rel="nofollow" href="#u111bfbb0-28aa-53a8-a117-241ea2faf9ab">CHAPTER XXI
ANNE ADALISA
PUDDICOMBE
By Daniel Lleufer Thomas
Mrs. Anne Adalisa Beynon Puddicombe, writing under the pseudonym of Allen Raine (1836-1908), novelist, born on 6 Oct. 1836 in Bridge Street, Newcastle-Emlyn, was the eldest child in the family of two sons and two daughters of Benjamin Evans, solicitor of that town, by his wife Letitia Grace, daughter of Thomas Morgan, surgeon of the same place.
The father was a grandson of the Rev. David Davis (1745–1827) of Castell Howel, and the mother a granddaughter of Daniel Rowlands (1713–1790)
After attending a school at Carmarthen for a short time she was educated first (1849–51) at Cheltenham with the family of Henry Solly, unitarian minister, and from 1851 till 1856 (with her sister) at Southfields, near Wimbledon. She learnt French and Italian and excelled in music, though she was past forty when she learned the violin.
At Cheltenham and Southfields she saw many literary people, including Dickens and George Eliot. The next sixteen years she spent mainly at home in Wales, where her colloquial knowledge of Welsh was sufficient to gain her the intimacy of the inhabitants, and she acquired a minute knowledge of botany.
On 10 April 1872 she was married at Penbryn church, Cardiganshire, to Beynon Puddicombe, foreign correspondent at Smith Payne's Bank, London. For eight years they lived at Elgin Villas, Addiscombe, near Croydon, where Mrs. Puddicombe suffered almost continuous ill-health. They next resided at Winchmore Hill, Middlesex. Her husband became mentally afflicted in February 1900, and she removed with him to Bronmor, Traethsaith, in the parish of Penbryn, which had previously been their summer residence. Here he died on 29 May 1906, and here also she succumbed to cancer on 21 June 1908, being buried by the side of her husband in Penbryn churchyard. There was no issue of the marriage.
From youth Miss Evans showed a faculty for story-telling, and the influence of the Sollys and their circle helped to develop her literary instincts. At home a few sympathetic friends of like tastes joined her in bringing out a short-lived local periodical, Home Sunshine (printed at Newcastle-Emlyn). It was not however till 1894 that she took seriously to writing fiction. At the National Eisteddfod held that year at Carnarvon she divided with another the prize for a serial story descriptive of Welsh life. Her story, Ynysoer, dealing with the life of the fishing population of an imaginary island off the Cardiganshire coast, was published serially in the North Wales Observer but was not issued in book form. By June 1896 she completed a more ambitious work, which after being rejected (under the title of Mifanwy) by six publishing houses (see letter of Mr. A. M. Burghbs in Daily News, 24 July 1908) was published in August 1897, under the title A Welsh Singer. By Allen Raine.
Her pseudonym was suggested to her in a dream. Like most of her subsequent works A Welsh Singer is a simple love-story; the chief characters are peasants and sea-faring folk of the primitive district around the fishing village of Traethsaith. Despite its crudities it caught the public ear. She dramatised the novel, but it was only acted for copyright purposes. Thenceforth Mrs. Puddicombe turned out book after book in rapid succession. Her haste left her no opportunity of improving her style or strengthening her power of characterisation, but she fully sustained her first popularity mainly owing to her idealisation of Welsh life, to the prim, simple and even child-like dialogue of characters in such faulty English as the uncritical might assume Cardiganshire fishermen to speak, and also to the imaginative or romantic element which she introduces into nearly all her stories.
All her works have been re-issued and their total sales (outside America), it is stated, exceed two million copies. An Allen Raine Birthday Book appeared in 1907.
A Biography from
Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement
GARTHOWEN
CHAPTER I
A TURN OF THE ROAD
It was a typical July day in a large seaport town of South Wales. There had been refreshing showers in the morning, giving place to a murky haze through which the late afternoon sun shone red and round. The small kitchen of No. 2 Bryn Street was insufferably hot, in spite of the wide-open door and window. A good fire burnt in the grate, however, for it was near tea-time, and Mrs. Parry knew that some of her lodgers would soon be coming in for their tea. One had already arrived, and, sitting on the settle in the chimney corner, was holding an animated conversation with his landlady, who stood before him, one hand akimbo on her side, the other brandishing a toasting fork. Her beady black eyes, her brick-red cheeks and hanks of coarse hair, were not beautiful to look upon, though to-day they were at their best, for the harsh voice was softened, and there was a humid gentleness in the eyes not habitual to them. Her companion was a young man about twenty-three years of age, dark, almost swarthy of hue, tanned by the suns and storms of foreign seas and many lands, As he sat there in the shade of the settle one caught a glance of black eyes and a gleam of white teeth, but the easy, lounging attitude did not show to advantage the splendid build of Gethin Owens. One of his large brown fists, resting on the rough deal table, was covered with tattooed hieroglyphics, an anchor, a mermaid, and a heart, of course! Anyone conversant with the Welsh language would have divined at once, by the long-drawn intonation of the first words in every remark, that the subject of conversation was one of sad or tender interest.
"Well, indeed," said Mrs. Parry, "the-r-e's missing you I'll be, Gethin! We are coming from the same place, you see, and you are knowing all about me, and I about you, and that I supp-o-s-e is making me feel more like a mother to you than to the other lodgers."
"Well, you have been like a mother to me, mending my clothes and watching me so sharp with the drink. Dei anwl! I don't think I ever took a glass with a friend without you finding me out, and calling me names. 'Drunken blackguard!' you called me one night, when as sure as I'm here I had only had a bottle of gingerpop in Jim Jones's shop," and he laughed boisterously.
"Well, well," said Mrs. Parry, "if I wronged you then, be bound you deserved the blame some other time, and 'twas for your own good I was telling you, my boy. Indeed, I wish I was going home with you to the old neighbourhood. The-r-e's glad they'll be to see you at Garthowen."
"Well, I don't know how my father will receive me," said her companion thoughtfully. "Ann and Will I am not afraid of, but the old man—he was very angry with me."
"What did you do long ago to make him so angry, Gethin? I have heard Tom Powell and Jim Bowen blaming him very much for being so hard to his eldest son; they said he was always more fond of Will than you, and was often beating you."
"Halt!" said Gethin, bringing his fist down so heavily on the table that the tea-things jingled, "not a word against the old man—the best father that ever walked, and I was the worst boy on Garthowen slopes, driving the chickens into the water,