At home with the Graysons...
The following is an extract from My Brother Denys by Nicholas Monsarrat, which contains a detailed description of Trearddur Bay between the wars.
"Except for the Cottles, all the original families returned after the First World War, and there were new ones in plenty to sustain and promote our vitality.
"Foremost among these were the Graysons, who must have arrived very soon after the war. Sir Henry Grayson was a Liverpool ship-owner of some consequence: he had substantial resources, unlimited charm, and a family of twelve children. They were a wholly fascinating family, with just that touch of fantasy appropriate to a fairy-tale world. I forget the names of the elder children, but the last five, roughly our contempories, were three ravishing girls - Monica, Meryl, and Angela - and the Twins, Ambrose and Godfrey. The latter were the sort of Twins who demand the use of capital letters: they were inseparable, deeply loyal to each other, and so naughty that Denys and I had the novel experience of being held up to them as good examples. This was quite enough to invest them with a special degree of significance.
"The Graysons, having bought a substantial section of the coast adjoining 'Hafod', built and settled down in the largest house ever likely to adorn Trearddur Bay: a huge, rambling place, with courtyards, walled gardens, a squash-court, and sufficient garage-space and stabling to accomodate the cars and horses which fourteen people, their husbands, wives, families, and friends, were bound to aquire. They were almost a separate community themselves: as the elder children got married, houses and cottages were built for them nearby. Indeed our house, 'Hafod', eventually became a sort of Naboth's Vineyard entirely surrounded by Grayson territory. We did not mind: hospitable, unexacting, and never dull, they were ideal neighbours to have.
"Their house was called 'Ravenspoint'. We often used to go over there to play with the three girls or the Twins, climbing the stile of our own garden wall, crossing the next field which sometimes yielded a useful crop of mushrooms, and then making our way over the lawn to the house itself. It was like stepping on to a very crowded stage full of unrelated characters from different plays. Some of them would greet us, particularly Lady Grayson herself, who had the welcoming charm and unfailing kindness which too often one looks for in vain outside the classier kind of novel; others had forgotten who we were, or had never known; others still, themselves visitors, took us for Grayson children and discovered a family likeness. Cars drove up, disgorging fresh arrivals who would often be quarrelling: we would be invited to play charades, to retrieve tennis-balls, to have a cup of a very special kind of chocolate which had just arrived from Zurich. Once, from an aircraft which had crash-landed in a nearby field, a young man in evening dress stepped out and made his way to join us on the terrace. He received an uproarious greeting, being, I think, a cousin. Weaving a quick and graceful path among us as we sat there, small Italian footmen in yellow liveries darted to and fro, like gold-fish doomed by fate to wait on their larger neighbours. Off the stage one sometimes heard them cursing, in torrential Italian, a delivery boy who could only answer in Welsh. Somewhere on the outer rim of the circle, tall, dignified, benign, and very handsome, Sir Henry Grayson gave his flawless interpretation of the part of the head of the family. He was not the sort of man whom even twelve children, their relatives, and their friends, could ever surprise or dismay.
"There were fourteen dogs.
"When we had done our duty by the grown-ups, we went off to play with the younger children. The three girls were about Felicity's age, the Twins were contemporaries of Denys: I hovered uneasily between the two camps, varying an ambition I could not yet define with a condescension I was hardly entitled to. But girls being what they are, I usually ended up with the Twins. They had an Italian nurse called Providentia, a rather unstable character (as well she might be) who frequently burst into tears at some fresh enormity of the Twins, and whom they then comforted and charmed back to laughter again. It is difficult to describe how odd these supernumerary players, the Italian footmen and the nurse Providentia, seemed to us, when they were first set against our staid Welsh back-cloth. But when we got used to them they grew, like the Graysons themselves, to be an essential part of Trearddur Bay, and one we would have missed tremendously.
"To prevent the Twins quarrelling, their toys had either to be duplicated or specially designed to accomodate both of them at once. They had a huge toy motor-car built on these lines, in which they rode tandem at a break-neck speed: there was a two-seated, square-ended punt wherein, sitting facing each other, they would row wildly in opposite directions, using the most hair-raising language at the tops of their voices while the water churned to boiling foam and Providentia, clasping her hands, screamed directions and threats from the bank. Left to themselves, the Twins quarrelled and sometimes fought, but if an outsider ever took a hand they abandoned everything and, welded into a furious alliance, defied all comers.
"We always enjoyed the time we spent over at 'Ravenspoint'; there was an endless variety of things to do and to learn. This large and lively family, different from any we had known before, made our own nursery seem little more than a retreat for the shy and the timid; and until Denys and I became preoccupied with sailing, we thought it by far the best way of spending the day. But perhaps, even as we played there, the sea was beginning subtly to pull. 'Ravenspoint', standing high up on the southerly arm of the bay, commanded a magnificent view of the whole coast-line nearly to South Stack lighthouse. On rough days the waves, surging in with the full force of the gale behind them, swept past in successive mile-long crests, piling up until they broke in a white flurry and fell thunderously onto the beach. One wanted to ride in with them, in some tough and gallant craft which refused to sink... In one corner of the garden, on a jutting headland with a steep fall to the sea, a figure-head from an old sailing-ship had been set up. It represented a buxom goddess with black hair and gilded eye-lashes, who, turning her back on these strange mortals, stared across the moving water towards the Cardigan Hills. Staring with her, we sometimes suspected that she had the right idea."
"Except for the Cottles, all the original families returned after the First World War, and there were new ones in plenty to sustain and promote our vitality.
"Foremost among these were the Graysons, who must have arrived very soon after the war. Sir Henry Grayson was a Liverpool ship-owner of some consequence: he had substantial resources, unlimited charm, and a family of twelve children. They were a wholly fascinating family, with just that touch of fantasy appropriate to a fairy-tale world. I forget the names of the elder children, but the last five, roughly our contempories, were three ravishing girls - Monica, Meryl, and Angela - and the Twins, Ambrose and Godfrey. The latter were the sort of Twins who demand the use of capital letters: they were inseparable, deeply loyal to each other, and so naughty that Denys and I had the novel experience of being held up to them as good examples. This was quite enough to invest them with a special degree of significance.
"The Graysons, having bought a substantial section of the coast adjoining 'Hafod', built and settled down in the largest house ever likely to adorn Trearddur Bay: a huge, rambling place, with courtyards, walled gardens, a squash-court, and sufficient garage-space and stabling to accomodate the cars and horses which fourteen people, their husbands, wives, families, and friends, were bound to aquire. They were almost a separate community themselves: as the elder children got married, houses and cottages were built for them nearby. Indeed our house, 'Hafod', eventually became a sort of Naboth's Vineyard entirely surrounded by Grayson territory. We did not mind: hospitable, unexacting, and never dull, they were ideal neighbours to have.
"Their house was called 'Ravenspoint'. We often used to go over there to play with the three girls or the Twins, climbing the stile of our own garden wall, crossing the next field which sometimes yielded a useful crop of mushrooms, and then making our way over the lawn to the house itself. It was like stepping on to a very crowded stage full of unrelated characters from different plays. Some of them would greet us, particularly Lady Grayson herself, who had the welcoming charm and unfailing kindness which too often one looks for in vain outside the classier kind of novel; others had forgotten who we were, or had never known; others still, themselves visitors, took us for Grayson children and discovered a family likeness. Cars drove up, disgorging fresh arrivals who would often be quarrelling: we would be invited to play charades, to retrieve tennis-balls, to have a cup of a very special kind of chocolate which had just arrived from Zurich. Once, from an aircraft which had crash-landed in a nearby field, a young man in evening dress stepped out and made his way to join us on the terrace. He received an uproarious greeting, being, I think, a cousin. Weaving a quick and graceful path among us as we sat there, small Italian footmen in yellow liveries darted to and fro, like gold-fish doomed by fate to wait on their larger neighbours. Off the stage one sometimes heard them cursing, in torrential Italian, a delivery boy who could only answer in Welsh. Somewhere on the outer rim of the circle, tall, dignified, benign, and very handsome, Sir Henry Grayson gave his flawless interpretation of the part of the head of the family. He was not the sort of man whom even twelve children, their relatives, and their friends, could ever surprise or dismay.
"There were fourteen dogs.
"When we had done our duty by the grown-ups, we went off to play with the younger children. The three girls were about Felicity's age, the Twins were contemporaries of Denys: I hovered uneasily between the two camps, varying an ambition I could not yet define with a condescension I was hardly entitled to. But girls being what they are, I usually ended up with the Twins. They had an Italian nurse called Providentia, a rather unstable character (as well she might be) who frequently burst into tears at some fresh enormity of the Twins, and whom they then comforted and charmed back to laughter again. It is difficult to describe how odd these supernumerary players, the Italian footmen and the nurse Providentia, seemed to us, when they were first set against our staid Welsh back-cloth. But when we got used to them they grew, like the Graysons themselves, to be an essential part of Trearddur Bay, and one we would have missed tremendously.
"To prevent the Twins quarrelling, their toys had either to be duplicated or specially designed to accomodate both of them at once. They had a huge toy motor-car built on these lines, in which they rode tandem at a break-neck speed: there was a two-seated, square-ended punt wherein, sitting facing each other, they would row wildly in opposite directions, using the most hair-raising language at the tops of their voices while the water churned to boiling foam and Providentia, clasping her hands, screamed directions and threats from the bank. Left to themselves, the Twins quarrelled and sometimes fought, but if an outsider ever took a hand they abandoned everything and, welded into a furious alliance, defied all comers.
"We always enjoyed the time we spent over at 'Ravenspoint'; there was an endless variety of things to do and to learn. This large and lively family, different from any we had known before, made our own nursery seem little more than a retreat for the shy and the timid; and until Denys and I became preoccupied with sailing, we thought it by far the best way of spending the day. But perhaps, even as we played there, the sea was beginning subtly to pull. 'Ravenspoint', standing high up on the southerly arm of the bay, commanded a magnificent view of the whole coast-line nearly to South Stack lighthouse. On rough days the waves, surging in with the full force of the gale behind them, swept past in successive mile-long crests, piling up until they broke in a white flurry and fell thunderously onto the beach. One wanted to ride in with them, in some tough and gallant craft which refused to sink... In one corner of the garden, on a jutting headland with a steep fall to the sea, a figure-head from an old sailing-ship had been set up. It represented a buxom goddess with black hair and gilded eye-lashes, who, turning her back on these strange mortals, stared across the moving water towards the Cardigan Hills. Staring with her, we sometimes suspected that she had the right idea."