Welsh Journals

For 'workers housing' we should of course read 'workers homes'. All but two of these photographs are of exteriors, but to most Welshmen what will be evoked is the lives that were led in these houses. Here is a reminder that our written history tends to be all too concerned with public and political events whilst our memories recall mainly personal and family events. Are our memories as yet richer than what historians have offered? Have we yet done justice to the lives of those who lived in these houses? What do we know of the dramas that were played out in these two, three, and four-roomed houses, and how much have we discussed the values of the society that created this housing and, in turn, the values, emotions and aspirations that were generated within these walls? Unless we can determine what went on in these homes our history can only be a caricature of the past. PETER STEAD Swansea. PAUL J. MCCARTNEY, Henry De La Beche: Observations on an Observer. Friends of the National Museum of Wales, 1977. PP. xiv, 76. £ 3.00. It is perhaps apt that someone from Swansea, though not a geologist, should write about this first study of Sir Henry De La Beche (1796-1855), because although Dr. McCartney says that he is a virtually forgotten pioneer of modern geology, his name is certainly well known in Swansea, with its Delabeche Street and its Delabeche Road. This is a study of the man as a scientific observer and as a kind of politician or entrepreneur of science not a gossipy biography, and his connections with Wales are left rather vague. De La Beche was a friend of the Swansea industrialist L. W. Dillwyn, his daughter married Dillwyn's son Lewis Llewelyn Dillwyn, and the couple lived at Hendrefoilan, which now forms part of University College, Swansea. It was Elizabeth De La Beche Dillwyn who designed the superb 'Etruscan ware' made at Swansea, 1847-50. Like De La Beche himself, the Dillwyn circle in and around Swansea were as interested in art as in science-for them the 'Two Cultures' were not separate entities-and their monument is the fine old Royal Institution of South Wales in Swansea (1835). Elizabeth's daughter became Mrs. Nicholl of Merthyr Mawr, and much of the material on which this book is based came to the National Museum from Merthyr Mawr, through the energy of the late Dr. North, who collected a good deal of the material used for this book. Dr. North endeavoured to make the public aware of De La Beche's great pioneering work, but it was at a time when the history of early-nineteenth-century science was rather out of fashion. Although one of his mentors was Dean Conybeare (known to us as the great reviver of Llandaff Cathedral), and although a friend of Dean Buckland (who worked in south Wales and discovered the celebrated 'Red Lady' at Paviland in Gower), De La Beche was a progressive scientific rationalist, hostile to religion and pious humbug and all forms of obscurantism, and was also a kind of radical in politics. Dr. McCartney observes that in his despair and fury at the rejection of the first Reform Bill in 1831, De La Beche suggested that the public should turn on the ruling classes (whom he called 'scum') and refuse to pay their taxes,