Welsh Journals

Search over 450 titles and 1.2 million pages

immovable matter as Matthew of Westminster's Chronicle, folio, 1601, written too in an unintelligible lingo and believe it or not, actually gave five shillings for it. Need I say that upon this compulsive Upstairs and its challenge to my book- lore and greed need I say that I looked with no less elation than Moses felt when he beheld the Promised Land, or the Serpent when he first pondered the pippins of Paradise, or to bring the whole thing nearer home (a Man of Gwent is speaking) than Sir Henry Morgan knew as he assessed the splintering gates of the loot-laden City of Panama. Nor need I (I trust) remind you that this was no question of loot for loot's sake. I had always loved books and their testimony to our human aspirations, their record of human achievement, their enormous variety, and their mastery of the art indeed, the arts of communication — to say nothing of the pride of possession and the privilege of preservation. But these are sentiments for another occasion. Our present business is to indicate the wonders of Upstairs. What have we here? Nothing less than the Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings, etc., etc. Plus the Appendix etc: 10 volumes plus 1, large folio 163/4" x lOW, 1776-79, 10 vols + 1, contemp. leather bdg with e-ps, 1776-79, 11 vols bd as 5: Some 5000 double-columned pp. 'Marked two pounds, but seeing as it's you, make it thirty bob. I know you'll give 'em a good home.' Thus cajoled and seeing as it was me I handed over Alice's banknotes and took possession of the books, though how I got them to that same good home via Lime Street and Wigan Railway Station I now cannot imagine, but get them I did, and in due course they got themselves the whole way to the National Library of Wales. In any case, this is neither the time nor place for detail. For the immediately curious there is the official Catalogue and Mr Paul Bennett Morgan's pleasant and informative article in the N.L.W. Journal, Summer 1989. My own concern is to place on record the vital part played by my first wife Alice in the (then untitled) Casgliad's creation. In brief, the 650 volumes or so that would later constitute the Casgliad Castell Gwyn a treasure-house of Literature and History, 1594-1862 (with many later forays, as witness the Section heading 'Ausonius to Yeats') in the main were Alice's typically happy and unselfish gift to me, and inevitably thereafter to our National Library and the Welsh Nation. There is a Providence! Gwyn found and coveted the books, and Alice paid for them, a division of labour entirely satisfactory to us both, and so prodigal of good results that I strongly recommend it to all young married couples; and though in life's golden heyday it was not our lot to raise a family, later when the years silvered, we could claim with ameliorative pride that between us we had conjured forth a right royal