Welsh Journals

THE PERSONALITY OF TOWNS EVERY parent knows that in the life of his lad there is a period when, for a while, he is a puzzle and an anxiety. It is the time when his pre- cociousness wanes, when no more he says the wonderful things of a brilliant childhood, and he becomes very much as other boys. He assimilates to type. He is neither extremely clever nor a dismal dullard. It is a time when, even to parents' eyes, dreams break and fancies fail when the lad of parts becomes the lad of the past. And every parent ought to know that these months or years, in which the promise seems broken, and the angles of dissimilarity are worn down to the general design, contain the critical days out of which will result the real boy. He will re-make angles and become a personality, or he will remain one of the many fellows of no special distinction and of no importance. Every parent knows of these indefinite, indeterminate days. A strange opening to an attempt at explaining the personality of Swansea Yet, I shall plead, not one without excuse. For the writer who would tell readers of The Welsh Outlook what are the present day characteristics of the town of his birth and love, is in the predicament of the needy knife- grinder, who had no story. Swansea, to-day, is in that stage of growth when anything may happen, when it may fulfil the hopes born in years of precoc- iousness, or walk along that path of material pros- perity which will take it unawares to ease and ex- tinction. It is in the tween" times. It may again become the leader and the voice of Wales, the new Wales caring most for those Celtic virtues which arc of the spirit and not the flesh. It may, sans soul, sans aspirations, sans vision, decay to fatness, to riches, to oblivion. Thus the writer sees his town, and these, in so far as the truth can be contained in generalisation, are the roads before it. But it will be early enough to speak decisively, dogmatically, of Swansea's personality when its feet are well upon the higher road for this, we know in our hearts, and by the signs of the times, shall be its road. The personality of Swansea, grown great in size and possessions, shall be that same personality which makes eighteenth century and even later days shine in our modem eyes. The town of Gomer", although it has fallen from its unique estate as the home of the preachers, poets and publishers, although in the east it sees another centre, favoured by author- ity for Welsh offices and conventions, has not for- No. 2. SWANSEA gotten its history and its obligations. The sun journeys westward, yet, to-day, we are in times of transition, and our personality, if we cling together enough to have one, is hard to define. Easy indeed would have been this work of definition fifty, sixty or seventy years ago. As easy as a definition of Cardiff's personality; but this temp- tation which assails the inner man of Swansea must be resisted-let us leave the cosmopolitan city to its own apologetic delineation, and guard our feet from straying. Fifty, sixty or seventy years ago. then, if the story which comes down to us be faithful, Swansea had a very distinct, a very strong person- ality there were giants in the earth in those days." Swansea was the home of national culture in the South. From its presses, the Rossers. the Williamses, the Griffithses, sent out books of which even the town itself has no complete record. It published Bibles and dictionaries-before me as I write is the work" designed to assist enquiring Youths and others to acquire a Knowledge of the English Language, Argraffwyd gan E. Griffiths, Heol Fawr, 1847 "-and those early equivalents to our modern fortnightly issues of a short course to general knowledge. It was then a notable birthplace of printed poems, of biographies, of pamphlets. It was the dwelling place also of preachers, who were not of a town but of a country, the habitation of Dr. Rees, for some time of Herber," of Thomas Jones and David Saunders. It was the very centre of Welsh political life and here, for repute as diplomatist, I ought to say that it is with the teeming busy south we are dealing. It was the native place of the literary society and the debating school, in which men, who have caused a large stir since, made some noise in an exhilarating air. It was, in music, the scene of many forward movements and conquests. It had a vivid personality. And that personality will persist, although its influence has somewhat waned in our days. Swansea, whatever road it will take to its destiny, will always have the past with its shadow on the present. There is some meaning, some symbolism in the fact that one of its evening journals has its foundations in soil saturated with memorials of fighting days, that the click of falling linotype matrices sounds un- ceasingly within what was the court of Henry de Gower's castle, that the thundering rhythm of a printing press echoes against its ancient walls.