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After my father's death I came across a letter, in English, from Principal Thomas Lewis to my father who was at the time completing his degree in University College, Cardiff, and then intended to go on to Memorial College. His intention was to do an Honours degree in Welsh but Thomas Lewis opposed this and advised him to take another subject such as Hebrew. In the letter the Principal threatened that there would not be a place for Dad in the Memorial College if he studied Welsh. But Dad could be very obstinate and he insisted on graduating with Honours in welsh and later he did go on to the Memorial College.
The Revd. Joseph Jones was a prominent figure throughout the whole of Wales, not only in the religious circles but in education and politics too. He was the first Chairman of the Welsh Joint Education Committee, formed after the war. When he prepared an address to be delivered in Welsh, he would come to our house so that my father could correct any errors and freshen the expression. It was generally allowed that the quality of my father's Welsh was faultless with a particular flow of expression.
The Patriarch, John Evans, was a source of amazement to everyone. I remember seeing him in his seventies / eighties flying to and form his lodgings in Camden Terrace to the College like a little bird on the back of his high, heavy bicycle. Several times at the end of the summer term he would lead a squad of tired students to the summit of Pen-y Fan and hand out a sweet each. On the occasion of collecting for the L.M.S (Missionary) I would take my card to his lodgings and, without exception, he would ink in the names, addresses and amounts of contributors, rubbing out my untidy pencil and every unnecessary mark; and return the clean card to me in a new white envelope. He still preached when over a 100 years old and he remembered his family being thrown out of their Ceredigion home for voting against the local landlord in the election of 1868.
A source of astonishment to us children was watching Prof D Miall Edwards arriving at the chapel on Sunday morning. By then the cruel paralysis had taken a serious hold of his body. He would come with Mrs Edwards and his sister who would help him rise from the car and then he would proceed alone at a steady trot half dragging his feet to the porch and then down the aisle of the chapel to his seat in the front. Sometimes we would meet him on the road, his sister pushing him in a wheel-chair. He insisted on stopping and having a word with us, but I could not understand what he said and his sister would have to interpret for him. His death in 1941 was a great loss to Welsh theology and philosophy.
© S I Jones 1999
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