist like her parents, bright like her father, and attractive. She was described by her youngest son William as ‘a good looking woman of medium height, fair complexion, very dark hair and bright brown eyes giving a most winning expression to her thoughtful face’.2 She had a kind and gentle nature, in contrast with Rebecca’s rather stern manner. Betsy suffered from episodes of asthma throughout her life, and she was never physically strong. Hard work from an early age, coupled with poor sanitation and rudimentary medical care, frequently led to some kind of chronic complaint, and her condition was not unusual.
At around sixteen Betsy found a place as a maid and lady’s companion in Pwllheli. The ports of North Wales were becoming significant centres of commerce as large sailing ships carried passengers and goods between Britain and the rest of the world. Pwllheli was a bustling, lively town. Betsy became a regular attender at the Pwllheli Baptist Chapel, and there, when she was approaching thirty years of age, she met a teacher who led an adult class in Sunday School. He was an eloquent, welleducated widower by the name of William George.
Eight years Betsy’s senior, William was handsome, with dark hair and striking blue eyes. He was a sensitive, driven man who was a good teacher and a would-be intellectual. Of average height and broadshouldered, he was described by his youngest son as ‘well knit together with a somewhat thin pale face surmounted by a thick crop of dark hair, a high broad forehead, large lively eyes indicating a quick perceptive mind, a heart full of sympathy and tenderness, and all his movements quick but firm and determined’.3 His pupils would remember him as a passionate Baptist who was never beaten in debate.
William George was born in North Pembrokeshire in 1820, the son of staunch Baptists David and Mary George, who had a large farm called Trecoed. David died when William was very young, and the children were raised by Mary and her second husband, Benjamin Williams. From an early age William showed more interest in books than in animals. Life in an urban environment appealed to his hunger for experience and advancement, so he left home at seventeen to seek his fortune in the town of Haverfordwest.
William may have been intelligent and ambitious, but he lacked firm purpose and direction in life. First apprenticed to a pharmacist and then to a draper, he drifted from position to position, recording in his diary his dreams of becoming a great intellectual. He could not settle in any trade because he was determined to continue his studies, often reading late into the night, which made him tired and inefficient by day. His determination to study stemmed from the fact that any opportunity to improve his lot could be obtained only through education. Indeed, he had been lucky to attend school to the age of sixteen, since education would not be provided by the state until 1833.
The level of education in Wales was poor even by the standards of the nineteenth century. Children who spoke nothing but Welsh were taught in English, often by teachers who barely spoke the language themselves, and in appalling conditions. The overwhelming majority of the general population were nonconformists, but only members of the Anglican Church could become pupil-teachers. The Baptist William George nevertheless decided that teaching would be his profession, which meant that he would have to study full-time to gain a qualification.
At around the age of twenty-one William plucked up the courage to move to London and enrol in the Battersea Teachers’ Training Institute. For the first time he experienced intellectual fulfilment as he finally found the guidance he had been searching for. He described the experience as the most useful year of his life, ‘the means by which he was brought from a miserable, useless life to…a happy one and not altogether destitute of usefulness to others’.4 After qualifying as a teacher he went on to hold several short-term teaching positions in London, recording in his diary his agonising internal debate over what he would do with his life: ‘I am still very unsettled in my mind as to my future plans and prospects. I cannot somehow make up my mind to be a schoolmaster for life…I want to occupy higher ground sometime or other. I want to increase the stock of my attainments but hardly know how to set about it.’5
This ‘higher ground’ was William’s secret desire to try his hand at writing. Spurred on by his ambition, he arrived in Liverpool around 1846. By then he had spent so much time away from his native land that he had all but forgotten its language. ‘I wished to say a few words to you in Welsh,’ he wrote to his mother, ‘—but I am sorry that I cannot do so, although Welsh is my mother tongue—and I knew very little English until I was nine years of age—but I have used English ever since. The English language has done with me what the English