Welsh Journals

'A GENTLE AND AMIABLE PRINCE': LOUIS-LUCIEN BONAPARTE AND WELSH STUDIES by Brynley F. Roberts, CBE, PhD, DLitt, FSA One evening in the early autumn of 1855 there were remarkable scenes at Merthyr Tydfil railway station: Large crowds had assembled to offer their greetings, among whom were several persons of distinction in the county of Glamorgan. Loud and con- tinued cheers were given for "The Prince", "The Emperor", and "The brave French army". The Prince made a suitable reply, at the close of which the carriages moved on, and the hearty hurrahs of the Cymry were lost to him only by the increasing distance. The prince had spent the day inspecting 'the huge furnaces for smelting iron, and the Cyclopean workshops that render this important and busy town so remarkable' and which were of particular interest 'to one who has devoted so much of his time to chemical studies'. He had also purchased several books, 'lluaws o lyfrau Cymraeg'. The crowds and persons of distinction had come to see and to show their high regard for 'a gentleman of noble lineage, and one who has spent so much time learning our language and becoming familiar with the honours of our nation'. This was not, as a casual reader might have assumed, a Prince of Wales but rather, as the cheers for 'the brave French army' suggest, a prince of France, a nephew of the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, Prince Louis-Lucien Bonaparte. He had come to Merthyr Tydfil at the close of a perambulation of Wales from Chester, Denbigh and Clwyd to west Wales, and so on to Brecon and Merthyr, from where he would journey onwards to Gloucester and London. It was a private visit-the prince, whose home was in London, had no official status in Britain-but it was not, however, an event shielded from public view for he was warmly welcomed wherever he went. He took the opportunity of meeting people-the gentry who accompanied him on some local tours and whose houses he visited, but also a number of leading figures in Welsh liter- ary and cultural life, both nationally and locally. For this was not simply yet another example of the Welsh tour which had become so popular with many English aristocratic and middle-class visitors, though the prince was by no means oblivious to the grandeur of the scenery around him, but rather it had 1 Accounts of the visit were published in Cambrian Journal 3 (1856), 1-13, and in Welsh in Charles o 'r Bala, 25 Awst, 1859, 262-63, 22 Medi, 281-2, from which these excerpts are taken. Cf, YCasglwr, Mawrth 1979, 6.