To the Ends of the Earth

“Yes,” she said. “It’s probably true—it is like a family here in Wales.”

And like all families, I said, sentimental and suspicious and quarrelsome and secretive. But Welsh nationalism was at times like a certain kind of feminism, very monotonous and one-sided.

She said, “I suppose it does look that way, if you’re a man.”

I could have said: Didn’t it look that way to you when you were a man?

She said, “As for the caravans and tents, yes, they look awful. But the Welsh don’t notice them particularly. They are not noted for their visual sense. And those people, the tourists, are seeing Wales. I’m glad they’re here, in a way, so they can see this beautiful country and understand the Welsh.”

Given the horror of the caravans, it was a very generous thought, and it certainly was not my sentiment. I always thought of Edmund Gosse saying, “No one will see again on the shore of England what I saw in my early childhood.” The shore was fragile and breakable and easily poisoned.

Jan Morris was still speaking of the Welsh. “Some people say that Welsh nationalism is a narrow movement, cutting Wales off from the world. But it is possible to see it as liberating Wales and giving it an importance—of bringing it into the world.”

We finished lunch and went outside. She said, “If only you could see the mountains. I know it’s boring when people say that—but they really are spectacular. What do you want to do?”

I said that I had had a glimpse of Portmeirion from the train and wanted a closer look, if there was time.

We drove there in her car and parked under the pines. She had known the architect Clough Williams-Ellis very well. “He was a wonderful man,” she said. “On his deathbed he was still chirping away merrily. But he was very worried about what people would say about him. Funny man! He wrote his own obituary! He had it there with him as he lay dying. When I visited him, he asked me to read it. Of course, there was nothing unflattering in it. I asked him why he had gone to all the trouble of writing his own obituary.

“He said, ‘Because I don’t know what The Times will write in the obituary they do of me.”

We walked through the gateway and down the stairs to the little Italian fantasy town on this Welsh hillside.

“He was obsessed that they would get something wrong or be critical. He had tried every way he could of getting hold of his Times obituary—but failed, of course. They’re always secret.”

She laughed. It was that hearty malicious laugh.

“The funny thing was, I was the one who had written his obituary for The Times. They’re all written carefully beforehand, you know.”

I said, “And you didn’t tell him?”

“No.” Her face was blank. Was she smiling behind it? “Do you think I should have?”

I said, “But he was on his deathbed.”

She laughed again. She said, “It doesn’t matter.”

There was a carved bust of Williams-Ellis in a niche, and resting crookedly on its dome was a hand-scrawled sign saying, THE BAR UPSTAIRS IS OPEN.

Jan said, “He would have liked that.”

We walked through the place, under arches, through gateways, past Siamese statuary and Greek columns and gardens and pillars and colonnades; we walked around the piazza.

“The trouble with him was that he didn’t know when to stop.”

It was a sunny day. We lingered at the blue Parthenon, the Chantry, the Hercules statue, the town hall. You think, What is it doing here? More cottages.

“Once, when we lost a child, we stayed up there in that white cottage.” She meant herself and Elizabeth, when they were husband and wife.

There was more. Another triumphal arch, the Prior’s Lodge, pink and green walls.

Jan said, “It’s supposed to make you laugh.”

But instead, it was making me very serious, for this folly had taken over forty years to put together, and yet it still had the look of a faded movie set.

“He even designed the cracks and planned where the mossy parts should be. He was very meticulous and very flamboyant, too, always in one of these big, wide-brimmed antediluvian hats and yellow socks.”

I was relieved to get out of Portmeirion; I had been feeling guilty, with the uncomfortable suspicion that I had been sight-seeing—something I had vowed I would not do.

Jan said, “Want to see my gravestone?”

It was the same sudden, proud, provocative, mirthful way that she had said, Want to see my grave?

I said of course.

The stone was propped against the wall of her library. I had missed it before. The lettering was very well done, as graceful as the engraving on a bank note. It was inscribed Jan & Elizabeth Morris. In Welsh and English, above and below the names, it said,

Here Are Two Friends

At the End of One Life

I said it was as touching as Emily Dickinson’s gravestone in Amherst, Massachusetts, which said nothing more than Called Back.

When I left, and we stood at the railway station at Porthmadog, Jan said, “If only these people knew who was getting on the train!”

I said, “Why should they care?”