IN SEPTEMBER 1906, the contents of a small farm in Carmarthenshire got here up on the market by auction. Everything was to go: corn, hay, rows of potatoes, cattle, horses, pigs — even among the household furniture. The seller was a 19-year-old farmer who had taken over the farm three years earlier on the death of his father. His mother had died 4 years previously.
The money raised was enough for the young man, Daniel Evans — who had needed his guardians’ permission to sell, as he was not yet a legal adult — to set out on his path to ordination.
Within days of the sale, Daniel left farming behind him. He took the train to Lampeter, a slow, 20-mile, branch-line ride, where he found lodgings. His long-term plan was to enrol on the University in Lampeter and take the degree required for ordination. St David’s College, Lampeter, had been founded in 1822 as a university for Welsh ordinands, who were unable to travel to, and study in, Oxford or Cambridge, to arrange for the priesthood and procure the crucial qualifications for ordination.
By 1906, the faculty was well-established within the small Ceredigion town. With only an elementary village education to his name, nonetheless, Daniel first had to check for the faculty’s entry qualifications. He due to this fact enrolled at St David’s College School on 29 September 1906, to start out work on the muse syllabus.
DANIEL EVANS was my wife’s grandfather. The family has an intriguing notebook covering his time as each a student and a curate. It shouldn’t be a scientific diary, but a miscellany of private thoughts, accounts, addresses, copies of reports on his work, and even the draft text of a petition asking for a recent postbox in New Quay, Ceredigion.
The first entry lists the prices incurred in autumn 1906 when starting out on his recent life. These, within the shillings (s.) and pence (d.) of pre-decimal currency, included: his travel to Lampeter (4s. 0d.); cap and hat (5s. 6d.); collars and braces (4s. 0d.); copy books and envelopes (1s. 0d.); fountain pen (7s. 6d.). At the tip of his first term, he copied his headmaster’s report into the notebook: “He has entered into the spirit of the lifetime of the School and can soon surmount all his difficulties.”
What those difficulties may need been may be only guessed at. Certainly, he was adjusting to an enormous change in his lifestyle, but his school report for the next term (Lent 1907) hints at a selected explanation: his language skills. English was the language of education in the college and the faculty, but English was Daniel’s second language — a language that he would have had no cause to make use of once he had left the village elementary school. Welsh was spoken at home, and together with his friends and neighbours.
The report confirmed his conduct as excellent, and noted that “He is doing good regular work.” His arithmetic, algebra, and Euclid geometry were “satisfactory”, but of his English it stated that, although he worked hard, it was nevertheless “very weak. He should read more.”
The tabulated grocery bills from Daniel’s early years as a student will certainly be of interest to economic historians as a measure of inflation: six eggs cost six “old” pennies (6d.); 2 lbs of sugar cost 5d. A term’s tuition fee was £3 5s. 0d. In the especially cold winter of 1909, he even bought a pair of skates for 4s. 3d.
He attended the college for 2 years before successfully matriculating to the faculty in October 1908. By December 1911, he had accomplished all his courses, passed his examinations, and satisfied the necessities of ten terms’ college residency. He was immediately offered the position of lay reader within the parish of Llanllwchaiarn, New Quay, Ceredigion.
His degree, BA (Hons), was awarded the next 12 months (29 April), and he was ordained deacon by the Bishop of St Davids in Abergwili Church, Carmarthen, on 21 September 1912. He was immediately appointed stipendiary curate in Llanllwchaiarn.
Sadly, Daniel didn’t write much of life as an Edwardian undergraduate. One intriguing entry, nonetheless, indicates that there have been sometimes tensions between the undergraduates and the faculty authorities. The context shouldn’t be explained, but it surely seems orders given by the faculty Principal to student representatives “that there ought to be no procession” were openly defied.
Recent research within the university library suggests that it was a reference to events of 1911, when two students were sent down after entering and causing damage to the room of one other student, as a rag prank. Fellow students thought the punishment too harsh, and a procession was planned to escort the 2 homeward-bound students to the railway station. They were carried shoulder-high through the streets of the town. Daniel’s part on this, if any, shouldn’t be recorded.
When he moved from town lodgings to school accommodation, the notebook does show that Daniel’s living expenses modified. His first term’s college bill as an undergraduate got here to greater than £29: this included tuition fees, room charges, coal, and costs incurred in “playing sport”.
WHY Daniel decided to hunt ordination shouldn’t be recorded. A powerful influence might have been “The Great Welsh Revival” of 1904-05. The Teifi valley, in mid-Wales, where he lived, was right at the guts of this religious upheaval, which revitalised the Nonconformist churches and from which the (then Established) Anglican Church was not immune.
One clergyman reported that “Sinners, and a few very notorious ones, are flocking to the Church by the lots of. Do not misunderstand me after I say the church as meaning the Church of England exclusively, however the church of Christ including different denominations.” The revival was such big news in Wales that the Western Mail printed special “revival editions” on the time.
Daniel would have been 17 years old when a major revival meeting was held in September 1904, in Newcastle Emlyn, a market town just five miles from his family farm. The Revd Joseph Joshua, a charismatic Calvinistic Methodist minister from New Quay, which was an early revival hotspot, got here to the town with a celebration of 15 enthusiastic young people. “They spoke, prayed and exhorted because the Holy Spirit led them. The fire burned all before it. Souls were melted and lots of cried out for salvation.”
It shouldn’t be known whether Daniel was present, though it is vitally possible that he was. In the three years before he left home, nonetheless, there may be reliable evidence that he was a daily churchgoer and a devout young man. The Vicar of Llangeler, who had known him for some years, wrote him a personality reference in 1911: “I even have had the pleasure of recommending a goodly variety of young men to the bishop through the last decade. I even have not the least hesitation in saying that I now recommend the best applicant of all. That he attends our church is sufficient guarantee that he’s thoroughly Evangelical.”
DURING some 40 years of ministry, Daniel was a respected, much loved, and conscientious parish priest in two rural Carmarthenshire parishes: first, Brechfa; after which Llanfihangel-ar-Arth. His entire ministry was served in St Davids diocese.
A practical ecumenist, he fostered good relations with other denominations in his parishes, at a time when this was less usual. He never achieved high office, but that appears to not have been a matter of regret. There was no indication that his faith ever wavered. The young man from a small farm in mid-Wales achieved in life that on which he had set his mind from his teenage years.
Ted Harrison is an artist and author.
