Sex, Sects and Society

Russell Davies

Description

In an extended account of national identity, this companion volume to People, Places and Passions provides the first detailed study of the sexual and spiritual life of Wales in the period 1870–1945. The author argues that whilst Wales and its people experienced a disenchantment of the spiritual world, a revolution in sexual life was taking place. This innovative study examines how advances in life expectancy and improvements in health were reflected in emotional life. In contrast to the traditional emphasis upon hardship and hardscrabble experiences, this fascinating and beautifully written volume shows that the Welsh were also a free and fun-loving people.

‘To begin at the beginning’: an introduction
1: ‘Dygŵyl y Meirwon’ (Festival of the Dead): death, transcendence and transience
2: The Citadel: pain, anxiety and wellbeing
3: Going Gently into that Good Night: desolation, dispiritedness and melancholy
4: Where, When, What Was Wales and who were the Welsh? contentment, disappointment and embarrassment
5: ‘The Way of all Flesh’: prudery, passion and perversion
6: Love in a Cold Climate: fidelity, friendship and fellowship
7: Religion and superstition: fear, foreboding and faith
8: The pursuit of pleasure: enthrallment, happiness and imagination
Conclusion: A few selected exits.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Great Britain
• History
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: University of Wales Press
• Date de parution: 28 mars 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781786832153
• Langue: English

Extrait

SEX, SECTS AND SOCIETY
SEX, SECTS AND SOCIETY
Pain and Pleasure : A Social History of Wales and the Welsh, 1870-1945
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University of Wales Press Cardiff 2018
© Russell Davies, 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Applications for the copyright owner s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff CF10 4UP.
www.uwp.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-78683-213-9 eISBN 978-1-78683-215-3
The right of Russell Davies to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77, 78 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The University of Wales Press acknowledges the financial support of the Welsh Books Council.
The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Cover image: Chapel group (unidentified) c.1910. From the Percy Benzie Abery Photographic Collection, by permission of The National Library of Wales.
Cover design: Olwen Fowler
Contents
Diolchiadau - Acknowledgements
Introduction: To Begin at the Beginning
1 Dygwyl y Meirwon (Festival of the Dead): Death, Transcendence and Transience
Glyn cysgod angau : the valleys of the shadow of death
The last dance : grief and ars moriendi (the art of dying)
2 The Citadel: Pain, Anxiety and Wellbeing
Healthy or Hungry Wales?
The Massacre of the Innocents : infant and maternal mortality
Endangered lives: disease and society
Dead Souls: disasters and misadventures
In place of fear : defences against death and disease
3 Going Gently into that Good Night: Desolation, Dispiritedness and Melancholy
Un Nos Ola Leuad (One Moonlit Night): suicide
The caves of alienation: worry, boredom and hysteria
4 Where, When, What Was Wales and who were the Welsh? Contentment, Disappointment and Embarrassment
Gwlad, Gwlad: Wales! Wales?
Yr hen ffordd Gymreig o fyw : rural idylls
Prometheus unbound: urban and industrial Wales
Weird Wales
Cry the beloved country : national character and identity
5 The Way of all Flesh : Prudery, Passion and Perversion
Yes Mog, Yes Mog, Yes, Yes, Yes : popular sexuality
The Harlot s Progress: pimps, prostitutes and professionals
Brief Encounters: alternative sexualities
6 Love in a Cold Climate: Fidelity, Friendship and Fellowship
The Alone to the Alone : the power of love and the battle to avoid loneliness
Til death do us part : marriage, femininity and masculinity
Bohemian Rhapsodies: Bohemian Wales and Welsh Bohemians
7 Religion and Superstition: Fear, Foreboding and Faith
Some trust in chariots : religion and Welsh society
The re-enchantment of the world: the 1904-6 religious revival
Blithe spirits: ghosts, ghouls and Gothic Wales
Some enchanted evening : magic and the pursuit of happiness
The Disenchantment of the World : the ebbing of religion and magic
8 The Pursuit of Pleasure: Enthrallment, Happiness and Imagination
It s in the Air : culture, technology and time in the first multimedia age
The Battle to the Weak : sedentary pleasures
Perchance to Dream : producers, players and performers
Fields of praise : sport and society
The Trip to Echo Spring : drink and dissolution
Make Room for the Jester : happiness and humour
Conclusion: A Few Selected Exits
Notes
Diolchiadau - Acknowledgements
To Kylie Evans for once more transforming hieroglyphics into a typescript.
To the anonymous reader who reviewed the volume in an early draft and made valuable improvements.
To the staff at the University of Wales Press for their guidance and advice. The errors that remain in the volume are mine, and mine alone. (Why is it that in the proofing process errors are invisible, but seconds after publishing they glare at you with gleeful malevolence?)
To all those researchers working to find a cure for MS, thank you - please hurry up.
To Wales (whatever that is) and the Welsh (whoever you are).
I Cati, Beca a Guto, pob lwc wrth ichi greu Cymru r dyfodol.
I Nerys, Betsan a Ffion, ac er cof am fy Nhad, John Haydn Davies (1926-2017), oedd yn drysorfa o straeon o r cyfnod 1870-1945.
Introduction To Begin at the Beginning
Parod yw dyn i liwio r cread â i ofidiau ei hun.
(Man is ever ready to fill creation with his own worries.)
Tegla Davies, G r Pen y Bryn (1923).
Set in the mountain vastness that inspired the national identity of Ceiriog, O. M. Edwards and countless others is the Arts and Crafts Movement s gem of St Mark s Church, Brithdir. Forlorn and forgotten, its congregation long gone to glory, its architectural and artistic riches are under the care of the Friends of Friendless Churches - an organisation whose title often evokes a sympathetic or sentimental Oh . In the graveyard s quiet earth is the grave of Sir Eric Ommanney Skaife (1884-1956). Of all the achievements of this Sussex-born, Sandhurst-trained career soldier, diplomat, civil servant, committed churchman and convinced conservative, a couplet in Welsh carved on the gravestone emphasises the most important:
Yng Nghymru yr oedd fy nghalon, Yn ei thir hi mae fy ngweddillion.
(My heart was in Wales And in her soil are my remains.)
Skaife learnt Welsh whilst a prisoner in Germany during the First World War and became an ardent eisteddfodwr, a vice-president of Urdd Gobaith Cymru and a generous patron of many aspects of Welsh language culture.
Across the same mountains are scattered the ashes of another person who is not always allowed into the Welsh Valhalla. Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) was the scion of an even more elite family than Skaife s. Russell s ancestors participated in every great British political event from the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536-40 to the Great Reform Act 1832. This philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist and Nobel laureate had a deep attachment to Wales. Born in Trellech, Monmouthshire, after his career, Russell retired home to Wales and lived out his long life in Plas Penrhyn, Penrhyndeudraeth.
Were they Welsh? Should their tales be considered as part of the story of Wales? Or were these nothing more than the desires of two people to wait the final trumpet in a tomb with a view? But their emotional attachment to the country would seem to suggest that a positive answer was appropriate. At the very least the couplet written in a Welsh country churchyard and the ashes scattered over the hillsides confirm the complexities of Welsh national identities. The private realms of belonging and being are often the preserve of the novelist or the literary critic but history too can provide valuable insights into a person s national identity.
This is the second of two volumes of the history of Wales in the period 1870-1945 under the collective title of Pain and Pleasure . Where, when, what was Wales and who were the Welsh? are more than the monosyllabic questionings of children. As ever with such precocious utterings they help to point towards deeper human truths that reveal how complex and contradictory the answers can be. There are almost as many answers to the questions as there were people within and without Wales who claimed some affiliation and attachment to the nation.
To many Wales was God s Acre, gently watered by gwlith a glaw Rhagluniaeth (the dew and rain of Providence). Its people had the piety of a chosen elect. But closer examination reveals that the spiritual life of Wales was not without its darker side, for the Welsh too were a people who walked in the darkness of superstition. After the revivalistic enthusiasm and excitement of 1905 and all that abated, there was an ebbing of the sea of faith. Wales experienced a disenchantment of the world, a dechristianisation and a desacralisation of the nation. One of the most fundamental factors behind these processes is that over the years 1870-1945, Wales and the Welsh, despite hardship and hardscrabble existences, experienced a remarkable transformation in the wealth of the nation and the longevity of the people. Life expectancy almost doubled. People were no longer terrified that they could scent the Grim Reaper s breath. This decline in fear must be one of the most remarkable transformations in Welsh history.
The Welsh were one of the few people who thanked their maker that they were a musical nation and included musicality as one of the characteristics of their national identity. In the 1940s Ealing film comedy A Run for Your Money , two miners on a trip to a rugby international in London are scandalised by a No Music sign in a bar. The inference clearly was that such a prohibition would be impossible in Wales. 1 The prohibition in Wales, of course, would have been over the sale of alcohol in the first place. The Welsh Sunday Closing Act (1881), the first legislation to treat Wales as a separate nation since the Acts of Union in the sixteenth century, sought to prohibit the sale of alcohol on a Sunday. It was perhaps the first step of the tortuous journey along the long and winding road to devolution. The long, dry Sunday became a feature of the Welsh Sabbath. It was testimony to the strength of the temperance movement and religion within Wales. Yet, for every person who signed the pledge, there was another who developed a strategy to assu