The Railways of Romance – part 1

Today marks the 140th anniversary of the birth of one of Merthyr’s greatest writers – J. O. Francis. To mark the occasion, one of his excellent short essays is transcribed below, following a short introduction by Mary Owen who wrote a marvellous biography of him.

John Oswald Francis (J.O.) was born at 15, Mary Street, Twynyrodyn in 1882, and lived later at 41, High Street, next door to Howfields, when his father, a blacksmith, opened a farrier shop in the busy shopping centre. In 1896 he entered the County Intermediate and Technical School on the day of its opening and benefited greatly, like many others, from the education he received there. It formed the grounding for the rest of his life. A blacksmith’s life was not for him. In 1900, he gained a scholarship to University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, where he graduated with first class honours in English.

He lived for the rest of his life in London, where he was well known as a dramatist, journalist, broadcaster and a popular public speaker. He found fame in 1913 with his play, Change, about ordinary Welsh working-class people and the problems they were facing as changes were taking place in politics, religion and education. It was the first of its kind and gave a new genre to drama, which influenced writers for decades. Although he lived away from Merthyr Tydfil for most of his life, his knowledge of it in his youth inspired him to write about it in the years that followed until his death in 1956. His many short comedies helped to bring about the popularity of amateur dramatics, especially in Glamorgan. He was a pioneer and he became a leading member of the First Welsh National Drama Movement. He was regarded as ‘a distinguished dramatist, ‘a gentle satirist, and ‘always a Merthyr boy’.

Mary Owen

The Railways of Romance

None of us can determine which of the impressions we are always unconsciously receiving is being most deeply written on our minds. What abides is, often enough, that which might least be expected to remain. It is, too, sometimes a little incongruous, as if memory were in part jester, playing tricks with recollection – perhaps in kindness – lest the past should have too grim a visage.

Setting up to be a serious and philosophic person, I must confess to some perplexity over my remembrance of South Wales. There is an interloping thought that persists in creeping into the midst of more exalted memories. I cannot think of the high places of my early destiny – my home, my school, the houses of my more generous relations, and the chapel of my juvenile theology – but that a railway station crowds unasked into the mental scene. In the station of that Town of the Martyr in Glamorgan, an there, no doubt, small boys, stealing away from the harsh realities of the High Street, still snatch a fearful joy upon the trolleys, and staring away past the signal box, weave for themselves the figments of young romance.

The small boy’s zest in railway stations has, I may argue in self-defence, a basis in the deep instincts of humanity. In the old primitive world the barbarian, looking up on the sun, was overwhelmed by a sense of its vast power. He made a god of it, and bowed in reverence. So, also, that unequivocal barbarian, the average small boy, beholds in a railway engine an example of power well within the range of his understanding. It is, perhaps, the same old instinct of adoration that kindles in every healthy youngster his burning desire to be a railway-guard.

Even in this riper stage, when life holds joys more attractive than the right to blow the whistle and to jump authoritatively upon a moving train, I find that a railway station can still exercise a certain lure. To every good Welshman, Paddington and Euston are wondrous places. He may not be one of the happy pilgrims, but it is a pleasure merely to look at carriages that go out under such banners as “Cardiff”, “Fishguard”, “Aberystwyth”, “Dolgelley” or “Barmouth”, and if he is not quite a curmudgeon he can find a vicarious delight in the blessedness of those departing.

But Paddington and Euston have a strenuous air. They do not encourage people to loiter upon trolleys and watch the pageant of the trains. In that station of the Martyr’s Town there was more tolerance. Over Paddington and Euston it had also this other advantage – it did not monotonously receive and despatch the rolling-stock of a single company. Oh, no! It had trains in a variety that I have never since seen equalled. Almost all the lines in Glamorgan gathered to it, just as all paths are said to lead to Rome.

Simply to enumerate the companies that sent their trains to pause under that grimy but catholic roof is to recover something of the rapture of the schoolboy “with shiny morning face”. We had the “Great Western” and the “Taff”; the “London North Western”, the “Rhymney”, and the “Brecon and Merthyr”. I am sorry that, by some kindly roundabout way, the Barry Railway did not run in also. But I am sure that it was then much more than a project.

We small boys of the station-hunting breed knew the different types of engine point by point. We had each of us a favourite. Bitter indeed were our disputes on the question of comparative worth, and devotion went occasionally to the chivalry of fisticuffs. Squeaky voices were raised in partisan abuse. Young eyes shone with the light of a noble championship. (Grown-up people, I have since learnt, land themselves in the law courts for issues less important than those falsetto controversies).

The engine of each company had its own characteristic quality, fully appreciated in our loving study after school hours and in the joyous emancipation of Saturday. The “Great Western” arrived from some vague place called “Swansea” – made after the “local” model, and with its well-known “tick, tick!” rather like a stout lady in a dark-green costume catching her breath after exhausting movement. To many of us the “Taff” was the most impressive of them all. I daresay that on a general suffrage, with a secret ballot to nullify the influence of some of our brawnier members, the “Taff” would have been voted the finest thing that ever went on wheels. How big and burly was the “Taff” engine as it swung past the signal box! How cheerfully it whistled, and how inevitably did it suggest a robust representation of John Bull!

Often did we wonder what would happen if it failed to stop before it reached the buffers. About our expectant platform hung the legend of a day when an engine had crashed right through and gone in mad career almost to the door of the Temperance Hall without. But not for us were such catastrophes! They were the story of an older era, a reminiscence of giants before the flood.

To be continued…….